Despite protests in Gaza, the idea of community life has not vanished

JVL Introduction

Footage of Palestinians in Gaza protesting against Hamas last week was instantly seized upon by Israeli and Western media as evidence that Israel’s campaign was working, driving a wedge between the population and resistance groups

This nuanced piece from Mondoweiss explores how, in Israeli discourse, Palestinians “are framed not as victims but as potential collaborators—Palestinians willing to betray their own, to confess the error of resistance, to kneel before power.”

Writer Abdaljawad Omar says that the war “has not only displaced people physically, but it has also disoriented the social fabrics and neighborhood-based solidarities that once underpinned political life.”

Nonetheless, he says, the idea of community has not vanished.

“Against a backdrop of fragmentation, dispossession, and relentless violence, the continued existence of communal life is not simply a residue of the past—it is an active form of resistance, a refusal to allow war to fully atomize the social fabric.”

NWI

This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Thu 27 Mar 2025. Read the original here.