This isn’t a civil war, it is settler-colonial brutality
JVL Introduction
In this article Lana Tatour suggests that we cannot understand the current conflicts between Israeli Jews and Palestinians citizens of Israel as a situation of civil unrest.
It takes place in a reality where Palestinians have always been regarded not just as second-class citizens – they may have the vote, but they suffer many legal as well as social discriminations – but also as “the enemy within”.
They have always lived in a wider society where many regard their presence as “temporary”, on sufferance, a “demographic threat” as it has been put in polite parlance.
Netanyahu, too, has indulged and encouraged this, whipping up fear and hatred when it has suited his opportunistic ends.
AS Tatour puts it: “The civil war discourse erases the colonial context in which violence against Palestinians takes place. It is designed to mask the reality on the ground: one of settler colonial brutality, state-sanctioned violence, and pogroms by Jewish supremacist groups backed by the state against Palestinians, the Indigenous people of the land.”
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Thu 13 May 2021. Read the original here.
This isn’t a civil war, it is settler-colonial brutality
We are not seeing a “civil war” inside Israel, but rather the Israeli settler state declaring a war on its colonized “citizens,” and Palestinians fighting for their liberation.
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Thankyou for a true analysis of what is happening. How can we help the BBC to stop inferring that it’s a fair and balanced argument, and not a massively unbalanced conflict?
More and more people are being better informed, and are finding biased reports dishonest.
Protests are taking place all over the world. We may be seeing a “George Floyd” moment. Ordinary people have come to recognise the Israeli Government is committing gross violations of human rights as well as war crimes. I hope the movement keeps on growing until governments change their policies towards Israel and the Palestinians obtain the freedom they lost 70 years ago and recover land which was stolen.
Another good article which helps to counter the false Israeli narrative about the treatment of Palestinians living within its borders. Attacks on them by armed right wing Jewish settlers and the Israeli police are described by the mainstream media as”communal violence”when they try to defend themselves.
So called “Arab Israelis” are under no illusions about their identity as Palestinians. They understand their treatment as second class citizens by the state of Israel. When a Hamas rocket kills a Palestinian living in Israel the settler colonial regime milks this for all it is worth. All of a sudden we are expected to believe the Israeli regime gives a damn about non Jewish citizens of a state that only exists for Jews. Still the brain dead MSM interviewers of Israeli propogandists show a complete lack of awareness of the situation on the ground.