Their 911

Israel has been engaging in a project of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians since its inception. It waxes and wanes in intensity and speed, but is the necessary starting point of any discussion of Israel and Palestine, or of Palestinian uses of violence. We are currently watching Israel, in an eerie replay of post-9/11 bloodlust, launch a new chapter in this project. They are indiscriminately laying waste to homes, neighborhoods, and even against caravans of those refugees already fleeing the onslaught. North Gaza will become a new Golan Heights, a de facto annexed military zone of occupation. Just as 9/11 was quickly seized upon by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration to justify enacting the Project for a New American Century’s goal of “remaking of the world” (in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) for American hegemony, the hardline architects of a “Greater Israel” are no doubt seeing this as their time to push through their military and political goals.

What is particularly deranged in the US is how “this is their 9/11” is being used as a justification of this looming bloodbath rather than as an ominous warning of what a disaster for humanity this military blitz against a city of mostly children will be. Rather than a cause for temperance and self reflection on the relationship between colonialism and reactions to it, it is being discussed in mainstream tv and print media as a temporary period of impunity to, what, blow off steam? It speaks volumes of the lessons Americans have not learned about the moral calamities and character of their own political institutions. Of course, this ignorance is not endemic but is also the product of intense efforts at rewriting history.

by James Petrocelli