Genocide is not simply something that is “far away.” Palestine is not a “complicated conflict” nor is it based on religious tensions. History does not begin where a person sees fit.
A genocide is being committed against Palestinians by Israel and the United States through its financial and military aid amounting to over $310 billion since the former’s creation in 1948.
American citizen’s tax dollars facilitate the deaths of humans who are trapped with nowhere to escape the constant destruction of their homeland.
The Gaza Health Ministry officially counts human deaths caused by Israeli attacks to exceed 42,847 as of Oct. 25.
An open letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris by 99 American medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023 said the loss of life is “greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s total population” when including starvation, disease and other factors.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor intends to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and Israel’s intentional deprivation of basic human necessities like food or water to the civilian population in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) “found it plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide” in South Africa’s court case against Israel.
These deaths are not some unfortunate circumstance of “war.” The genocidal invasion by Israel is done with systematic intent.
Events always have context, and in this case, it is an Israeli occupation for the capital interests of Western powers.
The Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by a coalition of secular and religious organizations including Hamas on military installations and civil society sit in the context of nearly 100 years of violent occupation.
Israel’s response has been one of its most deadly campaigns of violence against civilians that thinly veils its long-existing motive of displacing the Palestinian population.
This is between a colonizing force and an indigenous people.
Palestinians, not defined by race or religion but region, were Muslim, Christian and Jewish populations that lived in co-existence prior to the end of World War I.
In the early 20th century, settlers from Europe and North America colonized the land of Palestine and began evicting indigenous Palestinians through land grab.
Their goal was to create a state with a Jewish majority populace, the ideology of Zionism. Prominent Zionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, wrote in his essay “The Iron Wall,” accepting the label of colonialism and that Palestinians would fight back against it.
He argued means such as displacement or unequal rights were necessary for the success of Zionism. Jabotinsky simply argued it was “moral and just” and that Arabs were primitive.
These efforts were supported by the 1917 Balfour Declaration of the British Empire, which saw the socio-economic value of a Jewish satellite state, an apparatus still supported today.
Zionist paramilitaries, precursors to the current Israeli military, displaced over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and committed several dozens of massacres in an ethnic cleansing campaign, the 1948 Nakba.
Following the creation of Israel is its continual theft of Palestinian land ownership, resources, human rights and culture over the course of decades.
Israeli demographics continue to grow more homogenous as a result.
The result of this ethnostate is an apartheid regime that places white Jews above Black Jews and Arab-Israeli citizens. Palestinian people are treated as third-class citizens.
Palestinians are not allowed to drive on certain roads, while there is constant profiling based on religion and skin color.
Year after year, Jewish-exclusive settlements are built in the West Bank and previously Gaza, with settlers notorious for inciting violence and accelerating the displacement of Palestinians.
These settlements are illegal according to the ICJ, yet Israel continues to ignore orders to withdraw.
There is a reason Israel faces hostility from its neighbors and why its bloodthirst is recently expanding into Lebanon and rounding up northern Gaza.
It seeks expansion for ethnocratic and financial purposes through violent means. It is allowed to do so with the unequivocal military and financial aid of every single U.S. administration.
In the 2018 Great March of Return, thousands of peaceful protestors demanded the end of Israel’s ongoing blockade of basic needs to Gaza and the right of return to their homes after the initial 1948 Nakba expulsion.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed over 200 protestors.
The many currents of opposition to Israel’s occupation, violent and or nonviolent, follow the paths of previous movements in response to colonization.
Algeria and Vietnam’s wars for independence were armed means of liberation when the oppressed were backed into a corner with guns to their heads.
How can we expect Palestinians to quietly accept their own genocide? Who would expect Jews to accept their Holocaust? Why would Black slaves consent to perpetual servitude?
Should the indigenous peoples in North America have accepted the eradication of their cultures and ancestral lands while being murdered by settlers?
The American news media and journalism has been complicit. Israel’s narrative and victimhood runs riot in the cultural institutions while it continues to mercilessly slaughter people it considers undesirable so that it can create an ethnocratic utopia.
Journalism is not to be a tool wielded by empire. It is a methodology of seeking the truth.
The Rampage editorial staff consists of learning journalists who are embittered by the media institutions that we are supposed to look up to for guidance. It would be wrong of us to fundamentally ignore what we’ve been taught.
We are not journalists when we do not give voice to those whose screams you ignore.
We cannot ignore a live-streamed genocide. The systematic killing of 160+ Palestinian journalists cannot be brushed off by any respectable media institution.
Israel’s censorship and war on journalism through designating Al-Jazeera journalists as “terrorists” cannot be left unchecked.
There is only one side that is committing a genocide with the backing of some of the most powerful militaries in the world.
Understand that these matters affect us here too.
Social services, subsidized education and free healthcare are considered too expensive to support yet the U.S. candidly gives the multi-million dollar aircrafts and bombs used by Israel to kill.
The Rampage has dealt with the firsthand accounts of people increasingly forced onto the streets due to the lack of social safety nets, yet our tax dollars funnel to an obscene military-industrial complex.
The U.S. cares more for its interests in Israel than it does its own citizens in the wake of Hurricane Milton and Helene.
The pollution of a war-machine burns while many in North Carolina face the worsened effects of climate change.
We encourage everyone to educate themselves on these pressing matters. You have more in common with a child in Palestine than you do a billionaire or ghoulish politician.
Palestinian journalists on the ground in Gaza offer some of the most valuable perspectives in these times as they document what you would never know reading an American newspaper.
Bisan Owda, for example, documents the difficulty of life in Gaza, the perspectives of the everyday person and the necessary context behind this genocide.
There are many times where the most affected have the most valuable input to offer. The other side prefers to murder journalists and hide the truth.
Continue to learn and listen to the perspectives of those who are affected, especially when their words continually fall on deaf ears.
Organize within the community and share what you learn with others. Collectively, people are stronger together than keeping to yourself.
Protests occur weekly on Saturdays at 5 p.m. on Blackstone and Nees. Fresno State has a Students for Palestinian Liberation club.
Fresno City College has the Social Justice Center and clubs like MEchA who support student activism.
In the face of this adversity, Palestine continues to live, even as Israel carpet bombs and attempts to rid of the signs of life that do not fit its twisted ideals.
Palestinians continue to exist through culture and identity even as a violent suppression attempts to undermine it. It is admirable and its existence is resistance.
Many can learn from the Palestinians stride for self-determination and freedom against the biggest of adversaries.
One out of nine editors for The Rampage have chosen to not be included in this editorial.
