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July 29, 2014<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>From Victim to Colonial
Settler</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Shifting the Paradigm on Israel</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by AJAMU BARAKA</div>
<blockquote>
<p>“… To be committed to justice we must believe that ethics
matter, that it is vital to have a system of shared morality.”</p>
<p>- bell hooks</p>
<p>“Out of nowhere many soldiers jumped out and ambushed Samir.
They shot him first in the leg, yet he managed to run away
towards the village. But how far can an injured child run?
Twenty, maybe 30, meters? They could have easily arrested him,
especially when he was injured, but instead they shot him in the
back with live ammunition… To me this is premeditated murder.”<a
title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_edn1">[i]</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Palestinian life is cheap – something Samir already understood
from his short 16 years of living under occupation. For the
friends and family of Samir and the thousands of other Samirs
murdered by the Israeli military and settlers over the last four
decades, Palestinian life will still be cheap when the shooting
stops, the Israeli military withdraws its ground forces from Gaza,
and daily life under occupation returns to the norm of
low-intensity systematic state terror.</p>
<p>The killings, breaking of bones, firing of tear gas canisters
into enclosed spaces, and the daily humiliation of checkpoints,
separate roads and separating walls will continue and will
continue to be daily reminders to Palestinians that they are
different; lesser; expendable.</p>
<p>From these experiences, Palestinians understand – like many of us
on the receiving end of the Western world’s “civilizing mission” –
that the West’s claim to moral superiority by championing
universal human rights and the rule of law is a grotesque lie.</p>
<p>Over the years, Palestinians have seen how they can be murdered
in the hundreds and thousands with impunity and in the full glare
of the mass media. And while most of the non-Western world is
stunned by the indiscriminate viciousness of the Israeli attack,
headlines in Western media outlets proclaim “Hamas lays siege on
Israel” and “Hamas terrorizes Israel”—as though the over one
thousand lives of murdered Palestinians are completely irrelevant
and devoid of value.</p>
<p>The devaluing of Palestinian life is in stark contrast to the
concern for the dignity of the remains of the victims of Malaysia
Airlines flight M17, recently shot down over Ukraine. It is also
reflected in the arguments of the Israeli propagandists, who imply
that Western news media should stop covering the deaths of
Palestinian civilians because it satisfies the strategic objective
of the “Hamas terrorists.”</p>
<p>The scenes of carnage – Palestinian bodies littering the streets
of Shujaiya; whole families packed into cars, desperately trying
to flee the onslaught of Israeli rockets and naval bombardments;
and a vicious scorched-earth ground operation in which whole
communities are free-fire zones for Israelis, have still not been
enough to generate much empathy for the lives of Palestinians for
many in the U.S. A recent Gallop poll of opinion in the U.S.
suggests that 71% of the respondents who claim to follow the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict closely say that Israeli actions in
Gaza are justified. <a title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_edn2">[ii]</a></p>
<p>And in Western capitals, the defenders of “universal” human
rights proudly proclaim their unwavering support for Israel’s
right of “defense” against a captured and largely defenseless
people who are supposed to have special protections under
international law.</p>
<p>The moral positions taken by many people in the West, especially
in the U.S., confirms the existence of an ethical double-standard
– one in which the actions of the Israeli state are framed as
legitimate, reasonable and deserving of support, and one in which
all acts of resistance on the part of the captured and oppressed
Palestinians are seen as criminal, immoral and terroristic. <a
title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_edn3">[iii]</a></p>
<p>The ethical double-standards for non-Europeans versus Europeans –
or those who are associated with white power and European
civilization, like the Israeli state – are grounded in a
generalized acceptance of the civilizational superiority of the
West and the division of humanity between those “like us” and
“others” who have different standards of human behavior.</p>
<p>This division has always been a fundamental component of white
supremacist thought that justified the conquest, pillage and
exploitation of most of the non-Western world. The violence of
slavery, genocide of Native Americans and colonialism found its
defenders among liberals and within the contradictory framework of
Eurocentric, male-centered liberalism that divided humanity
between those eligible for the full enjoyment of human rights –
European male, capitalist property owners and eventually most
people categorized as “white” irrespective of class and gender –
and everyone else.</p>
<p>The “white man’s burden” “manifest destiny,” the “doctrine of
discovery,” “American exceptionalism” – and their 21<sup>st</sup>
century expression in humanitarian intervention and the
responsibility to protect – these are all expressions of the
arrogant pathology of the white supremacist worldview.</p>
<p>It is this sublimated framework that Israeli propagandists
skillfully appeal to, in order to generate the continued moral and
political support for their policies with large segments of the
populations of Europe and especially within the white supremacist
settler-state of the U.S.</p>
<p>Constructed as an uncivilized, barbarous, terrorist organization,
Hamas has been effectively de-humanized – along with all of the
Palestinian people of Gaza, since they voted for Hamas in the
elections of 2006. In contrast, Israel is juxtaposed as innocent,
civilized and humane.</p>
<p>Projecting itself as a superior civilization, Israel attempts to
immunize itself from human rights charges, since as a “civilized”
(read “Western”), humane and rational society, Israel by
definition cannot be accused of engaging in massive human rights
violations?</p>
<p>Instead it is the actions of the Palestinian resistance fighters
that are highlighted, because that resistance provides a
convenient weapon in the narrative created by Israel of
Palestinian “otherness” where their legitimate resistance is
instead twisted into being further evidence of their sub-human
status.</p>
<p>According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natahuyu, the value
of human life is different for Palestinians and their leadership
who want more dead Palestinians so that they can use
“telegenically dead Palestinians”<a title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_edn4">[iv]</a>
for their cause. The logical corollary to this position is that it
is perfectly understandable and justifiable that Israel is forced
to kill hundreds of “them” in order to ensure Israeli security
from these “barbarous” people who have a natural propensity
towards violence, if they are not contained and periodically
terrorized into submission.</p>
<p>For activists in solidarity with Palestinian desires for national
self-determination, undermining the hegemony of the “innocent
settler” narrative is imperative in order to counter the
propaganda that justifies Israeli state and settler violence. To
do so means centering colonialism and white supremacy as the
grounding analytical categories and conceptual framework.</p>
<p>This is not necessarily a new argument or one that has not been
embraced by some, but for various reasons, including bogus charges
of anti-Semitism, many in the U.S. progressive and radical
communities have eschewed this approach over the years.</p>
<p>The other challenge is that the “white supremacist” term has been
domesticated and reduced to a crude and relatively simple notion
of “racism.” In this context, white supremacists and white
supremacy is represented by easy targets like Donald Sterling and
Tea Party members, while racialized imperialism is overlooked.</p>
<p>In order to re-position Israel in the public imagination,
activists must overcome both of these issues if movements for
solidarity and justice such as the growing boycott, divestment and
sanctions (BDS) movement have any chance of being effective
solidarity mechanisms.</p>
<p>Liberated from the racist bias of the colonial/imperialist lens
that casts Israelis as victims, Israeli state actions and policies
in Gaza are then stripped of the obfuscating claims of
self-defense and concerns for Palestinian civilians. And ending
ethical double standards by applying one standard informed by the
principles of human equality and the rejection of all forms of
dehumanizing oppression would clearly identify the real victims in
the ongoing drama of the Israel/Palestinian conflict – and it
would not be the state of Israel.</p>
<p><em><strong>Ajamu Baraka</strong> is a human rights activist,
organizer and geo-political analyst. His latest publications
include contributions to two recently published books “Imagine:
Living in a Socialist USA” and “Claim No Easy Victories: The
Legacy of Amilcar Cabral.” He can be reached at <a
href="mailto:info.abaraka@gmail.com">info.abaraka@gmail.com</a>
and <a href="http://www.AjamuBaraka.com">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></em></p>
Notes.<br clear="all">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%">
<div>
<p><a title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_ednref1">[i]</a>
Malek Murrar, 16, interviewed on 20 September 2013 at the site
where he had witnessed his friend Samir Awad being murdered by
Israeli security forces, see Trigger-Happy: Israel’s use of
Excessive force in the West Bank” <a
href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/002/2014/en/349188ef-e14a-418f-ac20-6c9e5c8d9f88/mde150022014en.pdf">http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/002/2014/en/349188ef-e14a-418f-ac20-6c9e5c8d9f88/mde150022014en.pdf</a></p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_ednref2">[ii]</a>
<a
href="http://www.vox.com/2014/7/24/5934837/gallup-israel-gaza-americans">http://www.vox.com/2014/7/24/5934837/gallup-israel-gaza-americans</a></p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_ednref3">[iii]</a>
The analysis here and what follows was greatly influence by the
work of Cyra A. Choudhury, see “Comprehending “our” Violence:
Reflections on the Liberal Universalist Tradition, National
Identity and the War in Iraq,” Muslim World Journal of Human
Rights, volume 3,Issue 1, 2006.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title=""
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/shifting-the-paradigm-on-israel/#_ednref4">[iv]</a>
<a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-the-myth-of-hamass-human-shield-9619810.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-the-myth-of-hamass-human-shield-9619810.html</a></p>
</div>
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