I believe that the I Support Gaza hashtags are different from the Gaza Under Attack hashtags in function. Israel and Co already know people support Gaza, which is why they exercise control over the media and the news on casualties. They know that Palestinians have support and that this support will heighten when the world finds out that Palestinian civilians are dying brutally.
But support from people outside the warzone makes no difference to them really, particularly because they know that this support shows in hashtags and that does nothing to stop their drones from falling. To me, a plain and empty I Support Gaza has no tangible function in doing anything now, even if it is a collective demonstration of solidarity.
However, defeating biased media makes a difference, and removing the shroud over untold truths of oppression is tantamount to defeating it. After the bombs fall and blood is shed, when and if Israel and Co finds victory, history will be written by the victorious, and of course “who controls the present, controls the past” (Quted from George Orwell’s 1984). But there will be this – a barrage of Gaza Under Attack tagged posts that carried truth out of the warzone when various mainstream media didn’t. Social media makes a difference now in saying what could be concealed in history, and therefore lost from mankind.
It is important to make a stand against any sort of wrong, which one can do with proof and reason, not just empty statements. Every photo out of a warzone, every report of a new attack on civilians, every critical analysis of a flawed political statement is a mark on their glorified version of history. Tyler Hicks’ photo of the child barbarically lost to Israeli attacks on a beach can be a meme someday, somehow trending on someone’s newsfeed, teaching what textbooks won’t in certain places maybe.
The hashtag on Gaza Under Attack is our source of information so that we may know and let people know, which is the least we can do in solidarity even if we can’t help. Gaza Under Attack has a function in the longer run — the world knows, and will always know, and a difference can be made only if we know what needs to be known.
Yes, solidarity is also essential. It shows the empathy and concern we are capable of, and the oppressed will know that the world knew and stood by their side even as they fell. Even if it has no real function in solving their problem, they know they aren’t unheard as they struggle in their crisis, and they know that their lives have worth even as they bleed and crumble worthlessly within their warzones.
If sympathisers and empathisers are willing to mark the perpetrators’ glorified history with the numbers and statistics of their support in hashtags, it is definitely nothing negligible. But if person A is under the impression that their hashtag has a real tangible function, while person B thinks that they are mistaken in thinking so, and that demonstrating their support and solidarity in some other way has more function, B has every right to share this opinion with A with due respect, logic, and reason, in a non-provocative manner. I would personally appreciate it very much if solidarity isn’t turned into a festivity marked by the trending of a new hashtag every two days though.
In the past week, I’ve seen at least three different hashtags trend, as if the sympathisers were bored of the same hashtag and needed to add new flairs to it to keep people and themselves engaged. It was also as if phrasing the same hashtag in a different manner symbolised a new act of social activism on someone’s part, when it is essentially the same act and shouldn’t provide any more gratification than what has already been obtained.
In all of this, I pray. I pray for peace, for the worth of humanity to be restored, for lives to be saved, and for homes to be preserved in every corner of this distressed world so that children can live with their families under a roof with safety, and more importantly, with humility, because such peace is always vulnerable. I also pray that as we become the medium of information, we don’t lose ourselves to bias or a heightened sense of self-worth and self-importance. Most importantly, I pray to God that no one walks out of any conflict with a blotched sense of victory and a higher glory in their national identity, color, race, or religion.
Because the truth is that most of the lives lost in conflicts are of plain human beings, made of flesh and blood who just want to wake up every morning in their homes with their loved ones but are caught up here in the middle of a power play between two parties instead. And I pray that this solidarity arises from us for every person in distress and oppression, no matter what their cultural identities are.
With that, I pray for the oppressed in Palestine, just as much as I pray for the oppressed in Iraq, in Syria, in South Sudan, in Nigeria, in Maldives, and every other location in crisis and conflict right now in this world. I also pray for those oppressed in history so much that today they themselves are driven to oppress.
As for the so-called awareness brought from trending I Support Gaza, truth be told, there’s so much news that has to be read about every oppressed being in this world that it is actually easier to pick up a trending news of an unfortunate death than the news of an equally unfortunate death that isn’t trending. Such is the value of human life dependent on our hashtags. So I also pray that we care more about learning about our fellow human beings and making a difference, and that a hashtag isn’t all that defines our generation of social activists.