On 7 November 2023, the death toll in Gaza surpassed 10,000 as the most brutal military assault in contemporary history continues to unfold. Now impossible to update following the collapse of services and communications in the north, this figure had risen to 11,078 by November 10th, with thousands still missing – who may be “trapped or dead under the rubble”.
Referring to a civil uprising, ‘intifada’ is an Arabic term that translates too to a ‘shaking off’ – long used in Palestine to refer to the ‘shaking off’ of the shackles of colonial domination, including through mass civil disobedience, unity and solidarity, boycotts, divestment and sanctions. Beneath the burgeoning death toll across Palestine are global systems of power, rooted in the logic, history and present of colonial violence. As such, in the face of this genocide, the intifada – the ‘shaking off’ of colonial dynamics of racism, violence, dehumanisation and division – must be globalised.
According to Save the Children, more children were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in three weeks than in warzones across the globe since 2019. With over 4,500 Palestinian children recorded dead in this recent escalation of colonial genocide, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, called Gaza a “graveyard for children”.
Since Hamas attacks on 7 October that killed 1,200 Israelis – including 33 children – and saw over 239 taken hostage, the scale of Israel’s violence has been unrelenting – continuing a horrifying trajectory ongoing from before 1948 to the present. Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, UNWRA facilities, ambulances and convoys of both aid and evacuees have been targeted in Israel’s month-long bombardment, while the imposition of a deadly siege threatens mass starvation, dehydration and the devastation of essential infrastructure and services. Only one hospital in the north is now operational amid fuel shortages and ongoing attacks by Israeli forces on the Al Quds and Al Shifa hospitals – with thousands still trapped inside.
As a population already traumatised by forced displacement and ethnic cleansing, over 1.5 million Palestinians – 65 percent of the 2.3 million population of Gaza – have now been internally displaced in the densely populated ‘open-air prison’.
The colonial present and systemic hypocrisy
Aligning with Palestinian civil society and the many Jewish voices that seek to untangle Zionism and the actions of the Israeli state from Judaism and Jewish identity, it is essential to place these devastating statistics in their context of settler colonialism. As my Palestinian friend and colleague, Omar Khatib, reiterates, “Israel is a settler colonial state that was established and exists on the erasure and ethnic cleansing of a whole people and nation. Let’s deal with this very foundational concept.”
In recognition of the clouding of this violent materiality, author Ta-Nehisi Coates outlines the frequent ascription of ‘complexity’ to discussion of Israeli occupation and apartheid and names, in an interview after a visit to the West Bank “just how uncomplicated it actually is […]. You don’t need a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies”, he explained, “to understand the basic morality of holding people in a situation where they don’t have basic rights”.
What else is glaringly uncomplicated is the hypocrisy systemic to the global world order, in which the West – led by the US, UK and key European allies – postures as the paragon and guardian of human rights and international law, yet asserts its “steadfast and united support” to Israel regardless of the damning evidence of the illegality of the state’s actions undertaken through the now untenable frame of ‘self-defence’. While the US already supplies Israel with approximately $3.8 billion in ‘security assistance’ annually, additional support has been made manifest in statements, political support at the international level, and increased military and economic aid – with the Biden administration requesting an additional $14.3 billion for Israel from Congress.
While principles of human rights have in other cases been selectively invoked by Western governments to impose economic sanctions and justify devastating military interventions – such as in Iraq and Afghanistan – the flagrant support of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians is clear evidence, writes Afreen Faridi, “of how White liberal states and societies can flout international conventions – of their own creation – freely and with absolute impunity” – and, profit while doing so.
Silencing and censorship
In today’s digitised world, the horrors and scale of Israel’s violence across Palestine are, at least, visually accessible to many – revealing the brutality too of this enduring colonial hypocrisy. Nonetheless, targeting of Palestinian journalists, internet shutdowns, and a broader wave of silencing and censorship serve to disrupt the communication and critical analysis of Israel’s actions.
Telecommunications blackouts have been imposed three times to date as a weapon of war by Israel since 7 October, including on 27 October before Israel launched its ground invasion into Gaza. At the same time, Reporters without Borders said “nowhere is safe for journalists in the Gaza Strip [… who are] covering one of this century’s deadliest wars are in constant danger of death”. “Betray[ing] an open contempt for international humanitarian law”, they write, 36 journalists have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza so far, with more than 50 media premises completely or partially destroyed.
Outside of Palestine, repression of protest and censorship of critique are heightening, while anti-Zionism as an anti-racist and anti-colonial movement is all too often conflated with antisemitism. For instance, the Jerusalem Declaration on antisemitism is written as a response to the highly problematic IHRA definition, which the authors rightly assert has “caused confusion and generated controversy, hence weakening the fight against antisemitism”. They continue: “supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national and civil rights, as encapsulated in international law” is not an example of antisemitism – nor is “evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state” or the assertion of the presence of “systematic racial discrimination.”
Nonetheless, the former U.K. Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, described the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza as guilty of participating in “hate marches“. In a letter to all UK Chief Constables, she instructed police to ensure “a strong presence” and criminalise “offensive chants, placards or behaviours” at such demonstrations, including waving of a Palestinian flag, which she deems as “intended to glorify acts of terrorism”.
Academic freedom too is at stake. As Israeli forces stormed and vandalised Birzeit University in Ramallah on 8 November, a sector of U.K. academia is struggling against government intervention and censorship. Secretary of State for Science, Michelle Donelan, demanded that the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the UK’s independent funding body – cut links with two academics appointed to the expert equality, diversity and inclusion advisory group, whom she mischaracterised as promoting “extremist views”: in response, CEO of UKRI, Professor Ottoline Leyser, suspended the advisory panel and is now holding an enquiry on account of Donelan’s accusations.
Standing accused by the University and College Union of “capitulat[ing] to unwarranted pressure”, an open letter to the UKRI signed by over 2,700 academics aptly stated that: “Targeting one of the most authoritative research bodies in the country has surely been designed to produce a chilling effect across the whole academic community at the cost of intellectual and professional integrity.”
The intifada must be globalised
Undoubtedly, we are at a moment of reckoning. Our collective response is urgent: We cannot, writes Afeen Faridi, simply “wait for a people to die, make a museum of their genocide, then set up departments of decoloniality over their mass graves.”
As Palestinians bear the murderous weight of the colonial present – materialised in an unprecedented scale of genocidal military force – streets and cities across the world have been seething and screaming, calling first for an immediate ceasefire, and secondly for decolonisation and a dismantling of Israel’s apartheid regime.
The term intifada translates as a “shaking off” and refers to a “civil uprising”. From the Jewish Voice for Peace protesters proclaiming ‘not in our name’ in “Jews against Genocide” rallies, to the hundreds of thousands that marched in London on Armistice Day, masses across the globe are protesting the violence we are all watching – aligning with the Palestinian call for justice and liberation, and forging solidarities across anti-racist, decolonial and liberatory politics more broadly.
This shaking off, this uprising – against the horrors of colonial genocide, and the racism and profiteering that precedes, sustains and follows it – must be global. Reminding us that “the causes of Palestine and Black liberation” are intertwined, Angela Davis cites the late poet June Jordan in asserting that Palestine “is a moral litmus test for the world.”
As global solidarities and movements, progressive voices and critical analysis are increasingly silenced, siloed and censored, we must speak truth to power, even as – and, indeed, because – it is becoming ever harder to do so. At the same time, Davis continues, “We have to believe that it is possible to make change and we can’t give up. We can’t not hope because hope is the condition of all struggles.”
This blog was updated on 24 November to clarify what is meant by the term ‘intifada’ used in the title.
