Looking Beyond the Rockets of Hamas
Reflections on the May 2021 bombing of Gaza [27 June 2021]
Just last month, Israeli airstrikes pounded the Gaza strip for more than a week, supposedly as retaliation to the rocket attacks launched by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups from within Gaza. It was reported that more than 200 Palestinians died in that month of May, 66 of who were children.[1] During that time, while I was seeing Facebook posts expressing solidarity with Israel, our online class on the history of Modern West Asia was, by coincidence, tackling a period which actually laid the conditions for the present issue. On a more personal note, last month was also a time of deep reflection, a time wherein I confronted my ignorance of the history behind this contemporary issue and, with difficulty, tried to dismantle my prejudice against the Arab peoples. This piece is therefore both a written confession of my shame and ignorance, a synthesis of my realizations in the past month, and an attempt draw lessons from the Palestinian struggle.
Admittedly, I did idolize the state of Israel. It was difficult not to develop such sentiment about Israel and its people being God’s chosen people (Biblically and in the present context) who are endowed with God’s favors which supposedly has given them an advantage over their Arab neighbors. If we look at the various action movies which featured the exploits of the Mossad and the Israeli Defense Force and documentaries or magazine articles which discussed the birth of the state of Israel, from its struggle for Independence to the “miraculous” Six Day War”[2], the state of Israel has always been presented as a David amongst a multitude of Goliaths. It has always been portrayed, in mainstream media, as an underdog — a people in diaspora who fled from discrimination and the holocaust in Europe, and who sought to return to the land which was “historically” theirs. Thus, the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its occupation of the land, most especially of Jerusalem, has been entrenched and, one could even say, tainted with divine providence. Another factor which I believe had contributed to how I viewed Israel was religion, for both Catholics and Protestants have always made Jerusalem and the kingdom of Israel a focal point in their doctrines.
Although I do not want to be seen as someone who generalizes these faiths, one of which I still profess today, we also have to understand that these dominant narratives which assert the indigeneity of the Kingdom of Israel and its continuity in what is now the present state of Israel are central to how Christian Filipinos make sense of the current issues plaguing this region. Added to this is the persisting Islamophobia in our own country, which has been reified by the corpus of, borrowing from Edward Said, Orientalist scholarship[3], American and European media, and by the colonial literature, history, and traditions which has been embedded among Christian Filipinos. This collective memory which has been reinforced by performances and portrayals of Muslims, both in the context of the Spanish Reconquista (e.g. moro-moro) or the slave raiding by the moros of Mindanao has, in one way or another, “othered” our Muslim Filipino brothers and sisters.
That being said, my engagement with the discussions in our class concerning the history of this region in West Asia has left me questioning myself and my long held beliefs about Israel and the Palestinian people. For one, it came as a surprise to know that by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the territory now occupied by Israel was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem was a multi-ethnic and religiously diverse city — with Arabs, Jews, and Orthodox Christians living in peaceful coexistence[4]. That based from Turkish records, Arabs constituted majority of the population in the region, and that despite being ethnic minorities, the Jewish and Christian communities were treated equally by the Arabs[5]. Then, upon reading the articles of Zionist leaders, I have realized that Zionism as a political movement had in fact explicitly expressed a goal of acquiring a homeland in Palestine for Jews in diaspora through settler colonialism[6]. However, the part of this history of Palestine which had sparked within me an urge to self-reflect was the rather shady dealings of Zionist leaders and European Imperial powers during and after the First World War — from the Balfour Declaration to the policies of the British Mandate which were from the start, biased for the Jewish settlers[7]. Lastly, is the United States’ intervention in the regional politics of West Asia by the onset of the Cold War, which were accomplished largely with the cooperation of the state of Israel who acted as a valuable ally and a buffer which protected US interests in the region.
Though the history of this region is far lengthier and complex, my point is that this encounter of historical facts which sheds light on the narratives and experiences of the marginalized peoples, in our case the Palestinians, allows us to form an idea of how the present conditions of the region came to be. For one, an understanding of their history shows that the land the Zionists had settled in was neither barren nor unpopulated, as it was home to a majority Arab population, with their own settlements, culture and traditions. By looking beyond racial and ethnic stereotypes of Arab Palestinians and by considering the role of western colonialism in the conception of the state of Israel, we may be able to understand the persisting Palestinian resistance directed against it.
I have then asked myself, with regards to the coverage of the events which had transpired last month, that perhaps we had only noticed the rockets of Hamas, most of which were intercepted by a superior Israeli defense system and whose damage were mitigated by the privileged use of bomb shelters, but not the Israeli airstrikes which landed on clustered Palestinian homes, on Palestinian civilians. That perhaps we may have only condemned the fighters of Hamas because of their being Muslim, but not the Israeli Defense Force and border guards who continuously harass and injure Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Jerusalem. Or could it be that we have been so enthralled in the idea of the continuity of the Biblical Israel in the form of the present state of Israel, that their illegal occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank[8]and elsewhere is justified, and that the history of Palestinian resistance — from the Palestine Liberation Organization, the 1st and 2nd Intifada, to the recent actions of Hamas — are all but forms of terrorism and Jewish hatred? If so, then it follows that the 1896 Philippine Revolution which sought to expel Spanish colonial rule was also a terrorist movement; that similar to the leaders of the Palestinian resistance our Rizal and Bonifacio were also terrorists because they too had stood up against an empire.
Having realized this, I instantly felt ashamed remembering how I once championed an apartheid state and its driving ideology which oppressed the indigenous inhabitants of the land and had displaced thousands immediately after its conception in 1948 — with generations of Palestinians having since then lived in diaspora, still unable to return to their homes. However, I have learned a great deal of lessons from my professors, one of which is that this feeling of shame or disappointment after being faced with evidences that ran counter to one’s previously held beliefs can be transformed into hope and progressive action. By realizing our lapses and misconceptions and by accepting new perspectives through the study and analysis of history, we can as a people form an outline of the actions we ought to take in order to achieve collective goals — be it prosperity, equality, freedom, or social justice.
From the Palestinians we Filipinos can learn that it is essential for a people to remember their history and their culture in order to continue a stride towards genuine self-determination. Through historicizing the Palestinian resistance against Israel, we may also understand the persistence of the drug problem in our country, the separatist movements in Mindanao, and the continued engagements between state forces and the New People’s Army — as all of these conflicts have risen due to the subjugation of a minority by a majority and the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities. If we only view the violent nature of the launching of the rockets by Hamas but not the long history of oppression that their people have endured under Israel which influences such acts, then we will surely repeat history. In short, one must trace the roots of such conflicts; one has to look beyond the headlines of the rockets of Hamas and go back to the Nakba (catastrophe)[9] of 1948. I am well aware that it will take us a long time to achieve such consciousness as a people, as it involves the need to push forward free and accessible education for all and a dismantling of the neo-colonial structures in our society. Nevertheless, I am hopeful that our generation, just as we had expressed our support with the Black Lives Matter movement and the current struggle of the people of Myanmar, can someday also chant in unison: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!”
References:
[1] “Protection of Civilians Report/24–31 May 2021.” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2021. https://www.ochaopt.org/poc/24-31-may-2021
[2] Cleveland, William & Bunton, Martin. A History of the Modern Middle East (4th ed.). USA: Westview Press, 2009; Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Arab-Israeli wars.” Encyclopedia Britannica, May 18, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars.
[3] Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
[4] “Chapter 7: Wasif Jawhariyyeh and the Great Nineteenth-Century Transformation”. In The Modern Middle east: A History (3rd ed.), edited by James Gelvin, 100–109. Oxford University Press, 2011.
[5] “AGENDA ITEM 108: Question on Palestine (continued)*.” 2282nd PLENARY MEETING. United Nations General Assembly Twenty-Ninth Session Official Records, November 13, 1974. https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/A238EC7A3E13EED18525624A007697EC
[6] Herzl, Theodor. Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Jewish State” (1896). Jewish Virtual Library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl
[7] “Chapter 14: The Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute.” In The Modern Middle east: A History (3rd ed.), edited by James Gelvin, 217–226. Oxford University Press, 2011.
[8] Vox. “The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history.” January 21, 2016. Video, 10:18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYZjOuUnlU&t=184s
[9] Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Arab-Israeli wars.” Encyclopedia Britannica, May 18, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars.
