The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, coupled with the accelerating ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, is the latest act in the appalling history of European colonization of non-European lands. In Gaza, this has meant overwhelmed hospitals being bombed out of existence. It has meant the destruction of virtually every school, college, university, mosque, church, clinic, and pharmacy. It has meant the intentional bombing of designated shelters and “safe” zones; the demolishing of 80% of all residential structures; the burning of tent cities; the strafing and bombing of ambulances attempting to reach the dying and injured; and the wanton murder of over 150 journalists who bravely attempted to document the slaughter. Not even the dead have been spared the sadistic orgy of violence as cemeteries have been ripped apart by bulldozers and excavators uprooting souls that in some cases have been resting peacefully for centuries.

By conservative estimates, Israel has killed over 47,000 men, women, and children in Gaza behind the mantra of a “right to defend herself.” The current campaign of murder, she claims, is justified by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. That attack resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 Israelis. Using the Zionist logic of self-defense as a justification for indiscriminate violence would not the Palestinians have a far stronger case? If 1,200 dead Israelis can justify the deaths of the 47,000 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023, how many Israelis could justifiably be killed by the Palestinians in the name of defending themselves and preserving their existence? This question is particularly poignant if we add to the 47,000 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023, the 70,000 killed by the Zionists since the events leading up to the founding of Israel until Hamas’ attack. The Zionists, their defenders and enablers would answer, none. This response demonstrates the contradictory logic of colonial violence. It deludes its perpetrators into believing that just as they have an inherent right to the land of those they have dehumanized, they have exclusive license to deny them the right to life. We will never transcend ever-deepening cycles of violence until we reject the logic informing them.

The Zionists further argue that the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Gaza are justified by the claim that Hamas is embedded in the civilian population of that tiny enclave. Therefore,to eradicate Hamas, thousands of civilians must inevitably be killed. Again, using this logic, could not an adversary of Israel claim that decimating the entire population of the Zionist state and destroying its civilian infrastructure could be justified since Israel has over 300,000 military reservists embedded in its civilian population? Were anyone to even posit the question they would surely be met with charges of antisemitism or worse. When applied to Gaza, however, this logic forms the basis of actionable policy.

As has been the case throughout Europe’s modern colonial venture, a venture that gave birth to political Zionism, the colonized, occupied, and “genocided” are not allowed to ask such questions. Questioning the logic of colonial violence is an affront to the colonizers. Only the Northern invaders can justify their violence. The invaded only have the right to submit to the colonial order, leave, or die. They have no right to resist, for resistance, even when nonviolent, is terrorism.

Furthermore, the grotesque violence of colonization is heroic. King Leopold of Belgium orchestrated the killing of upwards to 10 million indigenous people in the Congo in the span of ten short years. Until recently he was hailed as a national hero. Perhaps the emerging “Make Europe Great Again” movement will restore him to his former status. It is no coincidence that Netanyahu is using the promise of the destruction of Hamas to paint himself as a hero. If he kills a hundred thousand Palestinians in the process who cares?

Most Americans apparently do not. This should come as no surprise, however, as American history is replete with such heroes. We need look no further than Andrew Jackson, who consecrated the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous tribes east of the Mississippi River with the “Indian Removal Act” of 1830. That Act precipitated the infamous “Trail of Tears.” The river of pain and suffering those tears created flows down the slopes of the Great Smokey Mountains all the way to Gaza.

The “Indian Wars” in North America resulted in over 500 native tribes being wiped out as an estimated population of 12 million was reduced to 238,000 at the end of the 19th Century. That genocide was largely facilitated by murder, starvation, and biological warfare, smallpox being the most effective weapon. When the US military could not defeat the Plains Indians militarily, they decided to accelerate the destruction of the massive herds of bison (buffalo) that tribes such as the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and others depended on for their existence. The US government did this to starve the tribes unto reservations. That policy helped facilitate the near extinction of the buffalo. Between 1820 and 1890 over 60 million buffalo perished because of the European colonizing and settling of what had become the United States. As we have seen elsewhere, ecocide is often the handmaiden of genocide.

We can add to this US genocide, the campaigns of extinction carried out against the indigenous people of South and Central America; the extermination of the native Caribbean tribes; the physical and cultural extermination of the aboriginal population of Australia; and countless other victims of the European “civilizing” mission. That mission resulted in nearly ninety percent of the world being under direct or indirect European colonial control at the turn of the 20th Century, and that control was achieved in large part by the kind of violence we see unfolding in Gaza today.

Since America is so critical to the perpetuation of the Zionist colonial enterprise, we should note that Gaza is an example of how the “West was won.” The Zionists, by casting off the niceties expressed in the post-World War II jargon of “human rights,” a “rules-based order,” and “international law,” reveal the raw genocidal nature of European settler colonialism. They are a 21st Century manifestation of 19th Century colonial realities. The dead of Gaza are King Leopold’s Ghosts reincarnated to die again to show not just who the Zionists are, but what many of us, owing to our silence, have become.

It is fitting that President Donald J Trump should take center stage during what we hope will be the denouement of this latter-day European colonial play. Trump, with his threatened ethnic cleansing of Gaza, is the 21st Century face of American colonization. In declaring his desire to end, “decades of death, destruction, and bad luck,” he ignores the inconvenient truth that the “decades of death, destruction, and bad luck” commenced with the successive waves of Zionists occupiers coming into Palestine from Europe and was accelerated by the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. He does not mention that since 1967 those “decades of death, destruction, and bad luck” have been aided and abetted by billions of dollars of US weapons, and unwavering American diplomatic and political support. He does not note that the bad luck of the Palestinians being born in a land that a group of Europeans desire is no different from the bad luck that befell the first nations of this land, the indigenous people of Australia, the native people of the Congo, Algeria, or anywhere where millions of humans lost their lives in the face of schemes as delusional as Trump’s proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Yes, Gaza is a demolition site. The question is, “Who created it?” Not the Palestinians.

In the face of Trump’s wish to transform Gaza into a Middle East Riviera, all treaties, agreements, arrangements, and other legalities can be cast aside as quickly as the Peace Treaty with the Oglala Sioux was cast aside when gold was discovered in their sacred Black Hills. In the words of Mark Twain, “there’s gold in them thar hills.” Trump might as well proclaim, “there’s gold on them thar beaches.” If European colonial history shows us anything, it shows us that the “Art of the Steal” was perfected long before Trump.

In the end, the Palestinians, owing to their steadfastness, sacrifices, stubbornness, courage, and faith, will continue to challenge the theft of their homeland. By so doing, they will demonstrate that the strength of American and Israeli money and bombs does not possess the power to break the resolve of a determined people. God-willing, they will be the harbingers of a post-colonial world illuminated by the light of truth and justice glistening off the rubble of their demolished homes, gleaming on the blood of their martyrs. May our support for them begin to approach the strength of their resolve.

Imam Zaid Shakir

© 2025 New Islamic Directions ™

Photo Image: Buffalo Skulls

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