100,000 people killed, injured, or missing In Gaza (January 2024)
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."
- Howard Zinn
Colonisation and genocide go hand in hand. It's impossible to read about European colonialism and not see the parallels with the Israeli state and how it acts towards the supposedly 'barbaric' people it has colonised. Not least in the way the coloniser regards itself as a shining beacon of civilisation on a dark continent, even while it unleashes incredible violence against defenceless civilians. The destruction of farms and wells, forced deportations, indigenous people as second-class citizens in their own land. There is nothing really new here except the technology of murder. This is Empire, red in tooth and claw.
When European and North American nations cannot see genocide happening in Palestine, it's because they are unable to see it in their own story either. If what Israel is doing is genocidal, then maybe what we did was too? Maybe we'd have to stop pretending that it was only a handful of enemy regimes that engaged in genocidal policies against 'undesirable' peoples. And then we'd have to stop skipping those pages of the history we tell ourselves.
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