Nour Odeh: “We are here to stay”

Ref: ADS-55

Summary: the distinguished Palestinian journalist Nour Odeh delivers a powerful message to Israel and the Western powers who have colluded in the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing being carried out by the Israeli state.

Today’s newsletter is a transcript edited for length of a 2 June presentation given by the Palestinian political analyst and journalist Nour Odeh at an event titled Recognition is the Beginning sponsored by the Britain Palestine Project (BPP).

We thank Nour Odeh and BPP for permission to publish.

There is a shifting dynamic in global public opinion about Palestine, about the injustice, the prolonged injustice that the Palestinian people have endured but that shifting global public opinion is still not able to overcome the wall of established mainstream attitudes in politics. And the announcement of the UK Prime Minister about the recognition of Palestine, I think, provides a very good example of that. In that announcement, the words Palestine and Palestinian were mentioned seven times. The word Israel and Israeli was mentioned eight times. Nowhere were the words international law, United Nations, self determination. Those words were not included in that announcement.

Now why am I saying that and why am I picking on Keir Starmer? Well he deserves it, but it also tells where we’re at: the contrast between where global public opinion is heading about Palestine and where mainstream politics in the West, the former colonisers of Palestine, the Western powers who now have permanent seats at the UN Security Council, are. The issue of Palestine is moving in terms of policy only when it is under extreme pressure and only in as much as it doesn’t really disturb the balance of power that has allowed Israel not just to maintain the Nakba since 1947 but also to commit genocide live on the air since 2023 and to continue to commit ethnic cleansing in the Occupied West Bank.

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I think one of the most interesting things that we’ve gone through as Palestinians since the onset of the genocide is to watch the world, the world’s people see what we feel and what we go through, and to reject the filter of mainstream media, to isolate mainstream media – which has on many occasions been complicit in this genocide – and to be in a place where they simply cannot unsee the truth, and that will have, I think, long-term implications for mainstream media which is losing its share of the pie. It’s losing its integrity and its standing as a credible source of information because it has proven over the years that it’s not objective, that it is not unbiased and that it does not view Palestinians as of equal humanity. Global public opinion, which is shifting against genocide, against ethnic cleansing and being more pro-Palestinian, has simply switched off mainstream media, and hats off to them for doing that.

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The world cannot unsee what they’ve seen since 2023. They cannot unlearn what they’ve learned, and Palestinians have a much lower tolerance for what they already knew was institutional bias and racism against them and for trying over the decades to prove their humanity in order to get the attention of the mainstream. I think you will find less and less attempt to do that by Palestinians and more leaning towards those in alignment with the vast majority of people who understand that our fate as humans is more connected than we previously realised and to understand that solidarity with Palestine is not just uncontroversial it is common sense, because what has been allowed, what has been normalised in Palestine, in Gaza and in the West Bank is now spreading across the region and it will be normalised beyond the boundaries of the Middle East if the status quo continues, if the mainstream is allowed to get comfortable and trade real policy change for performative actions, for nice declarations, for expressions of concern.

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I think there is a bigger realisation worldwide that what is happening to Palestinians, what is being allowed to happen in Palestine, is part of a much bigger problem and the alignment of interests is part of a much bigger problem. So, instead of trying to get into the mainstream, you will have more polarisation and more pressure on those policy makers of the mainstream today, the way we’re seeing, for example, in the Democratic Party in the US, which continues to have the blinders on. Those in the progressive block which, if they survive being primaried by AIPAC, will continue to apply the kind of pressure that you see in the debates about support and weapons supply. But the fact that we’re still not there, and the fact that this shift in global opinion has not affected policy shouldn’t be a reason to be discouraged.

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It’s very difficult to be optimistic during these times, and I understand the enormity and the significance of what Dahlia (Scheindlin) presented about Israeli youth and the fact that they are more hardline and more right wing. I don’t think that we completely comprehend the effects of the genocide on Palestinians, not yet, anyways. I don’t think we’ve been able to process it all because it hasn’t stopped, but I think at the end of the day the only way for Israel to move from where it is now – a society that endorses genocide, that supports everything that has been happening, that sees the equation as zero sum, us or them – is for us to call things for what they are. This is not about a peace process. This is about decolonisation. This is about Palestinian freedom and the expectation that – if you can just pound Palestinians enough and force them to meet certain criteria to make Israelis comfortable enough to give Palestinians some of their rights – that is no longer a workable formula. I know many of our politicians still think it is but let me tell you the alternative view in Palestine. It is not. Three years after the onset of the genocide and the level of tolerance for this kind of dehumanising colonial rhetoric is quite literally near zero. It is not what Palestinians want to hear, and it’s not what Palestinians are willing to work with. They’re willing to work with people who see them as equals, with people who don’t need them to prove their humanity, with partners around the world who understand that without Palestinian freedom this region will continue to be tortured and this world will continue to have that mirror facing them, showing them the hypocrisy, the duplicity and their complicity in these crimes and the unraveling of this international order we keep hearing so much about from the countries that created it, without, of course, Palestinians in mind; because we were supposed to have disappeared decades ago. What we’ve proven is that we are very difficult to make disappear, we’ve proven also to be very difficult to put on mute, and we’re here, and we’re here to stay, despite the genocide, despite the apartheid and despite the annexation. And the fact that we have more global partners in ordinary people and the human rights organisations and civil society around the world, including brave organisations in Israel, only adds to my conviction that the way forward is not to appease the mainstream, but to continue to challenge it, because playing by those rules that produced and designed the Nakba are not going to result in liberation or decolonisation or even peace, which has almost turned into a dirty word at this point, and it will not bring justice. And that is not something that I personally think is tolerable after everything that we’ve endured and seen over the past three years.