Skip to content

MRN Presentation at the International Conference for the Call of Al Aqsa in Karbala, Iraq

PARADIGM OF WAR EMBEDDED IN COLONIAL CONTRACT OF PALESTINE

                   ZIONIST COLONIALISM AS EXTENSION OF GLOBAL ISLAMOPHOBIA

                   Dr. Ahmed Haroon Jazbhay

INTRODUCTION: COLONIALISM IN PALESTINE

  Zionist narrative posits as a war/struggle/conflict between Judaism and Islam

‘Eternal hatred myth’ – Zionist construct used to justify existence of Zionist state after Holocaust

Fear and hate-mongering tactics used to maintain a system of direct and indirect colonisation of Palestine

Started in 1948 (Nakba) – Palestinians became a present which is absent

Jewish/Zionist identity elevated to ‘whiteness’ as European compensation/guilt for the Holocaust.

Long-term consequence? Palestinian relegation to Fanonian zone of non-being as part of imperial & colonial justification of displacements, epistemicide, ethnic cleansing & settler colonialism

Structure of paper

  1) Colonial contract in Palestine within the framework paradigm of war

2) It is an oxymoron to discuss Palestinian oppression as distinct from Zionist settler colonialism

3) Palestinian socio-economic struggles because of Zionist colonialism

4) Contemporary settler colonialism utilises Islamophobic discourse of ‘war on terror’ to eliminate prospects of liberation

Paradigm of war

  • Constitutive component of the struggle against global coloniality
  • Coloniality refers to long-standing patterns of power that define culture, labour, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations
  • Coloniality of power, being and knowledge

Paradigm of War in Palestine

  • Maldonado-Torres defines paradigm of war: “way of conceiving humanity, knowledge and social relations that privileges conflict”
  • racial heirachisation of humanity, which enables the ideology of dispensable ‘other’ – Palestinians
  • since the advent of the Euro-American worldview in 1492, Muslims relegated to the category of sub-humans
  • Paradigm of war defines relationship between Palestinians and Zionist settler colonialists

PARADIGM OF WAR MANIFESTS IN 3 WAYS

1) Settler colonialism

2) socio-economic oppression

3) Islamophobia

ZIONIST SETTLER COLONIALISM

  • Myth of ‘land without people for a people without land’ informed the colonial policy of expropriating Palestinian land for the settler inhabitants by brute force and disregard
  • Settler colonialism of Palestine is a combination of Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and Jewish fundamentalism.
  • Audacious claims as “chosen people” is backed up a revisionist version of history, geography, cartography and archaeology, in so doing carefully binding identity and topography
  • Settler colonialism aims to commit genocide and destroy remaining infrastructure before constructing the new settler majority state – ‘dictatorship of the settler’.
  • “Settler colonialism is not interested in exploiting the natives, rather it attempts a totality though eradicating its negation, the existence of indigenous people, and reducing them to an invisible, a persona non grata. (Rodrigo 2015).
  • This is why settler colonial structure underpinning the subjugation of Palestinians must become the object of

SOCIO-ECONOMIC OPPRESSION

 A crucial manifestation of paradigm of war, is vast & occurs with assistance of Palestinian elites & Western powers – characteristic of colonial

  • Extracting and controlling strategic natural resources whilst relocating more settlers into colonies
  • Oslo Accords: the coloniser retained control of natural resources such as Moreover, Zionist military law continued to be applicable for Palestinians
  • Oslo: modern peace-building efforts and the building of state institutions both commence and terminate with the shared objective of spreading ‘Western’ cultural and socio-political systems.

 

ZIONIST COLONIALISM EXTENSION OF GLOBAL ISLAMOPHOBIA

  •  Islamophobic discourse of ‘othering’ is applicable to Palestinians
  • Kumar (2012, 75) contends, ‘hostility toward Arabs and Muslims was part and parcel of the Zionist program of creating an exclusively Jewish state in which all gentiles were unwelcome’
  • Islamophobia is fermented in 3 ways:

 

1) religious Zionists forward the Islamophobic prophecy that Palestinians are not just unbidden inhabitants, they are non- Jewish outcasts – God’s instructions concerning them are clear – they should be

2) Christian Zionists hold the identical interpretation. They construct most of their language about Muslims & Islam using a religious framework, suggesting that return of Holy Land to Jewish hands is a precondition to the second coming of Issa (AS)

3) Political Zionists unreservedly support Israel & harbour abhorrence for Muslims through the close relationship between the coloniser & present global hegemon, US

  • Islamophobic narrative has existed since 1897, the anti- terrorism discourse exacerbated the situation. Gained more currency in ‘war on terror’ discourse
  • ‘war on terror’ has provided a context for Israel to reiterate longstanding claims about the alleged inadequacy of international law and the nature of terrorist enemies (Palestinians)
  • The implications of such alliance between Zionist colonialism and global Islamophobia are Americans are ‘suffering’ from ‘Islamist’ terrorism, Israel is also experiencing ‘Islamist terrorism’ from Hamas and Islamic Jihad
  • Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ repositions Zionist colonialism as a deplorable but indispensable ideological project.
  • West bought into this cultural, political shift & assist the Israeli narrative that the Zionist colonisation of Palestine is necessarily violent in the face of Palestinian ‘Islamist’ terrorism
  • Anti-terrorism has been used to back up Islamophobia, imperial reason and coloniality’s justifications for the deployment of the paradigm of war and selective applications of international law
  • The struggle of the Palestinian people will continue to be condemned within the Western Islamophobic paradigm – a crucial component of the paradigm of war

 

 

CONCLUSION

  • Paradigm of war treatise indicates the fallacy of the decolonisation narrative
  • Zionist leaders use colonial framework to oppress & subjugate Palestinians using the three tactics of the paradigm of war 1) settler colonialism 2) socio-economic oppression & 3) Islamophobia
  • Zionist colonisation is proof that we are inhabitants of a modern/colonial world system that is impervious to decolonisation and de-imperialisation
Latest posts by Ahmed Jazbhay (see all)