Elisa Miah on the oppression of the Palestinians

Naturally, those at Yale with relatives who have been taken as prisoners or died in this manner have a right to mourn for their loved ones.  However, the losses must be compared to the losses, abuses and deaths inflicted upon the Palestinians.  Without a clear and full understanding of the situation, its origins and effects, we will not be able to draw a roadmap to resolving the crisis. 

When the Palestinians try to mobilize peacefully, they face brutal retaliation. Attempts at peace imposed by the international community — led, as usual, by the Western bloc and the United States — have led to nothing.  There have been countless UN declarations and condemnations.  The problem is that Israel has no respect for international law. 

Attempts at peaceful resolution, such as the Oslo Accords, have failed the Palestinians completely.  When Palestinians try to peacefully take matters into their own hands, such as in the peaceful ‘Great March of Return,’ they are shot at, mowed down.  Whether they resist or submit, Palestinians can be sure that Israeli bullets will kill, maim and injure them. 

There can then be no confusion.  This conflict is between a powerful, aggressive imperialist state against a weak, oppressed people, deprived of their every right.  To present these sides as equal aggressors and to take a stand middling between the two, or to claim the oppressed to be the instigators of violence is to look at the situation without any sense of history, perspective or understanding of how we got here. 

There is no conscionable stance that can be taken except to stand with the right of the oppressed to live in liberty and dignity, free from oppression. Israel’s “right to defend itself” is an inversion of the whole situation.  Palestinians have been unrelentingly oppressed and are the ones trying to defend themselves, throwing whatever they can at a mighty military machine that has crushed their resistance every time. 

~ Elisa Miah, "Fanning the Flames," Yale Daily News, October 16, 2023

(Elisa Miah is a sophomore in Branford College and an active member of Socialist Revolution, a communist group active in New Haven and across the United States.)