A pro-Palestine protest on the online game platform Roblox [photo credit: Roblox]
In the same time, Africans and Arabs who were under the influence of
Western propaganda have always believed that there’s a brighter future
for their children in Europe than in Arab/African countries, where
wealth was plundered by these same propagandists. Following this
mindset, my upper middle-class parents put me in a French public high
school in Tunis. History was my favourite class and I excitedly
discovered Western values like democracy, freedom, and justice. Our
French teachers taught us about both World Wars and how Western human
rights and institutions would make sure that the horrors committed
during these wars would not be repeated again. The teenage me was
fascinated by these idealistic values and the utopian world France and
the West were promising to build.
However, although history classes in the French curriculum were based
on analysing historical events and discussing different perspectives,
the Palestinian war wasn’t even a lesson, and the Nakba was
mentioned in only a short sentence, as part of post-WWII events. While
most of my peers who grew up in “Westernized” households didn’t have a
problem with it, I, who come from a strong Arab cultural background, was
surprised by this, and raised questions inside my head : “Why didn’t we
talk about it like we do about both World Wars or the Cold War? Is this
a taboo topic?” I thought that even if I asked these questions, I’d
have received cliché answers like: “We’re mostly focused on Western
history”. While my teachers from France always told us that the history
curriculum’s goal is to help us develop critical thinking, I guess that
our learning doesn’t include questioning and criticising Western
policies in the Middle East.
After graduating from high school and gaining some distance from this
Western propaganda, as time passes I realise how much the ‘developed’
world make words like “justice” and “democracy” void of meaning. People
in the society I grew up in, often say that once one gets to Europe or
the US, full rights will be guaranteed. I think many of them would
change their minds now, as countries like the US, France, and Germany
look at the genocide happening in Gaza, not only without calling it out,
but also with demonising Palestinians. Besides, Instagram and Facebook
stand accused of
censoring Palestinian-related content by deleting all posts against
Israel. As if it wasn’t enough that they are oppressed in real life,
Palestinians are also silenced on social media, supposedly spaces for
freedom of speech. Reputable American media outlets try to claim
neutrality but have ended up as the accomplice of Israel, since the
oppressor and oppressed can’t be on an equal footing even when analysing
the situation objectively. And when the Arab diaspora tries to protest
and to express their opinion, the police in France repress it by teargassing protestors and in Germany by arresting them.
These recent weeks, the message from powerful Western countries is
that Arab lives don’t matter as much as those of white people and Arab
grief and anger shouldn’t be expressed. Israel’s colonisation of
Palestine will remain a perpetuated trauma through generations. However,
Arabs and the Palestinian people won’t only pass grief and anger to
their children but also resilience and resistance.