Colonialism dehumanises Palestinians

Imperialism and colonialism devalue and dehumanise the colonised, which enables the Israeli genocide of Palestinians By Charlie Kimber, Socialist Worker, Monday 10 June 2024 Gaza has been decimated by Israeli colonisation efforts (Photo: wikimedia commons) Gaza has been decimated by Israeli colonialism (Photo: wikimedia commons) It is central to imperialism and colonialism that the lives of colonisers are worth far, far more than the lives of those they oppress and eliminate. That murderous arrogance is allied with racism—the white invader is more human, more advanced than the black and brown people he rules. That disgusting calculus is not some ancient prejudice. It is as modern as this weekend’s news of the Israel’s massacre at the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. An Israeli bombardment killed at least 210 Palestinians and wounded more than 400. But this led to celebrations across Israel and in Western political circles because it saw four Israelis detainees freed. One Israeli equals 50 or more Palestinians. Nidal Abdo was in Nuseirat last Saturday when he described “something we never witnessed before, maybe 150 rockets fell in less than ten minutes, while we were running away more fell on the market”. “There are children torn apart and scattered in the streets, they wiped out Nuseirat, it is hell on earth.” The four who Israel seized back could have been freed without any violence if Binyamin Netanyahu’s regime had accepted one of the ceasefire deals. Instead the Zionists chose murder—and the deaths of more detainees. Abu Obeida, spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said that some captives were killed during the Nuseirat operation. “By committing horrifying massacres the enemy was able to liberate a few of its prisoners but at the same time it killed some of them during the operation,” Obeida said. There are many unanswered questions about the raid. Video footage obtained by Al-Jazeera showed Israeli special forces using an aid truck and a civilian car to carry out the operation. An eyewitness described seeing what he thought was a truck carrying humanitarian aid before armed forces emerged from the vehicle and shot him. Israel justifies its murder of civilians by saying Hamas shelters among humanitarian infrastructure. The Nuseirat murders saw Israel use such a tactic. The US military provided “intelligence support” to Israel in the raid, according to the mainstream CBS News which cited two American officials. Some reports claimed that US forces were involved in the operation on the ground, and the fake aid trucks left from the US-built pier. Videos circulating on social media showed helicopters that were used in the operation to evacuate the Israeli captives taking off from near the US “humanitarian” pier. There is a direct ideological line from the mass “elimination of the natives” in Australia, Canada and the Americas to imperialist- backed murder in Israel today. This is how imperialism and colonialism have always behaved, and this won’t stop until revolution destroys the system that spawned such vile actions. Hundreds murdered in ravaged West Bank “Unprecedented bloodshed”. This is how Volker Turk, the United Nations (UN) high commissioner for human rights, described the West Bank. Israeli soldiers and settlers have murdered over 500 people in the West Bank since 7 October. Last Friday Israeli soldiers invaded the West Bank city of Jenin, murdering three Palestinians. They wounded at least 13 others. Jenin has been a particular target of the Israeli state because it is a stronghold for the resistance. Israeli forces also murdered a child in the Far’a Camp, and a student was also murdered in the Dhanaba suburb, east of the city of Tulkarm, on Monday. Israeli forces rounded up another 30 Palestinians on Monday, including a child and a woman, and detained them in Israeli jails.