As George Orwell said, “Those who control the present, control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” (1984). Below is from another powerful essay from Illan Pappe, detailing the way the Israeli media help maintain the Palestinian Occupation by controlling the narrative of past and present.
A letter from Palestine
By Ilan Pappe
A mini-intifada is taking place this 2022 autumn in Palestine, spreading over Jenin, Nablus and Jerusalem. What is incredible is not that these uprisings occur, but rather the way the Israeli media is trying to explain their occurrence. One ex general after the other, on ex secret service expert after the other, provide an analysis that is familiar for anyone studying the history of colonialism in Asia and Africa. European colonialist policy makers always attributed resistance to the colonisation as the outcome of “incitement” and never attributed the revolts against them to their own callous oppression.
The daily humiliation in the checkpoints, the collective punishmentsthat include closure and endless curfews, the mass arrests without trial including of children, tortures in the interrogations, confiscation of land, ethnic cleansing operations and settlers’ attacks are all not sufficient causes, in the view of this narrative, for an ongoing uprising. Unemployment among the youth, the absence of any vision for a different future and the international indifference also do not factor into the analysis not just of the securitization sector but also in that provided by very respected doyens of the Israeli academy. They appear constantly in TV studios and explain how the violent nature of “Arabs” and “Muslims” are the sole causes for this and previous uprisings.
Who are the inciters is never totally clear from the analysis. Usually, the “culprits” is the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip. However, the fingers are pointed to all kinds of organizations such as the Islamic Jihad, the Fatah and a new group called “the Lions’ Den” situated in Nablus. The contradictions have never bothered the analysts with their clear narrative which needed to have inciters and an easily incited crowd.
The depiction of the Palestinian liberation struggle as a series of senseless assaults by an incited mob is very familiar for those us exposed to the Israeli educational textbooks and public discourse. The Israeli academia provided scholarly scaffolding for this narrative and
articulated it in a more sophisticated discourse.
This analysis had been put forward already after the first significant Palestine uprising during the Mandatory period in 1929 (_thawrat al-Buraq_). While the British inquiry commission that was set up after the uprising, did attribute that particular uprising to the Zionist policy of land purchasing that pauperised rural Palestine, the Zionist assessment was that pro-Arab British officers and “fanatic” religious leaders incited the uprising which was carried out by “criminal gangs”. In 2022, the same Zionist discourse is employed for depicting the present Palestinian resistance (that already cost the life of more than 100 young Palestinians) as a mixture of criminal gangs and incited youth.
It is important to acknowledge the explanation official Israel, and by extension its civil society, provides for the present and past Palestinian uprisings. This discourse analysing Palestinian violence as the product of an “Arab culture” and “Islamic primitivism” is
widely shared within Israel.
These images and prejudices are deeply rooted, and are planted and replanted in every new generation of young Israelis passing through the educational system, the media, the political discourse and the socialisation processes, the most important taking place during the compulsory military,
read the full article here.
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine articles, israel and palestine conflict by on Jan 18th, 2023. Comment. 
The following article was published by my friend, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, on January 4th, 2023, after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice over the ongoing occupation of Palestine and associated human-rights violations. It is unlikely that the Israeli government will pay any attention to the determination of the World Court. Even so, Dr Muzaffar believes that the UNGA decision is important.
with Dr Chandra Muzaffar in Kuala Lumper, Malaysia, in 2013
THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY DRAGS ISRAEL TO THE WORLD COURT
By Chandra Muzaffar
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted last week to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice (World Court) for its on-going violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza and for adopting measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem.
Before we analyse the significance of the vote, let us probe the actual voting pattern. 87 states voted to refer Israel to the World Court. This represents almost all the Muslim majority states including those that had recently established diplomatic relations with Israel. It shows that on this issue at least, the diplomatic manoeuvres of Israel and its backers have not helped the Zionist state. Other largely non-Muslim majority states in Latin America, Africa and Asia also endorsed the resolution. It is notable that both China and Russia supported the move to haul Israel before the World Court. 26 countries voted against the UNGA resolution. Among them were of course the US, Britain and a number of other Western states. A huge number — 53 — also abstained. India which at the time of the creation of Israel in 1948 was in the forefront of the struggle to defend the rights of the Palestinians was one of the abstentions. Its growing ties with Israel, especially in the military sphere have often been cited as the main reason for this change in attitude.
The Indian stance does not in any way nullify the significance of the vote for the resolution. The UNGA is asking the highest jurisdictional authority in the world to state its stand on Israel’s conduct as the Occupying Power over lands it has held in its grip for the last 55 years. Right from 1967, the UNGA has viewed Israel not only as an Occupying Power but has also demanded that Israel withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Needless to say, Israel has ignored this plea. It is worth observing that this time the UNGA’s request is being made when Israel is led by perhaps its most extreme right-wing government which has pledged to pursue policies that will undermine even further what little is left of the rights of the Palestinian people and demolish even more the Christian and Muslim features of Jerusalem.
By asking the World Court to examine Israeli behaviour in the Occupied Territories, the UNGA is telling Israel that it is under scrutiny. It is holding Israel accountable. It is forcing a rogue state to behave properly —a State that since 1948 has refused to abide by the norms and standards of conduct that all states are expected to uphold.
If the World Court concurs in essence with the UNGA resolution that Israel has violated the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and has attempted to alter the character of Jerusalem, how would the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu respond? Going on the basis of his past and present conduct, it is almost certain that he will ignore the World Court’s position and even rail against the body just as he has condemned the UNGA for its recent resolution. In other words, there will be no change in Israeli behaviour in the Occupied Territories or in Jerusalem. After all, in 2004 the World Court had already ruled that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories were in breach of international law but Israel continued to expand the settlements which today house about 700,000 Jewish settlers.
But this should not in any way diminish the usefulness of going to the World Court or working through the UNGA. These are important routes to take for at least two reasons. One, they reveal that Israel is the real problem and that it is this problem that has to be resolved in the interest of genuine peace. Two, by harnessing support from UN member states and UN agencies, the Palestinian cause is enhanced. It strengthens the Palestinian position as it confronts not just Israel but its principal backer, the US and a number of European states, sometimes joined by Japan and South Korea.
It is perhaps at this juncture that we should examine briefly Palestine’s relationship with the UN. It has been ambivalent at best. It was the UN under the influence of the US and other Western powers that presided over the unjust partition of historical Palestine in 1948 giving the less than 30% Jewish population two-thirds of the land while the 70% Palestinian majority comprising Muslims and Christians was awarded the remaining one-third. There was no plebiscite to determine how the people — the entire population — felt about the proposed partition. By ignoring the people’s feelings, the UN in effect transgressed its own Charter.
But after Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem in 1967, UN resolutions — as we have seen — clearly recognise Palestinians living in those territories as victims of Occupation. It should also be emphasised that through various resolutions the UN continues to recognise the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty. Besides, since November 2012, Palestine is a non-member observer state of the UN General Assembly.
The UN also looks after Palestinian refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides education, health relief and social services for over 5 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. Gaza and West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Palestine’s relationship with the UN is one wrapped in obligations, responsibilities, rights and aspirations. It has had its ups and downs. But it should continue to be viewed as one of the many channels through which the Palestinian people seek to secure their justice, freedom and dignity.
Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict by on Jan 7th, 2023. Comment.
Friends of Sabeel, Australia, join the rest of the world in distaining the US President’s ‘Deal of the Century’ as a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The fact that no Palestinian was involved in the formulation of the proposal, nor was present when it was unveiled, is indicative of the fact that the US and Israeli leaders prepared their deal for domestic consumption. It offers nothing to the Palestinian people – no land, no real sovereignty, and no right of return for refugees. It is, as some commentators have suggested, the Monty Python parody of Israel-Palestine peace initiatives.
Friends of Sabeel, Australia, stands with the Palestinian people in the fundamental demands as outlined in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) program:
- An end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian lands
- Equal rights for Arabs in Israel
- The right of return for refugees
No meaningful deal can be made with the Palestinian people that does not address these basic demands.
Father Dave Smith, President of Friends of Sabeel, Australia, said “If Mr Trump wants to make a deal with the Palestinian people, he needs to actually deal with the Palestinian people and their demands. This one-sided parody of a peace initiative does nothing to move us closer to a just settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict”.
Filed under Israel and Palestine by on Feb 14th, 2020. Comment.
Saturday, June 24th, 2017, outside the State Library of Victoria. It was good to be back with my friends from the Al Quds association of Melbourne, and it was a privilege to be invited to address the gathering.
Sisters and brothers, we stand here today at a significant point in the history of our planet and in the history of the Palestinian people in particular.
2017 marks one hundred years since the Balfour Declaration – that document that set the world on a trajectory towards the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine, and so initiated the most defining human struggle of our generation.
2017 further marks the 50th anniversary of the six-day war of 1967 – an event that took the dispossession of the Palestinian people, experienced in an Nakba in 1948, on to a whole new level. As a result of that short war, the State of Israel took control of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, and life has never been the same in any of those places since!
We are probably aware that the people of Gaza are currently under threat of having all their electricity cut off! That is true, but we are talking about a city that already only gets electricity for about four hours per day!
More than that, half the population of Gaza is currently food-insecure, the unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world, and, according to UN estimates, if nothing changes, Gaza could be completely uninhabitable by 2020!
These figures give us just a small taste of what life is like for the millions who live under Israeli rule as second-class citizens due to their ethnicity. The depth of the humiliation and deprivation is without modern parallel, and the longevity of this occupation is mind-blowing!
I cannot imagine that when Ayatollah Khamenei inaugurated Al Quds Day in 1979 that he thought for a moment that the Palestinian question would still remain unresolved some thirty-eight years later! It shames the whole of humanity that this injustice has been allowed to continue for so long, and we may be tempted to despair, until we see the flip-side of this tragedy. For the flip site to this 100 years of imperial dominance and fifty years of military occupation is 50 years of active resistance, and 100 years of refusing to bow to the dictates of power!
The endurance of the Palestinian people is simply amazing when you think about it. The great Israeli activist, Uri Avnery, said that the Zionist plan to uproot the Palestinian people and claim the land for a single race is based on a lie – a lie that considers Palestinian people to be less than human, such that if you kick them enough they will (like dogs) simply limp away with their tails between their legs!
Fifty years of military occupation has shown this to be a lie! Fifty years of violence, discrimination, deprivations, housing demolitions, targeted assassinations, and endless checkpoints and harassment have shown that the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people cannot be underestimated. After fifty years of violence, the Palestinian people continue to stand tall, continue to maintain their dignity and continuing to resist – the recent hunger-strike, led by Marwan BarghoutiMarwan Barghouti, being the latest great act of non-violent defiance!
The resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of oppression is indeed a source of inspiration, and I believe that the rest of the world is finally starting to wake up.
There was a time when, to many in this country at least, Palestine was thought of as just another Middle-Eastern issue – certainly only as an Arab issue, and truly only as an issue for Muslim people. That time has passed.
I was greatly encouraged to read this week a coalition of Palestinian Christian organisations reaching out to their sisters and brothers around the world through a letter to the World Council of Churches – an organisation that includes 348 member churches from more than 110 countries, representing over 500 million Christians.
The letter expresses the urgent need for Christians everywhere to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people – “We are on the verge of a catastrophic collapse. The current status-quo is unsustainable. This could be our last chance to achieve a just peace”.
The appeal has not fallen on deaf ears, and so it seems that the World Council of Churches may indeed now follow the lead taken by a number of church bodies in the United States and adopt the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) program – that great non-violent Palestinian initiative that hits the machinery of Occupation where it hurts – in the hip-pocket.
There is much to grieve in the last fifty years of Occupation, but the resilience of the Palestinian people is, I believe, finally leading to a universal awakening. People around the world are waking up to the lies that they are being fed by their governments and by the ever-compliant mainline media.
The recent election result in Britain, the Brexit vote, and even the result of the last election in the USA are all clear indicators that people are fed up with the lies, even if they aren’t quite sure at this stage what to do about them yet!
People everywhere are recognising though that the emperor has no clothes and that the imperial narrative that generates endless cycles of war around our planet is without foundation. At the heart of that narrative is the web of lies that maintains the Palestinian Occupation – claiming eternal victimhood for the State of Israel, and depicting the Palestinian people as sub-human, angry militants.
All this is starting to unravel, and we stand here today as a testimony to that unravelling. We come together today as a mixed multitude, representing various different ethnic groups, language groups, and countries of origin. We come together as a mixture of Muslims and Christians and, I suspect, any number of other faith traditions. In our diversity we represent peoples across the world, and yet we are unified in our love for God, our passion for justice, and hence in our solidarity with the Palestinian people.
We do not accept the lies. We will not accept the endless humiliation and subjugation of the Palestinian people. At this crucial point in human history we take our stand in solidarity with the oppressed in Palestine and around the world.
Not long now, sisters and brothers! Liberation is coming! God has heard the cries of the oppressed. A new day will dawn and justice will come – enshallah, very soon.
Filed under israel and palestine articles by on Jul 4th, 2017. Comment.
Saturday, July 2nd, 2016: It was again my privilege to be invited to speak at an Al Quds Day event, this time in the grounds of the Kingsgrove Mosque.
I was surprised to receive applause about half-way through my brief address and I wasn’t sure at first what prompted it. It was afterwards that a Palestinian man came up to me and said “you said what we needed to hear. You told us not to forget Palestine. We are afraid that the world is forgetting us”.
Indeed the man’s plea makes sense. When there is so much trouble at home and abroad to absorb our energies, it is easy to forget the ongoing trauma of the Palestinian Occupation. The longer it goes on the more we are tempted to normalise it! In truth, we must never forget Palestine!
Father Dave
The video below covers the first half of my address. Please see the transcript below for the complete version.
Al Quds Day 2016
As most of you would know, I returned not long ago from Syria – my fifth visit there in the last four years. One of the great tragedies of Syria (and there are many tragedies associated with that great land at the moment) is that the violence and injustice being visited upon the Syrian people is so extreme that it can easily absorb all of our time and emotional energy and so distract us from other tragedies in our world that also deserve our prayers and our attention.
It’s not only Syria, of course. When we think of the suffering of the people of Yemen, and also of Iraq and Libya and the suffering of so many of our sisters and brothers around the world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and have no space in our hearts left for the people of Palestine. After all, there’s only so many people you can pray for at any one time!
I recognise in myself that I have fallen victim to this. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I am president of Friends of Sabeel, Australia – the Australian church’s attempt at Palestinian Liberation Theology. I am supposed to be a recognisable face in the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom, and yet I find the concerns of the Palestinian people have taken a back seat for me as my energies have been absorbed by other concerns that seem even more pressing!
The truth is that there is no more pressing need in our world than that of justice for the Palestinian people, for in truth, all these global tragedies we grieve are connected. As my friend, Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal (former Bishop of Jerusalem, himself a Palestinian) said “the road to world peace goes through Jerusalem”.
I believe this is true. I don’t mean that if we solve the Palestinian issue that all the other pieces of the puzzle will suddenly, magically fall into place, but I do believe that unless we put an end to the abuse and discrimination and disenfranchisement experienced by the Palestinian people, these other issues we struggle with will never be solved!
This year has been another hard year for the Palestinian people and, as I say, it has been a difficult year for all of us whose hearts yearn for Palestine. The problem has been further exacerbated too lately by initiatives taken within the Islamic world to divide the ummah over their attitude to Israel.
The Saudis have made a number of statements in recent months that seem to endorse the Israeli government and would thus encourage Muslims everywhere to accept the Palestinian Occupation as normal!
I don’t know whether the long term effect of this will be more love for the Israeli government or more hatred for the house of Saud. I suspect the latter. Either way though, I am tempted to say “welcome to the club”. The Christian community has been similarly afflicted for many years by prominent voices urging the faithful around the world to turn a blind eye to the abuse of the Palestinian people!
The other things I say is “thank God or Al Quds Day!”, and I mean that. In spite of the clamour of voices urging us to forget Palestine – voices coming through the media, through our political leaders, and (as I say) even from within the ranks of the faithful, on Al Quds Day we cannot forget Palestine!
The suffering of the Palestinian people is real and it is ongoing, and it cries out to Heaven for redress! God knows that the barriers to justice and freedom seem as intractable now as they ever have been, if not more intractable! Even so, we must do what we can and we must not give up! We must pray, and we must speak out, and we must take action wherever we can to uphold the dignity and humanity of the Palestinian people.
We may fear that our efforts will never amount to much. Even so, I am always encouraged in this regard by the comparison Jesus made between the Kingdom of Heaven and the yeast that’s sprinkled into dough to make bread.
Jesus told them still another parable: “The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A woman takes some yeast and mixes it with a bushel of flour until the whole batch of dough rises.” (Matthew 13:33)
The yeast seems insignificant when mixed in with the dough, and it is virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the lump. Even so, we know full well that when the time comes, these small flakes of yeast become the agents of extraordinary transformation! This is our hope too – that even though our collective effort seems small, that God will work through us and through all who remember Palestine today to bring about extraordinary and genuine transformation.
Thank God for Al Quds Day. Thank God for the ongoing strength and resilience of the people of Palestine. Thank God for the privilege of being able to participate in the process of transformation towards justice and peace.
with my friend, Husain Dirani, on Al Quds Day
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict by on Jul 6th, 2016. Comment.
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