Written by Felicia Davenport and Kirk Baltimore

There's nothing antisemitic about standing with the people of Palestine, but something is dehumanizing about bypassing the genocide they're experiencing. Over the past few weeks, news outlets, political institutions, and public figures have preserved Israeli propaganda by implanting a "justified" defense of the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. And that "defense" maintains that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is war.

Narrative matters; in global contexts, it's easy to be spoon-fed rhetoric at mass volumes. In truth, being "informed" on a surface level at a national magnitude allows for a more "united" public opinion. And any information that may contradict public opinion is usually met with hostility and circumvention. The same is true for the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, President Biden pledged his support to Israel, which has developed into a 100 billion dollar package in Congress. If the backing of a superpower like the United States isn't enough narrative, one-sided reporting and misleading information have enabled an "American" stance that completely removes the humanity of the Palestinian people.

If the national perspective of what's happening in Gaza is one of war and America stands on the "right" side, there is a willful ignorance that is encouraged by spectators. And that willful ignorance leads to complicity, not only in ideology but in humanity. Shortly after the terrorist attack by Hamas, Israel shut off water, electricity, and aid to Gaza. Such acts are not consistent with war. Experts have expressed humanitarian concerns, as millions of innocent Palestinians are expected to be without water, food, electricity, and medical care. In addition, Israel has also responded to the attacks by Hamas with airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which have resulted in thousands of innocent Palestinians being killed and injured. Given these acts, a universal humanitarian conversation exists on whether Israel has committed war crimes.

Despite these facts, the ubiquitous narrative hasn't allowed empathy for the innocent Palestinians. However, it's nonetheless intentional. Ussama Makdisi from the University of California, Berkeley, stated regarding the treatment of Palestinians: "As soon as you identify with them as people —as ordinary human beings —you cannot do to them what's now being done to them right now." The issue is when we become more comfortable overlooking the plight of specific populations if the narrative has encouraged us to see them as less than human.

This begs the question —when faced with clear examples of war crimes, propaganda, and genocide, does the personhood of the oppressed group determine the degree to which there is (1) global outrage and (2) acceptance of resistance to the perpetrators? That is, do we deem certain groups less than human? This alone provides the landscape in which we can have video footage for almost two weeks depicting these atrocities and the continued ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in the geographical land of Palestine. Dehumanization is not an incidental byproduct of war! It is a meticulously well-thought-out series of policies and propaganda that lay the landscape for an "us vs. them" mentality. We have historical accounts of this happening repeatedly, with far-reaching implications. Yet, in 2023, we can witness the mass genocide of a group of people, and society and world powers still choose to rationalize those actions.

When there is so much evidence of propaganda and dehumanization, one must question why. In the inverse, we must also examine how humans can reconcile with these atrocities. Why is genocide so "complicated" to identify with specific populations? Our inability to address the imperialistic forces that reflect white supremacy is a pattern that continues to emerge. Oppression maintains a vested interest in portraying the global majority (BIPOC) as othered, less than, savage, and undeserving of humanity and consideration. And with such a sub-human narrative, we can answer the question above about how we reconcile our compliance and willful ignorance. That is, if there is social segregation, a sense of inadequacy in the human experience with those who are described as "barbaric," "savage," and "perverse," then there will be constant gaslighting of their plight.

"For Palestinians, and anyone else who refused to buy into the Zionist narrative, it was clear long before this book was written that these people were perpetrators of crimes, but that they had successfully evaded justice and would probably never be brought to trial for what they had done. Besides their trauma, the deepest form of frustration of Palestinians has been that the criminal act these men were responsible for has been so thoroughly denied and that Palestinian suffering has been so totally ignored, ever since 1948."

Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

What's even more interesting than Western society bypassing the genocide of the people of Palestine is its involvement in the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, which caused thousands of Palestinians to become displaced. 2023 marks 75 years since the first Al-Nakba, or the Palestinian experience of dispossession and losing their homeland. Nakba translates as catastrophe and has been used to refer to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people in 1948. It is essential to understand that the events of October 2023 did not happen in a vacuum, nor are they the first time the Zionist State of Israel has systematically and strategically attempted to wipe out and forcibly remove the Palestinian population.

On May 14, 1948, Zionist forces, having garnered the backing of the British government for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, proclaimed the birth of the State of Israel, coinciding with the expiration of the British Mandate in the region. This declaration marked the inception of enduring conflict and the first Arab-Israeli war. During this turbulent period, Zionist military operations displaced 750,000 Palestinians, who were forcibly uprooted from their ancestral homes and lands. Simultaneously, these military actions captured approximately 78 percent of historic Palestine by the newly formed State of Israel. The remaining 22 percent of the land was subsequently divided, giving rise to the territories now recognized as the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.

If the oppression is evident, why is it so easy for Western societies and the like to look away? The fact is that the dehumanization of Black and Brown people makes room for apathy. Essentially, "oppression" isn't oppression when it concerns people of color. And narrative breathes life into whatever lie that suggests that specific populations aren't "eligible" for empathy. To overlook the genocide the Palestinians face along with their exploited history takes commitment. And that devotion is to an allegiance to White supremacist ideals that can be compartmentalized and justified.

Morally, who would want to justify or compartmentalize a genocide? The "convenient" social glossophobia is palpable; this fear of critiquing society by overlooking the harsh realities of the oppressed just to avoid seeming anti-Semitic is deafening. If our humanity were intact, we would consider those who not only don't have a voice but also don't have a choice about what happens to them. While we're timid to speak against the "towering pillars," thousands of innocent people are losing their lives to them. We have often asked ourselves, "What would we have done during the enslavement of African people, Jim Crow, the Holocaust," and the list goes on. It has become abundantly clear since October 7th, with the flood of imagery and proof of atrocities on social media, that many would have chosen the way of silence. For many, the personal risk of speaking up outweighs their morality. What we say, when, and how we say it matters. If lives are on the line, reputations are small prices to play to save them.

Palestinians Are Human Beings: You Cannot Do To Them What’s Being Done To Them Now