Zionism’s Palestinian Problem…and Ours

by MANUEL GARCÍA, JR.

Photo by gnuckx | CC BY 2.0

The “Palestinian Problem” for Israeli Zionists and their codependents (e.g., the AIPAC-bought U.S. two party system) is: how do we get rid of the Palestinians as fast as possible – to get all the Levant real estate we want, free and clear – while not going too fast so as to stir up the concerted ire and actual physical opposition of the combined rest of the world?

The consensus now seems to be for the equivalent of a Wounded Knee (1890, South Dakota) every few months, punctuating the continuous intentional erosion of living conditions in the “reservations,” like Gaza, by the controlling “whites.” But, that limit is always being tested with an eye toward accelerating the removal.

The attitudes of Western liberals (and conservatives, but they’re remorseless) towards the Palestinians is equivalent to that of the 19th century American public towards the American Indians: acceptance of their inevitable (but not to be delayed) disappearance for the sake of “progress,” occasionally garnished with a sense of pity for “the primitives” by the cultured and comfortable sentimentalists of the privileged bubbles.

Given the self-serving attachment of the American ruling class to Zionist manifest destiny in the Levant, and the irrational popularity for that support by the American public (especially its lunatic religious segment), it is likely that a sacrifice of war dead and lost potential national social development, equivalent to that made between 1962 and 1975 to prop up the anticommunist regimes of South Vietnam, would be tolerated by the American public for the sake of maintaining the Israeli state in its present apartheid form.

The best – and infinitesimally slim – hope for the liberation of Palestine would be a revolutionary change of the US government to a socialist model, with the consequent removal of Israeli lobbying influence, correctly identified as “foreign interference.”

For that to happen we would first have to embrace the truth that ethnic cleansing and slavery form the historical foundation of American capitalism. America’s continuing embrace of Zionist manifest destiny is a projection of our own denial of our history by cloaking it in romanticized myths about ourselves as heroic 7th and 9th Cavalries riding out of Fort Apache to save wagon trains of virtuous settlers penetrating wild lands whose primitives are hostile to our advance of “progress.”

Given the realities of power in today’s world, and the reality of individual human weakness against it (and generally), what can insignificant people like us, the readers and writers of obscure blogs like this, do to change tragic situations like the relentless suppression of organized Palestinian life, by superpower design?

Political and journalistic activists will always find it easy to answer that question by telling you to devote yourself to tasks, groups and movements they think important, because it is always easy to tell other people how they should spend their money and time, and live their lives, in order to fulfill your own preferences.

I would suggest that the best first answer we each can make for ourselves is to just stop believing, or acquiescing to, the propaganda – the excuses – that cloak the continuation of these war crimes, and to not be reticent about expressing that unbelief. Attitude can be contagious, the disempowerment of the fabled Naked Emperor began with the disbelief of a child, after all.

Beyond that, the second and subsequent answers depend on a myriad of personal factors and individual circumstances; I certainly can’t make generalizations about others. But, I am convinced that the first step for everybody is a clear-eyed embrace of the truth, however unpleasant that truth and unsociable its expression.

I keep thinking of Albert Camus’s epigram: “I rebel, therefore we exist.”

Manuel Garcia, Jr, once a physicist, is now a lazy househusband who writes out his analyses of physical or societal problems or interactions. He can be reached at mangogarcia@att.net

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/09/zionisms-palestinian-problem-and-ours/