THERE IS NO FUTURE FOR APARTHEID ISRAEL
Russia Today
July 7 2014
John Wight is a writer and commentator specializing in geopolitics,
UK domestic politics, culture and sport.
The latest round of repression against a relatively defenseless subject
population of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by the state of
Israel has by now assumed the air of tired routine.
But for those on the receiving end what a largely desensitized world
considers “tired” and “routine” bespeaks terror and brutality. Given
the lack of intervention on the part of the international community
whenever an Israeli security crackdown occurs, it is evident by now
that a tacit acceptance has taken root to the effect that massacring
Palestinians has been elevated to the level of bloodsport within
Israeli society.
“No one people has a monopoly on human suffering and every ethnic
tragedy stands on its own.
If I were a Jew or Gypsy, Nazi barbarity would be the most atrocious
event in history. If I were a Black African, it would be slavery and
apartheid. If I were a Native American, it would be the discovery
of the New World by European explorers and settlers that resulted
in near-total extermination. If I were an Armenian, it would be the
Ottoman massacres.
I happen to be a Palestinian, and for me it is the Nakba.
Humanity should consider all the above repugnant. I do not consider
it advisable to debate hierarchies of suffering. I do not know how
to quantify pain or measure suffering. I do know that we are not
children of a lesser God.”
Afif Safieh – Palestinian diplomat
For those of us who still care about the plight of a people whose only
crime is that they exist on land coveted by a settler colonial state,
the latest manifestation of Israel’s disregard for international law
and human rights is as good a reason as any for closer examination. In
so doing, we must call upon the greatest teacher of them all: history.
Most empires and colonial projects fall under the weight of their own
contradictions, but usually over a protracted period of resistance,
both passive and active, on the part of its victims. At the same time
the material privileges gained from the exploitation and expropriation
of a colonized people acts as a slow-acting corrosive on the society
of the colonizing state, poisoning it with racism and hatred for those
it has colonized as it seeks to justify the material privileges and
psychological sense of supremacy and national pride that accrues
from that colonization. This moral decay is commonly reflected in
the degeneration that takes place in the armed forces of the state in
question, where the emphasis of the troops shifts from self-sacrifice
and heroism in support of a just and galvanizing cause to personal
survival as demoralization sets in.
In other words, the day-to-day reality of perpetuating oppression and
injustice overcomes any amount of national propaganda in support of
that oppression. In this, the case of American troops in Vietnam is
a prime example.
There, the reality on the ground of killing and being killed in a
country thousands of miles from home in an ignoble war eventually
proved stronger than the propaganda the troops had been fed that they
were fighting in the cause of freedom. This resulted in a widespread
and growing breakdown in discipline, almost to the point where the
US military effort in Vietnam was in danger of complete collapse. It
might even be argued that on a certain level atrocities like My Lai
were informed by a projection of the self-loathing experienced by
more and more American troops in the field as the reality of the
injustices they were committing took hold.
Another and contemporary example of this moral degeneration is the
case of the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces. More than any
other, the IDF is a product of the constructed mythology that has
sustained Israel since its creation in 1948. It is a mythology which
combines both a biblical and political justification for the state’s
existence. On the one hand it constitutes the realization of an ancient
covenant in which the land of historic Palestine was promised by God
to the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham, over 2,000 years ago,
while on the other hand it is the fulfillment of the Zionist postulate
that in a world that is irredeemably anti-Semitic the Jewish people,
hitherto stateless, would never find peace and security until they
had a state of their own.
While the former can instantly be dismissed as obscurantist poppycock,
it must be said that the second of the aforementioned philosophical
arguments in support of Israel’s existence reflects a concrete
historical reality in the shape of the wave of anti-Semitism that
swept across Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, and which
gave rise to the emergence of Zionism.
Israeli Defense Force soldiers set off on a tracking drill near
Tze’elim in southern Israel June 9, 2014. (Reuters)
If anyone was still in any doubt as to the power behind the early
proponents of calls for a Jewish state, as the vast majority of Jews
around the world were for decades, the inimitable horrors of the
Holocaust in the Second World War instantly dispelled them. Indeed,
the psychological impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish people cannot
be underestimated even today, despite it proving fertile ground for
the extreme nationalism that has taken root within a significant
section of Israeli society.
No matter the impact of the Holocaust on Israel, however, it can
never justify the decades of injustice suffered by the Palestinian
people as a consequence, else we describe a world in which the only
answer to oppression is oppression. Moreover, the victims of the Nazi
Holocaust share a bond of humanity with victims of every other genocide
and state sanctioned crimes against humanity throughout history. It
is a bond that transcends ethnicity, religion and/or nationality, and
which embraces the many thousands of Palestinian victims of the Nakba
and the millions more subsequently rendered stateless and refugees
as a consequence.
Desperate propaganda
The romantic ideals attached to the pioneering spirit of the founders
of Israel, along with international sympathy for a people who’d
suffered such grotesque brutality at the hands of the Nazis, imbued
the nascent state with a sense of purpose and destiny that helped
mask the atrocities being carried out in its name.
A mythology of heroism and bravery was already well on the way to being
constructed in 1948 when it came to Zionist militia organizations like
the Haganah and Irgun. It was a mythology that continued on into the
ranks of IDF when Israel was founded in 1948, embodied in the adoption
of the state’s guiding “purity of arms” ethos, one designed to give
romantic flavor to the militarism that sits at its heart. Yet in truth
the ranks of the Haganah, Irgun and various other militia groups were
filled with racist killers massacring men, women and children in order
to fulfill the biblical and national destinies previously mentioned.
This toxic mix of racism and exceptionalism has led to the existence of
a state that since its formation has viewed its repeated violations
of international law and its crimes against humanity entirely
justified. So deeply ingrained is the biblical and historical
justification for Israel’s continued depredations against the
Palestinians that when it comes to international condemnation of its
crimes, rather than a cause for reflection and introspection within
Israeli society, for many it merely serves to reaffirm Israel’s view
of itself as the last bastion of defense of the Jewish people in a
hostile world.
The day-to-day reality of this corrosive outlook involves young Israeli
soldiers, mostly conscripts, humiliating, intimidating and brutalizing
civilians at checkpoints, or killing Palestinians and Arabs in general
in the knowledge they are able to do so with relative impunity.
Israeli soldiers take part in an operation to locate three Israeli
teens near the West Bank City of Hebron June 21, 2014. (Reuters)
But when those same soldiers come up against a determined and dogged
resistance on the ground, such as they did in 2006 during the brief war
against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, their resolve crumbles and they
are defeated. This is key to understanding why Israel, just like its
chief sponsor the US when it comes to its own military operations, has
come to rely on an advanced arsenal of missiles, aircraft, helicopter
gunships, drones and tanks in its continuing conflict with the entire
population of Gaza for the crime of exercising its right to elect a
government of its own choosing.
Such would be the demoralizing effect not only on the troops but
also and more importantly on Israeli society at large. Israel knows
it cannot afford to sustain heavy casualties during its repeated
military operations against a largely unarmed population.
To put it another way, while Israeli troops are more than willing
to kill to maintain the material privileges attached to living in
a settler colonial state, one in which their consumer lifestyles
are subsidized by the West, they have consistently demonstrated a
reluctance to die for those privileges. Evidence of the increased
pressure that Israel is under is reflected in the growing desperation
of its propaganda in painting the motivation of its growing number of
critics and opponents as being founded in anti-Semitism. But where
previously such calumniation would have been suffice to silence
dissenting voices, now it merely discredits Israel’s supporters and
apologists further.
Throughout history, humanity has been locked in struggle between
oppressor and oppressed. It is a struggle that has posed the same
question to each succeeding generation: Whose side are you on?
Israel as an apartheid state has no future. Only as a state which
embraces the concept of universal human rights, justice and dignity
for all who share the same land can it ensure the peace and security of
its people. More than any other this is the abiding lesson of history.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
http://rt.com/op-edge/170912-israel-no-furute-apartheid/