Tag: Will the historic UN vote for sanctions on Israel change reality for Palestinians? by Omar Barghouti

54. Regardless, Palestinians have no illusions whatsoever that justice will shine on us from the ICJ or the UN, the latter being historically responsible for the 1947-49 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of most Palestinians, and the establishment of Israel as a settler-colony over most of the area of historic Palestine. The utter failure of the international legal system, dominated by Euro-American colonial powers, to provide the necessary, unambiguous, legally binding foundation for stopping the world’s first televised genocide, let alone delivering justice, speaks volumes.
56. We have international law on our side. We have the ethical high ground as an Indigenous people fighting a depraved, genocidal system of oppression to achieve our rights. Ethics and the law are necessary in our or any other liberation struggle, but they are never sufficient. To dismantle a system of oppression, the oppressed invariably need power as well: people power, grassroots power, intersectional coalition power, solidarity power and media power, among other forms.