Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Whoever controls the discourse controls emotional reactions to reality |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2023-10-25
In the Israel/Palestine history of violence and non-violence, there is ONE REALITY but have always been two stories, TWO DISCOURSES, the Palestinian story, and the Zionist story. ”The Land” :: The land of Palestine “from the river to the sea”, the land which the British Mandate governed (1920-1948), the land which Israel now controls (excluding the Golan Heights of Syria and bits of Lebanon). To repeat: in the Israel/Palestine history of violence and non-violence, there is ONE REALITY but have always been two stories, TWO DISCOURSES, the Palestinian story, and the Zionist story. People who hear only one of these stories often become emotionally (and politically) engaged with the tellers of the story they have heard. Zionists know this and use many tools to attempt to prevent the Palestinian story from being heard. The “western world” or “global north” has generally listened to, and repeated, and propagandized, and made part of its political party-lines, only the Zionist/Israeli story, and been deaf to and ignored, and refused to hear, indeed, refused to allow to be heard, the Palestinian story. There are reports of crackdowns and even death threats against pro-Palestine speech. From university disciplinary hearings to death threats, supporters of Palestinian rights are facing a wave of reprisals.(JewishCurrents). The “global south” has been more willing to hear and attend to the Palestinian discourse. Because story-telling can affect popular understanding and motivate emotional attitudes, Israel has used the “terrorist” accusation to attack both violent and non-violent resistance to the Zionist Program of erasure of Palestine. As Israel Tells It, Israeli Violence Is Always Called Self-Defense, Palestinian Violence Is Always Called Terrorism Palestinians describe the history of violence as a history of cruel terrorism, settler-colonialism and expulsion, ethnic cleansing on the part of Zionists/Israelis, and heroic resistance on the part of Palestinians. And this has been true from 1947 into the present, with the worst Zionist/Israeli violence and most heroic Palestinian resistance in 1947-1950, 1967, and 2008-2023. Israelis describe the history of violence as heroic nation-building and then defense against terrorism on their own part and terrorism on the part of their Palestinian victims. Most of the world and the mainstream media in the USA and elsewhere have mostly aligned with the Zionist/Israeli narrative, limiting their thought and story-telling to the Zionist/Israeli narrative. By using money to bribe USA’s Congress, media, and others, by foreign trade, by propaganda (Israel’s much-vaunted “hasbara”), and by the skillful deployment (“weaponization”) of the Holocaust narrative and the Antisemitism narrative, and by overwhelming military success, the Zionist/Israeli narrative has achieved supremacy over the Palestinian narrative. And since whoever controls the discourse controls the emotional reactions to the stories told, the (North American and European) world has—mostly—heard, believed, and emotionally attached itself to the Zionist/Israeli narrative and been deaf to and ignored the Palestinian narrative. Thus, since Israel controls the world’s understanding, today’s violence is described only by Israel: Israeli violence is described far and wide as “self defense” and Palestinian violence is described as “terrorism”. If the Palestinian narrative had the upper hand in the world’s ears, the Palestinian violence would be described as Palestinian resistance to Zionist/Israeli closure and siege of Gaza, settler-colonialism, terrorism, oppression, murder, torture, imprisonment without cause, seizure of land, violation of the international laws of war and other humanitarian and human rights law, apartheid, genocide (today in Gaza), etc., etc., ad nauseam, ethnic cleansing, and so forth—and Israeli violence would be described as all those things to which Palestinians are occasionally resisting with violence. Non-Violence Is Also Called Terrorism By Israel It is interesting to note that even non-violent resistance to Zionist/Israeli rule by Palestinians is called “terrorism” by Israel, so that the term “terrorism” loses all meaning while still retaining its emotional power to persuade. Here in the USA, many governments have passed laws to restrict or outlaw promotion of the Palestinian civil society’s program of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), calling BDS “antisemitic”— a response to Israel’s “weaponization” of the term “antisemitism”, robbing it of its meaning while preserving its emotionally-persuasive power. Within Israel, Israel has declared many human-rights NGOs as “terrorist organizations” because they tell the world things about Israeli rule that Israel does not want the world to be told. Similarly, the first intifada was a mostly peaceful, non-violent protest against Israeli rule in the OPTs (Occupied Palestinian Territories), but was put down by Israel with great violence, called “self-defense”, in this case, “defense” against a generally non-violent protest movement. (However, there was a great deal of stone-throwing by Palestinians, though not gunfire. Stone-throwing was treated by Israel as violence as dangerous as gunfire, and the Israeli response was deadly.) Israel Insists There Is Only One Acceptable Narrative In the news today (Oct 25, 2023), we learn: Israel says it is banning United Nations representatives from visiting the country “to teach them a lesson” after the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the 7 October attacks by Hamas had to be seen in the context of decades of occupation of the Palestinian people.reported here. One commentator put it this way: As we’ve just seen with the UN secretary-general, not even the slightest diversion from Israel’s counter-reality is permissible – lest the whole edifice come tumbling down. * * * The Secretary-General continued: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Had Guterres wanted to fill in the vacuum a little more, he could have mentioned the past 75 years of ethnic cleansing, dispossession and massacres suffered by Palestinians at the hands of Israel, which has now added forced starvation to its deadly anti-Palestinian arsenal.Al Jazeera. Evidently, Israel believes that it can—or should—constrain the UN’s discourse as well as everyone else’s. Truth be dammned, this is serious! Hasbara uber alles! In Israel’s view, no-one must be heard to truthfully describe Israel’s program of erasure of Palestine, and nothing is forbidden in Zionist efforts to enforce this silencing. Fortunately, Both Narratives Are Becoming Known world-Wide Increasingly, it is becoming known that there are two stories. Young Americans, including young Jewish Americans, are increasingly listening to the Palestinian narrative. The news reports—often with criticism, but reporting nonetheless—that a few Members of Congress are standing up for Palestine, for instance now (10/25) calling for a CEASEFIRE while the president resolutely demonizes Gazans and vetoes a ceasefire resolution in the UNSC. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Not in My Name, etc., have become an audible minority voice in the din of otherwise overwhelmingly Zionist/Israeli controlled voices. A high State Department official has recently resigned because the USA has OK’d arms shipments to Israel which are clearly not for use on defense. |
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