Hell Envelopes Jenin

As this is written, Israeli forces have launched a genocidal crusade into the West Bank once again. Civilians run on the streets, and others cover into homes. Others try to escape all together. Others are injured, imprisoned, and killed. The horrid past is alive, and it desires more death. The Israeli state sinks further into a coup attempt by Netanyahu, and the Israeli Conservatives make common cause with Israeli Fascism, which is now firmly within the government and state. Israeli Liberaism a half hearted farce, with a Left Wing too minuscule to effect real change (and some of them too, a half hearted farce). Calls to annihilate Palestinians grow daily. Since 1948, the state of Israel’s policy has been genocidal settler colonialism. Now, calls for total extermination have voices beyond where they had already. Armored trucks and foot soldiers flow in as planes and choppers above, rain destruction and death onto the people below.
Including, attempting to annihilate the refugee camp of Jenin.

On social media, images and video circulate as humanity is forsaken and genocidal rage with bombs and flames, bullets and steel thrown onto people whose only “crime” is existing and being stateless with no rights. People are injured, imprisoned, and dying. And in a refrain that governments across the globe have adopted, Jenin and the West Bank are considered “terrorist militant strongholds”. Israel is no stranger to barbarity, the state was founded on it and these acts are almost a century old (to think this could be the state of affairs in 2048 is an obscenity no word encapsulates). When international outcry rightfully condemns the barbarism of Fascist Russia waging a genocidal war on Ukrainians, leveling buildings and mass murdering so many, it falls silent on Israeli action. News sources like CNN and others, dispassionately and vapidly cover it in the most worthless and matter of factly way. Very little leaks through these official sources. Jenin is but a refugee camp. They don’t matter, they are not real people in the dominant gaze’s eyes. Refugee camps from Yarmouk (itself bombed by the twin fascisms of Assadist Syria and Fascist Russia) to the Rohingya camps and far beyond, past and present, do not elicit the responses of empathy or compassion. They are not important compared to what a random Billionaire could say about their upbringing in the Bronx, or the state propaganda of a country has to say.

Only a few lights are within this, such as a slowly turning tide globally against Israel’s barbarism. This itself is uneven especially among states close to Israel. Yet much of this was unthinkable even a decade ago, when the genocidal state was de facto seen as the “only democracy in the Middle East”. Another light being strong international support from below. And most of all, the light of Palestinians from below who carry with them the same numberless amount of scars from almost 80 years of genocidal actions against them. Who despite being shackled by corrupt governments past and present, and “allies” who pay lip service or continually stab them in the back (once again our attention turns onto the Assad regime which has blood directly on its hands, Palestinian as well as so many others). Even in the face of an Israel that is by all accounts, spiraling faster into a nightmare that could birth a Fascist state, with intent to destroy that would exceed the barbarism already present. Even as voices in Israel who are opposed to the ongoing coup efforts, still side with the genocidal project of the state while shutting out the minority of Israelis who are unequivocal in their support of Palestinian liberation.

Palestinian liberation is bound up in all liberation. It demands international and transnational support that centers Palestinian people, not states nor governments. The Palestinian suffering the bombs of Israel is the sibling to the person suffering the bombs of the Junta in Myanmar, the person in Ukraine suffering the bombs of Fascist Russia, and the person in Tigray suffering the genocidal onslaught of Ethiopia. Palestinian liberation binds itself to liberation from Hong Kong to Syria, to Kosovo to France, to Brazil to the US. Our futures are bound as one. Beyond states, beyond borders, beyond bigotries, beyond the onslaught of Fascism in the 21st century and the various authoritarian models. Beyond capitalism’s ever descending anti human mechanisms. As we see our futures twist and turn, heaving and gasping for air in the face of threats to all of us, we must stand firm in support. Jenin is another atrocity not just in Palestinian history, but global history. Climate Change itself is, and will, create more refugees who have no rights or are seen as inhuman by states with guns and bombs pointed at those not deemed a part of ethno nationalist and nationalist fantasies.

As this hell envelopes Jenin, milquetoast liberals and others (we expect nothing less from the Right), either tepidly condemn, both sides the issue through false equivalence, or outright support these atrocities. People under a military occupation and under an almost 80 year genocide, are condemned for resisting and for self defense. It’s a series of lies and half truths baked into colonialism, baked into the genocidenaire’s mind, and within the supporters of such. The milquetoast liberals practicing this are more loathsome because these running dogs of genocide, mask it in a universalism and calls for equality. Freedom, liberty, and pacifism, all buzzwords rolled into this chimera that only serves to bolster an Israeli state so intent on worsening conditions for itself, and most of all, that of Palestinians. And again, as we see a rising fascism in Israel, these liberals make themselves fools who acquiesce to it, and active collaborators at the more extreme edges while still claiming to be liberals. When they hit the news waves and the papers churn out boiling excrement meant to absolve and justify the Israeli state, know this is where they stand. Palestinians are not considered deserving of even the prospect of a liberal democracy these liberals claim to be for, let alone anything more. In fact, they prefer them to have even less than a refugee camp with conditions they themselves would not accept.

In the end, this piece only serves to add to the chorus of voices calling for an end to this. However, the chorus must and will only get louder, just as the barbarism and descent into the abyss grow wider and deeper. This cannot last forever though we have not seen the worst yet. All things come to an end, even the facade of a never ending Israeli state that channels the brutality of its existence, setting it also alongside France in Algeria and Apartheid South Africa. Amongst the barbarism of Russia today, and far too many others in current existence. No, even if it sinks further into the abyss, Palestinian liberation will not cease.