The Cyclone of Settler-Colonialism: Israel/Palestine & Globally
What’s happening in Palestine and Israel right now is atrocious, unacceptable and heart-breaking. And the pain is particularly heightened during a global pandemic when our collective focus should be on a deepened commitment to care and compassion for our neighbors.
While the crimes of this moment are being put in the foreground, unfortunately, they are not new or different from the crimes of settler-colonialism across the world. Including the ones I implicitly support everyday by being a citizen of the United States.
I am not a scholar or activist that focuses directly on Israel/Palestine. Instead, my focus is on Jewish settler-colonists’ relationships with land and the people Indigenous to where we live in the N. America/Turtle Island diaspora. However, I did receive certain socializations about Israel/Palestine via being a Jewish person, I have visited twice, and I did feel an ancestral connection to the place. My relationship with Palestine/Israel does shape me, and, I have been expected since I was corned at my Bat Mitzvah by a non-Jewish attendee to state my position on Israel/Palestine.
Here is my position: I adamantly believe that settler-colonialism anywhere is physically and psychologically violent to the colonized, the land, and ultimately also to the colonizer. I believe Resmaa Menakem’s analysis in “My Grandmother’s Hands” that the origins of violent oppression in North America/Turtle Island, including settler-colonialism, is traumatized people of European descent who are “blowing their trauma” through the bodies of others, instead of healing. This feels true in both Turtle Island/North America and Israel/Palestine. In a simplified summary, I believe Jews of European descent who experienced the traumas of the Holocaust have chosen to say “never again” to their pain and grief through oppressing the people and land of Palestine and non-European Jews. In the big picture, Jews of European descent are harming others, the land, and ultimately preventing their own healing by avoiding their grief and failing to take responsibility for their actions.
This avoidance of grief, failure to take responsibility for the harms of our actions (and actions of our ancestors) is also true of all settler-colonists living in North America/Turtle Island. Including Jewish settler-colonists. I do not see myself as somehow more responsible for the harms the Israeli government and some Israeli citizens commit against Palestinian people than I do see myself responsible for the harms the U.S. government and some U.S. citizens commit against Black, Indigenous and People of Color who live on Turtle Island and around the globe.
Israel isn’t unique. Although, people often think of Israel differently than how they think of other settler-colonist nations. The difference range from:
Israel is a “modern” country (whatever that means), it shouldn’t be doing “archaic stuff” like Indigenous genocide, that’s from the “past and no longer happens” (false, Indigenous genocide is still happenings in North America/Turtle Island today and is an essential element of all settler-colonialist nations)
Israel is a Jewish state, shouldn’t Jewish people not be oppressive since they were so recently oppressed? (while I personally would love to see Jews make this connection, this is not true that all Jews are no longer oppressed, and it is also a double-standard to expect that people who have experienced oppression should act differently because of that experience than people who are oppressors)
Israel is different from other non-European countries, so we have a different expectation of how they act (code for: we expect Israel to mask/export its oppression better like how other European-culture countries do. This is thinly veiled racism against non-European countries and also a form of anti-Jewishness by wanting Israel to assimilate into European norms around veiling oppression).
While these assumptions that set Israel as somehow separate or “special” in comparison to other settler-colonist nations can be understood as anti-Jewishness (pedestalizing, double-standards, and expectations for assimilation), that does not negate the following:
Jewish people of European descent living in Israel who are actively participating in and/or benefitting from settler-colonialism and violence against Palestinians, Sephardi, Mizrahi and BIPOC Jews are responsible for their actions.
And, for the sake of not setting Jewish people living in Palestine/Israel apart from others, the following are also true:
Jewish people of European descent living on Turtle Island who are actively participating in and/or benefitting from settler-colonialism and violence against both Jewish and non-Jewish Indigenous, Black, and People of Color are responsible for their actions.
Non-Jewish people of European descent living on Turtle Island who are actively participating in and/or benefitting from settler-colonialism and violence against both Jewish and non-Jewish Indigenous, Black, People of Color and Jews of European descent are responsible for their actions.
The paradoxical nature of trauma is that until people have begun healing, they can rarely “stand in the fire” of taking responsibility for the harms they have caused AND until they have taken responsibility for the harms they have caused they cannot fully heal. Everyday Israelis (or settler-colonists anywhere) add to the Palestinian death toll (or Indigenous people anywhere), they are adding to the harms they will one day have to take responsibility for while also further avoiding their own healing. And the core, I believe, Jews of European descent are ashamed that we were unable to prevent the deaths of 6 million of our people. Instead of feeling the grief and sitting with the shame long enough to realize we don’t need to be ashamed, many Jews of European descent in Israel have decided to act out in violent ways for a temporary sense of control to prove their ability to protect their people. However, this ultimately creates more shame. Harming others always creates more shame. And, when we are ashamed, we are less able to remember that we are redeemable even if we’ve harmed others. Thus our ability to take responsibility for harming others is severely hampered. Settler-colonialism quickly becomes a cyclone of harm and avoidance of the root issues with no clear end in sight.
For me, this is where the gifts of diaspora come into play. In some ways, my European Jewish lineage was “preemptively spit out” of the cyclone of settler-colonialism in Palestine/Israel by deciding to settle/immigrate in Turtle Island/North America to avoid anti-Jewishness in Europe. While I must contend with and take responsibility for my people’s need to heal and stop committing harm in this land, I am a step removed from the harm in Israel/Palestine. What do I mean by that?
While I have family members living in Palestine/Israel (one close and the others relatively distant), I do not fear for their lives. I have never lost a family member to the violence of settler-colonialism. I was only partially and sporadically trained to mistrust Palestinians, which I can easily shrug off. Essentially, I’m not living in the middle of the cyclone of settler-colonial violence and indoctrination in Israel every day of my life nor have I experienced personal loss due to it. So, as a Jew living in diaspora, I have a little breathing room, and I would argue, perspective and ability to hold complexity on the issue (not to negate the very real and different perspectives of direct experiences and loss).
From my position in diaspora, where I am a European-descent Jewish settler within a Christian state (rather than Israelis of European-descent who are both settlers and heads of their state), I can more easily be critical of settler-colonialism. I can more easily see and understand myself as both a pawn in a greater scheme that was not of my creation and as someone who has considerable relative access to power and thus responsibility. My hope for Israelis of European-descent is that they too begin to see how they are both pawns in a bigger scheme that is not of their creation and have considerable relative access to power and thus responsibility.
Another gift of being a Jew in diaspora is I can more clearly see who my actual allies and enemies are. The white Christian ruling class talks a big game and offers Jews of European-descent many perks for assimilating. But, are they actually there for us when it is not in their self-interest? Of course not. The true is same on a global scale. All of the support Israel receives from the Christian nation of the U.S. is predicated on the self-interest of the U.S. (whether it be religious or economical). Who are my actual allies here in diaspora, and who are the actual allies of Jews living in Palestine/Israel? Many people have written on this topic, so I’ll let you read their writing (here is one example).
My hope is that this conversation can evolve from “are you pro-Zionist or pro-Palestinian liberation” to something much more complex. Here are the questions I would like to see us asking collectively:
If a people has experienced both oppression and have chosen to become oppressors, how can they receive support in healing the impacts of their oppression AND be held accountable for (and one day forgiven for) the harms they committed when they chose to become oppressors (read more)?
If two groups are oppressed but one has more access to power/wealth/resources how can the third party who is supplying the power/wealth/resources be made visible and held accountable?
If an oppressed group spends enough time in an oppressive system that they begin to take on the traits of their oppressor, how can they “detox” and remember who they actually are?
If a people are caught up in a collective trauma response that is harming others, who can best de-escalate the situation?
Since we are all ultimately interconnected, how are we all, no matter where we live, contributing to this conflict either literally by paying taxes or more energetically by not healing our own traumas or acting oppressively?
