Young people in the Italian city of Udine taking part in a demonstration for Palestine. [GETTY]
In the past year, we have witnessed an unprecedented surge of global mobilisation for Palestine due to the ongoing US backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, that has decimated the area and killed over 200,000 Palestinians (a direct and indirect figure of deaths which is expected to be considerably more with so many buried under the rubble). However, despite this growing popular support for Palestinian liberation from Israel’s 76 years of settler colonialism, we see the same orientalist, racist, and patronising narratives that have been deployed for decades to undermine Palestinian resistance. This is an attempt to delegitimise the global call for justice and full liberation of Palestine.
As people around the world gather to condemn 13 months of ongoing livestreamed genocide, many of these demonstrations and vigils are arbitrarily banned or demonised by Western governments. Palestinians and their supporters have been labelled by some political leaders and media pundits as violent, antisemitic, and even sympathisers of terrorism.
In some contexts, the strong criticisms of mobilisation by new generations of Palestinians in the Western diaspora, have informed the analysis of “leftist” and “liberal” voices, as was the case in Italy, for example. On October 5, Palestinian groups organised a national demonstration despite being forbidden by the government. Politicians and mainstream media rushed to criticise the organisers for being “too radical” in their vision and language, as they echoed the demand for the return of Palestinian refugees and full liberation of Palestine.
Who defines decolonisation?
It is important to note that many Palestinians in the diaspora are rejecting any narrative that fails to seek a reclaiming of their right to resist Israel’s domination. They adopt an anti-colonial analysis that places Zionism at the core of the western imperialist project that finds its most brutal contemporary implementation in the genocide of Palestinians. Therefore, framing their discourse and protests as “too radical” is an intentional distortion of a movement that is fighting for justice, accountability and charting a new path towards liberation.
This raises some important questions over who holds the authority to define the ‘appropriate’ language and action that a movement for liberation should use, and who has the authority to dictate what decolonisation looks like or how it should be articulated.
Imposing a specific framework or understanding of decolonisation on the colonised replicates the very power dynamics decolonisation seeks to dismantle. This act of prescribing a ‘correct’ language strips the colonised of their agency. The language and demands coming from Palestinians are reflective of their lived experiences of erasure, not theoretical exercises.
The youth and groups of Palestinians in the diaspora who are calling for change and mobilising against Western complicity are part and parcel of the Palestinian nation facing extermination in all its different forms. They have the right to define their own path to liberation. Furthermore, inspired by a long history of anti-colonial struggles, they have learned, as Franz Fanon articulated, that decolonisation often requires radical and even violent measures to break free from the chains of oppression.
Policing Palestinian liberation
Too often, many of these groups are labelled “extremists”, a favourite of Western orientalist discourses. For Palestinians in the diaspora, who are very much part of the national struggle, their voices and actions emerge from the shared experience of existential threat, exile, and fragmentation. To label their mobilisation as extreme dismisses the urgency of their situation, and silences them.
Palestinians are constantly expected to moderate their tone, language and demands in order to build and achieve “consensus” among the broader public. However, reaching consensus should not be about accommodating the oppressor or those complicit in maintaining the colonial status quo. Rather, it should be rooted in justice and the full recognition of the rights of those who have been wronged. This involves addressing the structural violence that characterises not just the Zionist colonial project but also the international approach to the Palestinian cause.
Furthermore, to expect Palestinians to constantly change their image to fit Western standards in order to not be perceived as violent or intolerant, is itself a colonial expectation. It demands that the colonised centre their resistance around how the West sees them, rather than what they need to do for their own liberation.
It is not the duty of Palestinians to change how they are perceived; it is the West’s responsibility to confront its own misconceptions and bias rooted in centuries-long racism and supremacy.
The master’s tools
Palestinians are also often asked to refer to international law as the main framework for their demands. However, International laws and institutions are part of the international system that has recognised the Zionists colonisation of Palestine, legitimised it and more broadly, sustained colonial (and neo-colonial) rule all over the world. To insist that Palestinians confine their demands within such boundaries dismisses the oppressive historical legacy of the international system.
International law is often wielded in a way that preserves the global power structures rooted in colonialism. Instead, the youth has been able to present a holistic analysis that identifies and denounces neo-colonial approaches. They are all too aware that the master’s tool will never dismantle the colonial order.
Additionally, questioning whether Palestinian youth in Diaspora and their claims to full liberation are connected to the reality on the ground in colonised Palestine, reflects an underlying assumption about their legitimacy. It reflects an orientalist perception of Palestinians, reinforcing their fragmentation and refusing to see them as a collective. Especially among Western liberals, diaspora is often dismissed with a reference made to ‘Palestinian fragmentation’, in order to justify the unwillingness to seriously engage with active young Palestinians. Here, the colonised are blamed for their complexities, as though this is the reason that Western “allies” have failed to uplift their voices. The result of this amongst liberals is the picking and choosing of the best interlocutors.
The current generation of Palestinian activists, though young, are making conscious choices in rejecting frameworks that try to sell the dream of “state-building” and “pragmatic solutions”. This includes refusing international legal approaches that grant Israel the cover for more land appropriation, settlement expansion, the erasure and elimination of the natives, and the continued killing of Palestinians, as well as the preservation of an unequal regional system that perpetuates colonial dynamics.
Whilst mainstream discourse wishes to make us believe these young Palestinians are naive, their rejection is not a sign of extremism, but of clarity in their anti-colonial vision and commitment to justice. They are demanding the dismantling of a system that has sustained colonial oppression, rather than reforms that only tinker with its edges. By rejecting the imposed frameworks of international actors, they are asserting their right to determine their future on their terms.
Dismissing their approach as extreme, or questioning their legitimacy because it doesn’t align with Western expectations reflects a paternalistic attitude that decolonisation seeks to readdress. We must name this colonial violence for what it is, and denounce it in the terms and language that is necessary to eventually dismantle its brutal role. Why should Palestinians call for anything less than this?
Mjriam Abu Samra is a Marie Curie Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari and at the Department of Anthropology at UC Davis, USA. She has been the Coordinator and Senior Researcher at the Renaissance Strategic Center in Amman Jordan. She was actively involved in Palestinian transnational youth organising.
Follow her on X: @mj_dalia96036
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
