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href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-placebo-not-the-cure-why-removing-trump-and-netanyahu-wont-relieve-the-illness/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-placebo-not-the-cure-why-removing-trump-and-netanyahu-wont-relieve-the-illness/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">A Placebo Not the Cure: Why Removing
Trump and Netanyahu Won’t Relieve the Illness</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">October 11, 2019<br>
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<p><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/benay-blend"
title="Display all articles for Benay Blend">Benay
Blend</a></strong></p>
<p>In both the United States and Israel, there is a myth
that if we could just get rid of certain leaders—namely
Trump and Netanyahu—then things would go back to normal,
the good old days (in truth, for some but not for
others).</p>
<p>“What have we become?” people ask, thereby glossing
over the settler-colonial history of both countries.
This historical amnesia stems from many factors. It
satisfies the human desire for a definable villain,
someone to lay the blame on rather than doing the harder
work of understanding that it’s the capitalist, colonial
system that must be changed.</p>
<p>In no way does this analysis negate the damage done by
both leaders. What it does point to is the way that this
focus plays into the founding myths of both countries.
Indeed, Zionism not only stems from an ideology born out
of nineteenth-century nationalism but also bears
resemblance to settler states established in the
Americas. In this scenario, both sought to present a
virgin land, ready for fertilization and development.</p>
<p>Instead of “civilizing” the indigenous population or
utilizing their labor, as was done in other colonial
enterprises, the problem for Israelis was to find an
“empty” land that could be transformed into a Jewish
homeland, though this meant erasure of 689,272 residents
through some serious historical revision. Like the
so-called “virgin land” in the American West, this trope
serves to gloss over the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948
just as the American version disregards the
extermination and/or relocation of the American
Indigenous population.</p>
<p>In his “Forward” to Ramzy Baroud’s Last Earth: A
Palestine Story (2018), Ilan Pappe refers to Al-Nakba al
Mustamera, the on-going Nakba, a common term for the
period after 1948. Moreover, he explains that discrete
chapters in the history of Palestine, such as the
disaster of 1948, are not just past events, but instead
are a long narrative of massacres, land confiscation,
displacement, and assassination. Relying on Patrick
Wolfe, who “adapted and applied” the settler-colonial
paradigm to Palestine, Pappe explains that the colonial
project is on-going, as is Palestine’s resistance to it.</p>
<p>Similarly, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in An Indigenous
History of the United States (2014) that the history of
United States is also that of settler-colonialism, i.e.
the founding of a country established on the premise of
white supremacy, the widespread use of African slavery,
and a strategy of “genocide and land theft” that
disenfranchised the Indigenous population (p.2). She
adds that “those who seek history with an upbeat ending”
(p. 2), or for the present purposes, those who seek to
find a Golden Age in America’s past, might be looking
far and wide for neither that conclusion nor that bygone
age, exists.</p>
<p>Trump and Netanyahu, then, are merely just the
symptoms, while Zionism, settler-colonialism,
neoliberalism, capitalism, and racism are all elements
of the disease. Impeaching Trump will not bring about a
better world to come. Writing for Aljazeera as far back
as 2015, Hamid Dabashi <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/12/trump-symptom-disease-151209095355840.html"><span>claims</span></a>
that “Trump is a symptom not the disease.”</p>
<p>In short, Dabashi adds, “he is a decoy, a diversion so
outrageous, so disgusting that it overwhelms and hides
the real disease.” The problem, he concludes, is “firmly
rooted in the political culture of a country that began
its history by the mass murder of Native Americans,
continued by the systematic slavery of African
Americans, and most recently with a stroke of a pen
ordered the US population of Japanese descent
incarcerated in concentration (internment) camps during
World War II.</p>
<p>Writing four years later, Philip Weiss <a
href="https://mondoweiss.net/2019/10/lose-netanyahu-and-dems-will-love-israel-again-liberal-zionist-mantra/?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=5f4685a1f0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-5f4685a1f0-398588117&mc_cid=5f4685a1f0&mc_eid=fed7d8f1d9"><span>explores</span></a>
a variation of that same mantra used by liberal Zionists
to entice their Jewish brethren back into the pro-Israel
Democratic fold. According to Weiss, their argument goes
something like this: “The only thing we need to do to
end the Democratic Party’s disaffection with Israel is
to get rid of Netanyahu—and Trump.” Like those who place
all blame for America’s problems on the shoulders of
Donald Trump, liberal Zionists locate all of the
culpability for Israel’s sins on the actions of one
person.</p>
<p>“His sins are innumerable and the damage he’s done
immeasurable,” <a
href="https://israelpalestinenews.org/levy-netanyahu-isnt-the-problem-the-israeli-people-are/"><span>writes</span></a>
Gideon Levy, “and it would be great to have him out of
our lives, but blaming everything on him is deceiving
and a shirking of responsibility.” Yet Levy blames the
“values and outlooks” that he says have been “ingrained
here during decades of Zionists,” not the values of
white supremacy and ethnic cleansing that have been
inherent in Zionism since 1948. Levy wishes for a
Mandela who would lead a revolution in the nation’s
values, rather than lead a revolution that would instead
dismantle the Zionist state.</p>
<p>Racism in both countries is not an individual problem
but rather embedded in the institutions of each
settler-colonial state. When George Bush<a
href="https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/419847-george-w-bush-michelle-obama-share-moment-at-state-funeral"><span>
slipped</span></a> Michelle Obama a cough drop at
John McCain’s funeral, it was viewed by most as a moment
of civility, the kind of hands across the aisle so
lacking in government today.</p>
<p>George Bush’s history as a war criminal responsible for
thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan after 911
was totally erased by a desire to believe that we only
have to be kind to each other in order to topple the
racism of Trump’s regime. The same could be said for the
practice of “normalization” by Israelis, <a
href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/debating-bds-normalization-and-partial-boycotts-1"><span>defined</span></a>
by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in the following way:</p>
<p>It is helpful to think of normalization as a
“colonization of the mind,” whereby the oppressed
subject comes to believe that the oppressor’s reality is
the only “normal” reality that must be subscribed to,
and that the oppression is a fact of life that must be
coped with.</p>
<p>Those who engage in normalization either ignore this
oppression or accept it as the status quo that can be
lived with. In an attempt to whitewash its violations of
international law and human rights, Israel tries to
re-brand itself, or present itself as normal — even
“enlightened” — through an intricate array of relations
and activities encompassing hi-tech, cultural, legal,
LGBT and other realms.</p>
<p>Frederick Douglass, the 19<sup>th</sup> century escaped
slave turned statesman, said that power does not
relinquish power without a struggle. Whether that be the
dismantling of the Zionist state as advocated by the <a
href="https://onestatefoundation.org/"><span>One State
Foundation</span></a>, the decolonization of the
Americas outlined by the <a
href="https://therednation.org/manifesto/"><span>Red
Nation</span></a>, or any number of revolutionary
struggles not carried out under the mantle of the
colonialist enterprise, significant change will not come
about by removing one person from leadership and / or
advocating unity when all parties are not sharing equal
power.</p>
<p>In an era when the governments of both Israel and the
United States are working hard to erase the past, it is
important to cut through the founding myths of each
country in order to chart a clear path forward to a more
egalitarian state.</p>
<p><i><span>– Benay Blend received her doctorate in
American Studies from the University of New Mexico.
Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam
Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile
are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of
Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She
contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.</span></i></p>
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