"Al-Qassam Brigades" Source: From the official website of Al-Qassam
The study of colonial discourse has been interested in many thinkers, such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Gayatri Spivak, who consider studies of colonial discourse crucial to understanding the structures of colonial power and the processes behind the production of the “other.”
These studies explain the colonizer's use of rhetorical practices in order to establish the superiority of the colonizer, and this explains the difference in the lack of similar response with the Palestinian victims compared to the Western and Israeli victims.
If the response was given to the same degree, this would mean that the colonizers condemned their colonization, and there would be no justification for continuing the occupation.
Colonial era discourse
Studying the Israeli occupation as a stage connected to the era of colonialism during the past centuries reduces the strangeness in explaining Western centers’ blatant support for the Israeli occupation. In that era, Gayatri Spivak (1985) noted that Europe’s sense of self was represented by the British soldier in the colonies, by forcing the native citizen to Allocating space for others on their homeland.
The speeches during that period focused on enhancing this feeling.
Bill Ashcroft (2014) agreed with Spivak, as he sees the centers of imperialism as interconnected and homogeneous.
The British fighter obtained a mandate to represent these colonies.
After 1948, this British “fighter” was replaced by the Israeli “fighter,” which did not lose contact with Western centers.
This appears through the speeches, as well as the affiliation of the members of the occupation army to the West, as the occupation army is the only one in the world that contains the largest number of soldiers who have nationalities other than Israeli.
It is more like multinational armies that have been formed over the past years.
If the West wanted to form a colonial military alliance, it would find nothing better than the Israeli occupation army.
In their speeches, the occupation and some of its supporters were keen to show that the post-October 7 war is a war of a civilizational nature, between “civilizational and enlightened countries” against “groups of darkness and human animals.”
This depiction of Palestinian society represents an Orientalist and Victorian imperial point of view, similar to the colonialists’ perceptions of African cultures as violent, lustful, crazy, and obscurantist. The occupation leaders draw their discourses from the repertoire of travelers, military campaigns, and commercial companies of the colonial era to describe the Palestinian people.
Some Western leaders agreed with the occupation leaders on these contents, and this shows the extent of agreement on rhetorical representations and terminological definition.
Since the "Al-Aqsa Flood", the speeches of many Western institutions and regimes have intensified in support of the occupation. This amount of speech cannot be treated merely as political positions and orientations, or as propaganda campaigns targeting public opinion, but rather as an institutionalization of the speech.
This is an extended colonial phenomenon practiced by countries of the colonial era.
It is a means of imposing ideological messages related to colonial self-identity.
This is what Edward Said expressed in his book Orientalism, where he argues that without studying Orientalism as a discourse, one cannot understand the systematic system through which European culture was able to manage and produce the “East” politically, socially, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. .
Michel Foucault agrees with Said, considering that there is no knowledge outside discourse.
Discourse is the cultural and political formation of the “textual situation.”
In the same way with regard to Palestine, many Western academia, institutions and governments have given the discourses their authority.
To have the ability to produce information that constitutes the knowledge that it claims to describe Palestine.
This knowledge accumulates over time to form a political tradition.
One of the cognitive frameworks that shaped the discourses of Western institutions towards Palestine is what is commonly called: “anti-Semitism,” which has become an accusation directed at defenders of Palestinian rights.
Especially with regard to the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes from which they were displaced.
Although the United Nations General Assembly issued a resolution in 1948 stipulating the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and lands from which they were expelled.
Discursive practices to repel the flood
Although the texts of international institutions that recognize the right to self-determination for the Palestinians lack clear and binding mechanisms, the United States has followed three rhetorical strategies to neutralize the rhetoric in support of Palestinian rights. The first is linguistic manipulation without a clear political path. This manipulation has contributed to the perpetuation of the Israeli occupation. End it.
Second: Narrowing the reference points for the Palestinian issue, and distracting from the main path of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, such as preoccupying the world with post-war discussions, reforming the Authority, the form of aid delivery, etc.
Third: The most difficult thing that the United States and Western countries supporting the occupation face are the discourses generated by international institutions.
It indicates international consensus on the one hand, and is based on contents that contradict the occupation narratives on the other hand.
It provides support for movements and institutions of the international community to criticize occupation policies.
However, the United States restructured the discourses to perpetuate the occupation.
An example of this is Security Council Resolution No. 242, which was issued after the Six-Day War in 1967. The British diplomat Lord Caradon was one of the drafters of the resolution, and he coordinated with the United States to produce a vague text without binding implementation mechanisms.
At the same time, it ensures acceptance by the Security Council, the same mechanism that the United States followed in issuing Resolution (338) after the October 6 War in 1973, and subsequent resolutions in the same vein.
After October 7, one of the rhetorical practices that the United States seeks to turn into a political tradition is the repetition of the phrase: “After the war on Gaza.” Aside from the political contents and perceptions that it expresses, it assumes that the Palestinians cannot decide their fate and their representatives. themselves, and considers that the war is represented only by the fiery attack as it has been since October 7, and does not include ending the siege and occupation, and granting the Palestinians their right to live in freedom and dignity.
This phrase worked to sever the Palestinian issue from its complete colonial context, severing it from other current complex contexts, such as the occupation practices in the West Bank of settlement, the Judaization of Jerusalem, and displacement.
The occupation and its supporters seek to dominate Palestine not only through material, military and technological superiority, but also through discourses that include special perceptions of the Palestinians.
Such as the fact that the occupier has the right to defend himself, and the “post-war” perceptions in which Israel and its allies confiscate any space for the perceptions of the Palestinians themselves, as if they were primitives who needed management and education systems to rehabilitate them.
Controlling representations of Palestinians in the discourse of supporters of the occupation has been an effective tool of coercion.
An example is dealing with the numbers of Palestinian martyrs and wounded. United States President Joe Biden denied these numbers, either by ignoring or denying.
Support to UNRWA was stopped after the International Court of Justice relied on the agency’s data on the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
As a practice of obliterating Palestinians’ narratives even on abstract issues, namely numbers, as a case similar to denying the massacres carried out by the occupation in 1948.
Western media institutions ignore thousands of human stories of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
These discursive practices and modes of representation have been used by colonialism since the colonial era to maintain domination, centered on silencing the voices of the colonized and rendering them invisible.
Some Western officials present cultural discourses rather than media discourses, assuming that the other is dysfunctional and easy to classify, not at the individual level, but at the level of groups and institutions.
For example, European Union foreign minister Joseph Borrell was quick to describe the operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance last October 7 as a “war crime,” while he wanted to return to his cultural reference to find out whether it allowed him to describe Israel in the same capacity.
Palestinian rhetorical resistance
However, in the post-October 7 situation, how can Palestinians resist the structure of colonial-era discourse?
In principle, the fact that the “Palestinian narrative” has not disappeared indicates the historical strength of indigenous cultures, and the existence of a rich cultural heritage that is more advanced than the culture of the occupation and its supporters.
The Palestinian narrative resists the authority of the occupation narrative by assuming that the latter is superior and can be relied upon in place of the narratives of the South.
But what the Palestinians need for their discourse and narrative to have an effective political impact are two things:
The first: rhetorical policies and strategies, and dealing with discourse as a framework that regroups the Palestinians and constitutes a platform for communication with the world.
Especially after the discourses resulting from Oslo that confused the Palestinian narrative, and were unable to express the Palestinian whole, which was reduced, by expressing only the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Excluding the diaspora and Palestinians from the territories occupied in 1948. Dealing with the discourse as a moral homeland that expresses and unites the Palestinians.
As well as the openness in the discourse to diverse global groups, the connection to historical and social movements, and the synergy between Palestinian discourses and the discourses of social movements critical of racism, marginalization, and impoverishment policies.
It is true that social media has confused the discourses of the occupation and its supporters, by exposing crimes and re-discussing the Palestinian issue from its origins, to form what we can call rhetorical resistance, which is based on questioning the discourses of the occupation and its supporters as being far from objectivity, morality and civilization, and this comes close. As envisioned by Homi Bhabha (1995), anti-colonial discourse “requires an alternative set of questions, techniques and strategies for its construction.”
The speeches of countries supporting the occupation after October 7 require the Palestinians to hide more behind their speech and narrative, and to push it to have a presence at the international level, as a mechanism to question the entire occupation, and to resist manipulation and mirage speeches about imaginary political paths, which mainly aim to Re-floating the occupation into the international system.
The second issue is institutions that give the discourse power, influence, and influence.
The importance of this strategy lies in the importance of resisting the rhetorical practice of the supporters of the occupation and its relationship with authority and institutions, and it is sad that Palestinian institutions such as the PLO are not activated in this context.
Palestinian solidarity with the demands of marginalized and oppressed groups and minorities prompts these movements to adopt Palestinian demands through their social structures and institutions.
And sometimes through state institutions, if these movements succeed in influencing them.
The International Court of Justice represents an opportunity for the Palestinians, not only because it is the highest international judicial platform, but because it constitutes institutional support for the Palestinian discourse, and also provides support for civil society institutions and solidarity movements, especially in the face of the encroachment of Western governments that have reduced the ceiling of freedoms with regard to Palestine, and have restricted criticism of and boycott of the occupation.
Communicating with the world and confusing the occupation
Good;
The Palestinians did so. Despite the persecution, marginalization, and international humiliation they were subjected to over the course of 75 years, despite the diversity of their sects, they did not cut off contact with the contents of humanitarian law, as it is the language of communication with the world, as a civilizational language that places them at the center of the world.
It confronts and confuses the rhetorical implications of the occupation and its supporters.
We note the occupation's dissatisfaction with international institutions that call for the rights of Palestinians and denounce the massacres and violations committed against them.
Considering that the Palestinians are not a human group to whom humanitarian standards can be applied, international institutions, in the view of the occupation, were created for the North, and not for anyone else.
A few days ago, I watched a video report highlighting the worsening hunger in the Gaza Strip. Among those interviewed was a Palestinian child in front of a torn tent, carrying an empty bowl, waiting for someone to fill it with food, his face showing fatigue and hunger, with those details that express the Palestinian tragedy throughout history. The child said: “We want to file a lawsuit against the countries so that they can bring us flour and feed us, and so that we can bring aid into the Gaza Strip.”
What is noteworthy is that, despite the bitter reality in which this child lives, he did not go extremist, nor did he go savage. He was calm and sober, and with his torn clothes, he addressed the world in a civilized language.
This is the behavior of the original owners of the land.
As the occupation increases its brutality and starvation, this child’s adherence to a high human language increases, and while the West’s support for the occupation increases, the occupation increases in racism, killing, and destruction.
It was said in the book that “hunger is an infidel,” but this child, despite his hunger, did not disbelieve in the principles that the Palestinian has been calling for for more than a hundred years, the principles of the palm that strikes an awl.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.