Commemoration of October 7 between colonial denial and concern for equity…

The October 7 commemoration was an opportunity for the mainstream media to pour out their lies and slander against all those who dare to show the slightest compassion for the Palestinians who are fighting for their inalienable national rights recognized by international law.

The outcry sparked by the declarations of President Macron who, while reaffirming France’s support for Israel, dared to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon and an end to arms deliveries to Israel, has showed all the obscenity in which the media in the pay of pro-Israeli lobbies wallow.

The new directors of conscience have criticized Macron for not having understood that there are no negotiations or ceasefires with “terrorists” but only with “regular armies”. Should we remember that the national liberation movements which have marked European history since the 18th century (Hungarians, Poles, Greeks, Serbs, Irish, etc.) and following them the decolonization movements of Africa and Asia in the 20th century, have all been labeled “terrorists” by their adversaries.

The history of violence did not start on October 7

The destruction of Gaza and its share of dead, missing and injured numbering in the tens of thousands, which has been taking place before our eyes for a year, in defiance of international law and world public opinion, is not even not mentioned by those whose moral and political clock stopped on October 7, 2023. As if contemporary history began on that day. The lack of compassion towards the Palestinian victims indicates a terrible colonial denial and execrable racism.

October 7, 2023 is a page in the history of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that did not start on that day. She has been and will continue to be commemorated variously on both sides of the barricade. If no violence has the privilege of escaping the moral judgment of history, anticolonial violence has its roots in the desire of the oppressed to defend their violated human dignity.

Anti-colonial violence is part of a painful attempt to reclaim one’s humanity, of which the colonial system constitutes an infamous degradation. As a result, she cannot deny the humanity of the Other without taking the risk of dehumanizing herself in turn. This is why from the start, anticolonial violence was part of the register of the right to resistance against oppression which has covered all the chronicles of the history of humanity from the ancient sacred texts to the declarations more recent ones which reaffirm the right of peoples and individuals to self-determination.

The violence in occupied Palestine did not start on October 7. It began the day the first settler set foot on the land of Palestine. The colonial enterprise could only be accompanied by the negation of the Other, of the Palestinian. It is no coincidence that Zionist propaganda has continued to hammer home the myth of a “land without people for a people without land”.

Like all colonized people, the Palestinian had to be invisible. And if he unfortunately happens to be a little visible, the colonial system will make him pay for it. Since the massacre of Deir Yassine (1948), collective assassination has become, within the framework of the Jewish colonial enterprise, a means of emptying Palestine of its inhabitants.

The massacre and extermination which mark Palestinian history from 1948 to 2024 are neither a so-called salutary self-defense nor a slippage attributed to extremist and supremacist minorities but are akin to a hideous colonial political technology.

The beautiful souls who recognize the suffering of the Palestinians and indeed their civic resistance against oppression but express reservations about the attack of October 7, pretend to forget that since 1982 the essence of the multifaceted resistance of the Palestinians, also both in Gaza and in the West Bank, between two wars, has always been civic and political in essence.

Unfortunately, this peaceful struggle, which rarely makes the headlines, has not even helped to alleviate colonial oppression. Worse, the latter has only gotten worse over the last three decades. Indeed, the Oslo process, which was to lead to an independent Palestinian state on 22% of the territory of historic Palestine, was gradually emptied of its content by the multiplication of Jewish colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem which made practically obsolete the option of a viable Palestinian state, not to mention the disastrous consequences of the blockade imposed on Gaza for almost 20 years.

It takes a lot of bad faith to criticize the Palestinians in these conditions for allowing themselves to be dragged into the realm of violence as if they really had a choice. We can, of course, regret that anti-colonial violence has indiscriminately affected Israeli soldiers, settlers, the elderly, women and children.

Violence against Palestinian children, the height of colonial barbarity

But this regret should not prevent us from seeing the essential thing, namely that when it comes to the violation of basic human rights, and in particular the rights of children, Israel and its defenders have no lessons to teach. Well before October 7, 2023, more than 10% of the 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners and 1,250 administrative prisoners were children.

Indeed, according to Amnesty International, “ more than 500 Palestinian children are sent to prison each year by the Israeli authorities. From the age of 12, they can find themselves before a military court. Illegal, these incarceration conditions have become even tougher since October 7 “.

According to practitioners at the MSF clinic in Nablus, which specializes in psychological assistance, consultations with minors are exploding due to the trauma suffered following imprisonment and mistreatment. Every year, between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested and detained in prisons according to Save The Children. A figure which is part of a broader context of violence against minors. In 2022, the NGO Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) recorded 44 children killed by Israeli occupying forces in the West Bank – a sad record since the end of the second intifada in 2005, surpassed again in 2023 (126 children killed according to the same source).

The violence targeting Palestinian children is directly linked to the colonial nature of the Israeli state. Still according to Amnesty International, the repression which affects Palestinians and particularly children in the occupied territories is reinforced by the presence “ of a special jurisdiction responsible for judging Palestinians which escapes Israeli law and makes Israel the only country in the world to systematically bring minors before a military court “.

Israeli lawyer and activist Smadar Ben Natan pointed out this discrimination of a colonial nature: The Jewish state does not apply the same standards as for its own citizens, and does not respect international conventions when it comes to Palestinian children. An Israeli child cannot be tried before the age of 14, while a Palestinian can be tried from the age of 12.» denounces Israeli lawyer and activist Smadar Ben Natan. For her part, Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, noted, in a report published in July 2023, that this “dual legal system” constitutes“the pillar of the Israeli apartheid regime (…) where children are treated as inhumanely and illegally as adults“.

October 7 a major turning point in regional and world history

Those who seek to annihilate the will of the Palestinian people to resist, by attempting by all means, including lies, slander and odious blackmail of anti-Semitism, to distort what happened on October 7, should explain why the Palestinian question suddenly regained the spotlight of international news and why even the Western powers who do not hide their sympathy for Israel were obliged to recognize, AFTER OCTOBER 7, the need for a Palestinian state if we want to ensure lasting peace in the Middle East region.

Should we recall that on the eve of October 7, 2023, the national cause of the Palestinian people was in the process of being completely liquidated as part of the normalization process underway between Israel and the Arab countries under the auspices of the American Administration.

The sacrifices made by the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, are enormous. Seeking to attribute responsibility for these misfortunes to the Palestinian resistance, in a desperate attempt to exonerate the Israeli occupier, is simply obscene. But history forgets nothing and has nothing to do with the pathological denial of the cultural delinquents who squat the television sets of a republic prey to attempts at monopolistic and tribal appropriation.

Even before decreeing its impartial judgment, history is in the process of taking out its account book in the din of the current and future bombings. Without Law, Force, however brutal it may be, cannot save the best-protected citadel, especially when this force is now overturned by opposing forces who have accumulated resentment and resources for the great event of history.

Whatever political judgment we may make on October 7, it will in any case have made it possible to turn a page in the history of the region and perhaps of the world, even if we unfortunately cannot predict what will happen next. It is up to all people involved in this painful ordeal to take advantage of the regional and international contradictions, which will sharpen in the coming days, to write the following pages. So that force finally returns to Peace and Justice in this region martyred because of its material and…symbolic resources.