[News] "Blood on their Hands" - The Demonization of the Palestinians

[Anti-Imperialist News]

"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





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