Syksy Räsänen's speech at the "Justice, dignity and peace for Palestine" demonstration

Had someone told me four years ago that in 2023 Israel will start a genocide, I would have thought that it is possible and not surprising, because Israel was already heading in that direction.

Genocides do not appear out of nowhere. They are often preceded by dividing people into racial groups, establishing the supremacy of one group, branding other groups inferior, transferring their members to segregated areas, and turning violence against them into accepted routine. These features have been part of Israeli apartheid from the beginning and have grown more prominent in the 2000s.

But if that person would have told me that Finland and other European countries will support Israel’s genocide, and that the support will only increase as the bodies pile up and the genocide is livestreamed for all to see, I would not have believed it.

But I have learned that there are no moral limits to Finland and EU’s support for Israeli apartheid.

The only constraint that exists is because of us. Civil society that has acted in so many ways and kept Palestine in the news. Never before has the difference between political decisionmakers and public opinion been so clear and so wide.

But it is also true that many politicians, now speak about Palestine with a clarity that previously only a few of them managed. And even governments have finally been pushed to slowly follow public opinion.

It is in public opinion where we see that Israeli propaganda has decisively failed. Israel is now globally the most negatively viewed country on Earth. The majority of the public in country after country is against Israeli apartheid, even –for the first time– in the United States.

And now, more than ever, the true names of things are spoken aloud. Apartheid, genocide, colonialism.

This is important to understand what is happening and why, and to have effective action against it. The genocide in Gaza is not mere revenge, it is the logical consequence of Israel’s settler colonialism. Dispossessing the indigenous Palestinian population, and replacing them and their society with a European society of settlers has been the goal of the Zionist project in Palestine from the beginning.

As Israel did not manage to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians and Palestinians refused to give up their national identity and their rights, it then proved a small step for Israel to move from the siege and regular mass killing in Gaza to genocide.

What we have seen, and what continues in Gaza every day, what extends to the West Bank, is the surrender to the eliminationist impulse of settler colonialism. The impulse of getting rid of the Palestinians.

For government politicians in Finland, genocide is about managing their reputations. To us, to the majority of the population, and for an increasing number of politicians, it is a moral issue. As civil society in country after country manages to shift politicians to act according to public opinion and international law, the support for Israel will turn to opposition.

As Israeli apartheid cannot continue without external support, we know that its days are numbered. In our lifetime, we will see the end of Israeli colonial rule and the apartheid regime. Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.

Syksy Räsänen, Vice-Chair of Sumud