Geneva – The Israeli army’s execution of an elderly Palestinian after using him in a propaganda campaign promoting its “safe corridor” in Gaza was strongly condemned in a statement released by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor today.
The rights organisation expressed outrage over Israel’s incorporating the man into its attempt to cover up horrific crimes against displaced Palestinians fleeing Israeli violence in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel’s army released a photo of one of its soldiers talking to Bashir Hajji, a 79-year-old resident of Gaza City's Zaytoun neighborhood, as he travelled on Salah al-Din Road, the main route to the southern Gaza Valley. The soldier in the photo appears to be helping and protecting displaced Palestinian civilians, said Euro-Med Monitor, yet Hajji was subjected to a field execution on the morning of Friday 10 November.
The elderly man’s granddaughter, Hala Hajji, told the Euro-Med Monitor team that her grandfather was brutally executed while crossing the “safe corridor” when members of the Israeli army intentionally shot him in the head and back. She also confirmed that he is in the photo that was put out by Israel—exposing the Israeli army's dangerous practice of flagrantly fabricating stories.
Euro-Med Monitor stated that it has previously documented dozens of cases where the Israeli army executed displaced Palestinians by live bullets and, in some cases, by artillery shells. Those displaced were attempting to flee to the south of Wadi Gaza at the Israeli army’s request.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renewed its calls for the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to open an urgent independent investigation into the execution crimes to which displaced Palestinians have been and are still being subjected to, to hold those who ordered such crimes accountable, and to achieve justice for the victims.
Are you unfamiliar with bourgeoisification theory?
Basically, privileged workers within an imperial/colonial context benefit from the superprofits generated by the superexploitation of imperialized/colonized workers. In return for their loyalty to the imperial/colonial project they are rewarded with cheap commodities. Even as the privileged worker is exploited they can afford to live a comfortable lifestyle on their meager wages.
This theory then draws the connection to why the privileged work force tends to be so conservative and reactionary, especially in places like the US and Israel. The conclusion some come to, particularly Maoist-Third-Worldists, is that settlers (literally every privileged person within the imperial/colonial structure) have no revolutionary potential and should be disregarded. They're not "evil", just generally worthless.
Never heard of that term, but I know the concept. That seems like a stupid term for things that were already known.
Anyway, yeah. I'm aware people in a society don't usually question it, and instead think whatever they're in is the way things should be. "At least it isn't as bad as..." The alternative is The Great Refusal, but Marcuse also wrote about one-dimensional thinking instead of critical thought.
Is it really good to kill all descendents of colonizers because they benifit from it? Is it really good to kill all those who benifit from exploitation of cheap labor and resources? Obviously no. We would have to kill pretty much everyone alive. We'd also probably want to discount their ideas too, which would require discounting nearly all radical ideas. There would be no Marx, Engels, Proudhon, etc. left in this world.
We need to recognize exploitation and the exploited and fight to overturn it. We don't need to fight against the exploited because they didn't do enough, which probably includes all of us on this forum.
Settlers need to be decolonized too. Fanon talks about how decolonial struggle humanizes the colonized when they take back their humanity by force and humanizes the settlers by bringing them back down to Earth. We don't need to kill someone to make them human, so we probably don't need to kill all settlers.
But! All settlers need to be decolonized. I think that will require Israel being abolished and a truth-and-reconcilliation commission trying everyone directly involved in the genocide. Israelis that are willing to become Palestinians would be welcome to join a one-state multiethnic democracy. Settlers that refuse to betray Israel to become Palestinian should reconsider.
Also I must point out, it's not just being a descendent of a colonizer that bourgeoisifies the worker! It's the material relationship they have to commodity production and consumption, it's the way they continue to benefit from superexploitation in an active and direct way. This isn't just inherited guilt, it's an active ongoing crime y'know?
I agree with everything in your post. The comments above were all saying they should be killed.
The last paragraph I also agree with, but this isn't an Israel thing. Every last one of us is benefiting from the exploitation due to colonialism. Where do you think the resources that are used to build or computers/phones come from? We're all culpable to some extent in this. This doesn't make us all equally guilty or deserving of punishment (let alone death like the comments above said). Most of us are just trying to live in the system we were born into, and hopefully push things to be more equitable in the future. We can't do anything to change the past, so dwelling on that is only useful academically.
This isn't about the past! It never ended.
Some people let their hatred of settler colonialism replace their actual class analysis of the situation. I can't blame them. I cry every day listening to DemocracyNow because of this nightmare. Ultimately, though, it's important to maintain an analytical stance without letting emotions overwhelm us.
Also I'm fully in support of abolishing America too lol