why i support palestinians

Excerpts from “My israeli Friends: This is Why I Support Palestinians” originally written by Ilan Pappe for the Palestine Chronicle.

It is challenging to maintain one’s moral compass when the society you belong to – leaders and media alike – takes the moral high ground and expects you to share with them the same righteous fury with which they reacted to the events of October 7.

There is only one way to resist the temptation to join in: if you understood, at one point in your life – even as a Jewish citizen of israel – the settler colonial nature of zionism, and were horrified by its policies against the indigenous people of Palestine.

If you have had that realization, then you will not waver, even if the poisonous messages depict Palestinians as animals, or ‘human animals.’ It is this moral compass that led me, and others in our society, to stand by the Palestinian people in every way possible;

Because we always supported the decolonization of Palestine, we knew that the longer israeli oppression continued, the less likely the liberation struggle would be “sterile” – as it has been the case in every just struggle for liberation in the past, anywhere in the world.

This does not mean we should not keep an eye on the big picture... The picture is that of a colonized people fighting for survival, at a time when its oppressors had elected a government, which is hellbent on accelerating the destruction, in fact the elimination of the Palestinian people – or even their very claim to peoplehood.

Many people know...the horrific reality israel had created in the Gaza Strip when it sealed the region, imposing a hermetic siege, starting in 2007, accompanied by the relentless killing of children in the occupied West Bank. This violence is not a new phenomenon, as it has been the permanent face of zionism since the establishment of israel in 1948.

There is an alternative. In fact, there has always been one: A de-zionised, liberated and democratic Palestine from the river to the sea; a Palestine that will welcome back the refugees and build a society that does not discriminate on the basis of culture, religion or ethnicity.

This new state would labor to rectify, as much as possible, the past evils, in terms of economic inequality, the stealing of property and the denial of rights. This could herald a new dawn for the whole Middle East.

It is not always easy to stick to your moral compass, but if it does point north – towards decolonization and liberation – then it will most likely guide you through the fog of poisonous propaganda, hypocritical policies and the inhumanity, often perpetrated in the name of ‘our common Western values’.

Source

We are grateful to the work of Ilan Pappe (2023), My Israeli Friends: This is Why I Support Palestinians, The Palestine Chronicle, direct excerpts of which informed the content for this blog post.