ABD-ELHAMEED: If you think we live in post-genocidal world, you are wrong
Column: Something to Think About
You may be able to recall learning about the late 15th century Indigenous genocide during your years in the U.S. public school system.
When learning about this genocide, there was never any dispute surrounding the abhorrence of this colonial expansion and its destruction, including the killing and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people.
Despite the fact that academics and historians only began acknowledging the depopulation of Indigenous people as a genocide in the late 20th century, we have been taught this devastating history from the stance of an evolved and non-violent society, one that has left colonialism in the past.
The despicable reality is that this "post-colonial" and "post-genocidal" society that the West, and global society as a whole, has miraculously achieved is nothing but a fantasy.
There is ample proof of genocidal intent targeted against Palestinians, and it is irrefutable.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made his intentions with Gaza explicitly clear. One of the countless, sinister messages that Netanyahu has shamelessly admitted was his comparison of Hamas to Amalek, which was "a rival nation to ancient Israel."
On October 28, Netanyahu said, "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember."
An excerpt of the Hebrew Bible says, "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them — put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."
He also admitted on Friday that Israel, with "all of its power," will continue to bombard the Gaza Strip.
For Israel, with the fourth strongest military in the world, to bombard Gaza, a region with a poverty rate of 65 percent, with "all of its power" is inexcusably genocidal intent.
Of course, these kinds of insidious statements are not spewed from just Netanyahu's mouth.
Amichai Eliyahu, Israel's Minister of Heritage, said on Sunday that Israel dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip is "an option." He proceeded to refer to Palestinians as "Nazis," saying, "There is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza."
He even admitted the Northern region of the Gaza Strip has no right to exist. As the cherry on top of these hateful claims, he also believes that anyone who waves a Palestinian flag "shouldn't continue to live on the face of the earth."
The U.S. government has always been an enthusiastic perpetrator of genocide as well. After all, the U.S. refuses to stand in the way of Netanyahu's wishes and willingly provides the Israeli government with financial and military resources.
Despite the myriad of times Israel has violated international law and committed war crimes against Palestinians, the U.S. will not be "drawing red lines for Israel."
There is a reason why during Saturday's pro-Palestine protest in Washington D.C., President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was called "Genocide Joe," among several names and chants that labeled Biden as genocidal.
Israel's intense bombings of Palestinian houses, schools, mosques, hospitals, churches and ambulances since October 7 have amounted to more than 25,000 tons of explosives, approximately 1.5 times the weight of nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
As a reminder, these 25,000 tons of bombs were achieved in the span of four weeks in a region that spans just 25 miles long and just more than 5 miles wide with a population of approximately 2.3 million people.
How can one sit here and still deny that Palestinians are being subjected to genocide?
If we can universally acknowledge that Indigenous people were undeniably subjected to genocide by European settlers in the U.S., then we must collectively acknowledge and explicitly declare that Palestinians are being subjected to genocide.
The parallels cannot and will not be dismissed. The settler colonial entities of the U.S. and Israel harbor roots in "religious fanaticism" with both Indigenous populations having suffered from forced displacement, depletion of basic necessities for survival, the extraction of the natural resources of their lands, cultural extinction, lack of political rights and ruthless ethnic cleansing, to say the least.
Ultimately, Western society has conditioned its populations to irrefutably believe that we live in a modern, democratic utopia that embodies freedom of speech and respects human rights, while the East is an embodiment of violence, restriction and backwardness.
These atrocities have been continuously justified in the name of democracy and as a calling to eliminate the "other" or the "enemy." In explicit terms, the U.S. is a settler colonial entity that was founded on violence.
The country has never abandoned its colonizer mentality as we have witnessed no such evolution to a modern, civilized and democratic state. We unequivocally facilitate the Palestinian genocide the same way we did the genocide of Indigenous people. Nothing has changed since European settlers set foot on this land centuries ago.
With the existence of the Palestinian genocide, how dare the U.S. and the West portray that we have achieved a post-colonial and post-genocidal reality?
This is not democracy. This is not a civilized society. This is not modern. And this is most certainly not freedom, because we are not free until Palestine, Congo, Yemen and Sudan are free.
Editor's Note: A previous version used the word "several" to describe the number of times Israel has violated international law. This sentence has been edited to say "myriad" instead of "several."
Naaima Abd-Elhameed is a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in journalism and media studies and minoring in Arabic and international and global studies. Her column, "Something to Think About," runs on alternate Mondays.
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