The Cheapest Land is Bought in Blood, Part 2

political effects, right. One of them is that, okay, so whose lands are you taking here?

option is to become cheap labor for Israeli capitalists. And this is another another part of the sort of self reinforcing dynamic of these engines, right, is like, you know, if if you're dealing with the population that doesn't have the means to support themselves except for you know, these these Israeli like work passes that they like, you know, like bestow upon the benited population. Like it's it makes it incredibly hard for there to be any sort of

physicist movement. And you know the other thing that David Grea was pointing out that you know, he was, I think like ahead of the curve on in a lot of ways. Is I mean, this has been happening for a long time, but the Israeli like electoral left is just gone. Israelly Labor, which is like the like Israeli Labor is the party that built Israel right, Like it was Israeli Labor guys who like pulled together this the entire Zionist coalition and like turned them in to the

engine that could actually win the war. In forty eight, Labor was outperformed by fucking Handash in the most recent election. This has happened several times. Hadash is an alliance of the Israeli communists and like left Arab nationalists. And when I say they do better, and it's not to say that Hadash is doing well, but like you know, they're both pulling at like four percent right, and Israeli labor again like has ruled is ruled Israel for like a

like a very magnificant part of his history. They are now nothing. Right, there's four percent of the vote. They have the same amount of vote as the oldest as the Israeli like and specifically I should mention this is this is the this is the like anti occupation communists.

This is another one of the sort of dynamics of settlerism that you know, this is sort of is universally true, right, this is It's not just Israel where a bunch of people who are normally leftist, a bunch of people who like you know, fought in their own liberation struggles and

get turned into just like absolutely fanatical right wingers. There are an enormous number of United Irishmen, rebels from the Rebellion of eighteen seventy eight in Ireland who go to the US and you know, wind up a bunch of these people wind up in the American Army to a bunch of these people wind up like I mean, I guess it's technically not the Indian Wars, but like a lot of these people wind up like fighting the Creeks in eighteen twelve. These people could become the front line

of settler expansion in the US. And this this happens again with like German and French like liberals and socialists who flee the crushing of the eighteen forty eight revolutions. It actually almost happened to Marx. He wound up not going to the US. But there's a lot of settlers, Like there's a lot of like of European socialists who come to the US and see all of this land and they go, oh shit, we can solve like we can solve the problems of the old world. But it is taking this land.

But you know, a lot of these people they come to the US and they're like, okay, well, so they're like the fundamental contradiction of capitalism or whatever is that, like you know, people like people, people are forced to become like, as they would literally call it, like the wage slaves of capital, right, And so these people take a bunch of just incredibly bizarre stances, Like one they're they're they're they're against the abolition of slavery because they

they're like, oh, well, if you free the slaves, these people are going to compete with us for wage labor. So either either they're pro slavery or they're like slavery the like ending slavery is the thing they can only happen with the end of capitalism, so we don't care about it. Or and this is a very common thing that this is one of them. This is i think

much closer to the Israeli dynamic. Is these people become convinced that like the you know, The problem with Europe, right is that you know, Europe is entirely ruled by either feudalist or like feudal bearerans or capitalist right and so there's no way for someone to like make like make themselves in the world, right, there there's no way for them to be independent like of the capitalist class.

But in but in the US there is because all you have to do is, you know, instead of being part of the like the industrial proletariat or whatever and getting like crushed by the Buddha capital, you can just go become a settler farmer. And this is this is one of the defining ideologies of the US, Like Abraham Lincoln talks about this, like the thing that makes the US different from Europe is that like, yeah, you can you can go be a settler, you can get your

own land. And this is something you can also trace back to the foundation of Israel. Israel is created you know, there are there are there are right wings Zionists, right, but it's also created by liberal socialist communists and even anarchists who fought the span a civil war who go to Israel become Zionists, are armed by Stalin and these people create like you know, these are the people who do the knapa.

I guess. But Jewish people who had fled programs in the early twentieth century grown up largely in New York an extremely impoverished neighborhoods, fought facism in Spain, came home, fought fatuism again in the rest of Europe after like pointing at it in nineteen thirty five and going bad, and in America going now dog were good, and then in nineteen forty one going who could have foreseen this?

And then they come in the meantime they see Stalin signing a pact with fascism, right, and they feel horribly betrayed and have to have to deal with either leaving the Communist Party or working out in their own head, how the fuck the people who kill their friends and now their friends and then they come home after the war, they're blacklisted under McCarthy and they see the nuck but happening, you know, like later on, and they they're disgusted, right

like they everything that, like every sort of like identity in group that they've had, they feel has turned against the things that they think are morally right. And they have these really difficult lives despite like pursuing what most of us would agree as in moral good throughout their lives.

Is the settlements are a big reason, you know, if you were invested in the peace process, like this is a big reason why the peace process failed was that the settlers never had any intentions of abiding by any of the treaties that were being signed by the Israelis. Right, And this is something that is true transhistorically, right. This is a dynamic you see in American history too. The US science like hundreds of treaties with like like just

incredible numbers and indigenous nations. And do you know how many of those trees I end up upholding.

gonna sort of come to. But you know, you can you can look at this treaty stuff, and you can look at the fact that you know, both the settlers and the Israeli governments like sign the Oslo Accords fully intending to do more settlements, right, And this is this is something that that like the Palestinians are watching, right, Like if you're a Palasidian, like you are watching these peace accords get signed, and then you are watching the

Israelis fucking bulldozing your house. Yeah, and and this is this is this is a thing in the US too, right. It's like everyone who signs a treaty get like, like all of the nation to sign treaties get a get a watch as the US is like oh well, actually, like no, we never had any intention of like fulfilling this, like no, We're just gonna keep exterminating you and like chasing the sort of like like shattered remnants of your

tribes like literally across the entire fucking continents. And you know, so so you can look at this from the from the perspective of the state, and you know, like like dealing dealing with the American state, Like it is well known by every day and every race that has ever had to deal with them that the white man is duplicitous in a state is built on lies, and that is only kind of a joke. Like everyone who fucking deals with the Americans just like what the fuck is

wrong with these people? Like do you like do people like not understand what an agreement is?

it too. I'm not saying like America spectrum, but fuck me, America in the last two hundred years is really setting you precedent for just like Jane has faced bullshit.

towards land seizures. It seeks to expand its base of power, it's territorial base in its economy, which leads it to push as far as it possibly can towards dispossessing the indigenous population. Now, this is also the interest of settlers, who act as a kind of extension of the state that goes beyond its normal capacity to do what it

wants to do. And you know, in the US, the human manifestation of this is Andrew Jackson, who is a man who completely illegally on multiple occasions, just like conquered Florida and you know, conquered Florida specifically. And this is one of the like a couple of things. This is what I have. I have a very good friend who talks about this a lot because they're they've they've been

studying this period immensely. You're probably not listening, but love you, Yeah, but talking about this a lot, which is that Andrew Jackson is like big part of the reason why he's going into Florida is specifically because he he wants to smash these these like indigenous like black indigenous like like Bauruin communities there. And so Jackson, you know jackx Jackson like is is like under orders not to invade Florida.

He invades Florida. Anyways, you know, we we we get were there's a very similar sort of tension between like the courts and you know, like the courts in the settler state that you have with the sort of international community in Israel now, where like the courts are like Andrew Jackson, you cannot do the trail of tears. Andrew Jackson is just like fuck you, Like we're doing the trailer of tears. We're going We're going to do a genocide.

And you know, and the thing the thing about what Jackson represents, right, is that Jackson is is the human embodiment of of all of these sort of structural like he's the human and political embodiment of all of these structural tendencies et cetera. Colonialism. Now. And one of the things that that's I think is interesting about this is that there are like all of the settler states, right, you see this in like every single one. And I'm going to talk about the US because that's the one

that like other than that I know the best. Well, I don't probably probainlays like the US better than Israel. But there are always times when this when when this the federal government tries to crack down on settlers, right, this happens like repeatedly. I mean this, And this is the thing even like like the British are like spend a lot of time trying to stop the colonists from

like moving like from moving west. And I think that there's a lot of people who like have come to believe that if they if the British had won the American Revolution, that they would have been able to stop the settlers. And no, like they wouldn't have been able to they would have been able to maybe they could have delayed it by twenty years, but no, there was there was no one has ever really been able to

stop these people. And you know, the IDF, like we talked about this a bit earlier, right, the IDEF in two thousand and five did pull Like when they pulled out of Gaza, they dragged like eight thousand center settlers

with them. But again, this is this is the dynamic to like that's incredibly familiar to anyone who studied the history of settlers in the US, is that government at tempts to control settler expansion inevitably fail when convented with the the you know, the these unstoppable twin economic and twin imperatives of the economic benefit to the settlers and also the sort of speculator, the speculative value of these

of this new land, the land speculators. But then the the other problem is the inevitable rise of the settlers themselves as the political bloc, which in the US, the man who is the champion of the settlers is Andrew Jackson. And this is you know, and when he comes into and when he starts taking power, when he starts getting power in the army, you get the conquest of Florida, and when he becomes president, you have the you have

the trailer tears and Israel. This is this is represented by Israel's overtly genocidal finance bitsiness at Betsiel Simotrich who represents the Religious Zionist Party, And uh, I'll give you all three guesses what those guys believe and if if your guesses are they are unhinged settler racists and like turbo home phobes, you're you're right on the buddy.

fucking you ain't gonna find anyone who's more genocidal towards queer people openly than this motherfucker.

And and the thing is, like these settler guys, you can't cover for them, like if you if they are on camera for longer than about thirty seconds, they start saying stuff like just the most unhinged, like We're gonna

kill all the Palestinians. They start saying like we're gonna kill every Arab, like they start talking about various and varies basically like their their their platforms that they you know they're and then this is this is so part of the reason that there are there there's a coalition of of these like of these like far right settler parties that are now backing net and Yahu. And this is this is how net and Yahu has been able

to stay out of prison. Is that he's been able to back enough, he's been able to buy off enough of these people that they're backing his government so he can stay Prime minister, so they can't charge him. But the the you know, the the concession basically for this was that these like this guy was just basically just given control of a bunch of state military power, like from the army in the West Bank. It's been given

to him in his settler fanatics. And you know, like especially since like the Hamas attack, like these, the government has been handing out guns these people like candy, yes, and they've been using it just murder Palestinians and cold blood and you know, I mean the things people do a lot, right, so sometimes they just kill people. The thing they do all the time is just in the middle of the night, like if you're if you're living in the West Bank, like a bunch of mass guys

will show up, they will break into your home. They'll beat the shit out of you, and they'll say like if you don't leave tomorrow, will kill you. And you know, sometimes those guys are settlers, like are just like non like I don't know, like non military settlers, right, they're

like settler civilians or whatever. Sometimes those guys are just like the army, and there's no fucking way to tell which one like, because again it's just a bunch of people in masks appear in the night and break into your house and start beating the shit out of you.

And these people, these are these are the people that increasingly the Israeli political system is being run by and and you can't and it is in a similar way, just the way that Andrew Jackson just like rips off this mask of sort of like New England gentility that the US had like had had under like John Adams and uh or like John Quincy Adams and like Minroe, well Monroe's I guess, like a like Minroe's like a you know, like another one of these like dignified Virginia

planter guys, and like you know, those people have do a lot of the same violence that that Jackson does. But Jackson is the guy who just rips the mask off and is just you know, this completely unhinged settler mediac who like this is the guy you killed it like just murdered a bunch of people in duels, like you know, and these are the kind of people who are who are coming to powered. Is there a right now?

And this is this is a self reinforcing dynamic because the more power these people get, right, the more they're able to, you know, just carry out genocides. And the more genocides are able to carry out, the more of that they're the more people that they were able to push into these territories that they've taken, and the more people they put in these territories, the more of the

more of these like settler fanatics there are. And this this is one of the big things that is driving the entire conflict.

it and stuff like that. They do these sort of like subtle metaphors, but like, yeah, what they want to do is to kick people out of what's called Area See, which is the majority of the West Bank, and they want to kick all the like the immediate plans, I want to kick all the people out of Area Sea and push them into just like increasingly tiny corners of

the West Bank. And presumably because again if if you listen to all of these people talk, right, it's that they talk about like Jews have the right to live in.

there's this great uh. I really love Daniel Connon the Painted Bird. It has this great line in one of his songs that goes because he's the one who did the stealing and named you as the heir whose filthiness provided you the privileges you bear. And this is this thing in the US, right, like in Israel. You know, if you're a settler on the border, right, there's no there's no escape from what you did to take this place. Right like you are you are looking down on the

people who you've like whose houses you've taken. Right in the US, we have this sort of luxury of like, wow, this happened a long time ago, Like we don't have to sort of we don't have to see the consequences.

in human history. And there's this tendency among I mean, you know, as a tendency among both both the communists and the nationalists want to sort of sanitize it, right, They want to turn it into this sort of glorious war for liberation, and like, yeah, like there are moments of like, you know, glorious anti imperialist struggle, but that war mostly was just a horror. And it's a horror not just because of the atrocities committed by the Japanese right.

The Chinese side in that war also does things that are unforgivable. And I'm not even talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki here because you know, like we as in like Chinese people, like we didn't do that right, like you know Mao, like on the one hit. It is true that when Mao found out about the nuclear eruptions, his reaction was, way, you had a third bomb and he

didn't drop it on Tokyo. But like, you know, we didn't do that, right, Like that was that was the Americans that wasn't like that wasn't like us in China. But you know, the things that I'm talking about that the Chinese side of that war did that were just unforgivable,

you know. I mean, I think the best example of it is Shangkhai Shek blew up a dam on the Yellow River, and his goal was he was trying to you know, he was trying to flood like several provinces to cut off the Japanese army and to like slow down their troop movements, right, and he slows down the troop movements, and he does it by killing four This is this is this is this is the low end estimates is that he killed four hundred thousand people. That

is a an amount of death that is unimaginable. He killed like in a single act, he killed four hundred thousand people. It is two Hiroshima and Nagasaki's And that's that's the low end estimate. Right, People, people, people fighting

against Japan, people fighting against colonialism, did unforgivable crimes. And you know, and the people of of China like never forget, like to this day, like in the provinces where like where this shit happened, like Chang Kai Shek is fucking despised, and you know, and like when when like when the Allies won the war and when China drove out the Japanese, right, like, the next thing they did was they drove out Shan Kai Shack because he was you know, because because he

had done things in that war that were so terrible that people willing to be like fuck it, Like Mao didn't fucking blow up a dam and kill four hundred thousand of US, right, you know, and so like, and this is the thing about colonial resistance is that it is the things that people do are unforgivable. Also that that word that Japan fought in China they killed twenty million of US twenty million. And this is one of these things, right where like colonialism makes monsters of us.

All suffering does not make you knowable, just makes you suffer. And so you know, again like the are like China's anti colonial freedom fighters right like fucking killed killed numbers

of like Chinese people that are it's just unimaginable. And then you know, these same freedom fighters who fought the good fighting against Japan, you know, within twenty years they're bulldozing Moss and shing John and murdering communists in Tibet, right, and they've built two, you know, after successfully repelling Japan's attempt to turn China into a settler state, they have

made two of their own. And you know, so like there's there's no I think the point that I'm trying to make here is that, you know, like anti colonial resistance is not this sort of like it doesn't look pretty. It's a fucking horror most of the time. But you also, you know, when when you're looking into like when you're looking at these wars, you have to look at the

direction in which colonization is moving. And that's you know, that's the thing that is crystal clear in Palestine, right, is you can just look at like which in which direction is is colonization moving?

the the underlying current of everything that happens. And and you know, like I don't know, like people people in anti colonial wars do things that are unforgivable and they get you know, and like often like their own people will eventually come for them one day. And also I don't.

It doesn't have to be like the violence has to be good for it to be like an inevitable consequence of violent colonialism, right that, like it sparks violent decolonization movements, and it doesn't imply like a moral like goodness to the individual acts. It's just an inevitable consequence of people fighting against colonalism in the only way that that colonialism kind of leaves for them, I guess, yeah.

lot of indigenous groups. Is that like you know, like like bye bye bye by by the time the trail of cheers is happening, like the Cherokee or like have adopted chattel slavery, like like American style plantation chattel slavery, and that fucking sucks, right It's like it being in contact with these settler empires like brings out the worst

in everyone, mm hmm. And there's no winning from that position, right, like the best I don't even know if it's the best case stereo, Like I guess occasionally you get like an Algeria where you know, they kill it off people and like the other Algeria, like you know, the settlers in Algeria all like went back to France. But that's not an option in Israel, right like, and we wouldn't you wouldn't want it to be a solution either, So I don't know. It's one of these I don't know.

It's one of the sort of dilemmas of how you deal with a.

fearing if the sky is going to kill them in Gaza, right, like this will happen for generations to come because you've emotionally scarred field children.

people kept killing them. Like I say this every time we talk about guards, but say again, Like when we were talking to the PK guys of guys and I've known them for a few years, Like one of them was telling me about how they used to do sleepover camps for kids there so the kids could learn parkour and not have to pay for the travel and like you know, take their time and risk to travel, so

they do sleep over camps in the summertime. And he was explained to me like it was the most normal thing in the world that the six eight year old children would wake up at night with night terror screaming because they thought they were being bombed, because they are having like a flashback from being bombed, I guess, And like that's something I recognized from from PTSD, from from you know, other texts, but like it really fucks me up that an eight year old child is like we

can't expect these people to like develop into come by us singing like peace activists, like that they they have taken on massive amounts of trawl where they've seen the neighbors and families die, Like it doesn't mean that we have to be like, oh, well, like violence is going to happen like that we should do everything we can to make a world where like people aren't killing and dying there because it will always result in more of

the least empowered people dying. But it's something that I think a lot of us are so far detached from that I think is as like, you know, if you lived a whole lot in the United States relative safety and prosperity, it's it's hard for you to understand, I.

but you continue with your life. But if you're never home and you're never so or your home is never safe, that's something I can't understand, right, That's something that I haven't experienced, and very very few of us probably.

palestign is. So yeah, yeah, this is but and and the problem is if we don't right the self, the mutually self reinforcing dynamics of Seidler colonialism are just going to keep like carrying on and keep spiraling on. And this is going to go on until everyone is dead or everyone is gone.

and maybe that will make a difference. Maybe it won't, but like, at least if it makes someone understand that you're kind of standing with them in a moment of darkness, and maybe that helps them in a way.

maybe follow that shouldn't happen anywhere. It shouldn't happen into Gray, and it shouldn't happen in Kurdistan, it shouldn't happen to the ra hinge of people, and like, yeah, try try and extend that. It's not to scold people, like if you weren't in the streets in twenty seventeen, fuck you, Like it's it's just to say that, like we've all had a window opened, even with every fucking attempt to shut that window, right, like but cutting off the internet

to Gaza, et cetera. This has been the most photographed ethnic cleansing, whatever you want to call it, in probably in human history. We're seeing more of it than we've en't seen before, a lot of it in certain ways or fucking footage and video games, past office, real life. But we're still seeing it, and we're still bearing witness to it to a limited degree. Right We're not seeing

it in the sense people seeing it firsthand. And I'd encourage people to like remember this moment and the shock and the terrible things that you felt, and like to not forget that next time you hear about something happening, because, like anywhere has happened, it's a tragedy. In anywhere it happens, we should do everything we can to stop it.