Genocide, Variations on a Theme #II
Lies, Lies and Damned Lies – Part 1
My sister once told me that for a Buddhist he who lies can also kill. Perhaps one need look no further than this as an explanation for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Israel is based on innumerable lies and to prevent the truth coming out murder needs to be exercised on a Biblical scale. More pertinently those embodying or perhaps “manifesting” the truth (“the light”), whether young or old, need to be put to the sword (“consigned to darkness”).
We’re all, or at least most of us, familiar with the lies which befog, befuddle and poison Israeli minds, and which turn them (against their own better judgement, instincts or interests) into vicious killers. A good example is this particular passage:
“I realized people didn’t know some basic facts, like that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has been an uninterrupted democracy since its founding in 1948, after the United Nations granted the Jews a state following the horrors of the Holocaust. The Arabs were also granted a state at the time, but they chose to refuse it and start a war. I heard people call Israel a colonialist state, which is absurd, as it is a refugee state that was decolonized from British rule. I heard some people call Israel an apartheid state, which is also absurd when you know that the third largest political party in Israel is an Arab party. I realized some people see the entire problem in the Middle East as an Israeli-Palestinian conflict—a David-and-Goliath story that pits an army-less people (the Palestinians) against one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world (Israel). It’s easy to cheer for the underdog, but this dynamic is categorically not the case. The conflict is not between the Palestinian and Israeli people but rather between the entire Arab world and Israel. Twenty-one Arab countries, population approximately 423 million, and one Jewish state, population approximately 9 million. In that matchup, who is the David and who is the Goliath? I realized that people were disproportionality fascinated by Israel, that almost everyone had an opinion, but that a lot of people simply didn’t know what they were talking about. I found myself explaining this and more to people, and I became a source of information and clarification on the topic for my community.”[1]
This passage is riddled with so many lies and misconceptions that I really don’t know where to begin. Suffice it to say that Israel isn’t a democracy, the United Nations didn’t grant “the Jews” (in reality: the Zionists) a state, “the Arabs” (the Palestinians) weren’t “granted a state at the time” and didn’t “choose to refuse it and start a war”. Israel also isn’t “a refugee state that was decolonized from British rule”. This is all fundamentally wrong.
Of Zionism Ilan Pappé tells us: “Since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century, Zionism was only one, inessential, expression of Jewish cultural life. It was born out of two impulses among Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. The first was a search for safety within a society that refused to integrate Jews as equals and that occasionally persecuted them, either through legislation or through riots organized or encouraged by the powers that be as a diversion from economic crises or political upheavals. The second impulse was a wish to emulate other new national movements mushrooming in Europe at the time, during what historians called the European Spring of Nations. Those Jews who sought to transform Judaism from a religion into a nation were not unique among the many ethnic and religious groups within the two crumbling empires—the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman—who wished to redefine themselves as nations.”
“The roots of modern-day Zionism can be found already in the eighteenth century in what was called the Jewish enlightenment movement. This was a group of writers, poets, and rabbis who revived the Hebrew language and pushed the boundaries of traditional and religious Jewish education into the more universal study of science, literature, and philosophy. Across Central and Eastern Europe, Hebrew newspapers and journals began to proliferate. Out of this group there emerged a few individuals, known in Zionist historiography as the “Harbingers of Zionism,” who showed greater nationalist tendencies and associated the revival of Hebrew with nationalism in their writings. They put forward two new ideas: the redefinition of Judaism as a national movement and the need to colonize Palestine in order to return the Jews to the ancient homeland from which they had been expelled by the Romans in 70 CE. They advocated for “the return” by way of what they defined as “agricultural colonies” (in many parts of Europe Jews were not allowed to own or cultivate land, hence the fascination with starting anew as a nation of farmers, not just as free citizens).”[2]
Ilan Pappé states unequivocally: “The myth that a democratic Israel ran into trouble in 1967 but still remained a democracy is propagated even by some notable Palestinian and pro-Palestinian scholars—but it has no historical foundation. Before 1967, Israel definitely could not have been depicted as a democracy…the state subjected one-fifth of its citizenship to military rule based on draconian British Mandatory emergency regulations that denied the Palestinians any basic human or civil rights. Local military governors were the absolute rulers of the lives of these citizens: they could devise special laws for them, destroy their houses and livelihoods, and send them to jail whenever they felt like it. Only in the late 1950s did a strong Jewish opposition to these abuses emerge, which eventually eased the pressure on the Palestinian citizens.”[3]
Furthermore, he tells us that: “Zionism was a settler colonial movement, similar to the movements of Europeans who had colonized the two Americas, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand…The problem was that the new “homelands” were already inhabited by other people. In response, the settler communities argued that the new land was theirs by divine or moral right, even if, in cases other than Zionism, they did not claim to have lived there thousands of years ago. In many cases, the accepted method for overcoming such obstacles was the genocide of the indigenous locals.”[4]
It is only by means of cleansing Israeli minds of all the toxic lies, which have destroyed their sense of reality, that Israel has a hope of surviving. The rot however has been too deep and too long and it is unlikely that even the most thorough detoxification will actually suffice.
[1] Tishby, Noa. “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth”
[2] Ilan Pappé. “Ten Myths About Israel“
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid