The ongoing explosion in public activism in the United States and the world for a ceasefire in Gaza and equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians is a battleground as important as the military face-off over Gaza in this century-old conflict.
It reveals the eroding efficacy of traditional pro-Israel propaganda in the face of more visible and explicitly apartheid policies by Israel and widespread, technically proficient mobilisations by pro-Palestine and pro-justice movements. It also signals how people across the globe recognise the Palestinians’ suffering and their battle for national rights as among the last anti-colonial struggles in the world.
Signs of this trend were visible even before the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 240 taken captive. But the unprecedented and brutal Israeli counterrampage against civilians and all institutions of life in Gaza that followed — killing 15,000 people and displacing almost 80 percent of the population — has clarified Israeli policies and their long colonial vintage and turned global sentiment against Israel’s aggressions.
That public pressure in turn forced even backers of the war in the West to reluctantly push for a week’s truce and negotiated exchanges of detainees by Israel and Hamas before the fighting resumed on Friday.
Perhaps the most compelling of the political developments that are now in flux and will shape the world’s view of the war and the configuration of the region has been the steady stream of students and young professionals in the United States and beyond standing up for equal........