The Death of Many
Birthdays
By L. Janelle Dance*
On my birthday,
December 27, 2008, I
awoke and was
literally sick to my
stomach. My symptoms
suggested either
stomach flu or food
poisoning. I now
interpret my illness
in terms of what was
happening in Gaza.
On December 27,
2008, my birthday
became a death day.
Since that day, over
1300 Palestinians
(half of which were
civilians including
hundreds of
children) and more
than 10 Israelis
(ten soldiers and
three civilians)
died in warfare.
The sheer number of
deaths of
Palestinians
troubles me the
most; still, I find
the human losses on
both sides tragic.
When one person is
killed in warfare,
that moment is
pregnant with
horrific potential
that hundreds,
thousands, or
millions more will
follow. In
justifying this war,
Israeli leaders only
told part of a
complicated
historical story,
the part that
started with Hamas
shooting Qassam
rockets into Israeli
territory. The
Qassams are simple
steel rockets when
compared to the
Hellfire missiles
and other U.S. made
armaments with which
the Israeli Defense
Forces retaliated.
Even the Israeli
Defense Ministry
described the
Qassams as "more a
psychological than
physical threat." I
find the justice
system of the Old
Testament far too
harsh, but what
happened to the
proportional justice
of "an eye for an
eye and a tooth for
a tooth" or the
Talmudic emphasis
upon the use of
minimum necessary
force in
self-defense?
Some date the
complicated story of
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict back to the
1880s, when the
first Zionist
Congress designated
Palestine as the
site for a Jewish
homeland. Others
start with the post
World War I period,
during which Great
Britain sponsored
the Zionist
colonization of
Palestine. Others
still, begin with
the post World War
II horrors of the
Nazi Holocaust
against Jews. And
others yet, refer to
the aftermath of the
1967 war and the
Israeli occupation
of Gaza and the West
Bank. Most recently,
the story starts in
June of 2007 when
Israeli leaders,
with the support of
the U.S. and the
U.N., strengthened
the blockade of the
Gaza Strip; or, in
early November of
2008, when the
Israeli Defense
Forces broke the
mutually agreed upon
cease fire by means
of a raid within the
Gaza Strip that
killed six members
of Hamas. The story
is even vastly more
complicated than
these significant
events, but it
definitely did not
start with Hamas
shooting rockets.
Like persons of
Jewish descent, I am
a descendent of a
displaced people,
namely the enslaved
West Africans who
were whipped,
chained, shackled,
and forcibly
relocated to the
Americas as slaves.
I empathize with the
desire to correct or
minimize a
historical wrong and
to return to a
homeland. The
founding and
colonization of
Liberia by African
Americans in the
1820s was one
attempt to correct
the historical
tragedy of American
slavery. Viewing
Africa as the
"Promised Land,"
African Americans,
sponsored by the
American
Colonization
Society, "settled" a
region of West
Africa now known as
Liberia. African
Americans did this
despite the fact
that the region was
already inhabited
and settled by
several West African
ethnic groups that
had been there for
centuries.
I sympathize with
the need of African
Americans to flee
the inhumanity of
slavery in the U.S.,
but it is eminently
clear to me that the
Americo-Liberians—as
these African
Americans came to be
called—colonized and
seized the lands of
pre-existing West
African populations
in the process of
minimizing the
horrors of American
slavery. It is
clear to me that the
West Africans of
that region were
made to suffer for
the sins of the
Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade.
I sympathize with
the need of Jewish
Holocaust survivors
in particular, and
Jews in general to
have a homeland to
heal from the
inhumanity of Nazi
Germany, the
horrifying legacy of
European pogroms and
massacres, and other
horrible forms of
anti-Jewish racist
projects. But it is
eminently clear to
me that Palestinians
were made to suffer
for the sins of the
Nazi Holocaust
against the Jews. In
that way,
Palestinians have
been indirectly made
victims of the Nazi
Holocaust.
So, the action of
Hamas leaders
shooting rockets
into Israeli
territory did not
occur in a vacuum.
It occurred in a
complicated
historical context.
As far back as 1948,
the Israeli army
forcibly relocated
Palestinians from
Palestinian
townships to the
Gaza Strip. During
the last four
decades, Israeli
leaders and Defense
Forces have suffered
Palestinians to live
in the apartheid
situations that Gaza
and the West Bank
have become. Similar
to the situation of
African Americans
under American
Apartheid, under
Israeli Apartheid
Palestinians
experience
discrimination and
dehumanization. At
best, Palestinians
are treated as a
source of cheap
labor, at worse they
are used as target
practice by the
Israeli army. It is
from a situation of
Apartheid that Hamas
has fired rockets
into Israel.
Let me be clear, I
am not questioning
the right of Liberia
and Israel to exist.
To borrow French
philosopher René
Descartes’ phrasing,
"They colonized
therefore they
exist." I
am highlighting that
Liberia and Israel
came to exist
through occupation
and colonization
followed by
conquest. These are
not the first
nations to come into
existence by
colonization (ask
American Indians
about lands and
lives lost through
colonization!).
Furthermore, most of
the Palestinians
that I know in the
U.S. and in Sweden,
accept the
legitimacy of Israel
in-line with the
pre-1967 borders.
This is an extremely
generous gesture by
Palestinians as it
leaves them with
less than 24 percent
of historic
Palestine.
I
am
questioning the
right of displaced
peoples to establish
homelands by
dehumanizing and
forcibly displacing
the inhabitants of
the territories we
claim. I
am
questioning the
right to call the
inhabitants
"savages" or
"militants" or
"terrorists" when
they resist
colonization. I
am
questioning the
right of displaced
peoples to rewrite
history to erase the
fact that our
leaders often have
behaved like the
very oppressors from
which we have fled.
I
am
also questioning the
role of the U.S. in
this conflict. The
U.S. openly protests
and condemns the
atrocities in
Darfur, while
Palestinians were
bombed like fish in
a pond with no
possibility of
escape. The lives of
Palestinians are as
sacred as those of
all other human
beings? The silence
from U.S. leaders
during the recent
Israeli attack upon
Gaza was deafening
and murderous.
(President Obama
please break the
silence, hear the
anguish of
Palestinian
civilians, and stop
the Israeli
leadership and
Defense Forces from
engaging in the
atrocities of ethnic
cleansing against
Palestinians !!!)
Israeli leaders did
not need to wage the
war of December 27,
2008 against
Palestinians to
punish Hamas.
Instead of bombing
Gaza, Israelis
leaders could have
fought for a Truth
and Reconciliation
process and/or a
recommitment to a
two-state solution.
They could have done
so, as recently as
2005 when Ariel
Sharon facilitated
the removal of
Israeli settlements
from Gaza. But this
unilateral
withdrawal from Gaza
was followed by an
increase in Israeli
settlements on the
West Bank.
By reducing this
complicated
historical story to
the firing of
rockets by Hamas,
Israeli leaders
indicate that they
are not interested
in truth and
reconciliation, but
that they are
committed to
propaganda, more
colonial expansion,
and more
dehumanization,
death, and
destruction. Israeli
leaders reveal
horrific disrespect
for Palestinian
lives as they
repeatedly justify
their absurdly
disproportionate
militaristic
response. To the
equivalent of big
steel rocks
catapulted by Hamas
into Israeli
territory, the
Israeli response has
included at least
sixty F-16 fighter
jets, F-18 hornet
aircrafts,
sophisticatedly
destructive Hellfire
missiles, and ground
troops using
powerful tanks and
bulldozers (weaponry
and machinery made
in the U.S.A.).
I will no longer
celebrate December
27th, my
birthday, until
there is a viable
one or two-state
solution that does
not rob Palestinians
of their civil
rights and their
right to exist!
Until then, I will
mourn the deaths of
innocent civilians
(Palestinians and
Israelis) who will
never celebrate
another birthday of
their own.
--------------------------------------------
* L. Janelle Dance
Associate Professor
of Sociology
Lincoln,
Nebraska
Email:
ldance2@unl.edu