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What is the Palestinians’ crime?

I am not a criminologist, or a lawyer, or even a social scientist. But I am one of those who have received a considerable level of education. Alas, my learning, knowledge, and living in the world for more than five decades do not give me a true understanding of the crime of the Palestinians? This is an epistemic failure for which I pay a psychological price — as a helpless, solitary soul in a big world.

It’s a crime that applies — of all living humanity — only to the Palestinians. It can’t be attributed to any other race, nation or religion.

It’s a sin that is committed by Palestinian adults and children, women and men, the able and the disabled, the elderly and the young, the healthy, and the sick. A crime that is owned by foetuses in mothers’ wombs, and even by the unconceived and the unborn. A crime that is individual, collective, social, religious, political, geopolitical, national and international. A crime that is material, cognitive, epistemic and discursive.

The very existence of a Palestinian is a crime. Their doing, being, becoming or unbecoming are crimes. Their sitting or standing, running or walking, eating or drinking, loving or hating is part of a repertoire of crimes. They eat crimes, drink crimes, breathe crimes. Their seeing, thinking, believing, and languaging have criminal intentions. They dream crimes, imagine crimes, write crimes, speak crimes and live crimes. They do crimes at homes, schools, hospitals and masjids. They commit crimes while they sleep and while they are awake; they are criminals in their conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind, body and being.

My epistemic longing to fathom the crime is for this extraordinariness.

I also wish to cognise the crime for the punishment it has deserved. Which is nothing short of being wiped out of their land and, to the extent possible, of the earth.Ìý

That punishment is also uniquely Palestinian. Its scale, form, variety and intensity can’t be imagined for any other group in the contemporary world, not to mention Israelis, Americans or Europeans. This is nothing short of a genocide which is inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israelis with their ‘civilised’ accomplices.

However, the Palestinian tragedy is unlikely to meet the criteria of a genocide. Maybe it will never satisfy them in the current paradigm. The discursive politics of genocide follows a selective path. It can only be evidenced where those with truth-making power want it to be evident. This is not in Gaza where mass killings happen every day with clear genocidal intentions. The whole world can see it except those who will never see it there.

Genocides happened in the past, but the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians is exceptional. It’s happening in front of our eyes and has happened for a long time. It’s a livestream show. However, western media present only a sanitised version of the horror to deceive any well-meaning audience.

It’s a genocide whose authorship can be claimed by the western world as well. It proves the killing power of their weapons. The thousands of tons of bombs dropped in Gaza are made in the West and gifted to Israel to make it happen. It’s the harvest of their aid in billions to Israel year after year. It’s the result of their cheerleading of the Israeli Defence Force and the Zionist lobbies. It’s what is expected by their media coverage and their epistemic slavery. It’s the effect of their seeing the world through Israeli eyes.

But it’s not just the West that deserves the champion’s trophy for the genocide. Muslim brothers in Palestine’s neighbourhood need to be acknowledged as well. Many are allies of genocidal Israel. Some maintain their stone silence while hell is loosed upon the Palestinians. Some from faraway places make noises once in a blue moon which do not ruffle anything or anyone.

The Palestinian crime is responded with cold and calculated murder at any scale, in all imaginable forms. Shooting, bombing, slaughtering and running military vehicles over the ‘human animals’, as they are called. Burning them alive and morphing them into charcoals. Blowing them into the air, severing their heads from their bodies. Forcing them to die and decompose under the rubbles of bombed buildings. Hanging them or incarcerating them and destroying their health, potency and human dignity. Inflicting sexual violence on women and girls and abusing them in all bestial ways.

The Palestinians are forced to die from hunger. Emergency food supply is halted. Hospitals are bombed into rubbles; even nurses, doctors, journalists and aid workers are not spared.Ìý

All Palestinians receive the same treatment from the genocidal agents — there is no distinction of gender, class, age or ability. They are killed in hospitals, schools, homes, masjids and any other places they may use as refuge from Israeli atrocities.

They are driven like herds of animals from one part to another part of their city. They must be evicted — dead or alive — from the land that Israel wants for more settlement.

The Palestinian crime is such that it demanded incredible response from some governments. Those ‘democratic’ authorities do not have to listen to their protesting millions; they continue supporting the genocide almost business as usual. International institutions of justice and their officials are criminalised because they want to stop it. All attempts at ceasefires and long-term solutions are vetoed, so the mission of exterminating the Palestinians can be accomplished.

Some aspects of the Palestinian horror have precedents in history. Palestine has been the land of the Palestinians for thousands of years. They had no idea that their homeland was the target of settler colonialism. This ignorance was shared by victims of settler colonialists in other places — the Aboriginals or the First Nations in Australia, the Indians or the First Nations in North America, and some African groups in Africa. They suddenly discovered that they needed to make room for the invaders — at the cost of their own lives, languages, cultures, heritages, identities and existences.

What is also unique about the Palestinian settler colony is the identity of the invaders. They were scattered in different parts of the world, without a home. They were tortured by many of those whose descendants/successors are now their buddies. They came to Palestine much like beggars, begging shelter and alms. The western colonising powers came to their aid and settled them in the Palestinian land. Over time, they have been enriched, empowered, expanded and equipped to assert their own existence and deny the existence of the Palestinians. A rare case in human history of victims transformed into monstrous villains and victimisers.Ìý

Israeli monstrosity has reached its climactic height. It wants to erase Palestine from geography and claim the whole land as theirs. They also flex their military muscles in the region to kill and occupy more lands.

Whatever stands in the way of Israel’s geopolitical ambition is considered part of the Palestinian crime. Even suggesting the co-existence of Israel and Palestine as two independent states in a much-reduced territory for the latter may be given criminal motivations.

I am haunted by Palestine’s tragedy, but I can’t language my adult and enlightened helplessness. I fail to imagine any way of preventing the killing or starving of even a single Palestinian.

I am probably not alone. Powerlessness may have gripped the thinking and being of many who understand neither the crime nor the punishment.

‘It’s horror! It’s horror!’

Ìý

Obaidul Hamid researches language, education and society in the developing world. He is a co-editor of Current Issues in Language Planning. The views expressed are his own and do not represent the views of any institutions that he is affiliated with.