Ione Belarra: To Stop Genocide in Palestine, We Must Use Our Heads and Our Hearts
As part of my commitment to bringing justice-oriented voices from Spain to a broader audience, especially in the context of the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, I am providing this English translation of remarks made by Ione Belarra, leader of the leftist Podemos party and Minister of Social Rights in the Spanish government between 2021 and 2023. Belarra spoke at a Podemos-organized event at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid marking 76 years since the UN Partition Plan. Her remarks followed those of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories; and Amira Cheikh Ali, a Spanish-Palestinian lawyer and activist.
Scroll down to watch the video of the full event (in Spanish).
During Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Belarra has been very vocal in demanding that European leaders and the international community hold Israeli leaders accountable. In addition to calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, she has consistently called on the Spanish government to break diplomatic relations with Israel, impose an arms embargo, and bring a case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to the International Criminal Court.
Text of Ione Belarra’s remarks
I wanted to begin by reading you some brief statements that I was able to collect.
Raquel Martí, Director of the Spanish Committee of UNRWA: “We had not seen a humanitarian catastrophe like the one in Gaza in the entire history of the UN.”
The UN Deputy Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, referring to Gaza: “The worst I have seen, and I don’t say that lightly. I started as a 20-year-old during the Khmer Rouge. 68 percent [of the victims in Gaza] are women and children. No, I don’t think I have seen anything like it. It’s complete carnage.”
The person in charge of institutional relations at Doctors Without Borders: “The violence we are seeing has no precedent. Gaza is being devastated, and thousands of people are dying. This must stop immediately. We condemn in the most emphatic way Israel’s demand that people be displaced.”
“In addition to the pain and everything we are seeing, which breaks the heart of of the majority of all decent people around the world, I think we have to be capable of thinking, analyzing, and reflecting [on]...the central elements that explain why the state of Israel is doing what it is doing, and doing it with absolute impunity. ”
I don’t know how much experience you have…but I think we can all understand that this isn’t the kind of terminology that tends to be used in the United Nations or in human rights organizations that normally use much more diplomatic language - something that has been an object of criticism for many of us on many occasions. But I think this kind of discourse from people who have such representative positions at the United Nations and elsewhere reveals how in Palestine in recent days, we have watched the most basic kinds of consensus we’ve reached as an international community be blown apart in the most profound and savage way.
I think all of us are here…to show our solidarity with the Palestinian people, to demand together a permanent ceasefire and to put an end once and for all to the planned genocide which, as Amira explained very well, didn’t start today or yesterday but has been unfolding for decades as part of the political project of Zionism that involves the elimination of the Palestinian people.
In addition to the pain and everything we are seeing, which breaks the heart of of the majority of all decent people around the world, I think we have to be capable of thinking, analyzing, and reflecting, and this is a bit of what I wanted to propose to you today: to analyze what I believe are the central elements that explain why the state of Israel is doing what it is doing, and doing it with absolute impunity.
The first element is the absence of context, as Amira said. You would think that everything started on October 7, but it’s not true. We have a responsibility to explain that this is a political process that has been unfolding for decades, and that the Zionist project, the project of constructing the state of Israel, has deeply colonial roots. It has as its foundation the deep belief that this people is superior to others and superior, concretely in this case, to the people of Palestine. This explains a large part of what Amira and also Francesca were discussing much better than I am, which has to do with the assassinations, with a regime of apartheid, with the torture, with the majority of the adult population and also children subjected to military tribunals and being incarcerated, and all of it sustained…with the most advanced military technology in the world. Which takes us to a scenario that is unprecedented in other conflicts in the world.
Ione Belarra (center) joins other speakers at the Nov. 28 event in Madrid. (Photo: John Collins)
The second that also seems fundamental to me has to do with the propaganda apparatus deployed throughout the world by the state of Israel, which has three parts, some of which I have already mentioned. [It] is the reason why we have seen a total dehumanization of the Palestinian people and an identification with terrorism that allows things to be done to those people that under normal conditions would never be allowed in any other part of the world.
For me, the first part is silence. What the state of Israel, in ‘normal’ conditions, has achieved is that this conflict isn’t talked about. The silence of the international community is absolute. The only news that is sent out is pinkwashing; using feminism and the LGBTI community as an element to clean up the image of the Israeli regime; treating the Israel regime as a democracy homologous to European democracies; and in general, praise of Netanyahu as a charismatic leader who is also homologous to European leaders. This is what is known of Israel under ‘normal’ conditions.
And when the media fence is broken, when unprecedented pain and suffering manage to get the world to talk about the situation, what we find is, on the one hand, a total dehumanization… The Palestinian victims die, they don’t have names, they don’t have families, they have no history, yet the Israeli hostages and the people killed have names, have histories, have families, and these are made known as they should be. But the names and the faces of all the victims should be known. Why do I say this? Because that dehumanization, that lack of recognition of their humanity, is what allows a policy of extermination like the one we are seeing to be carried out.
And when someone raises their voice, when someone signals what is obvious and what any human being with a bit of a conscience can see clearly, then the criminalization happens, which is the third element that I think is especially important to point out. What we are seeing in France with the prohibition of displaying symbols, any person who points out the most obvious thing, that it is necessary to comply with international humanitarian law, that even wars have rules, anyone who points that out is automatically equated with a terrorist.
And this is something that all together, the silence with the dehumanization and the criminalization, creates the perfect breeding ground that allows Israel to do what it is doing with total impunity. To me it doesn’t seem coincidental that the only voices that one has heard from political leaders come from the countries of the global south, that it would be [Colombian] President Petro, the Bolivian government, the ones who have it most difficult, governments that in general are already subjected to political pressure and a very strong form of ‘lawfare’, would be the only ones. Because in the rest of the world, it’s obvious that the media put out a singular message, and anyone who points out the [Israeli] crimes, the genocide, the attempt to eliminate an entire people, is criminalized.
This is what explains why what is being done can be done. And for me, analyzing this is a central task in order to be able to raise the political proposals that I would like to be able to do. I will leave those for later. But I think that if we don’t analyze in detail the tentacles of power of the state of Israel, it is very difficult to pose strategic solutions in the short and medium term. Thank you.
