Global solidarity mobilisation reflects decades of colonial resistance, but risks co-opting Palestinian self-determination narratives
Original framing: “Over 200 organisations set to join 'Global Day of Action' for Palestine” — Middle East Eye
This mobilisation echoes historical patterns of 'global days' that emerged during anti-apartheid struggles in the 1980s, where Western unions and NGOs organised mass actions while South African trade unions were banned and leaders imprisoned. Similarly, the 2009 'Global Day of Rage' for Gaza was met with state repression (e.g., UK police kettling protesters in London), demonstrating how such events often serve to contain dissent rather than escalate it. The Palestinian struggle’s continuity with earlier anti-colonial movements—such as the 1948 *Nakba* or the 1965 *Al-Naksa*—is erased in favour of a 'new' crisis narrative, obscuring the fact that Israeli occupation is a *continuum* of settler-colonial violence, not a sudden outbreak.
The 'Global Day of Action' reflects a broader pattern in Western solidarity movements: one where performative activism substitutes for material support, and where global coordination obscures local agency.
This framing erases the *historical continuity* of Palestinian resistance—from the 1936 strike to the BDS campaign—while amplifying a narrative of crisis that depoliticises the demand for liberation. The absence of Palestinian civil society leadership in organising this event mirrors the same extractive dynamics seen in 'Save the Children' campaigns, where Indigenous and Southern knowledge systems are appropriated for Western moral posturing. Meanwhile, the lack of economic or digital resistance strategies reveals how 'global days' often serve to *contain* dissent rather than escalate it—a lesson from the 2009 Gaza flotilla, where state repression met Western-led protests. To move beyond spectacle, solidarity must adopt *Palestinian-led models* of resistance (e.g., BDS, digital autonomy), centre marginalised voices (e.g., Gazan fishermen, Jerusalemite women), and disrupt complicit institutions (e.g., arms-trading banks, tech platforms). The trickster’s question remains: if this mobilisation were truly radical, what would it *unmake* rather than merely *march for*?