Three reasons we don't talk about Palestine

There's way more than three

The deathly silence that surrounds the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people has been to a significant degree dented since the 7th of October 2023, but, here in January 2025, more than fifteen months in, it has proven to be still resilient.

If we are fortunate enough to have a future in which honest histories get to be written, there will be volumes written about all of the reasons that the people of conscience in the West were not able to voice their condemnation of the genocide happening in the name of their values and with their tax dollars, let alone organize against it.

So there's way more than three reasons for the silence, but I feel the need to express my thoughts on why I feel so lonely when I'm wearing a kuffiyeh out in public in Canada and why the topic is so repelling to so many. I have three.

What does it mean about us?

The first is that it feels like there is a deep need among many to view Western societies as fundamentally good and decent. There is an understandable revulsion towards the idea that the community we live in isn't a force for good in the world. Nobody wants to be associated with evil and the idea that we would be contributing to it is a deeply horrifying one. It makes complete sense that we would want to avoid it.

But avoiding that thought in the West in our current day and age demands avoiding the topic of Gaza. Diplomatically, Financially, Militarily, our countries are deeply complicit in the horrific depravity that is being inflicted in Gaza by the state of Israel. Any honest engagement with the topic cannot help but contend with this complicity and that contention cannot help but shatter the myth of the superiority of Western values. In fact it becomes very easy to give credence to the idea that the West, far from being a bastion of liberty, equality, democracy, etc. is instead an imperialistic and warmongering force that is willing to abandon any pretense to caring about the human rights, lives, and dignity of the Palestinian people when it threatens it's own interests, whatever they may be.

Isn't it much easier to just not think about it entirely? Let alone talk about it? And doesn't it mean those who insist on speaking loudly about it are being incredibly rude for forcing us to face these ugly possibilities?

What does it mean for us?

The second thought stems from the first. If Western nations are willing to sacrifice the Palestinian people to serve other interests... then what keeps them from sacrificing any other group of people to serve those same interests?

The answer, of course, is, nothing at all. There is nothing about the Palestinian people that marks them out to be especially persecuted by the West other than they were unlucky enough to be seen as obstacles to Western imperialist designs over their part of the world. They are far from the only victims of this phenomenon, there are millions and millions of people all across all parts of Asia, Africa, and South America that have gone through similar horrors for the same reason.

All of these are ignored, in the same way that Palestine has been ignored. Prior to the livestreaming of the unimaginable violence that the forces of Israel have unleased on Palestinians over the last fifteen months, the only atrocities that penetrated the consciousness of the West was Vietnam. And even then it was only the effect of the war in Vietnam on returning American servicemen that gained any amount of traction in Western mass media, not what the Vietnamese themselves suffered.

And so, what would happen if the eyes of Western imperialism turned to a community that we belong to? Do we dare consider that we are just as vulnerable and invisible as Palestinians have proven to be?

Better to just keep our heads down and not think about such things.

It's not what we're supposed to be doing!

Which leads to the third thought. The reason I get odd looks from people when I'm wearing a kuffiyeh in public, and the reason that the thanks I get on occasion for doing so is whispered is that I am doing something that society doesn't want me to do.

Western society doesn't want me to speak out for justice for the Palestinian people. Not only is it not what I'm supposed to be doing, it's the opposite, and that explains the discomfort felt by all when I'm walking around in Canada with a scarf that is merely a symbol of Palestine. For all the propaganda that the West spreads about being a bastion for human rights and justice and whatnot and etcetera... fighting for those values is actively socially discouraged.

What is encouraged is putting our heads down and getting on with what society does want us to do. Which is work as hard as possible at our jobs, most of which are designed to accomplish the true objective of Western society. Keeping the rich and powerful of the West as rich and powerful as possible.

All else is to be met with, at the very best, a deathly silence.

A deathly silence that must be broken.