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By Jonathan Cook / Jonathan Cook Blog
Western establishments’ fear of the phrase “Globalise the intifada” has little to do with any danger supposedly posed to Jewish populations from its use.
The threat is posed by the slogan’s central idea, not by some specific target.
“Globalise the intifada!” is the modern equivalent of “Power to the people!” – a slogan long used by anti-colonial movements, by revolutionary socialist parties, by the ANC in its fight against South African apartheid, and by the Blank Panthers in their struggle against white supremacy in the US.
The emblematic anti-colonial struggle of our times is in Palestine. It is hardly surprising that any emerging, popular mass movement against oppressive, unaccountable, increasingly anti-democratic western elites should look to the language of that struggle.
“Intifada” refers to “shaking off” a system of oppression.
We can all see where Israel’s ethnic supremacist agenda has led for the Palestinians: to military occupation, apartheid and genocide.
Many of us sense too that this is where our own societies are heading. The ultimate destination of the technological developments – from smart phones to social media – that have atomised and pacified us over the past two decades is absolute control over our lives through surveillance, facial recognition and more militarised and robotic policing, and our ever-greater redundancy and powerlessness in the face of artificial intelligence and greater mechanisation.
These technologies have been tested and refined for at least a quarter of a century in the Palestinian territories illegally occupied and ruled by Israel.
Why is Israel viewed as so essential to western elites that they are willing to be seen openly backing its genocide in Gaza? Because Israel is creating a vision of the near-future, it is developing the template for how they deal with surplus sections of western populations in a world of diminishing resources and an ever-more hostile climate.
And all the better for our rulers, any resistance on our part to the Palestinians’ enslavement and slow extermination – and to our own growing servitude and abuse – can be characterised as antisemitism. In outsourcing this project to Israel, western establishments have devised the ultimate cover story.
Every time some deluded group or individual falls for this ploy and blames Jews collectively for what Israel and its patrons are really responsible for, the noose tightens a little more round the neck of those trying to liberate our minds before the confinement of our bodies becomes permanent.
While we are being demonised as racists, the technology and strategies used today against Palestinians will become the walls of tomorrow’s prisons for us.
“Globalise the intifada” isn’t a call for harming Jews, though western establishments would love you to think it is. It’s a call for showing solidarity with Palestinians before it is too late for them, and for us. It is about throwing sand in the cogs of a machinery of oppression before it grows too powerful to be confronted.
Over decades, the Palestinians have moved between peaceful and violent intifadas, and found neither has won them greater freedom. That is not because intifada is necessarily the wrong path to liberation and justice. It is because the forces ranged against them have been insurmountable.
That is why we, at the heart of the imperial hub, must show them solidarity – and why we need to learn from their experience before we run out of time to act for ourselves.
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Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.