When “settlement” is code for cultural genocide

On December 23, 2016, the 15-member United Nations Security Council took a highly controversial step by voting 14-0 (Resolution 2334) to condemn Israel’s construction of so-called “settlements” on the occupied West Bank taken after the 1967 War with its Arab neighbors. 

The UN Resolution stated that Israeli settlements constitute “a flagrant violation under international law” and said that all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, must “immediately and completely cease.”

Related:

To end the cycle of violence between Israel & Palestine, we must impose a ceasefire on blame

We must not use the past to justify surrendering to the supposed impossibilities posed by seemingly irreconcilable and intractable differences.

The United States chose to abstain, but throughout his presidency, Barack Obama had voiced the long-standing official policy of his country by designating Israeli settlements as a major impediment in any hoped-for two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then President-elect Donald Trump, on the other hand, blasted the United Nations’ vote. Trump’s proposed U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a far-right-wing lawyer, did not support a “two-state solution,” but did support Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the “settlement” program, and Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank.

When in office, Trump unilaterally declared that the Golan Heights is a literal part of Israel. Trump’s unilateral movement of the U.S. embassy to the contested city of Jerusalem increased already inflamed tensions. He unilaterally pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, and Trump’s obvious support for and collusion with Netanyahu was intended to sway the Israeli election in Netanyahu’s favor.  

Though declared illegal under international law, approximately 570,000 Israelis live in the more than 130 so-called “settlements” (a.k.a. stolen land) since the 1967 War. Approximately 475,000 Palestinians live in the West Bank and 230,000 in East Jerusalem.

Many see Israel’s “settlement” policy on the occupied West Bank in the same light as Russia’s illegal incursion into Eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, which likewise threaten political and military stability in the area and further endanger world peace.

Historian Joel Spring refers to this “cultural genocide,” as “the attempt to destroy other cultures” through forced acquiescence and assimilation to majority rule and standards. This cultural genocide works through the process of “deculturalization,” which Spring describes as “the educational process of destroying a people’s culture and replacing it with a new culture.”

An example of “cultural genocide” and “deculturalization” is evident in the case of Christian European American domination over Native Americans, whom European Americans viewed as “uncivilized,” “godless heathens,” “barbarians,” and “devil worshipers.”

White Christian European Americans deculturalized indigenous peoples through many means: confiscation of land, forced relocation, undermining of their languages, cultures, and identities, forced conversion to Christianity, and the establishment of Christian day schools and off-reservation boarding schools far away from their people.

The expansion of the republic and movement west was, in part, justified by overriding philosophical underpinnings since the American Revolution. Called “Manifest Destiny,” it was based on the belief that God intended the United States to extend its holdings and its power across the wide continent of North America over indigenous peoples from East Coast to West. The doctrine of “manifest destiny” embraced a belief in American Anglo-Saxon superiority.

“This continent,” a congressman declared, “was intended by Providence as a vast theatre on which to work out the grand experiment of Republican government, under the auspices of the Anglo-Saxon race.”

A mid-19^th century missionary wrote: “As tribes and nationals the Indians must perish and live only as men, [and should] fall in with Christian civilization that is destined to cover the earth.”

Throughout the Alaska territory, Christian missionaries, including Presbyterians, Catholics, and Moravians, vied to win converts. Simultaneously, the United States government issued laws barring Alaskan Indian ceremonies regarded as “pagan” and contrary to the spread of Christianity.

During the early years of the new republic, with its increasing population and desire for land, political leaders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson advocated that Native American lands should be obtained through treaties and purchases.

President Jefferson, in 1803, wrote a letter to then-Tennessee political leader Andrew Jackson advising him to convince Native Americans to sell their “useless” forests to the U.S. government and become farmers. Jefferson and other government leaders overlooked the fact that this style of individualized farming was contrary to Native American communitarian spiritual and cultural traditions.

Later, however, when he inhabited the White House, Jackson argued that white settlers (a pleasant term for “land thieves”) had a “right” to confiscate Native American land. Though he proposed a combination of treaties and an exchange or trade of land, he maintained that white people had a right to claim any Native American lands that were not under cultivation. Jackson recognized as the only legitimate claims for Native American lands those on which they grew crops or made other “improvements.”

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized President Jackson to confiscate Native American land east of the Mississippi River, “relocate” its former inhabitants, and exchange their former land with territory west of the River. The infamous “Trail of Tears” during Jackson’s presidency attests to the forced evacuation and redeployment of entire Native American nations during which many died of cholera, exposure to the elements, contaminated food, and other environmental hazards.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 excluded Native Americans from citizenship, considering them, paradoxically, as “domestic foreigners.” They were not accorded rights of citizenship until 1924, when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, though Asians continued to be denied naturalized citizenship status.

In addition, though Jackson founded the Democratic Party and brought greater popular control to government, as a farmer his wealth increased enormously through his enslavement of Africans, and he gave the lash to any who attempted escape.

I found a definition of “settler” as “a person who settles in an area, typically one with no or few previous inhabitants.” I would add an essential condition that for this person to settle, the area must not have prior claim by others who call it their home.

How could Columbus have discovered what would later be called “the Americas” when people lived on this land for an estimated 12,000 years after coming over the Bering Isthmus during a glacial age when sea levels dropped? How can one “discover” people who have been here so long? Actually, First Nation people discovered Columbus on their land!

We must interrogate (analyze) the concept of “settler,” of “discovery,” of “the New World” as distinguished from “the Old World.”

Say, for example, I own a house, and someone knocks on the door, walks in, pushes me outside, and claims: “I like your house, and I am now settling here. You get going on your way. Goodbye!” And he slammed the door in my face.

“Manifest Destiny,” “annexation,” and “settlements” represent different terms with similar meanings: unethical and immoral muggings and robbery of other people’s land. I fully support the United Nation’s courageous resolution.