I want to thank you all for coming today, and it is an honour to be able to speak with you.
My name is Peter Eisenstein, I am a board member of the Norwegian Peace and Justice party, Fred og Rettferdighet, and a member of the Norwegian Jewish group, Jødiske Stemmer for Rettferdig Fred.
And I am also an American Jew.
As an American, I am anti-imperialist, and as a Jew, I am anti-zionist. This means I stand against the zionist state of Israel which is nothing but a European and now American settler colonial project.
Some of you might be wondering what is the difference between a Jew and a Zionist?
A Jew knows what it means TO BE persecuted by others.
A Zionist knows only HOW to persecute others.
And Zionists have learned from the very best.
The British concentration camps of the second Boer war and the Nazi concentration camps of Germany – both perfectly legal – served no doubt only as inspiration for Israelâs treatment of Palestinians today.
The only difference is that today we have international laws that tell us that such concentration camps and arbitrary imprisonment are illegal. Yet Zionist Israel continues to be supported by all the civilised countries in the West. If not in word, then in deed.
Still, we in Europe like to think of ourselves as civilised, our countries governed by the rule of law.
For what is civilisation if not the rule of law? And what is the rule of law, if not justice? But what kind of justice imprisons the innocent?
The innocent are powerless – they have only to acquiesce – to consent to the powerful.
Is there a more powerless people in the world than Palestinians? But in the eyes of Zionists, Palestinians are not innocent. Palestinians are guilty for having been born.
But knowing they are powerless, Palestinians refuse to acquiesce; they refuse to give in. And therefore they are made to endure the daily humiliations of the West Bank, they are enclosed in the concentration camp
of Gaza and subjected to genocide, and from the very beginning of Zionist Israel, Palestinians have been arrested, imprisoned and tortured.
To be a Palestinian prisoner in Zionist Israel is to be swallowed whole into the belly of the beast. It is to be at the mercy of those who are merciless. It is to appeal to the humanity of those who are inhumane.
As we all know, the laws of an illegal occupier cannot be broken. The laws of an occupier can only be resisted!
Zionist Israel has no prisoners. Zionist Israel has only hostages. Zionist Israel is a rouge state – it is an illegal state.
Do not take my word for it – but the word of the International Court of Justice. The highest court of the civilised world.
According to the International Court of Justice, Israelâs occupation of Palestinian land has become illegal annexation.
And Israel defies all orders of the Court to stop actions that amount to genocide.
For these very crimes, the civilised world declared Nazi Germany illegitimate. That was justice.
And it is time that the civilised world declare Zionist Israel illegitimate. That would be just.
But the sad truth is that Israel is not the problem; Israel is a symptom. Israel is not the power; Israel is a tool.
I am sure many of you know of James Baldwin, the great American author, essayist, and civil rights activist who was born one hundred years ago today.
James Baldwin wrote, â…the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests… The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of âdivide and ruleâ and for Europeâs guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.â
That was 1979. But 45 years on, in 2024, Europe is no longer the problem; Europe, too, is a symptom. The land that gave us Sophie Scholl and the White Rose of resistance, now gives us only Olaf Scholz and the white flag of cowardice and complicity.
Europe, Norway included, Norway especially, is simply a tool.
The power is in the United States and we are all vassals of its empire.
If we are to achieve anything, we must first recognise our own powerlessness. Because, as has been said before, the powerful cannot exercise power without the consent of the powerless.
And as long as we allow ourselves to remain silently powerless, it is we who remain the jailers of those innocent people, guilty of only having been born Palestinian, but who refuse to remain powerless themselves.
So my question to everyone here, myself included, for how much longer will we remain silently powerless?
When will we loudly rescind our consent without which the powerful themselves will become powerless?
When will we stop following leaders who tell us:
Weapons are the way to peace.
Genocide is self-defence.
And one is guilty for having been born Palestinian.
Only when we recognise that our silence IS consent, only when we refuse to remain silent, only then will we see that WE have the power to open prison doors, WE have the power to bring justice to Palestine, and WE have the power to finally take a step closer to a truly civilised world.
