Ilan Pappe: “To my Israeli friends: This is why I support the Palestinians”

“It is difficult to maintain one's sense of morality when the society to which one belongs - both its leaders and its media - is in charge and is expected to share the same legitimate anger with which it reacted to the events of last Saturday, October 7.

There is only one way to resist the temptation to join them: if one has, at some point in one's life - even as a Jewish citizen of Israel - understood the colonial nature of Zionism, and if one has been horrified by its policies against the indigenous people of Palestine.

If he was aware of this, he would not hesitate, even if the poisonous messages described the Palestinians as animals or “human animals,” and the authors themselves insisted on describing what happened last Saturday as the “Holocaust,” exploiting the memory of a great tragedy.

These feelings are expressed, day and night, by the Israeli media and politicians.

It is this moral sense that prompted me and other members of our community to support the Palestinian people in every possible way, which allows us, at the same time, to express admiration for the courage of the Palestinian fighters who seized dozens of military bases, defeating the strongest army in the Middle East.

On the other hand, people like me cannot help but ask themselves questions about the moral or strategic value of some of the actions that accompanied this process. Because we had always supported the end of colonialism in Palestine, we knew that the longer Israeli oppression lasted, the less the chances of making the liberation struggle “purifying,” as happened with all the just liberation struggles the world had witnessed in the past.

However, this does not mean that we do not have to look at the bigger picture, even for a minute; This picture is that of a colonized people struggling to survive, at a time when their oppressors have elected a government determined to accelerate the destruction of the Palestinian people, or even their elimination, or their demand to be recognized as a people. Therefore, Hamas had to act quickly. 

These counterarguments are difficult to express, because the Western media and politicians have rallied behind Israeli rhetoric and its narrative, regardless of their problematic nature. I wonder how many of those who decided to dress the façade of the Parliament in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris in the colors of the Israeli flag really understand How is this, ostensibly symbolic, gesture being received in Israel? 

The liberal Zionists themselves, with little tact, interpreted this act as a complete absolution for all the crimes committed by the Israelis against the Palestinian people since 1948, and thus as a carte blanche to continue the genocide that committed by Israel against the residents of Gaza. Fortunately, the events of recent days have provoked different reactions. As was the case in the past, large sectors of Western civil society cannot be easily fooled by this hypocrisy, which has already been demonstrated in the case of Ukraine. Many people know that Since June 1967, one million Palestinians have been imprisoned, at least once in their lives; With imprisonment comes violations, torture, and permanent detention without trial. 

These same people also know the horrific reality that Israel created in the Gaza Strip when it closed the area and imposed a tight siege, starting in 2007, accompanied by the continuous killing of children in the occupied West Bank. This violence is not a phenomenon. New, because it has been the permanent face of Zionism since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Thanks to this same civil society, dear Israeli friends, your government and your media will ultimately be wrong, because they will not be able to claim the role of victim, or receive unconditional support and escape from... Its crimes. 

The bigger picture will eventually emerge, despite the bias inherent in the Western media. But the big question is: Dear Israeli friends, will you be able to see this big picture clearly, despite years of widespread indoctrination and manipulation? And just as important, will you be able to learn the other important lesson: What can be concluded from recent events, which is that force alone is unable to find a balance between a just system on the one hand and an immoral political project on the other hand? However, there is an alternative in reality, and this alternative has always existed: it is represented by a de-Zionized, liberated and democratic Palestine. 

From the river to the sea; Palestine receives refugees and builds a society that does not discriminate between its members on the basis of culture, religion, or race. This new state will seek, as much as possible, to correct the evils of the past, in terms of economic inequality, theft of property, and the denial of rights. This could herald a new era for the entire Middle East. It is not always easy for one to hold on to one's moral compass, but if that compass points north—toward decolonization and liberation—it is likely to show one the way through the fog of toxic propaganda, hypocritical politics, and inhumanity. , often committed in the name of “our shared Western values.”

Author: Ilan Pappe is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was previously a lecturer in 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: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel.

Source: chroniquepalestine.com