Decolonisation in Israel, Palestine and Britain
(If you’re just skipping down to read, stop and watch the great videos / listen to the songs!)
There is a life honouring, earth honouring paradigm.
It’s present in Israel. And in Palestine. And here in Britain. And there in the U.S. And all around the world. And in my own heart, and way of praying.
There is also a violent, dominant, colonial, extractive way of being and doing. It’s also present in all these places. It’s running the show right now.
Someone has to lead for peace. If the leaders can’t do it we have to step up.
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I’d like to situate myself.
I’m a Colonial Grand-daughter. My Grandfather was part of the British Administration in Malaysia, where my mother was born, the same year Israel was created.
My first husband was Jewish and I was deeply embedded in a U.S. Jewish family for 5 years. I still practice — actually I can’t right now. Until recently I still practiced Shabbat, singing the Hebrew prayers each Friday; and Hanukkah. I have a deep, tender and compassionate understanding of Jewish trauma.
I’m a political science graduate, a former member of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkely in California, a current member of South Devon Parents for Peace, and now a dual citizen UK-US.
Since October 2023, I’ve been living under a crushing weight of horror and grief; maybe you have too. My heart is broken on the daily. Every time I hold my gorgeous one year old, I think of the children who have lost their limbs, or their lives, or their parents, or who starve, and I struggle to hold the delightful little miracle in my arms, and the horrors that people just like us half way across the world are living, today, right now.
The mentality of the British Empire that partnered with Zionists to form Israel, the year my mother was born, is something I’ve spent half my life healing from. It’s broken.
If you’d like to learn more about the formation of Israel 77(ish) years ago, this is a good short radio doc series, and so is this (if you can access BBC).
So the Brits back then, and the Zionists, thought it was a good idea to plonk Israel on top of Palestine. How about we plonk Sweden on top of Britain, and we all have to move to Wales or be killed? It would be like that. Just like that. Outrageous? Completely. We would fight them off? For sure. We would hope for protection from the international community? Abso-fucking-lutely.
This violence that runs like a chain through Israeli society — that everyone goes into the military — the war after war after war; the violence with which the occupation of the remaining Palestinian territories is maintained, and the violence with which now it tries to defeat a terrorism that is rooted in the profound theft, violence, dominant settler-colonialism of Israel on top of Palestine…. that violence is terrifying. We need to heal from this, somehow.
Equally terrifying is the support flowing from the UK and the US, particularly in the form of weapons, for a genocide. Many of us ask, who are we that we do this? This can give me a fear, a numbness. When I can acknowledge those feelings, usually in community, other forms of seeing and empowerment grow.
Who are we, in the UK, that we support this violence by sending arms and so on, is a good question.
I feel that our colonial guts are strewn, bloody and painful, all over the place right now. They’ve been there this whole time — the military occupation of Palestine, for example, has been going since 1967. For anyone there under 57, it’s all they’ve known.
It’s been going on but now it’s ultra visible, there in Israel and here in the UK, and it’s been pretty visible for a while in the US.
We, this axis of colonial, extractive, violent power, we allies, who burn fossil fuels to drive our everything despite the planetary and ecological consequences; we who use empire and military dominance to get what we want from other places and other people, on our own terms. Where 1/3 of US female university students will be raped before they graduate. This taking, dominant, violent, extractive way of being and doing that has access to dominant power, and armies, and weapons, and is breaking so many of our hearts right now. This is our reality. Honestly, in the UK, I sometimes feel I live in a tyranny, between two high narrow walls of tyranny, painted prettily with signs saying “vote for me! :)”
Alongside this shitty paradigm is another one; a life honouring, earth honouring way of being and doing that is the way of most of the world. It’s illustrated for example by so many people around the world rising up in support of Palestine and Palestinian people.
The US and UK are also settler colonial countries. In the U.S., European immigrants laid a genocidal foundation for their new nation on Native American communities who had been living in sweet balance with the Earth for at least 6 millennia. And within 300 years, this way of being and doing is bringing life on earth to its brink.
Here in Britain, my own blood is a mix of indigenous Britons, Scandanvian settler colonialists (Vikings) and probably some Roman and Norman bits and bobs in there too. William the Conqueror vanquished in 1066, declared all the land and people his, made us serfs, and divded up the land to his most helpful warriors and created titles for them — Lord. Baron. Today, the Royal Family are his direct descendnts and they, along with 1% of the population — own 70% of the land and have their own house of government — the House of Lords.
So our land ownership, our political structures, are still in the shape of the historical settler colonialism of these lands — and they too are broken and in need of an update.
I really want to see Britain take responsibility for our role in creating this version of Israel. In a way I think we are taking responsibility — in coherence with this violent dominant thinking. Ok so you exist now and these nasty brown people are terrorists so yes you have a right to defend yourself and yes we will continue to supply arms.
I want to see us taking a different kind of responsibility. A kind that says, gosh we really made some mistakes. We need to make this right. We need to find ways that take care of everyone in the region. Equally.
From the river to the sea, may there be, equal rights, freedom, and dignity.
This notion of Zionism — an ethnically singular state — an apartheid state where the 2 million Palestinians within Israel have a different set of rights to the Israelis. In South Africa, the same situation was known as Apartheid. In the U.S.A and in Northern Ireland the same situation provoked the Civil Rights Movement, and 30 years of “the troubles” in Northern Ireland — which was only resolved by a politics of equal rights, written into the Good Friday Agreement. (Britain plonked ourselves on Ireland, too, among other places….)
I believe it’s time to evolve beyond treating each other this way. Like the songs at the top so inspiringly rise up in us; we can evolve beyond this. It’s time for a new way.
Or an old way.
Prior to Zionism, Jews, Muslims, Christians and others lived in Palestine.
I honour the need for Jewish people to have a safe home. I honour the need for everyone to have a safe home.
I don’t honour that Israelis need a Jewish state to be safe. I think that having a Jewish state, at such a high cost to life, makes Jewish people very unsafe.
I think Israel — and the people within it — are being used by the U.S. and UK. “Our man in the middle east.” Our military base, our ally, among the muslim countries who supply a lot of the oil we want. As Biden famously said, “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.”
I think Zionism was, is, a mistake. We need to fade out our use of fossil fuels, not get licences to drill for oil and gas in and around Gaza, while killing children to get that access.
Any map of 2 state solution, I don’t believe Israel will keep to borders or agreements. They never have yet; why would they now? Any map of 2 state solution proposals looks like an apartheid map. Muslims here. Jews there.
No.
A lot of healing will have to, in due course, happen for it to be possible. Folks forcibly dispelled historically by the creation of Isreal should be allowed to come home.
I think the new way the singers at the top sing of, is the only way.
From the river to the sea, may there be, equal rights, freedom, and dignity.
And then, there will be safety. And then, there will be peace.
To conclude I want to share this great interview with Hadar Cohen, an Arabic Jew.
