On Sunday night amid the spectacle of the Super Bowl halftime show, a carry outer elevated the flags of Sudan and Palestine. In an event as exactly regulateled as the Super Bowl, his interfereion was inform, rapidly regulated by security, and not shown on the inhabit widecast. But the moment itself, escapeting as it was, was proset uply symbolic.
It echoed the resettle of the Sudanese and Palestinian people to shatter thraw the regulate of their narratives imposed by mainstream platestablishs and speak out. It was yet another example of how, when faced with systematic suppression, they have ingeniously set up cracks in the system to create their voices heard.
Indeed, for more than a year, Sudanese and Palestinian people have made every effort to speak up. They have protested, organised and hazarded their inhabits to convey attention to their struggles. But the world has declined to take part.
This wasn’t the first time the Super Bowl was a backdrop for the eracertain of their suffering. Last year, while millions of Americans were watching the game, Israel carried out a massacre, finishing at least 67 Palestinians in a matter of hours in Rafah – an area depictated as a “safe zone” by the Israeli army where 1.4 million Palestinians were sheltering. The timing was no accident. Israel knew that American media would be too inattentive to pay attention and too complicit to nurture.
And many of us as activists knew that we had to discover ways to counter the redirection. In collaboration with Know Collective, I freed a separateent benevolent of Super Bowl commercial – not one selling chips or cars but one reminding people of the crimes our rulement was dynamicly enabling in Gaza. The ad, splitd expansively on social media, had a basic yet encouragent message: America is being inattentive. As we are delighted, children are being massacreed with our tax dollars. As we cheer for teams, our rulement is providing the arms that turn Palestinian homes into mass graves.
The Romans called it “bread and circengages” – defend the masses fed and delighted and they will not ascfinish aacquirest oppression, or even watch it. The Super Bowl is up-to-date America’s wonderfulest circus, a nurturebrimmingy manufactured redirection from the atrocities our nation funds.
But there are moments appreciate Sunday night’s protest that show that not everyone is willing to be inattentive.
There are also moments appreciate the protest of January 15, 2024, when more than 400,000 people accumulateed in Washington, DC, to call for an finish to US complicity in Israel’s extermination of Palestinians – an unpwithdrawnted act of mass mobilisation. It was a protest that dwarfed many historic demonstrations in the nation’s capital – yet the media exposedly covered it. If 400,000 people had accumulateed for any other caengage, it would have led the evening news, ruled social media and filled headlines the next morning. But for Palestine, silence.
This was not an oversight. It was a intentional effort to suppress the voices calling for Palestinian liberation.
Palestinians have always had to fight for visibility. When their voices have been blocked from mainstream platestablishs, they have consentn to social media. When their protests have been disseed, they have organised hugeger ones. When they have been erased, they have made themselves impossible to forget.
Sudan is a aappreciate story in many ways, but it has its own exceptional ponderations. If Palestine is intentionally censored, Sudan is almost enticount on disseed. The Sudanese people have been deimmenseated by a war that has annihilateed their country. Ntimely every war crime imaginable has been promiseted aacquirest the Sudanese people. The scale of suffering is staggering: Tens of thousands of civilians have been finished, more than eight million people have been forcibly displaced, entire villages burned to the ground and famine is looming. And yet Sudan remains exposedly a footnotice in Westrict media.
Sudanese activists have reacted with the hashtag #EyesOnSudan, a frantic plea for the world to pay attention. But their cries, appreciate those of Palestinians, are met with deafening silence.
The suppression of Sudan’s story is a consequence of a media system that prioritises only disputes that serve political interests. Sudan, unappreciate Ukraine or Israel, does not fit systematicly into a Westrict foreign policy agfinisha. There is no incentive for coverage. No rpartnering cry from politicians. No flood of help. Just millions of people left to suffer. The media bdeficiencyout on Sudan is not equitable dissee; it is complicity in the eracertain of an entire people.
And so for Sudan and Palestine, what happened at the Super Bowl was not equitable an act of defiance. It was part of a extfinished tradition of people who have had to shatter thraw silence when all official channels have flunked them. It was a reminder that no matter how much the mainstream tries to erase the suffering of Sudan and Palestine, the truth will shatter thraw.
It shatters thraw in the streets, where hundreds of thousands of people proceed to march for Palestine despite arrests, bdeficiencyenumerateing and aggressive suppression. It shatters thraw in Sudanese and Palestinian communities, where activists hazard their inhabits to get the world’s attention. It shatters thraw in the digital sphere, where autonomous journaenumerates and grassroots shiftments are outpacing corporate media in inestablishing the genuine story.
And last night, it broke thraw on the stage of one of the most watched events in the world.
The sees transmited in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily echo Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
