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Time. It truly is crazy. Time passes in the blink of an eye as families gather, children play, communities indulge in frivolous activities and delicious food. Yet some – for almost two years – have been deprived of those very special moments. Deprived of basic human rights. Time, it truly is crazy. Days turned into months, months into years and the end is yet to be seen.
Children are starving. Families are being torn apart. People are being senselessly murdered. Entire neighbourhoods, schools, hospitals have been reduced to rubble. As humans, we pride ourselves on our moral superiority. We show those around us that we value human rights; women’s rights, disability rights, and most importantly, International laws. Almost two years have gone by, in which ordinary people have screamed at the top of their lungs for this genocide in Palestine to stop. Yet, here we are today. Our politicians have turned a blind eye. Institutions have tried to silence us. Educational systems globally are on the wrong side of history. Complicity is everywhere.
Even here, as we stand today on stolen land in so-called Australia, we are faced with our many privileges. Privileges built on the dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples, under a colonial system that has never served them. As settlers, we have benefited from the colonial system. We have privileges: homes that shelter us, an abundance of food to nourish us, voices that we can use. These are basic human rights; human rights which our brothers and sisters in Palestine have been deprived of on a daily basis. Privileges that Indigenous peoples have also been systemically deprived of for centuries. Isnt time crazy?
So, it doesn’t come by surprise that we have a choice to make now: we can surrender to silence, we can choose comfort over our conscience, or we can act, we can stand by the Palestinian people. So I ask you today – what will you choose?
I choose the Palestinian people because we can no longer stand by and watch innocent children starve in front of our eyes. I choose the Palestinian people because we cannot watch as thousands are senselessly murdered without consequence. I choose the Palestinian people because we cannot accept that women are forced to give birth in the most treacherous and unsafe conditions imaginable. I choose them because we cannot watch as fathers collect the shattered limbs of their sons and daughters and still call ourselves human.
The world, humanity, has time and time again declared that “violence is never the answer,” and they’re right, it isn’t. So why is violence tolerated, even legitimised, when it is committed against people of colour, against Palestinians? Make no mistake, complicity is everywhere. Countries, companies, and people have ties to this genocide. They willingly choose to aid and abet the Israeli government. They facilitate the annihilation of an entire populus. They choose to starve millions. And yet here we are, expected to be silent, to follow in the footsteps of the complicit, to sit back and watch as people are murdered – every. single. day.
But how can we claim the title of students, or even humans, if we cannot do the bare minimum. We must use every strategy possible to break down colonial systems. We must follow the BDS movement. We must strategically follow their Boycott targets. We must demand that our universities, and any complicit institutions, divest. We must ask our politicians to sanction Israel. Throughout history, liberation against injustice has fundamentally been built on people who resisted. People who chose to speak out. People who used their voices to echo the voices of the silenced. People who stood up to frameworks that have never served them. This is the time to act. Remember, we, the students, the ordinary people, refuse to stay silent because silence is complicity, and WE WILL NOT BE COMPLICIT.
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA,
ALWAYS WAS ALWAYS WILL BE.
Written by Gana Salem, BDS Youth Magandjin Member
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