In just over a week’s time, on Wednesday May 15, Palestinians across the globe will mark the Nakba, the ‘Catastrophe’. The date is important as it signalled the end of the British Mandate and creation of the state of Israel in 1948, a period when Palestinians experienced ethnic cleansing on a mass scale amidst the almost total destruction of Palestinian society.
As they have done in so many locations across this planet, the British left an ignominious mark on the region, having played a large part in creating the enduring conflict courtesy of the Balfour Declaration and their conduct thereafter in facilitating Zionist endeavours to seize land and force the indigenous Palestinian population from their farms, villages and towns.
Last week, the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, formally announced his country would be cutting diplomatic ties with Israel and would seek to join South Africa’s case at the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide.
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Colombia historically enjoyed good relations with Israel, purchasing arms from the latter to be used in its conflict with rebel forces. But that was before the election of the left wing leader, Petro, who had previously announced he was ending the practice of buying weapons from Israel in response to the on-going massacres in Gaza.
In the northern part of the American continent, students at the Columbia University in New York have been to the forefront in seeking to use their collective voices to rage against the injustice taking place thousands of miles away.
All across the United States, the generation of future leaders are openly rebelling against a political elite which has for so long given Israel a free pass to oppress a beleaguered Palestinian population who have suffered an unending period of trauma since before the Nakba up to the present day.
The coast-to-coast reach and popularity of the protests has stunned a political and media establishment firmly in the grip of Israel and its influential lobbying forces.
At the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, extremist Israeli supporters violently attacked protesting students and, on many other campuses, state police and military resorted to physical force in their attempts to dismantle the encampments and stifle protests.
All across the United States, the generation of future leaders are openly rebelling against a political elite which has for so long given Israel a free pass to oppress a beleaguered Palestinian population who have suffered an unending period of trauma since before the Nakba up to the present day
And at Dartmouth College In New Hampshire, 65-year-old Annelise Orleck - a history professor and past chair of Jewish Studies at the Ivy League university - was assaulted and arrested by police officers and banned from the campus in which she had taught for 34 years for the crime of “standing with a line of women faculty in their 60s to 80s trying to protect students” who were protesting.
The descent into violence eerily recalls the events of May 4 1970, when four students were murdered by the Ohio National Guard whilst on their Kent State University campus protesting against American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Whilst the killings shocked many at the time, students seeking to protest the Kent State massacre in New York city days later were set upon by hundreds of construction workers who brutally attacked them, vandalised university buildings and marched on city hall to demand the Stars and Stripes be lifted from its half-mast position in tribute to the murdered students and fully raised.
The ‘Hard Hat Riot’ was a seminal moment in the cultural war era. The Republican president, Richard Nixon, worked to further curry support with the white working class by forging an alliance with organised labour bonded by patriotic rhetoric and a prejudice against the hippy, ‘draft-dodging’ college kids opposing the war.
Ronald Reagan would cement support for the right amongst this traditionally more Democratic-minded demographic as the nature of the ideologies forming the electoral divide continued to change, a trend continuing to the present day.
Alas, in Gaza and the West Bank they can be forgiven for having little time to indulge discussions about America’s cultural wars.
Last week, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Saul, accused Israel of committing a “war crime” following a media investigation into the Israel Defense Forces killing of an eight-year-old child, known only as Adam, in the West Bank last November.
Amidst the rubble of the bombed out universities, schools and hospitals and in the mass graves already discovered and yet to be, there are thousands like Adam, crying out for a justice history tells us is almost certain to be denied.
