Read Online On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Frank Barat - Free Book Online Page A
Tags: Political Science, middle east
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happened many years ago, I do not think these societies will resort easily today to settler-colonialist practices. They may deal well, or not so well, from our perspective, with crimes of the past. They may find different ways of engaging with them. As the Australians did when they initiated the Sorry Day. Or even a more progressive act of reconciliation in the permit given by the government of New Zealand to the Maoris to return to their lands that were stolen from them. All these acts are taken from what one can call the comfort zone of those settlersâ societies that have diminished the native population to such an extent, at the early stage of colonization, that they have no fear the symbolic acts will change the socio-economic or even political realities of today. For the Israelis, of course the task is far more formidable. They are still dispossessing because they failed in the early stage of the 1948 ethnic cleansing to eliminate the Palestinians as a people. And thus every symbolic act of reconciliation would have a profound and tangible impact on the socio-economic and political realities on the ground. Most Israeli Jews do all they can to prevent this from happening. Where they are not sure about their success is in winning international and regional legitimacy for their acts.
NC: Itâs true. Israel has had the problem that itâs a twentieth-century version of a seventeenth- through nineteenth-century colonialism. Thatâs a problem. But my point was a little bit different. There is a kind of an underlying mentality in the Anglosphere, in settler-colonial societies, which is simply some kind of deep-seated part of the way in which people look at the world and that slips through. However, speaking about the future, this is changing in the Anglosphere. Since the 1960s, mainly the effect of sixties-era activism, there has been a considerable revival, a significant one, of concern for what actually happened in the past. A lot of it was suppressed until then, literally. You go back to the 1960s when leading anthropologists were claiming that there were maybe only a million Indians [Native Americans] around the country. Thatâs collapsed. Now attitudes are very different. I think this is part of the background for the increasing criticism of the settler-colonial character of Israel. These things are connected in sort of subtle ways.
IP: I agree and I think that this shift in perceptions in the settler-colonial societies is something we are still struggling with as activists. I remember how I struggled to explain to my students in England that what they see in Israel and Palestine today is a daily implementation of nineteenth-century colonialist ideology and discourse.
NC: Yes.
IP: Where the Israelis find it difficult is actually in escaping the description of the reality as colonialist when trying to do this in Hebrew. Any translation into another language of the Israeli terminology of settlement is bound to expose the colonialist nature of the project. Even those progressive Jews who support Israel feel uncomfortable when this act of translation is taking place.
This Israeli predicament is also our predicament as activists. We are dealing with a nineteenth-century fossil that is very alive and kicking in the twenty-first century. Thatâs why I think the power of connecting the past to the future comes through the paradigm of settler colonialism. Because settler colonialism is not only about the act of settling and colonizing but what happens afterwards.
NC: Driving out the indigenous population.
IP: Exactly.
FB: I want to go back to the question of a Jewish state. If the Jews are a people, what is the problem of them having a state? And why shouldnât we recognize Israel as a Jewish state?
IP: I think that no one I know has ever objected or questioned the right of people to redefine themselves on a national, ethnic, or cultural ground. There is no ground for objecting from the
NC: Itâs true. Israel has had the problem that itâs a twentieth-century version of a seventeenth- through nineteenth-century colonialism. Thatâs a problem. But my point was a little bit different. There is a kind of an underlying mentality in the Anglosphere, in settler-colonial societies, which is simply some kind of deep-seated part of the way in which people look at the world and that slips through. However, speaking about the future, this is changing in the Anglosphere. Since the 1960s, mainly the effect of sixties-era activism, there has been a considerable revival, a significant one, of concern for what actually happened in the past. A lot of it was suppressed until then, literally. You go back to the 1960s when leading anthropologists were claiming that there were maybe only a million Indians [Native Americans] around the country. Thatâs collapsed. Now attitudes are very different. I think this is part of the background for the increasing criticism of the settler-colonial character of Israel. These things are connected in sort of subtle ways.
IP: I agree and I think that this shift in perceptions in the settler-colonial societies is something we are still struggling with as activists. I remember how I struggled to explain to my students in England that what they see in Israel and Palestine today is a daily implementation of nineteenth-century colonialist ideology and discourse.
NC: Yes.
IP: Where the Israelis find it difficult is actually in escaping the description of the reality as colonialist when trying to do this in Hebrew. Any translation into another language of the Israeli terminology of settlement is bound to expose the colonialist nature of the project. Even those progressive Jews who support Israel feel uncomfortable when this act of translation is taking place.
This Israeli predicament is also our predicament as activists. We are dealing with a nineteenth-century fossil that is very alive and kicking in the twenty-first century. Thatâs why I think the power of connecting the past to the future comes through the paradigm of settler colonialism. Because settler colonialism is not only about the act of settling and colonizing but what happens afterwards.
NC: Driving out the indigenous population.
IP: Exactly.
FB: I want to go back to the question of a Jewish state. If the Jews are a people, what is the problem of them having a state? And why shouldnât we recognize Israel as a Jewish state?
IP: I think that no one I know has ever objected or questioned the right of people to redefine themselves on a national, ethnic, or cultural ground. There is no ground for objecting from the
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