Adding insult to injury: when Israel and Britain celebrate the historical trauma of Palestinians

Pro-Palestine protesters gather during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Australia outside the Town Hall in Sydney, Feb. 23, 2017. DAVID MOIR/AAP/PA Images. All rights reserved.After
one hundred years, Britain seems to be at the same moral stage it was at when
UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to the leader of the
British Jewish community, Baron Rothschild, promising the establishment of a
"national home" for the Jewish people in Palestine.

Instead
of making redress, creating historical transformations, social developments
and repairs to the Palestinians, the British prime minister has invited the Israeli prime
minister to a celebration to mark the centile anniversary of the Balfour
declaration.

This
celebration triggers the historical trauma that has left significant scars on
Palestinian collective memory; over a century of displacement and military
domination that have deprived Palestinians politically and culturally and
treated them as problematic and inferior beings.

Britain
is also responsible for imposing massive Jewish immigration to Palestine, while
the Palestinians who aspired for independence after 30 years of British mandate
were crushed. The violence and defeat that was brought upon the Palestinian
people was facilitated by Britain. The effects of which don’t only harm
the people of that generation, who were killed or displaced and whose property
was stolen, but all members of society till this day. The generations that
have followed shoulder the burden of this historical trauma, and their future
has changed ever since.

Now,
with the US' unprecedented financial and political support, and global powers'
silence or collusion with the occupation and international acclaim of
its criminals (the funeral of Shimon Peres, as an example), Palestinians
realize that they live in a world where bullying prevails over reason, and
hegemony over ethics. Israel is imposing its discourse with power.

Racist
laws

During
last year alone, Israel issued five racist laws: the “Expulsion Law,” which stipulates that
a member of Knesset can be expelled from parliament through a majority vote of
90 legislators, a law that is aimed at the minority Arab Knesset members.

The
“incitement” law incriminates
political views and restricts freedom of expression. This law was passed to
target those who utter opposition against the occupation, or oppose the
character of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

The
third is the NGO law, which is mainly
targeting human rights organizations, mandating that they reveal the sources of
their funding.

The
fourth, and probably worst, is the “Regulation Law” which will eventually
allow the annexation of 60 percent of land in the West Bank to
Israeli settlers. 

More
recently, the “Muezzen law” which muffles the
Muslim character of Palestine by banning the use of speakers for the call to prayer by mosques, calling it “pollution”.

Trauma
is the disaster of helplessness

While
Israel is expanding geographically and demographically at the expense
of Palestinians, Palestinian leaders are making empty condemnations.

In
fact, the Palestinian leadership is coexisting with the settlements and only
rivals with Israel in the media. When Palestinian leaders complain of settlements,
yet remain gatekeepers and passive recipients of colonial domination of the
occupation, supposed friends of Palestine can only think "you deserve
what you get."

Blaming
the victim

Victim-blaming
attitudes make it harder for the abused to protest and remind the world of their
trauma. The world blames the occupied Palestinians for their ill fate and for
disturbing the peace of the occupation whenever they make any efforts to stand
up to Israel.

They reinforce the occupation’s narrative that it is the
Palestinian’s fault the occupation prevails, absolving the occupation from
responsibility or accountability for its actions, and allowing Israel to repeat
and replicate the atrocities it perpetrated to displace Palestinians from their
homes and towns.  

But
like a cunning abuser, Israel uses tactics to maintain good public appearances.
Recently, for example, it announced that it would be taking in one hundred
Syrian orphans,
while Palestinians are denied the right of return and hundreds of Palestinian
children are orphaned.

In
the "Amona" settlement Israel broadcasted dramatic scenes to the
world, depicting itself as a state of law that expels settlers out of private
Palestinian land. Neglecting the fact that private Palestinian land is being
confiscated to build these settlements in the first place.

Even
the Arab powers of today blame the occupied Palestinians for confronting the
occupation; an impotent strategy to distance themselves from the potential fate
like that of the Palestinians. This gives the false feeling that if they
ally with the perpetrators, occupation will never knock on thier doors. One only
needs to look at Iraq, Lybia, Syria and Yemen to see the failure of such a
strategy.

The
arbitrary propaganda that Palestinians sold their land to Israel,
which is gaining popularity in Egyptian media, is evidence of victim blaming
and siding with the perpetrators. By labeling and accusing the Palestinians, these
powers are hopelessly trying to make the Arab people see the Palestinians
as different from themselves, which results in less empathy. 

Denial
is an obstacle to peace

When
the historical trauma of the Palestinians is utterly nullified, it makes it
impossible to discuss, mourn and express their plight symbolically, thus
preventing repair.

The
Balfour celebration represents a denial of the harm caused to Palestinians. It
fails to acknowledge the trauma and human suffering or take moral
responsibility for it. Britain has no shame in their imperialist history, its
hegemonic attitude continues to consider the Israelis as culturally and
racially superior to Palestinians. It is not the Israelis who are occupied and
oppressed and deserve Britain’s solidarity (in celebration), but the occupied
Palestinians!

If
the very existence of traumatic occupation is denied, responsibility, remorse
and solidarity are repudiated. However, full immunity for Israel’s violations
continues to be granted and the suffering of Palestinians is hardly
acknowledged.

The
occupation always betted to break Palestinian collective consciousness through
massacres and wars, maintaining the pain fresh in our memory. Nowadays, General
Yoav Galant, the Minister of Housing, former commander of the southern region,
and commander of the 2008 war speaks of “a fourth war next
spring," on Israeli radio. Israeli Security Minister Avigdor Lieberman
said in an interview mid-February on an Israeli/Arab radio station that if the
government decided to fight a new war, this confrontation must end with a great
Israeli victory and crush the Palestinian resistance in Gaza forever.

In
fact, it is not the resistance preparations that Israel should fear, but the
desensitization and declining levels of fear among the citizens as a result of
repeated strikes, shocks and losses that affect most Palestinians. 

Acknowledgment
rather than denial is capable of humanizing all involved parties. Cultivating
empathy and trust could pave the way for healing history and reconciliation to
build peace. Urging Israel to stop its colonial policies rather than
celebrating the theft of Palestinian land is an important domain of trauma
intervention and peace making. 

History
will not be written by the powerful alone, no matter how irresistible Israel
and its allies seem to be. Palestinians will not be silenced by the dreadful
occupation of Palestine. We will voice our historical testimony and tell our
narrative to make sense of the senseless grievances of colonialism.

Anti-oppression activism is our remedy against political trauma and it will
heal us as individuals and help us heal the injured history of our homeland.

A
version of this piece was first published on Middle East
Monitor on
16 February 2017.