UGLY SOLITUDE IN PALESTINE

Okello Oculi argues that Palestinian protests against the relocation of American embassy to Jerusalem drew attention to victims of silence elsewhere

As the American embassy was planted in Jerusalem, a female Palestinian university student told a SKY TV correspondent that the 60 Palestinians killed that day by Israeli soldiers had died gallantly in ending global silence over tragic conditions endured by her people since their violent expulsion in 1948 by Israeli immigrants aroused by Zionist politicians. A Jewish people whose history of persecution peaked with Adolph Hitler’s ‘’holocaust’’ during the 1938-1945 War had (with the connivance of British colonial officials), crafted a home through an exodus by frightened ‘’Arabs’’ from their own homeland.

Decades later, the 1966 meeting of the International Student Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, opened with a Ugandan student as chairman allowing Palestinian students delegation adequate time to educate delegates from Africa, Asia and South America and the Caribbean about this legacy. His view was that bitter wars of liberation to get back lands seized by European immigrants had wracked Algeria and Kenya; and was blazing from Mozambique; Zimbabwe; South Africa, Namibia and Angola. Colonial officials had thrown a thick cloud of silence over Israel- Arab wars over Palestine.

Probably for fear of losing support by France, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Netherlands as oppressors of African peoples, Israel herself refrained from exposing to African students the sordid barbarisms against Jews by Europeans. At the Nairobi conference, Israeli students chose to complain about the amount of time given to Palestinians to make their case, and not on educating African victims of blood-stained colonial educational silence about Europe’s crimes. They conspired to depose the Ugandan chairman of the plenary session.

Nemesis hit International Student Conference when in 1967 a revelation by radical students at the Berkeley campus of the University of California listed in among organisation financed by America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to raise fighters against the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and ‘’freedom fighters’’ supported by these communist countries. Following that exposure, leaders of the organisation elected in Nairobi - headed by Ram Lekina from India – scattered into various showers of political rain to wash off stains of this bit of Cold War drama. The opportunity was lost of the tragic history of Palestinians and Israelis turning into a collective washing off old wounds with LOVE as deodorants; and evolving new political cultures of inventing human brotherhood and sisterhood on university campuses.

Another twist in history’s sense of humour struck when Israeli and Palestinian actors locked horns in Kampala after the January 13, 1971 when Idi Amin grabbed the world stage. It was widely said that his military takeover was managed by Britain, the United States of America and Israel. Britain was eager to stop Milton Obote’s plan to send ‘’Indian-Pakistani Britons’’ out of Uganda to stop the flow of foreign currency out of the economy. Israel and the United States were angry over Obote denying them a military base from which Israeli jet fighters could hit targets in Sudan and Egypt from the south, including bombing the vital flow of River Nile to both countries. Muammar Gaddafi soon disrupted their honeymoon with Idi Amina. Probably persuaded by offers of Libya’s oil money, Amin returned from his trip to Libya and announced the expulsion of Israelis from Uganda.

Palestinians saw open skies for a propaganda sunshine on Africa’s sector of the Equator. Their commandos hijacked a plane carrying scores of Jewish passengers and forced it to land at Uganda’s Entebbe airport. It was probably true that Amin talked to General Barlev, his trainer as a parachute in Israel, and ensured an Israeli rescue operation without a shot being fired as the troop carrier landed and took off. The Western media would make heroes of the Israel and pushed Palestinian anger into another zone of silence.

Donald Trump’s decision to plant the American embassy in Jerusalem as the capital of only Israel, roused mass protests and demands by Palestinians for a return to their homes. They, thereby, drew attention to fates of victims of silence in other lands. Wole Soyinka once noted that the election of a son of Africa as president of the United States in 2008 awakened AFRO-IRAQIs, long ‘’invisible’’ Africans who had fought and protected their separate status in Iraq.

In Argentina, Obama presidency stoked a hidden history to reveal African heroes of several wars against neighbouring states; while several museums brought out paintings of African-Argentineans at social functions. The nasty Argentinean jab that Brazil is backward because it had too much African blood in their veins, turned into panic following Cuba’s troops whipping racist South African troops in Angola, and Fidel Castro justified his historic adventure by asserting that African blood runs in veins of Cubans. From Jamaica to Peru a silence over the humanity and political ambitions and potential of peoples of African descent shook gates power. Fidel Castro told a French journalist that Cuba had changed world history by fatally wounding crimes against humanity in Namibia and South Africa. One hopes that the crash of a Cuban plane that killed 110 passengers was not cynically planned to splash death onto the marriage of an African-America girl to a British monarch.

Tragic histories of Israelis and Palestinians can benefit from that marriage by seizing Preacher Michael Curry’s assertion that LOVE washes away prejudices. Together they must give world culture the words of the choir’s song: ‘STICK BY ME’’.

TRAGIC HISTORIES OF ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS CAN BENEFIT FROM THE MARRIAGE OF AN AFRICAN-AMERICA GIRL TO A BRITISH MONARCH BY SEIZING PREACHER MICHAEL CURRY’S ASSERTION THAT LOVE WASHES AWAY PREJUDICES