Unlearn the myths of Palestine and join the protest

When a young man picks up a stone to confront an army, it is easy to see that the story belongs to the stone. What makes a young man willing to do such a futile thing? In the 1980s, the story of the First Intefadeh was occupation, dispossession and structural violence. When the rock became a primitive rocket, the story extended to blockade.

Forty years after the First Intefadeh, 17 years into that blockade and five years after the Great March of Return; members of Hamas (and, it seems, some who were not) came through the illegal blockade wall. What followed deteriorated into the slaughter of civilians and the taking of hostages. Those are war crimes which have their precedents in anti-settler wars of liberation such as Phillippeville, Algeria. Those crimes merit condemnation and treatment by an international court.

Israel has taken this pretext to shatter Gaza, bombing a civilian community with mindless, inhuman intensity; without pause and within a total seige that defies any law. Twenty truckloads of supplies for 2.3 million people do not begin to make an impression on Gaza’s deprivation.

The story is now of occupation, apartheid, blockade and genocidal intent.

The devastation of Gaza challenges us to un-learn persistent myths. It requires each of us to stand on the precipice and ask, ‘What do I believe, everything I have ever been told or the world in front of my eyes?’

We do that learning as individuals because our government, media and too many institutions are still perpetuating the myths.

The Auckland War Museum could only see Israeli lives as being lives worth grieving. Its board had to be shown that Palestinians are also civilians. That is the ignorance that brings us to war after war.

The media still routinely shape interviews with Israel’s version of events. Speakers (and they aren’t Palestinian) must slog through Zionism’s rhetorical, ahistorical sand traps: this all began a couple of weeks ago, didn’t it?

put down the myths and instead look at the world in front of your eyes. The outright starvation and destruction of Gaza is not self-defense. It is the bloody, livid, intentional obliteration of an overwhelmingly civilian community. Yet we are constantly required to preface any speech with Israel’s—and only Israel’s—right to self-defense. Has Gaza no right to self-defense from Israel’s endless supply of American weapons? Have West Bankers no right to self-defense against the armed settlers and the IDF soldiers who protect them?

Our media have forfeited their critical faculties. Why are Palestinian voices not telling this story? Why is global solidarity with Gaza not a headline? Why did we hear that Israel denied bombing the Al Ahli Hospital but not the forensic investigations that debunk its claim of innocence? Several investigations are summarised and linked here. And Hamas’s offers to exchange civilians – nothing.

It’s time to ask better questions and take up the obligations of the world that you see.

We have tried asking ‘How can we, Aotearoa, be silent?’ It’s time to face the world wherein silence is our foreign policy. We are being positioned to spend another three years meekly following the old colonial club onto the catastrophic side of history. Hour by hour, Israel and the US are re-defining what power will now be permitted to do to unarmed civilians. That is also at stake here. Palestine has long been the testing ground of weaponry and the front line of that which is politically possible.

If you have condemned the passivity of bystanders at unfolding genocides in Rwanda, in Germany; here it is again. We are living it. Never again is right now.

Do not join the silence, join the protest. Grieve for all of the dead while you stand up and fight like hell to save those who are still alive. Write to your MP. Write to the media. Sign the petitions that demand ceasefire, ongoing and sufficient aid into Gaza, justice and real peace. Throw your weight against the tanks.

And join the march in Wellington October 28: Water, land, life.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa