Seeing is believing: laws that displace and narratives that paint

Palestinian-American philosopher Edward Said posited that “successful nationalisms consign truth exclusively to themselves and relegate falsehood and inferiority to outsiders.” In other words, those in a position of power create narratives that paint all opposition as inhumane, evil, beastly. Consequently, laws that align with these portrayals legitimise the resulting violence and the displacement of indigenous populations.

Palestinians are the villains in Israel’s story.

A narrative elevated through the fiction that is the laws of Israel, which have had lasting effects on Israeli citizens regardless of their own disregard of them. Even before the genocide that began post October 7, Israel had continued to bombard and displace Palestinian citizens.

Israeli citizens remain blind to the bombing campaigns that destroyed Palestinian residences and killed thousands. They only see what they call retaliation for homemade rockets that Hamas fired. They do not see the snipers that killed over 200 Palestinians, and crippled thousands more, for protesting peacefully. They see people ‘encroaching’ on their land. But, they do not see the flames engulfing Palestinian villages in the West Bank. They see homes that are ‘rightly theirs’.

They do not see disproportionate responses. They see necessary ones. They do not see a genocide. They see their beliefs being proved. Beliefs that emanate from religious narratives. To the Jewish people, God promised the land to Abraham. Then, a series of laws, beginning in 1950, further reinforced this promise.

Beginning with the absentees property law, which was created after the Nakba, Palestinians who were expelled from the region were deemed to be ‘absentees’. Thus, they forfeited the right to their land which was subsequently seized by the Israeli state. Conversely, in the case of Jewish people, the Israeli state granted them the right to immigrate and receive automatic citizenship through the law of return. In 1953, the Land Acquisition Law was established, granting the state priority in regards to legal ownership of the ‘abandoned’ land and property, justifying to their citizens and supporters, the expropriation of Palestinian owned real estate.

The Israeli people do not see 57 years of occupation. They see the lack of the words “all” or “the” from United Nations security resolution 242. Thus, they do not see a call to withdraw from all territories occupied after the six-day war. Rather, they see the Oslo accords, which saw the Palestine Liberation Organisation recognise Israel as a legitimate state, without the same done in return, while giving them 60 per cent of the West Bank.

Now, think back to the events of October 7, from the perspective of an Israeli citizen. It was an unprovoked attack. For one to be provoked, they must feel as if they are being treated unjustly. And from the lens of an Israeli citizen, imbued with all the rhetoric one can expect to find in an echo chamber constructed by a country at war, no such injustice had been carried out.

They do not see ethnic cleansing. In fact, they do not see human rights abuses at all! For what kind of hypocrite would claim foul play, when they engage in terrorism themselves? They do not see the context. They do not see people backed in a corner, surrounded by the blood of their own from all sides. They only see savages, inherently violent, interrupting peaceful life.

That is why Israel can stomach the slaughter. And that is why the countries that support them can do so without a hint of guilt. The West see themselves in Israel. In fact, they ravaged their own Indigenous populations in a similar way. Through laws that seek to displace, and narratives that seek to paint.

Before western politicians engaged in rhetoric that framed Palestinians as a threat to “civilised” nations. Before the west conflated Palestinian resistance to an infatuation with martyrdom, categorising any opposition to Israel as the behaviour of militants and savages; They branded their own indigenous populations.

Indigenous peoples were in need of being “civilised” according to the Doctrine of Discovery, which the colonists used to justify any acts of land seizure and cultural erasure that were carried out. Indigenous peoples were ‘primitive’, unable to govern themselves, thus needing to be saved from their own incompetence. Indigenous peoples were not people. Indigenous peoples were invisible. And so their land was empty. Undiscovered.

Legislation such as The Indian Removal Act and the Dawes Act in the US, removed the ‘savages’ from their land, before dividing their remaining territory into individual allotments. Blood quantum laws ended indigenous peoples’ political sovereignty, defining who was and wasn’t considered ‘native’ based on the US government’s standards, stripping land over time from Indigenous individuals as they married non-natives.

The Indian Act in Canada expropriated Indigenous land for the development of the country, while chipping away at Indigenous peoples claims to the remaining reserves. Those who obtained higher education, as well as Indigenous women who married non-indigenous men, were stripped of the Indian status, forcing their relocation by weakening their claim to the land. Residential schools were used to erase Indigenous cultures, separate families, abuse children, all while reinforcing the ‘savage’ label that painted them as inferior.

Even today, despite the supposed multicultural utopia that Canada and America claim to be, little, if anything, has been done to support Indigenous peoples. And the west has a new target for their ‘savage’ narrative. Middle Eastern people. Muslim people.

A recent example can be seen in the west’s supposed tolerance and inclusivity for queer people. A saviour narrative was employed, that exalted white people and their nations over Muslims and their countries of origin, attributing homophobia to be a Middle Eastern creation. Such a postulation ignores the discrimination against queer youth, such as in Canada, where different age of consent laws for heterosexual and homosexual activity create the belief that homosexual activity is deviant and dangerous. But that isn’t discussed. Instead, the West celebrates its tolerance of LGBTQ rights in contrast to their racialised others.

Muslims are savages that deny humans the right to be who they are. The bastion of civilised western society that Israel is, protects human rights, by simply and harmlessly “mowing the grass”. And the US will continue to support them, to maintain their presence in the Middle East, and deny the rising speculation that they are a receding superpower in an increasingly multipolar world.

Yet, the sheer audacity of Israel to attack UN peacekeepers in Lebanon and the stark scale of their atrocities, is beginning to make even their western patrons flinch. In place of the west’s coercive mimetism that sought to erase any vestige of indigenous culture through assimilation, Israel seeks to simply and completely slaughter. But the point remains that the similarity in treatment of indigenous populations is the foundation for the West’s ability to stomach Israel’s actions.