حرية لفلسطين

Falsely Equating 'Intifada' with Terrorism:

Despite the egregious lies and falsehoods perpetuated around the Intifada and its meaning, the reality is the Intifadas (shake-offs) represented grassroots Palestinian rebellion against decades of Israeli occupation characterized by nonviolent demonstrations and civil disobedience centered around boycotts, tax strikes, protests, and other measures focused against the occupation.

It was only after intense oppression from Israeli forces that resulted in the brutal massacre of approximately 1,100 innocent Palestinians (many of them women and children) that protestors adopted more violent tactics, still limiting themselves to throwing stones and molotov cocktails in the face of intense military aggression and force.

Similarly, 3,350 Palestinians would also later be slaughtered by Israelis during the second intifada, with tens of thousands more gravely injured - once again showing the violent and oppressive response innocent Palestinian civilians faced when protesting for their basic human rights and liberties.

Therefore, the malicious characterization of the Palestinian Intifadas as acts of "terrorism" and "genocide" represents an insidious attempt to delegitimize and demonize the struggle for Palestinian self-determination and liberation from Israeli occupation. This purposely inflammatory misrepresentation seeks to erase the historical roots of the Intifadas as grassroots uprisings and nonviolent civil resistance movements against decades of dehumanizing oppression.

By predominantly portraying the struggle for Palestinian liberation and statehood as inherently violent and affiliated with terrorism, Israeli propaganda and its supporters engage in a campaign of vicious historical omission and revisionism. They erase the fundamental reality that the Intifadas were born of decades of dehumanizing oppression, land theft, and ethnic persecution carried out against the Palestinian people by Israel's militarized occupying forces.

To equate these cries for emancipation with "terrorism" or “genocide” is a purposeful act of dehumanization that seeks to disparage and silence the Palestinian cause and render the victims of occupation and institutionalized racism as the aggressors, while sanctifying and absolving the state that has systematically stripped them of their homeland, rights and dignity through unrelenting violence, subjugation and displacement.

Distorting 'From the River to the Sea':

The purposeful distortion of the phrase "from the river to the sea" as a call for terrorism, genocide, and the expulsion of Jewish people constitutes a malicious act of disinformation designed to diminish the Palestinian struggle for human rights and self-determination. This inflammatory misrepresentation willfully misconstrues the fundamental meaning behind the expression as a vision of comprehensive freedom and dignity for all people living between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

Contrary to these slanderous accusations, the invocation of "from the river to the sea" represents an emancipatory ideal - the aspiration that all inhabitants of historic Palestine, regardless of ethnicity or faith, may one day live in peace, justice and equality. It articulates the hope that oppression, discrimination, and subjugation will be dismantled, giving way to a society where neither colonial dispossession nor segregation determine the fates and rights of any of its peoples.

To falsely conflate this uplifting prospect with genocide is an unconscionable act of propaganda that seeks to demonize the perfectly justifiable demands of the Palestinian people. It paints their yearning to overcome Israel's racist apartheid laws, draconian military occupation, and systemic oppression as somehow tantamount to the very injustices they continue to resist after decades of dehumanizing persecution.

Those crying "genocide" at this call for universal liberties are engaging in a cynical form of projection, perhaps of their own heinous beliefs and views as evidenced in the Likud party’s charter, where they claim ‘from the river to the sea, there will only be Israeli sovereignty’ - accusing their vulnerable victims of desiring the very atrocities that have been perpetrated against them.

Under Zionist occupation, it is the Palestinian people who have endured ethnic cleansing, massacres, land confiscation, and institutionalized discrimination under Israel's regime of supremacy. Their invocations of freedom "from the river to the sea" represent an end to such crimes against humanity, not their perpetration.

This wilful smear is an act of complicity in the continued denial of Palestinian humanity, identity, and rights. It is a shameless tactic to discredit the justness and beauty of their anti-colonial and anti-racist strivings by painting a venerable cause as something untenable and malevolent. In reality, it is those perpetuating occupation, apartheid, and displacement of the indigenous Palestinian people who are advancing the true forces of oppression and ethnic supremacy in the region.

To insist that this emancipatory vision equates to the expulsion of Jewish citizens is also a vicious deception that reinforces a paradigm of segregation and discrimination. The river to the sea idiom seeks the liberation of all peoples within historic Palestine - liberation that is fundamentally incompatible with any form of ethnic expulsion or supremacy.

Instead, it imagines a society where one's ethno-religious identity neither precludes their equality nor human and civil rights, regardless of whether they are Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, Christians or any other component of the diverse populace.

At its core, the river to the sea idiom gives a powerful voice to the universal yearning to dismantle all forms of racist oppression, institutionalized discrimination and denial of inalienable human rights.

To brand this righteous civic ideal as genocidal or an affront to Jewish existence is a crass attempt to invert reality and defame those demanding justice, freedom and pluralistic coexistence for all the people of the land. It is a bad-faith rhetorical strategy designed to perpetuate a status quo of subjugation and ethnic domination by falsely portraying the victims as aggressors and oppressors.

Smearing protestors and inciting violence:

The reprehensible act of smearing and inciting violence against pro-Palestinian protesters – even indirectly – represents dangerous attempts to silence advocacy for human rights and suppress criticism of the oppressive policies enacted against the Palestinian people. These unconscionable tactics seek to delegitimize and demonize those standing in solidarity with the struggles against occupation, apartheid, and the denial of self-determination.

By characterizing these demonstrations as violent hate-marches not only serves as an attempt to smear demonstrators in the eyes of the general public but also gaslight them into questioning their own actions. When combined with the false narrative around how these spaces are “unsafe” for Jewish individuals, played up only by inflammatory and incendiary terms like “no go zones” to further divide the movement and block meaningful mass organising between the different pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide and anti-Zionist movements.

This provides a smokescreen to justify forcibly disrupting and violating the fundamental civil liberties of peaceful protestors and conflates lawful expressions of dissent with threats to public order, falsely portraying those decrying injustice as provocateurs and aggressors in need of subjugation by state forces.

This defamatory rhetoric has routinely been deployed by authoritarian regimes throughout history to discredit challengers to their unjust systems of domination and marginalization. By cynically equating criticism of state misconduct with impending chaos, the powerful can recast efforts to hold them accountable as threats to societal stability requiring violent suppression. These divisive strategies are no different to the age-old tactics employed by colonial regimes who label the colonized as terrorists for taking up arms in their quest for liberation.

Those who peddle such dangerous rhetoric against Palestinian activists engage in an obstruction of truth and an assault on the sacrosanct rights of free speech, free assembly and freedom of conscience. They provide ethical and rhetorical cover for the repression of noble grassroots movements born of moral outrage in the face of subjugation and apartheid policies.

This results in the violent suppression of voices by police regimes, a reality we’re already seeing unfold before our very eyes across the global north. While it’s predominantly only extremist individuals committing acts of violence against their peers who are choosing to protest against the active genocide, it’s a worrying trend that should be

Any claims of such demonstrations being “inconvenient” or “not winning any hearts” only demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the core tenets of protests, civil disobedience and the philosophy behind demonstrations. Protests, in their very nature, are intended to disrupt and cause inconvenience, because at the end of the day, they’re a community’s desperate efforts to get their peers to listen, pay attention and take direct action.

By instead ignoring these calls to action and discussing how the protests affect you personally, you not only undermine the wider collective’s efforts but shift focus away from the core goal of saving lives and ensuring equality for all.Defenders of the indefensible find themselves resorting to such duplicitous vilification because they cannot counteract substantive criticism of the injustices and human rights violations they enable through truthful argument and moral reasoning. Smears and incitements become their only available tactics to obfuscate and deflect righteous condemnation.

Those genuinely committed to democratic values and universal human rights must firmly resist such ignoble efforts to denigrate and endanger pro-Palestinian demonstrators. In reality, portraying pro-Palestinian solidarity as an incitement of violence is, in itself, an incitement against the nonviolent civil resistors who represent the continued march toward universal freedom, dignity, and adherence to international law. This vilification of protestors is merely a desperate attempt to preserve an outmoded ethnonationalist order through the weaponization of misinformation and undemocratic physical force.

Visited Israel or Supported 'Birthright' Trips:

By visiting Israel, individuals actively endorse and support a regime built on systemic oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through settler colonial terrorism. These visitors are complicit in legitimizing and normalizing a brutal apartheid system recognized and condemned by numerous international bodies, including the United Nations, the ICJ, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. [1] [2] [3]

Visitors to Israel tacitly approve severe restrictions on Palestinian movement, land confiscations, home demolitions, and the devastating blockade on Gaza, which has created catastrophic humanitarian conditions. These are not mere allegations but documented realities. The apartheid system privileges Israeli settlers while subjecting Palestinians to systemic discrimination and violence, with segregated roads, military checkpoints, and a separation barrier that fragments Palestinian communities and restricts their freedom. [4] [5] [6]

Tourism economically supports the state, indirectly funding the military occupation and the infrastructure of apartheid, including illegal settlements and state violence. Without acknowledging or engaging with the Palestinian experience, visitors normalize and legitimize these oppressive practices. [7] The financial impact of tourism cannot be understated. [8] Visitors who spend money in Israel bolster the systems of oppression that deny Palestinians their basic human rights. This financial support funds the Israeli military and infrastructure supporting illegal settlements. [9]

Programs like Birthright trips further legitimize the subjugation of Palestinians by promoting a one-sided narrative that erases the realities of occupation and apartheid, falsely presenting Israel as a safe and welcoming homeland for Jews while ignoring Palestinian suffering and dispossession. [10] [11] [12]

Visitors to Israel without a critical perspective are complicit in the violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They lend credibility to a regime widely condemned for its discriminatory practices and human rights violations. By choosing to visit Israel, these individuals endorse a state that systematically violates international law and human rights, contributing to the ongoing suffering and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Further reading:

• Tourism in Service of Israeli Occupation and Annexation
• Ethical Travel to Palestine & Challenging Apartheid Tourism
• Boycott Birthright & other free trips to Israel!