Palestine is not complicated
Israel's treatment of Palestinians is plainly inhumane, and the consequences of vocally supporting Palestine are plentiful.
For as long as I’ve known about the existence of Palestine, since I was a child, I have understood the importance of standing with Palestinians in their struggle for freedom. Yet Western governments and media love to claim that the conflict and history between Palestinians and Israeli occupiers is “complicated.” This couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s rather simple, actually. Zionists settled in land that was already inhabited by Palestinians and destroyed hundreds of their villages, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Every time Palestinians fight back, the Israeli government and military double down and hit back harder. They create the conditions that cause Palestinians to rise up (violently or non-violently) and then act like the Palestinians are in the wrong somehow. Now with what is happening in Gaza, Israel is using Hamas’ attacks in Southern Israel to justify destroying entire areas of Gaza, killing thousands, and justifying killing civilians by saying Hamas is using them as human shields.
For those who are interested, here’s an abridged history: Starting in the 19th century, Zionism started as a movement in support of establishing a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. Zionists started to move to the area since then. The Balfour Declaration was signed by the British Government in 1917, announcing support for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine, which was at the time controlled by the Ottoman empire. In 1920, Mandatory Palestine was established by the UK after the Ottomans were driven out during World War I. Partition plans were made, outlining which territory would be given to the Zionists and which would remain Palestinian. More and more Zionists moved to Mandatory Palestine, and tensions grew between the settlers and the Palestinians, leading to violence between them. The UK then tried to limit the amount of Jews moving to Palestine. More Zionists moved to Palestine during and after the Holocaust, and in 1947, the UN finalized a plan to partition the area into two separate states, Palestine and Israel, with Jerusalem being an international city. In 1948, the British ended their mandate, and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, many Palestinians were expelled from their lands in the Nakba, with an estimated 700,000 left displaced. Israel expanded their controlled territory far beyond the partition plan that was created by the UN. The Gaza Strip ended up under the control of Egypt, with the West Bank under the control of Jordan. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed in the Nakba. After this came decades of conflict. There was the Six-Day War in which Israel annexed the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. In 1978, Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty, which also gave the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt. Settlements continued in the West Bank and Gaza while under Israeli occupation. There was the First Intifada from 1987 to 1993 in which Palestinians resisted Israeli Occupation, and Hamas was founded in Gaza. This ended in the signing of the Oslo Accords, in which the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist peacefully. Later, after the failure of the Camp David Summit, came the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, which resulted in Israel no longer occupying the Gaza Strip, and building a barrier wall around the West Bank. Since 2006, Gaza has been under a total blockade by Israel and Egypt. About half of Gaza’s population are children, and the majority of Gazans have never left the small area. Arabs living in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem don’t have the right to vote in Israeli elections, aren’t Israeli citizens, and their movement is severely limited by Israeli checkpoints or blockades. Arabs who are granted Israeli citizenship are not considered equal under the law. Over the years, conflicts have arisen between Israelis and Palestinians, and the vast majority of those dead and injured have been Palestinians. Israel’s military is extremely powerful and well-funded, with a very close and influential relationship to the US (the world’s most powerful military, duh), and constantly has the upper hand.
Like I said, this is an abridged history of Israel and Palestine, with so many things missing in between the events I mentioned. I’m not an expert on this, and I can’t possibly cover every event in the region from 1948 to present. But as you can see, it’s not actually that complicated. Zionists occupy land belonging to Palestinians, and through years of non-violent and violent uprisings, the Palestinian people have continued to be oppressed, displaced, and murdered by Israel. Even the UN Human Rights Commission acknowledges that Israel’s settlements in occupied territory violate international law. This isn’t an issue you can really take a “both sides” approach to. It’s simply decades of atrocity after atrocity, and straight up genocidal actions and beliefs.
While I’m no expert, what I can do is raise some issues I have with the mainstream narrative, the discouragement of telling the full truth, and the impacts that being vocally pro-Palestine has on so many, and likely will have on myself.
Western hegemonic views of Israel and Palestine
Western countries like the US, Canada, the UK, and their allies all have taken pro-Israel stances. They say that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” arm Israel to further its oppression of Palestinians, do nothing when Israel breaks international law and commits war crimes, and then blame Palestinians whenever they resist, regardless of the actions they take.
And as we’ve seen currently and in the past, speaking up for Palestinians, or even just in favour of ceasefire, can get you fired, ostracized, and labelled a million things from antisemitic to a terrorist sympathizer. Many seem to think that if you don’t support Israel, you are automatically an antisemite. I think it’s important to state that conflating all Jewish people with Israel and assuming Jewish people have any loyalty to Israel is a huge mistake that many make. Jewish people are not a monolith, just like any other group there are varying opinions on the state of Israel, Zionism, and settler colonialism. And just for the record, I have Jewish ancestors and relatives, I had family die in the Holocaust, and my grandfather was captured, tortured, starved, and imprisoned by Nazis in WWII. I care immensely about fighting antisemitism, and directing concerns about antisemitism at this issue is missing the point entirely.
The Overton window in the West is placed in a way that makes pro-Israel and anti-Palestine a common policy position amongst every major party. Here in Canada, the federal Conservative Party, Liberal Party, and NDP all explicitly stand with Israel, as do their provincial counterparts. Ontario NDP MPP Sarah Jama called for a ceasefire and de-escalation by the Israeli government and acknowledged Israel as being an occupier of Palestinian territory, for which she was admonished. On October 23, Jama was removed from the NDP caucus. Nothing she said was incorrect, she simply wasn’t following party lines. Ontario Premier Doug Ford even called for her resignation after her initial statements and accused her of antisemitism (pretty rich for a guy who has been called an antisemite himself after utilizing offensive stereotypes in a mayoral debate).
The consequences of morality
So, living in a world that considers supporting Israel to be the default position, what happens to those of us who refuse to support a violent occupation that has displaced, injured, and killed a massive amount of Palestinians since 1948?
For many, taking a stand means losing their jobs and livelihoods, having job offers rescinded, and being blacklisted and doxxed. Canary Mission, a website dedicated to doxxing pro-Palestine students, professors, and professionals, has smeared a massive number of people as being antisemitic. For many of these people, when you Google search their names, their Canary Mission entry is the first result you see. And in 2021, more than 2000 people, many of them journalists, signed an open letter to Canadian newsrooms that asked for more fair and balanced coverage of Israel and Palestine, noting that Palestinian voices are noticeably missing when covering the ongoing occupation. Afterward, two CBC journalists who signed the letter were told they couldn’t cover stories regarding Israel and Palestine. Even today as I write this on October 23, Michael Eisen was replaced as Editor in Chief for eLife for retweeting an Onion article about Palestine.
So basically, caring about a major humanitarian issue is grounds for life-ruining consequences. As a result, so many people can’t be vocally supportive of Palestine without fear of repercussions. And when fewer people speak out, the hegemonic support of Israel will become the only thing most people will hear. Our government and institutions may support the ongoing occupation of Palestine, but do ordinary citizens? It’s hard to know, because anonymous polling is flawed and speaking out can have such awful consequences.
I’ve forgone my self-censorship on Israel in the last few years. I used to be worried about the professional consequences I may face for standing up against the illegal occupation and atrocities committed against Palestinians, but I can’t be quiet in the face of injustice. I’ve also been unemployed for nine months now, and I haven’t had a single job interview the entire time. I need to be able to pay rent and feed myself, and my belief in freedom for Palestine shouldn’t get in the way of that.
And in my support for Palestine, I shouldn’t be forced by liberals to condemn Hamas, I shouldn’t be asked what I think the solution is, or whether I believe violence is the answer to decades of occupation. My thoughts on those things aren’t relevant to the fact that I support Palestinian liberation. You’ll find me at rallies, you’ll find me posting about Palestine, you’ll find me having a dialogue in my DMs with people whose hearts are in the right places but have misplaced their anger and fear.
The mainstream media’s complicity
But even in my commitment to vocalizing my views, this is a small audience. The people who need to see this stuff most probably won’t see it at all. Those who live in the West that get their news through the most mainstream channels are seeing reporting that is extremely biased toward Israel, often characterizing Palestinians as barbaric and backwards, not as a group of people rising up against their oppressors. This isn’t going to be characterized as decolonial by CNN or BBC or CBC and all the rest, this is going to be characterized as a “complicated conflict” at best and an antisemitic massacre at worst, ignoring the blocking of aid to Palestine, ignoring the decades of catastrophe. Even the most left-leaning voices on TV will have a pro-Israel bias, because the most left you get on there is a liberal. Maybe they’ll entertain the idea of ceasefire or de-escalation, but they won’t be platforming those calling for Palestinian liberation in any meaningful way. The most left-wing pundits on these programs will still be expected to condemn Hamas, even when it’s irrelevant to their point.
The media needs to treat Palestinians more fairly, it needs to acknowledge the reality of the situation. The situation on social media is already rife with misinformation and questionable sources (thanks a lot Elon Musk), so mainstream media sources have a responsibility to their audiences to present the truth in a truly fair and balanced way.
As long as the mainstream narrative is pro-Israel, and as long as these governments uphold the violence and oppression that the State of Israel perpetrates, the West will remain complicit in the death and displacement of more and more Palestinians.