Remember what our ancestors did to Native Americans and Indigenous populations centuries ago? This is a speedrun of that, aided with modern technologies and artificial intelligence to cause terrorism and calculated genocide and a capture of Palestinians and their homes.
In this era, instead of arrows and spears vs. guns, it’s wire-guided rockets vs. aerial strikes.
Edited to add
Fuck the more I think about it the more I see the parallels and it upsets me.
An analogous scenario would be like this:
Settler and native group don’t get along.
Tensions bubble and dissipate, fighting happens, some deals try to be worked out over decades, whatever.
Native group gets fed up and sets some huts on fire killing a few of the innocent families who had nothing to do with the conflict.
Settler group, understandably angry, vow to completely eradicate all elements of Indigenous culture.
Anything smelling of “cultural barbarism” is destroyed, families are displaced and relocated to new areas in terrible conditions.
Various tribes that were in different relationship states are indiscriminately attacked.
The goal is to eliminate the relevance of the other culture to “pressure their leaders to give up”, but in actuality the latter is left out of the goal.
Various treaties and promises are made but not fully followed through.
Looked at it this way, this conflict feels all too familiar like some repeat of history despite our shiny new “peacemaking” tools.
In case you - or anyone reading this - are unaware, the term covering the patterns you’re describing is ‘settler colonialism’. It differs from ‘exploitation colonialism’ in that it aims to not only profit from a territory, but to replace the population that is there with another population. What you describe are the logical consequences of that. I think your first two points are understating the history in Palestine/Israel, though. There was intentional displacement of the indigenous population from the start.
Thanks, that term describes it aptly. Yes, I know that area has a long long history but these events are on the next order of magnitude in recent history there.
It just kind of shocked me, from all the apologizing and reparations we pay for our past mistakes to our natives/places we settled (think Canada, US, Australia, Japan, UK, on and on), I had the naïve idea that most developed Western countries got over doing and supporting this kind of behaviour. Clearly not.
I’d hoped we come in, of course condemning what Hamas did on Oct. 7th, but put clear boundaries on what Israel as a military and their paramilitary organizations can do in retaliation, and what they cannot. When those are crossed, step in and say firmly “we don’t do that here”. Turns out we (from the North American perspective) give them carte blanche, because they’re the US’s middle east sweetheart.
To the Canadians and Americans in the room…
Remember what our ancestors did to Native Americans and Indigenous populations centuries ago? This is a speedrun of that, aided with modern technologies and artificial intelligence to cause terrorism and calculated genocide and a capture of Palestinians and their homes.
In this era, instead of arrows and spears vs. guns, it’s wire-guided rockets vs. aerial strikes.
Edited to add
Fuck the more I think about it the more I see the parallels and it upsets me.
An analogous scenario would be like this:
Looked at it this way, this conflict feels all too familiar like some repeat of history despite our shiny new “peacemaking” tools.
In case you - or anyone reading this - are unaware, the term covering the patterns you’re describing is ‘settler colonialism’. It differs from ‘exploitation colonialism’ in that it aims to not only profit from a territory, but to replace the population that is there with another population. What you describe are the logical consequences of that. I think your first two points are understating the history in Palestine/Israel, though. There was intentional displacement of the indigenous population from the start.
Thanks, that term describes it aptly. Yes, I know that area has a long long history but these events are on the next order of magnitude in recent history there.
It just kind of shocked me, from all the apologizing and reparations we pay for our past mistakes to our natives/places we settled (think Canada, US, Australia, Japan, UK, on and on), I had the naïve idea that most developed Western countries got over doing and supporting this kind of behaviour. Clearly not.
I’d hoped we come in, of course condemning what Hamas did on Oct. 7th, but put clear boundaries on what Israel as a military and their paramilitary organizations can do in retaliation, and what they cannot. When those are crossed, step in and say firmly “we don’t do that here”. Turns out we (from the North American perspective) give them carte blanche, because they’re the US’s middle east sweetheart.