[Marxism] Fwd: Gaza: The Logic of Colonial Power

["Lüko Willms" <lueko.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Gaza: The Logic of Colonial Power

By Nir Rosen 

The Guardian, London, December 29, 2008

> 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/gaza-hamas-israel>


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> I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure
> reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and
> other conflicts. I have been published by most major
> publications. I have been interviewed by most major
> networks and I have even testified before the senate
> foreign relations committee. The Bush administration
> began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and
> it ends with Israel committing one of its largest
> massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying
> Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he
> chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite
> Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the
> feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators
> who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated
> American regime.
 

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> Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented
> white Americans under siege, with Indians as the
> aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too,
> have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the
> victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were
> deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes,
> and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and
> their land was settled by colonists, who went on to
> deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war
> against the remaining natives and the national
> liberation movements the Palestinians established
> around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is
> stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself
> an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of
> entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they
> have the right to use any means necessary, it is
> because they are weak. The weak have much less power
> than the strong, and can do much less damage. The
> Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used
> home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It
> is only in the current context that their actions are
> justified, and there are obvious limits.


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> A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and
> Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation
> barriers have long since made a two state solution
> impossible. There can be only one state in historic
> Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be
> confronted with two options. Will they peacefully
> transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians
> are given the same rights, a la post-apartheid South
> Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a
> threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to
> leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the
> natives have been exterminated. But often, as in
> occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee.
> Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to
> compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the
> world want to further radicalise them?

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Comradely yours, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany
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