The Construction of False Oppositions: Rafah, Reasi, and the “All Eyes on” Phenomenon

In late May 2024, an Israeli attack on the base camp in Rafah, killed scores of innocent Palestinians. This sparked off a massive outrage on social media, which was primarily voiced through an AI image carrying the phrase ‘All Eyes on Rafah.’ A terrorist attack in Reasi, Jammu, in the week that followed, led to another social media trend that popularised the slogan ‘All Eyes on Reasi.’ This was done in a concerted effort by social media users, Hindu rights activists, as well as prominent journalists on national television, who pitted the attention that Rafah had garnered in an oppositional relation with the purported silence of activists and celebrities on the terrorist attack in Reasi, leaving out any semblance of criticality and nuance. This article takes a look at the performative aspect of voicing dissent through such AI templates, and whether at all such activism is efficacious in the long run. 

On May 27, 2024, an Israeli airstrike on a tent camp in the city of Rafah, located in the southern Gaza Strip, led to worldwide condemnation and outrage. As per reports, 45 civilians lost their lives to the bombings, even as they were seeking shelter from the violence in an area designated as a ‘safe zone.’ As horrific images and videos of charred bodies and wrecked houses emerged from Rafah, people took to social media to voice their condemnation of the Israeli government’s genocidal measures against the Palestinian people. Only two days later, another Israeli air strike on a tent camp in Rafah killed at least 21 more people.

An article by BBC pins down the origin of the phrase ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ to Richard Peeperkorn, a WHO representative who was on a video call with journalists at the United Nations headquarters, in Geneva, in the month of February. In the wake of the Rafah bombing in late May, an AI-generated image of a vast desert full of tents, suggesting a camp for the displaced, proliferated across social media.

In the image, the phrase ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ is marked out by white tents in the vastness of a refugee camp, indicating the urgent need for the world to oppose the Israeli military operations in Rafah. An NPR article credits two Malaysians, Zila AbKa, and Amirul Shah, with the creation and subsequent proliferation of the AI-generated image. It picked up massive traction in a short space of time, owing, particularly, to the ‘Add Yours’ feature launched by Instagram in 2021, which helped Instagram users re-share the template image in a matter of a few seconds.

First, this popularity gives rise to a debate; is it ethical to represent the plight of Palestine through amplifying a ‘sanitised’, artificially generated image, knowing that there exists an archive of the genocide, readily available, almost inescapable at this point? Is it not more thoughtful, when it comes to those who retain the comparative privilege of merely spectating the genocide, rather than experiencing it, to depict a more authentic representation of the violence, entailing the blood and the gore, to paint an accurate extent of its ravages?

This visual archive is accessible to millions of users across social media, and is indisputable proof of the violence unleashed by the settler colonial regime on innocent Palestinians. With greater access to social media, Palestinians are in a position to reclaim the narrative and present a more accurate account of their reality - and it is this reality that needs amplification - the horrors of colonial violence, in their completely unadulterated form.

However, the role of celebrity culture, in influencing political thought, cannot be underestimated. Especially in a country like India, where it is normalised for media personalities to be revered like Gods, political endorsements or opinions start carrying immense weight. In the aftermath of the Israeli military operations in Rafah, renowned Bollywood celebrities, like Alia Bhatt, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Sonam Kapoor, Malaika Arora, Dia Mirza, Tripti Damri, Sonakshi Sinha, Varun Dhawan, Bhumi Pednekar, Rashmika Mandanna, and Swara Bhaskar, started sharing the AI image on their Instagram stories.

A welcome sight for many, it was the first time that Indian celebrities had come out in such large numbers, in expressing their solidarity towards the Palestinian people. It is also interesting to note that by that time, the genocide had been in process for seven excruciating months.

In retaliation, the right wing launched a hashtag ‘Boycott Bollywood’, in an attempt to cancel the Bollywood A-listers who had condemned the Israeli operations in Rafah. In no time, this backlash developed into a steady flow of online trolls and harassment. Indian cricketer Rohit Sharma’s wife, Ritika Sajdeh deleted her post upon being criticised by a section of social media for her silence on the issue of Kashmiri Pandits. Similarly, Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit also deleted her post upon being trolled by social media users.

On June 9, a terrorist attack on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims from the Shiv Khori cave to Katra, tragically claimed the lives of 9 innocent people. Among them were two children, aged 14 and 2. The attack was immediately condemned throughout the country, but it was the reaction on social media that once again became a topic of contention. News media journalist Arnab Goswami was quick to organise a debate on his primetime program, on whether BCCI should boycott future matches with the Pakistan Cricket Team in a mark of protest against such terrorist attacks in Kashmir.

He also called out celebrities for their failure to condemn the Reasi attack, especially after their much publicized stand on Rafah. Amish Devgan, of News 18 India, in his address to the nation’s youth, asserted: “Apne desh ke baare mei sochiye - apne baare mei sochiye, uske baad Rafah-Wafah ke baare mei sochiyega…” (Think about your own country first, then you can think about Rafah). Several social media users also called attention to the purported hypocrisy of Indian celebrities who were vocal about Rafah, but had gone silent on the terrorist attack in Reasi. (Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack, it became apparent that Rafah had become a point of reference for igniting a sense of anger around the Reasi incident. Celebrities who had professed their solidarity with Gaza were being singled out for comments on the terrorist attack in Reasi. This juxtaposition is a calculated move that is carried out within the rhetorical framework of Hindutva nationalistic discourse. Also, these are two very different phenomena, which require to be addressed in very different ways. Clubbing them together, and seeing them in a referential light, is more than a disservice to those who have been affected by either the Israeli army, or terrorists in Kashmir.

Amid the furore that such controversies entail, the essence of the Palestinian struggle for freedom gets lost in empty polemics, and indifferent endorsement of ‘sides’. The historicity of Israel’s colonialism of Palestine gets washed down to an easy-to-digest clash between two supposedly equal ‘factions,’ which is a cruel disservice to Palestinians struggling to make their voices heard in a world that has forgotten how to listen.

Prantik Ali is pursuing M.A. English at Jamia Millia Islamia

Edited by- Nausheen Ali Nizami