U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Robert A. Wooden raises his hand throughout a United Nations Safety Council assembly on Gaza on the U.N. headquarters in New York Metropolis on December 8, 2023.
| Picture Credit score: AFP
With a staggering 17,000 Gazans already killed since October 7, Palestine is seeing certainly one of its biggest tragedies. The West has shockingly enabled this in numerous methods: it has supported Israel’s “proper to defend” by decreasing Palestine to Hamas; conflated critiques of Zionism and the Israeli state with anti-Semitism; weaponised the Holocaust; and tried to erase historical past (the White Home described Hamas’ assault as “unprovoked”).
No freedom of expression
Western societies that profess democracy have additionally scotched their very own individuals’s freedom of expression — not with official diktats however by demonising and focusing on residents talking in assist of Palestine. Western universities have grow to be the foremost floor for this. In Ivy League establishments similar to Harvard and Columbia, the personal particulars of scholars who signed pro-Palestine letters have been made public. Distinguished Jewish donors (and supporters of the Israeli state) have withdrawn funding from universities together with Harvard and Pennsylvania alleging inaction in opposition to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel speeches on campuses (observe: 45% of Harvard’s income of $5.8 billion in 2022 got here from philanthropy). College administrations in North America put out official statements condemning solely Hamas. And students engaged on Palestinian freedom have confronted numerous unwritten codes of harassment.
The media has been key in framing the Palestine-Israel battle for Western residents for 75 years. The elemental downside right here, with a number of honourable exceptions, has been the overwhelming bias in the direction of Israel. As 1,200 lecturers and educators from North America famous in a latest open letter, the historic roots of the violence in addition to the illegality of Israeli occupation in worldwide legislation usually are not mentioned. Phrases similar to apartheid, ethnic cleaning, genocidal intent, settler colonialism — utilized by students, human rights organisations similar to Human Rights Watch, distinguished Israeli rights group B’Tselem, and the United Nations, to explain Israeli actions — go lacking in discourse.
The liberal face of establishments like Hollywood now stands uncovered. The preliminary lack of response to the Hamas assault by unions such because the Writers Guild of America led to a backlash. Then, about 700 individuals from the leisure trade signed an open letter declaring their assist for Israel. Then again, pro-Palestinian voices selected to stay nameless of their letters to keep away from being doxxed or blacklisted as anti-Semitic. Some actors, artist brokers, and journal editors have needed to face skilled penalties.
Probably the most egregious actions have taken place in Europe, the supposed bastion of free speech. Nations together with the U.Ok., France, Germany, and Italy emphatically declared their assist for Israel and imposed numerous sorts of bans (a few of them blanket) on pro-Palestinian protests. Austria, for example, banned a pro-Palestinian demonstration citing the inclusion of the phrase “from the River to the Sea” in invites, as a justification. Sarcastically, this is identical “free” Europe the place blasphemy legal guidelines are abolished (Denmark, Sweden) and caricatures of faith are allowed (France) and have led to burnings of the Koran and cartoons on Prophet Muhammad.
There isn’t any denying that there are inflammatory positions, faux information articles, and in addition celebration of brutality on each side of the divide, all of which aren’t conducive to reasoned debates. If incidents of racism in the direction of Palestinians/Arabs have elevated, so has anti-Semitism.
However the root reason for Western complicity in Palestinian oppression lies in colonialism and imperialism, which is masked by the façade of liberal democracy. Democracy has seemingly thrived within the West, which has perpetuated colonialism and imperialism elsewhere. However even these democratic freedoms at residence appear underneath menace now.
An exposé
The way in which out of the complicity in Israel’s colonisation of Palestine can solely be by means of an exposé of the hypocrisies of Western democracy. This has been undertaken by these on the margins of this democracy. As an illustration, the Canadian government-appointed Nationwide Inquiry into Lacking and Murdered Indigenous Ladies and Women was pressured to acknowledge that the Canadian state has perpetrated genocide in opposition to the Indigenous individuals. There’s resistance to the struggle in Palestine, not simply by Arabs and Palestinians but in addition by Jewish dissenters. The horrors unfolding in Gaza are additionally altering opinions. Mainstream Western media has given more room to Palestinian tales this time, even when they don’t seem to be sufficient. In latest U.S. opinion polls, virtually 70% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters underneath 35 years disapproved of President Joe Biden’s assist to Israel.
Because the Israeli carnage in Gaza resumes, the West has to hearken to individuals similar to Israel-born Omer Bartov, one of many world’s foremost Holocaust students, who, whereas rightly expressing empathy with the Jewish victims of Hamas’ heinous struggle crimes, warned of genocide and requested leaders and students “to publicly warn in opposition to the rage- and vengeance-filled [Israeli] rhetoric that dehumanises the inhabitants of Gaza…”
As one other Holocaust scholar Raz Segal asserted, “No justice is feasible… and not using a truthful reckoning of how we obtained right here.” The West should acknowledge its personal monstrous position in getting Palestine to this precipice.
Nissim Mannathukkaren is Professor, Dalhousie College, Canada, and posts @nmannathukkaren
