by susan abulhawa, Electronic Intifada, June 14, 2024 https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-dragging-world-darkness/47081
Israel does not belong in the modern world. It is the child of European colonialism and Europe’s genocidal anti-Semitism, imposed by force and fire and Western guilt on a land already inhabited by an indigenous people. Israel is a contemporary trespass of that old world’s colonial ethos that justified genocide, ethnic cleansing, wholesale plunder, endless theft and destruction of indigenous peoples in the name of settlement and divine entitlement of a superior group of humans. But the modern world has moved on with incremental moral evolution. It long ago repudiated, at least in principle, the racist and violent impulses that powered the genocidal colonial engines of old. One can hear Israel’s anachronistic nature in the rhetoric of its leaders and citizens. Benjamin Netanyahu points to America’s nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Zionists, especially those in settler-colonial nations like the United States and Australia, love to remind us that these countries were founded on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples. And from these reminders come their accusations of double standards and hypocrisy. “You’re living on stolen land, why don’t you leave?” so their rhetoric goes. Implicit in their accusations is an admission of sameness with the violent and racist settler-colonial force that created the United States. In other words, while humanity has tried and continues to strive to prevent and right the wrongs of the past, Israel points to these base moments in human history, not in the context of “never again,” but as precedents it should be free to emulate. . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#31009): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/31009 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/107048258/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
