Baroud at PalExpo: ‘The Whole State of Israel Is a Settlement’
Ramzy Baroud speaking at the Palestine Expo 2019. (Photo: via Jane Elliott, Facebook)
Organized by the British NGO Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA), Palestine Expo has been dubbed the ‘biggest Palestine event in Europe‘, being held in the iconic Olympia Exhibition Centre in London.
The Palestine Chronicle chief editor, Dr. Ramzy Baroud, addressed the audiences in two panels on Saturday, dedicated to the problem of illegal Israeli Jewish settlements and the marginalization of Palestinian voices in mainstream media.
“Israel, as a whole, is a settlement project”, Baroud said.
In fact, since the very beginning, Baroud said, Zionism ideologues saw their movement as a colonial one, as we can see in the words of the father of the Israeli right, Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
Baroud also stressed the need to consider the solidarity movement in its global dimension.
“I have just returned from a speaking tour in Kenya. The fight is not only in Germany, in the UK, in France, and the US it is a global fight.”
Baroud highlighted the similarities between the Palestinian national liberation struggle and the African liberation struggles against British colonialism.
Palestinians have neglected the “global south” because of the Oslo peace process and a changing discourse that had convinced people that their destiny was connected to the West.
”But Israel has rediscovered the global south and they have penetrated Africa and South America and other places,” Baroud said. “We need to go back there and we need to resurrect their solidarity.”
“One thing about Africa that I noticed is that we don’t have to contend with the tiny little bits of the discourse – nobody accuses you of anti-Semitism, it is not even on the agenda of African audiences: what they talk about there is national liberation.”
In the second panel, dedicated to the marginalization of Palestinian voices, Baroud urged the audience to reverse the current communication paradigm, which is – even at a subconscious level – dominated by an agenda dictated by the Zionists.
“At the end of the day”, Baroud said, “Israel is still there because of the narrative that they were able to produce and to sell to so many nations, especially in the West.”
Baroud called for Palestinians to produce their own narrative. “The Zionists have been theorizing for 150 years. We did not counter this movement until a few decades ago”.
Baroud reminded how the language itself has been changed by Oslo and the so-called “peace process”, which has replaced the concept of national liberation.
“More important than owning media platforms,” he continued, “is owning the narrative of the Palestinian people”.
(Palestine Chronicle, Social Media)
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