Settlers: The Real Evil
Israeli settlers are taking advantage of the war in Gaza by further encroachments upon Palestinian land in the West Bank. Settlers: The real evil robbing hope and exploiting the hostility engendered by the times.
“Last week, Israel’s domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote to ministers warning that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were carrying out acts of “terror” against Palestinians and causing “indescribable damage” to the country. Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has been an acceleration in settlement growth in the occupied West Bank. Extremists in Israel’s government boast that these changes will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.”
Historical Crimes Against Humanity By Settlers
Throughout history it has been colonising settlers who have, most often, committed terrorism and acts of genocide against Indigenous populations. Cowboys and Indians, a popular Hollywood genre for many years was really all about the fighting between settlers and the Indigenous tribes who were having their land stolen by force in North America. In Australia, British colonial settlers murdered and committed unspeakable acts of savagery against Aboriginal tribal members either defending their land or, indeed, attempting to live alongside new settlers. The poisoning of whole clans of women, men and children via gifts of flour full of arsenic or the poisoning of water holes was common to these settlers in 19C Australia. Settlers: The real evil.
Anglo-Settler Rights Trumping Natives
Not many folk these days want to remember these things and can get quite upset when reminded by historians. It seems, as if taking someone else’s home by force is excused because it was a fight of this nature. That settlers have this semi-divine right to steal land because it is about establishing a new home for these white skinned folk. White is right, you know, whatever the cost to the non-white side. The superiority of white people trumps that of those lesser peoples or savages who came before. Aborigines and native American Indians were in the way of the expansion of European civilisation. Same story down Central and South American ways.
Hemi Semi Demi Quest For Homeland
Israel and its West Bank settlers have little time for the rights of Palestinians, it seems. These darker skinned folk are in their way and must be removed by whatever means necessary, apparently. Settlers: The real evil is exposed in their determination to unhouse others and re-home themselves. Religious belief is used to justify their assumption of the Holy land. A story to be told, a narrative to indemnify acts of evil and brutal crimes. Don’t get between a settler and their designated new home like you would not get between a hungry dog and its food. The taking of land for a new home is an ancient quest by hook or by crook, by the sword or the barrel of a gun.
European Settler Exploitation & Slavery
Settlers in Australia, South America, the United States and elsewhere have frequently disobeyed their colonial masters to take what they want and dispatch the Indigenous population brutally. Indeed, their future nation states have been riven with settler mentalities, which often promote racism and deep inequalities. South Africa and the Boer settlers and their apartheid state is a pertinent example. The taking of land by force and the enslavement of the defeated Indigenous population produces foul outcomes. Dehumanizing exploitations and crimes against humanity are often prevalent. The complete genocide of the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean comes to mind. Slavery and working these people to death on sugar plantations went on for centuries. The sweetness of sugar should be tinged with the taste of death, in my opinion. Many modern folk do not wish to be reminded of these facts. The wealth of many old settler families has been enriched on the back of exploitation and human misery. Is it any wonder that the descendants of these wealthy families expecting respect do not want us to look back into how this wealth was accrued.
The Evil In Our Pasts
Our histories are not dead facts locked away in dusty old books and museums, as some would have us believe. What lies beneath attitudes and institutions are the ramifications of the historical record. Those in power and the elite have been created by who we are and where we have come from. Dig a bit deeper into political parties and you will strike the settler ethos buried at the core. Old money and institutions have their foundations in the settler history in colonial lands. The new world of transplanted whites in the Americas and Australia rule on the basis of what settlers carved out in blood. It may be unpleasant to confront such truths today but it is fact. Settlers: The real evil.
“Colonial powers send out their soldiers and their settlers to conquer and found their new lands. This has occurred in Australia, the Americas, and many places around the world. Named the New World for these European colonists who come as invaders and refugees from their old countries. Settlers seek to become masters of their new home. They, who were likely, excess to requirements from whence they came now want to take centre stage. Settlers are rarely, if ever, friends to those who are Indigenous to the newly conquered territories. Settlers take what was not their own.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
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