Our Wednesday News Analysis | ‘Genocide’ vs ‘Bigger Genocide’ in Gaza: Time to Decolonize Our Minds

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

" … both sides of this inconsequential debate conveniently ignore obvious facts that America’s ruling elites are rooted in pro-Israeli political allegiances,
that though there might be a difference in style,
US foreign policy, under the Democratic Secretary of State Antony Blinken
and Trump’s future hire, Marco Rubio, is likely to be identical;
that the Biden-Harris administration has given Israel all the help it needed to sustain its wars in the Middle East over 13 months and counting.”

"It is time that we abandon the archaic thinking
regarding our collective colonial past or present
that saw Western leaders as masters and our peoples
as mere subjects struggling to survive,
imploring, though never obtaining, prudent Western foreign policies."

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well,” Frantz Fanon wrote in ‘The Wretched of the Earth’.

What the iconic anti-colonial philosopher and psychiatrist was essentially arguing is that the mind must be decolonized first, in order for the undoing of colonialism to succeed in all aspects of our liberation.

Many in the Global South, but especially intellectuals and analysts concerned with Middle Eastern affairs, are still struggling with their relationship with the United States.

Though all signs indicate a rapid decline of US global status, many among our intelligentsia, possibly unwittingly, still believe that Washington holds all the cards, and that any US administration that controls the White House naturally must also rule the world.

Of course, US domestic and foreign policies are relevant to global affairs, as financial decisions by the US Federal Reserve, for example, will affect US-global trade volumes, and will impact the interest or disinterest in purchasing US treasury bonds. Some countries that are keen on standing at an equal distance between the US and China often jockey to refine their positions and to protect themselves in case of seismic political changes in the US. And more …

Read more: ‘Genocide’ vs ‘Bigger Genocide’ in Gaza: Time to Decolonize Our Minds

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OPINION | ISRAEL VS. THE ISRAELI PEOPLE: THE STATE WAS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT US. INSTEAD, IT TURNED ON US

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-11-30/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/israel-vs-the-israeli-people-the-state-is-meant-protect-us-instead-it-turned-on-us/00000193-7b04-dd5d-a3bf-7bb57c7b0000

By Tomer Persico
Published November 30, 2024

The idea of the democratic state sought to offer a fair alternative to the one-way connection between humans and God. But similar to Russia, Venezuela, and Syria, the Israeli state has now also turned against its citizens

A Tel Aviv protest earlier this month, following the firing of Defense Minister Gallant. We stand wide-eyed in the face of the decisions made by the government.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

"… surveys conducted since the start of the war show that this government rests on the support of a minority of the country's citizens and that its leaders suffer from a fundamental lack of trust among the public.

A government for which support is partial and declining can only intensify its citizens' feeling of being taken hostage. Add to this the government's denial of its responsibility for the crisis, disdain for professionalism and expertise, and lack of readiness to correct its path, and you get a population that feels it is held captive by an erratic and unpredictable force.

A sense of helplessness impels the Israelis who are now fleeing abroad.”

"Israel's citizens are suffering from an irresponsible government
that knows very well what it has inflicted on them
but is only tightening its hold on power.

If that looks like a struggle against an angry giant, it's not by chance. This is what the plotline of the calamity of fate seems like in our age."

Beyond the misery, sadness, and mourning over what could have been and will now not be abiding by helplessness: the appalling feeling that we are being taken willy-nilly to a place we don't want to be. As if in a bad dream, we are in the passenger seat of a bus whose brakes have failed, and the country's borders are our closed windows.

"Proceedings have been instituted against you, and you will be informed of everything in due course," says one of the strangers who has come to arrest K. in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial," precisely expressing the citizen's helplessness in the face of the state's machinery. "We've been abducted," shout the demonstrators in Tel Aviv and across from the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem, venting the same angst.

The helplessness that underlies our present situation places us opposite the vast power of the state. We encounter that power when we are inducted or are informed about a tax audit, but at present the lines are sharpened and the danger of losing all we hold dear looms clear and immediate. As though we've been transformed from citizens into subjects, we stand wide-eyed in the face of the decisions made by the government. Like the faithful in the hands of an angry God, we are unable to wield influence and also do not know what to expect...

Read more: Opinion | Israel vs. the Israeli People: The State Was Supposed to Protect Us. Instead, It Turned on Us

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DIARIES FROM NORTH GAZA: ONE WOMAN’S STORY OF SURVIVAL

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/diaries-from-north-gaza-one-womans-story-of-survival/

Sondos Sabra writes in Mondoweiss, November 29, 2024

Palestinians inspect the damage in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip after Israeli shelling of the camp stopped on November 29, 2024

October 7, 2023: Rain and olive trees

It’s raining. I love rainy mornings. October rain is particularly eagerly anticipated by Palestinians, especially my father. He’s on pins and needles for it. It’s the season for Palestinian festivals. People consider it a sign from Mother Nature, signaling the start of the olive season, a gesture from her to cleanse the grains with green gold, as they call it. This morning seems beautiful. In Palestinian slang, this time of year is called the “Jad al-Zeitoon” season, where the bond between the land and the people is renewed, and families gather to pick olives in an atmosphere of cooperation and joy.

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Editor’s Note: Making a choice…

The Israeli-Palestinian saga needs a twist: a paradigm shift with new metaphors, uplifting stories with more openness, questioning the legitimacy and authority of deeply rooted dogmas. These tools enable us to succeed in going from darkness – the terrible realities we face – to the fantastic possibilities of tomorrow.

We must start by rejecting the narratives we are told to tell our stories, becoming the storyteller rather than the person told what to think. Every day, we must make choices based on the good, the bad, and the ugly within us. Some pick up their hammers to shatter glass, to harm, injure and destroy. Others work their hammers to forge steel, to shape something that lasts.

The people of Israel and Palestine have been intertwined for millennia.

Wouldn’t it be an ironic twist if the indigenous people in the Region were genetically connected to any of the eleven lost tribes of Israel? Their gene pool still exists. They have lived in the same Region from the beginning. Don’t people living contiguously beget others, one after the other? Palestinians could be just as much if not more, Israelite than the Israelis. Plus, 32 percent of the Palestinians were once Christians. “How Does One Reunite a Million-Year-Old Rain Drop With a Million-Year-Old Blossom”?

And why does the Israeli-Palestinian Feud, the defining feud of our times, enrapture the world? Could it be that our hearts belong to Zion, that we all carry the DNA of the original Israelites inside our souls? We know how many seeds are inside an apple. Only God knows how many apples are in one seed. It is time for the region's people to greet each other with “Welcome Home.”

Prolonging the struggle is “sadness silence can’t touch.”

               Real and sustainable peace begins in the mind, heart, will, and soul because it arises from genuine appreciation and respect for the other.

               Peace is a conscious decision to improve relations, do everything possible to overcome tensions and misunderstandings, and even become friends if possible.

               Peace is the fruit of love. It is give and take. It is a dance with life.

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My grandfather, born in 1898, “before the establishment of Israel and the British Mandate,” spent much of his life planting his land with olive and prickly pear trees – my family’s name ‘sabra” comes from their reputation for growing it. Over 80 years ago, he established orchards that my father and uncles inherited. My grandfather lived a long life, nearly 100 years, and when he passed away, his sons pledged to care for his trees as if they were their children. My grandfather used to say, “The olive tree is like Palestine: its roots burrow deep into the earth; its branches are a symbol of peace, and its oil is the elixir of life.” Despite all the colonizers” attempts to steal his land, the Palestinian clings to every last inch of it, facing the Israeli thirst for annihilation with an even more steadfast determination for life, dying a thousand times, if necessary, only to rise back up with a newfound love for the homeland...

Read more: Diaries from north Gaza: one woman’s story of survival