The political conditions forced by the European Union on the people of ’67 occupied East Palestine, in order to alter the cultural and educational policies in exchange for EU funding is immoral and illegal. Their conditions aim to serve the occupation and extend its lifetime within the framework of a policy of Conflict Management and not Conflict Resolution as is publicized, tying the hands of official and unofficial Palestinian associations and organizations.

The occupation can announce, just as it did during the last week of October 2021, that a number of these organizations (Addameer, Al Haq, Bisan Center, Samidoun, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees) are PFLP (founded by Dr. Georges Habash) affiliates, and that they are part of a terrorist organization, despite the fact that the PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords (1993-1994) with the occupation. These organizations were meant to give in to the Zionist narrative of Palestine, as part of the occupation's attempts to weaken the Palestinian sense of belonging to the land as well as the cornerstones of Palestinian identity, else they would suffer and have their efficiency and activity gradually lowered.

Hegemony and Counterhegemony studies from different eras on different peoples provide us with conclusive evidence that the deep concept of “Resistance” against occupation is a system of integrated paths and interwoven elements. All of these standalone elements come together to form a complete agenda that transforms into a way of life for a people or society at a certain stage, usually until liberation and sometimes, even further.

Introduction

Scientific studies show that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is based on an array of the most modern of scientific fields, and is composed of four pillars: the military, the economic, the political, and the cultural. Despite all of the occupation’s resources (financial, human, and central planning), the Palestinian people, irrespective of geography (and its lack of the strengths that the occupation possesses), still fights on, using different, humble means and whatever resources it can manage.

Historical Context

The occupation has never shifted its goals as seen through its recurrent tactic of assassinating Palestinian cultural figures in Beirut such as:

-Literary figure and editor-in-chief of the PFLP’s Al-Hadaf magazine, Ghassan Kanafani, on July 8th, 1972.

-The attempted political-media assassination of (then PFLP figure) Bassam Abou Sharif on July 25th, 1972.

-PFLP leader and poet-politician Kamal Boutros Nasser.

-Head of the PLO’s media bureau Kamal Adwan.

-Member of the PLO executive committee Mohammad Youssef al-Najjar.

The last three figures were in fact PFLP leaders who were assassinated in the “Verdun operation” in Beirut on April 10th, 1973.

Dozens of other assassinations that targeted Palestinian intellectuals and politicians in the Arab world and Europe could be added to this list, all with the aim of silencing the Palestinian voice of justice, and silencing the narrative of its suffering. 

The Zionist occupation did not alter its policy of direct assassination, but rather evolved it, adding new tools in its culture war against Palestinians, at the forefront of which is the assassination of the Palestinian narrative.

A Journey of Generations

The assassinations executed by the Zionist occupation against individuals who were active in the cultural-political scene in the 1970s took place in the backdrop of the rise of the Palestinian armed resistance. Though the scene changed on the Palestinian side, there was no critical change to the occupation’s plans and its approaches in its all-out war against the Palestinian people in their person, their culture, their history, and their present. 

The Israeli occupation’s accumulated excessive aggression is being guided and being put to work in its battles on the cultural front, against the past and future ­of Palestinian culture as a force of resistance. This is how one can explain the attack on the Jebus cultural center (Jebus is an ancient name of al-Quds, given by the Jebusites, the ones who first built the city) in ’67 occupied Al-Quds, and the arrests of the Center’s Director, Rania Elias, her husband Souheil Khoury, the Director of the National Conservatory, and young liberated prisoner Dawoud al-Ghoul, the director of the Shafaq institute of art, on July 22nd, 2020.

The Glass War

Despite the absence of a wide and direct military confrontation in Palestine at the moment, the unyielding resistance that refuses to submit to occupation is ongoing at all times like a glass battle. What confirms it is the sheer number of arrests made by the occupation against Palestinians in ‘67 occupied East Palestine (Eastern al-Quds and the West Bank), which reached 413 arrests in July 2020. Al-Quds’s share of the arrests was the largest at 21% (86 arrests), despite the fact that Eastern Al-Quds (Al-Quds Governorate) only makes up about 15% of the population of the governorates of Al-Quds and the West Bank.

The Occupation’s Technology

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The Fabric of Reality

Since the occupation depends on “scientific knowledge” for its fascist practices, the storming and searching of the houses, and the intelligence-like and repressive arrests of these cultural figures is the last step - in the first stage - of a lengthy, thought-out plan that includes the study of all fields of Palestinian life everywhere, using the latest in technology. 

The occupation usually works on monitoring all activities that include an axiological system for resistance and liberation. This statement is a far cry from a “conspiracy theory,” rather it is something that can easily be proven through any internet search, even without accessing covert files.

Once the results of “scientific knowledge” regarding a certain aspect of Palestinian life are received, discussed, and refined, and the ensuing results show that this aspect: (1) has become organically linked to Palestinians’ lives, (2) is effective in their social lives and national consciousness, as ideological chains link together cultural life and music (as an example), and (3) cultural products are spread domestically and internationally under the name of Palestine, within the framework of the axiological system that forms a strategy of “counterhegemony” against the occupation’s hegemony, the occupation then opts to select some channels and readies its attack gear, escalating its acts of reckless “sniping” against active individuals or groups.

An “unmusical” occupation

Two main processes envelop musical education and the playing exhibition thereof: the first is a social, educational and psychological process, which transforms with the Palestinian into a process of socio-political upbringing that possesses an aspect of awareness & resistance, or one that can help resist occupation; the second (in the case of classical music, in addition to the aforementioned) becomes an upscale cultural-media arm, and part of the attempt to attract global public opinion to the Palestinian side. There is also the matter of integrating Palestinians into the global culture of music, a field where lovers of (mainly classical) music have gotten used to seeing and hearing Jewish and European names up on stage.

The reactions in theaters and outside hence echo: “They’re not terrorists…they can play classical music…they’re like us…that’s beautiful…they deserve life and freedom”…etc (These are phrases I myself have heard personally, in Europe especially).

Funding “notes”

This kind of Palestinian cultural path (the cultural-civilizational kind) produces a great deal of confusion within the occupation, which wants to close its many arms tightly around the whole of Palestine, and deprive Palestinians of their legal rights, their independence, and freedom on their own soil. The occupation works (or tries to work, continuously, and scientifically) using cultural arms, on providing “proof” to the world that the Palestinian has been, and is still a terrorist. It does not hesitate to use all weapons in its comprehensive war on the Palestinian people, including an economic embargo, or what it called “financing sources.”

The occupation is working diligently to separate Palestinian cultural organizations (especially those based in al-Quds) from their international financiers. The easiest thing the occupation can do is describe the Palestinian people as terrorists and murderers, thus bringing to light the Euro-Western anti-Semitic past, triggering Western guilt and preventing the latter from sympathizing with the Palestinian victim. The West would “prefer” to settle its problems “with its own victim” first, because it can always be extorted with such accusations. 

The new regulations of finance imposed by the EU in early 2020 go well in line with the policies, practices, and decisions of the occupation in October 2021 against Palestinian NGOs, and are yet another testament to this kind of pressure policy that can lead to ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in their own home.

This is why the occupation invents ties, and fabricates links between “terrorism” and culture, forming fierce campaigns led by Zionist lobbies in the media, demanding an end to what it calls the indirect “financing of Palestinian terrorism,” which constitute a burden for the backers and financiers of any cultural activity.

Through this dirty game, the occupation attempts to don the robe of the “classy, music-connoisseur intellectual,” the defender of the bastion of civilization against the barbarians.

Right and public opinion

Zionist colonialism targets Palestinian culture (especially that of al-Quds) because it constitutes a change from armed resistance to peaceful cultural resistance: “from the Kalashnikov to the violin,” as it were. Here, the occupation will have to work (after it was confounded because of the many narratives and the many facets of resistance) on convincing the world that Palestinian culture/music: “is nothing but a ruse…you don’t see what these Palestinians do…look carefully…what you see as a violin is a Kalashnikov…the Palestinian is a terrorist!”

The occupation’s worry comes from its knowledge that what was once possible in the 1970s will fail miserably in the third decade of the 21st century.

The occupation has understood that culture, with its many building blocks, is a (political) power that goes hand in hand in the fight alongside another kind of political power (the military), and this is what the occupation dreads. The occupation would love nothing else than to have the Palestinians remain within the confines of military power (the occupation in the “legitimate” uniform of its soldiers – against the “terrorist” Palestinian without an official uniform) because it is easy to attack this kind of power and promote a negative image of the Palestinian. The occupation has invested billions of dollars across the decades in crystallizing this image, in order to weaken the other forms of power in the Palestinian’s possession.

Wellsprings of Steadfastness

Despite the embargo and persecution, Palestinians had grown successful over the decades in developing a plurality of cultural products (theatre – since the work of  Francois Abou Salem, the founding pioneer of Hakawati theater, i.e. storyteller in Arabic, in al-Quds; and in music, with Mustafa al-Kurd singing poems by Samih al-Qasem in the mid-1980s, or the musical theater of Ahmad Abou Sal’oum, for example), some of which are made for domestic audiences, while others are international, acting as creative ambassadors for the righteous cause of a people living under contemporary history’s most vicious occupation.

Despite there not being a comprehensive, centralized Palestinian national program for culture (a cultural policy), these overtures are mostly of individual and organizational nature. This plurality of art products has made it difficult for the occupation to keep the Palestinian in its grip or under its power (with Zionist funding and cultural tools), which is how the conflict has grown more intense and led to the occupation's current gradual loss in terms of global opinion.

Since classical music (in particular) is a universal language, and as the National Conservatory has a global reach (it was named after al-Quds academic, the late Palestinian-American Edward Said), be that physically, or through the public space created by social media technology, it has become hard to limit and pin down since its Palestinian cultural geography is mobile, thus creating a new position that hindered the occupation’s control.

Although the occupation reiterates in all international events, and before donor states always, that Palestinians (in ’67 occupied Palestine) teach their children to be “anti-Semitic” and anti-“Israel”, including in their educational programs (the last time was in a hostile question against Palestine in the UK Parliament in July 2020), with the aim of targeting the backers of Palestine’s educational institutions, the persecution in occupied eastern al-Quds takes on a different form.

Here, and despite attempts by the occupation to control al-Quds society by providing health services, social security, and the blue ID-card for al-Quds residents, these methods of control have failed.

Al-Quds has a round-the-clock battle of all kinds, including a continuous cultural battle, ranging from control over a building of civilizational importance and up to threats and pressuring schools, colleges and universities to prevent Palestinian cultural-educational activities in East Al-Quds.

As Palestinian creative talents came to light, along with the growth of their skills, professional cultural performance, and the worldwide web of relations with universities, research center and backing organizations, the occupation has been trying to pursue all of this through “scholarly” monitoring via espionage, that seeks to cut off financial grant from donor countries by providing proof on the funding of terrorism…The sole purpose of these efforts is to weaken steadfastness in occupied al-Quds and eliminate solidarity and complementarity between the Palestinian and al-Quds the land, and the special structural, national, religious and civilizational symbolism of multiple backgrounds its buildings possess.

Resistance Hormone?

By waging this war of terrorism through action against the cultural musical Palestinian Qudsian power, the occupation has frankly declared that culture (music, the arts, etc…) supports the resilience of Palestinians in al-Quds, and may incite them to revolt against the occupation, or raise them up to an intellectual defense of their people.

Within the cultural framework of music, Palestinians sometimes find joy despite the killing, torture, oppression, apartheid wall, checkpoints, and abuse by the occupation, which is the result of endorphins secretion, allowing them to remain hopeful and persevere in dealing with the occupation’s oppression, which they have to suffer from every day, especially since art is the common language that delivers the voice of Palestine to a global audience; culture and music lead to all those positive things. Needless to say, this goes against the occupation’s agenda; music can tame some animals and make them relax or dance…yet it has so far been unsuccessful in taming the occupation’s brutality.

Counterhegemony

Studying the case of Palestinians in occupied ’48 West Palestine, I discussed in my PhD thesis at London University how despite the repression of military rule, the state of emergency, the embargo, the imprisonment, the persecution, and the policies and practices of cultural hegemony (according to the theory of Antonio Gramsci, the philosopher, political and captive during the reign of Fascist Mussolini), the cultural policy of the Communist Party in West Palestine was able to crystallize and create a culture of counterhegemony (through a rich literary corpus published in Palestine’s “Al-Ettihad” daily and its literary annex “Al-Jadeed”). It was also successful in breaking the occupation’s embargo (through the likes of historian Dr. Emile Touma, political and literary figure Emile Habibi, poet and politician Tawfik Ziad, and poets Salem Jibran, Samih al-Qasem, Mahmoud Darwish, as well as others), by what Ghassan Kanafani, who at the time still read up on news from the occupied territories (before the eastern part of Palestine was occupied), called “resistance literature” in his book “Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine 1948-1966), which was published before 1967’s Naksa.

 Hybrid attack

The occupation is attempting to terrorize the Palestinian people in general, and the people of al-Quds specifically, and is working on depriving Palestinians of any legitimacy in eastern al-Quds. They did so by arresting al-Quds’s governor Adnan Ghaith, and al-Quds Governorate’s intelligence chief, Brigadier General Jihad al-Faqih, and other activists, so as to prevent any cultural coordination (of artistic exhibitions) or social cohesion (to combat the Coronavirus pandemic). It is launching methodical campaigns according to a well-thought-out policy of hegemony.

Planning and Perseverance

National resolve is still high, classical music is still being pursued at a normal rate, and mass cultural-artistic-musical products are still surfacing from time to time, like the new song La Tahjuru (meaning do not emigrate) by Banat al-Quds (daughters of al-Quds). This is evidence that hard work is still ongoing to break the chains, remove the system of control, and cement an axiological system of steadfastness in al-Quds in particular.

Working to break the occupation’s hegemony through a counterhegemony requires a comprehensive long-term national-Arab-Palestinian plan (one that is free from regional agendas) that requires a strategy, resources (both human and financial), vision, and an executive tactic so that its continuation is not imperiled, and the achievement of its goals is guaranteed.