They're just doing what colonizers do.
The French in Africa Image ofohr.com
Looking at Israel’s murderous, ongoing terrorism in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and beyond, it’s easy to think ‘These are the worst people in the world.’ In fact, they do horrible things, but they learned their ways from colonial powers that came before them and who still support them.
The United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, and before them Spain and Portugal have done the same things to indigenous populations that Israel does to Arabs now. Non-European countries including Japan have, too. Israel may be monster #1 in 2025, but they are part of a long tradition, and their predecessors in terror are helping them carry out their current ethnic cleansing and genocide.
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By the numbers: Belgium killed an estimated 10 -15 million people in the Congo under the rule of King Leopold, and the killing continues to this day, carried out mostly by militias paid for by mining companies.
France killed between 400,000 and one million people in Algeria, depending who you believe, them or the Algerians. They also colonized much of Africa, including 18 modern African countries, which they still economically dominate, exploit and impoverish.
According to an excellent article from the Russian Foreign Ministry, the French controlled and plundered Caribbean islands like Haiti, and Southeast Asian countries like Viet Nam and Cambodia, stopping only when thrown out in a 12 year war.
The British Empire gives France a run for its murderous money. Historians believe up to 100 million people died in India between 1880 and 1920 because of famines created by British looting of the subcontinent. The Brits also colonized North America and Australia, so the genocides there can be pinned on them, not to mention what they did to Ireland.
Germany under the Nazis killed millions of people, after genociding Namibian tribes in the early 20th Century, while their Japanese WW2 allies killed millions in China.
But neither Israel nor any European empire can outdo the United States when it comes to killing. They genocided the indigenous peoples of North America, killed millions of Africans through the slave economy, then went on to massacre indigenous people throughout Latin America and the Pacific through invasions and proxy dictators. In the 21st Century, the American ‘war on terror’ is estimated to have killed over four million Arabs, Afghans and Pakistanis, forced millions to become refugees, and created groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, which are now mass murdering other ethnic groups in Syria.
So, there have been horrible people and governments before Israel. But previous evil empires tried to present themselves as good people forced to do bad things, because the people they were fighting were subhuman. Israel does not claim to be doing good things. They throw their war crimes in the world’s face, live streaming them on Telegram, boasting about them to the media. They apparently seek to become the most feared and hated people in the world.
Why would any people violate all the principles of their own belief systems and set themselves up as monsters? Unfortunately, becoming monsters is part of the colonists’ job description.
How colonists lose their humanity
Colonists’ descent into evil starts with a drive to conquer people, exploit their labor, and take their land. Conquest is a natural urge in a competitive world of real or imagined scarcity, though most nations resist that path and try to live within their own borders.
Once people decide to conquer and displace — to become colonizers — a downward spiral sets in. They start off talking about “bringing civilization” or “modernity” to backward savages. But when people inevitably resist, they must be dealt with violently: killed, imprisoned, enslaved or driven away. Doing terrible things to regular people makes it hard to live with oneself, so colonizers learn to consider the natives subhuman, evil, or deficient in some way.
Once the natives are dehumanized, colonizers start to do even worse things to them, which requires further dehumanization and demonization. We can see in Gaza now where this leads. Apparently, it’s not enough for Israel to kill Palestinians and drive them away. They must be tortured, starved, raped, and destroyed in increasingly imaginative ways. We see Israeli leaders calling Palestinian babies ‘terrorists’ and saying Hamas is stealing flour to make bombs.
The colonizers’ club
People wonder how the countries of Europe and the white English-speaking world can give full support to an obviously genocidal apartheid state. Apart from Israel’s key role in the US-centered Empire, there is an important psychological truth here. Once you’ve become a colonizer, you never go back, because to do so would be to indict your own history and society.
Gaza Image from Vatican News
Colonizers need eternal control of the narrative to maintain their self-image. In America, over 100 years after the genocide of indigenous Americans ended, the US still identifies with colonizers like Israel and supports their crimes. The same is true for Germany, Australia, the UK, France and other colonizers. It’s a club that’s very hard to get out of. Most of the so-called ‘West’ is part of this club.
The habit of dehumanizing others is hard to break, especially when you are rewarded for it with their stolen wealth. Dehumanization becomes normalized. General George Patton, who commanded post-World War 2 camps for people displaced by the war, hit back at liberals who complained about inhuman conditions in the camps. “People of their ilk,” Patton said, “believe the displaced person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.” This racist, antisemitic monster went on to become a top general in the US army, an army now giving full support to Israel.
It seems that any group that exploits and harms another group (e.g. the rich vs. the poor, masters vs. slaves) comes to hate those they oppress and to identify with other oppressors. It’s not clear to me how this dynamic can ever end. Nazi Germany didn’t stop until the Soviet Red Army destroyed their country. Perhaps the colonizing West can be brought back to humanity by forces like the nationalist government in Burkina Faso, backed by China and Russia. But I’m afraid that can’t happen until the world does to the US, Israel, and the other colonizers what the Soviets did to Germany.
Israel won’t fall until the U.S. falls. The whole colonizer club has to go. I don’t know how, but Gaza is waking billions of people out of the 500-year long nightmare we’ve been living in. This could be the greatest social change in human history, or it could be the end of the world.
How do we help? All I can see is to keep contesting their narratives and supporting indigenous people everywhere. Always take the side of the global South. Put our bodies and reputations on the line. Don’t wait for someone else to do your part. Perhaps the world can still be healed.
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