GenZedong

Projected on the wall at a meeting of pro-Palestinian Vietnamese activists were two images of war: one of Gaza in 2023 after [a neocolonial] air strike and another of the rubble left after the bombing of the Kham Thien neighbourhood in Hanoi more than 50 years ago.

Then-U.S. President Richard Nixon had ordered the Christmas period bombing of the North Vietnamese capital in 1972, and Kham Thien suffered the most severe devastation. Over 12 consecutive days and nights starting on December 18, about 20,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Hanoi as well as the busy northern port city of Hai Phong and several other localities.

The juxtaposition of the two images and the historical echoes of the two wars — whether to "flatten Gaza" or "bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age" — form part of a reservoir of shared symbols that have fuelled the current mood of Vietnam-Palestine solidarity among young Vietnamese.

History is on repeat, said Hung*, a 20-year-old student whose father and grandparents lived through the 1972 Christmas bombings by U.S. forces.

"Looking at what's happening in Gaza, I couldn't help thinking of the story my father told me of a day during his childhood when he watched in horror as bombs were dropped near [Hanoi's] West Lake and shortly afterwards he felt a gale blowing in his direction and the shockwave pressing against his chest,” Hung told Al Jazeera.

“Now, precisely that is happening to everyone in Gaza day in, day out," he said.

"Every day in Gaza, there's another Kham Thien."