The occupation deliberately committed dozens of massacres against civilians (French)
Through its crimes in Gaza, the occupation seeks to create a belief in the futility of resistance and the inevitability of acceptance of its hegemony. Employing violence in its various forms is a common colonial policy, aimed at subjugating the peoples under occupation and deterring them from waging wars of liberation.
A study entitled “Civilized Barbarism... What We Miss When We Ignore Colonial Violence,” conducted by American political science professor Paul MacDonald, and which included 193 cases of colonial war, tracked colonial violence, and showed that colonial wars were more brutal than other wars, such as civil wars and wars between states. .
The study, published on the Cambridge University website, says that, for example, three-quarters of countries in colonial wars targeted civilians, compared to less than a third of countries in wars between countries.
It also showed that colonial powers particularly harm civilians when resistors use guerrilla tactics, and when the colonial state relies on settlers or local agents to help compensate for its relative weakness.
For his part, the Iranian/Swiss historian Buda estimated in his book “Owning the World” the number of deaths in the wars of colonial expansion in the period extending from the 18th to the 20th century, at between 25 and 30 million people, 95% of whom were civilians.
Colonial behaviour
Thus, the Israeli occupation state bases its genocidal extermination of the Palestinian people on a colonial legacy extending over centuries. The United States, for example, was created as a result of a comprehensive war of extermination of the indigenous population, for which American society mobilized its economic and technological resources.
This violence has continued as a basis for the political rise of the United States to this day, as recent history documents in audio and video the killing of thousands of civilians by drone attacks in Afghanistan, the bombing and siege of Iraq following the first Gulf War, in addition to the systematic stripping and torture of detainees in the Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram detention centers.
It is known that the rise in the international standing of many European countries was based on widespread colonialism and the intellectual establishment of its various components of oppression and crime.
This includes placing racism in the form of scientific theories, as in the theory of the biological superiority of some races, in addition to dehumanizing other races, treating them like animals and putting them in cages.
Ki awareness
Another consistent policy in colonial behavior is “cauterizing” peoples’ awareness and consolidating their conviction of the heavy price of resisting occupation. An example of this behavior is France’s issuance in the early 20th century of postcards bearing pictures of its executions of rebels against its colonization of Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos -. To deter the inhabitants of the colonies from resisting, and to justify the idea of colonial violence among the French.
The colonial authorities also deliberately unleashed local agents to wreak havoc on the society under occupation, in exchange for their participation in providing occupation security. This appeared, for example, in the alliance of the American occupation of Afghanistan with warlords and drug trade barons.
In this regard, an article by Imran Fairouz on the American Prospect website details the facts of the United States’ silence regarding the phenomena of tyranny, mismanagement, torture and extrajudicial killings committed by its local allies over a period of 20 years, even though it entered the country under the pretext of spreading democracy.
Israel and the inheritance of colonialism
The Zionist movement learned the colonial lesson early, as the leader of the movement, Vladimir Jabotinsky, theorized the necessity of excessive use of force in order to impose the existence of the occupying state.
This is what Zionist behavior has been like since the Mandate era, which witnessed the formation of the Haganah, Stern and other gangs, which carried out hideous massacres against the Palestinians in several villages, and among its most famous leaders were former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin.
The Israeli occupation also carried out crimes and atrocities against civilians that accompanied all of its wars since 1948, during the suppression of the first and second intifadas, and in its wars in southern Lebanon, all the way to the successive wars it launched in the Gaza Strip.
Al-Aqsa flood
The Israeli copying of colonial thought and behavior appeared since the first days of the war that followed the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, by dehumanizing the Palestinians, as in the statements of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant following the October 7 attack, and using that as a pretext to cut off water, food, and electricity from them.
And treating them as if they were not human, by stripping their captives and putting some of them in cages.
Efforts to quell Palestinian awareness also appeared in the perpetration of dozens of massacres against civilians, in addition to the boasting of the army and Israeli officials about the extent of the destruction they caused in the Gaza Strip, which targeted everything.
While the occupation seeks to reach an agreement with political parties or families in the Gaza Strip, entrusting them with undertaking the distribution of humanitarian aid, in parallel with preventing any national efforts to organize local administration affairs, through the assassination of police officers and government officials.
This is a repetition of the experiences of employing local agents to reduce the cost of colonialism and suppress resistance.
Experiences of resilience and liberation
On the other hand, many peoples were able to confront colonial oppression and gain their freedom through policies including:
Raising the cost of colonialism, humanly, economically, and politically:
For example, in Afghanistan, the Taliban movement continued to fight for 20 continuous years, until the United States was forced to negotiate with it and then exit under the weight of this war of attrition.
The Cost of War Project at Brown University estimated the cost of the Afghanistan war to the US Treasury through 2021 at no less than $2.261 trillion, or nearly $16,000 per federal taxpayer.
These numbers do not include future health care costs for veterans in Afghanistan, nor future interest payments on money borrowed to finance the stay of American forces there.
The analysis estimates that 241,000 people were killed in the Afghanistan war, including 2,442 US military personnel, and suicides many times that number.
In addition to the killing of nearly 4,000 American contractors.
It also indicated the killing of 1,150 people, including military personnel and contractors from international coalition countries, in addition to the killing of nearly 60,000 Afghan police and army personnel.
The war resulted in the injury of nearly 40,000 Americans.
Strengthening resilience through cultural and intellectual resistance:
affirming national identity and glorifying sacrifice and martyrdom.
Insistence on resistance is considered an obstacle to the victory of the occupation, as the definition of defeat in military science, as conveyed by the military theorist Andre Bouver in his book “Introduction to Military Strategy,” is that it is “a psychological state that prevents the enemy from continuing to fight. Accordingly, the conflict takes place in reality.” On minds, before anything else.
Isolating local collaborators with the colonialists from the people and often confronting them militarily:
as in the experience of Afghanistan, Vietnam and Lebanon.
Expecting a popular consensus to resist occupation is an illusion, as there were often local agents of colonialism. Liberation is only achieved by treating them as part of it.
Source: Al Jazeera