Palestine’s Plight, US Ignorance
Together with the world leaders, Indonesia also needs to actively lobby the US, which is now also under pressure from its domestic public to fundamentally revise its policies toward Israel.
After Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire, the world can be relieved, at least temporarily.
An 11-day successive Israeli bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 243 Palestinians, many of them women and children. Apart from the thousands who were injured, more than 70,000 people became refugees among the 500 or so office buildings, residences, schools and health facilities that were destroyed and turned into rubble. Amid the threat of the pandemic and subsequent war that could break out again at any time, without electricity, water and public facilities. "If there is a hell on Earth," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, "it is the lives of children in Gaza."
Peter Beinart, a Jewish professor at the City University of New York, said the confiscation of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem that sparked the war yesterday was only the tip of the iceberg.
There are 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in fear when the state of Israel was declared. That was half the Arab population there in 1948. When Israel annexed the West Bank and Gaza through the 1967 war, again 300,000 people were left homeless. Between 1967 and 1994, 250,000 people who left the territory lost the right to return.
Through house seizures and demolitions, apartheid discrimination, the construction of hundreds of illegal Jewish settlements in the Palestine territory, as well as hundreds of kilometers of segregation walls and military posts that insulate settlements, to regular clashes and wars, from year to year tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed or could not stand the situation and had to leave.
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As a result of Israel\'s continuing systematic ethnic cleansing, a “two-state solution” as the only solution to the conflict is becoming increasingly impossible. For Netanyahu, who has been plagued by corruption cases for years, the conflict is a golden opportunity to regain the sympathy of the Israeli public. Meanwhile, for the Palestinian political elite, the conflict is an excuse to postpone the election again in order to remain in power. As a result, the plight of the Palestinian people is increasingly unbearable.
Palestinians who have returned to their neighbourhood, assess the damage in their home hit by Israeli bombardment in Gaza City, after a ceasefire brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas, on May 21, 2021. - A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip, appeared to hold today after 11 days of deadly fighting that pounded the Palestinian enclave and forced countless Israelis to seek shelter from rockets.
US unconditional support
The Jewish people continue to be haunted by the "cultural trauma" of the holocaust, which claimed nearly 6 million of their citizens under the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. This trauma ultimately became the main legitimacy for the Zionist movement to establish the state of Israel. This trauma has also given the Jews broad support in the West, especially the US, to ensure that a similar tragedy does not happen again. Hitler\'s identity as a modern white Christian has left the West to bear a sense of collective sin.
"Cultural trauma", said Jeffrey Alexander in Trauma, A Social Theory (2012), is formed through a social process in which traumatic events are narrated as existential threats to all members of a group. The narrative identifies who the victim is, who the perpetrator is, and how society should respond. A superior narrative is not primarily determined by factual events, but by performative power that are closely related to relations between power and resources, as well as the demography of the audience.
Collective guilt in the West as the audience, as well as relations of Jewish power and resources have enabled them to present extraordinary performance power through the production of discourse, history, works of art, museums, epistemological frameworks and media narratives. While it is claimed to be a unique traumatic experience, the tragedy of the holocaust is interpreted as having universal moral lessons.
The fate of the Maori, Aboriginal Australians or American Indian people may be more tragic, but why aren\'t their stories as important as the
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Jews? "Pro-Israel" is the West\'s declaration of every demand and action of the Israeli government regarding the victory of this narrative of Jewish cultural trauma. There is even an assumption that criticizing the Israeli government is equal to anti-Semitism which is directly linked to the holocaust.
Even though in current practice Israel is one of the countries with the best military power in the world that continues to commit atrocities against a fragile Palestine, the US still places Israel as a victim who must be defended unconditionally. The US has always emphasized Israel\'s right to defend itself and the curse of violence is directed at Palestine. Before the final ceasefire was reached, the US vetoed three times a resolution made by 95 countries in the UN Security Council to stop violence.
Indeed, not a few Israelis are also US citizens, including squatters in Palestine and Netanyahu himself. Obviously this has its own psychological ties. The US identifies its strategic partnership with Israel as the most important with a special relationship. In 2016, even under Obama, who was seen as distant, the US signed a contract agreement to provide unconditional military assistance to Israel worth US$3.8 billion per year until 2026.
A Palestinian woman peeks from the window of her home, hit by Israeli bombardment in Gaza City, after a ceasefire brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas, on May 21, 2021. - A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip, appeared to hold today after 11 days of deadly fighting that pounded the Palestinian enclave and forced countless Israelis to seek shelter from rockets.
Many Christian Zionists are funders of the right wing politicians in the US as well as in Israel. It is they who provide support behind the pro-Israel policies in the US. These Zionist Christians believe that the establishment of Israel and the conflict that culminated in the Middle East are the door to Armageddon. In addition to the economically lucrative reasons, the arms business and US military assistance, among these Christians, is also theologically motivated, in order to accelerate the ultimate war between Good versus Evil. Why?
When Armageddon erupts, the second coming of Jesus will happen. That\'s the moment they\'ve been waiting for. Despite Donald Trump\'s personal belief, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\'s capital is part of this scenario. In Israel alone, 70 percent of its citizens are secular Jews who do not care about religious matters. However, they took advantage of US support for both economic and political interests, namely legitimacy at the global level.
Constellation change
While major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram continue to rigorously censor pro-Palestinian posts to keep up with Israel\'s demands, thanks to advocacy for "digital rights" by millennial activists, the world can now witness stories being told live by Palestinians. We also watched a video about a Jewish squatter who openly confessed to the theft of a Palestinian home in Sheikh Jarrah on the grounds that "if I don\'t steal your house, someone else will steal it."
As the critical attitude of the Western media has become more widespread in the last 10 years, the US public\'s perception of Israel and the Palestinian conflict has also changed fundamentally. Bernie Sanders of Jewish descent, who was a candidate for the presidency of the Democratic Party, called for “Palestinian Lives Matter” while demanding that Biden stand firm on Netanyahu\'s hard-line government and their undemocratic and racist behavior.
The US public\'s perception of Israel and the Palestinian conflict has also changed fundamentally.
Rashida Tlaib, the only member of the US Congress of Palestinian descent, had also spoken directly to Biden before the ceasefire to evaluate the military assistance that had enabled Israel to commit humanitarian crimes against the Palestinians.
"How many Palestinians have to die in order for their lives to be considered valuable?" she said before the Congress. The constellation surrounding the Palestinian conflict is changing rapidly, including among Jews, both inside and outside Israel. The same goes for the US public or other Western countries. Key terms, such as systemic racism, police brutality and white supremacy that drove the Black Lives Matter massive demonstration in the US last year, are evident in Palestine in a much more brutal form. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have also occurred in many major cities around the world, not only in Muslim countries.
Seeing the condition of the Palestinian people who are increasingly squeezed even though there have been 88 resolutions issued by the
Achmad Munjid
United Nations since 1948, the world must look for a more serious solution. Through international communities, such as ASEAN, NAM and OIC, Indonesia needs to take more effective steps. The first strategic step that must be implemented immediately is to ensure that Israel stops the military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the illegal takeover of Palestinian houses by Jewish settlers with the sponsorship of the Israeli government. Together with the world leaders and other international communities, Indonesia also needs to actively lobby the US, which is now also under pressure from its domestic public to fundamentally revise its policies toward Israel.
Achmad Munjid, Lecturer in American Studies, FIB UGM
This article was translated by Kurniawan Siswoko.
