EXCERPT
Over the last seven months, Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has generated an unprecedented wave of global protest and awareness around Palestine. Many millions of people have taken to the streets, encampments have spread across universities throughout the world, courageous activists have blocked ports and arms factories, and there is a deep-seated recognition that a global campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is needed now more than ever. The strength of these popular movements has been reinforced through the enormous attention brought by South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – a case that has not only powerfully highlighted the reality of Israeli genocide but also the intransigence of the leading Western states in enabling Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip and beyond.
Nonetheless, despite this global upsurge in solidarity with Palestine, there remain several misconceptions in how Palestine is commonly debated and framed. Too often, the politics of Palestine are viewed simply through the lens of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, ignoring the wider regional dynamics of the Middle East, and the global context in which Israeli settler colonialism operates. Relatedly, solidarity with Palestine is frequently reduced to the question of Israel’s massive human rights abuses and ongoing violations of international law – the killings, arrests, and dispossession that Palestinians have experienced for nearly eight decades. The problem with this human rights framing is that it depoliticises the Palestinian struggle, failing to explain why Western states continue to support Israel so unequivocally. And when this crucial question of Western support is raised, many point to a ‘pro-Israel lobby’ operating in North America and Western Europe as the cause – a false and politically dangerous viewpoint that gets the relationship between Western states and Israel fundamentally wrong.
Source:
https://www.tni.org/en/article/framing-palestine