Israel

I’m fond of quoting Gil Scott-Heron’s sarcastic observation that “America leads the world in shock!”  It’s a concise way of expressing how easily people in a position of privilege can bury their heads in the sand for years…decades…generations…and then suddenly realize the obvious – and then expect everyone else to congratulate them for discovering it.  So it’s no surprise to find CNN expressing shock – shock! – at the content of The Gatekeepers, the Oscar-nominated documentary that features the perspectives of six former heads of the Shin Bet (Israel’s "internal security service").  In a January 28 blog post, CNN’s Samuel Burke breathlessly tells us that the film contains “stunning revelations.” Money quote:

Against the backdrop of the currently frozen peace process, all six argue – to varying degrees – that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is bad for the state of Israel.

In my previous post I began the process of thinking about lessons we can learn from looking at the discourse surrounding Israel’s recent “Operation Pillar of Cloud” (also known as “Pillar of Defense” - the name itself has prompted criticism) in Gaza.  Today, in the first of several posts addressing specific lessons, I want to want to highlight what is always the first lesson to be learned about how Palestine is represented in mainstream discourse, a lesson that remains as relevant today as it has been for decades.

Lesson #1: The vast majority of mainstream discourse on Israel/Palestine serves to hide the ongoing structural realities of colonization, specifically the settler colonization of Palestine by the Zionist movement and the state of Israel.

Mama lives in Poland, a country that for 123 years did not exist – being partitioned and occupied by Germans, Russians, and Austrians. The country that lost the most during the second world war, and became a witness – to most horrible genocide and terror of Nazi Germany and Soviets’ Russia. But for some reason when Mama watched TV, and her favorite series of daily news; and when Radio and their continuing commentaries of what is local and global out there – Mama concluded: “They make us think that this is all fault of Palestinians!”