MIFTAH
Wednesday, 4 December. 2024
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

On a recent advocacy trip to Europe, I was asked by a young university student how to respond to his parents who shrug off the genocide in Gaza as something that is “unfortunately inevitable”. While this student maintained that his parents realized this was not an ideal situation, he admitted to struggling with their nonchalant attitude about the annihilation of the Palestinians. My answer was brief and to the point, albeit emotional. “Tell them: is this the kind of world you want to live in? Where a state can freely annihilate an entire people with impunity? Is this the world you want your children and grandchildren to inherit?”

The young man was well intentioned and he was clearly grappling with this existential conundrum. Jewish, he grew up in a household that believed in Israel and the Zionist project, but having witnessed what this entity and its ideology is capable of, he shifted course and is now trying to convince his parents it is their moral imperative to do the same.

Now over two months after this encounter, as Palestinians and many around the world continue to reel from the horrific scenes coming out of Gaza, this young man’s question has repeatedly crept back into my head.

In the past nine months, Israel has provided a sneak-peak into the world it envisions: one that does not question it, regardless of its atrocities; one where the word Palestine, along with its people, are wiped from map and memory. The Gaza slaughter is a foreshadowing of this new world order, which does not include us.

As the genocide grinds on mercilessly, the dead, wounded, missing and displaced soaring to unimaginable heights, a terrifying truth has dawned on us Palestinians: there is no question anymore whether the world will allow our extermination to happen or not. The answer is provided every day and with every unchecked massacre.

This world that really is callous, watching the slaughter of innocent men, women and children without blinking an eye. Or worse, they justify the rivers of Palestinian blood as “concerning” but immediately follow this up with the hackneyed phrase: “Israel has the right to defend itself,” or, “…but Hamas.” Where is the argument for the Palestinians’ right to self-defense against a brutal military occupation that has stripped them of rights and dignity for decades? Does that never calculate into the equation? Apparently not.

This is nothing new. Colonialist powers have always maligned the people under their colonization, dehumanizing them through language and deed as a means of justifying their annihilation. Indigenous peoples all over the world understand this painful reality, from New Zealand, to North and South America, to Africa and of course, Palestine. We are the “terrorists”, and the “human animals”, so our deaths will not matter.

This is where the world has it all wrong. To the parents of this young man who found his own humanity and compassion for the plight of Palestinians and was desperately seeking answers to how this compassion could be passed on to his parents, the answer is clear. The world will pay for this genocide in more ways than one, humanity being the first casualty. If “never again” signifies anything other than its literal meaning, then it means nothing at all, and this is a dangerous and slippery slope for everyone. If Israel is allowed to get away with mass murder and remain a nation among nations, who will stop Israel or others from doing this to another people ? Those who greenlighted this genocide from day one, unwittingly created a beast that will turn on them the first chance it gets.

 
 
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