Marzuk, you’ve got it wrong! You cannot compare Malaysia to Palestine      

In a social media post on 19 October, Pas MP Marzuk Shaary tried to draw a parallel between the dispossession of Palestinians in Palestine and the position of the ethnic Malays and Muslims in Malaysia.

He said that 80 years after the arrival of Jewish immigrants, the land of Palestine was no longer in the possession of the native people, many of whom had become refugees in their own land.

Marzuk spoke of Jewish immigrants who came as guests with tricks and worldly wisdom, gradually seizing control of the economy, strategic towns and lands, and eventually political power.

He drew questionable parallels about how the Malaysian economy is increasingly controlled by religious and ethnic minorities. He claimed that, having reached Putrajaya, these minorities are now drafting laws and slowly charting their political control of the nation.

Ominously, Marzuk warned that the history of Palestine would be written in a new chapter in Malaysia if Muslims here continued to slumber. He said this land could not be allowed to become a second Palestine.

A friend from Palestine (ie a Palestinian) had this to say about Marzuk’s comments: “I felt upset when I understood what “not allowing a repetition of Palestine in Malaysia” meant.

“At first, I didn’t get it…I felt sad and disappointed – how could someone compare their own people as Israel? And at the same time ask them to support Palestine…this only shows that the speaker is narrow-minded.” 

(I have included my friend’s first-hand experience of life in the West Bank further below.)

I write this article as an activist for the Palestinian cause, as a Malaysian from an ethnic and religious minority background, and as a thinking person. Views such as Marzuk’s harm the cause of the Palestinian struggle, which already faces immense obstacles. Such views, based on erroneous assumptions, also harm the solidarity that ordinary people in Malaysia have forged.

No comparison with Palestine

By now, many around the world should know how the Zionist state of Israel came to be implanted in Palestine. Many articles have been published, including on this website, about the origins of the historic injustice that befell the Palestinians about a century ago. They continue to suffer its consequences.

A few main strands of that history should enable us to understand how Marzuk’s comparisons are unjustified. He speaks of Jewish immigrants who came with tricks and worldly wisdom, eventually gaining control and displacing the natives of Palestine. That much is true, especially during the period between 1890 and 1920.

But the implied comparison Marzuk draws with Malaysia’s historical immigrants and the nature of their current presence here is false.

Immigrants arrived in Palestine as part of a plan to establish a national ‘homeland’ for the Jewish people in the region – at the expense of the Palestinians. They had the backing and active support of the imperial power of the time, Britain – for the plan also served the empire’s strategic interests in West Asia.

The Zionists aimed to carve out as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible. (There’s a big difference between the Jewish people and Zionists.)

Their plan employed hideous means: forced displacement, Zionist terrorism, war and ethnic cleansing (as also seen recently in the genocide in Gaza).

The new immigrants forcefully implanted themselves as part of a settler-colonial enterprise. Laws were enacted to support their presence and survival at the expense of the native population, from the early years of the British occupation of Palestine.

This background is completely different from the Chinese and Indian immigrants’ experience in Malaysia. Yes, these immigrants also arrived as part of a colonial enterprise. But they arrived as labourers – not as settlers backed by powerful interests, intent on robbing the natives of their land and displacing them.

Labourers for whom? They were pawns and cogs in the tin mines, plantations and railways. These operations facilitated wealth and resource extraction from colonial Malaya, reaping enormous profits for the British economy. In contrast, most of these immigrants were indentured labourers who endured harsh working and living conditions.

To imply an equivalence in such diametrically opposed situations, to impute Zionist-like ill intent on these poor immigrants in Malaya, is just wrong. It is an unmindful analogy of what has happened in Palestine.

Worse, by drawing false parallels with Zionist immigrants who have acted barbarically towards native Palestinians, Marzuk risks dispensing ill-conceived offence to today’s descendants of those immigrants in Malaya.

These descendants are today part of the fabric of Malaysia and have contributed immensely to its growth. They have deep psychological and emotional roots in the country. It is grotesque to even suggest they would constitute any threat similar to what the Zionist migrants did in Palestine.

Outlandish view

This is all so unnecessary. No one in their right mind today would say or believe there is any conceivable ethnic minority intention to seize legal, economic and political control of Malaysia. Neither is there any intention to dispossess the indigenous people of the land. Hence, there is clearly no repetition in Malaysia of the history of Palestine.

The suggestion is so outlandish it must be a fringe idea. But Marzuk’s Facebook page shows he has 85,000 followers.

That said, there are bumiputras who have criticised Marzuk Shaary and urged him to apologise to the minorities. Some even want the Islamist party Pas to take a stand.

Why is it outlandish? Since 1957, the bumiputras have been at the helm of political power.  Political power has always been shared with representatives of other ethnic groups. But the helm has always been in the hands of the Malays.

In addition, the leadership of the government is appointed by the Malay royalty. The Federal Constitution provides that Islam is the official religion of the federation. It also enshrines the special position of the Malays and other Indigenous people of the land.

The Constitution allows for preferential quotas, privileges and institutional support to be accorded to the bumiputras. (How much that has translated into reducing disparities is a separate question that is not so clear-cut as it also involves the elite classes across all ethnic communities. Economic disparities within each ethnic group may even be worse than inter-ethnic disparities.) 

So the position of the bumiputras in Malaysia is the reverse of that of the Palestinians in their native land. The bumiputras are in a protected, privileged and ascendant position in many areas. In fact, their position is strong enough for them to have the confidence and generosity to share power and the economic pie with other ethnic groups. Arguably, this has contributed to the largely peaceable coexistence that has prevailed in Malaysia.

In contrast, many Palestinians live in their own homeland as prisoner-refugee survivors of the ongoing Nakba (Catastrophe) under the brutal Zionist regime. Or they subsist as lower-grade Palestinian citizens of Israel, especially in Jerusalem and the areas known as the 1948 territories. These territories were colonised and occupied through Western decree, forced displacement and military violence.

In the past two years, we have witnessed Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and, to a looming extent, in the West Bank.

Surely, there is no comparison between the bumiputras of Malaysia and the Palestinian natives, and nothing to suggest that the bumiputras here could be dispossessed by the minorities. Any such assertion would be outlandish and irresponsible.

And the minorities in Malaysia?

It is ironic that some among the minorities in Malaysia may also compare themselves with the Palestinians under the Israeli regime. They may see parallels between how Palestinians are discriminated against and how they themselves feel discriminated against in Malaysia.

As a result, they may ask, if you are concerned about the rights of Palestinians, and you protest their oppression, why wouldn’t you do the same for the minorities in Malaysia? Why would someone from a minority background in Malaysia want to support the Palestinians when it is primarily ‘an issue for the Muslims’?

Other articles in Aliran have already explained why Palestine is not a Muslim or sectarian issue. Or why it is a humanitarian issue rooted in colonial bullying and racism, and therefore should concern everyone who values survival, freedom, dignity and self-determination.

There is no real parallel between the condition of the minorities in Malaysia and the Palestinians. This is not to say that the minorities here do not face discrimination at various levels. They do. But it would be a great exaggeration to draw a sweeping comparison between Malaysia and Palestine.

Apartheid in occupied Palestine

Palestinians in Jerusalem (who are nominally regarded as citizens of Israel) are deprived of the rights and privileges granted to Jewish citizens.Palestinian residents in some villages around Jerusalem are prohibited from entering certain areas without special permits.

A Palestinian going from point A to point B in the West Bank would have to pass through checkpoints. Checkpoints and simple journeys made punitive, even torturous, are a form of suffering.

The entire process of securing special permits and then embarking on the journey is a process marked by complex colonial and racist procedures and policies.

Another example. Palestinians in the West Bank are prohibited (under threat of punishment) from drawing water from underground beyond a certain depth, restricting them to the use of only ‘seasonal’ water sources (Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land, 2007).

Wells dug to meet people’s needs are often sealed with reinforced concrete. Even licensed wells are destroyed, as happened in 2025, when the main water line supplying the southern Nablus area was deliberately demolished.

In addition, hundreds of natural springs in the West Bank have been confiscated, and Palestinians are denied access to them or prevented from using them altogether.

Meanwhile, intruding (and illegal) Israeli settlers are permitted to dig deeper wells to reach ‘ancient’ groundwater and use the natural springs freely. This means Palestinian families who have been on the land for centuries cannot access those ancient waters while a newly migrated Jewish family from, say, New York or Florida, is given full access.

If you are a Palestinian and you wish to build a new home for your family, or if you want to extend your existing house or put in a room, a water well, or a small livestock shelter, think again. You will face enormous difficulties in getting a permit for that from the Israeli authorities.

If you do get a permit for a new building, the plot ratio granted (that limits the size of the building) will be far less than what a new migrant Israeli settler from New York or Florida would be allowed in the same area.

This is part of a process that has been described as the extra-territorialisation of apartheid. Someone of the ‘right’ ethnicity from somewhere else has more rights than you – even though you were native born and your family has been there for generations. 

Indeed, it is often recognised that Israel’s apartheid, its ethno-nationalism, is worse than that formerly practised in South Africa. (International and Israeli human rights organisations, the International Court of Justice and UN bodies have called Israel an apartheid state.)

So it is difficult to obtain a permit and build a legal structure. But Palestinians end up building something anyway because their families still need a home to live in. It then gets bulldozed by Israeli authorities because it becomes illegal. Why? Because you don’t have a permit – which is almost impossible to get in the first place!

Given the precarious existence they face, many Palestinians thus build their (‘illegal’) homes cheaply with walls of raw concrete or cinder blocks left bare. Israeli homes, in contrast, are built with concrete and stone to give them a ‘conjured authenticity’ as part of an ancient land. To top it all, these homes invariably have red-tiled pitched roofs so that they can be identified as Jewish and, therefore, not to be bombed from air!

So if you are a Palestinian in the West Bank, you are basically under military rule by a colonial power. Your homes and orchards can be forcefully taken over or destroyed by Israeli Jewish settler thugs under the protection of the military occupation. 

You can also be killed – just like that. And it would be done with impunity. Forced illegal settlements spring up creating pockets of ‘irresolvable geography’ that will make it well-nigh impossible to create a viable separate state for the Palestinians.

And if you are in military-occupied Gaza, if you try to resist or fight back out of desperation, you suffer genocide and forced starvation.

Clearly, the ethnic minorities in Malaysia, despite their felt discrimination at various levels, experience nothing remotely close to what the Palestinians are subjected to in Palestine. The struggle for greater justice in Malaysia – for the underprivileged across all ethnic communities – is indeed work that is needed.

But the apartheid conditions that Palestinians face is not a useful comparison to make in that effort. It would be better for us to support the struggle of the Palestinian people regardless of ethnicity in the same way that we might advocate for greater justice for the disadvantaged in Malaysia regardless of ethnicity.

False comparisons benefiting no one

There should be no confusion by now: viewed from the perspective of either the bumiputras or the minorities, people in Malaysia are far better off. False comparisons only create greater internal divisions among ourselves. Not good.

We already have a situation where the Malaysian response to historical injustice to Palestine comes predominantly from Malay Muslims. Sadly, there is less ethnic minority protest in Malaysia against the barbaric treatment of the Palestinians by Israel and its backers, especially the US.

It shouldn’t be this way. The issue is one of deep cruelty and modern-day imperialism. This should be the concern of all communities in Malaysia. The polarised Malaysian response weakens whatever support we can muster for the victims of world-class thugs. 

So, drawing false parallels that worsen this polarisation harms support for the Palestinian cause.

Our words and behaviour are important

Trump is the chief enabler of the genocide that has taken place in Gaza and the looming one in the West Bank. He bypasses any need for accountability on Israel’s part for the holocaust it has inflicted on the Palestinians in Gaza over the last two years. He uses his immense power to bully small nations and discriminate against minorities – all while smartly dressed in coat and tie.

Yet, witness the spectacle of Trump’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur, where he was inappropriately welcomed by joyful traditional dancing. He bumped along to the rhythm, and Malaysia’s prime minister bumped along with him. 

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim complimented Trump for his “tenacity and courage”, saying the “world needs leaders who promote peace strongly”. The PM gushed over how happy he was that Trump actually came, even saying they shared a lot in common.

He even lauded Trump’s 20-point Gaza deal, which – though it ceased the bombing in Gaza – is full of injustices against the Palestinians. It even sidelines Palestinian voices — as has been the pattern for many decades. The deal also provides cover for what the Gaza People’s Tribunal in Istanbul describes as the “proxy occupation and colonial control over the victims of genocide”.

It was all so bizarre. All of our rhetorical tools supporting the Palestinian struggle went out of the window. In its place, amid the pomp of the occasion, was gushing submission and self-forgetfulness in the presence of the proverbial great white man. It was disturbing, embarrassing and hugely disappointing.

In response, Pas secretary general Takiyuddin Hassan said Malaysia went “overboard” in rolling out the red carpet. “It rubs salt into the wounds of the people in Gaza who are still suffering,” he said, adding that it was insensitive in view of the ongoing humanitarian disaster there.

Takiyuddin was right. His would have been the sort of honourable and self-respecting statement worthy of our support – rather than Marzuk’s ill-conceived and harmful parallels between the Palestinian and Malaysian conditions, which do no one any good.

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