Gaza Today
Today, the city of Gaza is the ‘world’s largest open-air prison’, subjecting the Palestinian people to nearly a century of systematic dehumanization and oppression. This is not a byproduct of conflict, or a sacrifice of freedoms, but a deliberate series of actions by the state of Israel to erase the Palestinian people.
How It Started: 1948
This campaign of ethnic cleansing is traced back to 1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their rightful land and shattering communities. This event, the ‘Nakba’ set place generations of unjustified displacement, occupation, and ethnic cleansings. Homes destroyed, olive trees uprooted, and identities erased by the genocidal regime of Israel, that in turn has perpetrated propaganda against the Palestinians, fueling and spewing hate within Israel against the victims of their bombs.
This created the identity of a Palestinian, to be able to stand firm in the rightful land of your ancestors, even as the world attempts to erase you.
Why People Spoke Up- Especially Students!
In turn, protests erupted across the world in support of Palestine, and in the face of genocide and global silence, students rose. With chants, posters and banners, held by the fundamentals of a ‘democratic’ country, they demanded a ceasefire to stop the support of this genocide, while mourning the children lost by the bombs of the Israeli regime.
Freedom Has ‘Limits’
The right should have been protected by the constitutional freedoms of the West that preach freedom, but it failed to be utilized in this scenario as it comes at the support of a Muslim country. It is through this that the West exposed the limits of their ‘liberal democracy’, as the only crime the students committed was that of having compassion.
Such was imposed on protestor to maintain power and control over the voice of students, not peace. The West, branded with their supposed values of democracy, is challenged by its citizens for exercising democratic freedoms, to demand them to defund and denounce Israel for its actions. Even failing to even call these targeted actions a genocide, protecting political alliance and corporate interest over constitutional rights of its people.
Detaining of Protesters
During such protests, detaining citizens and arresting them without cause were all undemocratic and illiberal acts perpetrated by the government, as protesters, mostly students did NOT threaten safety nor disrupt any civil rights, but challenged complicity in this genocide. Governments often justify such acts with the balancing of freedoms, or need to protect national security, or most importantly prevent hate-speech.
Many say these acts are being done to prevent the spread of antisemitism, to protect the same genocidal regime responsible for literal ethnic cleansing. A singular life, cannot equate to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives. These acts are examples of the US government selectively providing rights and freedoms, showing their true ‘dedication’ to maintain freedoms, while suspending them to project their own interests.
What This Says About Democracy
Reflecting upon the last year of Pro-Palestinian protests, and the current state of foreign affairs and their impact on the application of democratic rights, it has made me realize the role of the citizen is much further than obeying laws within democracy to maintain ‘peace’.
Democracy, each time fails to stand beside injustice when it does not provide gain, leading to the establishment of the role of the citizens to challenge such beliefs when governments are complicit with injustice.
Students standing for Gaza did not call for destruction or hate, nor did they carry out attacks to the level of police they were met with. They simply asked the tough questions. “Why are the Western governments funding this?” “Why are Palestinian lives disposable?”.
Democracy celebrates these actions, it demonstrates the right to freedom of speech, peaceful protest, and is the basis of change. The government met this with hate, highlighting how The West is only a democracy in name, and reverted to control, surveillance, detention, and fear.
These are NOT values of a democracy but of an authoritarian regime. The role of students became a representation of action when the government fails to, to speak to individual beliefs, and to fight for injustice supported by your ‘democratic’ nation.