Sunday evening, in the middle of the part-time show of the Super Bowl, an artist raised the flags of Sudan and Palestine. In an event as meticulously controlled as the Super Bowl, its interruption was brief, quickly manipulated by security and not shown on live broadcast. But the moment itself, ephemeral as it was, was deeply symbolic.
This reflected the determination of the Sudanese and Palestinian people and their allies to unravel the censorship of their stories imposed by traditional platforms and express themselves. It was yet another example of how, in the face of a systematic deletion, they ingeniously found cracks in the system to make their voices heard.
Indeed, for more than a year, Sudanese and Palestinians have done their best to speak. They protested, organized and risky their lives to draw attention to their difficulties. But the world refused to listen.
It was not the first time that the Super Bowl was a backdrop for erasing their suffering. Last year, when millions of Americans watched the match, Israel made a massacre, killing at least 67 Palestinians in Rafah – an area designated as a “safe zone” by the Israeli army where 1, 4 million Palestinians have abbreviated. Timing was not an accident. Israel knew that the American media would be too distracted to pay attention and too accomplices to worry about it.
And many of us as activists knew that we had to find ways to counter distraction. In collaboration with Know Collective, I published another type of Super Bowl advertising – not a single selling tokens or cars, but a recalling people of crimes that our government would actively allow Gaza. The announcement, widely shared on social networks, had a simple but urgent message: America is distracted. As we are entertained, children are slaughtered with our taxes. While we encourage teams, our government provides weapons that transform Palestinian houses into common pits.
The Romans called him “bread and circuses” – keep the masses nourished and entertainment and they will not get up against oppression, or even notice it. The Super Bowl is the largest circus in modern America, a carefully manufactured distraction of the atrocities that our nation finances.
But there are moments like the Sunday evening demonstration which demonstrate that not everyone is ready to be distracted.
There are also moments like the protest of January 15, 2024, when more than 400,000 people gathered in Washington, DC, to ask for the end of the American complicity in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians – an act of mass mobilization without previous. It is a demonstration that has overshadowed many historical demonstrations in the national capital – but the media barely covered it. If 400,000 people had gathered for any other cause, it would have led evening news, dominated social media and made the headlines the next morning. But for Palestine, silence.
It was not supervision. It was a deliberate effort to remove the voices calling for the Palestinian liberation.
Palestinians have always had to fight for visibility. When their voices were blocked consumer platforms, they went to social networks. When their protests were ignored, they organized larger ones. When they were erased, they went impossible to forget.
Sudan is a story similar in many ways, but it has its own unique considerations. If Palestine is deliberately censored, Sudan is almost entirely ignored. The Sudanese people were devastated by a war that destroyed their country. Almost all imaginable war crimes were committed against the Sudanese people. The extent of the suffering is astounding: tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, more than eight million people have been moved by force, whole villages burned on the ground and famine is looming. And yet, Sudan is barely a footnote in the Western media.
Sudanese activists responded with the hashtag #eyesonsudan, a desperate plea for the world to be careful. But their cries, like those of the Palestinians, encounter a deafening silence.
The suppression of the history of Sudan is the consequence of a media system which only favors conflicts which serve political interests. Sudan, unlike Ukraine or Israel, does not perfectly fit into a Western foreign policy program. There is no incentive to the cover. No rallying of politicians. No help flow. There are only millions of people left. The failure of the media on Sudan is not only negligence; It is a bond in the erasure of an entire people.
And so for Sudan and Palestine, what happened at the Super Bowl was not only an act of challenge. It was part of a long tradition of people who had to break the silence when all the official channels failed them. It was a reminder that no matter how much the dominant current is trying to erase the sufferings of Sudan and Palestine, the truth will allow you to unravel.
He crosses in the streets, where hundreds of thousands of people continue to walk for Palestine despite arrests, black lists and violent suppression. He crosses the Sudanese and Palestinian communities, where activists risk their lives to attract the attention of the world. He drives in the digital sphere, where independent journalists and basic movements become corporate media by telling the real story.
And last night, he pierced on the scene of one of the most watched events in the world.
Publisher’s note: The second paragraph of the article was modified after the revelation of the demonstrator’s identity.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
