The last twelve months have highlighted to a global audience that the Palestinian people are engaged in a physical struggle for the liberation of their lands and lives from military occupation by the self-proclaimed Jewish State of Israel. They are facing an existential threat to their lives and loss of homeland. However, there is another area of liberation that needs understanding and reflection.

The mass slaughter of Palestinians has shown us just how little  Western states and leaders care about the lives of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. Many Muslims already knew this from our colonial history passed down to children by elder generations, and the wars of the last 40 years in the Muslim world. Yet for Western audiences, this is the first time they are viewing what Muslims have seen and known for decades. The grotesque violence and massacres of innocent people we have seen on social media are something that few in the West could have been prepared for. Social media has exposed the reality of Israeli ideology and militarism that the mainstream media conceals.

The colonial history of Palestine and the conflict with Israel has become widely known among the masses of the youth in the West. This education in such a short space of time has been phenomenal. There are now many podcasters and influencers pumping out history and counter-narratives as an alternative to the mainstream media. Some have a bigger viewership than the mainstream. The masses in the West have lost their fear of speaking out and telling the truth. Activists have overturned a major plank of the global Zionist propaganda machine in a brief time. This has been nothing short of a revolution in countering pro-Israeli propaganda, hence the extensive efforts by governments across the West, aligned with Israel, to censor activism and social media.

However, there is an area of colonial policy that continues to dominate which is the most difficult for people in the West to come to terms with and disrupt. That is the area of political and corporate media language, discourse, and narratives. Words and sentences, help to shape the lens through which the world is seen. They help construct the framing of a conflict. Words also provide context and meaning that are imposed on people, as such they become a source of knowledge and “truth” (epistemology) which in turn becomes a source of influence and power over people.

The Power of Words

This is the power wielded by Israeli propagandists, the political class, and Western media when representing Palestinians, their struggle, and the genocide in their homeland. Those words, terms, and sentences are key to the dehumanisation of the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim people, as well as providing legitimacy to the Zionist project, and Israeli crimes.

They must represent the Palestinian people as a threat to Jews/Israel/civilisation and as inherently evil. It elicits indifference to killings, starvation, ethnic cleansing, and the destruction of homes and the way of life of Palestinians by the state of Israel. This is no different from how the European invaders of Africa, America, and Australia were able to justify violence and genocide against them. This is precisely why Israel’s propaganda war machine in the West fights tooth and nail over every word and sentence used in the media to describe the conflict, which is already pro-Israel.

Words are war by another means in this instance. Hence slaughter and crimes can be dismissed by politicians and the media using words. The power of political systems to define and describe the condition of people from the Global South and impose solutions to their problems is itself a source of oppression from which we need liberating.

This representation of Muslims and minorities by the political/media elites is part of the historical colonial project which is still operational in the West. If we want to liberate the Palestinian people and Muslim lands we must ditch the language of colonialism and oppressors and develop our own. Sadly, most Muslims will hardly ever challenge or complain about words or sentences in the media or even social media, except within our circles. This must change. We must also fight tooth and nail to challenge the language of politicians and the media just as Israel’s propaganda war machine does. By not doing so, we are allowing them a free hand to present the Palestinian struggle through a biased lens that reproduces colonial thinking which legitimises grotesque violence and war crimes against them.

Obstacles to Independent Language and Narratives.

It is not only mainstream media that shapes the way we think and the language we use, but other institutions also reinforce which words, sentences and solutions are appropriate to describe Israeli military occupation and colonial rule. Thinking outside the official narrative is liable to be described as extreme or antisemitic and therefore not worthy to be in the mainstream or be engaged with.

In schools, children are encouraged to hear alternative views on issues, but these are confined to hearing only alternatives acceptable to the establishment. Similarly in mainstream universities, students and academics encourage the use of the same official language as the political class, and even when academics produce a counter-narrative or analysis it is often a Euro-centric one that reinforces a colonial outlook or mindset. Here again, we have seen students challenging the official narratives through campus encampments and protests being clamped down by university establishments.

The mask has come off some famous Western academics like Jurgen Habermas who reinforced the concept of the Eastern colonial other by stating that the word genocide should not be applied to Israel’s actions.

“All the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population […], the standards of judgment slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions.”

Slavoj Zizek another popular Marxist intellectual, whilst condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine claimed the former were “no less than Arabs.” Bernard-Henri Levi allegedly a liberal French intellectual has authored a book “Israel Alone” in which he considers Israel to be waging an existential war against barbarism for Israel and the world all alone. This is despite the most powerful Western countries in the world openly aiding Israel.

Media populists like Jordan Peterson have shown their utter contempt for Palestinian life by calling for Netanyahu to “unleash Hell” on Palestinians. Salman Rushdie once considered an Indian anti-racist novelist, and now the darling of liberals, has stated that if Palestine were free, it would end with rule like that of the Taliban.

Journalists/commentators such as Piers Morgan reinforce the colonial message of the illegitimate violence of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims who despite being militarily weak, allegedly pose an existential threat to the “civilised” European Jews who are portrayed as weak, under threat from native violence. Israel’s violence is portrayed as legitimate and even necessary to prevent an existential threat to Jews, extending it to Western civilisation (even though Israel is a military power itself, backed by the mightiest military power the world has ever seen) –  a narrative straight out of the colonial playbook.

Scratch the surface and these types of scholars and media pundits (some on the left, some on the right, even proclaiming to be liberal human rights champions) whilst claiming to have sympathies with the Palestinian struggle, do not challenge knowledge about “Easterners” (the other) but rather please and conform to those corporate controllers of knowledge by not going beyond acceptable words and narratives. Some even come across as a reincarnation of Rudyard Kipling and the “White man’s burden.”

Western governments now plan to control narratives on Palestine/Israel in schools, limit free speech in universities, and restrict the right to protest. Muslims will need to resist and provide the means of education and training outside schools and universities on a mass scale.

The  Language of Politics and Activism

It is political parties/governments that reinforce language and narratives on political issues. Hundreds of Muslim members of political parties and councillors present a framework of how we should view the Palestinian people’s liberation struggle against European invaders/colonialism, and solutions. In turn, politicians reinforce acceptable words and narratives to Muslim communities by towing the party line on what is antisemitic/acceptable and through party discipline and whips. It is for this reason, that the Ayaan Institute advocated for a political movement of Independents and alternatives in politics, in Britain. This will help break consensus thinking and language and build political alternatives and policies.

It is not only party-political epistemology (sources of knowledge and truth) that has imprisoned us and handicapped the emergence of a genuine Palestine liberation discourse and movement, which is not rooted in a colonial Western civilisational outlook. Some of the pro-Palestinian movements and commentators have trapped us into adopting a softer controlled colonial/Zionist discourse and outlook that still confers legitimacy to Zionism/Jewish supremacy and its Israeli project. This allows for the continuation of the “othering” of non-Westerners. They still present Zionism/Israel as having some moral/ethical basis and as a struggle between two people with a common history over a piece of land. This requires the Palestinians, victims of Jewish supremacy, who had no part to play in the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe, to take some responsibility and ownership for Jewish suffering.

These approaches are not from Muslim civilisation or history which rejects ideologies of racial supremacy and embraces co-existence. Why should anyone in the region accept Jewish supremacy and domination in the Holy Land of the three great religions and beyond? Zionism is not a religion; it is a political ideology of racial supremacy that has been imported and imposed through violence into the Muslim world by European invaders; and must be uprooted for peace to return to Palestine and the region. Therefore, there will always be a liberation and resistance struggle against this form of Western colonialism in the Muslim world for many decades, if not another century.

In the West, we need to liberate Western intellectual, political, and media from ideologies of racial supremacy, colonial thought, and discourse. We must develop and popularise a new political discourse on the Palestine/Israel conflict using our history, language, and terms. This independence struggle is equally necessary for ending wars and the disregard for the lives of people in the Global South. Palestine is at the heart of this struggle and that is why in a sense it is the last great independence struggle against Western colonialism, that all those committed to anti-colonialism and imperialism must be a part.