Pricey Europeans,
I, like tens of millions of Palestinians, am dwelling by way of the worst nightmare of yet one more spherical of mass demise and destruction unleashed on our individuals – one thing you’d usually merely name “an escalation” of the “Palestinian-Israeli battle”.
As I write these traces, al-Ahli Hospital was bombed, killing a whole lot of youngsters, women and men, who had sought security on the premises of the hospital. Hours earlier, the information of the demise of my good friend Mohammed Mokhiemar, his spouse Safaa, and their three-month-old child Elyana reached me.
They have been killed after evacuating with different households to the southern a part of Gaza, following Israeli orders. They and 70 different Palestinians have been killed by Israeli air strikes.
The one phrase I can consider that comes near what I really feel proper now’s “qahr” in Arabic; it isn’t simply ache, anguish and anger. It’s the feeling handed on by way of generations, amassed greater than 75 years of ethnic cleaning, mass killings, injustice, oppression, colonisation, occupation and apartheid. It’s a feeling ingrained in each Palestinian, one thing we have now to dwell with all our lives.
It’s a feeling I used to be born with to a household of refugees within the Gaza Strip. My grandparents hailed from the village of Isdud (now Ashdod) and the village of Bayt Jirja, however have been compelled to settle in Jabalia refugee camp, nearly 20km (12.4 miles) away from their houses. Qahr was most likely the primary emotion I learn on my mom’s face as a child – a younger mom fearful about her infants surviving the Israeli onslaught on Gaza amid the primary Intifada.
Qahr was what I felt when the Israelis first raided our dwelling, and after they first arrested my father, who was subjected to repeated arbitrary detention with out trial or cost. Qahr was what overwhelmed me once I noticed Israeli troopers open fireplace at peaceable Palestinian demonstrators. Qahr was extra highly effective than the ache I felt when I, too, was shot.
Qahr outlined each assault Israel launched on Gaza, killing, maiming and devastating my household, buddies, neighbours, and fellow Palestinians in 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2020, and 2021.
In the present day, as I watch what’s unfolding in my homeland, I really feel qahr, but in addition deep indignation and frustration. The reactions of your leaders, pricey Europeans, to what’s going on have but once more revealed selective solidarity, ethical failure and a darkish double customary.
On October 11, when greater than 1,000 Palestinians had already been killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Fee, supplied unconditional help to Israel. “Europe stands with Israel. And we totally help Israel’s proper to defend itself,” she stated, making no point out of the entire blockade Israel had imposed on Gaza, slicing off electrical energy, water, and the provision of meals and drugs – what authorized consultants outline as a warfare crime.
Just some days earlier, her colleague, Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi had stated, “The size of terror and brutality towards #Israel and its individuals is a turning level. There will be no enterprise as typical”, asserting the suspension of all assist to the Palestinian individuals, in a transparent act of collective punishment. The choice was reversed, however the harm had been finished: all Palestinians had been painted as “brutal terrorists”.
In fact, there was no official European response to Israeli officers calling Palestinians “animals” and “sub-human” and the genocidal implications that such language carries; hardly shocking, provided that Israeli settlers’ marches by which they shout “kill the Arabs” have been by no means condemned both.
However there was a concerted effort to censor and stop diaspora Palestinians and their European allies from mourning and demonstrating solidarity with the individuals of Gaza, as numerous European states have imposed protest bans and police forces have harassed and crushed demonstrators.
European politicians from throughout the political spectrum – together with many liberals and greens – have joined the marketing campaign of collective dehumanisation of Palestinians. But, these similar people have been greater than forthcoming in help of Ukraine in its battle towards Russian occupation.
In accordance with them, Ukrainians have the correct to withstand, Palestinians don’t; Ukrainians are “freedom fighters”, Palestinians are “terrorists”. Ukrainian lives misplaced to indiscriminate bombardment of civilian houses and infrastructure are price mourning, Palestinian lives misplaced in the identical circumstances are higher ignored – or worse justified as Israel exercising its “proper to defend itself”. This European double customary is actually lethal.
That European leaders and politicians are taking the ethical excessive floor proper now and labelling us, Palestinians, “brutal terrorists” is sort of wealthy, particularly contemplating the pre-history of what’s going on.
Allow us to keep in mind that in your continent, pricey Europeans, wild, brutal anti-Semitism raged for hundreds of years, leading to bloody pogroms, mass killings, expulsions, dispossession and harassment of European Jews. When a motion emerged inside the Jewish group calling for a mass exodus to Palestine, European anti-Semites inspired it.
Considered one of them, British Overseas Secretary Arthur Balfour signed a pledge in 1917 that the British authorities would help the institution of a nationwide dwelling for the Jewish individuals in Palestine, on the lands of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. The Holocaust, the height of European murderous anti-Semitism, was adopted by European nations unanimously backing the creation of Israel in a United Nations vote. Greater than half of the world – nonetheless below colonial rule – couldn’t vote.
The indigenous Palestinian inhabitants, after all, was not requested whether or not it wished to pay the value for European anti-Semitic brutality. The next 12 months, Israeli militias ethnically cleansed greater than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in what we name, the Nakba, the disaster.
As American author James Baldwin aptly put it in a 1979 article reflecting on this actuality: “the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western pursuits … The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial coverage of ‘divide and rule’ and for Europe’s responsible Christian conscience for greater than thirty years.”
It has been 75 years of this “responsible Christian conscience” now, pricey Europeans. One has to surprise if ever you’d ever really feel guilt on your complicity in what is going on to us, Palestinians.
It shouldn’t be that tough to look critically on the brutality Palestinians have been subjected to, and ask yourselves whether it is proper. It shouldn’t be that tough to open a historical past e-book and skim and study what has occurred in Palestine and perceive our battle for self-determination and return. It shouldn’t be that tough to learn the myriad of United Nations resolutions reaffirming our rights – to withstand, to be freed from occupation, to return to our homeland.
It’s a shame to speak about human rights, equality and democracy after which fail to query the brutal insurance policies of a rustic that engages in settler colonisation and apartheid.
Within the first six days of the warfare, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on the densely populated Gaza Strip. That, in line with consultants, is the equal of 1 / 4 of an atomic bomb. In accordance with the Palestinian Ministry of Well being, greater than 3,000 individuals have been killed, together with greater than 1,000 youngsters; however we actually have no idea the true demise two as many individuals stay below the rubble with nobody to drag them out.
Final week, Israel ordered greater than 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate their houses below steady bombing. The photographs of Palestinians leaving their houses and making their method by way of the rubble in the direction of illusory security have reminded us of the Nakba. Amongst them are my household, who left with heavy coronary heart our partially broken home, which they spent their lifetime constructing.
As I write these traces, I worry at any second receiving a message in regards to the demise of my household: Ismail my father, Halima my mom, Mohammed my brother, Asmaa my sister-in-law, and my most stunning nieces Elya (6 years previous) and Naya (2 months).
I need you to recollect their names. I’d not allow them to change into mere numbers in the event that they get killed.
I’d not be fearing for his or her lives right now, pricey Europeans, if it weren’t on your help, silence and complicity in Israeli crimes and the financial and political backing Israel receives from the European governments that you just elected.
A day will come when Palestine can be liberated. It will likely be a day of reckoning. You can be requested, whereas Israeli occupation and apartheid have been crushing Palestinians, what have been you doing? What is going to it’s a must to say on your inaction then?
There may be nonetheless time so that you can spare your self the disgrace of being on the flawed facet of historical past. As bell hooks stated, “Solidarity is a verb”. Are you performing now to cease the genocide in Gaza?
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
