At 5:40 a.m. on Aug. 10, the IDF Spokesperson sent a message to reporters informing them of an Israeli airstrike on a “military headquarters located in Al-Taba’een school compound near a mosque in the Daraj [and] Tuffah area, which serves as a shelter for residents of Gaza City.”
Shortly after this announcement, shocking images from Al-Taba’een school circulated around the world, showing piles of dismembered flesh and body parts being removed in plastic bags. The images were accompanied by reports that around 100 Palestinians had been killed in the Israeli attack, with many more hospitalized. Most of those killed were in the middle of fajr, or dawn prayers, at a designated space inside the school compound.
The IDF announcement explicitly stated that the school “serves as a shelter for residents of Gaza City,” meaning that the IDF knew refugees had fled there in fear of the army’s own bombings. The statement did not claim that there was any gunfire or rocket attacks from the school, but that “Hamas terrorists … planned and promoted … terrorist acts” from it. Nor did it claim that the civilians who took refuge in the school were given any warning, only that the army had used “precision weapons” and “intelligence.” In other words, the army bombed a populated shelter knowing full well the deadly repercussions its assault would inflict.
This dehumanization has reached new heights in recent weeks with the debate over the legitimacy of raping Palestinian prisoners. In a discussion on the mainstream TV network Channel 12, Yehuda Shlezinger, a “commentator” from the right-wing daily Israel Hayom, called for institutionalizing rape of prisoners as part of military practice. At least three Knesset members from the ruling Likud party also argued that Israeli soldiers should be allowed to do anything, including rape.
But the biggest trophy goes to Israel’s Finance Minister and Defense Ministry deputy, Bezalel Smotrich. The world “won’t let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned,” he lamented at an Israel Hayom conference earlier this month.
Your argument would make tons of sense theoretically if there wasn’t a long history of real discrimination and pogroms in Europe and also Muslim societies (e.g. jizya) against jews that justify wanting a haven state where the laws and the people will never turn against them.
And so just because there existed discrimination against Jewish people that justifies stealing the land of Palestinian to give them their own state? Why wasn’t one founded anywhere else? Why not colonize somewhere in the middle of Europe? Why not somewhere with sparse population? Why is it fine for them to take Palestinian land and homes and drive them out?
Jewish people are not the same as Israelis. Most Israelis are Jewish, but there are many jewish people who are not Israelis and who are anti-zionist. Colonialism isn’t fine because the colonizers were facing discrimination. That doesn’t justify them committing atrocities and stealing the land of others.
Who is Israel a colony of? And what would the decolonization you want look like?
Zionists? It was zionists who colonized. They did so with the intention of creating a Jewish state.
Decolonization would be… decolonization. Return Palestinian land to the Palestinians. There are still plenty of people alive from the first Nakba. They all deserve their land back. A dissolution of the Israeli state and the creation of a new state of Palestine. Which would necessitate a total dismantling and withdrawal of the entirety of the Israeli state. An international criminal Court to prosecute all crimes against humanity that have ever been committed by the Israeli state. Redistribution of wealth from the Israeli state. How to handle things from there should be up to the new state of Palestine. They have a right to self-determination. Through mediation, but still it should be up to them. It was their land. They have the right to decide what happens with it.
I’d say at the very least the Zionists should go. The entire Israeli state is not composed of zionists. But the entirety of anyone who has ever served in the IDF or the Israeli government should at the least be sent back to the countries they or their fathers came from. Anyone who has participated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Anyone who has murdered Palestinians. They don’t have a right to be there. But, like I said that’s just what I would think is just. It shouldn’t be up to western white people to decide. Palestinians deserve the right to choose what happens with their homes.
I would say the same thing about America or Canada, to be clear. That decolonizing them would be to return land to the Natives and allow them to form their own states and determine what happens with their land. It’s a more complex question of what they should do from there, but it was always their land and they deserve the power to say what happens with it.
And, to be clear, I’m not saying I believe this is what will happen. Merely what I’m saying ought to happen. What actual justice would look like.
This “solution” makes about as much sense as shipping all black Americans to Africa.
