U.S. exporting ‘Indian country’ to the Holy Land

This article passed through the TUPOCC listserv. It strikes me as a biting reality-check for those in the US who understand Palestinians as nothing more than an oppositional concept. Extermination of people doesn't just happen, and those of us who live in the US rarely take pause to understand the mechanism that turned "indians" into geographical references or sports team mascots. We are so blind that we cannot even recognize that those same mechanics are turning in our midst, albeit by satellite and internet feeds.

Good Fox: Palestine: Stop the re-creation of ‘Indian country’ in the Holy Land | Indian Country Today | Opinion

As historians and scholars will remind us, Jewish people generally thrived and lived in respectful coexistence with Christians and Muslims in Palestine while they were subjected to prejudice (and far worse) in Europe and the United States. It was only during the mid-20th century that sustained violence began to occur between the populations – when the U.S. and Europe, out of their collective guilt for allowing the Shoah to happen, formed the state of Israel on top of Palestine.

This formation did not occur on empty land. Known as “Al-Nakba” (Arabic for “the Cataclysm”), this 1948 event involved the expulsion of an estimated one million Palestinians from cities and villages, massacres, torture and rape, and the destruction of nearly 500 Palestinian villages. Zionism, which activist Gabe Camacho has correctly described as synonymous with manifest destiny, is the hegemonic ideology of the colonizers in the Holy Land. And one of the ideas of Zionism/Manifest Destiny is the concept of “Indian country,” an anti-human rights activity that the U.S. exports internationally.

“Indian Country” is a U.S.-designated term for our remaining and secondary homelands; however, the term also is common in the U.S. military and colonization parlance such as when it was employed in the invasion of Vietnam or as seen in the ongoing occupation of Iraq. We see this term in action, too, in Palestine.