[News] "Blood on their Hands" - The Demonization of the Palestinians
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Apr 9 10:41:33 EDT 2009
"Blood on their Hands"
The Demonization of the Palestinians
April 09, 2009 By Shmuel Amir
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21122
"Blood on their Hands" is probably one of the most successful
slogans ever invented by Israel's propaganda machine. It has a most
powerful and immediate impact, both visual and emotional: it
suggests a brutal murderer who should be confined to a prison for the
rest of his natural days.
It further eliminates the need for any more profound enquiry. No one
need ask why he committed such a barbaric deed or if his victim had
done him any wrong. And it also eliminates any possibility of
negotiations with him or with those in whose name he was acting (in
our case the Hamas and other Palestinian groups). It is obvious that
they came to kill us simply because we are Jews and because murdering
people is in their genes. They are completely devoid of any human or
humane values.
We have been told by Ehud Barak, a man whose hands have never been
soiled by blood, that the Arabs are unable to distinguish between
right and wrong because they do not come from the Judeo-Christian
tradition. We were told by another prime minister, Menachem Begin,
that the Palestinians are two-legged animals.
As a result, in all media discussions regarding the issue of prisoner
exchange (the name given to negotiations over the return of the
kidnapped soldier Gil'ad Shalit even though the Israelis do not
recognize their captives as POWs), the words "blood on their hands"
are repeated in almost every sentence. And in such an emotionally
charged atmosphere there is little room for logic. (Nonetheless, it
should be pointed out that the majority of Israelis still favor
releasing those 450 prisoners in order to bring Shalit home.)
The blanket condemnation of people fighting for their independence as
criminals has always been part of colonial strategy. Turning POWs
into criminals with blood on their hands tells us more about the
colonial character of Israel than it does about the captive prisoners.
Colonial peoples fighting for their independence have always been
accused of being cruel and murderous and thus labeled
"terrorists." Their colonial rulers could not possibly acknowledge
them as soldiers because if those people were soldiers fighting for
their freedom, then what were they themselves? If they are labeled
terrorists (and terrorists are surely not entitled to any rights)
then "civilized European" soldiers have full permission to hunt them
down like animals.
The blood-thirsty Mau Mau
A rather telling example of this practice, remembered perhaps by the
older generation, is Kenya's war of liberation. In 1952 a rebellion
broke out in Kenya, known as the Mau Mau Rebellion. This was an
uprising of the Kikuyu people against the 50-year long appropriation
of their lands by white settlers. The farmers deprived of their
lands became either serfs on their own land (the lucky ones) or were
incarcerated in "reservations," or detention camps.
The Kikuyu rebellion was rife with barbarism, including brutality
against Kenyans who refused to join in the struggle. I remember the
way the press (international and local Israeli) described the
brutality of the Kikuyu in vivid detail. The mere mention of the
name Mau Mau was enough to send chills up and down your spine. No
one ever mentioned the reasons behind the uprising. No one ever
mentioned the brutal subjugation of the natives by their British
masters. Even today one can hardly believe the facts.
The prisoners were tortured and starved and some of the tortures were
grotesque. They were attacked by dogs and forced to commit
atrocities on themselves and their fellows. The British Secretary
for the Colonies at the time, Alan Lennox-Boyd, described the
torturers as a few "bad apples" (in Israel the term is "exceptional
cases") and the uprising as an "atavistic evil." In one of the many
books on the subject, the trials held against persons suspected of
belonging to the Mau Mau are described as "a picture of systematic
injustice." Defendants had poor representation, convictions were
made on scanty evidence by dubious informers, and the judges were
usually highly prejudiced (and also bribed). The result was 1090 hangings.
In terms of military power, the rebels were poorly armed against the
might of the British Empire. The Mau Mau described themselves as
their own tanks.
In terms of victims, the figures are fairly representative of such
colonial confrontations. The Mau Mau (the "brutal monsters") killed
32 white settlers and about 200 British soldiers and police during
the period of the rebellion. The British hanged 1090 suspects and
killed 15,000 others. They detained another 150,000 Kikuyus of whom
some 100,000 (according to various sources) perished.
Fortunately or unfortunately, these figures don't tell the whole
story because before they left Kenya, the British destroyed hundreds
of thousands of documents. But after putting down the uprising, the
British were finally forced to leave Kenya. The famous "terrorist, "
Jomo Kenyatta, who had been imprisoned, was released and became
Kenya's first president.
The end of this particular story is not limited to Kenya. Dr. Kwame
Nkrumah of Ghana had also been imprisoned by the British and
eventually became the country's first president, as did Nelson
Mandela of South Africa. Imprisoned for long years as a "terrorist,"
Mandela had the dubious honor of being officially "acquitted" by the
American Congress of terrorism and named instead a "freedom
fighter." We in Israel have now only to await the release of Marwan
Barghouti, the most popular Palestinian leader today and probably the
best choice for future president of a free Palestine, from his prison
cell in Israel, where he has been sentenced to three life imprisonments.
No colonial regime can exist without disguising and/or justifying its
actions. The British did it successfully over a long period of
time. They demonized the freedom fighters in their colonies as
monsters while glorifying themselves as rulers of high moral
standards, interested only in bringing enlightenment and progress to
the wayward "natives." We, too, have been told time and again that
the army of our "enlightened occupation" is "the most moral army in the world"
The Blood-thirsty Slaves of Virginia
In August 1831, while slavery was still the norm in the United
States, the slave Nat Turner led a rebellion of slaves in the state
of Virginia, with seventy of his followers. It began with the
slaughter of whites in the city of Southhampton and victims were not
only men, but women and children.
The rebellion failed. Thousands of soldiers put down the small rebel
army and Turner was captured and hanged. Following this, the army
conducted a massacre, killing any slave who was even suspected of
supporting the rebellion.
That same year the first issue of an abolitionist journal, The
Liberator, was published by William Lloyd Garrison. He wrote:
On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with
moderation. No,no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a
moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands
of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from
the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation
in a cause like the present. I am in earnest - I will not equivocate
- I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD.
******
The main perpetrator of "blood on their hands" has always been the
colonialist himself. There are many differences among the various
colonialist-anti-colonialist struggles but they all share one
characteristic: the demonization of the victim, of the people trying
to break the chains restraining them. They are always depicted as
murderers, their hands soaked in blood. They are always described as
savage monsters, animals, or creatures that God is sorry he created
(former Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef). Furthermore, as is well-known,
they are completely irrational.
Colonialists, on the other hand, according to their own evaluation,
are rationalist and considerate, working for the benefit of the
native population. Their aims are noble and their empires have
brought only progress and civilization to the backward peoples of the world.
During our recent incursion into the Gaza Strip, it was apparent to
all that there was not a single drop of blood on our hands. The
blood of 1330 Palestinian men, women and children, could be
discerned, however, on the wings of our bombers, on the turrets of
our tanks and on the barrels of our cannons.
Translated by Chaya Amir
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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