Cognitive Dissonance and Palestine

 

 

If you don’t care what is happening in Palestine/Israel because it is not your problem, then I encourage you pay attention to it for a very different reason.

Cognitive Dissonance causes in the minds of people an inability to process certain information, because it conflicts with deeply held and cherished beliefs.

One of the reasons so many westerners struggle to see the injustices done to Palestinian people, is because our ancestors did precisely the same thing to the indigenous inhabitants of our land, and most are in denial about it.

The best example of this is in the USA. Over the course of centuries Native Americans were conquered, violently, and after all their nations, or tribes, were broken the remnant survivors were herded into reservations. These reservations are small enclaves on tiny fractions of their former land where they are given some level of independence. It's indisputable that America was conquered, though some try to deny it. However, an honest reflection of the history can only lead to such a conclusion. There's a reason many forward towns were set up close to forward military bases, or forts, which housed large cavalry detachments. Tribes were often rounded up and pushed off their land, or worse. The Americans broke almost every treaty they signed with native Americans culminating in the trail of tears, and the reservations that still exist to this day.

The reason this conquest took so long is because the native Americans were often as good or even better fighters than the Europeans, having come from a long tradition of tribal warfare. But three things sealed the victory of European Americans: numbers, the 6 shooter pistol and the repeater rifle. These three things ensured European conquest. As long as the Europeans only had muskets they made much slower progress in their movement across America.

The problem is many descendants of the conquerors don't see themselves as the beneficiaries of conquest. But they are, just as Saxons are in Britain. As many other peoples are across the world.

So, they struggle to see what is happening in Israel/Palestine as it really is: a conquest against indigenous peoples. But that is exactly what it is. As Ilan Pappe, Israeli historian and scholar, notes,

"What every colonization project primarily needs is land—in the occupied territories this was achieved only through the massive expropriation of land, deporting people from where they had lived for generations, and confining them in enclaves with difficult habitats. When you fly over the West Bank, you can see clearly the cartographic results of this policy: belts of settlements that divide the land and carve the Palestinian communities into small, isolated, and disconnected communities. The Judaization belts separate villages from villages, villages from towns, and sometime bisect a single village. This is what scholars call a geography of disaster, not least since these policies turned out to be an ecological disaster as well: drying up water sources and ruining some of the most beautiful parts of the Palestinian landscape."[1]

Palestinians have been continually herded into reservations, just as the US did to native Americans. Genetic studies prove most Palestinians have ancient DNA from at least the Bronze Age era. Remember, ancient Israel even had large Gentile populations, hence Galilee, as you know from the bible, is called Galilee of the Gentiles. Jerusalem had its Gentile quarters, and even the temple, remember, had a place for the Gentiles, called the Gentile’s Court. Gentiles were never not inhabitants of the area, and Genetic studies, history and the Bible all agree. In Ezekiel God even commanded Israel to make room for Gentiles in the distribution of the land.

Indigenous peoples being herded into reservations. It is not new. But it is a painful topic for former colonial peoples.

In Australia the remnants of these semi-reservations are still demarcated by all those roads called Boundary Road. These were the boundaries the Indigenous were not supposed to cross.

Those who are not honest about their own people's histories, but live in some kind of denial, cannot honestly evaluate the same thing happening right before their eyes, with people, like ourselves that they inherently define as the good guys. We are the good guys, they are the good guys. Good guys would not do that, ergo that's not what happened, that is not what is happening, it can’t be happening. But it did happen, is happening, and our denial of it is being revealed to be more and more dishonest as the tit for tat violence increases.

I suspect we'll come to understand more and more what is really happening as we become minorities in our own land. Only then for most people will it click: oh, it was happening, and we are heading towards our own reservations if we continue this trajectory.

As the native American told Dutton in Yellowstone, "You are the Indians now."

List of References

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[1] Ilan Pappe, 10 Myths About Israel.