The Fall of all Walls: Genocide in Palestine
Preamble: The write-ups below start with a statement from me that hopes to instil hope and action in you, and in me. What follows are write-ups to share what I know and my interpretations of context. You may have different interpretations. Palestinians need to lead the way forward; we need to support them in every single way that we can. Genocide cannot be stopped soon enough, no action is too little, and apartheid needs dismantling in all its forms.
Addendum 15th October 2023: Residents and citizens of major world cities are rising up in protest of what Israel is doing to Palestinians. This is without precedent. I have never in my years seen something like this before. The genocide is ongoing, but there is at least an awakening of conscience at a scale that I could not have imagined two weeks ago. These protests have themselves resisted their own government attempts to silence or ban them altogether, particularly, but not exclusively in Europe. This strength in numbers and the power that wields is what you can take heart from. I am in awe, and I have hope, hope which terrifies me if I see the Palestinians will be let down again, but hope that also inspires me, and I hope it inspires you too.
Addendum: Important resources for action
Global protests I’m aware of: Britain, Malaysia, Lebanon, France, Italy, Iraq, Many US cities, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Jordan, Kenya, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, and Ireland.
See a full set of possible actions listed out here.
Join vigils/protests in your cities: Calendar.
Donate to efforts to support casualties. Be sure to vet the sites and organizations you donate to Build Palestine.
Write directly to key stakeholders who can influence the process (US):
Dear friends and family,
There is an ongoing genocide of Palestinians led by Israel and enabled primarily by US and European governments. More than [updated] 4200 Palestinians, including 1100 Palestinian children, have been killed by Israeli aggression, whole neighbourhoods have been flattened, and families completely destroyed.
While the October 7th attacks are horrific, the context of these attacks, as well as the response to them need to be centered.
Genocides are not a thing of the past. This is happening right now.
This ‘response’ by Israel is built off of years of ethnic cleansing, imprisonment, abuse, control, and the overall dehumanization of Palestinians, and Muslims generally. It is also their arrogance, resulting from decades of impunity, that has led to this moment. Genocide does not capture the extent of how horrific 75 years of this treatment is.
What is worse is the feeling of helplessness or indifference others may have about your condition. The Palestinians have felt this for decades.
Now is different. Now you see what is going on as explicitly as possible. Some of us saw more in the past two years. Others since 2014, others since 2007. Others since the 90s. Others since 67. Others since 1948. Yet others, since before. That is progress. Slow as hell as it has been.
This apartheid system is enabled by great liberal nations looking to shed or bury their histories to remain credible today. These nations are under threat by rising powers and will, like all empires, double-down wherever they can. Nations that love to tout free speech until it goes against their own interests. Nations that love to celebrate liberty after they have been hard-fought and won, pretending to be champions, but rarely in the ring when they are needed most. Nations that have a history of control and oppression abroad, but tout the freedoms they create domestically, for some more than others.
Then they point the finger at Palestinians and Palestinians alone.
The impunity enjoyed by Israel is enabled in part by decades of military testing and experimentation on the “human animals” the Israeli generals refer to the Palestinians as. This experimentation results in increased surveillance, enhanced militarization and the sale of arms, and considerable lessons in fascist narrative framing in your country too. Some are acting on it now. Others are keeping a card in their pocket. This includes Muslim-majority countries and non-Muslim countries. This is not isolated to Palestine. This is all about greater forms of control to suppress future resistance, everywhere. Pegasus, enhanced weaponry, the use of AI to categorize people based on threat level, the use of propaganda to divide and rule hearts and minds and narratives.
Of course, it is not just about military technologies. It has always been about a counterbalance, reframing of narrative, and the pursuit of greater control in the region for these great liberal nations. Israel offered that to them in exchange for its own level of impunity and control over the land it now occupies.
There is no guarantee that fascism fades or liberalism prevails. There is no guarantee that the arc of history bends toward justice.
These issues are never-ending because states and political elites never want to be credibly threatened by the people they govern. They prevent clarity of vision, clarity of principles, and clarity of action.
Speaking up about Israel is difficult. There are often unclear ways to support. An emotionally overwhelming complexity is presumed when there is considerable simplicity. There are real risks to jobs and how people see you, including those you love. These are not easy shackles to break from and not everyone can or should. Your families, loved ones, and your own mental health need you too. I struggle with this balance as well.
No one is asking any individual to single-handedly destroy the Israeli apartheid system. Systems of oppression do not disappear, they manipulate and evolve, hide in plain sight. There’s evidence of this everywhere you look.
But try every day or every month, try and solve for who you want to be and be seen as for the next generation, in full honesty, without ego, and full clarity. Whatever that looks like for you.
If you want to talk, listen, learn, teach, correct, I am here for all of it. I do not care if you were silent before this. This cannot be absent from your heart and not be affecting you. It is affecting everyone either on the surface or somewhere deep within them.
If you are someone with influence in your immediate circles because of your ability to listen and communicate, use it. There is little more powerful than that in all of history.
If you have the privilege of an education from a university and that university has not issued a clear statement condemning genocide, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing. Rally your classmates and people you were your allies then. Write to them in force.
If there is a protest near you, I want you to be there. If there is a way you know to show more solidarity with Palestinians, show it. If all that is possible is a change of picture or a post to show solidarity, do it. If none of this is possible for you, I’ll still love you of course, and we’re going to have to talk about what emotional or structural barriers exist for you over time.
All consumers can join the BDS movement. It has been attacked left, right, and center by the Israeli government, often trying to label it as anti-Semitic. However, many products use Palestinian land and/or Palestinian labor to produce those products. Choose how you approach this as best as what works for you. Companies collapsing can mean jobs lost, but exploitation persists when you do not demand better.
If you have the skills, sue the media groups that parroted genocide-enabling narratives without question. Retraction or not. It does not matter if the lawsuit is won or not. The culture of impunity exists because it is allowed to. The numbers are and always have been with us, as have the skills. It’s about using them more.
If you are in diplomatic corridors for your countries, improve the statements and the votes your country is making in security council sessions and national assemblies.
If you are an Israeli and you care about the Palestinians, find every way to dismantle this apartheid government of yours. The next election cannot have another right-wing government in power. There needs to be sustained liberation-focused individuals elected. You deserve much better and they do not deserve you.
You are much stronger than you may feel and have much more support around than you realize, and if nothing or no one else, you’ve got me and I’m always ready to fight with and for my loved ones, you just have to open your arms and spirit to it. If and when you burn out, I am also here.
It is not lost on me that I am also saying this as much for myself as I am saying it to you. Exercise your strength and find courage.
For those in Nairobi, I’ll be at Cheche Bookshop in Nairobi at 5pm on Saturday for the vigil they are convening. Come. This is a step we can take together.
I will continue writing beyond this point, though you may also find some of it useful, interesting, clarifying, or provocative.
Yours, and with the Palestinians,
Osman Siddiqi
13th October 2023
From Pakistan and Kenya
The Root of Violence is Violence
Being factual for some reason is hard when it comes to this occupation. There’s a lot “but this but that” going on. However, some things are simply harder to shake or misinterpret. Those are the things I’ll speak to here, because they are enough.
We must question what we’re told. And question our assumptions. We’ve all in part been indoctrinated by a global Islamophobic projection and narrative-framing led by a pretty corrupt system when it comes to this occupation. This is particularly important given the Israeli government’s many shameful tactics, but one where the media in the US is fed fake news, and the US media just runs with it, and then we all believe it as fact even after the media retracts the information.
I want to share the understood definition of Zionism as described in part by the Jewish Virtual Library, it is not a blanket term, it means some pretty specific things and has pretty specific goals, even as they evolve in manifestation over time:
The term “Zionism” was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum. Its general definition means the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of the State of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel through support for the Israel Defense Forces.
Here’s a rapid rundown of the history of this occupation, it will miss key things, and I stop at the formation of Israel. I choose this because I feel this origin story is not as well-understood as things post-1967:
- 1939 — Nazis. Holocaust in Europe. Committed by an elected party and pushed by German forces. Somewhere between 5–10m Jews were hunted and murdered by the Nazis, for being Jewish. The term and legal norms around genocide are not yet formed though genocides have taken place before.
- 1942 — because saying 1941 would be giving the US too much grace (it was December), the US entered the war. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Now they were threatened. So, they acted.
- From the late 1800s through to Nazi Germany — Europeans wonder what to do with the Jewish people? Surely, they can’t stay in Europe and be safe. They turned out to be right. Proposals were shared for Palestine, Ethiopia, Japan, the US, Uganda, and Madagascar.
- 1920s — the first manifestation of Zionism in Palestine shortly after the British put forward the Balfour Declaration where the British supported the Zionist ask that the Jewish people had a birthright to live on the land the Palestinians lived on for generations.
- The UN proposed a partition plan in 1947. The UN was only a few countries then — if you remember, most of us were still colonized. Two-state solutions were all the rage. And still, India and Pakistan voted against this plan, they probably knew better than most.
- Here is a summary of the plan — while Palestinians inhabited 80% of the land and were 66% of the population. How disproportionate and elitist! The plan assigned 44% of the land to them, meaning, get up and leave nearly half the land you live and work on. The vote in the UN was 33 votes for, 13 against, 10 unsure. I’m going to list the 13 against because this is new information for me too — India, Pakistan, Iran (pre-US coup…), Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Cuba. So the wider “Middle East” which struggles with peace, most of South Asia, Greece, and Cuba. Palestine did not have a vote.
- 1947–1949 — the Nakba, coincidentally at the exact same time as the above. The Nakba is the catastrophe that destroyed Palestinian society. There is no other way to describe it. Palestinians were gunned down, families destroyed, yes, babies killed, homes raised, close to 700,000 Palestinians pushed out of their land and into our present world of statelessness. Israel then earned its right to exist, through a vote in a colonial era UN and extreme violence exerted upon Palestinians. Aged Israeli fighters from then still proudly speak about how effective they were.
- Mandatory conscription into the Israeli Defense Forces begin in 1948, for both men and women, starting at the age of 18. They are not children anymore legally, but they are kids. This is a level of violence against one’s own people I cannot imagine. No child soldiers and fully inclusive. Mandatory. Mandatory to harass, bully, surveil, and/or kill Palestinians (optional).
There is a whole additional stretch of history that starts in the late 60s which I won’t go into. A war in which Israel gained more territory within Palestine, but also in Jordan and Egypt. This is when Israel’s brand as a significant military force to contend with took place and global media doubled down on enforcing this belief. So much of contemporary history comes from this era — Cold War, origins of OPEC and oil price increases and the Yom Kippur war, the coup in Afghanistan, global economic recessions, Gulf War the first, the Mujahideen, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, 9/11, Hamas winning an election, the Gaza prison walls, the Intifadas, Israel’s new model of Apartheid. Pretty quickly comes to present times, doesn’t it?
That’s a lot of Googling I know. But it’s worth it, I promise.
History is never really about the past. It is more important to think about how it shows up today, and how it does not — who is around to share their history, in what way, and who isn’t? How things evolve, but never go away.
Hamas
All right, this is kind of a tough one and I have to take careful breaths writing this down. There goes this brown dude…
Hamas is a political party that uses its state-like powers in many different ways and sometimes to exercise violence as well as acts of terror. A deep reflection is needed on some questions on whether you believe Palestine exists or not and who you believe has the right to exercise violence. Without question, most people believe IDF has the right to exercise violence and acts of terror, Israel has a right to defend itself, and has the right to monopolize violence across Israel and Palestine. And in the same breath, people can say they want a two-state solution. Peacefully. Let’s do some breathing and free our minds a bit.
Some countries have Hamas on a terrorist list. Others do not. The general assembly in the UN did not get a two-thirds majority on designating them as a terrorist organization. Severe violence is hard to digest or align with, I absolutely know, and I cannot personally align with it. But I am not the one who is occupied (other than mentally). As much as I would be the first to criticize the BBC on their coverage of this occupation, even they ‘resist’ calling Hamas a terrorist organization. Palestinians do not have a choice today but to align with Hamas.
“We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened. We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as ‘bomber’, ‘attacker’, ‘gunman’, ‘kidnapper’, ‘insurgent’ and ‘militant’. We should not adopt other people’s language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.”
To be clear, I’m not saying “because the BBC says this, therefore it is true”, oh please. I am saying, that if even the BBC, who often say nothing and use a lot of words, can draw this distinction to convey the point, then so can we.
Resistance is a right, and there is no occupation in history that I know of that has been shaken off with handshakes alone. As far as an organization that is willing to exercise violence, it should be worth prompting oneself with how violent Hamas is relative to the IDF, given what the IDF does to Palestinians.
There is no alternative political organization today in Palestine that can drive resistance ‘by any means necessary…’, to quote someone who understood resistance quite well. Also, they were initially financed and supported by Israel to delegitimize the PLO whom Israel was negotiating with. Shockingly.
Hamas is used as a tool by the Israeli government. Don’t just believe the op-ed I’ve cited. This does not begin and end with Netanyahu. This is an article about how Israel supported the very foundations of Hamas and an Intercept write-up and video on this history.
Don’t be silenced just because Hamas sometimes pursues severe acts of violence, because their most extreme actions are used to silence all action by anyone else. This is a dehumanizing and silencing tactic by which Muslims in particular are asked “Do you condemn Hamas?”, “How do you feel about 9/11?”, and more subtle questions like, “Are you a practicing Muslim?”.
(Heck, even the word Fundamentalist is rooted in racist ideas that someone who follows Islam’s fundamentals must be violent. Think about it.)
Because the point is not whether they are a terrorist group or not. The point is resistance is a right, in all forms. Had Hamas not broken through Israel’s seemingly invulnerable impunity-ridden prison walls however, had not had the audacity to do so, the Israeli government would not be showing its truest colors, in the clearest possible ways with this siege of Gaza. This clarity and discussion would not be emerging.
Addendum: It is worth mentioning that Hamas is not the be-all end-all representation of Palestinians nor the be-all end-all resistance by the Palestinians. Palestinians have stood up in front of bulldozers, and been bulldozed. They have stood against IDF weapons, and been gunned down. They have thrown rocks in the face of machine guns, and they have been called violent. They have painted on the walls of their occupier, and museums that were visited were beyond this wall. They have made music, food, and art, that have been enjoyed by many, but often captured by Israelis as theirs. They have created incredible products the world consumes, but they have done so as cheap unprotected labor in Israeli-controlled factories. They are represented by TF
And yet, that was never enough. It has not been enough.
Some resistance movements in history:
- The Mukti Bahini used violence against Pakistan’s genocidal forces in Bangladesh. They are to this day, by some in Pakistan, seen as terrorists. They are not in my view. They killed Pakistanis openly in resistance to occupation and the denial of basic human rights, and more clearly, a denial of equality, justice, and dignity.
- The Mau Mau used violence against the British Empire’s violent colonial rule in Kenya. They are to this day, by some in the UK, seen as terrorists. They are not in my view. They killed British forces openly in resistance to occupation and the denial of basic human rights, and more clearly, a denial of equality, justice, and dignity.
- The ANC used violence against the Apartheid regime in South Africa. They are to this day, by some white people in South Africa, as recently as May as I heard it (in a tour bus no less), ‘not the right kind of resistance’. Apartheid forces were openly attacked and killed in resistance to occupation and the denial of basic human rights, and more clearly, a denial of equality, justice, and dignity.
See here how Gandhi (did not) singlehandedly and peacefully help India get rid of the British, independence involved multiple wars and “mutinies”. I’ll bring one example forward of the INA:
“After the Second World War, many British officials were unsettled by fear of the Indian National Army, a military organisation made up of Indian prisoners of war released from Japanese custody and led by the famous nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose.”
The list can go on to describe very many liberation struggles across empires and colonial enterprises.
It is easy to look back and think that if we were around then, while those organizations were seen as terrorists, we would be on the right side of history, and we would be allied with them. But turns out, that is much harder than you may think. I do not know what is in Hamas’ heart, but that’s one tool that Palestinians, whether they like it or not, have in order to resist occupation. Importantly, like all resistance movements, it is not the only tool.
That’s as much time as I want to spend on Hamas. It is deeply uncomfortable as a topic but is important to not softball it with flat condemnation, or if there isn’t flat condemnation, the implication of full support among Muslims or Palestinians or anyone who does not outrightly condemn them. Condemn the actions, and see the wider and deeper picture.
This topic needs depth and clarity because unlike apartheid, this conversation is more complicated, it needs nuance, and not something that can be concluded with a rating of good or evil, terrorist or not. These are silencing tools, tools to shut you down, tools to shut thought. Hamas are a political force, that uses violence, and the only one currently with any kind of teeth, governance, and large-scale resistance capability in Palestine.
The UN in 1947, the Two-State Solution, and the Nakba
Let’s not start with what I think. Let’s start with the legendary James Baldwin in 1979, writing in The Nation.
The state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. The Palestinians have been paying for the British Colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.
I worry when people presume having a prescription for the problem is as simple as saying a one or two-state solution. Let’s establish some context.
Because the solution-space is where complexity arises, not in what the problem is. The two-state solution has some validity, but it has a dark past and can result in serious consequences if dealt with without depth. Details matter. This will not be a deep-dive in the details. Open a map of where Israeli settlements are today and where Palestine is. Pretend to be that imperial power that decides where people will live. See how difficult this will be.
In 1947, the British Empire was only just beginning to collapse in on itself, and it couldn’t do it sooner. Its biggest colony, India, had freed itself from direct control. This freedom came at a severe cost prior to independence with communal violence picking up, during independence with the mass migration and millions of people dead, and this arbitrarily pursued, rushed decision perpetuates a cost on South Asians to this day, manifesting in a multitude of ways. This is one reason why South Asians can be a bit cliquey when they meet outside South Asia — because we do not get the opportunity to meet each other when we are in South Asia. This lack of connection is a huge problem, and it allows domestic fascist or nationalist movements to take hold, it has empowered militaries far beyond their remit, and it has caused significant rifts between us. We are free, controlled, divided, unified, in pain, angry, killing each other, easy to manipulate, strong resistors of oppression, pacified by our own myths, heartbroken, and joyous.
This is not a personal digression, it is important. Because this is the world then and how it connects to now.
The UN in 1947 had 57 members. Most of today’s countries were colonies of European powers. The UN was much more controlled and financed by European powers and the US than it is today. This nascent UN pursued a tumultuous process and, in my read, forced a two-state solution forward a month after India and Pakistan were formed, knowing full well what that looked like. Two-state solutions looked/look like easy fixes, easy exits. Palestine was not allowed to vote. The Arab Higher Committee, which constituted Palestinians, did not accept the initial draft of a Partition Plan as it simply did not have a legal basis. Why should they move from their land because European and Zionist forces want them to? It’s quite a simple point they made in this new forum.
At this stage, the British endorsed the plan of mass Jewish immigration. They presumably wanted to be done with this headache and again, in my read, Europeans wanted fewer Jewish people in Europe. Again, the Jewish people had gone through something existential and, even after WWII ended, they were not wanted around by the perpetrators, and proclaimed saviours, of the Jewish people.
As the process continued, supporters of Zionism in the United States, filibustered the final vote, delaying it to add considerable pressure on countries to vote yes. A two-thirds majority was needed.
Here’s President Truman of the US then:
“The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed me.”
The US of course voted yes to the Partition Plan. I mean they had just dropped a couple of nuclear bombs in the world. The annoyance probably helped.
Interestingly, the US knew it had lost favor with the Arab nations, the Arab nations threatened the US using their oil, and the US at least for a while began to support Pakistan’s position on Kashmir as an appeasement mechanism for the “Muslim Ummah” presumably.
This is not a side point, it is to say how US/European forces saw this part of the world — through the eyes of religion and religious differences. The US/Europe were deeply homogenous spaces religiously, and to a great degree still are. The main counterbalancing force was the Ottoman Empire, which was also relatively homogenous but much less so (74% Muslim in 1906, and probably an overestimate given the violent conditions in the Ottoman Empire then). India was the other large religiously diverse space with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, and more. These nations really had no other lens to look at how to divide, conquer, analyze, and assess countries abroad.
Zafrullah Khan, the then-representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, had an incredibly quotable speech. After clinically incisive remarks on the Partition Plan, he described a state of affairs that will sound all too familiar:
“What has Palestine done? What is its contribution toward the solution of the humanitarian question as it affects Jewish refugees and displaced persons? Since the end of the First World War, Palestine has taken over four hundred thousand Jewish immigrants. Since the start of the Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany, Palestine has taken almost three hundred thousand Jewish refugees. This does not include illegal immigrants who could not be counted.
One has observed that that those who talk of humanitarian principles and can afford to do most, have done the least at their own expense to alleviate this problem. But they are ready, indeed they are anxious to be most generous at the expense of the Arab.”
Abdul Rehman, who was representing India during the vote, stated that
“Great Britain wanted the creation of the Jewish state for political and strategic reasons in total disregard for the principle of self-determination”.
What a boss. This is pulled from the text of Indo-West-Asian Relations.
And Nehru:
“Fundamentally the problem of Palestine is a nationalist one. The Arabs are struggling against imperialist control and domination. It is a pity, therefore, that the Jews of Palestine instead of aligning themselves with this struggle have thought it fit to take the side of British imperialism and to seek its protection against the inhabitants of the country.”
Do note, this push to establish a Jewish state, came from Zionism supporters in a different continent who were probably afraid, angry, and wanted control of their own protection no matter what the consequences were. I do not know what the mental health of a community is that faces existential threat. Today, one can ask Rohingyas, Palestinians, Uighurs, Kashmiris, and many other populations that are undergoing extreme subjugation and oppression.
The UN ultimately passed the resolution with 33 votes for, 13 against, and 10 in absentia. India and Pakistan voted against and walked out together with the Arab Higher Committee, protesting the UN’s almost immediate loss of a principled stance on the right to self-determination.
The Nakba of 1948, the catastrophe and destruction of Palestine was on its way. Fully backed by the power of a UN vote and the violence in the hearts of a settler-colonial force that we have yet to fully reckon with.
In the votes, the United Kingdom, abstained. Chalaak log (sneaky people)! Wiping their hands off this situation. Thankfully, they were not scot-free yet. As the empire collapsed, efforts to preserve credibility and strength began. The foundations for burying their role in colonial oppression began. And what a on-the-sleeve name — Operation Legacy.
The US took center-stage fully. No need to go into anything more here. We see today, what was visible then.
India and Pakistan knew full well the dangers of the two-state solution and were openly, and confidently skeptical, of ideas pushed by the British. At least then. They, alongside the Palestinian representation, which again, didn’t get to vote, walked out of the UN after the vote. Of course, we then did our own wars and oppressions and genocides and pogroms.
As non-Palestinians, we can sometimes jump to the conclusion of what we support here. The two-state solution sounds so reasonable, fair, and easy. It is anything but. If history has taught us anything, any separation of a nation in any way or form will unlikely remove, but much more likely add to the violence and trauma the people have already experienced. It presumes separation is better along religious lines, that there is something in the hearts of one religion or another, that prevents co-existence. What prevents co-existence is low exposure to one another. Building things together. Healing and listening to one another. Hearts out. Pursuit of justice together. This does not exclude hearings and the pursuit of a just justice. Nor does it exclude a just form of economic compensation.
What makes us think that a two-state solution is what the Palestinians want today, or if it were to be even practically implemented, where would its borders be, given the state of power distribution between Israel and Palestine? Or if we reverted back to 1948 or 1967 borders, that uprooting people again would somehow not be met with immense resistance?
Most importantly, if the wider-we are just more and more recently getting attuned to listening to Palestinian voices, shouldn’t we at least let them say what they think is the right way forward as an occupied population rather than jump to ideas like two-state solutions that were speedily pushed by Britain, ignored Palestinian voices, and fought for heavily by the Zionist movement itself?
That in itself should give you a lot of pause.
To be the contradiction that I am, I’m not in the one-state or two-state space of solutions. I’m much more in a federalist camp. It shifts the possibilities of democracy and justice, and centres togetherness, not separation or central control. But I’m not here to defend that view, because it’s not my place to prescribe it. I do want to say this so that others can see there are more options out there.
I would say the epic Edward Said’s words should be held with a lot more weight than the non-Palestinian you/me— this is an extract from Orientalism:
I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial.
Because here we are. It is not too different from where we were. And we need a better and more just vision of where we should be. That vision needs to come from Palestinians.
Our Emotional Triggers
There is no conclusion to this piece. Palestinians will determine the conclusions with our support. This last section is an effort at baring myself a bit. It’s not really a personal section, but what I know from personal experiences that can be educational. I’m not the only one saying the below things, just another person saying them.
Some conversations are harder to have for me, even if just online. I cannot at the core of me imagine how many-fold harder these conversations are for Palestinians. I do know, however, that some of the below pointers I am sharing are shared experiences that can be difficult to stay calm with in conversation, even when well-intended, and be triggering in ways we do not always understand.
For all our lives, we’ve been told we’re violent until proven otherwise by a certain narrative. Many of you will relate to this in your own ways. That means there are words and things that are triggers for me. Words and phrases affect some of us in bad ways even when said innocuously or with all the right heart and intention. I will try not to be triggered. If I do get triggered, please find a path to forgive me or wait for me to slow down. I am human, and I am deeply imperfect. Examples of triggering comments:
- “Israel-Palestine Conflict” — it is not a conflict per se, it is an occupation facing resistance in many forms.
- “Both sides” — yes, life is life, and death is death. However, this is also deeply akin to ‘All lives matter’. Or if that is not an argument that lands for you, then consider power structures — both sides on how many dimensions of control, harm, superiority, violence, time periods?
- “Complex issue” — I’ll make it simple for you, it isn’t. See above.
- “Egypt has also implemented a blockade” — you are absolutely correct. Please help obliterate the apartheid system supported by our imperialist forces. Egypt is the second largest beneficiary of US financing in history in the region. Israel is the first.
- “Religious war” — this one probably gets to me the most. Kindly, remember how the British loved to split things up and move people around? Remember what happened just before 1948 in Europe that resulted in the mass ‘movement’ of Jewish people into Palestine (and that they were welcomed initially until they started killing Palestinians). Shockingly, it goes back to…European violence and colonialism. They would love for no one to be able to call that out.
- *Ignores all conversation points then…* “But do you believe Israel has a right to exist/defend itself?”. It’s here, isn’t it? Yes a few people are insane enough to call for the destruction of Israel and have no sense of justice in them. The remaining 99.9999% of us are not that kind of insane. But — in big and small ways — we are and have been insane enough to call out a super powerful influential settler-colonial imperially backed entity called Israel despite the possibility that we may lose our jobs, rights to travel, and credibility as humans, which we have worked hard to gain.
- “That sounds anti-Semitic” — that sounds like extremely bad faith and wilful ignorance to gain brownie points with dead-brained individuals. Judgment because of me being Muslim, brown, critical of Israel, critical of the West, a Pakistani — please expand your inner workings. I am also deeply critical of the identities and spaces I occupy. That does not make me anti-Pakistani, anti-Semitic, anti-Palestinian, anti-Kenyan, anti-X. But I am a little bit anti-anyone-who-chokes-the-conversation by using faux-justice as their line of theatrical intelligence.
- “But do you condemn…?” — that’ll likely be the end of our conversation. If the conversation were to continue from this point, I would have to resist your presence around me with some serious verbal destruction. I do not know how Husam Zomlot keeps a straight face in all these interviews, though you can see the exhaustion and incredulity of this situation.
On Lukewarm Acceptance
October 15th 2023: There is now a substantive increase in “both-sides” platitudes on LinkedIn and other social media. To be clear, there is no space for “both sides” to apartheid or genocide.
A dear friend reminded me of MLK’s quite on exactly that kind of rhetoric
This feeling is what many of us have always described as a manifestation of one of the deep hypocrisies of the current global order, and how it expresses itself in over-intellectualized ways, often devoid of a clear moral compass. When we grow up seeing white supremacists, racists, or extremists of any kind, we know exactly who they are, what they are saying, what they want, who is with us, and yes, how to counter them. But the frustration of dealing with people who want to not take a principled stance, both-sides the issues, and perhaps eventually claim credit for saying nothing, revising the history of their participation — may we get the patience to navigate these folks.
If I or your Palestinian friend cannot shake you out of this disarrangement in your morality, then let MLK do it. We know how much you all love a good MLK. We love the real MLK too.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
With love and for better conversations, and the pursuit of the fall of all walls,
Osman Siddiqi
