“Netanyahu you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”

[This piece, by Amal de Chickera, Co-Director of The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), was originally posted here by Medium.com on 6 November 2013 and is reproduced here with the Author’s permission]

“Or does self-defence mean, the defence of the indefensible idea of ethnically cleansing the land of all Palestinians? Does it mean the defence of the indefensible notion of settler colonialism? Does it mean the defence of the indefensible pursuit of supremacist ideology?”

The resounding clarity of the protest slogan “Netanyahu you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide”, chanted by millions of people marching worldwide for a ceasefire, for an end to genocide, for justice, for peace, for a free Palestine, puts to shame most heads of state and political leaders.

In these darkest of days, my phone and computer screens — as I’m sure those of many others — are dominated by three types of content.

1. Images and words that try to capture the unimaginable, language defying horror being mercilessly, psychopathically meted out on the Palestinian people in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. I say ‘try’ because I think it is impossible for those of us not living this nightmare, to fully comprehend existence amidst such relentless cruelty, carnage and sadism.
2. Images and words of rabid warmongering, gaslighting, dehumanisation, justification, pontification, ‘debate’, hatred, supremacy, spewed by the Israeli state, its powerful allies, a largely complicit media, racists and supremacists around the world.
3. Images and words of solidarity, resilience, righteous anger, compassion, revolution, resistance, direct action, by a growing global mass, reflecting an awakening of consciousness, of fedupness and rage. People of the world, are rising up, getting organised, marching and taking action, to send a clear message to our supposed representatives who think they can get away with facilitating, endorsing, turning a blind eye to, or not doing everything in their power to stem this genocide.

This latest, most intensely violent episode of the Palestinian and Israeli story is now four weeks old. But the profoundly unjust, painful and violent tragedy endured by the Palestinian people is more than a hundred years in the making. The lived experience of these hundred plus years has kneaded an immovable resilience, strength and stubbornness into the very fabric of Palestinian society; a generational commitment to endure all that Israel has and will throw at it, and still shine on. While resistance will mean different things to different groups, sparking disagreement within Palestinian society, the duty to resist occupation is a largely unifying value. Israeli society has over this time, perhaps grown more polarised, with ever deepening, now seemingly insurmountable fissures between dominant, increasingly fascist, genocidal voices on the one hand, and those who oppose the occupation and are fighting for peaceful co-existence on the other.

Typically, given the polarising nature of this very long story, the telling of this particular episode completely changes, depending on who is doing the telling. If an alien were eavesdropping, they would be forgiven for thinking there were two very different situations at play. But it’s not only the telling of the story, but also the manner of its telling, which is in itself, a tell.

I see on the one hand, people choosing their words with extreme care and caution. If this catastrophe has produced a million statements and articles, the number of drafts circulated, reviewed, edited, argued over, the number of hours spent in the interest of balance, tone, language, must be astronomical. The care taken to find the ‘right’ words, can be values driven — a genuine commitment to use language for good, to be accurate, to find ways to bridge polarisation, to not inadvertently cause pain to those who hold a different view. But it is also about self-preservation, to avoid the myriad traps set for anyone articulating their solidarity with the Palestinian people or calling for restraint and respect for international law on the part of Israel. Perhaps the most deeply cynical and damaging of these traps, is the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. These bad faith charges of antisemitism (often liberally spewed by proven antisemites) — particularly when levelled at minorities in the western world — can (and sometimes does) cost everything.

I know who I am. I am anti-racist and anti-violent to my very core. But when writing about Israel, whether in my own name or as a collective, I have found myself taking extra care with how I chose and use every word, to not give bad faith actors any opening to taint my intentions. This is of course a losing battle, because it is impossible to protect against the unhinged denigrations of those whose mission it is to disingenuously undermine any critique of Israel by painting it antisemitic.

And then on the other hand, I see people spewing unmitigated hatred, spelling out in no uncertain terms, their genocidal intent, dehumanising Palestinians in a manner that is affronting and insulting almost to the point of incomprehension. The wielders of such hatred are often platformed and legitimised by the quiet affirmation, endorsement and finger-wringing of suited technocrats of the mainstream media, western diplomatic and liberal establishment society. These sycophants resolutely choose — and it is always a choice — to disregard the true meaning of the crude, vile hate speech they hear. Their job, which they perform with gusto, is to sanitise, repackage and sell the hate in more ‘acceptable’, ‘rational’ soundbites. They do this by unquestioningly spouting state-centric justifications for the unjustifiable, citing self-defence, fighting terrorism and protecting democracy. The benefit of the doubt is relentlessly given to the hate-mongers, whose words, were they to be applied at face value to almost any other group, would be immediately recognised and denounced for what they really are.

It’s not necessary to repeat in detail the self-incriminating genocidal calls of the Israeli establishment and their apologists worldwide. But let me tell you this, we are not dealing with a rational situation here. We have seen them:

• Literally call all Palestinians (children and all) animals and terrorists who should be annihilated.
• Openly admit to pursuing strategies of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, forced expulsion, starvation, destroying infrastructure and indiscriminate attacks to cause maximum damage.
• Speak of vengeance, and invoke Amalek.
• Victoriously share videos of war crimes — from the viscerally intimate brutality of stripping naked, beating up and torturing Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, to the cold, distant brutality of massive bombs flattening entire blocks and killing hundreds of people in Gaza.
• Create tiktok videos mocking and ridiculing the bereavement and trauma of genocide victims
• Coat bullets in pigs blood and write sadistic messages on missiles before launching them on their deathly final journeys.

Such dehumanising and sadistic words, theatrics and symbolism of genocide and hate is backed up with the most brutal actions to match:

• Thousands killed, well over a third children (at the time of writing this sentence, the number was 9,770; a number which will be out of date before I post this piece).
• Tens of thousands injured, maimed, buried under rubble.
• Hospitals forced to conduct operations and amputations without anaesthetic, treat patients without antiseptic, and running on reserve generators to keep babies alive in incubators.
• The use of illegal weapons on children and civilian adults, including phosphorous bombs.
• Entire neighbourhoods reduced to dust.
• Hospitals, schools, ambulances, mosques, churches, universities, refugee camps, UN compounds, civil registries all intentionally targeted and attacked.
• Journalists, doctors, humanitarian workers, ambulance first responders, UN staff killed.
• Deliberate targeting all things that give life — water pipes and reservoirs, fishing boats, bakeries, solar panels, communication infrastructure, electricity and the like.
• An impossible and unlawful evacuation order to a million people, followed by the bombing of some who obeyed, on the ‘safe’ routes they were told to use.
• The persistent denial of humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing.
• Palestinian villages in the West Bank being forced to evacuate under threat of life by Israeli settlers and the military.
• The mass arbitrary detention and torture of Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank.
• Bombings of Palestinian communities and infrastructure in the West Bank.

Any one of these acts are war crimes. This is genocide. It is barbaric, heinous, indefensible.

But it is being brazenly carried out, while simultaneously claiming victimhood, invoking the right to self-defence and gaslighting the entire world.

Let’s play a game. Let’s call this bluff. The bluff of self-defence.

How much self-defencing does it take to self-defence a sense of security for those whose ideology seems to be predicated in manufactured, bloated paranoia? When the logic of self-defence is construed to mean that it is an untrammelled right that is held in perpetuity, and when this is then unleashed upon that other logic that ‘every Palestinian is a terrorist’, where does that leave us? That despite the objects and purposes of the United Nations, despite principles of human rights, despite the laws of war, despite the jus cogens prohibition of genocide, the imperative of self-defence demands the slaughter and forced expulsion of an entire people? Is this the argument that the USA, which is bankrolling, providing a military sword and a diplomatic shield for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, subscribes to?

But here’s the thing. ‘Self-defence’ isn’t the blank cheque that Israel, America, the UK and several EU countries have painted it to be (we are now seeing some quiet, embarrassed roll-back in language, but not in action). This isn’t news to them of course. It is the deliberate obfuscation of a very basic legal concept. Think about it. All the solemn stares, sombre voices, measured prose in defence of the self-defence argument, are wilful misrepresentations of international law. These are people who know better, who prefer to be viewed as ignorant or hypocritical, instead of clearly articulating the legal parameters that restrict self-defence, or any other act of aggression.

But let’s ask a different question as well. What does self-defence actually defend?

• Is it the defence of Israel’s borders?Isn’t this best achieved by not illegally taking Palestinian land, trapping Palestinians in a concentration camp, controlling every aspect of their lives and subjecting them to daily violence, humiliation and subjugation? Isn’t it this never-ending project of using force to always redraw borders, always take, always push out, that is transforming these particular borders into sites of extreme contention and violence, even by the heady standards of ‘borders’ in general?
• Is it the defence of the hostages taken?Isn’t this best achieved by not relentlessly bombing the area they were taken to, but instead, listening to their families and negotiating for their release? Offering what Israel has illegally prised — the liberty, security and dignity of thousands of Palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons — as a fair exchange for the hostages that Hamas also took illegally?
• Is it the defence of Israeli citizens from future attacks?Isn’t this best achieved by not pursuing a policy of feeding Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority (as Netanyahu proudly claims credit for), but instead, being serious about a peace that centres justice and liberation for the Palestinian people?
• Is it the defence of the idea of Israel? Isn’t this best achieved by bucking the long-standing practice of Israel being a serial violator of international law? By demonstrating that Israel can become a democracy in its true sense, instead of the occupying, apartheid, fascist, war-crime committing state it is?

Or does self-defence mean, the defence of the indefensible idea of ethnically cleansing the land of all Palestinians? Does it mean the defence of the indefensible notion of settler colonialism? Does it mean the defence of the indefensible pursuit of supremacist ideology?

And here’s the other thing. The Palestinians, as an occupied people, have the right to resist their unlawful occupation, including through the use of force. This is the same right that the French resistance wielded, when under Nazi occupation. If you are occupying me, and I have the right to resist your occupation, do you have the rebutting right under international law to punish (read destroy) me as an act of your self-defence? What law treats both victim and oppressor as victim? Spoiler: it is not the law of self-defence.

The ’self-defence’ of 2023, is the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ of 2003. It is the petulant brat plugging their ears and screaming as loud as possible, in the hope that their voice will endure. It is the audacity to bully and browbeat all other viewpoints, international norms and basic morality into submission. It is the fig leaf covering the naked racism and inhumanity at the very heart of this catastrophe.

The world of course sees through this. The emperor truly has no clothes. The US — through bloodymindedly pursuing its policy of unquestioning military, financial and diplomatic cover and support for Israel — is quickly losing any goodwill it may have built and any credibility it may still have had. The UK, ever happy to be the US lapdog in cheerleading war crimes, clearly hasn’t learnt the lessons of 2003. And Israel, buoyed by the impunity it is enjoying, is getting more unhinged with every passing hour, as it carries on bombing, starving, burning, parching, killing.

We — who resolutely oppose these atrocities — are the many, and they are the few. There is absolutely no denying this fact. The majority of the world’s people in all continents would end these horrors this very second, if it was within their power to do so. And so, if ever there was a moment, which showed us how completely broken ‘democracy’ has become, this is it. For we live in a world where it is increasingly clear that an overwhelming minority of people who lack any compassion, decency or humanity, cruelly wield the power of life and death over fellow human beings, and are happy to do so with impunity, and in brazen defiance of international law. How is this different to the monarchies and totalitarianism that democracy supposedly supplanted?

I recently read a tweet that it is ‘Palestine that is setting us free’. It is perhaps confronting to hold this thought when millions of Palestinians are under such immediate and grave threat. But there is a truth to this. It has taken this unspeakable sadistic violence, to shake the consciousness of our world in a way that I haven’t seen before. We are rising up in one voice to demand freedom for Palestine. In doing so, we are also emancipating ourselves. We may even save our broken democracies. For if we cannot use the weight of our collective voice and action to protect our fellow humans in their hour of greatest need, our democracies will be exposed (yet again) to be nothing but dressed up platitudes and morality laundering schemes.

So political parties and so-called leaders across the world, remember this:

You are supposed to represent us.

You cannot represent us, without representing the best in us.

But we are better than you. By far!

We are kinder.

We are more compassionate.

We are more empathetic.

We live be stronger value codes.

We are more truthful.

We are more courageous.

We are more accountable.

We demand a ceasefire now.

We demand an end to genocide.

We demand freedom for Palestine.

We demand justice and accountability for all.

You have proven that you have no morality to appeal to.

You have proven that truth is a game to you.

You have proven that the weight of the law sits like a feather on your shoulders.

You have proven that it is power and greed that drive you.

So we will hit you where it hurts.

We will organise, protest, agitate, disrupt, boycott.

We will use our power to fight this inhumanity. Your inhumanity.

We will break our complicity, which is so infuriatingly tied to yours.

With our voice and through our actions we are making clear, the abundant gulf between us and you.

It is your job to bridge this divide.

Move closer to our will that you so brazenly lie about representing.

Or face the consequences of revulsion, rejection, legal, economic, political and social action.

To end with another protest slogan:

I believe that we will win!

I believe that we will win!

I believe that we will win!