Introduction to Rethinking Palestine Podcast
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From Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawaii and this is Rethinking Palestine. As
Genocide in Gaza: A 2023 Retrospective
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we end the year 2023, the Israeli regime genocide in Gaza continues.
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Bombs are still raining down on people's homes, on schools, on hospitals and shelters. Meanwhile, the people in Gaza are being pushed further and further south, with fears that they'll eventually be exiled into the Egyptian Sinai desert. The Israeli army has invaded and occupied the north of Gaza and seems intent on staying.
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Many say this is the niqba of our generation, and indeed we have surpassed 1948 in terms of both the numbers of those killed and those displaced. This is a horrific moment in the Palestinian story, but it does not exist in isolation. Rather, it exists within the broader context of continuous Zionist settler colonialism and erasure and unwavering international impunity for the Israeli regime.
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And that's why in this podcast episode we have collated some of the most important soundbites of all our podcast episodes of 2023. Together they shed light on the Palestinian experience under settler colonialism, provide analysis on repressive policies and highlight pushback and resistance by Palestinians and their allies.
Criminalization of Palestinian Solidarity
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of the Israeli regime have been working hard in recent years to criminalise solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation. These efforts have been so draconian that many argue they undermine the very fundamental principles of a democracy. Darek Kenny-Shawa, the Shabaka US policy fellow, explained why this is happening in the US and what this means for political movements beyond those related to Palestine.
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Across the US, a growing number of Americans are heeding calls to boycott Israeli goods and services. Unsurprisingly, Israel's apologists are stepping up their efforts at both the state and federal levels to shield Israel from accountability. And they're doing this by going straight for our First Amendment rights to free speech and political boycott. And they're insisting that by criticizing a nation state's policies, we are somehow being inherently anti-Semitic.
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Since 2014, dozens of states have adopted laws designed to punish individuals and companies that refuse to do business with those who profit from the Israeli regime's occupation. And their message to us is clear. Take any action to hold Israel accountable for its crimes and you will pay.
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they won't stop at boycotts of Israel. If these forces are successful, they will use it as a template to target the right to boycott just about anything that goes against their interests. In fact,
Anti-BDS Laws and Boycott Movements
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several states have already used these anti-BDS boycott legislations as template for copycat laws that will criminalize other boycotts and other forms of protest, such as preventing businesses from boycotting fossil fuels and firearms industries
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And for example, we're seeing in Kentucky, for example, SB 205, which prohibits the state from entering into contracts with companies unless they submit written certification that they will not engage in a boycott of energy companies. So just to reiterate my earlier point, efforts to clamp down on Palestinian solidarity by outlawing boycotts of Israel
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are just one tactic amid a larger strategy by reactionary elements on both sides of the partisan divide to undermine democratic values in the US. And if they're successful, these forces will undoubtedly direct their efforts at other forms of protests and free speech that are being leveraged in calls for justice.
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This kind of high-level repression is not only happening in the US. Ben Jamal,
Repression of Solidarity in the UK
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director of the British Palestine Solidarity Campaign, explained how this kind of repression is also happening in the UK and how it too has wider implications on British citizens' rights and freedom of expression.
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this global campaign being waged by Israel to delegitimize the Palestinian struggle. And obviously that begins with targeting any form of Palestinian resistance, delegitimizing it, targeting human rights defenders on the ground.
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that are defending the rights of Palestinians, usually through narratives of terrorism, but then also expanding globally to target any organisation and individuals that are active in supporting the Palestinian struggle for liberation. And there, the most usual narrative that's used is to define any such activism
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as anti-Semitic by conflating legitimate support for the Palestinian struggle with anti-Semitism. And that campaign of delegitimisation is very, very active in the UK. And where we see that playing out, we see it at the moment, for example, actively playing out in academic space, in universities. We have numerous examples of individual students being targeted for their activism.
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being accused of antisemitism being subjected to disciplinary investigations by their universities. We see the same tactic used against academics. In the vast majority of those cases, and there is now an organisation called the European Legal Support Centre, that is very very active in providing support
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to individuals and organizations under attack. And in most of those cases, the disciplinary proceedings do not proceed to anyone having action taken against them because the allegations are entirely spurious and can be shown to be so. But obviously what it does is create a chilling effect. So it toxifies the issue of Palestine and it makes people very cautious about putting their head above the parapet and being vocal in their advocacy for Palestinian
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Right so we've got that dynamic and then that colludes with another dynamic which is a government in the uk i would say successive conservative governments. In the uk that have bringing in a whole range of laws of that in lots of ways.
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are clamping down in the right to protest. We've had a whole bevy of laws, the policing bill laws that are affecting the right to strike and most recently the Public Order Act and what that is doing is in very serious ways attacking the fundamental right to protest.
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So we know that this repression of Palestinian solidarity is happening, and many of the ways in which it is happening. But why is it happening?
Chant Criminalization: 'From the river to the sea'
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Mahan Assad, historian at the University of Arizona and Shabakah member, gave us an explanation in the context of the attempts to criminalize the chant, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. That idea of free Palestine from the river to the sea being political speech is itself a recognition of Palestinians
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legitimate political claims, their legitimate national identity, and their legitimate and long standing, I should add, personal ties to the land. So I do see the draconian measures that you mentioned, and there are many more that are happening, particularly across college campuses, which is
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something that I'm particularly attuned to. I see it as part of a, as a testament in many ways to the success of the pro-Palestinian movement that has managed to put Palestinian rights and the Palestinian struggle for freedom front and center in the struggles of justice in the West today. And I also see the pushback against this chant and the
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real draconian measures and punishments from banning student groups to firing people from their jobs to actual physical threats against people. I see all of that as a recognition of the fact
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that the other side doesn't have a logical answer to the demand for Palestinian freedom. They don't know how to respond to the demand for Palestinian freedom, so what they try to do is to criminalize the demand for Palestinian freedom. And I think that's what we're seeing. It's very difficult to see, but I'm also heartened by all the people who are coming to see what's happening for what it is. That these are demands for Palestinian freedom,
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And these are attempts to criminalize the demands for Palestinian freedom. And just as we are seeing cracks within the network of global state support for the Israeli regime, we're also seeing cracks within the Israeli regime itself.
Israeli Protests Against Netanyahu
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In their thousands, Israelis took part in so-called pro-democracy protests over the last year. These protests were largely aimed at Netanyahu's coalition and their efforts to erode Israeli Jewish democracy through various judicial reforms. But they were also in anger at Netanyahu's attempts to evade corruption charges.
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Amir Mahal, activist and Shabakam member, shared with us why these protests are about saving the Israeli regime from itself and upholding militant settler colonialism. In the other aspect of Israeli demonstrations, there are very militarized demonstrations. The military voice, the security voice is very high. People are saying that we are
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They're going to the army. We are protecting the Israelis. We are protecting all citizens. So we don't agree that we will be led by ministers who are not serving in the army, like we belong smoothly. They are totally Israeli. They have very strong Israeli citizen identity, which is very deep Zionist identity that we have to protect our state to defend it in order to be able
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to overcome all of our enemies. Listen to the language and to the beard. Nobody is speaking about occupation. Nobody is speaking about to change the regime. Nobody is speaking about to make its state of all citizens pay not only for Jews. This opposition of the Netanyahu are in line with Netanyahu in supporting the Jewish state. All of them supported during
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the law of confiscate or to the citizenship of Palestinians. So it's nothing matter that anybody wants to change the nature of the city. They want to keep the nature of the city.
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Indeed, many in the West viewed these protests as a battle between liberal and right-wing Zionism and had high hopes for the former to win out. Mohanad Iyash, Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University, and a Shabakam member, explained what liberal Zionism is and how it is a core pillar of the Zionist movement.
Liberal Zionism and Human Rights
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Zionism is today's dominant force on the left wing of the Zionist movement, which itself is not that dominant anymore, as you rightly point out. Israeli politics have veered further and further into the right. But liberal Zionism basically presents itself as the defender of human rights
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international security, law and order, progress, democracy, toleration of diversity, respect for ethnic, racial, and religious, and gender diversity, and so on and so forth. So that's its place in the larger Zionist movement. It speaks the language of Israel is a liberal democracy that promotes European, Euro-American progress and civilization.
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and modernity in general. So some of its main principles or tenets is that it proclaims that the establishment of the Israeli state is the only way to secure Jewish safety and security. It sees the Israeli state as the only, like the Zionist movement, as it is Zionist, it sees the Israeli state as the
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only way to resolve the quote-unquote Jewish question of anti-Semitic Europe. And it views the historic land of Palestine as the rightful place where that project should unfold, that this land is really the land of Israel.
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and that Israeli Jews have an inherent sovereign claim to that territory. And therefore, 1948 becomes a central event that it views as unquestionable. As far as liberal Zionism is concerned, 1948 was a war of independence. It was a war where Israel was created to safeguard
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Jews from across the world and protect themselves against the aggression of Arab states who were hostile to the idea of creating the Jewish state in the land of historic Palestine. And some of them will acknowledge the quote-unquote tragic dimension of that founding, that is the displacement and expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian
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inhabitants, but they ultimately view this as a righteous, valid and legitimate war of independence that should no longer be open to any kind of serious decolonial critiques. So therefore, any kind of Palestinian critiques of the foundation of the Israeli state. So that becomes, I think, the most critical element of liberal Zionism. Don't touch 1940.
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From liberal Zionism to neoliberalism, Asma Abul-Mazid, a gender and economic justice expert and Ashabakam member, explained how the donor community through the aid and development sector is complicit in the depoliticization of the reality in Palestine, and particularly with regards to the energy crisis that is facing the West Bank and Gaza. Energy crisis
Depoliticizing Palestinian Energy Crisis
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in Palestine donors treat it as a humanitarian or a development issue.
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So by preparing Palestinians with capacity building, a technical capacity building, by investing in technology related solutions, by investing in solar power, for example, Palestinians supposedly should be able to solve the issue or listen the amount of
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energy crisis that they have. And this is a very depoliticized view to an issue that is very political in its core. The issue with the electricity and the energy crisis is very political because in order to have energy security and energy dependence, you need to have control and sovereignty over your natural resources so that you can work around coming up with solutions that is benefiting for the Palestinian community. But
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The whole structure in which Palestinians are living, they do not have any control over their natural resources because the Israeli regime is controlling these natural resources. So what the international community end up doing is really providing Palestinians with painkillers and very short term solutions rather than addressing the big elephant in the room, rather than addressing the root causes, which is the role of the Israeli regime in perpetuating and maintaining
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energy crisis. So any solution, if we want to talk about sustainable solution, it really needs to challenge the role of the Israeli regime. And it also needs to hold them accountable for all the challenges that Palestinians face. And I'll just give an example of Palestinians in an RAC
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where they need to have permits to establish any solar energy system and usually they get denied these permits. But even in donor support to the projects that establish solar panels, these solar panels are being destroyed and there is no accountability for the Israeli regime for destroying these infrastructure that has been paid by the international community.
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The donor community in Palestine is also complicit in increased political repression of Palestinians in the West Bank from the PA, the Palestinian Authority. Alat Tartir, a direct and senior researcher of the MENA program at SIPRI and policy adviser at Shabaka, explained this in the context of the security coordination and the so-called revolving door policy.
Oslo Accords: Security and Status Quo
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Oslo Accords in that sense was a security arrangement or a security agreement in effective terms to sustain the status quo and not an agreement to make the Palestinian people living in the West Bank and Gaza in particular closer to statehood or to freedom. And the key element of that framework, of that security framework, is the so-called security coordination or security collaboration paradigm.
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And security collaboration or security coordination takes different forms, different shapes, and the revolving door policy is one of its components. What we call in Arabic al-Baba dawar or the revolving door policy is effectively a mechanism to operationalize the overall security framework agreement or arrangement or coordination that's put in place with Oslo Accords. And this revolving door is a transactional
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and operational protocol whereby the Palestinians and Palestinians activists, freedom fighters, opposition members and the oppositions are imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority or
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the Israeli regime and then directly or indirectly handed over or handed back to one of those, the Palestinian Authority or Israel. So for example, the Palestinian Authority can arrest a Palestinian and few days, few hours, few weeks, few months later, the person would be arrested by the Israeli regime for the same charges.
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But it is precisely when there is an anti-fado, there is an uprising, or there is a height in terms of resistance, and there is a new peak of resistance or larger mobilization. That's when the revolving door policy gets utilized and instrumentalized.
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So it is by design designed to do that at that time when Palestinians are mobilizing, when Palestinians are resisting, when the Palestinians are acting together to resist the oppression by the Israeli regime.
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amidst this deepening repression and entrenchment of colonial occupation. Palestinians, as they have done so since 1948, are pushing back. Rashid Khaledi, history professor at Columbia University and a Shabakam member, came on the podcast to tell us about the theft of his family's land in Jerusalem and the legal case around it.
Theft of Palestinian Land and Property
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I think the case is important, not because any, I think, of the people involved in it has any sense that they're going to recover their property, certainly not in the short term. That's not the point. The point is, first of all, to highlight something that is constantly, as you suggested in one of your earlier questions, obscured in media coverage, which is just the theft of Palestinian property, of Palestinian land, not just the theft of a country and not just the ethnic cleansing of a country.
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But the seizure of people's livelihoods, agricultural and urban, private property, bank accounts, rugs, books, everything that they owned was stolen from them after they were driven out of their homes in 1948.
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And as you say, this is never talked about. So I think any spotlight that can be put on this general issue I think is all to the good. The second thing is, I hope it will, at the very least, embarrass and ideally stop the US government from, in fact,
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formally accepting through taking this property and building an embassy on it, Israel's theft of Palestinian land. Now, Israel stole the land, and that's an issue that, you know, can only be dealt with in the very long term. But the US government is about to build on that problem.
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and thereby consecrate through that building its acceptance of this theft, formally accept, in other words, what Israel has done. And hopefully bringing up this issue can stop that, or at the very least cause maximum embarrassment to the people who are doing it.
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On May the 2nd, 2023, political prisoner and leader of the prison hunger strikes, Khadr Adnan, died. Basel Faraj,
Khadr Adnan: Symbol of Resistance
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assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Beersite University and a Shabaka member, explained the significance of his struggle and that of the wider struggle of Palestinian political prisoners. What Khadr Adnan symbolizes is not just the hunger striking for liberation or the attempt to kind of force
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your jailer to give you your freedom. And in his case, it's his freedom through his death, basically this time, his martyrdom. But I think he also makes perhaps his martyrdom is a call to action for us to relook, actually, at what Palestinian prisoners mean. Why did these people, why have they spent most of their lives behind bars? What does it mean to have
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a national movement which is not able actually, not in the past, it's in the present, it's not able or had not been able yet to liberate all of its prisoners, all of its members of its struggle, basically, and particularly to think about those who have lingered for decades behind Israel's walls, including, for instance, Walid Baqah, who as listeners might know, who has been diagnosed as well with a very rare disease. And I think here we have Khadr Adnan and we have also the triumph of
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of the six Palestinian prisoners who managed to dig their own way to freedom. So in a way, I think it's a wake up call and also perhaps an assertion of the Palestinian prisoners and by prisoners, I mean us outside prisons and those inside prisons, an assertion to our desire for freedom, a desire for freedom that has to also, you know, that we have to work for. That is not
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that will not just be simply given to us. Again, as the 1970 hunger strike, where prisoners had won their right to address their jailer as jailer through struggle. So they basically made that confrontation clear between them as prisoners, as captives, and between the prison authority as their jailer, as their occupier.
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For many Palestinians, imagining a future free of Zionist settler colonial domination is difficult.
Challenging Temporal Domination
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The constant process of Eurasia that Palestinians face means that surviving the ever deteriorating present takes priority. Sirona Abu Akbar, a poet and artist and worker in Palestinian education, and Dan Abdullah, designer, educator and researcher, co-developed a discussion-based game called Countless Palestinian Futures.
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and came on Rethinking Palestine to discuss how this project seeks to challenge the temporal domination and stimulate the imagination by helping people develop tangible outcomes and ideas around Palestinian futures.
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Palestinians, essentially like our return and other people's returns have been snatched from us and it's been placed within a very like hegemonic process dictated by the UN and by the IMF and all of these governing bodies. And when Palestinians have attempted to implement their return, whether through the great march of return or what we saw during the unity and the fall though with people
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or in Jordan and in Lebanon, walking back to Palestine. We see the very material ramifications of that. And so hopefully this game is a very humble, small way of us not seeking that permission.
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I've just remembered one really nice response or wouldn't say a really nice response, but it was a discussion that took place regarding the return question is, are these kind of status of Palestinians, you know, one with ID card, one from Gaza, one from Jordan, do they remain? And is it something that's going to be stamped on me if I return? I think that was a very powerful question and thing to think about. And it's amazing how much context
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changes, you know, who's in the room, changes the responses, because that experience, I think that the crowds of people we played with generally in London, it is quite a homogeneous, I'm not saying that Palestinians are, but you know, you're more or less from similar spaces, whereas in Lebanon, it wasn't. And so they were concerned with very different things than what we are concerned about. In the second iteration at May Day rooms,
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I remember one of the responses that I found to be really interesting was, and Danny you just pointed it out, was it depends on the context, creates the response and it really forces us to grapple with I think the facade of nationalism, but also I think like the very real questions we are facing, like who are we beyond this crisis in many stances
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And one of the questions we asked was about what kind of education would we teach something along those lines. And someone's first immediate response was, well, the first thing we have to do is agree on a shared history and one unified history. And I found that to be so, so fascinating because what does that history then look like? What is the necessity of an agreed shared history in order to then live together? I don't know, but I don't have the answer. But I think that's part of the fun.
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Many human rights experts have asserted that the Israeli regime's latest assault on Gaza amounts to genocide.
Global Protests Supporting Gaza
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At the time of recording, over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs with at least a third of them children and many more thought to be trapped under the rubble.
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Meanwhile, millions of people around the world have gathered in the streets of their cities and towns, declaring solidarity with the Palestinian people and with Gaza. Organizations and groups have also issued statements condemning the Israeli regime not only for its most recent onslaught, but also for its decades-long colonial occupation of Palestine. There have likewise been efforts at direct action to shut weapons factories down and prevent the shipment of arms from reaching the Israeli regime.
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Yet this widespread international solidarity has been facing repression and the Norwellian crackdown from governments and various different actors. I spoke with Leila Kataman of the European Legal Support Centre and Diyela Chammas of the Centre for Constitutional Rights for further insight on this suppression and mobilisation. Together, they offer concrete advice for how to resist such efforts to stifle Palestine's solidarity and to continue standing with Gaza amidst this unfolding genocide.
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There's also a big defiance achievable through numbers. The demonstration bans in Berlin, although the police really tries their best to prevent any
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assembly or protest from happening. When there's a lot of numbers, they can't do much. So even though there's a demonstration ban in Germany and there was one in France, people still went on the streets and huge numbers, so huge that the police couldn't do anything. Of course, they can still be violent, but people stick together and march regardless. And apart from that, I think it is the time to speak up and out more than
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like to speak out against what is happening more than ever before. A lot of people are. It is, I think, also the time to join forces, so to connect with other people at whether your place of employment or study or elsewhere, which share the same passion or will to do something about it and to organize together. Smear campaigns, for example, which target a person,
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usually aim to isolate a person from society. It is always easier to attack one person than a group. So there's definitely strength in numbers when it comes to defying the current repression. And remember you're not alone. Speak out about the repression rather than be silent about it. It's actually really helpful to be doing that. I think historically we've gone back and forth on this question of whether we want to be sort of
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advertising how difficult it is to speak about Palestinian rights because we don't want to be discouraging folks from doing it. But at this point, it's well past that point. Everybody knows that this is happening.
Building Support Networks Under Repression
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And I think when you speak out, you also
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draw support and solidarity and also can build organizing. So organizing within your professional network or community. We've seen really inspirational models of artists coming together to support each other. We've seen people in the medical profession offer up support and finding employment when someone's lost a job. I think that's kind of the level at which we're seeing solidarity and it's a really important way to be building resilience in these moments of heightened targeting.
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Thank you for listening to our final episode of the year and we, at Ashabaka, continue to have hope that Palestinians will one day experience freedom.
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Rethinking Palestine is brought to you by Ashabaka, the Palestinian policy network. Ashabaka is the only global independent Palestinian think tank whose mission is to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide. For more information or to donate to support our work, visit al-ashabaka.org. And importantly, don't forget to subscribe to Rethinking Palestine, wherever you listen to podcasts.