Gaza and the Zionist Settler Colonial Politics of Genocide

This chapter discusses the main features of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which is made unique by the extent of the unwavering and open support it has received from the West, by its more or less continuous live coverage on social and other media, and because it shows that yesterday’s victims, or more accurately, those who claim to speak for those victims, can become today’s perpetrators. Israel’s aim is to make Gaza uninhabitable and to strip Palestinians not only of their homes and material possessions and livelihoods but also of their cultural heritage and identity. That is, to deny them their right to life and their humanity. To create a blank slate. Such calculated and deliberate cruelty (sadism) depicts racist colonial ideals and behaviour. It is also genocide for profit – from arms testing and sales by the US and Israeli military industrial complexes to villa resorts on ‘Gaza beach’. For these and other reasons, Gaza can be seen as a metaphor for struggles for freedom by peoples of the Global South, as a clash of civilisations, and as a global political watershed that could help to unify resistance against oppression. Cause for hope can be found in worldwide student protests against the genocide and in the growth of anti-Zionism among young Jews in the United States.