Mandela: Nothing beautiful about the occupation.

For the first time, Miss Universe contestants from the UAE will take part in this year's pageant, and Morocco will take part for the first time in 40 years, after the ratification of normalization agreements between their country and "Israel".

The 70th Miss Universe contest will be held in Occupied Palestine in the occupied city of Eilat (Um al-Rashrash) on the 12th of December. The announcement triggered a wave of boycott calls against the contest’s next destination.

It is contradictory that a beauty contest is taking place in "Israel" given that this colonial entity is built on the ruins of Palestinian land and countless natives, and as everybody knows, colonial barbarism is an act of utmost ugliness and no amount of "beautifying" could ever change this fact.

Tiaras and coffins

The Miss Universe committee plans to tour the occupied land, visiting the Dead Sea and al-Quds (Occupied Jerusalem), in a clear attempt to whitewash the Israeli occupation's crimes against the Palestinians and paint a picture that connects "Israel" to the occupied land.

It is, simply put, aiming to push Palestine out of the picture.

This decision feels completely disconnected from the socio-political as well as military struggle of Palestinians who have been vehemently fighting against attempts to judaize al-Quds, notably after the one-sided announcement of the US which appropriated the historic city to "Israel".

Completing a tour across the occupied land is "Israel’s" seemingly non-political approach to normalizing the occupation. "Israel’s" step to hosting the Miss Universe 2021 is a pure whitewashing of their crimes against the Palestinians and another attempt to eradicate the Palestinian cause from politics.

The president of the Miss Universe Organization, Paula Shugart, told Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post that this year's theme is "Israel", a rather odd choice given that a host "country" is supposed to supply the organizers with a variety of themes and not refer to itself as one. This showcases the limits of Israeli choices when it comes to "cultural" facets given that its existence is nothing but a colonial construct with no exclusive authenticity to offer the world.

Hosting the event and its contestants from all over the world, with the widely-contested participation of two Arab countries, is an Israeli attempt to normalize its occupation and facilitate the capability of regional Arab policymakers to make decisions that could be detrimental to the Palestinians.

Recently, the occupation adopted the same approach by participating in the Dubai Expo after normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates.

The Israeli pavilion illustrated an image that highlights similarities between the UAE and itself, in an attempt to show its "belonging" and how it is a part of the region.

Masking massacres

Last year's Miss Universe beauty contestants spoke about women's empowerment and influencing generations to be "changemakers". The 2021 Israeli winner Tehila Levi, who has served with the Israeli occupation forces, spoke in a similar tone.

However, pro-Palestinian Malaysian activists were quick to lambast Levi after she appeared in the national costume round of the Miss Universe pageant, while her government was bombing Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians.

Her overall image alludes in an artificial fashion to women's empowerment, yet her government and the military forces in which she served use every trick in the book to strip Palestinian women from all their rights.

A broken heel

During the long years of occupation, Israeli occupation authorities imprisoned dozens of pregnant women, some of whom gave birth to their children while still in prison.

The first Palestinian female prisoner to have given birth inside the prisons of the occupations is liberated Zakiah Shammout from Haifa, who was arrested in late 1971. Ever since then, stories upon stories of similar tragedies have been accumulating with no end to them in sight.

But Israeli violence doesn't stop here, as the occupation forces keep committing human rights violations through administrative detentions, where prisoners have reached their 113th day of hunger strike in protest of the poor and abusive prisoner conditions, and illegal settlement projects.

Only a few days ago, a mother was recorded holding on to her son's grave refusing to let the Israeli occupation soldiers demolish and desecrate his grave.

The mother told reporters that a female Israeli soldier physically assaulted her and prevented her from entering the cemetery to protect her son's grave, as the occupation was demolishing said cemetery. "Even the dead were not spared from the savage occupation's brutality," the mother mourned.

The aforementioned female soldier could have been last year's beauty contestant, Tehila Levi, so on what grounds can she or any other Israeli beauty contestant speak about women's empowerment or human rights?

Mandela: Nothing beautiful about the occupation

In response to the contest being held in "Israel", several voices spoke up in protest, choosing to boycott the event.

On that note, both Malaysia and Indonesia took a bold stand by withdrawing their contestants from the race.

In support of the two contestants and the boycotting campaign against the event, former South African President Nelson Mandela's grandson, Inkosi Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela, called on the remaining contestants to follow suit.

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"Israel is an Apartheid State and we will continue to mobilize all freedom-loving people of the world to boycott, divest and pass sanctions against the brutal apartheid regime," Mandela said in a statement.

"We must persist in isolating Apartheid "Israel" in the same way that we isolated Apartheid South Africa," he added.

Miss Universe is not the first event which "Israel" hosts in the occupied land. It is nothing but a desperate attempt by the occupation to propagate a beautified version of itself in the hope of polishing the appearance of its heinous crimes against the Palestinians.

In light of the string of regional normalization agreements, "Israel's" strategy has become focused on lending itself a sense of organic placement within the region through rapid ill-devised policies of faux-cultural and diplomatic rapprochements.

The Israeli occupation does not belong in Palestine. The crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians cannot be beautified, cannot be polished, and cannot be excused.

There is no beauty in the occupation and no beauty in its crimes. You can't find beauty in brutality, aggression, and apartheid.