With news flashing at us, the ‘Israel-Palestine’ issue has been bought to the attention of so many of us in the past few months. As baffled as we are, we can all bear witness to the explosions of bombs, collapsing of buildings, and the brutal injuries suffered by young children. We have all felt horror, just at the hearing, seeing and knowing about this ‘issue’
Yet, even with feelings as strong as horror, shock, and anger at the state of humanity, there are still a lot of people who remain unwilling to discuss this issue. The dread that we all feel about being labeled as an Anti-semitic, whenever it comes to condemning the actions of the Israeli state, is exactly the narrative that they wanted to create.
And so, our hesitation to speak about the terror that Israel is imposing on Palestine is their certification of success.
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Many of us are unwilling to accept that what Israel is doing is an injustice to an entire group of people, ironically only because we look towards history only to see how brutally the Jewish people were treated. But when did it ever become right to dehumanise another group of people because of the pain that has been inflicted upon us? Moreover, we are have been made confused by the Media, which is reeling a very twisted story to us.
The news headlines have indeed been a great fallacy. We have been misled and kept uninformed. We are unable to form a confident opinion on this issue because the mainstream media fails to capture the real stories and display them with authenticity.
The headlines have been wrong to call this a clash because it is more than just mere clashes. It is the use of brutal force to ‘legally’ impose injustices on a group of people using a politically corrupt justice system. At the most extreme, they have wrongly called this a ‘war’ and it just can’t be that because war is an armed conflict between two groups of people. And whilst arms are being used, there are nowhere near equal amounts of arms on both sides.
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This is a siege
It is wrong to call this a war because all the arms remain with the 4th largest army in the world, the Israeli side.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are imprisoned for retaliating with stones. They are described as violent, chaotic, disorder and
And when the Palestinians respond with the same amount of force and brute they are denounced as terrorists.
In reality, if we were to walk the streets of East Jerusalem or Gaza, we would feel the surveillance suffocating our breaths. We’d walk in fear of the authorities as their forces watch over, even when we are doing no crimes. Living in an occupied area, under full military control is exactly what a siege looks like.
In a war, both sides get an opportunity to fight. And this is exactly what the Palestinian people have been deprived of for over 70 years. They have been forced to surrender. And with a twisted justice system, t has become impossible to dispute any claims, People are being told to surrender with no offense and to empty their ancestral homes. They have had to surrender even before they can fight back because they are being starved, with supplies being cut off. There is no other option but to bow one’s head down.
And here we are writing this off as a war. People living in terror is not a war.
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This is Apartheid
This term relates to the segregation of people based on their skin colour in South Africa from the 1950s. This regime ended in the 1990s, however, the reality is the apartheid never really ended, it still haunts the land today. The lasting impacts of the regime have left scars on all aspects of life in South African society.
Even when the separation was denounced in an agreement after series of negotiations, the people of the country never untied. With black people and children suffering from deprivation of education, violence, and poverty, the injustices echo through generations.
In essence, this word means ‘apartness’. After the injustices suffered by the black population of South Africa, this policy has been declared a crime under International law by the United Nations.
What South Africa endured is no different from the state that Palestine and its people are under.
The Israeli state has been exceeding all the criteria required to implement apartheid.
This is how Israel has implemented apartheid…
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Dominating one group of people
To dominate over one group of people because of race, colour and ethnic differences is a significant attribute of apartheid. Like the Black people were dominated, the Palestinian people have also been dominated in their own land for the past 70 years.
In occupied territories of Palestine, in East Jerusalem residents in Sheikh Jarrah are being evicted from their homes, only to be replaced with Jewish settlers. In streets filled with armed forces, it is only the Palestinian people that have to walk in fear.
It is only Palestinian people that risk being imprisoned for wanting not to be made homeless.
Meanwhile, Israeli citizens sing and dance to celebrate the injustices against the Palestinian people. Whilst some get arrested for speaking for their rights, others are guarded even whilst they rejoice b screaming ‘Death to the Arabs’.
This double standard proves the domination of the Jewish people over the Palestinian, literally within their ancestral homes. And so we must recognise this for what it is. This is apartheid. This segregation is the method leading to the expansion of the Zionist movement. The Jewish population in Israel was given the larger part of the land, to begin with, yet they come invading the little land Palestinians have been left with.
There are both Palestinian and Israeli citizens living in occupied territories, however, it is only the Palestinian people that have sleepless nights in fear of sleeping under a roof that might collapse at any moment.
Depriving a people of fundamental human rights
This refers to the deprivation of the natural rights of man, taking away the fundamental freedoms and liberties every human qualifies for regardless of any differences that separate us.
Palestinian people are denied a right to free speech, freedom of the press, and more importantly a right to own property.
With journalists and activists being arrested and detained for highlighting the injustices imposed by the Israeli forces against the Palestinian people. Because their motive is to keep it concealed, they feel threatened by the voices that raised against them
Suppressing any voice that speaks not against the Israeli state but FOR the rights of the Palestinians shows the core of the deprivation of human rights.
Systemic injustices to a group of people
The corrupted justice system fails at its purpose. The Israeli courts manipulate every appeal made by Palestinian people against their forced evictions, this shows the interrelation between the different bodies of power.
With political agenda in between the Palestinian people and justice, the oppression has become systemic. It has been institutionalised. It seems that the mission of the Israeli state and authorities has become to corner the Palestinian people at every step.
This is another symptom of apartheid. We have all witnessed and called out systemic racism and sexism within our nations in the past year. We understand the deep implications that scar a nation for generations.
These policies of the Israeli government are geared toward keeping a fine line between the Palestinian people and the Israeli-Jewish citizens.
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And All this is Ethnic Cleansing
In culmination, all their policies are heading towards one big goal: Ethnic Cleansing.
Obsessed with finding a home for the Jewish faith, the Zionist movement has crossed all limits of dehumanising the Palestinian people.
It should not and must not cost the life of an entire ethnic group to create the space for another. Zionism seeks to ensure security and justice for the Jewish faith. Where is the justice in that? I
And more importantly, is it justice when it’s only for one group of people and not another. That is inequality.
This unequal treatment began in 1948 and has persisted through decades.
The constant and consistent torture, humiliation has continued to cause pain and suffering for Palestinians, generation after generation. It is a rigid, stubborn system that will only end with the end of the Palestinian people.
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In the 1948 war, over 700,000 Palestinians were made starless and became refugees. These words and figures fail to capture the story. This is a monstrous scale of ethnic cleansing from the very beginning. We cannot imagine the collective amount of pain suffered by the Palestinian people. It is just too heavy.
And why did all this start to begin with? In search of a Jewish state. It seems relentless and it just does not stop after every war, clash, and a round of violence innocent lives are lost. And it seems to keep on coming back for more lives.
Let’s not be confused, the agenda is clear. They plan to wipe away the Palestinian people and ethnicity to claim the entire land as Israel: the National Home of the Jewish.
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To confront this reality better we must not become divided in recognising this issue for what it is. Let’s not be hostile towards those who do not wish to talk on this matter. It is not right to believe they are inhumane. This is because they are merely misinformed and misled by conflicting information.
Instead, we must educate both ourselves and our peers. In a world full of content this is both easy and difficult at the same time. We now have the choice to look elsewhere, instead of just consuming news from our television screens. We have a wealth of resources online, but to utilie them we must first become critical consumers if information.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Unsplash by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona