Rocket Attacks on Israel

"The Rocket Attacks on Israel for Dummies" from Juan Cole

The reason Israel is taking rocket fire from Gaza is that is is an Occupying Power over Gaza and won’t let the Palestinians of that territory have the rights that accrue to citizens of a state. The Israeli military decides the fate of 4.3 million Palestinians, who are denied basic popular sovereignty. Israel has Gaza non-combatant civilians under economic blockade, preventing people from exporting most of what they make. It has destroyed the airport and won’t let the Mediterranean port function. It has deliberately made 56% of the population food insecure, i.e. a couple of paychecks away from going hungry. 

The United States isn’t behaving this way toward Quebec, or toward Mexico nowadays, whatever happened in the 19th century before we had the United Nations Charter and an attempt a crafting international law. 

It is insulting to Americans for Israel chauvinists to imply that we are just like them, that we also gleefully have a jackboot on the necks of brown peoples beyond our borders, and that we would respond with the same disregard for non-combatant life as the Israeli air force if a few mostly harmless rockets fell on our side of the border. I don’t think we’d bomb the bejesus out of Montreal over some 8th grade chemistry experiments. 

When you see that trope, know that you are not just being played. You are being assumed to be a racist and an international outlaw. It isn’t a nice comparison.  

And as with all propaganda, what would be easier than turning it around? Imagine if the Chinese occupied Alabama and strode around Birmingham armed and in Chinese military uniforms. Imagine if they started importing millions of Chinese people into Alabama. What if they disarmed the Alabamans and pushed them off the land they’d lived on for centuries, stealing water and other resources? What if, when asked by now homeless families whose houses had been confiscated or blown up, what the reason was, the Chinese replied this way? That the Native Americans were East Asians & the ones who remained behind were ancestors of the Chinese and their eastern branch that crossed the Bering Straits became the original inhabitants of Alabama, and so China’s claim much preceded that of recent immigrants from Europe? 

What do you think the people of Alabama would do to those Chinese occupiers and settlers?