I heard a comment by an Israeli soldier on National Public Radio that will probably haunt me for life. Interviewed in southern Lebanon in the midst of the Israeli aggression, he commented on the hundreds of Lebanese civilians killed by the Israelis. His words were chilling: most of the civilians killed, he noted, lived in areas controlled by Hezbollah-- they should have found a better place to live.
In that instant, the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, and the additional one in Gaza, took on a new clarity. It also became evident to me how the Bush administration and the majority of Congress can champion the atrocities that are mounting with each day: the lives of Arabs are irrelevant.
Consider the words of the Israeli soldier and now let’s flip the script. Since 1967 the Israelis, in violation of the United Nations and international law, have occupied Arab land and created illegal settlements. Yet, when a Palestinian suicide bomber kills Israeli civilians, whether in a settlement or elsewhere, I cannot remember anyone seriously saying that the Israeli civilians should have chosen somewhere else to live, as a justification for the murder of non-combatants. In contrast, the White House and the Israeli government have decided that Arab non-combatants can be killed indiscriminately as long as an apology is offered afterwards.
What makes Arab lives expendable? This should not be too difficult for us in the USA to answer since it is driven by the psychology of settler colonialism, the same thinking at the heart of the founding and expansion of the USA. Settlers develop a myth that justifies their arrival on and occupation of land which is not theirs. Normally the settler myth involves God allegedly giving the settlers the land. Why God does not explain this directly to the indigenous inhabitants is never made quite clear in the settler myth, but the myth is strong enough to assert that the lives of the settlers are qualitatively more important than the lives of the indigenous people.
The settler is not bound by any agreements that s/he may sign with the indigenous people. The agreements are temporary accords as long as they fit the needs of the settler. When they get in the way, they are abandoned. For us in the USA, think about the great state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma was once called “Indian Territory” because the Native Americans were run out of the Southeast of the USA on something called the “Trail of Tears” by Andrew Jackson. They settled in Oklahoma and were given that land UNTIL oil was discovered there. At that point, Oklahoma was opened up for white settlers.
Thus, when we look at what Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinians and the Lebanese we should react with indignation, but we should not react with surprise. The lives of the Arab population are irrelevant to the Israeli government. There is no way that they are even able to justify the bombing of Beirut airport or the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians that makes the slightest degree of sense. It is all an act of ‘faith.’ If you believe that the settler has a God-given right to carry out whatever actions that they deem necessary in order to survive, then it becomes obvious that the Arabs have simply gotten in the way. That the Bush administration is not putting a stop to the Israeli atrocities speaks not only to Bush’s strategic objective to eliminate opposition to the re-division of the Middle East, but as well to his acceptance that largely European settlers have a God-given right to cleanse Palestine (and anywhere else in the Middle East deemed necessary).
The problem is that neither the Arabs, nor non-Arab Muslims have heard God say anything approaching this to them. It is unclear why God would be ambiguous about something so important unless this is really not about religion but instead about settler colonialism and great power politics.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a labor and international activist and writer, and the former president of TransAfrica Forum. Email to: papaq54@hotmail.com.
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