Palestine has always been part of our everyday discourse because of media coverage. We used to get our daily share of corpses from Palestine as a constellation of images. People were in sedated sleep until a video footage showing bombarded civilians flying in the sky became viral. Consumers around the world were used to seeing the demolition of concrete structures, but this was something new for them. The sight of people flying through the air due to the impact of bombardment struck the brain as a significant event. The conscience woke up from the cocoon of multilayered fatigue caused by repeated exposure.
What we feel for the Palestinians is our privileged grief. By calling it privileged, I do not discredit the intensity and honesty of emotions felt by people around the world. The short-lived mourning is triggered by our pampered position. Our privileged grief is mixed with Ivy League opportunities. After the demonstration, people dive into the lake of Coca-colonization. Once we protest for a day and share a photo or video footage of wounded children, we think our responsibility is over. We go back to the schedule of routinized slavery. Bio-Neoliberalism does not allow us to grieve for a long time. Corporeal commitment tied to employment responsibility plays the dominant role.Our workloads preclude the possibility of extensive engagement. Maybe this is the best we can do for people mired in deep and never-ending troubles.
We grieve for the Palestinians from a sense of conscientious burden. The burden of privilege is very tenuous. The concert for Bangladesh during the liberation war was an instance of privileged grief. The news from Palestine, due to geographical distance, gets mixed with our celebrations and entertainment. A day is reserved for mourning, and one minute of silence is observed to respect the willing or unwilling victims of geopolitics. A little bit of demonstration, mixed with techno-beat, Hollywood action films, intellectual discussions, and a cultural festival, constitutes our privileged grief.
When one is overburdened with the struggles of life, one has very little room for vicarious grief. One may not have the leeway to shed tears or demand justice for the war victims when one is within the hub of social injustice. Is the lady who went to the police station with her dead chickens to file complaints concerned with the plight of the Palestinians? Is the farmer who wails over the spoiled watermelon in his field able to show empathy for the people in dire straits? Are the relatives of car accident victims able to give a share of love to the resilient and intrepid residents of the shrinking land? Does it make the personal crisis seem trivial or create a common ground for fighting every form of domination and brutality?
Only daylong protests for the lives of Palestinians are not enough at this stage, when the country is about to be erased from the world map. It is a minimalist endeavour to deal with our dying traces of conscience and ethics. Even in the face of protests, the genocide goes on in full swing. The most disturbing part is the desensitization towards the scenes of atrocities. Edward Said was a strong critic of the politics of dispossession deployed by the Israeli government. He dedicated his entire life to reclaiming the history of the land where he was born. His publications remain a testimony to his intellectual preoccupation with Palestine's liberation from Israeli occupation and colonization. His whole-hearted pursuit was not a perfunctory association with the inhuman bloodshed, but rather a lifelong career of a firebrand. Boycotting, as an indirect form of democracy, can bring corporations sponsoring war in Palestine to their knees. It started one year ago, and then people, after a few days, started consuming those again out of their artificialdependence. People got disillusioned with the news from Palestine and went back to their routine of careless consumerism. Now, in the wake of the viral video,people are again waking up from their slumber and, with renewed zeal, are thinking of boycotting Israeli products.
Not all Jews enjoy equal status in Israel.Ashkenazi Jews enjoy more privileges than Jews coming from other countries. Zionism has diverse support groups. Not all Jews are in favour of Zionism. There are many Muslim Bangladeshi who support the Zionist agenda. Mount Zion, as the reluctant emblem of Zionism,remains in the background,maintaining a low profile.Zionism aligned with the holocaust is used as a flawed justification for the occupation of Palestine. The Holocaust,on the other hand, is wrongfully considered justified retrospectively due to Israel's invasion of Palestine.
While I compose this writing, genocide in Palestine is raging like a merciless force. Some are volunteering, but our comfort zone does not allow us to go and help the helpless victims. In the future, people will bask in the heat of memories of protest. Stories will be shared with future generations that people in the past demonstrated for a day out of their busy schedule. The limited and romanticized notion of protest will give us some mental peace and mend our wounded conscience until we find another occasion to raise our voice for a day.
The writer is an Anthropologist and a faculty member at Independent University Bangladesh (IUB)
