Stop taking the word of my murderer as the truth

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For over 76 years now the genocide of Palestinians has been justified on the back of European guilt of the holocaust. Which has been followed by the constant dehumanising narratives against Palestinians to justify crimes against them. It comes as no surprise that after the Al Aqsa flood on October 7th Israeli media has pushed every gory fantastical brutal allegation from beheaded babies to mass rape to justify an escalation in the genocide of Palestinians. Reminiscent of the allegations of mass rape that were used to justify bombing Libya and fabricated stories of babies being thrown out of incubators to justify the killing of 2 million Iraqis.

What is surprising today, on some minuscule level, is that too many supposed leftists in or out of the media have all fallen for these babies on bayonets-styled hasbara narratives. Supposed pro-Palestine social media is divided on this and people remotely falling for this hasbara are nonplussed when they are asked why they believed those stories very obviously put in place to manufacture consent for genocide.

It is ludicrous that the same Western feminists who write articles and posts on social critiquing the pro-Palestine movement for not condemning the Israeli narrative of the mass rape of Israeli women are now silent about the very real Palestinian women who are suffering every kind of abuse imaginable in their genocide. While Palestinian women are experiencing three hundred times more chances of miscarriages in Gaza. Little Palestinian girls talk about how they wish they died with their families so they didn’t have to live in such a cruel world. While Palestinian women have their personal belongings rummaged through and posed with as trophies by the IOF. While Palestinian women are raped in Israeli prisons or made to share prison cells with men, naked. There are documented Palestinian women who have their hands bound and eyes covered as they are taken to unknown locations in Abu Ghuraib-style scenes.

Western feminism seems to have come to a standstill for Palestinian women but these same feminists were unflinchingly quick to repeat allegations of mass rape to manufacture consent for genocide. Although some now say it was an honest mistake or a moment of emotional turmoil that led them to believe this hasbara one can now not take them as allies or let them into our spaces as people for a free Palestine.

These words may seem harsh but they are not meant to be. My words are not a winning checkmark on a scoreboard but they are meant to draw definite lines of who are and who are not our allies for a free Palestine. These lines must be drawn in my humble opinion because to support Palestinian liberation while simultaneously believing the very state that dehumanises them to justify their slaughter is not a decolonial stance.

You cannot support the human rights of Palestinians while you believe and give weight to their abuser in any capacity. Similarly, it would be equally justifiable to assume anyone who accepted any dehumanising narratives by the Nazis about the Jewish people was a propagandist and perpetrator of the genocide of the Jewish people.

Words matter

Words have meaning and words matter. Today if you have any platform you are responsible for the words you publish on that platform irrelevant of how big or small your platform is. Why are you lending an ear to the oppressor in any capacity? Why do these words need to be written at all? Have you not read To Kill A Mockingbird? Do you not know how white women have weaponised feminism to have Black men like Emmet Till lynched?

The reason the media can manufacture consent for genocide is that the media knows how to manipulate Western readers and their emotions. The reason Westerners fall for these narratives, which are like Jim Crowe-era white people projecting their abhorrent crimes onto the native people, is that some are inherently racist and orientalist.

If the Western world perceived Palestinians as equals to themselves they would not need to be reminded that Israel is not to be trusted at all when it comes to the people they are annihilating and have been annihilating for almost a century. No one with half an ounce of common sense would seriously condemn Ukrainians due to narratives via Russia but somehow these standards are never held for Palestinians and it is proven every time Israel publishes a shocking dehumanising narrative to justify more crimes against Palestinians.

Some of the supposed pro-Palestine people like Mehdi Hasan, Lisa Goldman, Ariel Gold, Erin Biba, Faine Greenwood, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Lux Alptraum, Tamars and many more used Israeli propaganda to highlight the abuse that has been disproven. This needs to be called out and highlighted because if people fall for Israeli narratives to justify the slaughter of Palestinians they become normalisers.

Focusing on the humanity of the oppressor but ignoring the material harm done to the oppressed when it matters most is the normalisation of the oppression being perpetrated.

Remember the people who dehumanise Palestinians at their darkest hour because they actively manufactured consent for the genocide of Palestinians that a fundraiser for a Gazan family or empty words of remorse won’t correct. People die behind these tropes. Palestinians have been and continue to pay the heaviest price for your orientalist perception of them.

It is dishonest to dismiss these actions because they were four months old or the audience was too meagre for this to be considered manufacturing consent for genocide. People who actively joined the chorus against a people while bombs were being dropped on them are part of the narrative that justified their slaughter.

I wrote this post because people on social have misconstrued why this is a problem and have diverted the discourse, recently on Bluesky as well, by implying that we (the people who call it out) are terminally online so we look for conflict, engaging in the stories of Palestinians on social media has no material benefit, it is self-serving, and that looking away is self-care rather than keeping up with the news of our loved ones, friends and for some of us families in Palestine.

To quickly deconstruct these arguments it’s worth highlighting that people are doxxed, lose jobs for posting about Palestine and are often marred wrongly with the label of being antisemitic. Israel actively runs PSYOPS against Palestine supporters as organisations like Wix have already done.

There is a material risk in posting about Palestine that everyone is aware of. Some of the viral images and videos of war crimes by the IOF on social were used as evidence by South Africa in the International Court of Justice. How can we with roots in the global south ignore our people being wiped out of history? I feel so incredulous that anyone would say posting on Palestine is self-harm or useless when every Palestinian I have ever had the honour of speaking to has always asked that we never stop talking about them and sharing their stories to humanise them in the public sphere. Like Mona from Palestine,

“My message to all women and feminists [is] just to keep posting about Palestine and Palestinians and spread the truth, spread the news as much as they can, keep talking about us, we are not numbers, tell the world that we are not [only] under bombing as every time, this time is the most difficult, and we are [experiencing] a genocide, tell the women and feminists that huge numbers of mothers lost their children and huge numbers of children will complete their lives without their mothers. Keep posting and posting and posting about us ... keep us in your prayers.”

It is one thing to not want to expose yourself to the genocide of Palestinians but it is quite another to shame or call out people who do. We all know that our struggle for Palestine is ongoing till Palestine is free and that not everyone will walk with us till the end. Palestinians and those who intend to watch this through are well aware so don’t shame them online. Instead, use the tools on all social platforms to shut yourself out of the constant stream of Palestine news. The rest of us are here to free Palestine in every possible way.

“To practice feminism in the midst of bearing witness to genocide is to embrace love as a radical consciousness, as a radical decolonial politic of fighting for life. To practice feminism in this moment is to hold each other through the vast darkness of our grief, to walk with each other hand in hand, to bear witness to landscapes of death, and, as Mona urges us, to tell the truth. Indeed, Mona's words invite us to break out of this  غصة/ ghassa, this lump in our throat that keeps us from speaking, and to speak loud and courageously into the wind.”

“We will never forgive the world that has allowed this to happen, nor will we stop fighting for our people's lives.”

Speak about my people with the respect that is owed to them

Image by Aljazeera

For too long our men from the global south have been dehumanised as only capable of being terrorists while in reality, Palestinian men are telling little wounded girls, that they dug out from under the rubble with their bare hands, they look like the moon. There are videos of Palestinian men fainting because they could not tell their neighbour’s daughter that her entire family had been killed. A young Palestinian man is seen trembling as he cries while phoning his friend presumed dead under a bombed building. Some Palestinian men who were doctors sang to their patients that they would not leave them after Israel told them to evacuate the hospital.

These are the tender-hearted men you have chosen to dehumanise while they are being carpet bombed. I am begging everyone to stop. These men are my fathers, brothers and sons they not only deserve the respect they have earned but they are owed this respect.

Palestinian feminism has never felt more vital:

In speaking about feminist consciousness, I am not speaking of that universal, atemporal feminism that casts Palestinian women as defenseless victims who must be saved from the savage brutality of our Indigenous men, especially our Muslim men — that dangerous Orientalist narrative that has been weaponized to sell an imperial war to the masses, justifying the invasion, theft, or destruction of our homelands — the very narrative that has helped stoke fear and hatred in the colonizer this time around, mobilizing them for a military assault against our people, the grotesque scale of which we could not have fathomed. Nor is it that brand of colonial feminism that views us only as “human animals” (the term mobilized by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Oct. 9) who birth future terrorists, those one thousand (and counting) Palestinian children massacred by Israel in the recent incursion the world has allowed to be stripped of their humanity and denied their childhood and future. I am speaking of a decolonial Palestinian feminism.

Even Paul Biggar was able to recognise this about Palestinian men:

Fathers holding their babies, dead, caked in dust. Bombs dropped on homes [1], on hospitals [2], on schools [3]. Tens of thousands of dead [4] in indiscriminate bombings [5]. Children crying, pulling through rubble to find their families [6].

The inhumanity of the soldiers is unbearable. They shoot civilians in the street [7], imprison and torture children [8], and strip and humiliate innocent men [9].

Yet people entrenched in Palestinian discourse seem to struggle with the concept of our Palestinian siblings being fully human with tender hearts capable of gentle words and kindness. I have found it harder and harder to stay silent on this issue. Have you all no shame?

You are not my people

People in tech like Areej Abu Ali who have been very vocal on almost all social issues especially feminism are wholly silent on Palestine. While recognising the danger of speaking up I find it unforgivable that people like her who have an already successful career normalise anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian tech bros in the tech space namely people from the senior staff at Wix.

An organisation founded by ex-Israeli intelligence who ran the most racist PSYOP against Palestinians to justify their genocide. I have written extensively about Wix as well but it seems to fall on deaf ears. Today my Palestinian siblings are dying. They have been murdered in cold blood for over four months and seventy-six years.

Everyone who turns away, feeds the Israeli propaganda machine or worse normalises Israeli propagandists are not my people. You cannot be my friend and I do not want you near me. Silence in the face of oppression means that you have taken the side of the oppressor which one repost of the UNRWA fundraiser won’t change.

I hope my words reach you

To point out that people who are in or out of media no matter how big or small, ran with stories to manufacture consent for genocide is simply pointing out the double standards and hypocrisy in the pro-Palestine space.

We are all one people on this earth whether we accept that fact or not. We all have the same beating hearts in our chests so I hope my words reach you, I hope my words touch the tender parts of your hearts and you recognise the humanity of my Palestinian siblings. We are not to be pitied but joined in solidarity as equals in the face of genocide. My only plea is that you recognise and remember the humanity of my Palestinian siblings the next time Israel makes false racist claims.

I will leave you with the immortal words of Mahmoud Darwish: “In silence we become accomplices.” but, “Every word has the power to change the world.”