Read this by a Palestinian
The conduct on display in Gaza is part psychological warfare, part colonial theatre, part occupation soldiers having fun, and none of it is new.
thebaffler.com
Goes into the psychology of why IDF soldiers put up on social media stuff that TBF is alarming but in Israeli society not a problem.
What the article is saying is that the dehumanisation of Palestinians/ wilful rewriting of history did not start with the extreme right and Netanyahu who now run Israel.
It can also be seen in the Labour Zionism of the early years of Israel.
So article is saying that Palestinians as an "other" is built into the Israeli State. The writer of the article quotes her father. She asked him what he thought of what is happening now and he said they love killing us.
The present attack on Gaza and the reactions of the ordinary IDF soldiers is not an aberration.
Take this from the article:
Palestinians have been “abandoning” their houses for a long time. At the start of the Nakba in 1948, a member of the kibbutz called Karmia—between Ashkelon and Gaza, built over the Palestinian village of Hiribya—wrote of settling there in the 1950s, “I did not feel like I was stealing from others, I did not feel any guilt at all . . . those who had lived in the kibbutz area had abandoned their homes and fled.” This is what the kibbutz members had been told. In fact, Hiribya had been targeted by Israeli air raids during Operation Yo’av; its survivors fled south, many to Gaza
The so called New Isreali Historians of Israel looked at newly released records in late 70s and found a different history.
Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe both found that the Nakba was violent expulsion of Palestinians.
From this historical research they came to different political views.
Benny Morris said it was terrible but necessary. And the problem was that the Zionists in 48 did not finish the job.
Ilan Pappe thought that giving the Isreali public the facts would mean a dealing with the past and a new state emerging.
Benny Morris stayed and Ilan Pappe eventually had to leave Israel as his views ended his career in Academia. Now a professor of history in UK
This says it all about State of Israel.
Ben Gurion the leading light of Labour Zionism:
The justification behind implementation of the population “transfer” was that war suspends morality. In February of 1948, addressing the consciences and practical concerns of those who worried how the Zionists could build a state when they owned around 6 percent of the land, Ben Gurion reasoned, “The war will give us the land. The concepts of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning.”
Israel is a state built on removal of the Arab population.
What is happening in Gaza is part of a continuum that started in 48. With plans for population transfer being discussed within Zionism in 1920s onwards.
www.aljazeera.com
