Why I Joined Tech For Palestine
I woke up at 4:00 AM today (1-11-2024) to watch the live feed from the International Court of Justice (known colloquially as "The Hague") as it heard representatives of South Africa present the case outlined in their "Application Instituting proceedings and Request for the indication of provisional measures", which calls for an immediate end to Israel's attack on Gaza. The nation of Israel will have an opportunity to defend itself in a session tomorrow.
If the court finds that it is more probable than not that Israel is engaged in genocidal actions in Gaza, it will order an immediate end to the hostilities and an opening of the blockade on food, medicine, etc. It can't be known whether Israel would respect such an order, or whether a vote in the UN Security Council, which is the enforcement arm of the ICJ, would be vetoed by the United States. Yet whatever the outcome, it would be a historic moment if the nation of Israel was found by the ICJ to be in violation of the very same Genocide Convention that was drafted in reaction to the atrocities of the holocaust.
As a fairly typical American I grew up hearing about conflicts in the Middle East and not paying a lot of attention to them. There seemed to be constant conflict between people whose culture and religion I knew little about, with names I could barely pronounce. Besides, I had my own life and challenges to manage.
This time things are different. Not so much for the people in the Middle East, but definitely for me. I became irreversibly politically engaged in 2020 when the killing of George Floyd sparked mass protests around the globe, and for the first time in my 50+ yrs I saw a flicker of hope for a more just and peaceful world. As such I have spent the last few years paying a lot more attention to politics.
The whole world knows that on October 7th, 2023, Hamas fighters infiltrated a number of kibbutzim and a music festival and killed a large number of civilians and Israeli soldiers and took a number of hostages. It is also well-known that targeting civilians and taking hostages are war crimes, and the perpetrators of those crimes are subject to the same international laws that also prohibit genocide.
What is less well-known, due largely to decades of misleading narratives in media and politics, is that the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza and the West Bank, have been under almost total occupation by the Israeli military for nearly 75 years, that Israel has for nearly two decades restricted Gazan's food, medicine, electricity, technology, industry, as well as air, sea, and land travel, in response to the people's democratic election of Hamas, and that there are different laws in Israel for Jewish people and Palestinian people, leading many scholars and human rights organizations to credibly accuse it of apartheid.
Most tragically, what many people don't know is that under the pretense of "rooting out and destroying Hamas", an organization with an estimated 40,000 members, over 2 million Palestinian people, men, women, and children, have been under nearly constant assault (with only one brief ceasefire) for nearly 90 days.
Almost non-stop bombing, starvation, lack of water, lack of medicine, and other unspeakably horrible atrocities are the daily life of 2 million people, and the United States government is supporting this effort completely, supplying the Israeli government with all the money, ammunitions, and political support it requires.
I am not religious but I have no animosity toward the Jewish people or religion, but I am opposed to the nationalist ideology of Zionism. Propaganda to the contrary, this is not a radical or antisemitic view. Many Jewish people, historically and presently, have opposed Zionism. Jewish Voice for Peace being the most prominent organization in the United States.
A large Arab/Muslim majority and a small Jewish minority lived side-by-side peacefully in Palestine for hundreds of years before the early 20th century, and many live side-by-side peacefully outside of the occupied territories today. I don't think any nation can call itself a "Liberal Democracy" with laws and policies that privilege one group over another. That is an apartheid state.
What is happening right now is not simply about Hamas vs Israel, or Jews vs Muslims, or who was on the land first. It is about the most powerful nation in the region, backed by the most powerful nation in the world, performing very plausibly genocidal acts against a group of people they are occupying, and the urgent need for this assault to come to an immediate end and for the world to unite in ensuring that the Palestinian people have as much right as anyone to lives of health, happiness, and prosperity.
If you want to help shift the narrative on Palestine, please join us at TechForPalestine.org