Organised by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the documentary was screened on 4 December. Is the UN really the best platform when the UN itself paved the way for the Zionist ideology to create the Israeli colonial enterprise in Palestine? Is the UN even worthy of listening to an echo of Hind Rajab’s voice, after spending decades of protecting Israel’s security narrative to the point of genocide? Maybe the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People would do well to remember that Hind Rajab was killed by Israel, in complicity with the UN itself.
Screening the documentary is not a bad option, but recognising the politics of the entity where the screening is held, is a moral imperative. The UN legitimised colonialism while pretending to eradicate it. It set up committees, remembrances and passed a multitude of non-binding resolutions with the aim of feigning involvement in the Palestinian struggle. This is the context in which Hind Rajab was killed. The UN Committee of the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People merely endorses the same imperialist notions of two-state politics; the most dangerous illusion which also provided veneer for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. None of these regurgitated so-called efforts are aiding Palestinian liberation or, at the very least, providing safe cover for Palestinians in Gaza. Not even for a defenceless child, trapped for hours in a car at which Israeli soldiers shot relentlessly until even her voice dissipated. Hind’s name lives on precisely due to the circumstances that allowed a live narrative of her last hours alive. But thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza were blasted by Israel’s bombing or crushed under buildings, with not so much as a last whimper or breath attesting to the final moments of their lives.
The exploitation of Palestinian lives for the UN’s programmes, events and conferences is unacceptable. There is no honour in the film being shown at the headquarters of an entity that took almost two years to affirm that genocide is taking place in Gaza; if anything, it desecrates the memory of Hind Rajab as much as the UN desecrated the memory of all Palestinians killed since the start of Zionist colonisation in Palestine. A film such as this should not be the subject of accolades; it should be a weapon against the international institutions that not only excused genocide committed by Israel, but also supported it, because the UN never steps in against Israel’s security narrative.
Hind Rajab died from live fire by Israeli soldiers, protected by a colonial, genocidal entity that derived its recognition and legitimacy from the UN. It is time to stop looking at the UN and its committees as emblems of human rights when all they do is help perpetrate international law violations and war crimes through approval or tacit silence. Hind Rajab deserved a better audience and definitely a venue that does not uphold the genocidal politics that murdered her. After all, what has the UN done for Palestine except help Zionism colonise it?
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