Why Palestinian voices cannot be silenced again

The list of Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians grows longer every day. So far, Israel has killed about 38,000 people in Gaza, though the actual number may be far higher. Israel attacks aid workers, hospitals and their staffs, and journalists.  It has levelled Gaza’s health care and educational systems. It is starving 2.3 million civilians, half of whom are children. Right now, 500,000 Gazans face famine. Israel has made Gaza uninhabitable. In the West Bank, it has increased its attacks on Palestinians, killing more than 560 people since Oct. 7, 2023, and recently announced the largest illegal “land grab” in decades. Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons are subject to physical and psychological torture, sexual assault, and starvation.

In the West, opposition to Israel’s conduct has been met with an extraordinary campaign of intimidation and silencing. The fear of being blacklisted has kept most of the supposedly “liberal” entertainment industry quiet. Across western media, numerous reporters have been fired for being overly critical of Israel while the media have been accused of pro-Israel bias. In Canada, the CBC has been accused of stifling efforts to critically cover the Gaza War. American Senator Mitt Romney admitted that the United States Congress’ primary reason for trying to ban TikTok is because the platform evoked support for Palestinians among young people. “Antisemitism” has been misused to muzzle Israel’s opponents. Pro-Palestinian protestors have been assaulted by police and attacked by counter-protestors.

The Guardian has revealed the extraordinary co-ordination between Israel and pro-Israel groups to “police” the political discourse around Israel within the U.S. and Europe, especially on university campuses. Professors have lost job offers— something familiar to the University of Toronto—and part-time instructors have lost their careers for daring to protest  Israel. Students have been punished and blacklisted with threats to their professional futures. Wealthy donors have threatened universities for failing to shut down pro-Palestinian protests.

Yet this effort to silence the Palestinian voice will, inevitably, fail. Donors may fume, university administrations may try to appease them, but Israel and Palestine/Gaza have become an unavoidable part of the curricula of thousands of classes. Every course on human rights, genocide, international law, racial discrimination, colonialism, etc., will need to examine Israel’s siege of Gaza and the Palestinians. There is no avoiding this. Thousands of students will read South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), read the words of  Israel’s leaders, public figures, and soldiers, and understand why the ICJ decided it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Israeli leaders continue making statements of intent to violate international law. Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court (ICC) are gathering the ever-growing evidence of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity. Thousands of dissertations will be written on every aspect of this situation. Only by cancelling entire fields of study could universities even start to ignore the reality of Palestine.

On Israel-Palestine, there is an enormous gulf between  Canada’s rhetoric and its actual policies. Canada claims it seeks “reconciliation” with the Indigenous people whom it subjected to cultural genocide, but its reaction to the situation of Palestinians evokes historical settler-colonial attitudes. The Canadian Parliament condemned China for the “genocide” of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, but it can muster only non-binding, anodyne criticisms of Israel as that state does exponentially worse to the Palestinians. Canada claims it upholds a “rules-based international order” but it refuses to act against Israel’s decades-long violations of international law. Canada prides itself on opposing apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s but is silent about Israel’s far-worse apartheid today. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attacked the ICC by suggesting that Israel’s “democracy” somehow made its atrocities different from those of Hamas, thereby denigrating tens of thousands of dead Palestinians. Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians investigated foreign interference in Canadian politics but neglected to examine Israel’s activities in Canada, despite Israel being flagged by security agencies as a concern.

Palestinians in the West have been dehumanized for decades, their stories and history silenced, their mass death and oppression normalized. However, the longer Israel’s war against the Palestinians continues, the more it becomes the subject of rigorous, long-term academic study. The more western states defend and even enable Israel’s conduct, the more damage they do to themselves and the institutions of international law and order they purport to represent.

Shaun Narine is a professor of international relations at St. Thomas University, in Fredericton, N.B. He is a contributor to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, and Jewish Voice for Peace.

This commentary was first published in The Hill Times on July 17, 2024.