#title Opposing the massacre in Gaza!
#subtitle An anarchist perspective
#author Pikante
#date April 2024
#source Pikante Paper
#lang en
#notes This is a translation of a text that had been published in the paper “Pikante”, in Toulouse (fRance), in the beginning of April 2024. Contact : pikante(a)riseup.net
#pubdate 2024-06-30T09:09:20.131Z
#source Original in French: [[https://mars-infos.org/s-opposer-au-massacre-a-gaza-un-7502][]]
To write from here an article about this situation is something that will inevitably be limited, but the silence appears worst to us. We feel the need to write about what is going on, in order to take the emotions out. Also, to try to take ourself out of the media and state propaganda. Even if words won’t ever be enough against this incredibly unfair violence that is falling on an entire population. More than 2 millions of people, guilty of being enclosed in this roofless prison and of not wanting (and even not being able to) to get out of it. And to go where?
The horrible situation of today is one step among a crushing colonial process organized for more than 75 years in this area. Today, the Israeli government is its main and most visible perpetrator, but this should not make us forget the fact that numerous western countries, with their participation, are sharing the historical and present responsibility in the making of this unbearable situation. From the british administration that “gave out” Palestine (that they took for themselves 30 years earlier) to enable the creation of Israel, to the US that are its faithful support. Without forgetting France that, yesterday as much as today, got on its hands the blood of exterminated jews (Vichy’s government collaboration during World War II) and of massacred palestinians (through its historical support to the State of Israel and its weapons trade).
The situation of today in Gaza is one tip of the iceberg, but the colonial violence is taking place on a daily basis in the whole territory dominated by the State of Israel (including in Cisjordania). Expropriations, exploitation of humans and resources, humiliations, arrests, bombings, raids, tortures, murders, the list is endless.
And this extreme violence, presented as a “legitimate response” didn’t start on the 7th of october, far from it.
The willful resistance of the population fighting against those injustices has always been repressed by the Tsahal israeli army. Every time, the protest against the colonial regime from the palestinian side is bloodily crushed. Without it being an excuse for the atrocities perpetuated on the israeli population on the 7th of octobre, it is a reality that we have to take in account when we look at what happened on that day.
In the same way, we can’t look at what is going on as two armies fighting each other on the same level. Even though they’re both receiving support from other states, the political and military power of Hamas have nothing to see with the one of the State of Israel. Nevertheless, it doesn’t make it harmless in the least. The organization aims at the palestinian independence to impose its totalitarian military as well as its political and religious domination. It’s a toxic and rotten one that seeks to ingest the various resistance movements as much as people angers, in presenting itself as the only existing and legitimate voice.
We were told over and over again this untruthful story telling about two homogeneous sides, of entire populations which would be all behind Hamas on one side, and behind Israel’s government on the other. Misleading shorthands saying about the opposition of Jews and Muslims within a so called “*clash of civilizations*”.
But if there is not such a thing as a common stance for “*the Jews*”, or for “*the Muslims*”. In the same way, the equation “*Jew=Israeli=white=islamophobic*” and “*Palestinian=Muslim=non white=antisemitic*” are wrong and have heavy consequences. Those binary and racist views are seeking to erase the different realities and deep political contradictions, the divergent interests and the struggles that are existing through those so called “*sides*”. And this manipulation of the public opinion is an old recipe well known of warrior politicians to set in their power and reinforce a national unity against a common enemy.
These kind of discourses are powerful and are unfortunately working really well. They are built using some violences and experiences of racism that are real, traumas and fears, which as a result makes refuting them difficult and marginal.
How to not endorse a hate of the Other when they’re shown to us as responsible of our sufferings? How to not buy the idea of a State to protect us when it is the only solution that is sold to us to end the horrors of the past and of the present days?
Nevertheless some words and some acts are managing to refuse these logics. Like when some little time ago, multiple protests were clashing against the powers that are ruling over each sides of the wall. Israeli people also implicated in the struggle against colonialism and against their extreme-right government. Solidarities that are weaven, challenging nationalism and racism, like those demos of Israeli and Palestinian women, which in early October were taking the streets to demand peace. And all those things that are unheard of here, but that exist, invisibilized in purpose by those in power and their representatives.
The colonial violence of the State of Israel got specificities that we can’t forget when we want to fight it. Comparisons sometimes made here with the french colonization in Algeria are only relevant up to a certain extent. The history of the creation of Israel is complex, and can’t be solved by an order commanding Israeli people to “*go back home*”. Unlike the french colonizers, there is no home territory to return to for every person there. The persecution and the instrumentalisation suffered by Jews, that exists at a worldwide scale since hundreds of years, can’t justify the creation of a colonial State in Palestine, but neither can it be erased.
In Palestine like elsewhere, the problem isn’t to be or not to be “*a native*” of the place we’ re living in, it is rather the domination of some persons over others. The problem is that some States along with their leaders are taking for themselves territories that they plunder, that populations are exploited to feed the capitalist economy, that ways of life are imposed, that some persons are dehumanizing other people to justify the fact of crushing them.
The destruction of States, the Israeli one among others, is necessary to aim at a more desirable world. Just as attacking capitalism along with all the other systems that enable exploitation and domination.
These beautiful ideas seem way out of place facing the violence of the bombs. How then can one act concretely today, from here? How can one be in solidarity with the people who are fighting, also for their survival? Unfortunately there is no obvious answer. But we first need to overcome the immobility and the state of paralysis facing the horrors which are drowned in the flow of information.
To not expect anything from States who act according to their interests, interests that will never be aligned with ours.
To attack institutions and companies who take benefit from this situation.
To stand against those racist discourses and racist acts that are spreading, whether they are targeting the Jews, the Muslims or whoever.
To sabotage the propaganda and the militarist atmosphere that are preparing our minds and bodies to the war here.
To bring into existence a critic against the States, the nations, the borders and against all the driving forces of the massacres of the past and the massacres of tomorrow.
And to be in solidarity with other people in struggle, in Gaza like elsewhere, who are trying to not strengthen these logics!