By Motasem A Dalloul
Source: Middle East Monitor
Motasem A Dalloul is the correspondent in the Gaza Strip for the Middle East Monitor.
The most well-known football stadium in the Gaza Strip is chaotic, with masses of people flooding the pitch and seating. Everyone is carrying a bag on their back and some clothes. Some are helping sick people or carrying wounded relatives, while others are walking alone, struggling along on bare feet.
“We left the bodies of our children killed in Israeli air strikes either under the rubble or on the street,” an old man explains. He fled northern Gaza under heavy Israeli bombing.
Today, the people are not rushing to take their seats and enjoy a football match or a circus. They look for an empty place to rest after fleeing relentless Israeli bombing. The stadium is an encampment for displaced persons.
“Thanks be to Allah, we are safe,” said 72-year-old Hassan Abu Wardeh, who arrived in the stadium along with his sick wife and 13 children and grandchildren. “After the start of the third Israeli ground incursion into our area, we remained 25 days in our home,” he told me. “They were the worst days I have ever lived.”
That started on 6 October, when the Israeli occupation forces attacked Jabalia, concentrating on its refugee camp. Then the incursion was extended to the other north Gaza cities, including Beit Hanoun in the east and Beit Lahiya in the west.
“Since the start of their incursion, the Israeli occupation forces have been targeting homes and refugee shelters in Jabalia refugee camp, the beating heart of the city, clearly to put pressure on the inhabitants to run away,” explained Abu Wardeh. “However, most people persisted and stayed in their homes. We know that there is an Israeli plan to force us out of our land.”
Day after day, the Israeli occupation forces have targeted homes and refugee shelters alike, killing and wounding hundreds of people. The intensity of the bombardment meant that all rescue teams in the north had to suspend their services, including the Civil Defence and Ambulance teams.
Putting further pressure on Palestinian civilians to force them to leave, the occupation state has also targeted the three major hospitals in northern Gaza. Anyone seeking medical assistance and treatment has to go south to Gaza City.
Not content with dropping bombs and missiles on northern Gaza, said Abu Wardeh, the occupation forces have also used barrel bombs in the streets to displace the local population.
They detonate them without warning.
The sheer cruelty and brutality of the occupation forces saw Abu Wardeh ask his sick wife, his children and grandchildren to leave the house and move to Gaza City. His brother, who lived next door, moved 19 members of his family north to Beit Lahiya.
“I stayed at home along with two of my children and one of my grandchildren,” he said. “Five hours after the evacuation of the house, an Israeli missile turned it into rubble. It was a miracle that we survived.” It took another five hours for volunteers and neighbours to pull him and his children out from under the rubble.
“My grandson suffered from light bruises. I was happy that we were alive, but was very sad to hear that seven homes in our neighbourhood were bombed at the same time and 27 neighbours were killed. Only seven bodies were retrieved; the rest are under the rubble.”
This is how the Israeli occupation regime has been forcing the displacement — “evacuation” — of the northern Gaza Strip. People are killed, wounded or abducted. Hospitals have been destroyed, medical staff have been killed or arrested, and humanitarian aid is stopped from reaching the area. At the same time, the regime destroys entire residential compounds and is building massive sand barriers to separate northern Gaza from Gaza City.
Abu Wardeh, whose parents were forced out of Al-Majadal during the 1948 Nakba, is afraid that he is facing a new Nakba. The regime drops leaflets telling the people that they must leave their homes because they are in the middle of an “operation area”.
Then the occupation forces destroy their homes and destroy their refugee shelters.
During the ongoing incursion, the Israeli forces have killed more than 2,200 people in northern Gaza alone. A further 6,300 have been wounded while more than 1,000 have been detained — basically abducted — including children.
Spokespersons for the Israeli occupation army have declared several times that they will not allow the Palestinian residents of northern Gaza to return to their homes. According to Haaretz, the Israeli regime is carrying out ethnic cleansing as part of the “Generals’ Plan” laid out by one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military aides. Fanatical Jewish settlers are waiting expectantly to build illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory.
“I am afraid that we will never return to Jabalia,” added Abu Wardeh. “In any case, I am still hoping to return not to Jabalia, but to Al-Majdal.”
The right of return upon which his hope depends is entirely legitimate. It still seems a long way from happening though.
Motasem A Dalloul is the correspondent in the Gaza Strip for the Middle East Monitor.
Palestine: Islamophobia and resistance to the Israeli occupation
Anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia in the imperialist North, an ally of Israel, explains not only how consent to the genocide was created but also why the solidarity movement has not been on a mass scale. Anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia structure the consent to genocide
Genocide requires the dehumanisation of its victims. Israeli society is deeply racist towards Palestinians. Adherence to the Zionist project of colonisation requires this dehumanisation, which today is evolving into a widely shared feeling of genocide
The signs of this were visible before October 2023. Moreover, since 7 October, expressions of support for the Palestinians have been only very marginal in the demonstrations that began against Netanyahu and a reform of the Supreme Court and have continued for the release of the hostages.
It is this racist and supremacist dimension of Zionism that manufactures the consent to genocide abroad. In the discourse of the dominant classes, the struggle of the Palestinians is described as an expression of religious fanaticism and associated with international Islamist terrorism. The internalisation of a racial hierarchy enables Western countries to identify with the Israeli victims and, at the same time, make the murder of Palestinians invisible.
In this respect, Israeli bi-nationals benefit from repatriations and even tributes for those who died on 7 October, while Palestinian bi-nationals have the greatest difficulty escaping the massacres and repatriating their loved ones. And so, Israel and above all Netanyahu are supported not only by extreme right-wing regimes and far right regimes and parties, but also by all governments that see themselves in this culturalist interpretation of the ‘war of civilisations’, which is transposed into hostility towards Arabs, Muslims and those racialised as such. Systemic racism and a rise in Islamophobia common to the imperialist North have allowed such an alignment of discourse to take place instantly. Such is only possible because of our own colonial unthinking and the construction of the state on the ethnic homogenisation of the nation and supremacism.
Finally, the picture would not be complete without the Zionist government’s misuse of the fight against anti-Semitism, which maintains that the resistance of the Palestinian people is not motivated by their persecution as a colonised people but by anti-Semitism. In serving as a blank cheque for other racist regimes, Israel exonerates each of them of any anti-Semitism and in return allows them, under the pretext of fighting anti-Semitism, to target Muslims. Moreover, following the theory of the ‘new anti-Semitism’, contemporary anti-Semitism is said to emanate from Arabs and is therefore ‘imported’.
This discourse immediately places supporters of the Palestinian people in the camp of the enemies of the state, with the following fallacy: to support the Palestinian people would be to support terrorism against the Jews.
The erasure of the colonial dimension in favour of a civilisational discourse is echoed in the mainstream media, which have largely amplified it. The media treatment has dehumanised Palestinian lives, with the number of deaths put into perspective and the brutality of the Israeli offensive has been euphemised. Newsrooms have been forbidden from using terms that make visible the colonial context in which it takes place. The media also played a major role in demonising of the solidarity movement. It was accompanied by unabashed racist and Islamophobic expression.
Islamophobia: cornerstone of repression of the French solidarity movement
State-sponsored Islamophobia in France, which has its own colonial history, combines perfectly with Israeli propaganda. This is precisely what happened during the anti-Semitism demonstration on 12 November 2023, in which the anti-Semitic French far right took part. In the appeal, the link was made between ‘the Republic and the fight against anti-Semitism’ and ‘defence of secularism in the face of Islamism’. Very quickly, the attacks of 7 October were compared to the Bataclan attacks and the racist vocabulary of savagery was used to characterise Palestinian resistance.
While the racialised popular classes were quick to mobilise, state repression took a turn against any form of expression of support. General bans on demonstrations were motivated by the risk of anti-Semitic remarks during demonstrations and expressions of support for Hamas. It was this expression by Muslims and generations of racialised people from post-colonial immigration that the ruling class first sought to make invisible in the public arena by presenting it as an inherent threat to public order.
The imposition of the Israeli narrative had an impact on the solidarity movement. It was structured in conjunction with anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles, and the emergence of Urgence Palestine, formed around Palestinians, enabled more radical demands to be made; at the same time, the historic front of support organisations fractured over the condemnation of Hamas. This may explain why the solidarity movement found itself more easily criminalised, because it was more isolated. This criminalisation was particularly strong in France, where prosecutors were asked to respond ‘firmly and quickly’ to anti-Semitism and apologies for terrorism in a total confusion between denouncing the crimes of the Israeli state and terrorism. The autonomy of the offence of apology for terrorism, which is no longer solely covered by the law on freedom of the press, has served as a basis for immediate appearance procedures. There were already more than 600 prosecutions for apology for terrorism in April, with a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment.
A large-scale crackdown targeted mosques: several imams and heads of places of worship had their residence permits withdrawn and were deported because of remarks made in support of the Palestinian people. The most high-profile case was that of Abdourahman Ridouane, president of the Pessac mosque, who is due to be expelled after his appeal to the Council of State was rejected. This crackdown is obviously part of a more widespread attack by the state on organised Muslim cultural communities (the Pessac mosque had already been the subject of four attempts at administrative closure). Another example is Imam Ismaïl of the Bleuets mosque, who had to withdraw to avoid closure. The direct effect of this offensive is the destruction of communities and the demobilisation of people politicised through Islam. It has been greatly facilitated by the dissolutions of many anti-Islamophobia groups in recent years.
Palestinian voices and their allies have been intimidated, in particular Mariam Abu Daqqa, who has been expelled, Rima Hassan, who has been subjected to violent harassment, and Elias d’Imzalène, a member of Perspectives musulmanes, who is about to be tried for apology for terrorism after having taken up the Intifada slogan.
Because it denounces genocide and has refused to condemn armed resistance, la France insoumise (LFI) has been the target of an unprecedented attack designed to discredit it. The smear campaign combining accusations of anti-Semitism and clientelism towards pro-Palestinian voters was undeniably racist and Islamophobic because it was based on the following logic: only this clientelism towards voters racialised as Arabs and Muslims could explain LFI’s support for the Palestinian people (and therefore only other Arabs could have empathy for the Palestinians); and criticism of Israel can only be explained by anti-Semitism and not by real support for the Palestinians’ anti-colonial struggle.
Lastly, the French media’s approach was eminently racist and Islamophobic and was denounced as such by the association of anti-racist journalists. The structuring Islamophobia in France has encouraged the acceptance of this level of repression in society against pro-Palestinian supporters with patterns of domination specific to racist oppression.
Abroad, mobilisation constrained by racism
This observation of an increase in the level of repression against the pro-Palestinian solidarity movement can be extended to most of the imperialist countries allied with Israel: obstacles to the right to demonstrate, harassment and defamation of supporters, control of public expression, cancellation of cultural events, dismissals, criminalisation, stigmatisation of foreigners and so on. Palestinians in the diaspora have been particularly targeted. There were similar dynamics: a link with anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles, in particular due to the strong participation of racialised people, and pro-Palestinian activism perceived as threatening and, by default, anti-Semitic. Above all, there has been a sharp increase in Islamophobic acts (hate speech, stigmatisation, attacks on places of worship, but also physical violence and murders).
In Germany, censorship of the solidarity movement is very strong because of support for Israel, described as a ‘reason of state’. State racism has developed around the belief that anti-Semitism is imported by foreigners of the Muslim faith. Spain and Britain are exceptions, with a high level of mobilisation due to widespread public support for Palestine. The unconditional support of the British political class for Israel was offset by the strong mobilising role of Muslim and Palestinian community organisations. The university occupation movement that began in the United States had the potential to change the balance of power. Here too, the students mobilised were intimidated and defamed, accused of anti-Semitism and complacency towards Hamas.
While these mobilisations have been significant in places, they have not been able to sufficiently influence the support of the ruling classes for Israel, even if ‘unconditional’ support is now more timid. By importing the rhetoric of a civilisational conflict in which Israel is seen as a Western bastion against the Islamic threat, the ruling classes are using the expression of support for the Palestinian resistance to target Arabs and Muslims.
In the space of a year, we can take stock of an international mobilisation that has failed to rise above the ceiling of anti-Arab racism and a profound contempt for Palestinian lives. This racist portrayal of the Palestinian experience is not new, nor is the criminalisation of their support or the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. On the other hand, unconditional alignment with Israeli propaganda has marked acceleration in general trend towards fascism, fuelled by a normalisation of the dehumanisation of Arabs and a deepening of authoritarianism. In this, we bear a collective responsibility to look into the mirror held up to us by Israel.
International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
Palestinians, Both Civilian and Military, Are Transcending the Horror We’ve Unleashed
By Stan Cox
Image by Muhammad Sabah, Creative Commons 4.0
In February, the public health specialist Muna Abed Alah published a paper in the journal Current Psychology titled “Shattered Hierarchy: How the Gaza Conflict Demolished Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs.” The idea of a hierarchy of needs—first published by the psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943 and subsequently modified in various ways by Maslow and others—has long been pervasive in the world of pop psychology, while some in academia have poked holes in Maslow’s logic. Now, Alah suggests that the Palestinians of Gaza have rendered the hierarchy of needs wholly obsolete.
Briefly, Maslow and others who followed have identified universal human needs—including but not limited to basic physiological requirements, safety, cognition, self-actualization, and transcendence—and listed those needs along with others in a precise order. They maintain that an individual’s physiological needs (food, water, shelter, etc.) must be satisfied first and that each subsequent need can be fulfilled only after the needs that precede it in the list have been at least partially fulfilled.
Well, Alah writes, the people of Gaza have torn up and thrown away Maslow’s blueprint.
Regarding non-fulfillment of physiological needs, Alah of course cited Israel’s campaigns depriving Palestinians of food, water, fuel, shelter, sleep, and other necessities. Safety was being totally erased by Israel’s relentless bombing throughout Gaza. Endlessly repeated destruction of hospitals, assassination of medical personnel, and targeting of trucks and people that gather at food-distribution locations has prevented the satisfaction of both physiological and safety needs. With serial displacement of millions of people, separation of family members, and deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the need for esteem has been swamped; people’s sense of dignity and control over their lives has been wrecked. Israel’s intentional bombing of schools and universities has blocked their pursuit of cognitive needs. Regarding the need for self-actualization, Alah wrote, “The relentless focus on mere survival in the face of constant threat overshadows any opportunity for self-fulfillment . . . In such an environment, where safety and basic needs are a daily struggle, the luxury of realizing personal potential becomes nearly impossible.”
But what about transcendence, the peak of the hierarchy of needs? In Alah’s words, it “involves connecting with something larger than oneself, including spiritual experiences, deep connections with others, and contributions to the broader society.” With none of the prerequisites being satisfied, transcendence should have receded completely out of reach months ago, according to Maslow’s thesis. Instead, Alah, observed, transcendence is the one need that was being realized:
“Amidst ongoing conflict and siege, achieving transcendence is notably difficult, yet it manifests itself in unique and meaningful ways. Despite the limitations in aid and resources, many people in Gaza have started to help each other, fostering a strong sense of community and solidarity. This mutual assistance not only addresses immediate needs but also serves as a powerful form of transcendence, allowing individuals to connect with and contribute to something greater than themselves.”
The coordinated service, heroism, and sacrifice personified by Palestinian journalists, taxi drivers, first responders, and health care professionals during the war is by now legendary. But countless other people in all walks of life have demonstrated similar degrees of transcendence. In his article, Alah focused on the resilience of Gaza’s civilian population. Here, I’ll just add that the armed resistance forces in Gaza—encompassing the al Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s armed wing) and others—also have transcended unbearable hardship by mounting an extraordinary collective effort.
“Something Greater than Themselves”
A report released in August by Ground Truth Solutions and Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) revealed the extent of mutual aid occurring in Gaza over the past year. Conducted in June and July, the survey of 1,200 civilians confirmed that none of the fundamental needs at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy were being fulfilled in Gaza. As expected, when asked about their most immediate priorities, 90 to 99 percent of the respondents listed Maslow’s basic needs: food, water, shelter, and safety.
But more than 90 percent also listed priorities such as “care for marginalized groups” and “doing something to contribute or support.” A large share of people also provided food, water, help with daily affairs, electric power, housing, childcare, or psychosocial support to others in the community—and received such help from others. Community volunteer groups organized early in the conflict, and about one-third of respondents told interviewers they had benefited from support provided by these groups.
Displaced families or communities taking refuge in a new location said they’d found plenty of help. Local leaders and committees helped them set up tent encampments or “find other housing arrangements in host families.” Furthermore, “When asked about the most important resources available to them, people often mention community kitchens, which provide a means through which local aid groups can provide support and residents can pool resources to try and reach those in greatest need.”
At the time Ground Truth Solutions and AWRAD were conducting these interviews, the Israeli onslaught and aid blockade had been going on for nine months. When families and communities are forced to live with constant hunger and thirst, to go without medical care, to watch family members and compatriots die all around them for months on end, sustaining a functional society can become physically impossible. As a result, the report noted, “During in-depth discussions, both aid providers and community volunteers mentioned the erosion of mutual aid within communities as resources become scarcer.”
Burdens of scarcity, displacement, and death-risk accumulate over time. There’s only so much that people can take, however brave and generous they are. But that doesn’t mean the Palestinians are giving up. One woman told Ground Truth interviewers, “We are a mighty people who have dignity and we will prevail. We’ll die standing like palm trees and we will not kneel.” It may be that colonized people just don’t fit Maslow’s model. Alah himself noted that its “Western-centric origins may not adequately reflect the collective experiences of trauma and resilience that significantly influence societal dynamics in regions like Gaza, where cultural heritage plays a pivotal role in shaping communal responses to adversity.”
No Choice but to Fight
The Palestinian armed resistance too is exemplifying transcendence. As part of a great tradition established by wars of liberation throughout history, they have held their own against a far larger, more powerful army—one equipped and supported by the world’s biggest military-industrial complex, that of the United States and other Western powers.
Gaza’s fighters have so far thwarted the occupiers’ efforts to depopulate Gaza. They are mounting fierce resistance against the army’s attempt to drive all Palestinians from northern Gaza into the South, annex and resettle the North with Israelis, and let the South become one big, uninhabitable “deportation camp” (somehow inhabited by millions of Palestinians until they are pushed out).
The Palestinians are fighting with antitank weapons, rifles, and mortars that they designed and manufactured themselves. In so-called “return to sender” missions, they’re blowing up IDF tanks and troops using “barrel bombs” filled with explosives they’ve recycled from the Israeli “dud” munitions that litter Gaza’s landscape. They’ve also gained remote control of Israeli drones, landed, reprogrammed, and armed them, and then sent them back out to attack IDF sites. In these and many other ways, the resistance forces have shown great resourcefulness.
They’ve shown not only ingenuity but great courage as well. In resistance videos (starting at the 2 hr 6 min mark in this one), we can see fighter after fighter dash from a bombed-out building across dozens of meters of open ground, highly exposed to drone fire, lugginga 45-pound, locally manufactured explosive device. They place them just a few feet behind an IDF tank, dash back across the open ground, and take cover just before the bomb explodes.
The resistance fighters attack only military targets that threaten the people of Gaza. After they strike, and IDF ambulances and medevac helicopters arrive to carry away the wounded and dead, the resistance fighters film from a distance but do not attack them.
Some readers might object to the inclusion of resistance fighters among examples of how people of Gaza are rising above their demolished hierarchy of needs. But focus on the than 2 million-plus people who have lived through more than 13 months of unspeakable horrors—preceded by 18 years of open-air imprisonment and a blockade that has deprived them of fundamental human needs, a siege punctuated by deadly IDF bombing campaigns in 2006, 2008-9, 2012, 2014, and 2021, along with massacres of nonviolent protesters in 2018. (And Israel’s unlawful occupation of Gaza goes back another four decades, to 1967.) No population that’s been under deadly siege and bombing for two decades would accept an open-ended continuation of such savagery without fighting back.
The death and destruction that occurred during the Palestinian resistance’s October 7, 2023 military action could never justify Israel’s attempted eradication of an entire society—even if one chose to believe every one of the now-debunked claims that the Israeli military, government, and press have made about that day.
Even if on that day the resistance had committed every act of which the Israelis have falsely accused them, the latter’s genocidal campaign of the past 13 months (and counting) is a monumentally extreme violation of two fundamental principles of international conflict: proportionality (retaliation must not be disproportionately more severe that the acts being retaliated against) and distinction (military targets may be attacked, but civilians or civilian targets must not).
In Gaza, Nonviolence Is a Nonstarter
My friend Justin Podur, author of the 2019 Gaza novel Siegebreakers, points to the 2018 mass protest known as the Great March of Return as conclusive evidence that nonviolence had no chance of ending the Israeli occupation of Gaza—that, indeed, nonviolence has never freed a people from a violent colonial power.
Every Friday for a year starting in March, 2018, Palestinians, by the tens of thousands on some days, carried out nonviolent actions at various points along the giant fence that (along with a sea and air blockade), separates Gaza from the rest of the world. The groups protested on their own land, along their own side of the barrier. By sticking to wholly nonviolent resistance, March of Return protesters did what many around the world are constantly urging the people of Gaza to do. But starting on the very first Friday, Israeli forces on the other side of the fence fired with abandon at the unarmed protesters. Over the next twelve months, the troops shot and wounded 30,000 people, killing 266. The dead included dozens of children. Though a horrific massacre, it was just a peek-preview of the crimes Israel would commit against Gaza’s civilian population during this genocide half a decade later.
The Israeli regime will use any excuse at any time to kill, maim, or displace Palestinians. The regime, not the resistance, is the driving force behind the conflict. In Podur’s words, “the slaughter of Palestinians at the Great March of Return was not the fault of the nonviolent protesters any more than the genocide in 2023-24 was the fault of the Palestinian armed groups.”
Recently, the Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed, who reports from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, was asked if he has a message for Westerners who demand that those of us protesting the genocide answer the question, “But do you condemn Hamas?” He responded,
“Regardless of political affiliations, do you really condemn someone who defends you and has your back against a terrorist state? Israel has been butchering, dehumanizing, torturing, and bombing us for 76 years. And has imposed a strict siege on us in Gaza for 17 years. In this context, where does this question even fit? It’s incredibly enraging that people are trying to justify Israel’s genocide by asking such silly questions.”
Those of us who live in a country that’s supplying unlimited support for Israel’s all-out military assault and starvation campaign have no right to demand that the Palestinians refrain from fighting back. Our time is better spent demanding a total embargo on the provision of arms, money, or anything else to Israel. We too are responsible for bombing Gaza’s people out of access to their basic Maslow needs. Now, to do nothing more than celebrate the valiant perseverance into which we ourselves have forced them would be a hollow gesture indeed. And to engage in pious tut-tutting over their armed resistance would be immeasurably worse.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. Donate
Stan Cox began his career in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is now the Ecosphere Studies Research Fellow at the Land Institute. Cox is the author of Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) and Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine.
No comments:
Post a Comment