Decolonization is always a violent event.
– Frantz Fanon
From Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, I substituted Palestine and Palestinians for “colonized” and Israel and Israelis for “colonizers.”
For the Palestinians, to be a moralist quite plainly means silencing the arrogance of the Israelis, breaking (their) spiral of violence, in a word ejecting them from the picture. (page 9)
The Israelis are no longer interested in staying on and coexisting once the colonial context has disappeared. (page 9) (Me: it’s already happening as thousands of Israelis in the past nine months have gone back to their ancient homelands of Rockaway and Woodland Hills.)
Israel only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat. Israel’s naked violence only gives in when confronted with greater violence. (page 23) (Me: actually it doesn’t take nearly as much as Hezbollah helped Israel discover in 2006.)
Palestinians have had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now they decide to express themselves with force. In fact the Israelis have always shown them the path they should follow to liberation. (page 42)
Palestinians register the enormous gaps left in their ranks as a kind of necessary evil. Since they have decided to respond with violence, they admit the consequences. (page 50)
The work of the Israelis is to make even dreams of liberty impossible for the Palestinians. The work of Palestinians is to imagine every possible method for annihilating the Israelis. (page 50) (Me: actually years ago Hamas accepted a “hudna,” a long-term truce based on the 1967 borders.)
(Me: actually Palestinians are much better people than Israelis.)
Violence is a cleansing force. It rids Palestinians of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence. (page 51) (Me: Palestinians’ 2018-2019 Gandhian non-violent Great March of Return was met with Israeli snipers killing 223 and injuring over 9,000 others.)
Whatever gains the Palestinians make through armed or political struggle, they are not the result of Israel’s good will or goodness of heart but to the fact that it can no longer postpone such concessions. (page 92)
Toward the end of The Wretched of Earth, Fanon details the diabolical tortures inflicted on Algerians (many by doctors, of course) and elaborate brainwashing techniques utilized by the French. For this paragraph on brainwashing, there’s no need to even substitute Palestine and Palestinians for Algeria and Algerians:
Algeria is not a nation, has never been a nation, and never will be. There is no such thing as the ‘Algerian people.’ Algerian patriotism is devoid of meaning. (page 214)
The world must unite to defeat Israel. The openly ethno-supremacist and genocidal actions and comments by Israel and its supporters are what happens when Israeli war crimes and human rights violations are allowed to fester for over seven decades. Israel is as if the Nazis were allowed to survive and continue their genocidal ways. Israel must be delivered its Stalingrad.
The post Fanon Goes to Palestine first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Randy Shields.
Randy Shields | Radio Free (2024-07-04T23:23:57+00:00) Fanon Goes to Palestine. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/04/fanon-goes-to-palestine/
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