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The Fear of Palestinian Existence | | | One of over 1000 Gazans wounded by the Israeli army at the Gaza border. (Photo: MEMO) |
Fear has consistently shaped Zionism's approach towards the indigenous Palestinians. As Palestinians have been blamed for merely standing in the way of the colonizer, their removal which has entailed multidimensional policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide, has been rhetorically rationalized through Orientalist transformations of Palestinians from the original owners of the land into "Islamist" terrorists. While Palestinians face a multitude of structural and physical violence, reoccurring culminations of Israeli aggressions resulting in the mass production of Palestinian death have repeatedly highlighted the always-already dehumanized position of Palestinians in the Western political and public sphere. The Great Return March, a popular, peaceful protest of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, discloses once again that Palestinians are being blamed for their very existence by Israel and its allies. The protest is a colonized population's call for the implementation of international law. Gazans are collectively incarcerated, besieged at land, air, and water, denied the right to return - a right that was granted in UN Resolution 194 in 1948 - for seven decades, while simultaneously facing a tremendous humanitarian catastrophe that entails the lack of food, water, and electricity. Reduced to bare existence, Israel regularly bombards them - like in the 2014 war - and tests new weapons on their bodies. It was not surprising that this time again Israel's advanced military immediately attacked the protesters. Audio-visual material shared on social media by Palestinians shows how Israeli snipers indiscriminately shot anyone who came near Israel's "border fence." This banal violence that resulted in a massacre of Palestinians was encouraged by the Israeli government, largely ignored by Western governments, and legitimized by Western media. Major news outlets euphemized Israeli aggression as passive response, linguistically appealing to the readers' implicit Orientalism and rationalizing the use of military aggression against peaceful protesters. For example, the Washington Post wrote about "deadly clashes" (March 30) and CNN narrated that Palestinians were "killed in confrontations with Israeli forces" (March 31). According to a New York Timesarticle (March 30), which merely paraphrased the Israeli narrative, "the Israelis responded." The same article concludes by retrospectively justifying Israel's three wars on Gaza as a combat against "the threat posed by rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups, and from tunnels crossing under the border." Fox News blamed "Gaza attacks" on Hamas. Most reports included pictures of Kuffiye-wearing Palestinians throwing stones. Pictures and videos of heavily armed Israeli soldiers, or of the shootings of unarmed Palestinian civilians - though omnipresent on social media - were omitted. This fantasy of "clashes" and "confrontations" projects a conflict between two independent countries. Like the Israeli government, media deprives Palestinians of their geo-political and historical context, suggests a parity of power between colonizer and colonized, and implies that Palestinians simply die because they have to, not because they are massacred. This is also Israel's standard rhetoric. A cable sent out by Israel's Foreign Ministry to Israeli diplomats outlines the simple copy-paste tactic the Israeli government has perpetually employed to justify any new killings of Palestinians: as usual, the protest is demonized as "dangerous," "premeditated," and a "Hamas-led confrontation campaign." All Palestinians are rhetorically transformed into terrorists fighting for Hamas, which is depicted as the world's most dangerous terror organization capable of rapidly destroying Israel. Hence, all violence against Palestinians is necessary self-defense. Concurrently, Palestinians are blamed for their own death - like in 2014, when Naftali Bennett blamed Hamas for a Palestinian " self-genocide." Following the narrative behind this widespread criminalization of Palestinian dissent, Palestinians would not protest because of unsustainable living conditions, because of the omnipresence of death, or because they are facing a brutal military occupation - but because they simply hate for no reason. These Orientalist assumptions suggest that Palestinians do not have any agency. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) defined the protests "a call for the end of the state of Israel." The ADL is right. Palestinian demands, i.e. the implementation of international law, an end of the occupation, and the granting of human rights, would certainly lead to an end of Israel in its current forms. Indeed, Israel is based on settler-colonialism, occupation, apartheid, ethnocracy, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal policies, all of which presuppose the perpetuation of Orientalist, Eurocentric, and Islamophobic racialization and dehumanization of Palestinians, who remain simultaneously unknowable and imagined as violent. Palestinians are seen as guilty for not surrendering and for drawing worldwide attention to their struggle. Hence, they are blamed for their very human survival instinct and for not embracing their own death. Media narratives reveal that Palestinians are comprehended as a plague. If the Israeli military's shooting of an unarmed protester is considered a "clash," then the danger stemming from Israeli weapons is on par with the danger coming from an unarmed Palestinian. Thus, Palestinians do not need to take weapons in order to be understood as dangerous. Their existence is comprehended as an attack per se, and the visibility of that existence continues to haunt the Zionist colonial project, as Israel continues trying to make Palestinians disappear discursively and physically. - Denijal Jegić is a doctoral researcher in Transnational American Studies. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter: @denijeg |
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Great March of Return: A New Defiance Campaign In a remarkably fresh approach in resistance to Israel's seven decades of colonialism, Palestinians have geared up to mobilize en masse in what has been dubbed as Great March of Return. Starting Friday 30th March 2018, thousands upon thousands head towards homes and lands from which they were forcibly expelled. Victims of evictions and ethnic cleansing whose losses have never been admitted by Israel despite being acknowledged by the United Nations, have every right under International Law to reclaim the theft of their land. Though month of March each year since 1976 has been commemorated as Land Day, this year sees it expanded in a very creative way. The popular sentiment shared amongst Palestinians in the diaspora as indeed within the suffocating occupied territories is "Returning to our stolen lands and homes is legal under International Law and UN resolutions". The Great March of Return is thus an affirmation of this inalienable right guaranteed by a substantial number of international conventions. Reports from the colonial regime reveal an aggressive and hostile military reaction is underway. Leaks from Netanyahu's war-room point to threats to kill any and all Palestinians who dare to approach the apartheid barriers or "fences" which bar the indigenous population from their homes and lands. To the dismay of Israel, the Great March of Return is not planned to be a short lived one-day event. And to add to Israel's PR nightmare, media coverage will in all likelihood revisit core issues at the heart of this March via extensive analysis and historic footage. Expressing its displeasure at mainstream media and throwing tantrums alongside wailing and howling - as Israel is accustomed to doing, will not assist the regime's Hasbara (propaganda) campaigns. In fact it will be entirely counterproductive as the old Nats in apartheid's heydays in South Africa learnt. Concealing the ugly reality of Zionism's imposition of a foreign entity (Israel) and the consequences of the Nakba (catastrophe) which to date are eminently visible throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories OPT, Palestine '48 and refugee camps dotted across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere is not only not possible, but morally repugnant. Equally it would be outrageous and utterly disgraceful for any media platform to ignore or downplay the enormous burden faced by Palestinians to free themselves from oppression and reclaim justice. The Great March of Return is thus a challenge to media to dislodge themselves from false Israeli narratives fed to them by highly resourced Hasbara campaigns. It requires a return to an understanding of the enormity of losses suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of a racist colonial entity supported and facilitated by the British government a century ago. It means revisiting notorious historical details which certainly will be unflattering for those European powers who played central roles In the dispossession of Palestine. The Great March of Return is a challenge to those in the media who've been cowed by intimidating threats of economic sabotage and fear being unfairly smeared as "antisemitic", to get off their fences and jump into the fray. Robust introspection and fearless courageous reports on the reasons why Palestinians have embarked on this momentous peaceful defiance campaign should be par for the course for journalists who value integrity. In keeping with its irrational conduct, Israel has imposed a "closure" on the Palestinian areas for the so called "Passover holidays". In addition the settler colonial regime has enforced a "no go" zone on land adjacent to Gaza's border. Chief of staff of the military's occupation forces has admitted that "more than 100 sharpshooters" primarily from elite special forces, have been deployed with permission to "open fire". B'Tselem, known for fearlessly challenging Israel's violations of human rights, is justifiably concerned about threats by the regime to unleash lethal force on the demonstrators. "Completely ignoring the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and Israel's responsibility for it, they are couching the planned protest in terms of a security risk, framing the demonstrators as terrorists and referring to Gaza as a 'combat zone."
As the March unfolds, reports come through about injuries and deaths caused by the Occupation forces' deadly weapons. As B'Tselem and other humanitarian organisations have warned, Israel's war mongering displays blatant disregard for the sanctity of Palestinian life. Nor for any of its obligations under International Law. The Great March of Return has the support of all the Palestinian factions - Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP and Islamic Jihad. Expected to continue until 15 May to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, it's demands will hopefully resonate across all corners of the world: Right of Return to their pre-1948 homes! - Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visiti: www.mediareviewnet.com. |
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By Ramzy Baroud Rim Banna passed away at the age of 51. Her death on March 24, after a decade-long battle with cancer, brought grief to Palestinians everywhere. Rim, a Palestinian Christian from Nazareth, united [...] By Denijal Jegić Fear has consistently shaped Zionism's approach towards the indigenous Palestinians. As Palestinians have been blamed for merely standing in the way of the colonizer, their removal which has entailed multidimensional policies of [...] South Africa's Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, an anti-apartheid stalwart and wife to Nelson Mandela when he was imprisoned on Robben Island, died Monday, her personal assistant Zodwa Zwane said. She was 81. During her husband's 27-year incarceration, [...] By Rima Najjar You can justify what's happening now to Palestinians in Gaza only if you can justify our Nakba - the violent establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in 1948 against the will of Palestinian non-Jewish Arabs, [...] By Iqbal Jassat In a remarkably fresh approach in resistance to Israel's seven decades of colonialism, Palestinians have geared up to mobilize en masse in what has been dubbed as Great March of Return. Starting [...] By Ramona Wadi The Palestinian "Great March of Return" has exposed the frailty of Israel's fabricated narratives, yet once again the international community prefers to speak about "sides" in the conflict. As the planned march [...] By Ralph Nader John Bolton's career of pushing for bombing countries like Iran and North Korea, and his having played an active role in the Bush/Cheney regime's criminal war of aggression that destroyed Iraq, makes [...] By Ramzy Baroud The "deal of the century" is a farce. We suspected that, of course, but, upon his return from Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in more detail why the long-anticipated plan [...] By Rebecca Stead On Tuesday, March 27, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) hosted Ramzy Baroud as he launched his new book The Last Earth in front of a packed lecture theater at Imperial College, London. Chaired [...] By Ramona Wadi In diplomatic circles, language hardly changes from one scenario to the next. It is only the accusations leveled against different political actors that convey part of the context, which always disregards allegations [...]
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