Horrified by Israel’s war on Gaza and the spiralling death toll, primarily young Vietnamese people have begun to raise their voices in support of Palestinians. In the process, they are discovering historical ties between Vietnam and Palestine and their shared fights for national liberation.

But the decades-old relationship between the two nations has been overshadowed by more recent promotion of Israel’s business culture to a younger generation of Vietnamese.

Focused on achieving success in Vietnam’s fast-growing free market economy, many have been inspired by Israel’s startup business culture while knowing little about the darker side of Israel’s success in terms of its long occupation of Palestinian land.

Through art, discussion and other means of expression, pro-Palestinian activists in Vietnam are helping their peers understand concepts such as Zionism, the Nakba, the Oslo Accords and settler colonialism.

And step by step, they are reasserting the context and history of Palestinian loss and removal that narratives in Vietnam in local media and books omit in their telling of Israel’s emergence as an economic success story