Sometimes, it seems that times are changing. When an Israeli soldier was filmed from multiple angles killing two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank on Nakba Day, commemorating the 1948 mass expulsion of Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel, the killing was covered by CNN, The Guardian, and the New York Times. Astonishingly, most of these news sources went in depth into the killings — interviewing family members and reporting on the circumstances of the killings, during which it was clear that neither Nadeem Nawara nor Mohammad Daher, the victims, posed any sort of threat to the soldiers who opened fire on them.

But the same elements tried to to bury the story nonetheless. CNN’s Israel lobbyist-turned anchor, Wolf Blitzer, decided to have Israeli military spokesman and ambassador-turned CNN contributor, Michael Oren give his “commentary” on the killing. Blitzer portrayed Oren as some sort of authority on the matter, rather than someone with a clear conflict of interest, and the latter proceeded to suggest that the entire killing was staged. Right-wing extremists have dubbed the denialism with the term “Pallywood” — the idea that Palestinians who are massacred on camera are staging these attacks.

The killings and the reaction to them reveal a growing conflict between increasing international solidarity with the Palestinian people and their history on one hand, and the campaign to suppress it on the other. While Wolf Blitzer’s commentary can be associated with the latter, a growing initiative of international people’s resistance, known as the Global March to Jerusalem, seeks to put the former into action by confronting Israel’s colonial borders from all angles and marching on Jerusalem. This march will take place on Naksa Day, June 6th, marking the “setback” during which the Israeli occupation was extended to the West Bank and Gaza following the 1967 war.

The colonial roots of “Pallywood”

While war propaganda is not foreign to Palestinians — or any people living in a conflict zone — denying clear evidence of violence by Israeli soldiers is a sign of denialism and conspiracism, not skepticism. Indeed, it was this same mentality that landed Philippe Karsenty, a French conspiracy theorist and “journalist” a hefty fine for libel, after suggesting that the filmed killing of Palestinian youngster Mohammed Al-Dura during a clash in 2000 was likewise staged. Israel had originally taken responsibility for killing Al-Dura, before revoking the apology, investigating its own conduct in a sham investigation, exonerating its soldiers, demolishing the crime scene, rejecting any international investigation from taking place to determine the killers, and even recently denying that the child is dead. Al-Dura’s father, who was wounded during the encounter, and the reporters who captured the scene on camera, continue to blame Israeli soldiers.

In fact, Israeli soldiers have been responsible for record amounts of violence against children and youth. In 2013 alone, over a dozen unarmed Palestinian youths were killed during demonstrations. Israel has killed at least 1,400 Palestinian youths since 2001. In virtually all cases, the Palestinian youths were not involved in armed violence. Nonetheless, Israel has continued to provide virtual impunity for soldiers engaged in violence against Palestinians.

It is through this violence that the Nakba itself continues to exist as a form of ongoing, brutal, and structural violence. Rather than simply a historical event with no relevance, the Nakba plays out both in the violence Israel has carried out against its victims as well as the propaganda and impunity that follows it. In that the Nakba has sought to erase an entire society, both physically and ideologically, the killing of Palestinian youths — the future of Palestine, also known as a “demographic threat” to Israeli policymakers — must be accomplished with ideological violence as well.

By categorically denying clear evidence of Israeli violence against Palestinian youths — such as footage from multiple security cameras, a CNN camera, hospital reports, funerals, testimonies from witnesses and family members, and the bullets themselves — Israel can also deny the suffering that has united the nation that is being subjugated. Just as there will always be individuals who seek out a grassy knoll shooter or the secret stage at Area 51 where the moon landing “really” took place, there will always be those who seek to dismiss evidence of violence against Palestinians, whether it be found in human rights reports or graphic videos.

But we should not see conspiracy theories concocted by former Israeli officials or right-wing internet bloggers outside of its context. Rather, this is the ideological aspect of the Nakba itself. Palestinians must be erased — and that means their suffering along with it.

Solidarity is the Answer

However, there is an opposite response, that seems to be ringing out internationally. While some seek to bury the Nakba with the bodies of Nadeem Nawara, Mohamed Daher, and Mohamed Al-Dura — along with the evidence of the crimes committed against them — others demand visibility. Throughout the world, boycotts and divestment initiatives against the State of Israel have grown. Throughout Europe, the ability to sign contracts with companies that are complicit in the Israeli occupation and expansion has become a financial liability. Turkey — a key Israeli ally in commerce and military trade — has still issued arrest warrants for Israelis involved in the massacre of Gaza-bound aid workers. And in the United States, students across US campuses continue unabashed in their social justice campaigns to divest their universities from Israel, with extraordinary successes, including votes at five out of nine University of California campuses among the dozens of others where students have voted for divestment. And in historic Palestine itself, Palestinian and Israeli initiatives like those by Zochrot seek to undermine the campaign to erase Palestinian villages that were expelled in 1948. It seems that the campaign to erase the Palestinians is not working.

Perhaps this is why initiatives like the Global March to Jerusalem have continued to maintain a large coalition. For three years, organizers from around the world, including Malaysia, India, Argentina, Italy, the UK, Palestine itself, and elsewhere have organized large numbers of marchers to converge on Palestine. Every time, the march has risked deadly repression, such as the Israeli shooting of unarmed demonstrator Mahmoud Zakot. Nonetheless, this year, they will take that risk again.

There is no denying that the international movement against the violent erasure of Palestine continues to have its problems. In some rare occasions, anti-Jewish rather than anti-Zionist sentiments have emerged. In others, anti-Arabism and enabling of Zionism has taken place by falsely accusing anti-racists of “anti-Semitism”. And perhaps more dangerously, many of the world’s violent regimes have spent empty words on solidarity with Palestinians while collaborating in the discrimination against them.

But this is not a sign of global solidarity’s lack of legitimacy. It is a sign that the movement is growing, is real, and therefore risks infusing the various problems of the imperfect societies in which it is manifest.

There is, of course, an answer: to prevent the erasure of Palestine, we must remain united and steadfast in our goal. That is what the Global March to Jerusalem seeks to do. By aiming to liberate Jerusalem from Israeli occupation through non-violence and international unity, we can make sure that the ideological and physical erasure of the colonized cannot be completed. We can demand awareness over denial, equality over racism, and liberation over occupation. Onward, to Jerusalem!

Amith Gupta is a volunteer of the Global March to Jerusalem — North America. He currently volunteers with a refugee journalism initiative in Cairo, Egypt.