[R-G] "There are Colonists" (a reply on Gaza and colonialism)

[Ivan D. Drury]

"There are Colonists"
A reply to Avishai Ehrlich's essay: Stop the War, January 2009 

Ivan Drury

“There are neither good nor bad colonists: there are colonists. Some of them reject their objective reality: carried along by the colonial apparatus, they do each day, in deed, what they condemn in their dreams, and each of their acts contribute to maintaining oppression.” 

- Jean-Paul Sartre, Introduction to Albert Memmi's “The Colonizer and the Colonized”


In a collection of essays, Colonialism and Neocolonialism, published for the first time in English in 2001, Jean-Paul Sartre deals with colonialism as a system of dominance and domination. He argues that, like Marx's proletariat, colonized people too carry inside of them the secret of the destruction of the system that oppresses them. He argues, “when a people's only remaining option is in choosing how to die, when they have received from their oppressors only one gift – despair – what have they got to lose? Their misery will become their courage; they will turn the eternal rejection that colonization confronts them with into an absolute rejection of colonization.” 

I'd like to compare Sartre's collection of essays, directed against the French colonialists in Algeria, with a article written in the face of the January 2009 Israeli siege on Gaza by an Israeli colonist in Palestine, Avishai Ehrlich. This article, "Stop the War Now" [http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet178.html] was published by Socialist Project (SP), a publication that I maintain friendly association with in Canada. I understand that this article was published because, even if the editors of SP do not wholeheartedly endorse it, they see some merit in it – perhaps because it was written by an Israeli colonist who has been active in the Peace movement in Israel for some decades. In general I agree with this approach, but I find no redeeming merits in this particular article. In my opinion, it stands in the Zionist camp that seeks to contain the Palestinian resistance and broker a “Peace” on terms of maintenance of the Zionist colonial
 project. It is important to recognize that SP regularly publishes a range of decidedly anti-Zionist articles about Palestine and about Israel – the article by Ehrlich stands out as an exception. (...)

//continued here: 
http://www.antiimperialista.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5973&Itemid=150
<http://www.antiimperialista.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5973&Itemid=150>
or here:
http://ivandrury.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/colon/
<http://ivandrury.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/colon/>


      __________________________________________________________________
Instant Messaging, free SMS, sharing photos and more... Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger at http://ca.beta.messenger.yahoo.com/