“Military occupations have always seemed irreversible, until in fact they are reversed, but it always takes the effort of the colonized to roll back what the colonizers have done. Occupations never ended voluntarily, or just because the more powerful nation wanted it, and have certainly never been the result of a one-sided negotiated settlement initiated and controlled by the dominant power.”
— Edward Said, “Bitter Truths About Gaza”, Peace and Its Discontents (1996)
“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”
Edward W. Said, Orientalism.
The last paradox is that the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve. Indeed, the story of Palestine has been told before: European settlers coming to a foreign land, settling there, and either committing genocide against or expelling the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this respect.
Noam Chomsky, from On Palestine, March 23, 2015
But Israel succeeded nonetheless, with the help of its allies everywhere, in building a multilayered explanation that is so complex that only Israel can understand it. Any interference from the outside world is immediately castigated as naive at best or anti-Semitic at worst.
— Noam Chomsky, On Palestine
The french minister of internal affairs banned pro-Palestine protests, but the administrative tribunal cancelled that decision because banning protests just because they’re pro-Palestine is illegal. So the prefecture had no choice but to allow it, and today 15 000 people gathered Place de la République, in Paris, to support the Palestinian people. Many people also marched in other cities.
We stand with the Palestinian people.
