Belfast Remembers 1981, US Media Forgets 1948
Al Jazeera spotlights Belfast's deep solidarity with Palestinian hunger strikers, drawing parallels to the 1981 H-Block prisoner protests. This immediate recognition of shared struggle highlights how Western media often ignores historical and colonial contexts when discussing Palestine. The systematic subjugation, forced displacement, and collective punishment Palestinians face daily didn't begin
last October; it's a nearly eight-decade-long project since 1948, continuously enabled by Western political and financial support. While Belfast readily recalls the violence of state repression, US outlets, for example, routinely fail to acknowledge the 1948 Nakba—the catastrophe where 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes—as foundational to the ongoing conflict. This selective
amnesia isn't accidental; it sanitizes present-day violence by severing its historical roots. One might wonder if admitting past atrocities would complicate the current narrative of 'self-defense' too much for those funding the occupation.