International Action Towards Ending the Nakba and Realizing the inalienable rights of the Palestinian People

 

Below is my speech at the commemoration of the 77 years of Nakba under the theme “International Action Towards Ending the Nakba and Realizing the inalienable rights of the Palestinian People” organised by the Embassy of the State of Palestine and the SL Committee for Solidarity with Palestine. 

“Despite this being the first genocide to be live streamed onto our mobile devices 24/7, the slaughter continues uninterrupted for 19 months. What does it tell us about the times we live in and the so-called rules that are said to be the basis of the global order? 

The difference between knowing and not knowing the magnitude of the atrocities that are being committed in Gaza right at this moment is simply this: we have been given the choice either to be active supporters of the unfolding Genocide or passive spectators of the carnage.

As we all know, the real body count can be 3 or 4 times more than the official figures as it is being repeatedly pointed out by reliable and reputed sources (such as Lancet), which includes almost 18000 children, over 200 journalists, 400 relief workers, over 150 academics, 1300 health workers etc. The complete dismantling of the infrastructure in Gaza as well as in the West Bank is a result of a surgically calculated and coordinated attack on the essential foundation of the collective national life of the palestinians. Nevertheless, the world keeps revolving around the axis of power despite the fact that millions of masses all over the world take to streets, literally every week demanding justice and end to this bloodbath.

But the question is, whether the world will be the same again once this criminal onslaught ends. After Gaza, what meaning would be left to understand the basis of common humanity, from the universal human rights charter to the so-called rules based world order?  

When shall we bring an end to this cold criminal calculations and ambitious geopolitical strategies of the powerful actors that have converted the strong willed Palestinian people into an easily disposable heap of human dust and rubble, as they did in many other places in the world?

We need to keep asking these questions to be able to resist the pressure to submit ourselves to passive acceptance and soulless silence.

However, despite all the harrowing and horrendous events, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are being starved, bombed, maimed and slaughtered in an ever diminishing land as the world looks on, will change our understanding as human beings, about justice, resilience and collective will of oppressed people by their decision to stand their ground and refusing to submit and leave. Palestinians who carry the flame of human will to be free, from the first Nakba to the present genocidal bloodbath, will reshape the world and humanity. They represent the collective human desire of the millions of oppressed, to achieve a different world, different set of values and dreams, which we desperately longed to realise as human beings. They have become the flag of unbreakable human will while epitomising the eternal flame that ignites the collective dreams of freedom and human dignity of the millions of oppressed. 

Palestine will live on and the collective will of the Palestinians will shine sharper & brighter as a timeless and borderless universal example for the subjugated people in the world.”