Palestine

by Harper Richardson

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe Streets flooded with keffiyehs; red, black, white, and green; chants of “free free Palestine”; watermelons crocheted, stitched, painted, and eaten. These are some of the sights in America post October 7th, 2023. Across the sea in Gaza, the once blue sky is filled with thick, black, suffocating smoke. The endless bombardment leaves piles of rubble that replace what were once vibrant communities. Children’s faces are wrenched in tears and aching with starvation, trauma, and unimaginable bodily and mental agony. Today, in March of 2024, “Palestine” is a word prompting online “wars,” trigger warnings, and physical and verbal harassment. But, equally, “Palestine” has fostered mutual aid, tears of joy, a global resistance movement, and community. In Said After The Last Sky, Edward Said, a Palestinian-American activist and scholar, affirms the quote by lawyer and activist Raja Shihadeh, that freedom is not a “blind, consuming hate but a sense that your mind is the one thing that you can prevent your oppressor from having the power to touch” (Said, 1999). Palestine today, and for the last 76 years, has called upon the world to decolonize and to grant true freedom in Palestine.

Historical Context on The State of Palestine

Palestine has long been incorrectly referred to by zionist settlers as a land without a people for a people without a land. The history of Palestine before the British mandate is overwhelmingly ignored in western media. In order to properly set the context of colonisation, an understanding of indigenous, pre-colonial Palestine must first be highlighted. This is necessary to break the cycle of colonial suppression of information which minimises empathy for indigenous peoples.

Despite popular western rhetoric, before 1948, Palestine was vibrant with life. A Palestinian boxer from Jaffa, Adib al Dasuqi, won the Orient Boxing Championship on the Al Hamra Cinema Stage in the early 1940s, reports Sami Abu Shehadeh, a Israeli-Palestinian politician. The cinema was a cultural, political, musical, and theatrical centre of Jaffa. In education, Jaffa was a hub of modern schooling. Two percent of the Palestinian population was literate at the beginning of the twentieth century but by 1948, literacy shot up to more than fifty percent for Palestine’s youth. Bayan Al Hout, a Palestinian author, depicts how in the 1920s there were government schools, constitutional schools, Arab schools, and international schools (German and Russian) with esteemed teachers. In 1921 Hakk Mohammed Ain al Husseini was elected mufti, a powerful jurist, of Jerusalem. During his time in power, he prioritised building an orphanage to accommodate and educate children, and an industrial school to teach hard skills (Al Jazeera World Documentary, 2022). Education and societal advancement were at the forefront of pre-occupied Palestine’s values.

Palestine boasted a robust railroad transportation system, prospering coastal commerce, and booming popular culture. In 1900 the Jerusalem train station opened, connecting coastal cities to interior trade and international trade to Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo. In 1905 Haifa opened a station connecting Medina and Damascus. This context is not meant to say that indigenous peoples' worth is defined by their productivity in a western sense, however, it solidly refutes the image that Palestine was occupied by nomadic people who had no attachment to the land before Israel’s creation.

Palestine was considered part of Greater Syria of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years and was represented in the Ottoman parliament until the end of the First World War in 1918. During World War I, the Allied Powers defeated the Central Powers which included the Ottoman Empire. In November of 1917 the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, published the Balfour Declaration calling for the establishment of a home for Jewish people in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration noted that “nothing should be done which would prejudice existing civil and religious rights for existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” (Jewish Virtual Library, 2024). This is in direct contradiction with the expected effects of the most powerful country in the world at the time, economically and militarily, establishing plans to create a new country on top of one already in existence. Not to mention the phrasing of “non-Jewish communities” is othering and lays the groundwork for zionist supremacy arguments over indigenous populations. The following British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, saw Palestine as a vital land bridge to connect British colonial control, yet equally wanted to limit British responsibility to the Palestinian citizens. After being placed under British control in 1920, Palestinians called for independence and held the Arab Palestinian Congress (uniting Muslims and Christians). In 1931 the World Islamic Congress was held in Jerusalem with twenty-five Arab countries in attendance (Al Jazeera World Documentary, 2022). The conference staunchly stood against colonisation across the world and called for the enrichment of Palestinian culture and the building of the Al Aqsa Mosque University, which was established in 1955 in Gaza (recently partially destroyed by the Israeli Defense Force). This growth in prosperity led to the British Mandate restricting Arab workers migrating to Palestine to maintain British control and profit maximisation (Al Jazeera World Documentary, 2022). The National Defense Party, formed in 1934, was an anti-zionist organisation fighting for people to meet more than their basic needs. Palestinian resistance against the British mandate was strong and organised from the start.

The Creation of The State of Israel

Herbert Samuel was the 1920 British-appointed British High Commissioner to Palestine. Samuel was a zionist Jew who attended the San Remo, a post-WW1 conference determining the allocation of undefined Ottoman territories. Samuel argued that Jews would help to construct unplanted lands and teach the Palestinians. Both of these are steeped in racist beliefs to excuse the displacement of Palestinians that British zionists knew would follow the mass migration of Jewish people that they facilitated. Due to strict immigration restrictions, most Jews fleeing war-torn Europe were unable to go to America or Western Europe and went to Palestine instead, which the US supported. Europe and the United States failed to question the inherent discrimination that a Jewish state in a multicultural religious area would create. That questioning would prompt an evaluation of their own nation’s antisemitism and restrictions on Jewish migration, which would be far more difficult for politicians to grapple with in their home countries (Makdisi, 2023). Therefore, Israel was hailed as an idealised nation where the west could gain a foothold in the Arab world that they feared and shunned. As a result, the British mandate allowed Jewish immigrants to become Palestinian citizens and thus large-scale migration followed from 1918-1947, leading to heightened tensions and a Palestinian revolt (Al Jazeera World Documentary, 2022).

In 1947 the UN created a partition plan from Resolution 181 forming a Jewish state with 55% of the land, an Arab state with 45%, and a separate territory of Jerusalem (Haddad and Chughtai, 2023). In December 1947 Britain announced their mandate would end 5 months later, leading to increased violence by zionist militias. On May 14th, 1948, the day before the mandate ended, the head Jewish agency proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. The state incorporated 78% of what was British colonised mandatory Palestine (Al Jazeera World Documentary, 2022). In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were forced to exile in what became known as the Nakba — or catastrophe in Arabic (Haddad and Chughtai, 2023). 1947, 1948 and 1949 were years of mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in central cities followed by Jewish migrants being accommodated in Palestinian homes. Roughly 15,000 Palestinians were killed between 1947 and 1949 (Haddad, 2022). In the Al Jazeera World Documentary "Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story” Ismail Abu Shehadeh, a former Palestinian resident of Jaffa, recounts that only 30 Palestinian families stayed in Jaffa. Sami Abu Shehadeh explained that “even those who fled the city to a nearby village to take shelter, even one kilometre away from their homes, couldn't go back.” He provided the example that “some of the residents of Saffuriyeh village near Nazareth, fled the bombardment and armed operations and went to Nazareth. That was their basic human right, to take shelter in another place. They can't go back to their homes even to this day. So it wasn't only a theft. It was a theft that was legitimised and legalised” (Al Jazeera World Documentary, 2022). Israel was founded upon violence, violation of international agreements, and the denial of the Palestinian state.

American relation to Israel and the Zionist movement

The film Israelism, released in 2023 allows for powerful insight into the psychology and morality of zionism from the American Jewish viewpoint. Jacqui Schulefand of the University of Connecticut Hillel staff asserted, “You can’t separate it. Israel is Judaism and Judaism is Israel.

That is who I am” (Israelism, 2023). To defend the continuation of this colonial project, Israel has been constructed as the sole hope and lifeline for all Jewish people. Simone Zimmerman, speaking of her experience growing up in Jewish schools, stated that, “what we learned is that the only way Jews can be safe is if Palestinians are unsafe.” This thinking promotes the idea that Israel is Judaism and Palestinians' very existence makes Jewish people unsafe. Thus if you are anti-zionist, you are anti-semitic and if you support Judaism, you must support the suppression of Palestinians. Eitan, also from the film Israelism, explained for Israeli Defense Force (IDF) trainees, “one week [of training] was focused on urban warfare in close quarters and that was simulated in what looked like Arab housing.” There is nothing defensive about this. IDF soldiers train to attack Palestinians with extreme brutality and prejudice. Former IDF soldier Avner Gvaryahu detailed how they barged into a Palestinian house in the middle of the night to use it as a military base and how IDF soldiers “can detain any Palestinian just because he looked at us the wrong way.” The active expansion and displacement of Palestinians remains the primary goal for Israel; theirs is not a mission of peace. Fear must be instilled so that thoughts of resistance to increasing dispossession are not an option. Eitan details that “[IDF soldiers] wanted [Palestinians] to know that [they] were watching, that was the mission.” Surveillance, lack of freedom of movement, and restrictions on freedom of thought and protest are vital features to a colonial state. This goes hand in hand with propaganda. Eitan highlighted that “it was always presented to us that the Arabs only knew about terrorism” (Israelism, 2023). This is entrenched in staunchly islamaphobist beliefs spread through western media and perpetuated by propaganda for the founding of Israel. Palestinians must be perceived as utterly inhumane to have soldiers commit to murder them. Zimmerman asked herself when reckoning with her zionism; “What is this thing that is so horrifying that you can't bear to let me see it?” Israel erases Palestine to the youth and tells them, as Eitan reiterated, “This is our land, this is ours. That is what was conveyed to us” (Israelism, 2023). Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace stated that “apartheid is not just a word thrown around. Palestinians live in a different legal system than Israeli settlers next door.” This erasure and apartheid is what Israel tries to cover up to silence the Palestinian liberation movement and justify expanding settlements.

The Christian zionist movement started two centuries ago, before Jewish zionists, to claim Palestine had no people, only nomads and farmers with no civilization or agriculture (Al Jazeera World Documentary, 2022). The British Preacher John Nelson Darby travelled to the US to preach the doctrine of dispensationalism (the belief in biblical historical progression following God's revelations) and the return of Jews to Palestine. He worked to promote the cause with British politicians, culminating in the Balfour Declaration. Christian zionists believe that Jews will convert to Christianity before the reckoning because there is no middle between good and evil. This is an inherently anti-Semitic idea yet the anti-semitism tends to be ignored due to what is seen as the larger cause of supporting Israel. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, associated with Franklin Graham Samaritan’s Purse, met with Prime Minister Netanyahu despite the organisation's frequent anti-semtitic rhetoric. Afterwards Netanyahu quoted the Bible, appealing to Christian zionists, signalling his awareness that American Jews are vastly outnumbered by evangelicals (The Listening Post, 2024). Hal Lindsey wrote The Late Great Planet Earth which framed the major evil force in the world as the Soviet Union; after its collapse, the Arab world replaced it as the major force for evil in western eyes (Dale, 2004). The Christian zionists see Israel as a biblical mandate. The triumph in the Six Day War was a supposed biblical prophecy of good winning over evil (The Bottom Line, 2024). This evangelical belief is that the end of the world is near and Israel is a harbinger of the second coming. So, it is the duty of Christians to support the end gathering of the Jews. The evangelicals believe God gave the land to the chosen people, the Jews, and any Palestinian claim to land needs to be ended to not interfere with the second coming.

Supporting Israel therefore does not mean you're supporting Judaism. The majority of American support for Israel is to advance the colonial project displacing indigenous people to prepare for the second coming of Christ and enact the rapture, which in their minds necessarily entails the death of all non-christians. The manipulation of information to conflate anti-zionism and anti-semitism harms the Jewish faith by allowing the deeply anti-semtitic and violent Chrsitian zionist project to diminish the importance of Jewish principles, and to advocate for the outright death of all non-Christians under this guise of Israeli support.

This sector of Christians are immensely politically powerful. The lobbying organisation Christians United for Israel has over 10 million members (CUFI, 2024). In May of 2002 President Bush called for the withdrawal of Israeli tanks from the Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Subsequently, the White House received more than 100,000 angry emails from Christians objecting to his demand (Dale, 2004). This is why Israeli politicians, like Netanyahu, will not part ways with the anti-semitic evangelical Christian zionists.

US-Israel Relations & Aid

Abe Foxman was the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent Jewish and zionist lobbying group. Foxman stated, “Look at the most recent Gazan demonstrations [and] ask yourself the question: if the Mexicans stood at the border and marched

a million Mexicans, 20,000 Mexicans, ask yourself what would America do? First, they would try tear gas and eventually they would have to shoot” (Israelism, 2023). Foxman responds with no remorse or humanity. He makes it clear that he condones violence and emphasises the racialisation of the situation by comparing Mexicans to Palestinians rather than Canadians, for example. Moreover he failed to reach the analogy of Palestinians and Native Americans, both native peoples of their respective lands. Foxman seems to perceive America as currently inhabited by the native people and Mexicans as the invading colonists, and in this case sympathises with the situational "natives". But in reality, the United States, and Israel, have never been the people indigenous to their land. He failed to hide his racism; he said, “Israel is in the Middle East and not the midwest. So the neighbours are not necessarily the Jones’ or the Smiths’.” Foxman paints the Jones’ and Smiths’ as lovely, white, safe American neighbours whereas in contrast he alludes to the Palestinians as dangerous threats that justify Israeli defence. An ADL whistleblower said the organisation has “an agenda to suppress pro-Palestinian activism” which is found in their recent call to investigate pro-Palestinian student protestors as pro-Hamas, leading to the banning of multiple campus activist groups across America (Guyer and Perkins, 2024). The ADL is ensuring American policy towards Israel remains overwhelmingly friendly despite consistent atrocities and grassroots protesting.

This pro-Israel lobbying (including from other groups, such as AIPAC) has led to the US footing a huge bill. From 1946 to 2023, the US has granted Israel close to $300 billion in economic and military aid. This makes Israel the largest cumulative recipient of US aid. Each year the US gives Israel roughly $3.3 billion for military financing and $500 million for joint US-Israeli missile defence programs (Masters and Merrow, 2024). To put this in perspective this means New Hampshire provides roughly $19,552,527 annually which could instead be spent on

6,803 children receiving free or low-cost healthcare (Paskus, 2024). The US is complicit in Israeli apartheid policy and actively aids the military occupation of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, at the direct cost to its own citizens.

Why and For Whom Palestine Matters

How can one explain why and how a home matters to its inhabitants? How can you put into words the innate connections humans form with land, memories, culture, and ancestral history? It is the great task that has filled humans with painting, music, story telling, and poetry since the beginning of documented time. Palestinians and Palestine are no different. However, colonisation depends on the dehumanisation and the purposeful forgetting of human connection. “I am nature. Ok? I would not harm myself. Ok?” claimed forager Ahmad Hosni, a Palestinian man in the 2023 documentary Foragers. This inherent connection to the land that Ahmad claims resists the Israeli attempt at dissociation. He asked the rhetorical “ok?” as if attempting to instil the inherent metaphysical connection between himself and his homeland. “Continuity for them, the dominant population; discontinuity for us the dispossessed and dispersed,” wrote Edward Said (After The Last Sky, 1999). Colonisation must repeatedly deny a consistent way of life and repetitively destroy history and historical practice. Hope and history are dangerous to colonisers.

A reporter said to an Israeli Za’atar businessman that “for your father, Za’atar is Zionism. Za’atar is coexistence. What is Za’atar for you?” The man answered, “simply national pride.” She followed up by asking,“as they say Coca Cola is the USA or oregano is Italy, you want them to say..?”, “Zaatar is Israel,” he replied. The Israeli businessmen acknowledged that Za’atar is the plant of Arabs so they required “the [Israeli] Nature Authorities to instruct customs to confiscate all Za’atar but ours” (Foragers, 2023). This is the ritual bending of wills and crushing of spirits to continue dispossession. History must be rewritten and culture must be stolen to be associated with colonists because colonial regimes cannot have the oppressed thrive with the inevitable threat of revolt. A scene in Foragers shows a forager of akkoub and his crop and a group of Palestinians standing around him and murmuring with glee: “Its smell breaks hearts open, when I eat akkoub I feel strong like steel.” Akkoub is not only a plant but it invokes emotion deeply connected to familial culture. A Palestinian woman in a legal interview explained that “We've been foraging from this land for all our lives. Since the age of my father and grandfather.... since you banned us, Za’atar is harder to find. We don't find it like we used to. Za’atar needs to be trimmed, like all plants. The more it’s clipped the stronger it grows back” (Foragers, 2022). Israel disregards the Palestinian understanding of the natural world and would rather destroy their way of life through regulation. Historical ties to the land, culture, and ancestors are direct threats to the colonial regime attempting to erase that history and peoples. Americans may fail to understand the ties between foraging and ethnic cleansing, yet the practice of dispossessing inheritance is purposeful. Children, and those inheriting their parents' ways, are seen as liabilities to colonial power’s ability to keep standing. Ahmad proclaimed, “I'll also be caught in 2050 with my children and grandchildren... I'll continue the path of my grandparents. That is my truth” (Foragers, 2022). To Palestinians, resistance is the practice of everyday life.

Conclusion

In the final page of Said After The Last Sky, Edward Said wrote, “we Palestinians sometimes forget — that as in country after country, the surveillance, confinement, and study of Palestinians is part of the political process of reducing our status and preventing our national fulfilment except as the Other who is opposite and unequal, always on the defensive — we too are looking, we too scrutinising, assessing, judging. We are more than someone’s object... If you cannot finally see this about us, we will not allow ourselves to believe that the failure has been entirely ours. Not any more.” Said addressed the concept of collective identity that encompasses the Arab world, according to Makdisi. Since the forceful presence of colonisation in the Middle East in the 1900, the collective identity of Arabs has been shaped by resistance to western forces. Makdisi asserts that decolonization is a critical part of Arabism, and therefore Palestine’s neighbours should fight against the persistent colonial forces. Anti-colonial resistance is demonised as evil terrorism and standing with Palestinians is said to be promoting the annihilation of Jews as messages of propaganda to protect a colonial state. Franz Fanon claims that “decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder.” Disorder is an antonym of colonialism.“Disregard this law altogether,” a Palestinian forager of akkoub proclaimed as his principle. His freedom was found through denying power to colonial laws of oppression (Foragers, 2022). Palestine calls for the radical reimagining of statehood and order. To think and practice disorder is disallowing the oppressor the power to warp your mind. America’s perception of Palestine must change to disrupt the flow of disinformation and increase visibility of the humanity of Palestine and Palestinian history. Information can be weaponized but it is also the catalyst for change.

Afterword

It felt wholeheartedly improper to attempt to fully capture one part of Palestinian history or identity. I recognise my synopsis is not complete in the slightest and only scratches the surface of the word “Palestine.” I captured what I, a college freshman, would want to know as an introduction to Palestine and its connection to indigeneity. I found historical context is largely glossed over in media summaries and I believe this to be a crucial basis for understanding. I wrote this for the target audience of American college students with limited background knowledge of Palestine. In my activism on campus with the Palestine Solidarity Coalition and Dartmouth New Deal Coalition I have observed that the most effective detail to envoke Americans’ newfound understanding is relaying US’ involvement with Israel. Therefore, I heavily emphasised America’s complicity in the Palestinian genocide and rationale for the biases present in American government and media. I hope to encourage readers to remain vigilantly aware of colonial coverage of current events both domestic and international.

I was raised in an extremely political family who taught me about Palestine and the “Free Palestine” movement from a young age. I went to school each day in a red car with “Free Palestine” in bold font on our bumper. I remember walking out of a children’s store after purchasing a birthday present and a lady screaming at my mom and me over our bumper sticker. I have been aware of the horrors of Palestine, its connection to colonial wars across the globe, and the aggressive disinformation disseminated in the US. The struggle of Palestinians is the struggle against imperialism and colonialism. I cannot say more than my individual American perspective and I encourage students to read international news and talk to students from across the world. I have learned more through dinner table discussions than I have from any singular reading. History is incredibly important but lived experience paints a picture that we, as humans, can relate to. To dehumanise is the goal of colonisers, so, to fight back you must humanise in every instance and question the framing of all media that is consumed.

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