From US government officials, to our biggest news broadcasters, and social media networks, Ukrainians were being applauded as heroes for going to whatever lengths to protect their land. The same exact things that Palestinians are labelled as terrorists for, imprisoned, and even killed.
Asmaa Yassin wonders why Palestinian aspirations for freedom are not treated the same way as Ukrainian resistance to Russia by the international media. “It appears what really matters is the sides in the conflict: who is involved and with whom, rather than for what and why,” she writes. “The world’s attention is now vividly focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I am watching the news in Gaza speechless, boiling with rage.”
The European and American media now celebrating Ukrainian civilians building Molotov cocktails is the same that condemns Palestinians for even picking up a stone to resist military occupation.
Videos and photos of Israeli police violently suppressing Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab have been flooding social media, as the campaign to #savethenaqab gained momentum amidst growing Israeli efforts to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands.
Palestinian support for “armed resistance and intifada” surged from 43 to 60 percent in the last two months, according to lead Palestinian pollster, reflecting overwhelming belief that Gaza militants defeated Israel in the May conflict by stopping expulsions in Jerusalem.
The 11-day Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip fundamentally altered Israel’s relationship to the Palestinian Resistance, in all of its manifestations.
Yoav Haifawi reports on how the “Strike for Unity,” the general strike that was observed throughout historic Palestine on May 18, unfolded in Haifa. He says it was a defiant display of unity across all sectors of the Palestinian community, even as ongoing governmental repression intensifies.
With Israeli soldiers and settlers rampaging through Jerusalem and another another rapacious attack on Gaza underway, it is not the role of supporters in the west to tell Palestinians how best to resist.
In many countries, governments and corporations are deeply complicit with Israel’s decades-old regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, just as they were complicit in the apartheid regime in South Africa. Israel can only sustain this regime of oppression with international complicity. Here are the 5 most effective things YOU can do to challenge this complicity and support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
Young Palestinians are growing up to find themselves inevitable targets of Israeli Apartheid and it is this new generation of Palestinians that is leading the struggle for Sheikh Jarrah. They are young, uncompromising, and, thanks to social media, better connected than ever before.