My Israeli friends: For these reasons I support the Palestinians – ILAN PAPPE.
ByIlan Pappe
- originally published in The Palestine Chonicle
It is a challenge to maintain your moral compass when the society you belong to (both its leaders and its media) assume the moral authority and expect you to share with them the same righteous fury with which they reacted to the events of last Saturday 7 October.
There's only one way to resist the temptation to join in.: if you understood, at some point in his life – even as a Jewish citizen of Israel – the colonial nature of Zionism and was horrified by its policies against the indigenous peoples of Palestine.
If you have noticed that, will not hesitate, even if the poisonous messages describe Palestinians as animals or "human animals". These same people insist on describing what happened last Saturday as a “Holocaust.”, thus abusing the memory of a great tragedy. These feelings are being transmitted, day and night, by both the media and Israeli politicians.
It is this moral compass that led me, and others in our society, to support the Palestinian people in every way possible; and that allows us, at the same time, admire the bravery of the Palestinian fighters who took over a dozen military bases, surpassing the strongest army in the Middle East.
further, People like me cannot help but raise questions about the moral or strategic value of some of the actions that accompanied this operation..
As always we support the decolonization of Palestine, we knew that the longer Israeli oppression lasted, the less likely it would be that the liberation struggle would be “sterile” – as has been the case in all just liberation struggles in the past, anywhere in the world.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't keep an eye on the bigger picture., not even for a minute. The image is that of a colonized people fighting to survive, at a time when their oppressors had elected a government, who is bent on accelerating the destruction, in fact, the elimination of the Palestinian people – or even of their own claim to be a people.
Hamas had to act, and quickly.
It is difficult to express these counterarguments because Western media and politicians have accompanied the Israeli discourse and narrative., no matter how problematic it was.
I wonder how many of those who decided to dress the Parliament in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris in the colors of the Israeli flag really understand how this seemingly symbolic gesture is received in Israel?.
Even the liberal Zionists, with a minimum of decency, They interpret this act as a total absolution of all the crimes that the Israelis have committed against the Palestinian people since 1948; and therefore, as carte blanche to continue the genocide that Israel is now perpetrating against the people of Gaza.
Fortunately, There were also different reactions to the events that occurred in recent days.
Like in the past, large sectors of Western civil society are not easily fooled by this hypocrisy, which is already fully manifested in the case of Ukraine.
Many people know that since June 1967, one million Palestinians have been imprisoned at least once in their lives. And with imprisonment comes abuse, torture and permanent detention without trial.
These same people also know the horrible reality that Israel had created in the Gaza Strip when it sealed off the region., imposing a hermetic siege, from 2007, accompanied by the relentless killing of children in the occupied West Bank. This violence is not a new phenomenon, since it has been the permanent face of Zionism since the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Due to that same civil society, my dear Israeli friends, Your government and media will ultimately be proven wrong, since they will not be able to claim the role of victims, receive unconditional support and get your way.
Over time, the big picture will emerge, despite inherently biased Western media.
The great question, Nevertheless, is the next: can you, my israeli friends, see clearly also this same general picture? Despite years of indoctrination and social engineering?
And no less important: Can they learn the other important lesson – which can be drawn from recent events – that force alone cannot find the balance between a just regime, on the one hand, and an immoral political project, for the other?
But there is an alternative. In fact, there has always been a:
A deionized Palestine, liberated and democratic from the river to the sea; a Palestine that welcomes refugees and builds a society that does not discriminate on the basis of culture, religion or ethnicity.
This new State would work to rectify, as far as possible, the evils of the past, in terms of economic inequality, theft of property and denial of rights. This could herald a new dawn for the entire Middle East.
It's not always easy to stick to the moral compass, but if it points north – towards decolonization and liberation –, will most likely guide you through the fog of poisonous propaganda, hypocritical policies and inhumanity, often perpetrated in the name of "our common Western values".
–Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. Previously he was a full professor of political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The modern Middle East, A history of modern Palestine: a land, two towns and ten myths about Israel. Pappé is described as one of the “new historians” of Israel who, since the publication of the relevant documents of the British and Israeli governments in the early 1990s 1980, has been rewriting the history of Israel's creation in 1948.
