Elaborations on Settler Colonialism: a Call for support of our Semitic Fellows in the Middle East

The most thoughtful response to my last post which concluded that Israel is a European settler colony came from a former graduate student of mine (who need not be named here). He currently edits a publication that tracks the excesses of Islamist forces in the Western world. After an animated give and take we both agreed that the extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the Israeli annexation of Gaza is not a desirable outcome to the conflict. 

I return to the theme of reconciliation and healing in the context of ongoing settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a fact in the West Bank and Gaza today. So what is the global community going to do about it? As I noted previously, Israelis, like European Americans, aren't going anywhere. As I suggested robust efforts at restorative (or transformative) justice need to be undertaken between the two traumatized people in that bedeviled "holy" land. I stated that I believe that the Israelis and Palestinians, because of their trauma, are incapable of negotiating a peace settlement on their own. It will a strong US-led international role to achieve that goal. But after some negotiated (two state) political solution is hammered out, the necessity for long-term reconciliation between those two beleaguered peoples will remain. 

 

Reconciliation, acknowledgement of harm done; and healing, making amends and reparation for wrongs done, are urgently needed for those two long-suffering peoples to chart a health course in the future. 

A longtime Jewish friend of mine who has been a progressive activist since the 1960s offered some suggestions for ways his family is supporting the Palestinian cause currently. One group he suggests supporting is Standing Together, "an organization led by Palestinian and Jewish Israelis that has been leading growing demonstrations calling for a Ceasefire and assistance to people in Gaza and release of the hostages on both sides." Another is "the Center for Jewish Nonviolence which physically stands with Palestinians in the West Bank who are being brutalized and killed by right wing Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defense Force. 

 

I'm suggesting here that the reconciliation and healing process must also be international. The visible demonstration of Jewish and Arab solidarity inside Israel and the occupied territories, can be paralleled by those of us in the international community. We outsiders can visibly support, embrace and send love to our Semitic friends on both sides from now into the foreseeable future. As we do so we must be sure to offer comfort to our Jewish friends, who are traumatized with good reason, as much as we do so for our Arab fellows. In this way we can make strides toward the creation of a sustainable "Beloved Community" of the kind Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. called for.

The international machinations of the British and American Empires created this tragedy in the Middle East in the Twentieth Century in the name of the "global" security. Today the forces of social justice, compassion and love emanating from global civil society must be marshaled for a more enduring security anchored in universal human rights.