General Strike for Palestine
Today has been called for a day of general strike to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. The call asks for:
A)People to skip school and work.
B) Stay home and refrain from going to restaurants, stores etc.
C)Not make online purchases or any purchases.
I hope we are all taking this action together at this time.
I will continue throughout the day to share and discuss in as many avenues as possible.
Be well and in solidarity.
Reza
Terms of reference
The next post I will provide is regarding terms. Specifically:
Imperialism:
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing not only hard power (military and economic power) but also soft power (diplomatic power and cultural imperialism). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
Settler Colonialism:
Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers.
Settler colonialism is a form of exogenous domination typically organized or supported by an imperial authority. Settler colonialism contrasts with exploitation colonialism, which entails an economic policy of conquering territory to exploit its population as cheap or free labour and its natural resources as raw material. In this way, settler colonialism lasts indefinitely, except in the rare event of complete evacuation or settler decolonization.
Settler colonialism was especially prominent in the colonial empires of the European powers between the 16th and 20th centuries. The settling of Boers in South Africa, British,French, Portuguese and Spanish expansion in the Americas as well as the settlement of the Canary Islands by Castile are classical examples of settler colonialism.
The idea of settler colonialism is to have citizens of a place be relocate
Exploitation Colonialism:
Entails an economic policy of conquering territory to exploit its population as cheap or free labour and its natural resources as raw material. In this way, settler colonialism lasts indefinitely, except in the rare event of complete evacuation or settler decolonization.
Yet another explanation, which is more common in unequal exchange and world-systems theories, is that warfare and colonialism is used to assert the power of core countries, divide the world into areas with different wages or levels of development, and strengthen boundaries to limit labour mobility or the secure flow of trade. This ensures that capital can remain more mobile than labour, which allows for the extraction of super profits via unequal exchange.
It is helpful in understanding the systems we live in when we can give shape with language to the system and identify what it is doing.
Statements of Intent
Today's post is about the settler colonial states of Canada and of Israel. I will put it in terms that hopefully as Canadians can understand.
A) There was an initial imperialist period. Foreign Imperialist powers sent people initially to these lands to extend the reach and power of these home Imperialist nations in these lands. These initial settlements were framed as places for people to rest/trade/establish a home. They were initially often dispossessed people from these home nations (prisoners/religious minorities/political minorities) and so called "adventurers" looking for economic gain from engaging in economic activity in dangerous/unknown environments.
B)When these imperialist bastions were established there was a period of exploitation imperialism. What were considered exploitable resources from these imperialist bastions were completely exploited and these resources were sent to fund the home imperialist powers. It could be anything from fish/produce/furs to people and their labour.
C)When a system of economic exploitation was established a settler colonial project is undertaken. This is when the indigenous people are completely dispossessed, their right to self determination is removed and these Imperialist bastions use relocation of populations or genocide to fully occupy the lands they have built bases in and create a mirror state of the imperialist power.
Let us employ this theoretical understanding:
A)The lands of Israel/Palestine first experienced the initial state of imperialism during the first,second,third,fourth, fifth and sixth aliyahs. It should be noted that Palestinians supported these communities and were one of the only regions in the wold which welcomed the arrival of these Jewish communities in to their community as compatriots. They also envisaged them as compatriots in the resistance against Ottoman Imperialism in the region.
In Canada it is represented by the arrival of French and Scottish traders throughout the country with the establishment of trading forts throughout the country. It should be noted that these initial French/Scottish people did not heavily identify with the imperialist powers and they established many of the first Metis communities with indigenous peoples.
B)There is the exploitative imperialist state where resources of the colonial state are sent back to the Imperial motherland. This could be understood in two periods for the lands of Israel/Palestine. There is the Ottoman period when all the productive capacity of the entire region was heavily taxed and the resources (mainly agricultural) were taken by Ottoman feudal lords and invested in the Ottoman Homelands (what is today Western Turkey).
There is also the second period when this area was British Mandatory Palestine. It is during this period that resources and infrastructure was given over completely to European settlers in the region and the resources were taxed by the British (funding their colonial endeavours throughout the world).
In Canada this represents the period of Imperialism where the Hudson Bay Company was established and the fishing concessions were established on the Atlantic Coast of Canada. Furs and fish were exported to the Imperial Homeland (England/Europe) and fish resources were used to fee the large plantation economies of the Caribbean and continues on to the current day with petroleum, lumber and the resource extractive economy of modern Canada.
C)The culmination is the settler colonial stage. This is when the sovereignty of these lands is disregarded and there is a mass replacement of the people with settler colonialists. The settler colonialist (even though being used to establish an imperialist state and continue an imperialist system from these occupied lands) are almost always undesirables for the Imperial nation. They can in fact be people displaced people from adjacent lands of the Imperialist state (such as the Irish, Scottish, Ukrainian, Italian, Jewish, Christian Arab, Ashkenazi Jewish Etc people in Canada) or people considered as inferior by Imperialist power and exported to have their labor exploited (such as the multitudal global south refugees in Canada or the "Oriental", "Mizrahi", "Sephardi" and "Falasha/Beta Israel" in the lands of Israel/Palestine). It is by subsuming these identities and creating mechanisms of identity building where the minority ceases to be the other and becomes part of the Nation building colonial identity that settler colonialism succeeds.
The continued genocide and erasure of Palestinians and the continued genocide and erasure of the multitude of indigenous peoples in Canada mirror each other. Neither of these systems care for any of the people that live in them. It behooves us whether a multi generational displaced colonist, a dispossessed exploited colonial labourer or an indigenous person to fight against this system. We must not just question the imperialist system, the oppressor but the very foundations of these systems.
These systems are not reform-able, they can never represent the indigenous person nor the exploited imperialist victim. To quote Audrey Lorde "The masters tools will never dismatle the masters house" (https://collectiveliberation.org/.../Lorde_The_Masters...).
I tire of my labor being exploited year after year to kill my own. I tire of seeing myself exiled to a land where people who look like me and who share so much with me as an indigenous minority in an imperial state are turned against each other and put in juxtaposition. I tire of seeing my being existing only as the subaltern (the other, the enemy) and any call for my Humanity as violence.
I call for all of us to join together to condemn Imperialism and Colonialism. I call for us to dismantle these subaltern identities and to look at each other with love and solidarity. I call for us not to negotiate with our oppressor and to instead ally ourselves with each other and be co conspirators in our liberation.
I invite you all to join me and If you have questions about the gross and horrendous colonial violence that exist around us (and how we can organize) I would be happy to speak and share the little I know and to be accomplices in plans for our liberation.
In solidarity and love.
Reza Sebti
#FreePalestine
#FreeGaza
#FreeGazaNow
The one million plan of Ben Gurion
To continue on another day and another opportunity to share and speak. I am unsure if this is an effective platform to share and speak but nonetheless I will proceed.
There was a deeply disheartening post I recently saw in which the genocide and apartheid system of Israel/Palestine was compared to the forced displacement of Middle Eastern/North and East African Jewish communities to the lands of Israel and posited that this meant that the apartheid was justified.
I would like to first (as I do not wish to be incendiary) point out that to describe Israel/Palestine as an apartheid state is a position held by multiple international bodies (please refer to link): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid). Or more succinctly
If you do not:
A)Make your own laws
B)Issue passports
C)Have territorial integrity
D)Have an independent economy
and are not enfranchised would that not be apartheid?
It would be as if to say that the multitude of nations or the fact that we have an Indian Act in Canada that refers to indigenous nations as "Nations" somehow negates the fact that the settler colonial state of Canada controls all real aspects of indigenous life and that we are not creating an apartheid state with the reserve system.
Now that hopefully we have a clarity of terms I wish to discuss the forced displacement of the "Oriental" or "Mizrahi"Jewish person in the state of Israel. Note the widely used "Mizrahi" is equivalent to "Oriental" in its Hebrew usage and is a term to other this community from the Jewish whole.
There are a few interesting points that should be discussed. If you are familiar with non white Jewish coreligionists in the state of Israel you are aware of the deep systemic racism that they experience. Since the declaration of the State of Israel and the forced displacement of these Jewish communities to the state of Israel they have (and continue to experience) some very troubling social issues:
A)Forced Sterilization. This was used against these Jewish communities specifically. This continues to this day with the administering of injected birth control on Beta Israeli communities without consent.
B)Housing and economic discrimination:
These displaced people were kept in camps (and many continue to be) for many years. They continue to be the poorest peoples of the State of Israel (aside from those living under apartheid and non Jewish Arabs).
C)Cultural erasure:
It is quaint to imagine the Asian/African jew as a cultural contributor to the state of Israel/Palestine. And indeed some of the most relished foods and music of the state of Israel/Palestine are from these communities. It however remains a fact that there was and continues to be an erasure of their languages, history and culture in the state apparatus. Zionism is an act of erasure for these communities as it does not recognize their ethic backgrounds, cultures and languages as valid and posits these communities as a peripheral other that needs to be subsumed and erased in what is considered and modern (and ostensibly "Civilized") Hebrew and Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Civil society.
D)The widely held belief that children were kidnapped from their families and adopted out to white Jewish families. This is a contentious issue but I will include it. Whether the body of research and work makes the state of Israel culpable of this act exists I will leave to you to research and decide. There will however be more information with time as more and more work is being done around this issue.
With this in mind one would need to ask what would compel communities to immigrate to a land which actively worked at their erasure? I will endeavour to answer this with honesty. I also want to say that I will encourage you to read more from scholars from Asian and African Jewish backgrounds as I am by no means capable of covering such a huge and diverse body of experience and scholarship completely. I will endeavour to do this justice but please forgive me for any failings.
A)Poverty:
There is an antisemitic trope that equates Judaism with wealth and an idea that the community is one based in mutual aid. This would be beautiful if true but the fact remains that like all communities throughout the world the reality is not so. I am most knowledgeable about Jewish people in my own nation and related to me. They existed in every ethnic group in Iran (What could be posited as the most ethnically diverse nation in the region). Many were serfs, many were poor artisans and some were wealthy. This matches the realities across the board for the people of Iran where most people were unfree laborers (enslaved or serfs), many more were free poor (mainly artisans/craftsmen) and some were wealth.
It was commonplace to see people in such grinding poverty that they would sell their children with only the hope that in doing so the child would not starve to death. It was in this context that most of the people from Iran/Afghanistan/Kurdistan/Uzbekistan etc immigrated to the land of Israel in the early days (And during the first Aliyah from Europe as well).
B)Imperialism:
It can not be mentioned enough that Asia and Africa were Heavily impacted by Imperialism and colonialism from several nations namely:
The Ottoman Empire
The French Empire of the new Republic
The British Empire
The Russian Empire
The Portugese
The Dutch
The Italian Empire
These countries established Settler colonial empires.They committed genocides against local peoples, they ethnically cleansed large tracts of land and they exploited and enslaved the peoples of these lands. This was still ongoing when the state of Israel was created. Many of the heroes of anti colonialism and anti imperialism are Jewish members of these countries and they are heroes to their compatriots.
Some also cooperated with the colonial states and saw the creation of Israel as a natural extension of these colonial efforts and were Zionists. It should be noted however (as this will go in to the next section) that in comparison the cooperators were few in number to the resistors and champions of anti imperialism.
Most however (like all the people of the region) were not agents. They were oppressed and exploited and wished only to survive and be free. They did not have inter-sectional political understandings and to posit that a choice to survive and a choice to die is a choice at all is a falsehood.
C)Propaganda.
In its early days the Zionist project had many issues in attracting Ashkenazi Jewish Settlement. Most had no interest in Zionism and immigrated to wealthy western countries. Those that did come mostly left due to the lack of economic viability for the colony and harsh living conditions. Seeing this demographic shortfall it was decided that by whatever means necessary the Asian and African Jewish Communities should be coerced in to immigration (one million plan of the Ben Gurion).
Zionist envoys were sent to the different nations that were emerging after the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires. They were tasked with presenting a Utopian image of the state of Israel to jewish residents. They also were tasked to speak to the still colonial governments to allow the emigration of Jewish people to the land of Israel (and to encourage immigration). In some cases they fomented discord and set off false flags to create fear to encourage immigration(I am unable to link any articles but if you wish for me to direct you look up the Lavon Affair, The 1950 Baghdad Bombing and feel free to reach out to me). They also at times actively antagonized governments (see Yemen) and took Citizens covertly.
D)Antisemitism:
The post colonial,colonial and pre colonial imperialist systems of the region had Antisemitic proponents. I will again speak of Iran (of which I am most familiar) to discuss what may be the most antisemitic history in the modern middle east.
Iran is an extremely diverse country. If you were to go to Iran (and I hope and encourage you to) you will see a land that has a level of diversity that you would not imagine possible. This extended to the religious sphere. Jewish people throughout the historic period made up from 2-5% of the population of Iran. They were represented in all levels of our society. Their situation (and the situation for the multitude of religious and sectarian groups in Iran) changed with the ascension of the Safavid Dynasty. This Dynasty was founded by a group of Shia religious zealots. Their policy was of mass conversion of all Iranians to their specific sect of Islam. It was during the course of their rule that Iran went from a religious plurality to a Twelver Shia majority (today Iran is 90% Twelver Shia according to official records). Much like other Imperialist states they started their expansion first with propaganda, then with expansion through violence and when they had established a majority to gross oppression of what was now the minority.
They introduced concepts of untouchability to society (which hadn't been present since the overthrow of Zoroastrianism approximately 900 years earlier) where those that were considered the "other" were deemed ritually unclean. There were regulations put in place that those deemed unclean had to wear specific clothing to identify them so that they would not pollute others through contact. They were relegated to what was considered "unclean" work (tanning, dealing with human waste, cleaning streets etc). One of the many groups that fell under this category were the Jewish people of Iran. There was widespread social and economic pressure to convert and the 3-5% of Iranians that were Jewish came to represent only 0.5 percent of the population today.
All Iranians in the modern day are descended from these religious minorities to some degree. Shia Iranians carry both the oppressed and oppressor in their family tree and it is in large part due to this history that you can see the confessional diversity and complex emotional and psychological dissonance in our relationship with Islam.
This (and I must clarify what proceeds is theoretical and personal thesis that requires discussion) I posit is why dog whistles (social queues of oppression) can be used to turn people against each other in the context of Iranian culture and why more specifically inter community violence in Iran descends in to forced conversion/sublimation (vs genocidal killing which is common in other adjacent regions).
I theorize this is also a significant reason that the surviving practitioners of the faith were some of the first immigrants from the middle east to Israel and the people of the first Aliyahs. It is also why we have the largest remaining Jewish Community and why their Iranian ethnic identity is as much a central value of Iranian Jewish identity as is their faith (and why the majority of Iranian Jewish people do not live in Israel due to its cultural assimilation policies) and there is a level of kindness and accommodation beyond what would rationally make sense for Iranian Jews that is shown to non jewish people and their willingness to see their non Jewish compatriots still as their people even after these gross injustices.
This continued in to the 20th century and it was not until the democratic revolution of Iran (in 1904)that Jewish people had political representation. From that point on their political engagement and their contributions to political life and the shaping of modern iranian political movements could not be overstated. For such a small community their contributions have been immense, robust and diverse.
They remained a significant minority in Iran until the Islam Republic of Iran was established. Due to historic reasons (of religious oppression listed above) and the clearly anti Zionists stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran they prudently decided to immigrate for the most part (mostly to Europe and The U.S.A) but many decided to stay and they currently make up the largest Jewish community in a Muslim majority Country. The dream of return persists among the diaspora community to their homeland (as it aught to happen among first generation diaspora people).
If you have read this far you may ask why was I disheartened by this comment about the exodus of Jewish people from Muslim majority countries? I do not endeavour to give a romantic image of the Islamic Majority Countries. We experience the issues that face all post colonial and post imperialist nations. We experienced violence, enslavement, exploitation and horrendous violence. We have lived in states that have oppressed us. But to legitimize this violence and to perpetuate it (and use our family and our brothers and sisters to legitimize doing so while at the same time committing violence against them as well) is deeply troubling.
I do not hold anything against my dis empowered brother and sister and I will reiterate the choice to live or to die is not a choice at all.
I do however hold it against you whomever you are to promote apartheid with the bodies of those you oppress. It disgusts me when this was done in Iran, forcing people into untenable situations where conversion and assimilation were the only way to survive, In the U.S.A. where the Buffalo Soldier (All African American Regiments) were used against Filipino resistance fighters during their apartheid era in that country or when the labour and resources of refugees,economic migrants, minorities, indigenous people and the poor is used to fund a system which dispossesses them.
In love and solidarity
Reza
#FreePalestine
#FreeGaza
#FreeGazaNow
#christmas2023
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