Dehumanizing the Native Through Media Narratives
“One last look before her son disappears forever, and the tears drip on the grave.”
Photo taken by Sakir Khader, retrieved from@sakirkhade
8 Israeli settlers were killed after Kahiri Alqam, a grandson to a martyr that was stabbed to death by settlers in the early 90’s, took matters in his own hands. What has been flowing around in Palestinian circles are quotations by the founders of the State that falsely professed that the old will die and the young will forget. Incidentally, the young have not forgotten and are now rattling the cages to attempt to break loose from the 74-year-old chains that are starting to rust.
Some have asked me what I thought of the events that unraveled in Jerusalem and to be frank I was unsure at first. What originally popped in my head was how this could be the start of an intifada, the spark to the eventual war that has been brewing ever since the War on Gaza in 2008 where nearly 2000 Palestinians were flattened by the onslaught of Israeli bombs in the highly dense open-air prison. But as time went on and the Occupation Forces waited to retaliate, I began to think critically on how this could tarnish the work that the non-violent resistance movement that consists of academics and Palestinian civil societies in the Diaspora and inside the occupied territories. Reminded about the hostile environment and the situation on the ground in Nablus, Ramallah, and Jenin where Palestinians are in a constant state of subjection and alienation, I immediately redirected my thoughts and emotions to accepting ALL means that Palestinians take in resisting.
At the end of the day, Israel is an occupying power that sold the world the idea that peace shall exist on stolen land but, the rational of such notions are quiet contradictory. Peace will NEVER be present on stolen land, true peace itself will never accept Israel for its home demolitions, for its racial hierarchy, for its destruction of the land and its ecology, for its dehumanization of the Palestinians, for its pyschological war that suppresses Palestinian pride and creates a hatred for one’s own Identity, religion, and culture. Ensuring that Israel never sees peace is now the only way to properly resist on the ground, there is no other way – to protest peacefully is to put one’s life at risk as they banned the flag, they hold a shoot to kill policy within very ambiguous guidelines that protects soldiers from impunity and worst of all, occupy us through land, air, and through the mind as we are told what to think and how to think.
The immediate example of the tactics used in occupying our mind is the response from Western media outlets which humanized the settlers in Occupied East Jerusalem and dehumanized the Palestinians in Occupied Jenin. The BBC drew up the environment in Jenin as a flashpoint yet held no mention to the fact that camps such as the one in Jenin are prominent across Palestinian cities are in existence because Israel grew and uprooted and internally displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what the international community now calls Israel proper. Within the same article, readers were unaware of the fact that the neighborhood which Alqam retaliated was in an illegal settlement in Occupied East Jerusalem. Not specifying such details not only erases facts but also justifies the occupation of Jerusalem and places Palestinians in a category where uninformed audiences will understand that the native is foreign in their own lands. Towards the end of the news article, the BBC proclaimed that “150 Palestinians were killed, nearly all by Israeli forces” but in turn was happy to emphasize the binaries between “Palestinians and Israeli Arabs” who resisted against “Israelis, as well as militant gunfire at troops during arrest raid” (Emphasis from original).[1] Unless the BBC sees all military action against Palestinians as settler violence, it ignoring the daily settler violence that takes hold in the West Bank is farcical journalism and begs the question if it was a deliberate act – making one wonder why Western Media is so petrified to elaborate on settlers in the West Bank? Is it because opening the public eye to what settler colonialism entails can be problematic to public support for Israel? Is the West nervous to have public knowledge consume a perspective to how armed citizens of colonial states, past and present, are a pillar to the stability of colonial institutions be that they be in Australia, Canada, the United States, Israel? One alone may theorize and ponder but from what I know, Palestinians cannot solely rely on external support as their freedom and liberation plays a domino effect in the liberation of Indigenous struggles around the globe.
Europe nor North America is interested in a free Palestine because a free Palestine will collapse the stability of the same nation states that outright support Israel’s “right to security”. A free Palestine sparks unity in the Arab World, a free Palestine demands the elevation and respect of the working class across the globe, and most importantly, a free Palestine is the torch towards the end of racist borders that are persistent across the human world.
Glory be to the Martyrs and may God protect their families and alleviate the pain from the broken hearts of Palestinian mothers.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64410607