By Soraya Misleh
“A man shot my nine-month-pregnant sister, Salhiyeh, in the neck. Then, he cut open her stomach with a butcher’s knife.“
“I screamed, but other women around me were being raped. Some men were so eager to steal our earrings that they ripped our ears off.“
“I saw women being hit by bombs and people with their stomachs torn apart. I saw a friend of mine, someone I studied with, with my own eyes. I touched his face and forehead to recognize him. There was blood everywhere.“
“They raped female prisoners right in front of me!”
“The Israeli army bombed our house directly, killing everyone inside.”
“I saw children beheaded in Gaza. I have photos.”
The first three testimonies are from survivors of the 1948 massacres. The last three are from recent events in Gaza. Seventy-seven years of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Seventy-seven years of the ongoing Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe, which began with the formation of the racist, colonial State of Israel on May 15, 1948, on 78% of historic Palestine. Seventy-seven years of attempts to exterminate the Palestinian people. Seventy-seven years of resistance under the constant threat of being wiped off the map.
Combating complicity and feelings of powerlessness
Witnesses to the ongoing Nakba and the Zionist state’s attempts at a “final solution” over the last two years portray a sense of abandonment and historical international complicity.
This complicity has allowed Israel, a military enclave of imperialism, to promote a veritable Palestinian holocaust, broadcasting it live and in color to the entire world. This injustice has its roots in the Nakba of 1948 but is part of a colonization process that has been ongoing for more than 100 years.
Throughout this macabre history, there has never been such international solidarity. However, we must constantly counteract the perception of powerlessness to stop the carnage, which is precisely what the Zionists and imperialists desire.
The masks have fallen; perhaps the enemies of the Palestinian cause have never been more exposed: imperialism, Zionism, and the Arab regimes and Arab-Palestinian bourgeoisie, which are now closely linked to the occupying power, the Palestinian Authority.
Israel no longer even bothers to hide its true colors. It openly speaks of destroying, expelling, and eliminating Gaza (home to 2 million Palestinians), and is imposing unimaginable conditions of hunger and thirst on this population without any shame. Since Israel imposed a blockade on all humanitarian aid to Gaza on March 2, 57 children have died of starvation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO acknowledges that these figures are probably underestimated and will likely rise. Nearly half a million Palestinians are experiencing “catastrophic famine,” according to the WHO.
Yet the horrific scenes of nearly 20 months of genocide in Gaza and the deepening ethnic cleansing in the West Bank—the remaining Palestinian territories after 1948 that have been occupied militarily since 1967, including the Old City of Jerusalem—have not substantially shaken the historic international complicity that has sustained 77 years of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. The killing of Palestinians, the bombing of schools and hospitals, the beheading of children and women, and much more have not substantially shaken the historic international complicity that has sustained 77 years of ongoing Nakba.
Palestine is a laboratory for the world
We must continue to advocate for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. It is crucial to raise awareness among the general public that imperialism and Zionism are exploiting Palestinians as guinea pigs in a laboratory to develop and export techniques, training, and weapons to the rest of the world. Seventy percent of the lethal technologies tested in occupied Palestine are intended for export.
In this life-or-death struggle, the Palestinian BDS movement must demand that governments worldwide sever economic, military, and diplomatic ties with Israel, a genocidal state.
Among the BDS’s priority campaigns is ending oil exports to Israel and imposing a military embargo. According to a report published by Oil Change International in August 2024, the United States is a key supplier of jet fuel to Israel. Azerbaijan tops the list of countries sending crude oil to fuel the genocide. The document also mentions Italy, Albania, Greece, Gabon, and Brazil as additional countries supplying crude oil to Israel.
In the midst of the Israeli genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, it is inconceivable that governments publicly condemning genocide and defending Palestinian rights under international law continue acting as usual with Israeli apartheid by supplying it with energy and profiting from its crimes. The BDS movement demands greater pressure from grassroots and civil society to prevent these hypocritical governments from being complicit in Israel’s mass murder and starvation of Palestinians and to hold accountable the companies complicit in these crimes, including Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni, and TotalEnergies, said Mahmoud Nawajaa, general coordinator of the Palestinian National Committee for BDS. Unfortunately, little has changed since then. It is time to strengthen this campaign.
It is also necessary to intensify denunciations of the fact that Israeli weapons, techniques, and training continue to end up in the hands of police and military forces around the world, who use them to repress and kill the oppressed and exploited. In Brazil, for example, the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) acquired another Israeli drone in September 2024, and it already possesses several more. Furthermore, state governments use Israeli rifles and armored vehicles, which have been employed in the genocide of the poor and Black populations and the extermination of indigenous peoples.
Palestine is the world’s laboratory. On May 15, we must take a leap forward in international solidarity to prevent the Palestinian holocaust from happening, as it would set a dangerous precedent for humanity.
On the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, amid calls to end complicity in genocide, we must mobilize and strengthen unified actions around the world. We must echo Palestinian voices and draw inspiration from their heroic and historic resistance for a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
We resist; we exist. We will not forgive; we will not forget.
