Bangladeshi youth's solidarity with Palestine will be remembered
Everywhere in the world, excited children gathered for Eid and so did the children of Gaza. But the latter, unlike anyone, had to celebrate with bombs raining down on them. At least 85 people were killed on Eid in Gaza, marking one of the deadliest days since Israel began their massacre again. Speaking to the Middle East Eye, Ahmad-al-Qahwafi who lost his relatives on Eid to Israeli airstrikes, said, "Instead of taking the children to celebrate Eid, we took them to the hospital's morgue - some of them were brought in as pieces." What did Gazans do to deserve such devastation during Eid-ul-Fitr?
Two holy months of Ramadan in Gaza—last year and this year—have now passed amidst genocide. Still people fasted, and still, people were excited. They mourn and they celebrate at the same time. Gazans have accepted life with indescribable grief. But Gaza will remain a witness to the failure of humanity to rise up against the gravest injustice we have ever seen in recent history. After seven decades of oppression and occupation, Gazans are being wiped out systematically and brutally for a year and a half.
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In despair, we ask: how will Palestinians ever heal from the wound that the Israeli government has instilled in our soul, watching their children being peppered with shrapnel? And how will children losing their families in front of their eyes ever recover from the trauma? And most importantly, how will humanity recover from this period of freefalling morality? The world has watched the flesh and open wounds of Gazans on smartphones, while Israeli extremist ministers have openly said, "A good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian."
On Eid, sadness envelops Gaza—its streets, the remains of its ruins and memories, and the rest of its men, women, children and the elderly, whose misery was the companion of the decades of its long journey from Nakba to Nakba without catching her breath. Life for Gazans is just intermittent breaks between the bullets and the bombs. It is a collective death sentence by all means. As I write this, the death sentences of thousands more innocent people are being manufactured in American ammunition factories. This continuous military aid, along with unwavering political support from the US, has allowed the gruelling war against Gaza to persist.
After a brief respite of ceasefire, Israel's Netanyahu resumed his murderous campaign, realising his extremist coalition will collapse if the bloodshed truly ends. What's particularly disturbing is that Netanyahu's own view about Palestinians is just one among many extremist Zionists who truly believe that human beings deserve to be killed in the most vicious ways possible—their bodies broken into pieces.
The Trump administration's so-called mediation efforts, rather than curbing the war, provided Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu with extended political cover. The Biden administration prioritised the optics of solidarity with Palestinians, and duplicitously used every veto power they had to ensure Israel could go on. The new Republican administration inherited a volatile situation. However, rather than recalibrating US foreign policy to meet their electoral promise of "ending wars," Trump pursued a more aggressive stance, discarding any pretence of mediation. The new administration has made it clear that Gaza's future will be dictated by the demands of Netanyahu, and his far-right coalition, including figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezazel Smotrich, who represent extreme Zionism that embraces violence and justifies mass murder.
But now, with Donald Trump's declaration of economic war, many wonder if the superpower would be isolated and eventually, the world order would change. But the optimism for Gaza—that any change in the near future will lead to a cessation of suffering—remains slim. The people of Gaza live life, waiting for the next worse action by Israel. In this context, though, students across the world, in the US and in Bangladesh, have protested, reflecting true, genuine support for the people of Palestine.
On April 7, 2025, students from various universities in Bangladesh marched in response to a global strike, "The World Stops For Gaza." The same day, Israeli airstrikes continued killing dozens of people and targeting a tent in Khan Younis that was being used by several journalists. Footage showed a journalist being engulfed by flames, and burned alive. Such horror happens regularly and the outrage towards it has been treated with repeated repression and censorship from the powers that be.
We appreciate students and people's remarkable and sustained solidarity with Palestine, when many have started turning the other way. Protesting against powerful occupation forces, shows the genuinity of the Palestinian cause to achieve freedom to live life with human decency. And Bangladeshi students have shown that genuinity with their bravery. We must mention Umama Fatema, spokesperson for Students Against Discriminations (SAD), who rejected the US State Department's "International Women of Courage" award for the July uprising, stating, "The collective recognition of women activists is highly honourable for us. However, this award has been used to directly endorse Israel's brutal attack on Palestine in October 2023. By refusing acknowledgement of the Palestinian war for independence, the award has justified Israel's assault in a way that questions its neutrality. While the Palestinian people continue to be deprived of their fundamental human rights, including land rights, I am personally rejecting this award as a mark of respect for the Palestinian struggle for freedom." The world must not lose momentum and such acts of solidarity that the youth continue to demonstrate will be written on the right side of this dark history.
Yousef SY Ramadan is the ambassador of Palestine to Bangladesh.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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