It's a long, slow journey to peace

The rally in support of Palestine in Kuala Lumpur on Oct 22, 2023, drew thousands of people. Civil actions are important to create a momentum for change – but people must realise that such change will be a slow process. — Bernama

What's the point of going to a political rally if you’re not allowed to get angry enough to attack your opponents and cheer your support? Or organising a boycott when you can’t achieve the thing you’re protesting against anyway?

In both cases, there is a yearning to express yourself against an injustice; one by shouting at your opponent, the other by insulating yourself from what you find offensive.

I am, of course, talking about the various shapes and forms of protests in support of Palestine during the current war in Gaza. Of course, you are free to do what you like, as long as its within reason. But what is reasonable?

Last month, a rally organised by Viva Palestina Malaysia and Humanitarian Care Malaysia (better known as MyCARE) drew thousands of people, all united in support of Palestine. Amidst the sea of flags, placards and spirited chants, there was a palpable sense of unity and shared purpose. However, that shared mindset soon was disrupted.

Participants at the rally, while granted the platform to express their support for Palestine, found that their voices were constrained by event “etiquette”.

Viva Palestina Malaysia chairman Dr Musa Mohd Nordin laid out ground rules that created a stir among the attendees. First, he discouraged chanting “takbir” (the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar”), with the intention of keeping the event inclusive for people of diverse backgrounds.

“We want everyone to be involved in the chants, so if you [chant] the takbir, then you are isolating the non-Muslims in the crowd,” he explained.

Secondly, Dr Musa instructed the removal of a poster degrading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by labelling him a “devil”. He deemed this provocative and unbefitting of the manners expected at the rally. “I said that we should not drop to the level of Zionist discourse,” he later elaborated, emphasising the high standards of manners propagated by Islam.

However, many attendees felt these standards were not what they were used to at political rallies. They wanted to vent their frustration as loudly as possible.

In a related vein, there has been a call to boycott US-made goods, triggered when a certain hamburger chain donated meals to Israeli soldiers amidst hostilities. This led to a ripple effect of boycott calls against the fast-food giant in Malaysia and Singapore, prompting the local franchise to publicly clarify that they operate independently from those in Israel.

I can sympathise. I myself boycotted US products back in 2003 after the US invasion of Iraq as it seemed like the Americans had continued to be unreasonably aggressive in their effort to stabilise the Middle East with the use of Abrams tanks and Apache gunships.

I must confess it was difficult to maintain the boycott. Fast food outlets and branded clothes are one thing. Movies and video games were harder to stay away from. And at the time, the only way to watch English football was on the American ESPN channel.

But I kept it up until Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, as I assumed the new president would withdraw troops. In between, tens of thousands of civilians died in the fighting. Despite keeping up the boycott for five years, I had absolutely no doubt that my actions had almost zero impact on US foreign policy.

The truth is that all this – the angry rhetoric, the boycotts – are both oversimplistic and ineffective against the complexity of reality.

It’s a byproduct of a reductionist approach to the issues at hand, making it easier for narratives like “Israel is evil” and “Islam is under attack” to gain traction. But while these distilled soundbites can be easily remembered and retweeted, the Israel-Palestine conflict’s roots lie in a myriad of ethnic, historical, political, and religious dimensions spanning several decades.

It’s critical to remember that the men, women, and children caught up in these hostilities are not rhetorical points to be won, but human beings, each with his/her own story of grief and loss. Our expression of grief should be for their betterment, not because it raises our own pedestal. So don’t get mad if others don’t protest or boycott in the same way as you.

And I’m not saying don’t demonstrate or don’t boycott at all. These civil actions are important to create a momentum for change. Although it took Obama three years to eventually pull US forces out of Iraq, it was a result of a constant hum of protests and lobbying rather than any single dramatic gesture.

But I’m saying the fervour some may demonstrate about these issues could perhaps be better applied in other areas. Dr Muhammad Khalid, who consults with the United Nations Development Programme among other roles, recently expressed his frustration that Malaysians are more willing to shout about the mistreatment of Palestinians in Gaza but do relatively little to support children of Palestinian refugees here in Malaysia.

So even as I heartily support any fight for peace and an end to the killing, I also understand that this is something all citizens of the world, including Malaysians, need to take the long view of, and also that there are much more constructive ways of building a future. Indeed, the road to building a better world is one best travelled by a constant tread of determined steps towards a worthy goal, rather than an over-exuberant sprint that goes nowhere.

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In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at [e-mail]. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.