The colonial practice-politics in the Middle East uses the same colonial script that was used against the indigenous peoples in America, only this time it is broadcast in high definition, financed by our savings in the banks of international moneylenders and sold as “the only democracy in the region”.
The structure of the plan
We are dealing with the same plan, namely:
- Arrival in the region claiming biblical rights or divine promise.
- Declaration of the land as vacant or in need of civilization.
- The newcomer displaces, murders and starves the people who already live there.
- He builds walls, forts, settlements on stolen land.
- When the indigenous people resist, he calls the resistance terrorism and exterminates them with the firepower at his disposal.
- It rewrites textbooks and maps so that future generations will believe that the colonizer was always the rightful owner of the land.
- It demands that the world recognize its “security needs,” while denying indigenous people any right to self-defense.
The Arguments
In America, these practices were called Manifest Destiny. In Palestine, they call it “security” and “the right to exist.”
The natives of both regions were told the same lie: “This land had no real history until we arrived. Your presence was and is temporary. Your resistance proves that you are savage.”
What is the difference between America and Palestine?
In America the colonizers have largely won the demographic war and have the luxury of pretending that it all happened “many years ago.” In Palestine the natives still constitute the majority of the region, refusing to disappear, still holding the keys to their land, even though they lie half-dead on it.
So the colonizer must keep killing, keep expanding, keep begging for weapons, because eradication only works if it is total and final.
And when the world finally looks over and exclaims “this looks like colonialism,” the response from the colonizer’s allies will be: “It’s complicated for both sides. We’re dealing with ancient hatreds,” and other nonsense.
It’s not complicated at all. It’s the oldest trick in the colonialist’s playbook: You take someone else’s house. You call yourself a victim when its rightful owners try to take it back, and you cry out for help from the West, which provides you with the necessary ammunition and weapons, while at the same time preaching to everyone else about human rights.
Native Americans were told that their way of life was over. Palestinians are told the same thing in variations every day.
Native Americans and Palestinians were and are right to fight. Both are still right. And history will not be kind to those who saw the same crime repeated under different flags and chose comfort and silence over conscience.
