A good friend of mine sent me this article and asked me what i thought about it. To me, this is another way that Israel tries to establish legitimacy of its illegitimate nation.
A nation is a group of people tied together through many different aspects like history, language, religion, culture, economics, etc. The problem of legitimacy with the nation Israel does not lie in the bonds that tie the people together, but in the bonds that tie the people to the land they have occupied. That is something hard to establish for a nation born out of agrarian take over of that land and surrounded by nations that do not share the same heritage as people of Israel. It is this pseudo-desperation that has led Israel to adopt quite “aggressive” Political, Religious, Economic, and Cultural policies that promote hegemony of Israelis over Palestinians and establishes an attitude that promotes ethnic cleansing of the people of Palestine.
Below i point out a few of the Israeli policies and point out how they back up my claim.
An obvious one is the continued building of settlements in the West Bank; and the now evicted ones in Gaza. It is this policy of expansion through settlements that is in the wrong. Rapid land expansion through settlement of civilians establishes Israeli rule over those lands. By using ones own civilians in the front lines ensures victory in many ways. If the people of the West Bank are to retaliate violently, their murder can be easily justified internationally as they were trying to harm innocent civilians. More than that, it can be used as a tool to present a violent, terrorist nature of Palestinian people. So the Palestinians are left with no choice but to appeal to the U.N and foreign nations to stop this injustice, to no avail due to political maneuvers of Israeli politicians. In many ways, it is a genius plan.
In the political sphere, Israel labels the democratically elected political party in Gaza, Hamas, as a terrorist organization and uses that in order to justify an elevated position in the international arena. What this does is that it establishes a link to the land as they are seen as the only democratic government present in that region by the international community. Coupled with many laws within the state of Israel that censor books about Palestine and keep Arab children from learning about their heritage, it takes a turn towards trying to wipe out Palestinian identity as Israelis establish their own.
To boost the economy of Israel, they have put an embargo on Gaza. As the economy of Gaza collapses and people starve, the area is destabilized. So, Israel provides Gaza with their own products, forcing the creation of a market for their products; textbook colonialism. Not only this gives many economic advantages, but also it is promoted as a justification to continue the embargo to the international community. Once again their policies give them economic strength used to establish an identity with the region while at the same time, it targets and persecutes the Palestinians. Hence weakening the Palestinian ties to the land.
On top of this, recently another reform has come up that prohibits Israelis from boycotting companies associated with Israel. This policy is in direct contrast with the ideals of democracy and basic freedom to choose and follow ones own ideals. This policy specifically targets the Arab communities living in Israel which try to live off and support other Arabs alone. This policy not only has obvious economic benefits to Israel, but also tends to break that Arab community ties forcefully in order to assimilate them into a hegemonic culture.
When it comes establishing cultural ties, Israel has not spared anything. They have made the official language Hebrew yet Israelis curse in Arabic as a form of humiliating the language. As the article in the beginning mentions, they have taken over Arab foods and other symbols and promoted them as inherently Israeli to the world. As majority of the people of Israel at time of its creation had come from Europe, they had very little ties to this land and rarely any unifying aspects except for the Hebrew language. After the creation of Israel, their government pursued nationalistic and often oppressing domestic policies rigorously in order to ensure unity among the supporters of Israel. Most of the time, these policies treated the Arab population in Israel very unfairly. From not being able to learn their own history in schools to having their language used as an insult to taking away cultural traditions that defined them.
This post does not even come close to scratching the surface of injustices Palestinians have had to face as victims of a process meant to create an Israeli legitimacy as heirs to that region. Sadly, this process also leads to ethnic cleansing of the subjugated people. It won’t be too long before a campaign much like the Holocaust is launched by Israel to be done with other nationalities present in the region. Some even argue that such a campaign has already been in motion but it is more gradual than the original Holocaust so it is much harder to notice and more devastating than the Holocaust itself.
