Embarking on a reflective journey through the memories and heirlooms passed down through generations within one’s family can lead to a profound exploration of the historical narrative embedded in one’s heritage.

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi, a distinguished US historian of the Middle East, stands as a monumental account, representing the first comprehensive history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Khalidi’s familial connection to the history of the region adds a personal and unique dimension to his groundbreaking narrative.

In crafting this extraordinary work, Khalidi draws on a wealth of archival materials and firsthand accounts from his eminent family members, including mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists. This meticulous approach not only adds originality and depth to the book but also imparts an authoritative touch to the narrative.

The journey through time commences in 1899 with a poignant letter from Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, the mayor of Jerusalem and the great-great-uncle of the author. In this letter, al-Khalidi warns Zionist founder Theodore Herzl about the perilous consequences of the Zionist movement’s ambition to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine.

This moment, according to Khalidi, serves as the prologue to the prevailing Zionist narrative, marked by the dismissal of indigenous populations and their interests as inconsequential. Khalidi provides a meaningful reflection on this letter, offering his unique and authentic perspective.

Weaving together personal history with pivotal events that have shaped the conflict, Khalidi challenges conventional interpretations that frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict merely as a tragic clash of competing nationalisms. Instead, he unfolds a narrative of colonial warfare waged against the Palestinians, underscoring its underappreciated centrality to the issue.

This colonial campaign, initiated by the Zionist movement and later endorsed by the state of Israel with the support of influential global powers, including Britain and the United States, becomes a focal point of Khalidi’s analysis.

I

n Eurowhiteness, Hans Kundnani, Associate Fellow in the Europe Programme at Chatham House, challenges a sanitized and linear history of the EU, prompting the reader to rethink Europe’s peaceful image against its imperial past. He goes on to tackle myopic assumptions about the European project throughout the book.

Kundnani argues that pro-Europeans, who cradled cosmopolitanism and renounced nationalism, have failed to perceive the reality of European regionalism. This provocative critique dissects both the civic and ethnic elements that shape European identity by highlighting Europe’s interaction with the “Other” and linking “Europeanness” and “whiteness.” 

Eurowhiteness may come off as unpalatable to many pro-Europeans, but it raises valuable questions against a backdrop of a rising far-right in Europe. Especially in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, the complex relationship between European identity and race demands urgent reflection.

Q. What are some of the myths that cause blind spots in understanding the European identity?

I would mention two in particular. The first is the idea that the EU is a cosmopolitan project. Cosmopolitanism usually has something to do with the whole world, and Europe is not the whole world. There’s a tendency by pro-Europeans and the EU to mistake Europe for the world. For example, when they talk about European integration, they sometimes seem to think that they’re talking about global integration, but they’re not.

Similarly, when they say “I’m a European or I’m a European citizen,” they seem to think they’re saying I’m a citizen of the world, but they’re not; They’re saying I’m a citizen of this particular region that has a very particular history and relationship with the rest of the world.

This is what I call in Eurowhiteness “the of myth of cosmopolitanism in Europe”, and related to that is the idea to think European integration is good for the whole of the world, but that may not necessarily be the case; It may be good for Europeans or may not be good for Europeans, arguably. But even if it is good for Europeans, it’s not clear if it’s good for the whole world.

The second myth would be that the EU is a peace project, and that is not entirely wrong. However, the way that pro-Europeans talk about it is sometimes simplistic; that after 1945 Europeans rejected war, and since then Europeans stand for peace. In reality, Europeans did not reject war in general in 1945. They only rejected war with each other.

In 1950 as the Schuman Declaration, which can be seen as the beginning of the idea of the EU as a peace project, is made by France’s then-foreign minister Robert Schumann, France is simultaneously fighting a brutal colonial war in Indochina.

Similarly, seven years later, when the Treaty of Rome is signed, France fought a brutal colonial war in Algeria. This demonstrates that Europeans are continuing to fight colonial wars until they’re defeated or exhausted.

Europeans like to think of themselves as being uniquely peaceful. The real story is more complicated, and in particular, as I say, to the extent that Europeans have rejected military force, it is military force within what has become the European Union, not even within Europe at large, that is being rejected.

Q. Has the EU’s focus shifted from peace to power?

I wouldn’t say it has shifted from being about peace to being about power. I think it was always about power as well as peace. In particular, it gets to what I was just saying about the idea of the EU as a peace project.

If you go back to the interwar period pan-European movement, which is the inspiration for the post-War European integration project, it is very clear that at that time already that the European integration project is about power and the perception of European decline accelerated by fighting one other.

The idea is: If we want to maintain our position in the world – and at that time this is a position of colonial domination- we have to stop fighting with each other. Not so that we can end European colonialism, but so that we can continue it. So in other words, European integration would take the competitive element out of European colonialism, allowing its practice collectively.

Part of the point of European integration in 1950s was for France and Belgium to consolidate their colonies in Central and West Africa at a time when they were no longer able to on their own. In particular, they needed an injection of West German capital.

The idea of geopolitical Europe goes back to the 1920s. It only seems new because pro-Europeans like to tell a story of Europe through the aforementioned myths. It only seems like a shift because we’ve forgotten the real history of how European integration began.

Q. Does the EU still export the European social model and the general welfare state?

Social market economy and the welfare state are no longer what the EU can to claim export anymore. It may have done once, but even in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War we observe that this is not the case. In fact, the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe had much more generous welfare states when they were communist countries.

What happened as they joined the EU during the enlargement process is that those welfare states were dismantled as part of their transition to democracy. There are obviously lots of things that you can criticize about the communist systems in those countries, such as the lack of political freedom and so on, but they did have welfare states.

What has happened now is a further stage in which the EU is putting pressure on member states to dismantle the welfare state. For example, during the euro crisis, the austerity Germany imposed on Greece dismantled what was left of the Greek welfare state.

Q. Your book suggests that civic ideas of Europe are being replaced by ethnic-cultural ones. What is the connection of the neoliberalization of Europe to identity politics?

What I try to show in the book is that there have always been both of the elements of civic and ethnic-cultural idea in the history of what I call European regionalism- which is similar to nationalism on a larger continental scale. I’m suggesting that we can think of the history of ideas of Europe in the way we think about the history of nations. Therefore, regionalism is like nationalism.

The earliest ideas of Europe are predominantly ethnic-cultural. For example, in the medieval period, Europeanness is synonymous with Christianity. From the modern period onwards, you begin to get civic ideas of Europe. Then, in the post war period is when the EU came closest to evolving into a purely civic regionalism. Particularly, in the period from the 60s to the 90s-2000s, there was an idea of Europe centered on the social market economy, the welfare state and depoliticized mode of governance which European integration had produced.

I think what’s happened is that the social market economy and the welfare state have been hollowed out by neoliberalism in the EU. Meanwhile, there has been a backlash against the depoliticised mode of governance where the older civic idea of Europe is no longer persuasive in the same way it was before.

The way I understand neoliberalism is not just financialization, but it’s also the depoliticization of economic policy. In other words, it’s taking economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation. Although, to some extent, this has happened in the whole world in the last 30-40 years through things like the World Trade Organisation rules, the EU has taken it further through the creation of the single market, and also the Eurozone and the fiscal rules. Therefore, it’s very difficult now to pursue a left wing economic policy in the Eurozone because the fiscal rules don’t allow you to do it.

My argument is basically that when you take economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation and no longer have big fights between left and right about economic policy, your democratic politics shifts to cultural questions.

The point of democratic politics is to reconcile different interests and to have fights about questions where people in your society have different ideas or different interests. I think a healthy democratic politics is one where you do that about economic issues because there are real differences between the interests and different ideas as well.

What has happened now is that the center left parties and the center right parties converged in the center around neoliberal economic policy, which the EU has constitutionalized. Therefore, the way parties can differentiate themselves from each other now is around cultural questions.

In terms of what Europe says to the rest of the world, there was a time it would say it stood for the social market economy and the welfare state and now it says it stands for European civilisation.

A good example of this is the phrase “the European way of life,” which used to be used by French socialists, specifically, to refer to the social market economy and the welfare state and the idea of solidarity that it was meant to embody, saying “that’s what we in Europe stand for as opposed to the United States.”

Now when you look at the way that the phrase is used, it is in more civilizational terms. In the current European Commission, the Commission of Ursula Von Der Leyen since 2019, a European Commissioner for promoting the European way of life and his job is to keep migrants out, which makes it very explicit that migrants- only migrants from the South, not migrants from the east- are a threat to the European way of life. That is a very explicit expression of civilizationalism where the European way of life is defined in terms of culture and civilisation, not in terms of the social market economy and the welfare state.

Q. In your book you imply that the center right is increasingly mimicking the far right. Is there a pro-European version of the great replacement theory, if so, what is it?

There is an idea that the EU represents a European civilisation which is being increasingly threatened. This is basically a far right idea that has now been taken on by the center right in Europe.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, Eric Zemmour was doing a rally in the South of France with the young far right leader Marion Maréchal, and the slogan on the lectern at which he was speaking was ‘Defend our civilization.’  The way the far right is thinking about Europe is there’s a European civilisation that is threatened right now. The far right tends to talk about this in the context of migration. That is, it’s the migration of non-white and non-Christian people that is threatening European civilisation.

For example, Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate in the French Presidential election in 2022, was talking about white replacement theory or alluding to it in terms of migration. However, in addition, what the centre right tends to do is not talk so much about migration as a racial threat, but more in foreign policy terms as a threat to European civilisation. Macron has given speeches where he’s quite explicit about this.

In other words, international politics is a clash of civilizations, like how Samuel Huntington argues, and Europe is a distinct civilization. Moreover, for someone like Macron, the West is not one civilization, which is what Huntington thought but that Europe is a distinct civilisation, separate from the United States as well.

Where I see a connection with great replacement theory is that this is almost the international political equivalent of the great replacement theory. It’s not about migration but it’s that if Europe does not unite and defend itself, it will be also replaced by other civilizations. Macron has basically said that.

Q. What are some key takeaways from history regarding Europe’s interaction with those who it sees as the “Other”?

I try to show in Eurowhiteness that there’s a long history of defining Europe against various different “Others” at various different times and it’s constantly shifting. But roughly, I would say, in the medieval period when Europe is pretty much synonymous with Christianity, Jews are defined as the primary internal other and Muslims as the primary external other, excluding the divide between Western Christendom and Eastern Christendom.

Then, in the modern period, I try to show how there is a new complex modern idea of Europe, which is partly to do with the European enlightenment and the scientific revolution. It is a rationalist, secular idea of Europe rather than a religious one. At the same time, the idea of Europe also emerges in the context of the encounter of Europeans with the populations of Africa and Asia, and especially the Americas, and that’s the context in which the idea of whiteness emerges.

So, the modern idea of Europe is not just a rationalist one as opposed to a religious one, it’s also a more racialized idea of Europe that is closely connected to the idea of whiteness. What I think happens in that context is that non-white people around the world are the “Others” against which Europeans define themselves.

In the 20th century and particularly after World War I, you have the new idea of Europe as a geopolitical bloc, which I mentioned earlier. European civilisation or the European spirit, as they talked about it at that time, is being threatened by the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other hand. In that context, Russia and also the United States are respectively an “Other.” What I think we’re seeing today is a mixture of all of those “Others.”

D

ecolonization is a multifaceted and transformative process which has left an indelible mark on the course of modern history. Emerging in the wake of the Second World War, it signaled a seismic shift in the global landscape as nations across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean reclaimed their autonomy from the grasp of colonial powers. This epochal phenomenon was not merely a political or territorial change; it was a profound reconfiguration of identities, cultures, economies, and societies.

At its core, decolonization was a rebellion against the unjust and oppressive systems of colonial rule that had prevailed for centuries. It was a response to the exploitative economic structures, cultural hegemony, and political subjugation that defined the colonial experience. Yet, this once  vital and necessary struggle for self-determination and freedom from Western colonial dominance, has, in recent times, taken a curious and unsettling turn.

In his thought-provoking book Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, a leading African political philosopher, takes a critical stance on the contemporary trajectory of decolonization, arguing that it has deviated from its original purpose. He makes an important distinction between the past and present trajectory of decolonization; The very ideals that once fueled the fight for independence have undergone a transformation, morphing into a vague and all-encompassing concept.

The unintended consequences of this shift, he argues, demand our attention. Táíwò asserts that decolonization has become a convenient tool for virtue signaling, ultimately stifling African intellectual thought and eroding African agency.

Táíwò’s main contention is that the term ‘decolonization’ has been applied indiscriminately to fields ranging from literature, language, and philosophy to sociology, psychology, and medicine. While this expansion has allowed for critical examination, it has also given rise to a complex and sometimes contentious debate.

Táíwò’s intervention in this discourse is a powerful and much-needed one. He questions whether today’s notion of ‘decolonization’ genuinely serves the empowerment of Africans or if it has been co-opted for other agendas. He calls for a reevaluation of the treatment of African intellectuals that should be recognized as innovative adapters and synthesizers of ideas they have always regarded as universally relevant. He aims to shed light on the delicate balance between rectifying historical wrongs and respecting the intellectual agency and creativity of African voices.

Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously offers a bold and critical perspective on the current state of decolonization. It is an intervention that prompts readers to reconsider the genuine objectives and consequences of the decolonization movement, advocating for a more nuanced and respectful approach to African intellectual contributions.

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously (Hurst Publishers,2022) ISBN: 9781787386921, 368 pages

Ilan Pappe’s remarkable work, Ten Myths about Israel, takes a fearless approach to scrutinizing the contested ideas surrounding the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel while offering a critical examination of the past, the present, and the path ahead. In this insightful exploration, Pappe meticulously dismantles ten myths, etched into the collective consciousness, that have long perpetuated and shaped our understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Focusing on the fallacies of the past, Pappe confronts six enduring misconceptions. The first myth contends that Palestine was an empty land, a claim he systematically debunks by delving into the historical record. The second myth suggests that the Jews were a people without a land, a notion Pappe addresses with a nuanced perspective that challenges conventional wisdom.

Myth number three posits that Zionism is synonymous with Judaism, a misconception that Pappe dissects to reveal its fallacious underpinnings. He also tackles the assertion that Zionism is not colonialism. Pappe’s exploration examines the formation of Zionism and its instrumental role in the early phases of nation-building

The fifth myth claims that the Palestinian population voluntarily left their homeland in 1948, a narrative that Pappe refutes by drawing from historical accounts and testimonies. The sixth myth revolves around the belief that the June 1967 War was a conflict of “no choice,” an assumption he subjects to rigorous examination.

Pappe then shifts his focus to the fallacies of the present, highlighting three prevalent myths that continue to shape the discourse on Israel. Myth number seven proposes that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, a claim he scrutinizes through the lens of contemporary politics and policy.

W

hen the Guardian reported on the negative Israeli reaction to the Netflix release of the film Farha (2021), the debut feature by Palestinian-Jordanian director Darin J. Sallam, they gave away a crucial part of the plot. It is difficult to discern whether this was a deliberate act of sabotage to ruin the film for potential viewers or a clumsy mistake by Bethan McKernan, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent.

What is undeniable is that there has been a concerted effort to rubbish the film and suppress it. Just before the film was released worldwide on Netflix, hundreds of spam accounts left negative reviews on IMDb in what the Middle East Eye described as an “organized campaign.” Furthermore, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s minister of finance, described Netflix’s decision to platform it as “crazy.”

So why has this film created so much controversy? Not to repeat McKernan’s mistake, I advise the reader to watch the film before reading any further. I will be analyzing the film in some detail in what follows so as to work out why it has unnerved so many and in order to tackle some of the criticism that has been leveled against it. I first watched Farha on the opening night of the 2022 Safar Film Festival in London, knowing nothing about it beforehand—I believe is the ideal way to experience this film.

The film is set in Palestine in 1948. Fourteen-year-old Farha (Karam Taher) wants her father (Ashraf Barhoum), the mayor of their small village, to allow her to continue her education in the city. Her uncle (Ali Suliman) argues in favor of Farha being educated rather than married off and the father eventually agrees. Just as Farha is on the cusp of achieving her dream, her village is attacked by Zionists. It’s a testimony to the filmmaking that you could be fooled into thinking you have seen extensive battle scenes when much of the war is implied through sound rather than image. Farha’s father locks her in a pantry for her own safety and seals the door. He promises to return at a later time.

We begin to feel Farha’s increasing claustrophobia. Everything is a challenge: from finding a light source to collecting rainwater through a hole in the wall and solving the problem of how to go to the toilet in such a confined space. All this happens almost silently or with very effective use of sound. It is pure cinema that allows us to get close to Farha as we experience the visceral intensity of being confined with her. We long for her to find a way to break the door.

Then, through a gap in the door, Farha witnesses the arrival of a family. A woman gives birth. Farha calls out for the father of the family. Just as we think he is going to rescue her, Zionist soldiers arrive. The film goes from second gear into fifth. Every passing second the tension mounts. The danger the soldiers represent is palpable. At one point, a female soldier reaches inside the garment of the Palestinian woman who gave birth and extracts the large, heavy metallic key to her house tied around her neck. The soldier teases her by telling her she can keep it as a souvenir, implying she will never see her home again.

The family is eventually lined up and shot. We don’t see the moment of their execution, only the reaction on Farha’s face as she witnesses the horror. Then comes the crucial part, the part McKernan ruined for the Guardian readers: the newborn baby is left behind. A young Jewish soldier is ordered to kill him without wasting a bullet. He contemplates stomping on the baby, but in the end leaves a handkerchief over him and joins his departing unit. Finally, when Farha finds a hidden gun and blows open the door, she discovers flies feasting on the dead baby’s corpse.

With such a powerful, unflinching story, the Israeli reaction to Farha is perhaps not surprising. The irony is that much of Sallam’s secondary research on the events of 1948, which the Palestinians refer to as “Al-Nakba” (The Catastrophe), came from the work of Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappé. The violent expulsion of some 750,000 plus Palestinians from their villages which led to the creation of Israel is hardly a secret. The Israeli denial is a testimony to the power of the film.

What is surprising are some of the negative reviews the film has received in the Arab press. Some have critiqued the film for pandering to Western orientalism by having a young girl longing to be educated and being denied that right by her Arab community—but those critics misread the early scenes. The film shows Farha’s struggle but also her triumph. She persuades her father to let her be educated and you feel that he is secretly proud of her “stubbornness.”

The film is very clear about the fact that her education wasn’t so much interrupted by her community but by the attack on her village by the occupying forces. The uncle who helped persuade her father to allow her to be educated turns out in the end to be an informant for the Zionist soldiers. This irked some critics who perhaps would have preferred for all Palestinians in the film to be depicted as heroes rather than as complex characters. The uncle, realizing that the Zionist soldiers lied to him about their intention, breaks down at one point. He reminds us that no one thought the destruction of Palestine was going to be so remorseless and complete.

The decision by the African Union Commission, on July 22, to grant Israel observer status membership in the AU was the culmination of years of relentless Israeli efforts aimed at co-opting Africa’s largest political institution. Why is Israel so keen on penetrating Africa? What made African countries finally succumb to Israeli pressure and lobbying?

To answer the above questions, one has to appreciate the new Great Game under way in many parts of the world, especially in Africa, which has always been significant to Israel’s geopolitical designs. Starting in the early 1950s to the mid-70s, Israel’s Africa network was in constant expansion. The 1973 war, however, brought that affinity to an abrupt end.

What Changed Africa

Ghana, in West Africa, officially recognized Israel in 1956, just eight years after Israel was established atop the ruins of historic Palestine. What seemed like an odd decision at the time – considering Africa’s history of western colonialism and anti-colonial struggles – ushered in a new era of African-Israeli relations. By the early 1970s, Israel had established a strong position for itself on the continent. On the eve of the 1973 Israeli-Arab war, Israel had full diplomatic ties with 33 African countries.

“The October War”, however, presented many African countries with a stark choice: siding with Israel – a country born out of Western colonial intrigues – or the Arabs, who are connected to Africa through historical, political, economic, cultural and religious bonds. Most African countries opted for the latter choice. One after the other, African countries began severing their ties with Israel. Soon enough, no African state, other than Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland, had official diplomatic relations with Israel.

Then, the continent’s solidarity with Palestine went even further. The Organization of African Unity – the precursor to the African Union – in its 12th ordinary session held in Kampala in 1975, became the first international body to recognize, on a large scale, the inherent racism in Israel’s Zionist ideology by adopting Resolution 77 (XII). This very Resolution was cited in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted in November of that same year, which determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. Resolution 3379 remained in effect until it was revoked by the Assembly under intense American pressure in 1991.

Since Israel remained committed to that same Zionist, racist ideology of yesteryears, the only rational conclusion is that it was Africa, not Israel, that changed. But why?

Since Israel remained committed to that same Zionist, racist ideology of yesteryears, the only rational conclusion is that it was Africa, not Israel, that changed. But why?

First, the collapse of the Soviet Union. That seismic event resulted in the subsequent isolation of pro-Soviet African countries which, for years, stood as the vanguard against American, Western and, by extension, Israeli expansionism and interests on the continent.

Tellingly, Washington does not only serve as Israel’s benefactor in Palestine and the Middle East, but worldwide as well, and Israel is willing to go to any length to exploit the massive leverage it holds over the US government. This stifling paradigm, which has been at work in the Middle East region for decades, is also at work throughout Africa. For example, last year the US administration agreed to remove Sudan from the state-sponsored terror list in exchange for Khartoum’s normalization with Israel.

In truth, Sudan is not the only country that understands – and is willing to engage in – this kind of ‘pragmatic’ – read under-handed – political barter. Others also have learned to play the game well. Indeed, by voting to admit Israel to the AU, some African governments expect a return on their political investment, a return that will be exacted from Washington, not from Tel Aviv.

Unfortunately, albeit expectedly, as Africa’s normalization with Israel grew, Palestine became increasingly a marginal issue on the agendas of many African governments, who are far more invested in realpolitik – or simply remaining on Washington’s good side – than honoring the anti-colonial legacies of their nations.

Netanyahu the Conqueror

However, there was another driving force behind Israel’s decision to ‘return’ to Africa than just political opportunism and economic exploitation. Successive events have made it clear that Washington is retreating from the Middle East and that the region was no longer a top priority for the dwindling American empire. For the US, China’s decisive moves to assert its power and influence in Asia are largely responsible for the American rethink.

The 2012 US withdrawal from Iraq, its ‘leadership from behind’ in Libya, its non-committal policy in Syria, among others, were all indicators pointing to the inescapable fact that Israel could no longer count on the blind and unconditional American support alone. Thus, the constant search for new allies began.

For the first time in decades, Israel began confronting its prolonged isolation at the UNGA. America’s vetoes at the UN Security Council may have shielded Israel from accountability to its military occupation and war crimes; but US vetoes were hardly enough to give Israel the legitimacy that it has long coveted. In a recent conversation with former UN human rights envoy, Richard Falk, the Princeton Professor Emeritus explained to me that, despite Israel’s ability to escape punishment, it is rapidly losing what he refers to as the ‘legitimacy war’.

Palestine, according to Falk, continues to win that war, one that can only be achieved through real, grassroots global solidarity. It is precisely this factor that explains Israel’s keen interest in transferring the battlefield to Africa and other parts of the Global South.

On July 5, 2016, then Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, kick-started Israel’s own ‘scramble for Africa’ with a visit to Kenya, which was described as historic by the Israeli media. Indeed, it was the first visit by an Israeli prime minister in the last 50 years. After spending some time in Nairobi, where he attended the Israel-Kenya Economic Forum alongside hundreds of Israeli and Kenyan business leaders, he moved on to Uganda, where he met leaders from other African countries including South Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Within the same month, Israel announced the renewal of diplomatic ties between Israel and Guinea.

The new Israeli strategy flowed from there. More high-level visits to Africa and triumphant announcements about new joint economic ventures and investments followed. In June 2017, Netanyahu took part in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), held in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. There, he went as far as rewriting history.

“Africa and Israel share a natural affinity,” Netanyahu claimed in his speech. “We have, in many ways, similar histories. Your nations toiled under foreign rule. You experienced horrific wars and slaughters. This is very much our history.” With these words, Netanyahu attempted, not only to hide Israel’s colonial intentions, but also rob Palestinians of their own history.

Moreover, the Israeli leader had hoped to crown his political and economic achievements with the Israel-Africa Summit, an event that was meant to officially welcome Israel, not to a specific African regional alliance, but to the whole of Africa. However, in September 2017, the organizers of the event decided to indefinitely postpone it, after it was confirmed to be taking place in Lome, capital of Togo, on October 23-27 of that same year. What was seen by Israeli leaders as a temporary setback was the result of intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying of several African and Arab countries, including South Africa and Algeria.

Settler-colonialism is violent in nature and is built on the negation of natives’ basic rights and their very existence. Algeria under French rule and Palestine under Israeli rule are no exception to such colonial violence. In an attempt to push them to surrender to the will of their colonial masters, the use of excessive and brutal violence against settler-colonized people in both countries has been well documented. But history has proven that this tactic does not work, and it backfires at a high human cost.

On May 8, 1945, France killed 45,000 Algerians who took to the streets to demand independence from France following the victory of the Allied Forces over Nazi Germany. Today, the world is watching the ongoing violent displacement of Palestinians in Jerusalem and elsewhere in silence, without doing more than condemning it.

The proven violent nature of settler-colonialism often produces violent reactions from the colonized people. This is true about the National Liberation Front (NLF) in Algeria, and all Palestinian factions and groups such as Fatah, Hamas, and the PFLP. The NLF in Algeria engaged in a campaign of revolutionary violence that was extraordinary in nature and included, among many other methods of torture, cutting the throats of French soldiers captured by the group “like sheep.” The same applies to the Palestinians who have used various violent means including bombings and kidnappings.

In the cases of both Palestine and Algeria, the state violence against colonized people has excessively surpassed the violence used by non-state Algerian and Palestinian actors. To give an example, France’s use of violence against Algerians was remarkably brutal with hundreds of NLF members being killed under torture – in some cases, they were thrown from high places and announced to have committed suicide. In its most recent confrontation with the Palestinians in May 2021, Israel killed more than 250 Palestinians in 11 days compared to 13 Israelis killed by Palestinian fire.

The use of violence by non-state actors in Algeria and Palestine does not negate their attempts to end colonial rule by dialogue. The NLF was ready to engage in dialogue with the French authorities, but France, which called Algeria “French Algeria,” refused any form of dialogue with the NLF. Although many Palestinian factions consider armed resistance central to their struggle with Israel, factions such as Fatah and Hamas have in many instances engaged in non-violent resistance against Israel, which was also met with violence.

Just like in Palestine, in Algeria, France responded with full force to Algerian non-violent actions, including the 1956 strike, as it viewed any Algerian action against its rule an issue of law and order, negating Algerians’ desire for independence.

This is also true for the protests of the first Palestinian Intifada, which started as non-violent and turned violent as Israel used excessive force against protesters, including breaking their bones. The Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip is another example of how Israel responded to Palestinian engagement in non-violent resistance, with Israeli snipers killing 214 Palestinian, and injuring 36,000 others, while many were intentionally shot in the knee to be maimed. Just like in Palestine, in Algeria, France responded with full force to Algerian non-violent actions, including the 1956 strike, as it viewed any Algerian action against its rule an issue of law and order, negating Algerians’ desire for independence.

The refusal of state actors to use violence can’t win moral ground as long as it permits the use of violence against colonized people. Israel’s creation was accompanied by a surge of violence not just against the Palestinians, who were made refugees, but also against the colonial British forces in Palestine.

In addition to dozens of documented massacres against Palestinians, Zionist militias have used car bombings and assassinations both against Palestinian and British targets, forcing some 750,000 Palestinians out of their towns and villages. The same applies to France, which today glorifies the French (violent) resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Glorifying the use of arms by states and denying its use by the very people they occupy deprives these states, namely France and Israel, of the moral high ground.

Today, the use of violence is condemned by most world governments, and non-state actors engaged in violence are often isolated and placed under pressure. The anti-colonial movement of the 1950s and 1960s no longer exists. Today, the challenge for the Palestinians is to be committed to their rights and exert all needed efforts to obtain these rights without being internationally isolated because of their use of violence.

Committing to non-violence as a strategy is one way to achieve this and it proved effective during the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and the Salt March in India staged by Mahatma Gandhi. However, whether this will be the case in Palestine is debatable. So far, the use of violence and non-violence alike have not led to their liberation.

The morality of the use of violence in (settler-) colonial contexts should not be questioned in isolation from the state violence used against the colonized people. Settler-colonialism is violent in nature – including that of France and Israel – in the same way the response to it is also violent. Violence creates a vicious cycle and the way to end it passes through ending colonial violence, which creates this cycle in the first place by denying people their national and political rights.

It is no coincidence that today Palestinians and Algerians can relate to each other based on their experiences under colonial rules – similar experiences produce a sense of solidarity emanating from relating to the experience of others. For this reason, the Palestinian flag is a familiar object at Algerian protests and the Algerian flag is an equally familiar object at Palestinian protests against the ongoing Israeli colonization.

Ruhama Marton, M.D., born in Jerusalem before Israel’s creation, founded Physicians for Human Rights-Israel 33 years ago As someone who has worked tirelessly her entire life for human rights and equality in historic Palestine, I wanted to hear her views about the radicalization of Jewish Israeli youth, especially in light of the most recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and the West Bank and the mobs attacking Palestinians in mixed Israeli cities.

Over the last 10 years or more, coinciding with Netanyahu’s leadership, “nationalism” has become synonymous with “patriotism.” Ruhama explains that being a Jewish, specifically Zionist patriot is at the heart of this radicalization. If you are not a Zionist, you are not a patriot; you are a traitor or antisemitic yourself and therefore not “one of us.” As in all extremist movements, when the language of “us and them” becomes the standard to speak about right and wrong, there is already a disregard for humanity and dehumanization of the ‘other.’

In recent decades, the Zionist Israeli collective has been deeply influenced by the growing power of religious Israeli Jews. Ruhama explains that being “Religious” is not about theology, but centered on slogans such as “Elohim Hiftiach lanu et Haaretz”, G-d promised us this land. This, as a concept, is enough for these radicalized Jews. The focus on G-d’s promise is a call to action, producing psychopathic behaviors in these followers, without moral limits. These religious Zionists settlers are entitled to do whatever they like. In fulfilling G-d’s promise, they may kill and burn people alive, and vandalize homes, businesses, and houses of worship. Everything is legitimized by this slogan.

Ruhama remembers the small Zionist left that understood right and wrong and behaved morally. But being both “created such a headache.” How can you be both Zionist and a leftist? Jewish state or democracy? Jewish rights or equal rights? Though some still call themselves Zionist leftists, they sadly have no idea that they are irrelevant and their sense of right and wrong and their Zionism is dead.

With G-d on their side, right-wing fascist religious Jews don’t have these problems because there is nothing to determine if something is right or wrong. These ideas don’t exist within this framework. And because the vast majority of Israeli society are Zionists, there is no one to stop the madness. From young teenagers to the elderly, they are emboldened to do what they want.

Netanyahu’s outgoing right-wing government fueled these sentiments because the settlers’ actions work for the government politically. They need the religious settlers to build power, working in tandem, in their own ways, to fulfill the ‘promise’ of Greater Israel by making life unbearable for Palestinians through intimidation and violence. For the Israeli government, this is a practical way to clear out the Palestinians and finally achieve the goal of the land without Palestinians.

Sadly, the majority of Israeli society seems content with nationalist Zionist patriotism. Younger people, who lack any contact with Palestinians, have been taught that Palestinians are the enemy, and Israel the victim. The right-wing government blames and dehumanizes Palestinians while claiming to protect Israeli Jews from internal and external enemies.

Israelis see the success of the religious extremists and don’t question the larger moral and ethical issues related to the occupation. There is no space for that consciousness to exist. Regardless, the society is still responsible for its behavior.

Ruhama mentioned the small minority of Israeli Jews who are moved by the immoral actions of the apartheid regime, who say “no, we do not agree.” However, this group lacks influence. Before our conversation, I received an important and unprecedented statement circulated by Israeli Jews calling for the decolonization of historic Palestine. It says, as Ruhama did, that nothing will penetrate Israeli hearts and minds.

The efforts of so many to do so from the inside has been a waste of time. The only course to address the future of Israel and Palestine is unapologetic international pressure, for example by following Palestinian civil society’s call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. But international pressure has not reached the tipping point required to make this apartheid regime fall like in South Africa. Australian Jews, U.S. Jews, and others are adding their names for decolonization alongside what Palestinians have demanded for decades and what some Israeli Jews are sending out as a message for help from outside.

What could the future look like? Ruhama said that if the International Criminal Court in the Hague would take Israel to task, this could be a game-changer. Both hopeful and hesitant with leadership changes in the ICC, she is going to see what will happen. She believes that international pressure on South Africa helped turn the tide, and that this is the only reality that can change Israel’s course.

It is not easy to imagine the transformative and healing process to change the Israel of today into a decolonized space, or how to address the harms that Israel has done. Ruhama agreed that South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission might not be an exact fit. She is clear that the process will be long. She believes what would work is to give Palestinians all the political, social, cultural, and economic rights that Jews enjoy, including the right of return and reparations.

And although money cannot undo injustice, it is a part of addressing wrongs. She recalls from her own past how Jews and Palestinians once lived together. She is not concerned about everyone loving one another, because there are plenty of people not to love – “where there is no big love, there is no big hatred.” Her main concern is that there be mutual respect and a sense of common humanity, to create a community that can thrive.  And this is down the road, after the harms have been addressed, and everyone has access to the same rights.

On May 25, famous American actor, Mark Ruffalo, tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

“I have reflected and wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding, “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”

But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of ‘hyperbole’?

To avoid pointless social media spats, one only needs to reference the ‘United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’. According to Article 2 of the 1948 Convention, the legal definition of genocide is:

“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part …”

In its depiction of Israel’s latest war on Gaza, the Geneva-based human rights group, Euro-Med Monitor, reported: “The Israeli forces directly targeted 31 extended families. In 21 cases, the homes of these families were bombed while their residents were inside. These raids resulted in the killing of 98 civilians, including 44 children and 28 women.

Among the victims were a man and his wife and children, mothers and their children, or child siblings. There were seven mothers who were killed along with four or three of their children. The bombing of these homes and buildings came without any warning despite the Israeli forces’ knowledge that civilians were inside.”

As of May 28, 254 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and 1,948 were wounded in the latest 11-day Israeli onslaught, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Though tragic, this number is relatively small compared with the casualties of previous wars. For example, in the 51-day Israeli war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, over 2,200 Palestinians were killed and over 17,000 were wounded.

Similarly, entire families, like the 21-member Abu Jame family in Khan Younis, also perished. Is this not genocide? The same logic can be applied to the killing of over 300 unarmed protesters at the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel between March 2018 and December 2019. Moreover, the besiegement and utter isolation of over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza since 2006-07, which has resulted in numerous tragedies, is an act of collective punishment that also deserves the designation of genocide.

One does not need to be a legal expert to identify the many elements of genocide in Israel’s violent behavior, let alone language, against Palestinians. There is a clear, undeniable relationship between Israel’s violent political discourse and equally violent action on the ground. Potentially Israel’s next prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who has served the role of Defense Minister, had, in July 2013, stated: “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.”

With this context in mind, and regardless of why Ruffalo found it necessary to back-track on his moral position, Israel is an unrepentent human rights violator that continues to carry out an active policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the native, indigenous inhabitants of Palestine.

Language matters, and in this particular ‘conflict’, it matters most, because Israel has, for long, managed to escape any accountability for its actions, due to its success in misrepresenting facts, and the overall truth about itself. Thanks to its many allies and supporters in mainstream media and academia, Tel Aviv has rebranded itself from being a military occupier and an apartheid regime to an ‘oasis of democracy’, in fact, ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’.

This article will not attempt to challenge the entirety of the misconstrued mainstream media’s depiction of Israel. Volumes are required for that, and Israeli Professor Ilan Pappé’s ‘Ten Myths about Israel’ is an important starting point. However, this article will attempt to present some basic definitions that must enter the Palestine-Israel lexicon, as a prerequisite to developing a fairer understanding of what is happening on the ground.

A Military Occupation – Not a ‘Conflict’

Quite often, mainstream Western media refers to the situation in Palestine and Israel as a  ‘conflict’, and to the various specific elements of this so-called conflict as a ‘dispute’. For example, the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ and the ‘disputed city of East Jerusalem’.

What should be an obvious truth is that besieged, occupied people do not engage in a ‘conflict’ with their occupiers. Moreover, a ‘dispute’ happens when two parties have equally compelling claims to any issue. When Palestinian families of East Jerusalem are being forced out of their homes which are, in turn, handed over to Jewish extremists, there is no ‘dispute’ involved. The extremists are thieves and the Palestinians are victims. This is not a matter of opinion. The international community itself says so.

‘Conflict’ is a generic term. Aside from absolving the aggressor – in this case, Israel – it leaves all matters open for interpretation. Since American audiences are indoctrinated to love Israel and hate Arabs and Muslims, siding with Israel in its ‘conflict’ with the latter becomes the only rational option.

Israel has sustained a military occupation of 22% of the total size of historic Palestine since June 1967. The remainder of the Palestinian homeland was already usurped, using extreme violence, state-sanctioned apartheid, and, as Pappé puts it, ‘incremental genocide’ decades earlier.

From the perspective of international law,  the term ‘military occupation’, ‘occupied East Jerusalem’, ‘illegal Jewish settlements’ and so forth, have never been ‘disputed’. They are simply facts, even if Washington has decided to ignore international law, and even if mainstream US media has chosen to manipulate the terminology as to present Israel as a victim, not the aggressor.

‘Process’ without ‘Peace’

The term ‘peace process’ was coined by American diplomats decades ago. It was put to use throughout the mid and late 1970s when, then-US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, labored to broker a deal between Egypt and Israel in the hope of fragmenting the Arab political front and, eventually, sidelining Cairo entirely from the ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’.

Kissinger’s logic proved vital for Israel as the ‘process’ did not aim at achieving justice according to fixed criteria that has been delineated by the United Nations for years. There was no frame of reference any more. If any existed, it was Washington’s political priorities which, historically, almost entirely overlapped with Israel’s priorities. Despite the obvious American bias, the US bestowed upon itself the undeserving title of ‘the honest peace broker’.

This approach was used successfully in the write-up to the Camp David Accords in 1978. One of the Accords’ greatest achievements is that the so-called ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ was replaced with the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’.

Now, tried and true, the ‘peace process’ was used again in 1993, resulting in the Oslo Accords. For nearly three decades, the US continued to tout its self-proclaimed credentials as a peacemaker, despite the fact that it pumped – and continues to do so – $3-4 billion of annual, mostly military, aid to Israel.

A term such as ‘resistance’ – muqawama – was slowly but carefully extricated from the Palestinian national discourse. The term ‘liberation’ too was perceived to be confrontational and hostile. Instead, such concepts as ‘state-building’ – championed by former Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, and others – began taking hold.

The fact that Palestine was still an occupied country and that ‘state-building’ can only be achieved once ‘liberation’ was first secured, did not seem to matter to the ‘donor countries’. The priorities of these countries – mainly US allies who adhered to the American political agenda in the Middle East – was to maintain the illusion of the ‘peace process’ and to ensure  ‘security coordination’ between PA police and the Israeli army carried on, unabated.

The so-called ‘security coordination’, of course, refers to the US-funded joint Israeli-PA efforts at cracking down on Palestinian resistance, apprehending Palestinian political dissidents and ensuring the safety of the illegal Jewish settlements, or colonies, in the occupied West Bank.

War and, Yes, Genocide in Gaza – Not ‘Israel-Hamas Conflict’

The word ‘democracy’ was constantly featured in the new Oslo language. Of course, it was not intended to serve its actual meaning. Instead, it was the icing on the cake of making the illusion of the ‘peace process’ perfect. This was obvious, at least to most Palestinians. It also became obvious to the whole world in January 2006, when the Palestinian faction Fatah, which has monopolized the PA since its inception in 1994, lost the popular vote to the Islamic faction, Hamas.

Hamas, and other Palestinian factions have rejected – and continue to reject – the Oslo Accords. Their participation in the legislative elections in 2006 took many by surprise, as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) was itself a product of Oslo. Their victory in the elections, which was classified as democratic and transparent by international monitoring groups, threw a wrench in the US-Israeli-PA political calculations.

Lo and behold, the group that has long been perceived by Israel and its allies as ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorist’, became the potential leaders of Palestine! The Oslo spin doctors had to go into overdrive in order for them to thwart Palestinian democracy and ensure a successful return to the status quo, even if this meant that Palestine is represented by unelected, undemocratic leaders. Sadly, this has been the case for nearly 15 years.

Meanwhile, Hamas’ stronghold, the Gaza Strip, had to be taught a lesson, thus the siege imposed on the impoverished region for nearly 15 years. The siege on Gaza has little to do with Hamas’ rockets or Israel’s ‘security’ needs, the right to ‘defend itself’, and its supposedly ‘justifiable’ desire to destroy Gaza’s ‘terrorist infrastructure’. While, indeed, Hamas’ popularity in Gaza is unmatched anywhere else in Palestine, Fatah, too, has a powerful constituency there. Moreover, the Palestinian resistance in the Strip is not championed by Hamas alone, but also by other ideological and political groups, for example, the Islamic Jihad, the socialist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and other socialist and secular groups.

A term such as ‘resistance’ – muqawama – was slowly but carefully extricated from the Palestinian national discourse. The term ‘liberation’ too was perceived to be confrontational and hostile. Instead, such concepts as ‘state-building’ – championed by former Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, and others – began taking hold.

The fact that Palestine was still an occupied country and that ‘state-building’ can only be achieved once ‘liberation’ was first secured, did not seem to matter to the ‘donor countries’. The priorities of these countries – mainly US allies who adhered to the American political agenda in the Middle East – was to maintain the illusion of the ‘peace process’ and to ensure  ‘security coordination’ between PA police and the Israeli army carried on, unabated.

The so-called ‘security coordination’, of course, refers to the US-funded joint Israeli-PA efforts at cracking down on Palestinian resistance, apprehending Palestinian political dissidents and ensuring the safety of the illegal Jewish settlements, or colonies, in the occupied West Bank.

Misrepresenting the ‘conflict’ as a ‘war’ between Israel and Hamas is crucial to Israeli propaganda, which has succeeded in equating Hamas with militant groups throughout the Middle East and even Afghanistan. But Hamas is not ISIS, Al-Qaeda or Taliban. In fact, none of these groups are similar, anyway.

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic nationalist movement that operates within a largely Palestinian political context. An excellent book on Hamas is the recently published volume by Daud Abdullah, Engaging the World. Abdullah’s book rightly presents Hamas as a rational political actor, rooted in its ideological convictions, yet flexible and pragmatic in its ability to adapt to national, regional and international geopolitical changes.

But what does Israel have to gain from mischaracterizing the Palestinian resistance in Gaza? Aside from satisfying its propaganda campaign of erroneously linking Hamas to other anti-American groups, it also dehumanizes the Palestinian people entirely and presents Israel as a partner in the American global so-called ‘war on terror’. Israeli neofascist and ultranationalist politicians then become the saviors of humanity, their violent racist language is forgiven and their active ‘genocide’ is seen as an act of ‘self-defense’ or, at best, a mere state of ‘conflict’.

The Oppressor as the Victim

According to the strange logic of mainstream media, Palestinians are rarely ‘killed’ by Israeli soldiers, but rather ‘die’ in ‘clashes’ resulting from various ‘disputes. Israel does not ‘colonize’ Palestinian land; it merely ‘annexes’, ‘appropriates’, and ‘captures’, and so on. What has been taking place in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, for example, is not outright property theft, leading to ethnic cleansing, but rather a ‘property dispute’.

The list goes on and on.

In truth, language has always been a part of Zionist colonialism, long before the state of Israel was itself constructed from the ruins of Palestinian homes and villages in 1948. Palestine, according to the Zionists, was ‘a land with no people’ for ‘a people with no land’. These colonists were never ‘illegal settlers’ but ‘Jewish returnees’ to their ‘ancestral homeland’, who, through hard work and perseverance, managed to ‘make the desert bloom’, and, in order to defend themselves against the ‘hordes of Arabs’, they needed to build an ‘invincible army’.

It will not be easy to deconstruct the seemingly endless edifice of lies, half-truths and intentional misrepresentations of Zionist Israeli colonialism in Palestine. Yet, there can be no alternative to this feat because, without proper, accurate and courageous understanding and depiction of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance to it, Israel will continue to oppress Palestinians while presenting itself as the victim.

In 2019, Emmanuel Macron assigned a commission of historians to research France’s role in the mass killing of Tutsis in Rwanda. The commission submitted its report to the French president on March 26, 2021. It concludes that the French government has “heavy and damning responsibilities” in the event, but dismisses the claim it was complicit in the genocide.

The mass killing or genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda began on April 7, 1994. Within three months, from April to July 1994, between from 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsis were killed at the hands of Hutu extremists, who were in charge of the government. The commission describes the Rwandan policy of the French government, which was led by then president François Mitterrand as a way to make Rwanda “a kind of laboratory.”

The Mitterrand government offered Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana “a guarantee of military protection in exchange for a program of democratization, respect for human rights and negotiations with the Rwandan Patriotic Front.” In this spirit, Mitterrand delivered a speech at the French African Summit of 1990, in which he depicted France as Africa’s most generous supporter. For the commission, there is no doubt that the “French authorities have shown continuous blindness in their support for a racist, corrupt and violent regime conceived as a laboratory.”

The report by the commission, which was chaired by Vincent Duclert, argues that France’s responsibility lies in the ideological blindness of Mitterrand and his advisors that was then imposed on the rest of the state apparatus, and that it is a revelation of colonial stereotypes and a purely ethnic reading that irrigated France’s African policy.

After its independence in 1962, following Belgian colonization, Rwanda developed a close relationship with France. Mitterrand and Habyarimana, who came to power in Rwanda in 1973, were on good terms. The Armed Forces of Rwanda (FAR) were established thanks to French support.

The commission’s archival research reveals that the Rwandan file with the request for arms was intentionally diverted away from the ministries and administrations that are involved in the usual decision-making process. The papers were signed by General Jean-Pierre Huchon, then deputy chief of staff to Admiral Jacques Lanxade, and by then general Christian Quesnot.

The influence of military staff was felt over the rest of the administration, and even at the Élysée Palace, where Bruno Delaye replaced Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the advisor on African affairs since 1986 and son of then president Mitterrand. It is the syndrome of smoking in a closed room where everyone present, even those who do not actually smoke, carry the smell.

According to an Élysée source, France’s responsibility “translates into an inability to think about the genocide that was taking place.” The commission report concludes that France bears political, institutional, intellectual, moral, and cognitive responsibility for the genocide that took place in Rwanda.

When the African struggle for liberation and the fight to end colonialism is discussed, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, and the names of a few other intellectuals and figures surface. Though widely known today among the elites and intellectuals, and unfortunately less known by the wider public outside of Africa, Amílcar Cabral is a symbolic name and a leading figure in the Pan-African struggle to self-determination and ending colonialism.

Amílcar Cabral was an agricultural engineer who became a revolutionary and theoretician. He was born to a family from Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde on September 12, 1924. Cabral dedicated his short but productive life to the liberation of African nations from colonialism, be it in his home country of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Angola, Algeria, or Liberia.

Cabral was one of the figures of a Pan-African movement that called for the independence of Portuguese colonies in Africa. In 1973, as he started preparation for the independence of Guinea-Bissau, Cabral was assassinated by his rival Inocêncio Kani, giving his life to the cause. Despite his short life, Cabral left behind a great legacy of books and writings that inspired generations of Africans to attain their independence from colonial powers.

Starting the Struggle in Portugal 

In 1956, Cabral was one of the founders of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGS). He headed the PAIGS in his own country against Portuguese colonialism, leading his people to one of the most successful anti-colonialism movements on the African continent and eventually becoming the de facto leader of today’s Guinea-Bissau.

The amount and depth of Cabral’s writings speak volumes to his legacy and impact on other liberation movements in Africa. He is also a major contributor to the national liberation theory through his writings such as Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amílcar Cabral, and The Weapon of Theory. In his writings, Cabral provides an understanding of the liberation process, its impact, and the political dynamics of liberation movements in conjunction with their aspirations and objectives.

Taking Up Arms

Cabral unapologetically defended the use of arms and revolutionary violence against foreign colonial powers to attain independence, noting that speeches, insults, and shouting will not liberate people, but rather what is necessary is taking up arms and engaging in an armed struggle for liberation. “For us, the worst or best we can say about imperialism, whatever its form, is to take up arms and struggle. This is what we are doing and will go on doing until foreign domination has been totally eliminated from our African countries,” he wrote.

A New Man and a New Woman

For Cabral, national liberation was only the first step in a long process that should lead to shaping what he dubbed as “a new man and a new woman,” stressing that such a process is a complicated one that goes beyond the symbolic politics of independence and celebrations. Using his own words, national salvation and liberation “must put an end not only to suffering but also to backwardness.” Africans, he added, should “return to the source,” in order to reinvent their culture and heritage and face foreign domination and colonialism.

Cabral argued that it is critical to understand history, because it allows people to comprehend how colonial borders were drawn, and thus strengthens their sense of Africanism.

Cabral understood well that convincing Africans to fight colonialization was a challenge in itself, but he also noted that people are united by the brutality of colonization which increases their awareness of their plight. This was the case when the Portuguese responded with brutal force to the Pidjiguiti strike in Guinea-Bissau, awakening the national sentiments of locals and the need for self-determination just as Cabral envisaged.

But for this to happen, Cabral argued that it is critical to understand history, because it allows people to comprehend how colonial borders were drawn, and thus strengthens their sense of Africanism. This knowledge of history will also help create what Cabral called a “nation-class” that is capable of confronting foreign domination and bringing it to an end. He believed that an educated social class is able to realize this noble goal and that there is no need for all African people to initiate this process.

In the memory of his people and fellow Africans, Amílcar Cabral is known as the founder of the liberation movement that won Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde their long-awaited independence. Despite the rapid and tragic end of his life at a young age, Cabral was able to mobilize the people of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde to put an end to the Portuguese domination of their territories. His legacy, however, besides his country, mostly lives on in the elites outside Africa who study his many writings.

Cabral’s Legacy

Being an international figure who participated in conferences across the globe, including in Cuba and Algeria, that called for the liberation and self-determination of the African people, Cabral deserves to have his legacy taught and studied. This is especially true for the nations that still live under a colonial regime in the 21st century such as the Palestinians.

Although tactics could vary from one place to another, including the use of arms, there is no doubt that the legacy of Amílcar Cabral has inspired and continues to inspire generations of Africans, as well as other peoples, to win their sovereignty and intellectual independence back.

Amílcar Cabral is an example of an organic intellectual who was educated as an agriculture engineer but chose to sacrifice his own life for the sake of his people and all Africans. Despite his tragic passing, Cabral left behind a great legacy of books and thoughts that inspire generations of Africans today many of whom are still waiting to realize their full liberation from colonialism and foreign domination.

And as Cabral himself understood it, today, as in the past,  the responsibility lies in the elites to educate the masses on the importance of unity and ideology for their liberation to be realized. The ideal can be attained: Africans and all other peoples can live in dignity. And Cabral can truly rest in peace.

A substantial part of my research investigates the postcolonial history of Algeria. During the data collection process, I had the chance to interview an ex-Algerian mujahid who fought in the Algerian War of Independence and we had the chance to extensively discuss the colonial history of France in Algeria.

The violence and brutality of French colonialism in Algeria was horrendous and undeniable. The vast majority of families have been traumatized by the cruel settlement of France in Algeria, including my own. My paternal grandfather, along with his two brothers, assisted the mujahideen and played a part in the resistance during the seven-year War of Independence. My grandfather was captured by French soldiers when my father was six years old. He was detained and tortured for days until his lungs collapsed and he died.

He was hanged upside down and immersed into a container of ice-cold water repeatedly in order to confess and provide leads on the hideouts of the mujahideen – but he never did! It cost him his life and traumatized my father to this day; however, his legacy will remain for decades to come.

There has been an ongoing discussion about France’s duty and responsibility to provide an official apology for its colonial history and war crimes, which has been met with ignorance and denial. Algeria was the only French colony to be considered a French territory. It was largely exploited and “…was considered ‘the door’ to the Third World and the ‘jewel’ of France’s territorial possessions.”

It wasn’t until 2011 that an Algerian scholar living in France, Ali Farid Belkadi, discovered that the Museum of Mankind in Paris holds skulls of Algerian martyrs and that some of them could be identified. Although his discovery didn’t receive support, Ibrahim Senouci, a professor of physics at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, took a different approach and launched an online petition gathering approximately 30,000 signatures to pressure the French authorities to return the remains of the Algerian martyrs as agreed on the the Évian Accords.

In 2016, France admitted that they are in possession of 18,000 skulls, 500 of which were identified including 36 leaders of the Algerian resistance who were beheaded in the mid-19th century.

The Museum of Mankind was established in 1937 by Paul Rivet. The skulls were taken back to France between 1800 and 1881 as trophies of the slaughter in Algeria and kept in boxes to preserve them.

In 2016, France admitted that they are in possession of 18,000 skulls, 500 of which were identified including 36 leaders of the Algerian resistance who were beheaded in the mid-19th century. France claims that the skulls have been kept for anthropological and scientific purposes.

In 2017, French President Emanuel Macron stated, “I have agreed to a request expressed by the Algerian public authorities several times regarding the return of the skulls of the Algerian resistance fighters, and have taken a decision to initiate the process.”

In the same year, which marked the launching of his presidential campaign, in one of his speeches, Macron declared that the French colonial history in Algeria represents “crimes against humanity.” However, the statement was not followed by an apology.

In July 2020, on the eve of July 5, Algerian Independence Day, 24 skulls of Algerian mujahideen who fought against the French colonial rule and played a crucial role in the resistance were brought back from the museum in Paris.

For over 170 years, the remains of these Algerian national heroes had been deprived their right of burial in the country for which they shed their blood.

The skulls belong to prominent resistance fighters, including Muhammad Lajd bin Abd al-Malik, known as Sherif “Boubaghla”; the “mummified head” of the Algerian officer Issa Hammadi; Sheikh Bouziane, leader of the Za’tasha Resistance in Biskra; Musa al-Darqawi; Si Mukhtar bin Qwaider al-Titrawi; and Muhammad bin Allal bin Mubarak who fought side by side with El Emir Abdelkader, the leader of the first resistance against French colonialism and founder of the modern Algerian state.

According to the writer and political analyst Fayez Abu Shamala, French crimes will not be easily forgiven. He asks, “Will the Algerian people forgive the murderers for their deeds? Will they forget?”

It is believed that this French compromise aims to silence the Algerian public opinion and polish the French image among the Algerian population.

On January 20, 2021, Macron received a report from the French historian Benjamin Stora about the French colonial era in Algeria (1830-1962). The report generated distress, criticism, and anger in the Algerian public opinion, and was considered to be manipulative and biased in terms of providing an accurate and truthful version of French colonial history in the country.

France announced the establishment of a “memories and truth” commission to review the country’s colonial history in Algeria. However, the report ruled out the issue of an official apology for France’s crimes.

Moreover, although the report proposes ways to promote healing, it provides data related to the 1954-1962 period and puts much less stress on the events that took place in the period before the  War of Independence (1830-1954). More importantly, the report is short of advising in favor of a proper and official apology for the atrocious crimes that France committed against the Algerian people for decades.

The magic moment in the life of a victorious guerrilla insurgency comes when it finally seizes the capital of the state for which it has fought, often at great cost and for many years, and the shattered remnants of the old regime flee or surrender.

But what happens then? Can the movement transform itself at a stroke from an army into a government? If so, what kind of government will it form? How successfully can it achieve those objectives for which it had fought, and resolve the multiple problems that power brings with it? Why do some movements manage this transition far more successfully than others?

For a start, will the liberation movement be able to form a government at all? This is not normally a problem, since it will have at its back a victorious army, with the capacity to enforce its will that this brings with it. Where it is a problem, as in Somalia and South Sudan, this is invariably because the movement was itself divided, with deep underlying weaknesses, and won out more because of the failures of the incumbent regime than of any strengths of its own. When, as in Angola, Mozambique or Zimbabwe, there were rival would-be liberators, victory over that regime is likely to be followed by a vicious settling of accounts between them.

But for the great majority of successful liberation movements, victory brings with it an overwhelming sense of entitlement, which justifies (at least for its members) the unfettered exercise of power, not merely in the immediate aftermath of the transition, but for long into the future. The experience of liberation war becomes deeply entrenched in the minds of those who have fought it, who have risked their own lives in the struggle, and who have often seen their comrades die for the cause.

This becomes the defining moment that gives meaning to their lives, and even though they normally hold elections to provide a legitimizing basis for their government, and win them with overwhelming majorities, they did not gain power through the formalities of liberal democracy, and feel under no obligation to give it up, should elections go against them.

Opponents are regarded, not as legitimate competitors for government office, but rather as traitors to the sacred cause.

At the same time, running a government is an activity very different from fighting a liberation war, and the sudden transition from one to the other calls for a transformation not only in what fighters-turned-rulers have to do, but also in how they have to think. In the field, everything is subordinated to the single overwhelming objective of victory, and the different elements in the struggle, including economic and social policies as well as military affairs, have to be seen in that context.

Running a government is an activity very different from fighting a liberation war, and the sudden transition from one to the other calls for a transformation not only in what fighters-turned-rulers have to do, but also in how they have to think.

Government, however, is about choices and priorities. It involves balancing alternative goals and means to attain them, which cannot simply be reduced to a single overarching objective. It also calls for reconciling the interests and demands of different groups within the population, some of which will normally have been associated with the ousted regime, but nonetheless remain central to managing the state and the economy, regardless of who is in power.

This in turn requires political skills of a kind that do not come readily to leaders whose previous goal has been the uncompromising pursuit of victory, and whose first resort in attaining that goal has been military force.

One critical variable at this point is leadership, and though this is certainly an important element during the struggle, the demands on leaders are significantly changed in the aftermath of gaining control over a national government. For a start, the unity imposed on the liberation movement by the need to combine for a common goal gives way to complex policy debates that arise from alternative priorities.

It is rare indeed for divisions not to arise between factions within the movement, sometimes going well back into the period of the struggle but now exposed by the new kinds of decision that need to be made. These may be ideological, between ‘hard liners’ committed to the original uncompromising objectives of liberation and ‘compromisers’ willing to adapt pragmatically to the changed circumstances in which they now find themselves; they may be ethnic, as individuals coming from different regions or belonging to different groups cluster together for reasons of patronage or protection; or on occasion, they may simply be personal.

The collegiality and comradeship that forged in the struggle likewise come under strain as the leader starts to operate within the framework of a state, and in particular gains an access to the international system and the massive resources that this has to offer, that is denied to those lower down the hierarchy. The cultivation of good relations with the populations among whom the liberation war was fought gives way to a world of aid donors and summit meetings, in which external actors almost invariably associate the state with the individual who officially leads it.

Put simply, some leaders are just better at managing the transition from struggle to statehood than others, and though this rarely affects their ability to cling onto power, since this is a vital skill for anyone who rises to the top of an insurgency, it certainly affects how they use that power, and the kind of post-insurgent state that emerges as a result.

One striking contrast between leaders of neighboring states who achieved their victories at precisely the same moment but then sharply diverged separates Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, a man of extraordinary intelligence who readily recognized the very different demands of running a complex state within a rapidly changing global system, and Isaias Afwerki in Eritrea, who remained locked within the mindset of a liberation fighter.

The problems of leadership are intensified by the fact that guerrilla warfare is a young man’s game (and not a woman’s game at all), with the result that once established, leaders may remain in power for a very long time.

Fidel Castro remained the effective ruler of Cuba for almost half a century after seizing power in 1959, while Yoweri Museveni, who on coming to power in Uganda in 1986 proclaimed that African leaders stayed in office for far too long, is still there thirty-five years later.

Prolonged liberation war, whether directed against colonial or settler regimes or against a domestic dictatorship, leaves an indelible mark on those states and societies that have experienced it. When the would-be liberators are themselves at odds, as in Somalia and South Sudan, or Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa, it carries terrifying dangers of state collapse.

More often it leads to powerful and militarized regimes, often with a highly personalized leadership, in which the prospects for transition to democracy are slight, and the legacy of past guerrilla struggle continues to wield a disproportionate influence. Rarely indeed, for the mass of the population, does deliver the ‘liberation’ that it promised.

Following the end of colonialism which saw the enslavement and migration of hundreds of thousands of people who were brought to foreign lands to serve the interests and wishes of their colonizers, immigrants had to survive by doing manual jobs. In this context, political engagement was severely hindered, if not completely impossible.

The new generations and descendants of these slaves and the new immigrants, however, grew up in different circumstances. Unlike their ancestors, they felt grounded in these new lands, which they came to call their home.

The path to citizenship for people of color was not easy. In the United States, the Civil Rights Movement was able to achieve success, although not a full and a decisive one, in the 1960s, after long years of fighting for equal rights for black people. People of color had to overcome many challenges to be able to engage in politics and to achieve representation.

Growing up in post settler-colonial societies such as the United States and New Zealand and having received the necessary education and skills, the younger generation had a different view of their new home countries and treated the political establishments differently.

Usually, the first generation of immigrants struggle to find work in order to survive. They have to learn a skill that helps them find their way in a foreign place in addition to facing cultural, economic, political, and assimilation challenges.

Their children, however, tend to have fewer such problems; they learn the language and culture of the countries they are in and adapt to their lifestyles.

The second and third generations of immigrants feel that their home is where they were born, although they might not forget their cultural heritage. They find their way in society more easily despite facing problems related to racial discrimination and family pressure.

The second and third generations of immigrants tend to be more involved in politics. This includes family and informal political debates, being involved with political groups on campus, being part of political parties and movements, leading the masses to bring about change, and ultimately running for political posts.

This second generation of immigrants have access to education, and this allows them to play a more prominent role in society. The fact that the second generation usually receives an education, empowers them and makes them feel less foreign. An empowered generation is better prepared to act politically. This political involvement of immigrants appears more prominently in the second and third generations who are more willing to take political action.

The second and third generations of immigrants tend to be more involved in politics. This includes family and informal political debates, being involved with political groups on campus, being part of political parties and movements, leading the masses to bring about change, and ultimately running for political posts.

Recent years have seen a trend in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, among others, of second- and third-generation immigrants who feel politically empowered and who want to be part of bringing about a political change.

In the United States, more and more people with migrant backgrounds started actively participating in politics and forming groups that seek to be part of the political scenes of their country. Recent years have seen the election to the U.S. Congress of more radical and younger voices that call for political, economic, and social change.

Palestinian-American Iman Jodeh is the first Muslim American to be elected to represent the 41^st district in the Colorado House of Representatives in the 2020 general election, becoming the first Muslim lawmaker in the state’s history.

Leaving behind a war-torn country, Ilhan Omar arrived in the United States as a refugee from Somalia and is a U.S. representative for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district. Rashida Tlaib is of Palestinian origin and is serving as the U.S. representative for Michigan’s 13th congressional district, which has a large presence of Arab and Palestinian voters.

Ayanna Pressley is an African American politician who made her way to politics through her early political engagement; she was the first African American woman to be elected to Boston City Council in 2010 and the first black women elected to the congress from Massachusetts.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also fought a hard battle to get to the U.S. Congress when she ran against Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent, defeating him and becoming a national sensation.

The Squad was doubled in 2020 with the addition of more members. The 2020 elections in the U.S. were remarkable in the sense that they saw the election of more Native American representatives to the US Congress such as Deb Haaland, who, if confirmed, will become the first Native American Secretary of State under President Biden.

Palestinian-American Iman Jodeh is the first Muslim American to be elected to represent the 41^st district in the Colorado House of Representatives in the 2020 general election, becoming the first Muslim lawmaker in the state’s history.

In a webinar organized by American Muslims for Palestine, Jodeh said, “We need immediate criminal justice reform; I will do it from the lens of a practicing Muslim Palestinian Arab woman of color.”

Derya Taskin, an American politician of Turkish origin, made history after being elected to the Electoral College, becoming the first U.S. politician of Turkish origin to be elected to such a post. Taskin served as the deputy mayor of Paterson in New Jersey.

“I read and learned more about the United States system, I wanted more involvement. I contacted my local party and started passing out fliers and going door to door during the local election. As time passed, I wanted to make more of a difference because I started to help my community who did not speak English to fill out forms and take advantage of certain benefits the state offered. This brought me to the idea that with politics I can do more, but I had to start from the bottom and this is what I did,” Taskin said.

December 11, 1917 is the day which changed the course of history for Palestine and its indigenous population and the day that wrote the first chapter of the land’s modern era of colonization, occupation, and dispossession. It is the day when Britain captured Jerusalem from the Ottomans and began laying the groundwork for the creation of the state of Israel in fulfilment of the Balfour Declaration.

Shortly after the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour signed a letter on November 2, 1917, declaring his government’s support for the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, British troops led by General Edmund Allenby turned towards the Holy Land.

“Jerusalem Operations” began on November 17 of the same year as part of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. By December 7, the British had already reached the Holy City.

On the morning of December 9, Ottoman troops peacefully surrendered the city to British command with a letter from the city’s governor:

For the past two days, bombs have been raining on Jerusalem, holy to all communities. Therefore, the Ottoman Government, in order to safeguard the religious places from ruin and destruction, has withdrawn its forces from the city and has commissioned officials to take care of the religious places like the Holy Sepulchre and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Hoping that your treatment will also be similar…

Then British Prime Minister David Lloyd George described the capture of Jerusalem as “a Christmas present for the British people” and numerous publications in the U.K. described the event as the “Last Crusade”

Jerusalem had fallen. General Allenby entered Jerusalem on foot through the Jaffa Gate two days later marking the beginning of the British occupation of the city. Upon his entry, a proclamation declaring martial law was read aloud in English, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Greek, assuring residents that no harm would come to them or to the city’s holy sites.

Then British Prime Minister David Lloyd George described the capture of Jerusalem as “a Christmas present for the British people” and numerous publications in the U.K. described the event as the “Last Crusade.”

Although this was the first time that a Christian army had taken over the Holy City since Saladin had liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, British sovereignty over Palestine was not the end goal. It rather served as a step towards the formation of the Israeli state.

Facilitating mass Jewish immigration to Palestine and Britain’s gross disregard for the indigenous Palestinian population and their national aspirations eventually led to the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948, reshaping the entire geopolitical order of the Middle East and North Africa.

Although the Balfour Declaration and the fall of Jerusalem set the cornerstone of the creation of Israel, the process was years in the making as British politicians worked directly and indirectly with the World Zionist Organization (WZO) to lobby the U.K. government to take a leading role in furthering their cause.

In the eyes of the Palestinians, who were seeking their own independence and right of self-determination, a foreign power with no legal title to the land of Palestine was handing over their homeland to Zionist settler colonialists who would go on to oppress them and deny them their rights for decades to come.

Though not a member of the World Zionist Organization himself, the liberal politician and the first nominally practicing Jewish cabinet minister actively campaigned for a Jewish national home in Palestine.

Although often overshadowed by Balfour, it was in fact Samuel who in 1915 proposed the idea of establishing a British protectorate over Palestine after the end of the First World War for the purpose of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Samuel’s words continue to ring true today as Palestinians continue to suffer under a grinding military occupation which has left millions struggling for their most basic rights.

In a report reviewing his first year as High Commissioner in Palestine, Samuel said: “Zionists sometimes forget or ignore the present inhabitants of Palestine… many of whom hold, and hold strongly, very different views.”

Samuel’s words continue to ring true today as Palestinians continue to suffer under a grinding military occupation which has left millions struggling for their most basic rights.

Britain has always revered the Balfour Declaration and its role in the establishment of the state of Israel.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May hosted her Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017 as they jointly marked the centennial since the British pledge that paved the way for Israel’s creation. “We are proud of the relationship we have built with Israel. And as we mark one hundred years since Balfour, we look forward to taking that relationship even further,” she said in a speech during the dinner in London.

Today, the U.K. sees Israel as a friend and an ally with whom they have strong diplomatic and trade ties, carry out joint military training, and enjoy a long history of intelligence and security cooperation. The two countries have already signed a contingency trade deal on preferential terms after the U.K. leaves the EU.

In 2019, Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s visit to Jerusalem, in which he placed a note between the stones of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, known amongst Muslims as the Buraq Wall, before meeting senior Israeli officials and praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, was the first visit by a U.K. cabinet minister in 19 years.

As far as the UK’s foreign policy stance towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is concerned, successive British governments have iterated and reiterated their commitment to a two-state solution, with a negotiated peace settlement that leads to “secure and recognised borders” for both countries and with Jerusalem as “the shared capital of both states.”

Current U.K. Prime Minister and then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson published an article in the Daily Telegraph in 2017 ahead of the centennial, professing Britain’s pride in its role in Israel’s formation while calling for the two-state solution to be implemented, saying that he sees “no contradiction in being a friend of Israel…while also being deeply moved by the suffering of those affected and dislodged by its birth.” In fact, earlier that year Johnson went as far as to admit that the alternative to a two-state solution is “apartheid.”

Britain’s official stance and its criticism of Israeli abuses and practices, such as the continued expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and the systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military custody, among many others, recognize Israel’s flagrant violations and disregard for Palestinian rights enshrined in international law and their aspirations for an independent state.

However, Britain’s passive role towards the Palestinians, on the one hand, and its active support of Israel on the other, continue to facilitate Israel’s incessant illegal and immoral actions in the occupied territories and to sustain a brutal, decades-long military occupation.

In light of its historical legacy and significant role in the suffering experienced by Palestinians today, Britain has a greater obligation than any other western country to safeguard Palestinian rights, hold Israel to account, and show real commitment backed by concrete actions to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

After the state of Israel was established, millions of Palestinians were either displaced or forced to move from their lands – some into refugee camps and others to Arab or Western countries. This uprooting was highly traumatic and has had profound effects on the Palestinian identity. Yeter Ada Şeko speaks about the effects of this trauma to Palestinian political activist and the Director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Sami Al-Arian, in relation to the Palestinian identity as well as the long struggle of Palestinians for their freedom.

Ada: After the state of Israel was established, millions of Palestinians were forced to move to different regions such as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Some of them also left Arab lands and started a new life in Western regions such as the US and Europe. What is the effect of this immigration process on the Palestinian identity?

Sami Al Arian: There are many effects and great impact which depends on generation to generation, and geography to geography. When the first generation was exiled, many of them lived in refugee camps, whether in Gaza, in the West Bank, Lebanon, and later on in Syria. Some of them went to Egypt even though there were no refugee camps in Egypt, and many of them had over the years immigrated to different places, looking for better living conditions such as the Gulf areas. A few also went to the West, especially after the 1967 war, and lived in different regions in the West including the US and Europe. So when we talk about Palestinian identity, many factors shape that identity.

The first is that this was a collective trauma that the Palestinians faced. When they were uprooted suddenly from their homeland, that they had lived in for centuries, it was very traumatic for many people, especially since it did not happen over time but all of a sudden.

80 percent of the Palestinians who lived in the 1948 areas, approximately 800,000, were uprooted and placed in places that were alien to them, some of them living in very poor conditions. People were living in good conditions in their country and suddenly they faced poverty – that affected the psyche of the Palestinians. That psyche has never really left the Palestinians from generation to generation, and the experience was fed into every generation. My father’s generation, my generation, and my children’s generation – we always talked about that trauma. We always talked about the impact of being uprooted so there was always this strong connection between the Palestinians of each generation with Palestine. It wasn’t something that was forgotten or something that was put away.

The pain, the suffering, and the whole experience of being uprooted lived with them as well as their history of living in Palestine. So that is the first thing.

And it may have differed. Some communities have more affinity than others depending on where they are based, but overall Palestinians do connect and have this connection with the land of Palestine.

Secondly, because the majority of Palestinians, especially those living in refugee camps, were never given citizenship – they were never assimilated in a way that immigrants or refugees could have been.

Being Palestinian has always been part and parcel of suffering because being a non-citizen in these countries meant that you were denied many rights and privileges otherwise given to citizens of a country: the right to work, the right to healthcare, education and so forth, and that also cemented the fact what it means to be Palestinian.

Also, you can see the same in the Gulf areas because they do not give citizenship. The Palestinians lived as communities within a community in these countries, like Kuwait before 1990. Before they left Jordan there were very large Palestinian communities and that cemented their identity of what it means to be Palestinians.

In the West, for example in the United States of America where I lived for four decades, you could see whole villages, especially from the West Bank, relocated to the US, and there they would begin life again and eventually gain citizenship. They would form associations that identify with the land of Palestine. So you have different villages and each village would have their association so that they can maintain the feeling and connection to their land, as well as to their fellow Palestinians of what it means to be a Palestinian.

Also, those who have been a part of the struggle, and that’s tens of thousands of people that are part of the struggle for Palestine, you will see that the struggle also cemented that Palestinian identity, because for many societies if you are struggling for Palestine that is not something that would come easy, as you will become a target. If you are in the US or if you are sometimes in Europe and even some Arab countries – if people work for Palestine they become targets of the security agencies in which they would suffer for being a part of the Palestinian struggle and that would also further cement their Palestinian identity.

Palestine, over the years, has become a symbol. A symbol against racism, a symbol against oppression, a symbol against tyranny, and a symbol against the occupation, therefore many people identify with that issue from that standpoint. This makes Palestinians even more committed to the struggle, cementing their identity further.

So, what I would say is that being part of a Palestinian exiled community, or being part of people under occupation is a struggle, whether in the areas of 1948 or the West Bank or Gaza, and that struggle continues, the suffering continues, and the pain continues, enduring from generation to generation. The collective memory is transferred from generation to generation, therefore there is more commitment and more association with what it means to be a Palestinian – that identity is further cemented.

Ada: Do you think that Palestinians who live in other lands, where they can get citizenship, may lose their Palestinian identity as a result? Do you think this suffering, i.e. not being able to get citizenship, keeps the Palestinian identity alive?

Sami Al Arian: I think it’s true. Historically it’s true that in many of these communities, particularly in the Arab countries (except Jordan), they never received citizenship, and that cemented what being a Palestinian is. However, many Palestinians would argue that it’s not an excuse for them to be denied basic rights as human beings because not being a citizen in a nation-state system puts huge hardship and burden on these communities and makes them non-entities, non-citizens, and non-human beings.

They are denied necessities, basic rights in life: the right to a decent education, the right to a job, the right to retirement, the right to live in dignity, the right to healthcare, and so forth. So not being a citizen did cement the meaning of what it means to be Palestinian and this was the only identity that people could identify with – being a Palestinian. So with that suffering – yes identity was certainly strengthened.

Ada: For Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship, being an Israeli citizen is another aspect of their identity. What do you think about the identity issue of Israeli-Palestinians and their relationship with the state of Israel?

Sami Al Arian: Palestinians who stayed in Palestine, after the catastrophe of 1948 and after the occupation of 78% of Palestine by the Zionist regime, never felt they were citizens.

For 18 years between 1948 and 1966, these communities lived under military curfew, under martial law, so they never felt part of society. Though 80% of the Palestinians were exiled the remainder lived under military rule, even though they lived side by side with Israelis. Living under military rule for 18 years brutalized an entire generation. Even after that was lifted and they were given citizenship by Israel, they never became part and parcel of society, and you can see the racist policies and mentality of the Zionist leaders in clear and plain ways. They don’t even try to hide it: a Jewish only state, Jewish only laws, some Jewish only roads in the West Bank, and settlements and so on so forth.

When they were uprooted suddenly from their homeland, that they had lived in for centuries, it was very traumatic for many people, especially since it did not happen over time but all of a sudden.

There is a lot of discrimination against the Arabs inside the 1948 areas, which is manifested in education, in job discrimination, in healthcare, and even in their right to go and pray in the al-Aqsa mosque. If they take a different political position, they will be prevented from praying at al-Aqsa. Most Palestinians outside Jerusalem have also been denied this right for decades.

So, even though the Israeli state tries to portray itself as being a state that respects different religions and ethnicities, the fact of the matter is that it is not the case. Numerous studies will prove that what we have in Palestine today, in terms of the Israeli state, is a state that discriminates against its citizens based on their ethnicity, faith, and religion, and therefore we cannot say that Palestinians inside that state enjoy the privileges and rights of being equal citizens to the Jewish citizens.

Ada: As was mentioned before some Palestinians have Israeli citizenship and some do not. From what you say, it is clear that this citizenship isn’t of equal value. So why does Israel give citizenship to Palestinians?

Sami Al Arian: That was a historical decision that the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, made. Many Israeli politicians regret that decision and the reason that Ben-Gurion made that decision, which is basically to grant the remaining Palestinians a form of citizenship, (which now many right-wing groups and settler movements and others, such as even Lieberman, are trying to undo so that they can maintain the ‘purity’ of a Jewish only state) had more to do with the image that Israel wanted to portray to the outside world than to the actual ideology of Zionism.

One of the strategic imperatives of Zionism is to occupy as much of Palestine as possible with as few of Arab Palestinian Christians and Muslims as possible. So they have a problem now that the Arab population inside the state have ‘citizenship’ whether Muslim or Christian. These populations are approximately 20% of the state, and they grow even faster than their Jewish fellows inside the state and that is a concern to them. That’s why in the so-called deal of the century, there is a clause there that says that part of that final status is to transfer what is called the triangle (these are three villages at the top of the border between the West Bank and Israel) numbering over 300,000 Palestinians.

This population will be transferred and they will lose their citizenship and be transferred to the Palestinian communities in case there is some kind of a deal. So there are concerns about that. As I said, for many it was a controversial decision but Ben-Gurion made that decision to improve Israel’s image in the eyes of the international community, after exiling 800,000 people and refusing to allow them to go back to their original homes.

Ada: It appears that Israel is using some narratives to justify their position over the land, right? How does these narratives effect Palestinian relationship with their history and their identity?

Sami Al Arian: Israel has a different narrative. They try to falsify what happened in 1948. They try to falsify the history of the land; they try to falsify the history of an indigenous people – Palestinians of the land. They even try to falsify what’s happening now on the ground. Palestinians unify and they have their narrative and they would like to talk advocate it in a way that will show the true nature of the conflict as well as the identity of what it means to be Palestinian today. So in this sense, you can also see the Palestinians common identity, regardless of where they are. I mean Palestinians today are in dozens of countries and yet they can identify with each other.

Each Palestinian can identify with the land, with the village, with the town they came from, or their ancestors came from. They can recite each chapter and verse of their history. So that collective memory and common destiny are what shapes what it means today to be a Palestinian even for those who live inside the state under racist policies. They identify with their brethren in the West Bank and Gaza and beyond. They still see themselves as part of the Palestinian people and share this common identity.

An uprising towards racial equality or a dissension into mob-rule? Both descriptions have been used to cover the recent Black Lives Matter protests in American cities and parts of the UK and Europe. The current climate has resulted in a profound but largely cosmetic shift- corporate, celebrity and even political parties (such as Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats) have made it clear that they are on the side of the anti-racism movement by donating money, verbally supporting and putting a knee down in solidarity with African-Americans (and the double-sided symbolism of a flag of freedom/oppression).

Prominent sports personalities (such as NFL players) who previously shied away from anything remotely controversial have found themselves apologizing for past silence and vowing to do more (after the black-listing of fellow quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his distinctive protest against American police brutality by kneeling through the national anthem during the entire 2016 season).

Now everyone has a racist anecdote to tell from school, the workplace or beyond – whether it’s the white person saying they should have done something more or the black person recounting an otherwise forgotten incident. However, much deeper issues remain; the historical placement of statues that symbolize oppression, the intertwined history of colonialism and the slave trade and its virtual absence in school curriculums, as well as ongoing African-American racial inequality and the dissension into a polarized world-view that is solely about race.

The Killing of George Floyd

The trigger for this profound and seemingly instantaneous plea for forgiveness from the entire African American community was the torturous killing of George Floyd on May 25 (through an eight-minute knee-hold) by a white police officer in Minneapolis after he was called to deal with a suspected counterfeit $20 bill. This became the latest provocation of police brutality against African American males and has become a symbol of the countless (unrecorded) deaths against black people that occur regularly in American cities.

Floyd’s imperfect character has only deepened his “martyrdom”; a father of 5, arrested eight times between 1997 and 2005 for drug possession, theft and trespass (spending several months in jail) and who in 2009 was sentenced to 5 years in prison for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. As a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement, Floyd’s seemingly tragic life story points less to flawed personal decisions and more to the institutionalized racism that is codified into administrative, educational and economic life for African Americans and culminates in either white police brutality against the community and/or time in prison. His face has become the face of the movement with images, murals, and iconography spreading throughout the world. A statue may be next.

Statueclasm

The toppling of statues that represent slavery advocates (such as the recent dramatic falling of Edward Colston in Bristol, UK) or those associated with General(s) or soldiers of the Confederate State in the American Civil War (mostly in the Southern USA) has become another manifestation of public anger and the disconnect between the icons of a place, the complex history and the sentiment of significant portions of the populace.

In fact, the American experience is often used to shoulder and deflect some of the ingrained attitudes to race and ethnicity that are deeply rooted in Europe and other nations. Canada, for instance, has perfected the approach of moral high-ground (it is constantly contrasting itself with its southern neighbor both on the political level and in the popular consciousness) while simultaneously repressing its Colonial roots of active participation in both slavery and genocidal policies to indigenous peoples. This contrasts with the American student’s introduction (although this can vary by state) to these topics, which start with a recognition of internal inherent unholy behavior at the primary school level.

Not Everything is Black and White

BLM stands for Black Lives Matter; in the U.S. people are for the most part either ‘White’ or ‘Black’ – this partially comes out of the segregationist history of the country as well as efforts to highlight massive disparities (such as the civil rights movement of the 1960s). It also raises other less discussed questions – people from the Middle-East, Turkey, and Latin America are usually categorized as ‘people of color’ even if ethno-genetically they may be part of Caucasian groupings (which is also fluid and less defined than is often presented). In the U.S., ‘Asian’ in conversation and on official forms refers to people of Far-East Asian descent (China, Japan, Korea) and is often used by people from those groups as a self-identifier (such as on TV, comedy and radio programs) even though Asia is a massive continent that includes 4.5 billion people and a plethora of ethnicities.