I like to believe my views on different topics are all defined by my moral compass. I like to believe my moral compass never fails and always points to an ethical north star. I’m wrong, but I try to be conscious of it.
As far as I can tell, everything (or at least the majority of it) that I’m against, is based on some form of oppression - the exertion of power (in itself already problematic, for power means imbalance) in a way that negates basic autonomy to the other.
I could write about different topics - many topics - to illustrate this. For this text, I’ll use one of the most brutal ones - the colonization and destruction of Palestine and its native population.
As I see it, we are all one people and one “country”, because we all live on the same planet and frontiers are these silly artificial lines that climate, diseases, and desperate humans ignore.
(this reminds me I want to write about the full abolition of borders soon. spoiler alert - it doesn’t matter if you’re in favour or against that idea, it’s bound to happen)
Yet, countries have been formed, and states have dominated them and the people in them, with various degrees of oppression. Most countries borders, by the way, were decided by imperialist outsiders, not by the local populations, but I digress.
Palestine was a well defined territory. Its population, despite being under the rule of an imperialist power, had, for the most part, a peaceful co-existence. The majority of its population followed some variation of the Abrahamic religions.
At the end of the 19th century, in Europe, an ethno-centric, colonialist movement emerged, with the objective to occupy Palestine (at first; eventually the plan grew to include the territory from the Nile to the Eufrates) and make it an ethno-state for Jewish people only.
An important caveat - I want to make it very clear that I have nothing against the Jewish people, only against zionists.
The zionists slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land” is almost as old as the movement itself, yet it is based on a lie (it happens a lot with this ideology). Palestine was not “without people”; quite the contrary, and a good percentage of them were Jewish. It is true that there was no “Jewish state” but it’s also true that there are plenty of religions that are not tied to a state.
Jewish people had been persecuted for centuries, culminating in one of the biggest crimes of all time, the genocide against Jews (and other minorities) by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.
Yet, like any other group of people, Jewish people are not all the same. They cover the entire political spectrum (as well as religious - there are many atheist jews). And part of that spectrum is very reactionary and extremist, and since the end of the 19th century this faction started etching a plan - they would steal the land, dominate, murder or expel the locals, and rule supreme the area that is called Palestine, and they did so (and continue to do so) with a ferocity and wickedness only comparable to the very nazis that tried to eliminate them.
In my view, there is no possible justification for colonization and imperialism. Zionists are colonizers and must be expelled. A two-state solution cannot work for two reasons:
1) because it’s not their territory. They are colonizers and occupiers and need to leave.
2) because they would never accept to only hold the part of the territory that the previous occupier (the UK, with the help of other foreign powers) offered them, or even that territory plus the land they conquered on the Six-Day War in 1967.
No, they want it all - the “Greater Israel”, their apocalyptic, messianic feverish dream of occupying all the territory from the Nile to the Eufrates, roughly from Egypt (the fertile strip of it) to iraq. And they are not coy about it - they openly say it, in their meida`. And it’s not just the current right and far-right coalition in power there, it’s practically its entire society.
They must be expelled. Palestine must be a free territory where the local population is free from external meddling and can rebuild its region free from colonialism. The local semitic people (muslims, christians, jews) has to be able to get rid of this cancer called zionism and live free.
Where should all the zionists go, you ask?
Anywhere, if they abandon their colonialist, genocidal ideas. In fact, if they leave their wicked ways and accept living in a multi-religion, multi-cultural society where they don’t hold all the power, theoretically it would be possible for them to live in Palestine. In any case, I’m sure that the current US and Argentine governments will happily welcome the followers of this hateful movement.
Zionism has become what the Jewish people’s greater enemy, the nazis, were - genocidal, criminals, thugs. They see the palestinian native people (including christians) as sub-humans, disposable bodies. Racists as they are, they have oppressed jewish people that they don’t think are jewish “enough”, like the Ethiopian jews that have relocated to Palestine.
And, as one might expect, every jewish person that criticizes “Israel” is called a self-hating jew, a traitor to their people - when in fact it’s zionists themselves that betrayed the holy books of judaism, as has been amply explained by religious scholars.
Let me ask you, reader of this text, the following : if you understand it would be wrong (and would fight against) the invasion of your territory and the occupation and genocide perpetrated on you and your people, why can you not understand it when it’s somewhere (and someone) else that is being oppressed? The principle is the same. It’s not who is the victim that dictates the crime, it’s the fact that the crime exists no matter who the victim is.
And all the fight back that has occured, since 1948, when the occupation started, is legitimate defense of the people of Palestine and surrounding territories, as they too have been terrorized by the zionists. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt - all have plenty of reasons to want to defend themselves. Nothing bad, nothing, would have been done to zionists by the Levant people if they didn’t go there to colonize the territory and rule that land.
And I don’t need to agree or disagree with the methods that this liberation group or that liberation group uses. I may like some, dislike others, even despise others, but it’s not my role to dictate how the local population fights against their oppressor.
And I’m really tired of the fact that the so-called western world, for the most part, sides with the genociders, the criminals, with the most basic racism, imperialism and, in some cases, eschatological (end of the world) fantasies, whilst those who oppose zionism are seen as extremists.
It’s a world gone mad.