[News] Why Israel wants to erase context and history in the war on Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Why Israel wants to erase context and history in the war on Gaza

*The dehistoricisation of what is happening helps Israel pursue genocidal
policies in Gaza.*
Published On 5 Nov 2023
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/5/why-israel-wants-to-erase-context-and-history-in-the-war-on-gaza
<https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Faje.io%2F923suq>
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Why%20Israel%20wants%20to%20erase%20context%20and%20history%20in%20the%20war%20on%20Gaza&source=sharethiscom&related=sharethis&via=AJEnglish&url=https%3A%2F%2Faje.io%2F923suq>
[image: Nakba 1948 people fleeing]
Palestinians carry their possessions, as they flee from there homes in
Al-Jalil in 1948 [File: Reuters]

On October 24, a statement by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres caused a sharp reaction by Israel. While addressing the UN
Security Council, the UN chief said
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/24/un-chief-says-clear-violations-of-international-humanitarian-law-in-gaza>
that while he condemned in the strongest terms the massacre committed by
Hamas on October 7, he wished to remind the world that it did not take
place in a vacuum. He explained that one cannot dissociate 56 years of
occupation from our engagement with the tragedy that unfolded on that day.

The Israeli government was quick to condemn the statement. Israeli
officials demanded Guterres’s resignation, claiming that he supported Hamas
and justified the massacre it carried out. The Israeli media also jumped on
the bandwagon, asserting among other things that the UN chief “has
demonstrated <https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-770186> a stunning
degree of moral bankruptcy”.

This reaction suggests that a new type of allegation of anti-Semitism may
now be on the table. Until October 7, Israel had pushed for the definition
of anti-Semitism to be expanded to include criticism of the Israeli state
and questioning the moral basis of Zionism. Now, contextualising and
historicising what is going on could also trigger an accusation of
anti-Semitism.

The dehistoricisation of these events aids Israel and governments in the
West in pursuing policies they shunned in the past due to either ethical,
tactical, or strategic considerations.

Thus, the October 7 attack is used by Israel as a pretext to pursue
genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. It is also a pretext for the United
States to try and reassert its presence in the Middle East. And it is a
pretext for some European countries to violate and limit democratic
freedoms in the name of a new “war on terror”.

But there are several historical contexts for what is going on now in
Israel-Palestine that cannot be ignored. The wider historical context goes
back to the mid-19th century, when evangelical Christianity in the West
turned the idea of the “return of the Jews” into a religious millennial
imperative and advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine
as part of the steps that would lead to the resurrection of the dead, the
return of the Messiah, and the end of time.

Theology became policy toward the end of the 19th century and in the years
leading up to World War I for two reasons.

First, it worked in the interest of those in Britian wishing to dismantle
the Ottoman Empire and incorporate parts of it into the British Empire.
Second, it resonated with those within the British aristocracy, both Jews
and Christians, who became enchanted with the idea of Zionism as a panacea
for the problem of anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe, which had
produced an unwelcome wave of Jewish immigration to Britain.

When these two interests fused, they propelled the British government to
issue the famous – or infamous – Balfour Declaration in 1917.

Jewish thinkers and activists who redefined Judaism as nationalism hoped
this definition would protect Jewish communities from existential danger in
Europe by homing in on Palestine as the desired space for “rebirth of the
Jewish nation”.

In the process, the cultural and intellectual Zionist project transformed
into a settler colonial one – which aimed at Judaising historical
Palestine, disregarding the fact that it was inhabited by an Indigenous
population.

In turn, the Palestinian society, quite pastoral at that time and in its
early stage of modernisation and construction of a national identity,
produced its own anti-colonial movement. Its first significant action
against the Zionist colonisation project came with al-Buraq Uprising of 1929
<https://www.aljazeera.com/program/al-jazeera-world/2015/11/11/jerusalem-dividing-al-aqsa>,
and it has not ceased since then.

Another historical context relevant to the present crisis is the 1948
ethnic cleansing of Palestine that included the forceful expulsion of
Palestinians into the Gaza Strip from villages on whose ruins some of the
Israeli settlements attacked on October 7 were built. These uprooted
Palestinians were part of the 750,000 Palestinians who lost their homes and
became refugees.

This ethnic cleansing was noted by the world but not condemned. As a
result, Israel continued to resort to ethnic cleansing as part of its
effort to ensure that it had complete control over historical Palestine
with as few of the native Palestinians remaining as possible. This included
the expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians during and in the aftermath of the
1967 war, and the expulsion of more than 600,000 from the West Bank,
Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip ever since.

There is also the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza. Over the past 50 years, the occupational forces have inflicted
persistent collective punishment on the Palestinians in these territories,
exposing them to constant harassment by Israeli settlers and security
forces and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of them.

Since the election of the present fundamentalist messianic Israeli
government in November 2022, all these harsh policies reached unprecedented
levels. The number of Palestinians killed, wounded and arrested in the
occupied West Bank skyrocketed
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/22/israeli-forces-kill-palestinian-in-northern-west-bank>.
On top of that, Israeli government policies towards Christian and Muslim
holy places in Jerusalem became even more aggressive.

Finally, there is also the historical context of the 16-year-long siege on
Gaza, where almost half of the population are children. In 2018, the UN was
already warning that the Gaza Strip would become a place unfit for humans
by 2020.

It is important to remember that the siege was imposed in response to
democratic elections won by Hamas after the unilateral Israeli withdrawal
from the territory. Even more important is to go back to the 1990s, when
the Gaza Strip was encircled by barbed wire and disconnected from the
occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords.

The isolation of Gaza, the fence around it, and the increased Judaisation
of the West Bank were a clear indication that Oslo in the eyes of the
Israelis meant an occupation by other means, not a path to genuine peace.

Israel controlled the exit and entry points to the Gaza ghetto, monitoring
even the kind of food that entered – at times limiting it to a certain
calorie count. Hamas reacted to this debilitating siege by launching
rockets on civilian areas in Israel.

The Israeli government claimed these attacks were motivated by the
movement’s ideological wish to kill Jews – a new form of Nazim –
disregarding the context of both the Nakba and the inhuman and barbaric
siege imposed on two million people and the oppression of their compatriots
in other parts of historical Palestine.

Hamas, in many ways, was the only Palestinian group that promised to avenge
or respond to these policies. The way it decided to respond, however, may
bring its own demise, at least in the Gaza Strip, and may also provide a
pretext for further oppression of the Palestinian people.

The savageness of its attack cannot be justified in any way, but that does
not mean it cannot be explained and contextualised. As horrific as it was,
the bad news is that it is not a game-changing event, despite the huge
human cost on both sides. What does this mean for the future?

Israel will remain a state established by a settler-colonial movement,
which will continue to influence its political DNA and determine its
ideological nature. This means that despite its self-framing as the only
democracy in the Middle East, it will remain a democracy only for its
Jewish citizens.

The internal struggle inside Israel between what one can call the state of
Judea – the settlers’ state wishing Israel to be more theocratic and racist
– and the state of Israel – wishing to keep the status quo – that
preoccupied Israel until October 7 will erupt again. In fact, there are
already signs of its return.

Israel will continue to be an apartheid state – as declared by a number of
human rights organisations – however the situation in Gaza unfolds. The
Palestinians will not disappear and will continue their struggle for
liberation, with many civil societies siding with them and their
governments backing Israel and providing it with an exceptional immunity.

The way out remains the same: a change of regime in Israel that brings
equal rights for everyone from the river to the sea and allows for the
return of Palestinian refugees. Otherwise, the cycle of bloodshed will not
end.

*The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.*
------------------------------

   - [image: Ilan Pappe]
   <https://www.aljazeera.com/author/ilan_pappe_151019144945133>
   Ilan Pappe <https://www.aljazeera.com/author/ilan_pappe_151019144945133>
   Ilan Pappe is the Director of European Center of Palestine Studies at
   the University of Exeter.
   Ilan Pappe is the Director of European Center of Palestine Studies at
   the University of Exeter. He has published 15 books on the Middle East and
   on the Palestine Question.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20231105/63116d96/attachment.htm>