This is the sixth in a series of statements the FPA is issuing daily on the ongoing Gaza massacre that has entered its sixth day. As of the time of writing this statement, at least 414 Palestinians have been murdered and more than 2,070 have been injured. The FPA calls on all to intensify their opposition to this fascistic Zionist massacre.
We call on our community to make a special effort to join the various protests planned tomorrow, Friday, throughout the United States. We especially call on our people to join the march in Washington, DC, on January 2, called for by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, MAS Freedom, and the National Council of Arab Americans. By marching from the Israeli embassy to the Egyptian embassy, both located at the doorsteps of the White House and in the backyard of the Pentagon, this march will focus direct attention on the complicity between the US, Israel and Arab regimes in attempting to destroy the Palestinian people and transform their national aspiration into an obedient Bantustan.
In Washington, D.C., there will be a protest on January 2, 2009. Gather at 3:30 pm at the Israeli Embassy (3514 International Dr NW) and march to the Egyptian Embassy (3521 International Ct. NW). (Red Line Metro to UDC/Van Ness.)
This systematic and unrelenting bombings of the besieged and impoverished 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of whom are refugees, smack of an orchestrated genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. It is the latest installment of a colonial conquest that spans the full 100 years of the 20th Century. Starting with the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, thus far the Palestinian people have endured 111 years of settler colonialism of the ugliest type, including 60 years of dispossession and exile since the Nakba of 1948. Under the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land,” Zionists joined the likes of Cecil Rhodes, Jan Smuts, Louis Botha, and others in forging settler schemes with western colonial powers to establish bridgeheads in various areas of the globe.
As is typical of all settler colonists, the wholesale removal of the indigenous population is a prerequisite to forming the sought-after functionary polity (the Palestinian Authority). For example, this was the case throughout Africa. Who else but settler colonists that trafficked millions of Africans in slave trades and also obliterated the indigenous people of the Americas and Australia, to name only two examples? The difference in the case of Palestine is that it is taking place today, in modern time, and is being televised live to every living room in the four corners of the globe.
The Gaza Strip massacre, and all those that preceded it including Deir Yasin, Qibya, Sabra and Shatila, Qana, Janin, and many more, could be renamed with any of the massacres against any of the native people that fell victim to colonial conquest. The Palestinian people are today’s Sioux and Cheyenne, and are the Zulus and Xhosas. Consider, for example how the only place where Israel and Zionism find significant support is in the US (the primary imperial power of today), and in Western Europe, the birthplace of modern colonialism and Zionism. Nowhere in the decolonized world does Zionism have any popular support – none whatsoever. In fact, it is accurately understood as a hateful racist colonial ideology that found alliances with the Apartheid regime and the neo-colonists of Central America, such as the Contras and the Death Squads of El Salvador.
Just as indigenous people worldwide have been demonized as the ones responsible for their very own destruction, so are the Palestinians today. In fact, the language of dehumanization remains the same that Palestinians do not value life and that they are savages and uncivilized. Blaming the victim is part and parcel of the “White man’s burden” to “civilize”, “conquer”, and “enlighten” the Other, even if by force and even if enlightenment results in wholesale obliteration.
In order to be able to carry out its conquest, as has been repeatedly done by Western colonists, it is imperative for the US and Israel to neutralize any emerging resistance and suffocate its cultural and political breathing space – hence the deadly blockade on and ongoing massacre in the Gaza Strip. But completing the assault also requires a local extension of complicit functionaries and collaborators. Such is the role played by the Arab regimes, Abu Mazen, and their protégés. Opposing this deadly colonial adventure therefore requires that we oppose all of its tentacles, in all of its forms, and no matter how well-disguised it maybe.
It is a moral duty to stand firm against this new campaign of colonial ethnic cleansing, as it is nothing but an extension of the very oppressive colonial forces that has destroyed so many people before.
The Free Palestine Alliance, USA
January 1, 2009
