There is an all-too-familiar feeling of fear when speaking out against Zionism and in support of Palestine—an inexplicable contradiction that calling out and condemning oppression somehow makes you the oppressor. While Palestinians have held staunchly anti-Zionist politics since the ideology violently founded the Israeli state, last summer seemingly eviscerated that culture of fear for millions more. People marched the streets demanding a free Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; condemning Israel as an ethnostate, an apartheid state, and an illegitimate entity.
The discourse around Palestine and Zionism has changed dramatically in the last year as a result—no doubt a product of Israel’s barbarous siege and assault on Gaza that murdered over 250 Palestinians, 67 of which were children. Palestinians were quite literally using their last living moments documenting the carnage, the massacre, and violence that the Israeli military that receives close to four billion dollars of U.S. tax dollars a year unleashed against a stateless, open-air prison.
It was in these moments that people started questioning: how are we seeing a genocide occur in real-time but still centering the personal injury of Zionists crying “antisemitism”? What has made Palestine so “complicated” (that coincidentally only Zionists have a grasp of) when Edward Said described it as is the most straight-forward geopolitical conflict that concerns us? Where does the phenomenon of “Progressive Except Palestine” emerge from?
Basically, why are people so scared to talk about Palestine?
On May 11, 2022, Israeli military executed Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh shooting her in the head with the utmost precision. Shireen, widely respected and loved by Palestinians around the world, was known for her fearless, principled journalism reporting from the frontlines of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 to the Jenin Refugee Camp, the site at which she was murdered while covering an Israeli raid.
Killing journalists constitutes a war crime according to Geneva Conventions. Yet, since 2000, Israel has killed fifty-five journalists and brutalized many others. There’s a reason for this.
There’s a reason that Israel killed Shireen Abu Akleh—shooting her so precisely that her helmet and bulletproof vest offered no protection. There’s also a reason that all western news outlets covering her assassination refuse to include who shot her.
There’s a reason that Israel bombed and destroyed the AP news building in Gaza during the assault last year that killed over 250 Palestinians.
There’s a reason that when the Israeli military raids Al-Aqsa during Ramadan, forces evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, Beita, or Silwan, or is seen indiscriminately beating up Palestinians in Jerusalem, the only word western journalists can muster to describe these egregious violations of power is “clashes.”
There’s a reason that Zionists’ only defense to indefensible actions is to point at anyone supporting Palestine and call them antisemites.
There’s a reason that websites like Canary Mission dox anti-Zionist organizers—including their social media pages, contacting employers, and making their life miserable for having principles.
There’s a reason that the academy has fired and slandered professors who have spoken out against Israeli assaults.
The truth of the Israeli occupation clearly constitutes genocide. Its entire apparatus is sustained by war crimes and human rights violations. The only way to continue the violence of Zionism is to destroy the truth; to murder those on the frontlines; to bully those in solidarity; and to twist and mangle the narrative until it’s unrecognizable.
The production of silence is a colonial tool of domination. Israel’s clear violations of human rights can’t hold up against the truth-telling of Palestinians living under their vicious occupation, so the only course of action for Israel is to censor and silence through fear tactics, slander, lies, incarceration, and murder. Why else would the Israeli army smash the windows of the hearse carrying Shireen’s body to remove a single Palestinian flag? For what other reason would Israel spread flagrant misinformation that she was shot by Palestinians, a claim that was swiftly debunked by B’Tselem, and then refuse to investigate itself due to fears that an investigation into their murder of a journalist “will lead to opposition within Israeli society?”
The morbid irony of Zionists and corporate media lying through their teeth about what happened to Shireen, a journalist known and celebrated for her courageous truth-telling, cannot be lost on us.
Our ability to tell our own stories is a central facet of our right to self-determination. The murder of Shireen is therefore indicative of something larger—the Israeli denial of Palestinians to exist as people. To execute her, among fifty-five other journalists who reported on the reality of life under occupation, is to bury the truth of Zionism and erase its victims and salient critics.
The Israeli state’s narrative rests entirely on Palestinian silence and deflecting the world’s attention from native suffering to settler tears and empty accusations of personal injury. It is therefore of utmost importance to amplify the truth of life under occupation and accept nothing short of full freedom for all Palestinians. It is, after all, what Shireen would have done.
Jewish Currents just ran an interview with Rashid Khalidi that touches on many of the points this article brings up:
https://jewishcurrents.org/you-cannot-unsee-this-image
Jewish Currents: With this assassination [of Shireen Abu Akleh] , we’ve seen outlets like The New York Times minimizing eyewitness accounts from Palestinian journalists who saw this killing firsthand. Why are Palestinians prevented from telling their own story?
Rashid Khalidi: It’s part of a general mindset that Israel and other colonial powers dating back to the 19th century have had about the inferior subject peoples they rule. Their testimony is not valid, so it is to be ignored, prevented, and blocked. Only Englishmen in Ireland, only Frenchmen in Algeria can appear before a court. That unfortunately pervades US media, partly because Israel polices the media to make sure that its own mendacious narrative is prominently included, but also because reporters themselves are biased. If a white person or a Westerner is on the scene, that’s testimony, that’s a witness. But any number of Arab, even Arab American, witnesses are not accorded the same respect.
This elegant essay makes it clear that American journalists are fully complicit in the barbaric crimes of Israel, both against the Palestinians and against journalism.
In effect, the Zionists’ rule of fear extends to America as well as Palestine.
Excellent analysis, thanks. I always believed, as a Palestinian born in Palestine, that Zionism, just like Apartheid, was always the danger to all. Some times i felt the Israelis didn’t care as much about defending Jewishness as they did Zionism. The State was a based on socialist non-believing atheists. The Zionist never allowed the UN Resolution 3379 from 1975 to remain & used US VP Gore to rescind the resolution. And now they raised the anti in forcing the erroneous definition of antisemitism to include anti Zionism. However, they will remain in fear now specially after, at least so far, three internationally well respected Human Rights groups finally realized & declared that Zionism & its creation, Israel, is a colonial occupation based on Jewish supremacy & exclusionist theory. Additionally, BDS now is their worst enemy & despite all the efforts they have put against it, they will fail as BDS is non violant and calls fro equal rights to all in the land, and eventually it will succeed as Anti Apartheid movement succeeded. They sense the tide turning hence their recent killing of Shereen Abu Aqleh and spreading their Hasbara to silence the truth & create a false narrative. I call for a single secular state of whatever you want to call it as long as all citizens are equal.
Yep. Silence is the Zionism’s only defense. Well, that, and like actually having its own narrative. And a thriving country. And a powerful army. And nukes. And international recognition and support. And dumb enemies.