Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 19 - 25 October 2000 Issue No. 504
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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'A familiar ring'

By Gamal Nkrumah

Israel is essentially a European settler colonialist state. Black people the world over -- Africans and people of African descent -- truly understand the full implication of the term. Historically, they bore the full brunt of that evil system and gross injustice, which remains imprinted in their collective memory. The European settler colonialist state is based on the premise that the indigenous people whose land is systematically usurped are something less than human. As "sub-humans", the indigenous peoples sometimes literally become "fair game" and they were almost hunted to extinction in Australia -- hunting Aboriginals was legal and only banned in 1908. The European settler colonialist state was traditionally buttressed by brute force.

It is this ruthless denial of the humanity of the dispossessed that characterises Israel and all other European settler colonialist states. Israel is the last of a long line. Long before the creation of Israel there was the United States of America and there was also South Africa. The US was created by the systematic extermination of the indigenous population and the institutionalised enslavement of people of African descent. Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were similarly fashioned European settler colonialist states. Another was Australia, which only permitted its indigenous Aborigines the right to vote in 1976, and where, as late as the 1968 census, Aborigines were classified under "fauna".

Barely three decades ago, a "White Australia" policy was enshrined into its constitution, much in the same fashion as Israel's "Law of Return". Israel is not an aberration in our contemporary world. Israel is a European settler colonialist state in the tradition of the US and apartheid South Africa.

Africans and people of African descent sometimes resented the superior airs occasionally put on by Arab nationalists who frankly professed that their struggle was somehow more sublime. Events in the past few weeks laid bare the grim reality that the Palestinians plight is tragically reminiscent of the struggles of peoples vanquished by European settler colonialism the world over.

There are two other distinguishing features of European settler colonialist states that are especially galling. First, a cold, callous and cynical feigning of democratic credentials. Second, an equally hypocritical and self-serving over-zealous religiosity. Whether in Zionist Israel, apartheid South Africa or the Puritanism of America's early settlers, the dispossessors were always the "Chosen people" in search of freedom, justice and an idealised, albeit somewhat illusive, democracy. Israel must learn the tough lesson that, like the US, Australia and South Africa, it cannot be simultaneously ethno-religiously-based and democratic.

It is in this context that the recently-released statement by the National Coordinating Committee of the influential US-based Black Radical Congress (BRC) calling for a United Nations investigation into Israeli atrocities must be commended. The BRC has in the past issued similar statements condemning the demonisation and criminalisation of the Black poor in America. "We will fight to advance beyond capitalism, which has demolished its structural incapacity to address basic human needs worldwide and, in particular, the needs of Black people."

The BRC is especially outspoken on the international economic crisis and its implications for the Black working class in the US. It has spoken eloquently in support of gender equality and women's liberation among the oppressed classes in the US and argued vehemently against "state-sponsored and state-sanctioned terrorism", "global capitalism" and against the "deliberate trafficking in drugs and weapons in [African American ghettoes] by organised crime in league with institutions of the state such as the CIA."

The BRC statement, issued in support of the Palestinian cause, must be singled out for its frankness, spontaneity and poignancy. The statement was issued in reaction to the Israeli atrocities graphically illustrated in the international media. "These pictures, along with the picture of Israeli soldiers' and police officers' disproportionate, murderous response to Palestinian protests, are pictures we know well from the lived experiences of our own history," the BRC statement pointed out. The statement explained that, "as people of African descent living in the US, who have endured several hundred years of unpunished crimes against our humanity, abuse of our rights as human beings and as citizens," the subject of the repression of the dispossessed "has a familiar ring."

In language replete with terms popularly familiarised in the course of the struggle against white supremacy and apartheid, the BRC statement graphically illustrated the current Palestinian predicament. "Not only do the conditions of Israeli occupation remain virtually unchanged under Oslo, but meanwhile, a march toward the stillbirth of Palestine as a bantustan, surrounded by Israeli settlements and subject to the total political, economic and military control of Israel, continues unabated."

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