[COLUMNIST] American, Israeli elites ---- Embrace the truth

THE Board of Peace established by US president, Donald Trump, to supervise the temporary governance of Gaza will not overcome the killings in that strip or resolve the deeper crisis that blights the land. Why? Because it does not address the root causes of the crisis. What are the root causes?

AI Brief

The Board of Peace established by US President Donald Trump for Gaza's temporary governance lacks effectiveness in addressing the root causes of the crisis, primarily the usurpation of Palestinian lands and their ongoing oppression by Israel for the past 78 years.
Elites in the US, Israel, and Israeli society resist acknowledging the truth about Israel's creation and its continued use of power, including violence and an apartheid system in the West Bank, which treats Palestinians as third-class citizens.
The crucial challenge is to spread awareness, particularly to American and Israeli elites, about the reality in Palestine and Israel using new communication technologies to foster a new consciousness for achieving justice.

The usurpation of the ancestral lands of the Palestinians and their expulsion by Israel, Palestinian dispossession and the systematic repression and oppression of an entire people for the last 78 years, are the real reasons for the turmoil and turbulence in Gaza and the rest of Palestine, and indeed in much of West Asia.

Elites in the United States of America, Israel and Israeli society as a whole do not want to embrace the truth about what has happened in Palestine-Israel since 1948. Embracing the truth means acknowledging the truth about how Israel was created and how it has perpetuated its power all these years. It means telling the world about Israeli violence, about its brutality and bestiality, about its callous cruelty towards the Palestinians, the indigenous people of the land. It means admitting that Israel rules Palestinians in the West Bank through an apartheid system which regards Palestinians as third class citizens with hardly any rights.

The world should know all this. This is why the real challenge before all of us is to disseminate to American and Israeli elites and their societies in particular the truth about the actual situation in Palestine and Israel. The new communication technologies should be harnessed to the hilt for this purpose. Justice will be accomplished only if there is a new consciousness.

* Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President for the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) Malaysia.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.