On Zionist feelings

JVL Introduction

This article was written in a particular context and published in December 2023, but it speaks a general truth.

Zionist feelings count. Palestinian feelings do not.

Academic and Palestine advocate Randa Abdel-Fattah asks starkly:

Why is our advocacy for the basic right to survival constantly juxtaposed with reports about rising antisemitism and the fears and political anxieties of Jewish communities? Why is mention of Palestinian truths and trauma confined or downplayed to avoid offending Jewish Zionist sensibilities?

What world do we live in, she asks where military occupation, “a daily crushing and asphyxiating violence”, is treated as “a kind of background noise or banal necessity, rather than conceived as the root cause of the violence of the so-called ‘conflict’.”

The “fragility” of Zionists justifies privileging the emotional standpoint of settlers and colonizers.

So – this being Australia – an Indigenous artist’s school mural containing the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ (as well as other phrases including First Nations ‘Always Was Always Will Be’) was seen as a “genocidal call” and “hateful and political stunt” “during a time of rising antisemitism,” “causing the Jewish community to feel unsafe.” and the school was directed to take these offending phrases out of artwork.

Talk about privilege…

RK

This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Wed 27 Dec 2023. Read the original here.