The Zionist project, whatever validity you might think that it had in terms of Jewish history and Jewish redemption, could only be accomplished at the expense of the people that had already been living in that land for a long time. And that’s been the dilemma. So that means that out of the Jewish trauma, a trauma had to be imposed on the local population. It could not have been done in any other way. Zionism granted people without a land a land without a people. But there is no land without a people.
The Palestinian people since 1929 are involved in a struggle in liberation. It’s an anti-settler colonialist struggle. And every anti-colonialist struggle has its ups and lows. Every anti-colonialist struggle has moments of glory and moments of violence. Decolonization is not a pharmaceutical process. It’s not a sterile process. It’s a messy business. And the longer the colonialism and the oppression, the more likely that the outburst would be violent and desperate in many many ways. Eliminatory policies could be genocide, ethnic cleansing or apartheid. They take different forms in different places according to capacity, historical circumstances and condition. Zionism's main idea, as a colonial ideology, is the elimination of the native or Indigenous population, the Palestinian.
There’s an Ojibwa understanding that when we die, we find ourselves on the beach of a vast lake. Here we see the footprints of those who have died before us - people who have crossed the lake, leaving the Village of the Living and journeying to the Village of the Dead. The newly dead cannot make that journey alone, however. They need help from both sides. Those in the Village of the Living must build for their dead a canoe out of love to propel out into the lake with the energy of our grief. Those in the Village of the Dead reach out and receive that canoe, using the energy of their joy to pull it towards them, celebrating the person’s arrival with the same intensity as the living mourn the person’s departure.
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