To Save the Amazon, What if We Listened to Those Living Within It?

Aiming to prevent “climate and ecological collapse,” rainforest inhabitants release a detailed plan to save their home, honing in on ending fossil fuel subsidies and securing Indigenous land rights.

By Katie Surma

July 6, 2024

Source: Inside Climate News

Young people from Amazonian communities march during the Pan-Amazon Social Forum in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia on June 12. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

RURRENABAQUE, Bolivia—Beneath a setting sun, marchers clad in feathered headdresses and hand woven clothing streamed across the Alto Beni River bridge on a muggy June evening, calling out:

“Agua si! Minería no!”

“Viva Amazonia!”

The march marked the opening of a four-day gathering known as the Pan-Amazon Social Forum (FOSPA), a semi-annual incubator where activists and leaders from Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other land-based communities exchange ideas for defending nature and the people of the Amazon rainforest.

Attendees, young and old, brown, Black and white, chanting “Water, yes! Mining no!” clasped signs representing dozens of organizations and causes, from “Women in the Northern Amazon” to “Nunca Más Un Mundo Sin Nosotros,” or Never Again a World Without Us.

For the 1,400 who descended on this small, bucolic Amazonian town, most of whom hail from Indigenous and other local communities across the nine Amazonian countries—Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana—the meeting was a welcome change from the formal United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COPs). COPs on climate change and biodiversity, which are dominated by government delegations, have been criticized for being captured by industry lobbyists.

“FOSPA is one of the few spaces for us to have our own dialogues,” said Vanuza Abacatal, the leader of a 314-year-old Quilombola community in Pará, Brazil. Abacatal’s community has struggled to defend its autonomy and maintain its way of life in the face of an encroaching agricultural frontier, mining and deforestation.

Beyond feeling that international negotiations are disconnected from their lives, the marchers here in Rurrenabaque and San Buenaventura, the small Bolivian towns hosting the conference, say governmental climate talks have failed. They cite the Paris Agreement’s target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Amazonian marchers wave the Colombian flag (left)and Bolivian Aimara wiphala flag (right) during FOSPA. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

Indigenous women march with a sign that reads “Free Territories and Bodies, in defense of Aguarague and Tariquia Tarija” during FOSPA on June 12. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

In 2023, global average temperatures breached 1.5 C for 12 months in a row, the European climate service Copernicus announced in February, and the world’s current warming trajectory will put global temperature rise at 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2100. Scientists say that amount of warming will be disastrous for the Amazon. Current levels of warming are already changing the forest’s hydrological cycles, drying it out and making it more susceptible to fire. As more forest is lost, more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, worsening global warming in a reinforcing cycle.

Climate change is just one of several human-driven forces that has, over the last century, caused about 20 percent of the Amazon to be lost and an even larger portion to be degraded. Agriculture, cattle rearing, mining, oil extraction and logging are all contributing factors. Loss of the Amazon, which is happening at a pace of roughly four soccer fields per minute, has already reached a point where some portions of the forest can no longer regenerate and have become grasslands. Directly affected are 47 million people living in the Amazon region who depend on the forest for their livelihoods, fresh water and other resources.

Vanuza Abacatal, 47, is the leader of a Quilombola community in Para, Brazil. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

The marchers here at FOSPA are witnessing the Amazon’s destruction first hand. “We are being suffocated by large enterprises,” Abacatal said.

She and other Amazonian inhabitants are simultaneously the most impacted by the loss of the forest and, they have long argued, best positioned to safeguard what remains of it. Their peoples’ centuries of experience living within the forest has endowed them with valuable knowledge about it.

Research is quickly catching up to them, with study after study confirming that Indigenous communities with secure land tenure have the best conservation outcomes, even when located near urban areas. And, increasingly, scientists are partnering with some Indigenous and local communities to identify key biodiversity hotspots and prioritize those areas, like animal reproduction and migration zones, for conservation.

With those bona fides, participants said they are ramping up their ambitions since the last FOSPA, held in 2022 in Belem, Brazil. That conference, like the nine before it dating to 2002, generated an accounting of the threats facing the forest and called on governments to do more to protect it.

But in the intervening two years since Belem, millions of acres of the Amazon have been cleared, burned or degraded; threats to inhabitants like mining and drug trafficking grew; and governmental talks in a separate conference in Belem in 2023 among the leaders of the nine Amazonian nations concluded without an agreement on stopping illegal deforestation by 2030. Instead, that Brazil-led summit ended with a vague text promising to cooperate on staunching illegal deforestation and promoting sustainable development.

So, with the stakes as high as ever, FOSPA attendees in Rurrenabaque had a deadline in sight: Within four days, they had to deliver a written prescription for what the world must do to prevent “climate and ecological collapse.”
‘Original People Without Our Land Are Nothing’

On the second day of the conference, in an Indigenous community outside Rurrenabaque, dozens of people focused their attention on Mari Luz and Emilsen Flores, Peruvian Kukama leaders. They were gathered inside a rainforest pavilion where nearly everyone had broken out into a sweat in the tropical heat. The pavilion had been set up with white plastic chairs, though some local men remained standing outside, their heads poking over the structure’s walls.

Luz, speaking in a gentle voice, unspooled how she, Flores and other Kukama women won a historic Peruvian court ruling in March, establishing that the heavily polluted Marañon River is a living being with inherent rights.

It was a major victory in the rights of nature movement, which aims to garner legal recognition of the rights of rivers, forests and whole ecosystems to exist. The movement is largely seen as translating into law the worldviews of Indigenous peoples.

Emilsen Flores (center) and Mari Luz (right), Peruvian Kukama leaders, speak to attendees of the FOSPA conference on June 13 in Bella Altura, Bolivia. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

As Luz spoke, glasses of fresh papaya juice and chicha, a customary drink made from fermented corn, were passed around to the mix of conference attendees and Tacana people from the host community, Bella Altura.

She began in 2000, when environmental organizations from Europe came to meet with locals about the vast oil-related pollution in the Loreto region of Peru, which had been ongoing since 1974. For Luz and the others, who depended on the Marañon River for food, water and transportation, the contamination had been catastrophic.

During the male-dominated meetings, Luz and other women had sat quietly, she explained, listening to the discussion about human rights. But later, the women met amongst themselves to discuss what they had heard. Luz recalled: “We women said, ‘We’re supposed to have rights. How can oil projects be forced on us when we don’t want them?’”

The women quietly formed their own federation, the Huaynakana Kamatahuara kana, meaning “working women,” she said, with the aim of protecting their environment, rights and culture. And then, in what would prove to be a propitious encounter, Luz was introduced to environmental lawyers at the Peru-based Institute of Legal Defense. She wanted to know whether the Marañon River, like her, had rights.

A dialogue ensued, with Luz educating the lawyers about her peoples’ view of the world. Nature is alive, she told them, and every being has a spirit. Those spirits live in the mountains and beneath the river, maintaining all the life within it.

The lawyers, in turn, told Luz and the Kukama women’s federation about the burgeoning body of law known as the “rights of nature.”

“Do rivers have rights?” reads an illustration depicting the story of the Peruvian Kukama women who won a landmark victory in March establishing that the heavily polluted Marañon River is a living being with inherent rights.

 Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

Thus began a 10-year partnership that culminated four months ago in a trial court ruling in favor of the Marañon River’s rights. Luz was blunt about the difficulties throughout. She and her family had been threatened with violence. “To be famous is very dangerous,” she said. To attend court hearings, she had to leave her rural home in the middle of the night, traveling by motorized canoe for hours, often in drenching rain.

At times, she had to sell off chickens to pay for fuel for the boat trips. Government officials demeaned her and fined her 100,000 Peruvian Soles (about $26,000 USD), she said, for her advocacy. Men in her village denigrated her. “There is a lot of machismo; they treat women like objects,” she said.

Luz, who became more animated the longer she talked, said that over the years, she had invited men in her village to the women’s federation meetings, swaying around 70 to 80 percent of them over to the women’s cause. “We’ve grown from the bottom,” she said.

Across the pavilion from Luz and Flores, a half dozen teenage Tacana girls watched the women with focused concentration. Other people in the crowd, including members of Brazilian and Bolivian Indigenous communities, took notes.

Luz emphasized that the Kukama women are continuing to fight—the government and other defendants have appealed the trial court ruling, and those appeals are pending. Even if they win on appeal, enforcing the river’s rights to exist, flow and be free from pollution will not be easy, she said.

In the crowd, heads nodded. Like Luz, many of the people gathered there had lost, or never had, faith that their state legal systems would protect them. Luz’s story emphasized what most already knew: No one was coming to save them. Real solutions, they said in a question and answer session following Luz’s talk, could only come through their own struggles, experiences and efforts.

One audience member asked Luz why she continued fighting.

“Original people without our land are nothing,” she said. “Now that we know our rights and nature’s rights, we need to claim them.”

A Just Transition

A few miles away, in the town of San Buenaventura, attendees of the conference’s “just energy transition” group arrived via motorized tuk tuks at a meeting hall at the end of a dirt road.

After more than a year of meeting over the internet, the group was now drilling down on a final list of proposals for what a transition away from fossil fuels ought to look like.

With a microphone passed around for three-minute orations, the session had faint echoes of a U.N. summit. Except here there were no three-piece suits or backroom dealmaking by representatives from the fossil fuel, agriculture or mining industries.

The “just energy transition” working group at FOSPA discussed issues ranging from access to energy to carbon credit schemes and ecosystem restoration. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

Rather, participants’ policy proposals were braided together with their own lived experience with illegal mining in the Bolivian Amazon, or decades of oil pollution in Ecuador’s Oriente.

There was broad consensus that the lack of electric power access for local communities throughout the Amazon was a major problem that had to be solved. In some cases, transmission lines had been installed adjacent to, or across from, forest communities but had never been connected. One woman told the group that her community in Brazil has no phone or internet. Instead, they have to communicate with an old-school radio. “If people don’t know what’s happening, they can’t participate in the debate about it,” she said.

Without energy, people also cannot access education, obtain health services or build sustainable economies, J. Gadir Lavadenz Lamadrid, a La Paz-based campaign coordinator for Global Forests Coalition, told the gathering. That makes communities vulnerable when mining or oil companies approach them to initiate projects on, or affecting, community land, he said.

Indeed, throughout Latin America, which produces a substantial share of the world’s fossil fuels, hydroelectric power and minerals used in zero-carbon technologies, 17 million people lack access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.

Members of the “just energy transition” group draft their findings following four-days of deliberations on the issues. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

The region is also one of the most economically unequal parts of the world, making energy affordability part of the problem—even for communities enduring the brunt of the impacts from energy supply chains.

As the microphone was passed around the room, a woman from Argentina’s lithium producing region said her community’s water and soil have been contaminated from lithium brine operations. But those affected, she said, have never been compensated for the destruction, which has not been remediated. When the community demanded that the provincial government provide them with consistent renewable energy, they were told they had to purchase batteries to store it. “We don’t have the money to do that,” she said.

The discussion moved on to a blistering criticism of the overconsumption habits of people living in wealthy countries, including the idea that the climate crisis can be solved by individuals purchasing electric vehicles. The group, some of whom live in the shadow of mining operations for zero-carbon technology inputs, called for more investment in public transport and a cultural shift away from wealthy countries’ consumer-driven culture.

There was also broad consensus that carbon and biodiversity offsets and credits were “false solutions” that come at the Amazonian communities’ expense. Indigenous and traditional groups in the forest, numerous speakers said, are rarely consulted about such projects.

Just days before FOSPA kicked off, Brazilian police cracked down on a scheme that allegedly provided carbon offsets to large Western corporations for rainforest preservation despite continued illegal logging. The conferees in San Buenaventura called for the funding and financing behind offset projects to instead be directed toward Indigenous and other local communities that are living sustainably in the forest.

A mural in San Buenaventura, Bolivia depicts an Indigenous man and Amazonian wildlife, including fish overlaid with the abbreviation “Hg” for mercury on the periodic table. Studies show rivers in the Bolivian Amazon are riddled with mercury poisoning, linked to illegal gold mining operations in the region. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

Across 16 working groups at the conference, the issues debated were, unlike the U.N.’s annual climate COPs, rooted in the proposition of what is best for the Earth and, specifically, the Amazonian ecosystem. Ending $7 trillion in annual subsidies to extractive industries. Expanding agroecology and ecotourism. Enforcing Indigenous land rights and the right to free, prior and informed consent. Protecting environmental defenders, who are increasingly threatened, imprisoned, assaulted and killed for resisting development and extractive activities.

Since 2014, nearly 300 environmental defenders have been killed in the Amazon, a statistic widely considered to be an undercount since the violence often takes place in remote areas. For many at FOSPA, the violence inflicted on people defending the forest is indistinguishable from the ravaging of the rainforest itself: “We are nature, defending nature,” was a common refrain.

There were also big new ideas hatched, like a detailed proposal for an Amazon-Andean treaty aimed at preserving the region’s hydrological cycles, recognizing water bodies as rights-bearing entities and creating a Permanent Assembly of Andean and Amazonian people to act as guardians for the water systems.

The proposal includes a description of the region’s water cycle, which begins high in Andean glaciers, flows down through rivers, cycling through Amazonian flora and fauna, and eventually moves out into the Atlantic Ocean. When one part of the cycle is altered, the entire system is affected, speakers explained: When the Amazon burns, ash from the fires lands high in the Andes, turning glaciers black, drawing in more heat and accelerating their melt rates. Loss of Andean glaciers will have downstream impacts, including the ability of millions of people to access drinking water, they said. Climate change is also affecting the region’s hydrological cycle, with droughts and heat waves stressing water sources.

Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s former U.N. ambassador and one of the conference’s organizers, said the proposed treaty is the first water-focused treaty that is non-anthropocentric, meaning that it is centered on what is in the best interest of the hydrological cycle rather than only addressing human interests.

“This is the beginning of a new kind of multilateralism,” said Solon, who in 2010 played a central role in launching a global rights of nature movement that now has pushed through laws in over 30 countries.
‘Without the Amazon There Is No Solution to the Climate Crisis’

For the last day of FOSPA, conferees packed into Rurrenabaque’s colosseum stadium against a backdrop of misty rainforest draped over mountainous cliffs.

On stage, portions of the conference’s final document, “A call from the Amazon to build an Agreement for Life in the face of climate and ecological collapse,” were read aloud to booming cheers while women selling empanadas and small packages of peanuts made their way through the throngs of people in the stands, some chewing on wads of coca leaves.

Representatives of communities from across the Amazon rainforest gather inside the “Colosseo” in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia on June 15 for the closing of FOSPA. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

“Without the Amazon there is no solution to the climate crisis. Without a solution to the global climate crisis, it will not be possible to save the Amazon,” the document began.

The communique called for the end of new investments in fossil fuel projects in the Amazon region and listed eight steps to end deforestation, including the demarcation and titling of Indigenous peoples’ lands and the sanctioning of institutions that finance activities causing deforestation.

With many in the stands filming the stage with their cell phones, representatives from three Ecuadorian Indigenous groups were asked to consider hosting the next FOSPA conference.

The request was made largely on the basis of Ecuador’s landmark 2023 referendums, where 59 and 68 percent of voters, respectively, voted to end oil operations in a portion of Yasuni National Park and mining operations in the Chaco Andino cloud forest outside of Quito. Since the vote, Ecuador’s government has suggested that it may postpone compliance with the Yasuni referendum on national security grounds. Whether the country complies with the referendum is largely seen as a litmus test for the viability of plebiscites aimed at keeping fossil fuels in the ground. At FOSPA, participants batted around the idea of using similar tactics to block Brazil from pursuing controversial oil operations at the mouth of the Amazon River.

The Yasuni and Chaco referendums are Amazon-grown tactics that participants aim to begin exporting. Pepe Manuyama, an Indigenous leader based in Iquitos, Peru, told other attendees they needed to lean into the political world of their home countries with the aim of promoting globally the Amazonian worldview—that nature is a living being, that it is possible for humans to thrive without unsustainably exploiting the Earth, and that humans and nature are interdependent.

“We need to build a new world,” he said. “From the Amazon, we can offer a different paradigm.”

UK

This wasn't the social media election everyone expected


By Marianna Spring, 

Disinformation and social media correspondent
BBC



It was just hours before the polls opened for the UK’s general election when I noticed the audio clip going viral on the social media site X.

It sounded like Labour politician Wes Streeting using foul and abusive language towards a member of the public who disagreed with him over the war in Gaza.

There were replies from other accounts, apparently reacting in shock: “Is this real???????”

It wasn’t. The incident never happened.

The fake audio supposedly featured Labour MP Wes Streeting


That did not stop the false audio clip - since labelled on X as “manipulated media” - racking up more than a million views.

By itself, the clip wasn’t necessarily enough to mislead voters.

But crucially, a network of profiles run by real people commented on each other’s posts in support of the fake clip. This had the effect of lending it credibility as well as amplifying it to more people.

The poster who asked whether it was real was connected to this group of accounts, as was the user who replied to insist that it was.


The same network targetted other Labour politicians as well as some from Reform UK


As a result of both the clips and these comments, some real users I contacted told me they were confused about what to trust.

Streeting himself even said that he had been contacted by another politician who initially believed the clip was real.


It’s not just about deepfakes…


Earlier in the election campaign, I had investigated this network - a group of left-leaning activists who had shared several other deceptive clips smearing not just Streeting, but other Labour politicians and some from Reform UK too.

Some of these clips were clearly absurd and satirical - a form of trolling - but others falsely portrayed candidates as saying politically damaging things.

There had been warnings from politicians and social media experts that the integrity of this election would be undermined by deepfakes - AI-produced video and audio that manipulate a person’s voice or image to say or do things they never said or did.

But the broader issue I encountered was that some committed political activists have learned to distort, manipulate and shape the online conversation with all the tools at their disposal including, but not limited to, AI.

…and not all ‘deepfakes’ are sinister


I tracked tactics like this on social media feeds during this election campaign using dozens of old phones, which were set up with the profiles of my 24 undercover voters.

They are fictional characters, based in locations across the UK, that I created based on data and analysis from the National Centre for Social Research. Their profiles are set to private with no friends.

What appears in their feeds cannot give me a complete picture of what everyone has been seeing this election campaign - they aren’t part of private group chats, for example.

But they have offered me an insight into how voters are targeted and what content they are recommended by the major social media platforms.

The undercover voters’ feeds have been greeted not by a tsunami of AI fakes, but rather by a deluge of political posts from activists, supporters and unidentified profiles amplified by the social media sites’ algorithms and at times with hate directed at politicians in the commentsTikTok users being fed misleading election news, BBC finds

And AI fakes are not always not always created with malicious intent. Sometimes they are used for the purposes of humour or parody.

In one example, a series of videos purported to show Sir Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson playing each other at the video game Minecraft. It’s unlikely anyone seriously believed these were real.


The average person can out-do political parties


A lot of the content that really took off this campaign was not paid-for targeted adverts, but posts picked up by social media algorithms designed to identify the most engaging content and push it into people’s feeds.

Cue funny memes, TikTok trends and selfie videos about parties’ policies - the less slick, the better.

It means that lots of the posts popping up on my undercover voters’ feeds have been from people I like to call the accidental election influencers, who have been plucked from obscurity by the algorithms.




Newscast

Hear more about the UK undercover voters and how this election unfolded on social media on BBC’s Newscast podcast.

Listen on BBC Sounds




They have a range of political views and their amateur content was getting as much traction as some of the parties’ own posts - and more than some of their online ads.

Crucially, these posts could reach an audience who were otherwise disengaged from mainstream politics.

Sometimes they provided reliable updates, but on other occasions they were responsible for misinformation, too - such as a faked image of Sir Keir Starmer in a Palestinian flag T-shirt or a post falsely suggesting that an incident in which a milkshake was thrown at Nigel Farage while he was out campaigning had actually been staged.

Reform UK dominated social media feeds


It is worth saying that some of the political parties have had success at producing viral posts. Reform UK in particular has generated a huge amount of traction and conversation on social media.

That is backed up by what I have found on both the feeds of my younger undercover voters, and in my conversations with real younger people.

As well as being pushed left-leaning content connected to Labour and the Greens, some of their feeds have also been awash with posts from Reform UK.

It is mainly young men who have told me me about how their feeds were dominated by posts about Nigel Farage’s party.


Nigel Farage featured widely on TikTok, including on this fan account


A lot of this shows the success of Reform UK - both the party itself and also its supporters - at dominating the online conversation and creating content that resonates with this audience, discussing housing, immigration and other issues in a very clear and direct way.

Reform UK was also one of few parties that had already started to build its TikTok reach before this general election, as had its leader Nigel Farage.


Don’t underestimate the comments


A very active network of users was also willing to post in support of Reform UK, either with their own videos and content or in reply to others.

While an earlier generation of internet users would warn each other to “never read the comments”, they can be a place users go to gauge the opinions of others - just as we saw with the network of profiles that boosted the fake Wes Streeting video.

In the comments of political videos during the campaign, it was common to see the words “Vote Reform UK” repeated over and over again by different accounts, suggesting the party had a wave of support behind it.

I investigated several profiles accused by some other users of being bots, tracking down and identifying who was behind them.

And as I’ve found in previous investigations, many of them turned out to be run by real voters who were indeed posting the same political messages again and again, from an anonymous profile that may have looked like a bot but was actually just their own account, to support the party.

Others were suspicious, though, and some of those have been removed by the social media companies.

A spokesman for Reform UK told me the party was “delighted about the organic growth of online support” but also said there were other fake accounts, not linked to the party, which it had flagged by itself to the social media companies.

Trying to pinpoint exactly who is behind suspect accounts is very difficult. I’ve established for myself that some of them really are political supporters who have decided not to share their identities. It’s possible that groups of political supporters might also get together to run fake accounts to push their preferred party’s ideas.

Alternatively, the accounts could be trolls seeking to make the party look suspicious. Or they could be spammers, jumping on a popular topic and eventually hoping they can use it to sell stuff.

Or they could be run by a group, such as a hostile foreign power, seeking to sow division or cause trouble.

But while there have been documented attempts by countries such as Russia to use fake accounts in this way, there is less evidence that they have ever changed anyone’s mind.

It’s not just a problem at election time

This concern over the risk of foreign influence has prompted social media companies - TikTok, X and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook - to invest in measures they say will protect users from online manipulation.

This election, they have all told me, they have tried to ensure users get reliable information. Some have removed posts and accounts following my various investigations.

During the 2024 election, for the first time since Elon Musk took over X, the social media site responded to allegations raised by me - and took action, too.X takes action on deepfake network

But lots of the tactics I’ve uncovered were deployed and finessed by political activists long before Rishi Sunak stood in the pouring rain to call the general election.

The group of accounts sharing the faked clips and false comments about Wes Streeting had shared similar posts about Keir Starmer, for example, during a by-election back in February 2024.

As someone who investigates social media’s real-world impact all year round, it feels like some of the companies often only really wake up and take action during an election period.

The problem is that the concept of the “social media election” is dead. Instead, the world is constantly shaped by what’s happening on our feeds and group chats long before and long after any vote.

And so in the end this wasn’t a deepfake election - it was an election in which the same old questions about social media regulation went unanswered. The warnings about AI were a distraction from the lack of clear solutions to problems posed by algorithms and well-practised misinformation tactics online.


BBC InDepth is the new home on the website and app for the best analysis and expertise from our top journalists. Under a distinctive new brand, we’ll bring you fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions, and deep reporting on the biggest issues to help you make sense of a complex world. And we’ll be showcasing thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too.

On Israeli Soldiers & The Dehumanization of Palestinians


“When you send us to war, you are not sending us to negotiate; you are sending us to kill… We are born with the idea that we should not kill, and now you tell me to go to war and kill all the enemies. Over time, the idea that I have the right to kill becomes normal, and we no longer ask why. The only questions we ask when we go to war are, how do we kill?” This was part of the response from Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, in a recent interview with CNN’s well-known anchor Christiane Amanpour. She asked him about the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza: “Do you feel that they (the soldiers) lose their morality and humanity?” He replied: “We lose our identity as people, as Jews, and as humans…” The discussion came after videos were circulated showing a wounded young man from the city of Jenin in the West Bank, tied to the hood of an Israeli military vehicle as it moved. Palestinian sources interpreted this as the Israeli use of the injured young man as a human shield during the raid on the city. This violation is not an isolated incident but recurs without accountability. Over the past eight months, since the start of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, the internet has been flooded with videos documenting the Israeli army’s violations, such as torturing detainees, killing civilians, raiding homes, and destroying them. Many of these images and videos were posted by Israeli soldiers themselves, as a form of bragging, representing a disgusting moral phenomenon. There are also testimonies from soldiers who defected or refused military service, confirming the crimes. These clips serve as legal documents that can be used in international courts against Israel for violating international criminal law. This documentation not only confirms the collapse of moral and human barriers and controls among the members of “the most moral army in the world,” but also indicates that these soldiers feel they can do anything as long as they are protected by their state and by major capitals that politically and militarily support Israel in its war. Israel itself constantly criticizes, attacks, and even hinders the travel of officials from international human rights organizations or the United Nations openly and continuously due to their positions on the Israeli army’s actions. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen went so far as to revoke the residency visa of the UN humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan even threatened to withdraw Israel from the UN and to deny visas to its officials “to teach them a lesson,” accusing the UN of anti-Semitism and calling for its funding to be stopped. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, faced threats for accusing Israel of committing acts of genocide. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself dared to belittle the UN, considering it “has placed itself on the wrong side of history.” And the list goes on and on… The Tale of “The Most Moral Army in the World” Among the claims circulated in Western media and political circles is the assertion that the Israeli army is “the most moral army in the world.” This description, heavily promoted by Israeli leaders and their international supporters, including politicians, media figures, and retired officers and generals, aims to present an ideal image of the Israeli army’s performance in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly concerning its adherence to the laws of war and the protection of human rights. This hollow phrase continues to be upheld despite accumulating evidence pointing to acts of genocide in Gaza and severe violations of those laws in both Gaza and the West Bank. One of the most striking phenomena resulting from the Israeli war on Gaza is the increasing number of videos showing Israeli soldiers committing acts that fall under the category of crimes against humanity, a phenomenon that continues without deterrent. What drives an increasing number of Israeli soldiers to commit such atrocities and document them themselves? What strategies does Israel employ to shape and mold the Israeli human self, producing this model of a soldier who commits horrific acts? The search for an answer must start with the policy of dehumanizing Palestinians. Once a mindset capable of demonizing the other is established, it becomes easy to violate their body, either through direct killing or torture, and their property, whether through confiscation, demolition, or vandalism. Numerous videos have spread in recent months showing Israeli soldiers engaging in such practices. The violation of Palestinian property has extended to the confiscation of their men’s and women’s clothing, even their underwear, as if they were spoils of war. The soldiers themselves post videos and photos proving these violations on their personal social media pages. According to Adama Dieng, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and former Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: “Genocide is not an accidental event, nor is it inevitable. Genocide is a process that develops over time. To be able to engage in the level of violence associated with genocide, perpetrators need time to develop the capacity to do so, mobilize resources, and take concrete steps that will help them achieve their goal.” A Zionist Strategy to Entrench Extremism and Racism No individual, no matter how extreme their ideas may be, can commit heinous crimes on their own. Committing individual murder is not easy, let alone mass murder. The process of transforming extremist ideas—whether Zionist, Islamic, or otherwise—into actions that reach the level of genocide requires a massive apparatus for propaganda, recruitment, mobilization, funding, planning, and execution. Without this apparatus, these ideas remain limited in scope, regardless of the crimes committed. An integral part of this process, which paves the way for turning extremist ideas into tools for mass killing, is establishing a psychological and social strategy that removes guilt and responsibility from the individual. Genocide is not an


“When you send us to war, you are not sending us to negotiate; you are sending us to kill… We are born with the idea that we should not kill, and now you tell me to go to war and kill all the enemies. Over time, the idea that I have the right to kill becomes normal, and we no longer ask why. The only questions we ask when we go to war are, how do we kill?”

This was part of the response from Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, in a recent interview with CNN’s well-known anchor Christiane Amanpour.

She asked him about the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza: “Do you feel that they (the soldiers) lose their morality and humanity?” He replied: “We lose our identity as people, as Jews, and as humans…”

The discussion came after videos were circulated showing a wounded young man from the city of Jenin in the West Bank, tied to the hood of an Israeli military vehicle as it moved. Palestinian sources interpreted this as the Israeli use of the injured young man as a human shield during the raid on the city.

This violation is not an isolated incident but recurs without accountability. Over the past eight months, since the start of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, the internet has been flooded with videos documenting the Israeli army’s violations, such as torturing detainees, killing civilians, raiding homes, and destroying them.

Many of these images and videos were posted by Israeli soldiers themselves, as a form of bragging, representing a disgusting moral phenomenon. There are also testimonies from soldiers who defected or refused military service, confirming the crimes. These clips serve as legal documents that can be used in international courts against Israel for violating international criminal law.

This documentation not only confirms the collapse of moral and human barriers and controls among the members of “the most moral army in the world,” but also indicates that these soldiers feel they can do anything as long as they are protected by their state and by major capitals that politically and militarily support Israel in its war. Israel itself constantly criticizes, attacks, and even hinders the travel of officials from international human rights organizations or the United Nations openly and continuously due to their positions on the Israeli army’s actions.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen went so far as to revoke the residency visa of the UN humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan even threatened to withdraw Israel from the UN and to deny visas to its officials “to teach them a lesson,” accusing the UN of anti-Semitism and calling for its funding to be stopped.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, faced threats for accusing Israel of committing acts of genocide. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself dared to belittle the UN, considering it “has placed itself on the wrong side of history.” And the list goes on and on…

The Tale of “The Most Moral Army in the World”

Among the claims circulated in Western media and political circles is the assertion that the Israeli army is “the most moral army in the world.” This description, heavily promoted by Israeli leaders and their international supporters, including politicians, media figures, and retired officers and generals, aims to present an ideal image of the Israeli army’s performance in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly concerning its adherence to the laws of war and the protection of human rights. This hollow phrase continues to be upheld despite accumulating evidence pointing to acts of genocide in Gaza and severe violations of those laws in both Gaza and the West Bank.

One of the most striking phenomena resulting from the Israeli war on Gaza is the increasing number of videos showing Israeli soldiers committing acts that fall under the category of crimes against humanity, a phenomenon that continues without deterrent.

What drives an increasing number of Israeli soldiers to commit such atrocities and document them themselves?

What strategies does Israel employ to shape and mold the Israeli human self, producing this model of a soldier who commits horrific acts?

The search for an answer must start with the policy of dehumanizing Palestinians. Once a mindset capable of demonizing the other is established, it becomes easy to violate their body, either through direct killing or torture, and their property, whether through confiscation, demolition, or vandalism.

Numerous videos have spread in recent months showing Israeli soldiers engaging in such practices. The violation of Palestinian property has extended to the confiscation of their men’s and women’s clothing, even their underwear, as if they were spoils of war. The soldiers themselves post videos and photos proving these violations on their personal social media pages.

According to Adama Dieng, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and former Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: “Genocide is not an accidental event, nor is it inevitable. Genocide is a process that develops over time. To be able to engage in the level of violence associated with genocide, perpetrators need time to develop the capacity to do so, mobilize resources, and take concrete steps that will help them achieve their goal.”

A Zionist Strategy to Entrench Extremism and Racism

No individual, no matter how extreme their ideas may be, can commit heinous crimes on their own. Committing individual murder is not easy, let alone mass murder.

The process of transforming extremist ideas—whether Zionist, Islamic, or otherwise—into actions that reach the level of genocide requires a massive apparatus for propaganda, recruitment, mobilization, funding, planning, and execution. Without this apparatus, these ideas remain limited in scope, regardless of the crimes committed.

An integral part of this process, which paves the way for turning extremist ideas into tools for mass killing, is establishing a psychological and social strategy that removes guilt and responsibility from the individual. Genocide is not an end in itself but a means to achieve a larger goal. Such a strategy has found unparalleled success in Israel today.

In practice, the Israeli authorities, in collaboration with the media, quickly dehumanized the people of Gaza following the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on October 7, 2023, carried out by Hamas. This operation, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Israelis, including civilians, provided the basis for a massive propaganda campaign against Palestinians. This campaign was aided by the dissemination of lies that helped mobilize Israelis and garner international sympathy for Israel’s reaction, no matter how excessive.

One of the most prominent lies was the claim that 40 children were beheaded in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a lie spread so widely that US President Joe Biden mentioned it before the White House denied his statement. The Israeli government’s media office itself denied this lie. However, the damage caused by these lies cannot be undone.

The transformation of an Israeli individual into a criminal participating in genocide, whether directly as a soldier or indirectly as a justifier, does not only involve immediate emotional reactions. It goes through several stages of normalization with violence, starting from living in closed environments where individuals adapt to similar patterns of collective behavior, to the separation and discrimination between Palestinian Arab and Jewish children in the education system.

Zama Neff, executive director of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, says: “There is a wide gap separating government-run Jewish and Arab schools; the education that Palestinian Arab children receive is inferior in almost every respect to that of their Jewish counterparts, which is reflected in the relatively poor performance of Arab students.”

A Human Rights Watch report titled “Second-Class Citizens: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools” states: “The Israeli government operates two separate school systems, one for Jewish children and one for Palestinian Arab children. Discrimination against Palestinian Arab children colors every aspect of the two systems.” The report further elaborates: “From their first day in kindergarten until they reach university, Palestinian Arab and Jewish children almost always attend separate schools. Palestinian Arab children are taught in Arabic, Jewish children in Hebrew. The two systems’ curricula are similar but not identical. For example, Hebrew is taught as a second language in Arab schools, while Jewish students are not required to study Arabic.”

The first steps in establishing this psychological and social strategy, aimed at turning Israelis into people who view Palestinians with racist superiority, involve institutionalizing apartheid in education.

Palestinian Arab children are forced to learn both Arabic and Hebrew, while Jewish children learn only Hebrew. This cultural integration does not go one way. Not teaching Arabic to Jewish children strips them of the ability to see the scene through Palestinian Arab eyes, criticize Zionist ideology, and exchange feelings and opinions equally.

This weakens their human empathy and finding common ground against a common enemy, where the contradiction between “Palestinian” and “Israeli” remains. This instead could transform into a contradiction between a landowner and another who could support him against the apartheid and occupation state, which robs the first of his life, land, and human dignity, and the second of his humanity and ability to criticize the racist Zionist ideology.

In addition to the education system, many Jewish children, of various ages, are subjected to “brainwashing” through extreme right-wing media, publications, and daily advertisements. However, families play the most crucial role in maintaining the cohesion of Israeli settler society. They form the fundamental unit for recruitment, especially in tight-knit and conservative communities where Jewish children are taught to view Palestinian Arabs with enmity.

In areas where social relations and lifestyles vary, and Jews and Arabs “coexist” in one way or another, building friendships and social relationships due to economic cooperation and production, personal beliefs play a modest role in influencing the views of Jewish families and their children towards Palestinian Arabs. While racial hatred continues in different forms, it manifests less intensely in many closed and isolated settlements.

As long as the Israeli individual does not fully assimilate into the broader community ready to obey higher orders and conform to the prevailing culture without any criticism, they maintain a margin of the ability for human empathy and communication with Palestinian Arabs. This simple margin of freedom of thought in some areas is what the extreme right-wing Israeli camp today seeks to eliminate.

Israelis are forced to join the army upon reaching 18, as conscription is mandatory and considered a cornerstone of the upbringing and training strategy. An individual is not considered truly Israeli in the eyes of the state if they are not capable of using weapons and following orders. Mandatory conscription includes all Jews, including Haredim who refuse conscription for religious reasons (A recent decision by the Israeli Supreme Court ruled to end their exemption from military service and ordered the immediate conscription of 3,000 students) , in addition to Druze and Circassians. However, Palestinian Arabs are completely excluded, allowed only to volunteer (most Arab volunteers are Bedouin).

This exclusion is portrayed as a privilege for Arabs, but it is actually to avoid conflicting loyalties and instances of rebellion.

New recruits undergo intensive training and “psychological programming” to become ready to participate in killing, coinciding with the escalating extreme right-wing rhetoric from Israeli politicians. Starting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comparing Palestinian Arabs to the Amalekites, implying that they should be killed and exterminated because they pose an existential threat to Jews, to the call of the leader of the “Jewish Leadership” faction (one of the most conservative of currents in the Likud), Moshe Feiglin, to completely destroy the Gaza Strip, in addition to calls to expel all the residents of the strip and turn it into a huge tourist resort complex. These are in addition to calls for the displacement of all residents of the Gaza Strip and its transformation into a massive resort complex (the most brazen of which came from Daniella Weiss, a far-right activist in the Israeli Orthodox Zionist settlement movement), or calls to use nuclear weapons in the Gaza Strip, rendering it a place “where no one can live.” The most prominent of these calls came from the far-right Israeli Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu (who was subsequently barred from attending Israeli government meetings following this statement), along with a call from U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to bomb Gaza with a nuclear weapon, akin to how the United States ended World War II by bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. There were also explicit and public calls to commit war crimes against the residents of the Gaza Strip and to intensify the supply blockade on it. The most notable of these calls came from Israeli Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi, who did not hesitate to reaffirm his calls to “burn Gaza” and “kill everyone who does not leave northern Gaza,” despite the significant global outrage that these statements provoked.

Alongside all this incitement, political, military, and legal authorities provide protection for soldiers and officers, absolving them of responsibility regardless of the individual and collective crimes they commit on the “battlefield,” even if they go so far as to film their violations against Palestinian property themselves and publish them on their personal pages.

These violations could not reach this level of brazenness without the collapse of all moral barriers due to the systematic normalization of the Israeli army with the culture of violence against Palestinian Arabs.

This reality is contrasted with a bright picture of gender equality, individual freedom, and moral superiority of the soldiers that Israel tries to sell to the West. Journalists and Western officers enthusiastically repeat the phrase “the Israeli army is the most moral army in the world” (Perhaps the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, is the most brazen and foolish in repeating Israeli war propaganda), relying on misleading information that completely contradicts the information provided by international human rights organizations about what this army commits that “can amount to genocide.”
A Compelling Comparison: Nazism and the Zionist Movement

Israel has not only ignored international laws but has openly declared war on the United Nations, starting from not recognizing its resolutions (not just ignoring their implementation) to threatening its employees, mistreating them, and targeting its centers with bombardment. According to the UNRWA Situation Report No. 114, dated June 21, 2024, 193 agency workers and employees have been killed, and 187 of its facilities have been partially or totally destroyed since October 7, 2023.

Israel’s actions bear a striking resemblance to Nazi behavior in their disregard for the international community. Israel acts with narcissism and manipulation to achieve its interests, making its future withdrawal from international bodies likely. Interestingly, the first foreign policy move made by Adolf Hitler after the Nazis came to power was withdrawing from the League of Nations on October 19, 1933.

Ironically, the concept of “genocide” was first established by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. He began writing on the subject by documenting the Ottoman genocide of Armenians (1915) and advocating for international laws to prosecute its perpetrators. He then documented the Iraqi genocide against the Assyrian minority in northern Iraq (Simele massacres, 1933) years before the Nazi genocide of Jews (1941).

The Nazis killed Lemkin’s family during the Holocaust, prompting him to flee to the United States where he continued his work and led lobbying campaigns for laws to prosecute those accused of genocide. His efforts led to the United Nations adopting the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Were Lemkin alive today, he would undoubtedly accuse Israel of committing genocide and lead international lobbying campaigns to punish it.

German-American Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt explored the similarities between the atrocities committed by the Nazis and those committed by the Zionists, as well as the similarities between Nazi and Zionist ideologies. Some Zionist thinkers even labeled her a “self-hating Jew” for her views. Her 1963 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” was influenced by her attendance at Adolf Eichmann’s trial in occupied Jerusalem.

Eichmann, one of the Nazi leaders who organized the Holocaust, was kidnapped by Israeli Mossad agents from a suburb of Buenos Aires on May 11, 1960.

In her book, Arendt mentions that Eichmann’s superior in the SS, von Mildenstein, asked him to read Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State.” At the time, Eichmann was a simple and naive man who was so impressed by Herzl’s ideas that the book “instantly and forever turned him into a Zionist,” as Arendt notes (Chapter 3, page 23).

Eichmann expressed great respect for Zionist Jews exclusively, considering them “ideal” Jews who matched his Nazi criteria for the perfect human (Chapter 4, page 30). He viewed other Jews as “rabble” or a Jewish mob (Chapter 3, page 25).

Arendt also attempts to debunk the Zionist movement’s claim that the only resistance to the Nazis was Zionist resistance. Despite the modesty of the resistance at that time against the Nazi might, these false claims represent a Zionist appropriation of Jewish history. She notes that “all Jewish organizations and parties played their part in the resistance, and thus the real distinction was not between Zionists and non-Zionists, but between organized and unorganized people” (Chapter 7, page 60).

Arendt repeatedly highlights the unique nature of the relationship between the Zionist movement and Nazi authorities. She states (translated directly from the book): “As it became clear that the Zionist officials in Hungary received greater privileges than the usual temporary immunity from arrest and deportation granted to members of the Jewish Council, Zionists were free to come and go as they pleased, exempted from wearing the yellow star, and obtained permits to visit concentration camps in Hungary. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Kastner, the original founder of the Relief and Rescue Committee, was able to travel around Nazi Germany without any identification papers proving he was Jewish” (Chapter 12, page 94).

Stanley Milgram’s Experiments: Do They Explain the Absolute Obedience of Israeli Soldiers to Their Commanders, Even in the Most Harsh and Testing Humanitarian Circumstances?

In 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University conducted a study on the psychological impact of authority and obedience. This study involved 40 men aged between 20 and 50, from various professional backgrounds. The experiment required participants to “torture” a “person” in another room by administering electric shocks, increasing the voltage for each wrong answer up to 450 volts, which is double the strength of household current. The “victim” was actually an accomplice of Milgram’s, pretending to be in pain, and sometimes stopped responding, leading participants to believe they had lost consciousness or even died. Despite this, Milgram instructed participants to continue and administer more shocks. Although they hesitated momentarily, most of them (two-thirds) reached the maximum voltage of 450 volts and repeated its use multiple times after being informed that they would not bear legal responsibility if the “victim” died or suffered any harm. The removal of legal responsibility was enough for them to give themselves the “right” to commit the act, despite their initial opposition and feelings of sorrow and guilt.

Milgram’s observations from the study reveal the following:

“The experiment yielded two surprising outcomes. The first outcome relates to the absolute power of obedient tendencies manifested in this situation. Participants learned from childhood that it is a fundamental violation of moral conduct to harm another person against their will. However, 26 of them abandoned this principle, following the instructions of a person who had no special authority to enforce his orders. Disobedience to these orders would not have brought any material loss to them; there would have been no punishment. It is clear from the observations and the external behavior of many participants that, by punishing the victim, they often acted contrary to their own values. Participants often expressed deep reluctance to administer electric shocks to the man in response to his objections. Others condemned it as stupid and meaningless, yet the majority complied with the experimenter’s orders.”

Milgram continues:

“The second unexpected effect was the extraordinary tension generated by the procedures. One might assume that the actor would simply stop or continue as their conscience dictates. However, this is far from what happened. There were astounding reactions of tension and emotional stress.”

Milgram conducted this study after being influenced by Adolf Eichmann’s trial, where Eichmann, on his way to the gallows, was calm and convinced of the correctness of his crimes. Just moments before his death, he said: “I tried to comply with the laws of war and the flag of my country.” In the United Press International archives dated June 1, 1962, one day after his execution by hanging, Eichmann claimed at his trial that “he was merely a small cog in the Nazi machine.” In his final plea for mercy, he blamed the massacre on “other Nazi leaders whose identities he did not disclose.”

How many Adolf Eichmanns, convinced that they are “merely small cogs in the Zionist machine,” exist among Israeli leaders and officers today, fully convinced that they bear no responsibility for the decisions and orders they execute without accountability?
A Long History of Dehumanizing Arabs and Palestinians

In a 2006 article by Bhoniapria Dasgupta titled “Israel’s Foes as Beasts and Insects,” Dasgupta wrote: “Immediately after the 1967 war Robin Maxwell-Hyslop, a British Conservative, recounted in the House of Commons a conversation he had with David Hacohen, one-time Israeli ambassador to Burma. As related by Maxwell-Hyslop, Hacohen “spoke with great intemperance and at great length about the Arabs. When he drew breath I was constrained to say: “Dr Hacohen, I am profoundly shocked that you should speak of other human beings in terms similar to those in which Julius Streicher [notorious Nazi propagandist] spoke of the Jews. Have you learned nothing?” I shall remember his reply to my dying day. He smote the table with both hands and said: “But they are not human beings, they are not people, they are Arabs”.” One of the many things Israeli spokesmen seem incapable of realizing is that abuse is no substitute for reason. Israel has amassed much military prowess but remains very poor in logic.”

In 2013, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan made a similar statement in a radio interview, bluntly saying: “To me, Palestinians are like animals, not humans.” There are many similar examples between 1967 and 2013, and even before and after those years.

Therefore, the statements by Israeli officials that dehumanize Palestinian Arabs and aim to establish an “animalistic” stereotype against them are not new. They did not come as a spontaneous reaction to the events of October 7, as in the case of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s statement two days later, describing the people of Gaza as “human animals” and announcing a total blockade of the sector, preventing electricity, water, and energy materials from entering. Rather, this is a historically systematic and adopted rhetoric, part of a comprehensive strategy where apartheid is just one aspect.
The Prevailing Narratives: Zionist and Islamist Extremism

The Israeli narrative labels Palestinian children as “terrorists” simply because their birth in a particular place in this world forces them to grow up in violent and oppressive conditions. Many will inevitably become rebellious against the violence and oppression that haunt them from cradle to grave. This narrative thus legitimizes the killing of children and the occupation and destruction of property by soldiers and settlers without punishment or even the need for guilt or conscience because these children are future “terrorists” and “human monsters.” In the Zionist narrative, the Palestinian is inherently “savage,” while Israel represents a paradise of culture, democracy, and humanity.

However, this dehumanizing narrative is mirrored by an extremist Islamic narrative, different in form but essentially identical in essence. It views any Israeli as a killer and a criminal, justifying retribution even against a child who has not yet developed language and communication skills, or an ally of the Palestinian cause, or someone refusing to fight against Palestinians, or someone advocating for the dismantling of the Zionist state from advanced intellectual, political, and humanitarian positions.

In both narratives, the human intellect is replaced by genuine barbaric emotions and thoughts, forming a step towards genocide, as is happening right now and has been for months. One of the prerequisites for such a major crime is stripping the “other” of their humanity and considering them a different kind of being undeserving of life. However, the fundamental condition for genocide, alongside other remaining conditions and factors, is possessing the capabilities and resources—both material and human—and the ability to plan and execute mass and indiscriminate killings, in addition to political cover. This is exactly what the Zionists have, and what the fundamentalist Islamic currents lack.

The translation is clear and well-structured, making it easy to read and understand. Here’s a slightly refined version for improved flow:

The Possibility of Separating the Future of the “Israeli Human” from the Zionist Movement

Many opinions suggest that the Zionist movement and the Nazi regime achieved mutual goals: the former by occupying Palestine and the latter through the genocide of European Jews. This argument follows an increasing context of incitement in Israeli society and acts of genocide in Gaza. Amid escalating incitement in Israeli society and the continuation of genocidal acts, especially after the complete destruction of the Rafah crossing—the only breathing space for the Gaza Strip—and the deeper infiltration of the far-right into the body of the Israeli state, which is witnessing a profound transformation towards fascism, resulting in security repercussions and explosions in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the “Israeli human” will eventually find themselves facing three options:

The first option is to engage in the vicious cycle of violence from a reactionary position, actively fueling the rising fascist trajectory, which will only result in more atrocities and horrors that could affect the entire region, not just Palestinians and Israelis.

The second option is a personal solution: seeking a safe haven far from the burning region. This is the weakest option amidst the dominance of far-right forces and holds little value as it reinforces their control and the fascist direction of the state, which will face little internal resistance.

The third and final option is for larger Israeli masses to be convinced of the failure of the “Zionist experiment” and the necessity of a joint struggle with Palestinians to dismantle the Zionist state, trampling its barren ideology, which in its essence rejects any “other,” akin to Nazism and fundamentalist Islam. This would ensure the Arab Palestinians’ right of return to their land and all their human and historical rights, while also averting a new “Holocaust” for Jews who grow more extremist in the wrong direction, as the far-right Zionist movement exploits the historical crime to instill fear in them.

The rising anti-Zionist Jewish voice in the West to its highest level is a tangible beginning of a real, long, and complex path that could, in the future, lead to the Israeli society splitting into two conflicting blocs over the viability of continuing the current model, whether this future is near or far. Subsequently, the rise of the Islamic and Arab voice opposing the Zionist state will not be far off. This voice will simultaneously denounce fundamentalist Islam, which has hollowed out the Palestinian cause from its humanitarian foundation and real dimension, turning it into a rigid defense of religious sanctities on one hand and random, empty incitement against the “infidel nation” on the other.

Hani Adada

Published on 01.07.2024

Investigative Reports
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STUDENT UNIONS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY

Continued absence of student unions and repression of student voices in Pakistan has become all the more glaring. So who is afraid of student unions?

Ammar Ali Jan

Published June 30, 2024

April 21, 2024, was a beautiful spring day at the American University (AU) campus in Washington DC. Yet, there was palpable tension in the air as the university’s student union was about to vote on one of the most contested topics ripping apart the political discourse in the United States — the issue of the horrific, genocidal violence unleashed by Israel on the Palestinian people.

The resolution called for supporting the Palestinian civil society’s call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, which in practice meant severing ties between AU and Israeli institutions. This was a contentious topic, as the university has a long history of deep ties to the Zionist project, as well as to the military-industrial complex that sustains American support to Israel.

Since October 7, 2023, the American University campus had witnessed a number of protests, by both by pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups, with each side accusing the other of being aligned with violent, regressive forces in the Middle East. Under the spotlight of the local media and the watchful eye of the university administration, this tension finally found its way into the student union, where the elected student representatives had to make a choice on the future orientation of the union with regards to the crisis in the Middle East.

On the day of the debate, I accompanied my wife, Tabitha Spence, an active member in the pro-Palestine movement on campus, to the room where the student union meeting was convened. The room had almost no space to sit as eager students, some wearing keffiyehs while others waving the Star of David, awaited to see how their elected representatives would respond to one of the most pressing moral challenges of our times.

In front of a packed audience, student leaders debated the controversial topics of settler colonialism, US imperialism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and the efficacy of BDS. After over an hour of intense debate on the pressing historical, economic and ethical questions, the motion was put to vote. Twenty-one students voted in favour of the resolution, two voted against it, while two students abstained.

This year marks 40 years since student unions were banned in Pakistan by dictator Gen Ziaul Haq. As student activism in the West over the issue of Palestine is highlighted and celebrated in political and public discourse, the continued absence of student unions and repression of student voices in this country has become all the more glaring. So who is afraid of student unions?

This was a miraculous outcome. One of the most stridently pro-Israeli universities was witnessing its student body indict the Zionist state of committing genocide, an act reminiscent of the BDS movement on US campuses against apartheid South Africa.

Students and activists chant slogans demanding the restoration of student unions during a protest rally in Islamabad in 2019: there has been a revival of the debate on student unions, heralded by the Student Solidarity Marches that began in 2018 | AFP

The response of the administration was hysterical, as expected. Within an hour, the president of the university sent out an email refusing to accept the verdict of the student body, highlighting the contradictory logics with which the administration and the students, the old and the young, viewed the world.

It is this impasse that triggered the pro-Palestinian “encampments” on university campuses across the US and beyond, where students are taking a bold stand against genocide in the midst of intense media hostility and severe repercussions from the administration.

While these students became symbols of hope across the world, it forced me to think of the context that provided them with the confidence to debate controversial issues. One of the pillars of this confidence is the regular student union elections, as well the debates that take place within the unions on key policy issues related to campus, with topics often tied to national and global issues. One cannot but lament that this basic building block of democracy is denied to students in Pakistan.

Having taught in Pakistan, I could only imagine the kind of spirited debates that our brilliant students would engage in if they were provided the opportunity to elect their own representatives on campus and provide a moral compass to our decaying society.

Forty years ago, in 1984, a military dictator imposed an unconstitutional and antidemocratic ban on student unions in Pakistan, robbing us of this possibility. The global student revolts under the banner of the Palestinian flag are an opportunity to re-examine the history of student unions in this country and to consider paving the way for their return on our campuses.

My thesis is that Pakistan’s student movement must be situated in the global context of anti-imperialist student uprisings across the globe, while the ban on them should be read as part of a global counter-revolutionary effort to wipe out revolutionary fervour amongst the youth and force them to assimilate into the dominant order.

These campaigns for the pacification of students took place simultaneously in the Global South and the Global North, with Pakistan standing out as the most successful example of a counter-revolution, which managed to wipe out all traces of revolutionary organisations on campuses.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah chatting with members of the Muslim Students Federation in 1947: the Quaid was a big proponent of involving young students in politics | Dawn Archives

STUDENTS AND THE GLOBAL REVOLUTION

The 1980s are remembered as a period that laid the foundations for the global defeat of the Left and progressive forces. From Latin America to the Middle East to Asia, many countries were firmly placed in the grip of pro–US and right-wing military dictatorships, pushing their societies into a vortex of authoritarianism and terror.

These regimes were counter-revolutionary, ie dedicated to the violent elimination of revolutionary organisations, the distortion of their memory and the complete discrediting, if not criminalisation, of their ideology. This counter-revolution was a direct response to the insurgent decades of the 1960s and 1970s, when mass uprisings, from Paris to Mexico City, from Los Angeles to Lahore, shook a defaulting status quo and heralded the arrival of a new political subject on to the stage of history.

This subject was the figure of the ‘student’, hitherto considered an elite vocation removed from the turbulent contradictions engulfing society. The convergence of global anger against the brutal Vietnam War, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) active opposition to national liberation struggles in Africa and Asia, and the growing consciousness of the links between universities and the ruling system, propelled students to become a leading vanguard of progressive movements.

Their power was most potently demonstrated in the famous “May ’68“ uprisings in Paris, where a mass student revolt brought French President Charles De Gaulle’s government to its knees. From this point onwards, students became an integral part of the rebellion against the system, turning universities into a hotbed of subversive ideas and political action.

Student revolts placed the entire Western system in an acute state of crisis. French philosopher Louis Althusser demonstrated the central role played by universities in the production of ideology of the ruling class.

Beneath the claims of promoting “free speech” and “critical thinking”, the primary function of the university was to produce a professional managerial class that could be integrated into the capitalist system without questioning its fundamentals. This ideological function was disrupted by the student uprisings that transformed universities into sites for new ideas, and fuelled the anti-war, anti-racist, feminist and worker movements on a global scale.

As a reaction, the ruling classes mounted an unprecedented effort at restoring the power balance on campuses, by defeating the challenge posed by insurgent student politics. Philosopher Gabriel Rockhill has recently shown how pacifying university students required a gigantic effort that included the mobilisation of corporations, the CIA, domestic policing as well as shrewdly devised concessions to the student movement.

One of his fascinating insights is how the CIA was directly involved in promoting postmodern thought on university campuses, as a substitute to more radical and directly political texts that were dominating the student movement in the 1960s.

Similarly, the US intelligence apparatus invested heavily in promoting ‘cultural exchanges’ and conferences through organisations such as the Asia Foundation in the global South, to promote its narrative in the unfolding Cold War against the Soviet Union.

However, ideological arguments and monetary inducements were insufficient tools of pacification in the Global South. Eventually, the counter-revolution could only be secured through military coups throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America, which aimed to eliminate all leftist elements in society.

The shocking nature of brutality stemming from these coups can be gauged by the example of Chile, where leftist leader Salvador Allende was propelled to power as a result of mass mobilisation by students and workers. On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government of Allende in a CIA-backed coup d’état, rounding up 4,000 leftists and shooting them in a stadium.

Many were former student leaders whose dreams of a different world were drowned in blood by ruthless counter-revolutionary forces. Similar massacres of students were staged in Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and a number of other countries, where the youth refused to be a mere footnote in the imperialist calculus of complete global domination.

Members attend a meeting of the Democratic Students Federation (DSF) at Dow Medical College in 1951: the DSF and the Communist Party of Pakistan were banned in 1954 | Dawn Archives

COUNTER-REVOLUTION COMES TO PAKISTAN

From the nation’s birth, the Pakistani ruling elites looked towards the US for their survival rather than charting out a sovereign path for national development. The signing of US-led military pacts, such as SEATO and CENTO in the 1950s, cemented the country’s place firmly in the anti-communist and anti-Soviet camp during the Cold War.

This fateful decision created many political distortions, including the elevation of the military as the primary arbiter on international and domestic issues, and the concomitant centralisation of state power. Such authoritarianism both fuelled dissent across the country, often led by the youth, while also triggering violent responses from the state, which had increasingly begun viewing any form of agitation through a myopic national security lens.

The 1951 language riots in Dhaka and the student movement in Karachi in 1953 were some of the earliest examples of the coming clashes between an uncompromising authoritarian state and a rebellious youth refusing to surrender.

The language riots stemmed from the imposition of Urdu on the Bengali population, while the 1953 movement began with a charter of demands presented to the government by the Democratic Students Federation (DSF), only to see their procession gunned down by the police, which murdered 27 people. A year later, the DSF, an affiliate of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), was banned along with the CPP, as a ferocious anti-communist fervour took hold amongst the ruling classes in Pakistan.

To promote ‘pro-state’ sentiments among students, the government facilitated the formation of the National Students Federation (NSF) in 1955. However, this soon proved to be a clumsy decision, as the group was quickly infiltrated by leftist elements who rebranded it as a major progressive student organisation. Incidentally, the organisation first showed its muscle in 1962, when it led a protest against the CIA-backed overthrow of the Congolese revolutionary government led by the charismatic Patrice Lumumba.

The protests resulted in severe backlash by the Ayub Khan-led military government, triggering a mass student movement that became one of the most significant protest movements against the military junta at the time. Throughout the 1960s, the NSF gained momentum as the foremost student body in the country, only rivalled by the right-wing Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT).

Indeed, the crescendo of this organisation arrived in 1968, when a student-led movement erupted against the Ayub dictatorship, disrupting his celebration of a “decade of development.” Students inspired workers, farmers and professional classes to openly air their grievances against the junta, eventually forcing the US-backed military dictator to resign in the midst of a popular upheaval. It was these student agitators, reviled today in revisionist history, who paved the way for the first general elections in the country, thus becoming the forebears of democracy in the country.

A number of groups sprang up in the 1970s that contested against each other in annual elections of the student unions. Campuses became hotbeds for debates on the place of Islam, secularism, socialism, democracy, women rights and minorities in society. The archives show the rich literature, both Islamist and socialist, that was produced, circulated and widely read by students on campus as they tried orienting themselves in a complex socio-political environment. These archives belie the contemporary narrative around student politics that portrays this past as a series of mindless violent acts, a distorted narrative that only serves those in power.

The cover of a radical leftist Urdu magazine in 1968 showing the National Students Federation (NSF) leader Rasheed Hasan Khan being led out of a military court: in 1968, a student-led movement erupted against the Ayub Khan dictatorship, disrupting his celebration of a “decade of development” | Dawn Archives

Gen Ziaul Haq’s martial law in 1977 must be viewed in the context of this increasing power of labour and student unions, which had slowly begun outflanking even the self-proclaimed revolutionary government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Zia’s counter-revolutionary regime aimed to discipline both labour and students by dismantling their organisations and discrediting their ideology.

The military junta drew its support from the US, which needed Pakistan as a base to launch its “jihad” against the socialist government in Afghanistan. This proxy war destroyed the entire region. Once again, the main bulwark against the completion of the counter-revolution was the organised student unions, the forebears of democracy who were now its final line of defence.

Apart from leading resistance for democracy when the country’s political leadership melted away to exile or went underground, student unions also became the most potent expression of the rejection of Zia’s agenda of authoritarianism and ‘Islamisation’. For example, in the student elections of 1981, 1982 and 1983, progressive forces gained massive victories on campuses across the country, despite the repression and state-led propaganda against them.

It was a sign that ideologically charged students were more difficult to control than career politicians, and hence had to be demobilised. Alongside increasing repression on campuses against left-wing student groups, the military junta played its final card. On February 9, 1984, it announced a complete ban on student unions, depriving the youth of the only form of representation available. The counter-revolution appeared complete.

THE FALSE LOGIC OF REPRESSION

As is often the case with authoritarianism, its rationale eventually finds support among broad layers of society who often tend to absorb the propaganda emanating from the highest echelons of power. A similar fate was meted out to the discussions of student unions in Pakistan, where a number of shallow, patronising and factually absurd arguments were forged and popularised to become the national ‘common sense’ arguments against the restoration of student unions.

In this sense, the counter-revolutionary aim of discrediting progressive ideology ended up discrediting the very idea of campus democracy and constructing a manufactured memory of the past to suit the unconstitutional and autocratic decisions made by the military junta.

Let us confront two of the most common myths against student unions.

The first includes how student unions were responsible for violence. As suggested earlier, this is a reductive understanding of the broad role played by student groups in cementing democracy and promoting a vibrant culture of intellectual engagement on campuses. Violence is a part of this story, but not merely between competing student groups. The worst forms of violence perpetrated on students were by the state itself, the self-appointed guardian of students in revisionist history.

Let’s assume that the state under Zia (who was promoting war across the region) was actually serious about promoting peace on campus. Has the ban on student unions helped in this regard? Anyone familiar with campuses knows that it is hardly the case. The incident of Mashal Khan’s lynching, the sexual harassment scandals at Balochistan University, the repeated tensions between student groups and administrations at Punjab University, and the sedition cases against students at Sindh University for demanding clean water, are a few of the many examples of the violence that pervades university campuses despite the ban on student unions.

The difference is that this violence is now detached from any ethical or ideological considerations and becomes part of petty turf wars between different factions of the administration, as exemplified by the tragic lynching of Mashal Khan.

One can add to this another misunderstanding that obfuscates the issues at stake. It is pertaining to the common confusion between student groups and student unions. Critics often give examples of IJT and other right-wing student groups as proof that student unions continue to promote violence. Yet, the problem stems from the conflation between organisations and unions. Student organisations are bodies formed by a group of students of a particular ideological/political orientation, while student unions are elected by students in elections that are held on campus. As a result, these are representative bodies of students that negotiate on their behalf with the administration. Since there are no elections on campuses, there are no unions in Pakistan.

Second, it is argued that educational institutions should be kept away from politics. This is a vacuous moral statement since education has always been a deeply political endeavour. Despite the erasure of student unions, politics plays out in each and every corner of universities in Pakistan, from the appointment of vice chancellors to the promotions of the clerical staff.

Similarly, the deep state continues to play a central role in monitoring university campuses, including keeping a close eye on the curriculum, so that it poses no threat to “Pakistan’s ideology.” I personally am witness to the calibre of these men when I was fired from FC College, Lahore. A security agency official had informed my university to remove me from teaching because I discussed politics in the classroom. At the time, I was teaching courses in political science.

The only politics that is suppressed is the politics of the oppressed, the students who simultaneously happen to be the most important and most excluded stakeholders in education. In the last 40 years, our universities have failed to compete with universities in South Asia, let alone across the world. All other countries of South Asia, as well as around the world, have student unions.

The reason for our dismal performance lies elsewhere, but the scapegoating of unions provides a useful veneer to cover up the failures of our system. There cannot be a bigger indictment of a system where VCs and administrators regularly convey to the government that they have no faith in the ability of their students to act responsibly if student unions are restored.

One should then ask that if, despite the increasing costs of education, universities are unable to inculcate basic virtues of citizenship among their students, would it not be correct to hold university administrators accountable for this incredible failure? Yet, in a perverse logic, accountability is only meted out to the victims, who must suffer the consequences of a defunct education system in suffocating silence.

Supporters of the Progressive Students Alliance during a student union election at Karachi University in 1973: a number of groups sprang up in the 1970s that contested against each other in annual elections of the student unions | Dawn Archives


REFUSING TO BE SILENCED

It is impossible, however, to turn young people into unthinking zombies. Hundreds of thousands of young people are entering the education system every year, only to see their hopes being shattered by a system that punishes critical thinking and promotes sycophancy.

It is pertinent to remember that hundreds of the brightest students, mostly Baloch and Pashtun, have been the subject of the odious policy of enforced disappearances at the hands of the state. A state that imposes physical violence to drill its own version of nationalism and religion into the youth is an insecurity state that will rule by fear but will never command the respect of its citizens.

This suffocating environment has led to a revival of the debate on student unions, heralded by the Student Solidarity Marches that began in 2018. Students who were taught to accept state narratives in silence built bonds across religious, ethnic and gender divides to bring together marchers in 54 different cities across the country, signalling popular unity from below when those at the top fuelled divisions in society. Students spoke out against the corruption scandals of university administrators, cases of sexual harassment, the militarisation of campuses and the increasing costs of education, as they demanded the restoration of student unions.

The response of the state to these demands was excessive, even by its own standards. Displaying a lingering hangover from the Cold War era, the students were castigated as anti-Pakistan and foreign agents. Many participants, including the author, were charged with sedition, while some were abducted and tortured. This violence was indicative of the fact that the state continues to view students as a law and order problem, and seeks to criminalise them when they demand rights.

Yet, the burgeoning global revolt of students on the Palestinian question shows that this generation cannot be intimidated into silence. Pakistani students are as capable as their counterparts around the world in determining their own path forward.

Our ruling classes will obstruct this development to their own peril, as history bears witness that even the mightiest empires cannot withstand the wrath of an agitated and united youth.

The writer is a historian, academic and political organiser. He is the founder and general secretary of the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party. X: @ammaralijan

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 30th, 2024