© Rana Shubair
Participants in Gaza’s Great March of Return on the eighth Friday of the demonstration.
The Great March of Return is a startling, powerful expression of Palestinian identity and resistance. Thousands of Palestinians have come out, bravely and unapologetically, to say: "We refuse to remain invisible. We reject any attempt to assign us to the discard pile of history. We will exercise our fundamental right to go home." They have done this unarmed, in the face of Israel's use of deadly armed force against targets (children, press, medics) deliberately chosen to demonstrate the Jewish state's unapologetic determination to force them back into submissive exile by any means necessary. By doing this repeatedly over the last few weeks,
these incredibly brave men, women, and children have done more than decades of essays and books to strip the aura of virtue from Zionism that's befogged Western liberals' eyes for 70 years.
What the Israelis have done over the past few weeks --
killing at least 112 and wounding over 13,000 people (332 with life-threatening injuries and 27 requiring amputation) -- is a historical crime that stands alongside the
Sharpeville Massacre (69 killed),
Bloody Sunday (14 killed), and the
Birmingham Fire Hoses and Police Dog Repression as a defining moment in an ongoing struggle for justice and freedom. Like those events, this month's slaughter may become a turning point for what John Pilger correctly
calls "the longest occupation and resistance in modern times" -- the continuing, unfinished subjugation of the Palestinian people, which, like apartheid and Jim Crow, requires constant armed repression and at least occasional episodes of extermination.
Comment: This is the example of a teamwork, but unfortunately the US is not a team player.