israel should not exist?
i had a mutual on bluesky question this line in my last post so i figured i would take the time to explain what this means. i think its easy to read genocidal intent where there is none and i could be wasting my time here (lets be real, when it comes to israel, anything but pure devotion to the ethnonationalist project is seen as genocidal!), but i do like to write, and i do like to waste my time.
in a dying colonialism, fanon details life before and during revolutionary algeria. its one of his lesser known books and i think very specific to that period and location, but still important. we should understand how such a tumultuous period of occupation, war, resistance, and revolution affects all sectors of society. what i appreciate the most from fanon is that he does not neglect the occupier, the settler, or the oppressor. the settler is as much part of algerian life as the native, and their reaction to the events unfolding around them can tell us quite a lot about the process of colonization and decolonization.
in a dying colonialism, many settler students were actually afraid to support algerian independence because they feared not being able to stay in algeria. they were worried that their adopted home would expel them for being europeans. however, the algerian natives only wanted that those europeans truly adopt algeria as their new home. they wanted them to become algerians and take on the suffering and joys that being algerian entails. if an algerian resists french colonialism, then a european who wishes to stay in algeria must also adopt those values.
when we talk about israel, we speak as if it had always existed in that state. those people have been fighting since the dawn of time. they hate each other. there has always been conflict there. etc. these phrases naturalize the strife brought upon by colonialism and displacement. ilan pappés a very short history of the israel palestine conflict is a perfect starting point for thinking about israel in this way. israel has not always existed, and when it was formed, it had genocidal intent from the beginning.
pappé talks about how jewish europeans would come to palestine in the early 1900s and be welcomed by the locals only to later expel those very same locals in the 40s. these settlers never had any intention of integrating themselves into palestinian life because they saw palestinians as inferiors who were interfering with the settler-colonial project. im not going to pretend like palestinians were flawless angels who never did anything wrong because thats unrealistic but i also need to stress that nothing warrants a century of ethnic cleansing. when you treat a population like they are evil, disposable, and monstrous, they can never be anything but evil, disposable, and monstrous. the oppressor sets the expectation, and the oppressed cannot do anything to surpass that.
israel is fascinating to me because european jews were encouraged to move there after the holocaust, since i guess europeans were scared theyd finish the job eventually. this is one of those things that never gets talked about and im going to take the time to ask why exactly jews were not given substantial control of the german state. why were jews not granted land, capital, and political power in europe after the holocaust? why did the UK and other so called first world powers agree that the jews needed to be expelled from europe for their own safety? why do we accept this insistence that jews need to be kept away from europe in order to be safe? doesnt that say something unspeakably violent and evil about the european? the european is so cruel, so depraved, that after decimating the european jewish population in about five years, they still insist that theyll do it again if they have the chance and that it is up to the jew to escape with their life!
i think its time to cite paulo freires famous line: 'when education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor.' zionism predates the holocaust and is a response to literal millennia of antisemitic monstrosities in europe. its a reactionary and racist movement, but one that appeared in the european context for a specific reason. after all, europe solved its problems through extermination and enslavement. the jewish population grew up in these societies that carried those evil values. it is hard to imagine other possibilities when all others are excluded around you. what we see in israel are european values espoused by european victims. what we see is the oppressed dreaming to become the oppressor.
what does this have to do with claiming that israel should not exist? well....why do the jews need an ethnostate to be safe? seriously, if you answer this one then youll see why israel is kind of an idiotic response to antisemitism. jews dont need an ethnostate; they need to be safe wherever they choose to fucking live. and most israelis have THOUSANDS of years of history in europe where they were forced to escape after the holocaust. how is that fair to them? why must the jew be forced out of their own home after experiencing one of the most traumatic and monstrous events in history? and even had the holocaust not happened at all, zionisms initial premise is a response to endless pogroms and exclusions in european society, something that is quite literally not the jews fault. so WHY must the jew go? what exactly is wrong with the european that prevents him from satiating their bloodlust against others? again, once we address the european, we can explain the israeli.
israel should not exist because israel is built on genocide. but wait, you say, stupidly, what about the united states and all of the americas? i admit that israel has the disadvantage of being the youngest settler colonial state of the settler colonies. there are people alive right now who remember palestine before the nakba. does that mean the US and australia and new zealand have more legitimate claims to statehood? well....no. perhaps this is where i lose you because i dont believe settler colonies are legitimate either. they have only had more time to consolidate their power than israel has had. this is why its important to highlight israel in particular, because much of the US's history was composed of similar violence that gets glossed over. well that was a long time ago. but we never question whether any of this violence NEEDED to happen.
what if the pilgrims simply decided to live alongside the indigenous populations of the americas? what if they simply chose to live with them rather than exterminate them to make room for their selfish european desire for land and serfs? this is essentially speculative fiction at this point in history. but with israel, we KNOW that european jewish settlers were well regarded in palestine in the 20s. we saw this happen in living memory, and that betrayal is also in living memory. the settler colonial mindset precludes any possibility of living alongside the native because the settler views themselves as superior to the native. the native has to die or be subservient because the native is ontologically inferior. they are an untermensch.
the worst punishment i can imagine for israel is that the population is forced to live alongside those they subjugated for decades. i cannot imagine a more psychologically destructive punishment than forcing israeli citizens to live peacefully alongside those they have slaughtered and demonized. yes i think it would be a little cruel, but ultimately its the only cure for fascism. we have tried solving racism through ethnostates and it hasnt worked. perhaps we can try the really shocking and horrible punishment of enforcing a multiplural society.
like with the europeans in algeria worried about being expelled, i think the oppressor class likes to believe theyll be massacred and pillaged in return, but i think that is a projection of their own values onto others. when you conquer half the world, you believe thats what others wouldve done to you first and then you can justify your pillaging as self defense. this is fucking delusional and based on absolutely nothing, but that is how fascism operates. you HAVE to kill and enslave those people in self defense, because you assume everyone is as fucking evil as you are. when you hear 'israel should not exist' you hear 'every israeli should die' because this is the only possibility you can imagine. genocide is the only way to solve problems, when that is obviously not so.
why not integrate the palestinians into israel then? for the same reason that you dont move into condemned houses--the bones are rotten. palestine prior to 1948 was not a utopia, but it wasnt marked by the same pogroms and hostilities towards jews like we've seen in europe. starting off with a palestinian state where all religious and ethnic minorities are equal makes more sense than starting with the israeli state, at least psychologically speaking. here i am going into speculative territory, but we do have some precedence for how to proceed: south africa.
apartheid south africa had the same air of inevitability and legitimacy as israel. likewise, until fairly recently, apartheid south africa and israel were also considered international pariahs because of their racism. in south africa, the white population controlled everyone else, and that was that. sorry, libtards, thats just how it is! a better world is NOT possible! if that were true then apartheid would not have formally ended in the 90s.
and what became of the white south africans? they werent killed or expelled. they werent forced to hand over their property. i think maintaining their position more or less intact was a mistake because white south africans were never meaningfully removed from power, and today they can invent white genocide hoaxes to justify the return of apartheid. you have to deal with these people and that means land reform and wealth redistribution. if thats genocide to you then youre fucking stupid lmao i dont know what to tell you. but they were left more or less alone, which completely undermines the argument that settlers will be murdered en masse should their racist regimes fall.
this has gone on for long enough. i dont think this will convince people who dont want to be convinced, and thats not the point. i think 'israel should not exist' deserves its own explanation, which is what this is, but this is very much not the final say on decolonialism. i think in order to hope for a better future we must accept that nothing is inevitable. racism is not inevitable, genocide is not inevitable, war is not inevitable. these are not natural disasters, many of which are also not inevitable and can be stopped if we do something about climate change, but manmade concepts that we are fully capable of preventing. the divine right of kings was seen as inevitable, until it wasnt. and then what? what next?
i refuse to accept planetary fascism as inevitable. maybe it is, but that would require defeating every single pocket of resistance, and i dont think that will ever happen. israel is not inevitable, and we dont need to accept it, or any settler colonial state, as legitimate entities that have the right to massacre and oppress with impunity.