In the past week, the violence in East Jerusalem has escalated beyond containment and control. Video footage recorded by local residents made the rounds on social media, followed by informative slides on the harm inflicted by the Israeli occupation. Casualties and injuries escalated, making martyrs again out of yet another generation. The Palestinian cause is now capturing the attention of those whose governments must be held accountable for aiding and abetting the Israeli regime.
The Palestinian cause is one of the last unifying causes of the Arab world. It is this nostalgic longing for a united Arab front that has allowed for discourse about Palestinian liberation and rights to continuously appear in the news cycle. Support for its people can be found in the suburbs of Tunisia to the mountains of Lebanon. Previous generations, some of whom have seen Israel’s divisive and obstructive governments penetrate their land or meddle with their domestic politics, have exhausted their anti-imperialist calls for international resistance and cooperation. The words of Edward Said, Ilan Pappe, and Walid Khalidi lose their significance each year as the Israeli military budget, bloated with American aid, grows and as it solidifies its place as one of the world’s top arms manufacturers, ranking at eighth place in 2020.
The myth of two-sidedness is now demystified by the plethora of evidence shared online, where besiegement and bombardment reign over the very homes that the families residing in East Jerusalem sought to protect and preserve. When social media conglomerate Facebook was accused of censoring resistance by removing content shared by Palestine’s advocates and activists, it was clear to all that freedom of speech only existed insofar that the status quo, upheld by tech giants and government officials alike, is not challenged.
Just as the Zionist movement predicated Jewish self-determination on the gradual expulsion and erasure of the “savage” Palestinian Arabs, Israel’s regime only perseveres under the guise of self-defence against the “violence” and “riots” incited by its subjects—a narrative corroborated by a handful of the world’s most notable media channels. But comparisons of Nazi Germany to occupied Palestine do not serve the Palestinian quest for freedom and agency in daily life; belittling the plight of Jews in the Holocaust merely reiterates the sentiment of Jewish isolation and the need for a secure homeland. These hyperbolic comparisons undermine the longstanding efforts of anti-Zionists trying to convey the horrifying reality of Palestinians.
What must be done in the whirlwind of social media activism is an open collaboration with movements across the globe that have undertaken the strenuous pursuit for liberation and self-determination.
In her book of essays, lectures, and interviews, ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement,’ Angela Davis discusses the focal points of Black liberation and its ties to Palestine by examining the securitization and militarization of the United States and Israel. By drawing factual parallels between the two powers, using military budgets, business transactions, and under-the-table meetings, Davis presents the succeeding generations with a template for social movements in the digital age: imaginative collaboration.
As was seen in Apartheid South Africa and the early days of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, the changes underway require new vocabulary and innovative methods for global resistance. Davis also speaks of her experiences with LGBTQ+ organizations that advocate for abolition and how collective bargaining and communal advocacy—displayed in the protests that erupted globally after George Floyd’s murder—can be extrapolated and used within the Palestinian context.
“We have to extricate ourselves from narrow identarian thinking if we want to encourage progressive people to embrace the struggles as their own… as an approach—as a way of conceptualizing, as a methodology, as a guide to strategies for struggle,” Davis writes.
As such, sustainable activism requires lifelong advocates to provide new 'on boarders' with the wide and extensive tools needed to understand the forces that have brought Palestinians to their knees. Political organization and mobilization require an informed audience that does not rid itself of responsibility through the signing of an online petition or the sharing of a social justice slideshow post, one with “colorful gradients, large serif fonts, [and] pastel backgrounds.” This education must reckon with Pan-Arabism and its merits, anti-imperialism, and the systemic decolonization of colonial settlers around the world, all of which are part and parcel of Palestinian liberation.
In the age of mass information and immediate accessibility, there are no excuses for ignorance and neglect—but it is what we do with the tools bestowed upon us by the Internet and its offspring that are remarkable in their ability to provoke change and demand accountability. The lives and destinies of the Palestinian people depend on their supporters’ invested engagement; credible video footage, organized protests, and political pressure alongside deliberate education through works researched and synthesized by credible scholars and historians, films directed by Palestinians to showcase their realities, and the diverse voices found on podcasts or recorded panels. This is how to translate the energy online to commitment and dedication to the cause offline.
For liberation, in both its temporal and horizontal continuity, is interconnected and interwoven into the hierarchies of power that were sturdily built in the proceeding century. The legacies of these hierarchies can only be unravelled if present and succeeding generations partake in communal reparation, through optimism, patience, and time. Proponents of human rights and social justice must stand on the shoulders of giants to imagine and create what lies ahead, for only then can Palestine truly, and enduringly, be free.