Response to Rakesh Unnikrishnan – Settler Colonialism – Part 2

Welcome all, this is a second part to my critique on Rakesh Unnikrishnan’s fb post on Settler colonial analysis of Israel Palestine issue. For those who want to read part 1, go here

Response to Rakesh Unnikrishnan – Settler Colonialism – Part 1

Rakesh Unnikrishnan’s fb post can be found here

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1PgAXBwfJA/

Before I move forward with my criticisms, I want to share something that I noticed. Rakesh Unnikrishnan’s Fb post has stark similarities with another article that one of my friends shared with me

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/how-settler-colonialism-colonized-universities/679514/

This I believe is from the same author that Rakesh mentions in his post – Adam Kirsch. This is one thing that surprises me on how the “freethinker” community operates in Kerala. Rather than referring the works of sociologists or historians who do decades of research on specific social issues why do people(especially freethinkers) refer works of poets like Adam Kirsch. I am not saying that poets are never right or are not important, but in serious issues like Israel and Palestine why are we not referring works of academia whose job is to seriously research, collect data, and do quality debates in an attempt to bring quality view point on an issue. The whole purpose of these institutions is to get a good understanding on complex issues which a common man would not get otherwise referring independent people .
Anyway, it is just my personal opinion that when enough research has been done on specific social issues, we should form our opinions from good sources. Irrespective of this, I am going to respond to the arguments raised by Mr. Rakesh Unnikrishnan’s post here.

On the term “Indigenous”

The author raises this in his post

ഏറ്റവും വലിയ വിരോധാഭാസം, പലസ്തീനിലെ തദ്ദേശീയരായ ജനങ്ങൾ പലസ്‌തീനികൾ തന്നെയാണെന്ന് കുടിയേറ്റ കൊളോണിയലിസത്തിൻ്റെ പ്രയോക്താക്കൾ ശഠിക്കുന്നതാണ്. ഒരു മത വിശ്വാസത്തിന്റെ അടിസ്ഥാനത്തിലാണെങ്കിലും ജൂതർ, അവരാണ് ഇസ്രായേൽ ദേശത്തെ ആദ്യം വന്ന തദ്ദേശീയരായ ആളുകൾ എന്ന് കരുതുന്നുണ്ട്. പല ജനങ്ങളുടെയും സൃഷ്ടി മിഥ്യാധാരണകൾക്ക് വിരുദ്ധമായി, അക്ഷരാർത്ഥത്തിൽ സ്വന്തം മണ്ണിൽ നിന്ന് ഉയർന്നു വന്ന തദ്ദേശീയരായ ഒരു മനുഷ്യസമൂഹവും ഇല്ല. ജനിതകവും പാലിയൻ്റോളജിക്കൽ തെളിവുകളും സൂചിപ്പിക്കുന്നത് ഹോമോ സാപ്പിയൻസ് ആഫ്രിക്കയിൽ നിന്ന് കുടിയേറിത്തുടങ്ങി പതിനായിരക്കണക്കിന് വർഷങ്ങളെടുത്തു ക്രമേണ ലോകമെമ്പാടും വ്യാപിച്ചു. തദ്ദേശീയരായ അമേരിക്കക്കാരുടെയും ഓസ്‌ട്രേലിയയിലെ അബൊറിജിനുകളുടെയും പൂർവികർ കുടിയേറി വന്നവർ തന്നെയാണ്.

This is another common argument that usually comes up from the pro-Israeli narratives.

The argument tries to challenge the Indigenous status which is given to Palestinian people. It uses a variety of techniques. Sometimes it invokes religion and says – “Our book claims so hence we are the indigenous people”. Sometimes people use science to say – “Oh well, as per biology, guess what ? we are homo sapiens and we all migrated from Africa. Isn’t it wonderful ?. Therefore, you know what? Palestinians cannot be indigenous community”

The problem with such arguments is I would say non familiarity with the word “തദ്ദേശീയരായ” or indigenous. The framework with which the critics look at the term indigenous is leading to irrational conclusions.

Often the term Indigenous is used synonymously with “Who came here first”. This is a gross misunderstanding that is spread among the common public. We had done a similar video addressing this topic earlier

I would quickly summarize the point here again- The term Indigenous doesn’t mean who came first.

It just means which community had a historical continuity on a piece of land before a colonial power came into picture.

This is the same definition taken by United nations¹:

Unesco :

This is what even wikipedia (not that hard to find source ) has to say on indigenous

Now notice the common attributes we see in the above all definitions.
It is historical continuity and the presence of a colonial power. In short – Indigenous status is not about who came first. Neither is it about which groups have common ancestors. Yes- it is correct that a basic biology class will tell us that all humans share common ancestors.

But I am sure even the author agrees that this point will be secondary when we are discussing the human rights issues when Britishers colonized India

The indigenous status is about which community had a historical continuity when a colonial power came into existence in the said region.

In case of Israel Palestine, the question to be asked is when the Israel colonial regime started- which group has the historical continuity.?

Surely, it is the Palestinian people who lived there for generations. Not the majority of Jews who lived for generations in Europe and other parts of the world. It is thus just a logical entailment that Palestinian people are the indigenous people

And people who have studied on Indigenous status have always said this – the status of Indigenous is like a husband wife relation. You get the status of husband when there is a wife. Similarly, you get an indigenous status when there is a dominant colonial power which oppresses you. Again – I am not saying that wife oppresses husband or vice versa, the point to be noted is that such status always exist only in relation to other entities. If there is no dominant power which oppresses you, the indigenous status is meaningless. It can be better understood with an example

Let’s say some community from Africa colonizes India in the future, the questions like who came here first or which common ancestor has what similarity are not even worth the consideration from a human rights perspective. We, the people of India, have a long historical continuity in this land we should be given the indigenous status.

The funny thing is even the Zionists didn’t hesitate to call Palestine people as the native people². The settlers who came to inhabit the land didn’t have any doubt on calling Palestinian people as native.

With so much evidence on this side questioning the indigenous status of Palestine doesn’t hold water.

Only if there is a “Genocide”

Mr. Rakesh continues

യൂറോപ്യൻ സെറ്റിൽമെൻ്റ് ഓസ്‌ട്രേലിയിലും അമേരിക്കയിലും തദ്ദേശീയ ജനസംഖ്യയുടെ നാശത്തിലേക്ക് നയിച്ചു. ഇസ്രായേൽ ഒരു കുടിയേറ്റ കൊളോണിയൽ രാഷ്ട്രമാണെങ്കിൽ, പലസ്‌തീൻ ജനതയുടെ വംശഹത്യ, പ്രത്യയശാസ്ത്രപരമായി അനിവാര്യമായേനേ. പക്ഷേ അങ്ങനെ സംഭവിക്കുന്നില്ല എന്ന് കാണാം

This argument says that

If Israel is a settler colonial project, then we should see genocide of Palestinian people
We don’t see genocide of Palestinian people
Hence Israel is not a settler colonial project.

Let’s see if any of those points are true

If Israel is a settler colonial project, then we should see genocide of Palestinian people

This argument assumes that genocide is a necessary condition for a country to be a settler colonial project. This is simply false – for settler colonial project – the intention of settlers is to replace the indigenous society with the society of settlers. To do that, all they need is to transfer the indigenous people.

The very possibility of a settler project– a collective sovereign
displacement– is premised on what historian of the “Angloworld”
James Belich has defined as “mass transfer”, the capacity of shift
ing substantial clusters of peoples across oceans and mountain
ranges³

And we can do multiple types of transfers. Some of them are listed below

Necropolitical transfer: when the indigenous communities are
militarily liquidated

Ethnic transfer: when indigenous communities are forcibly
deported, either within or without the territory claimed or con
trolled by the settler entity. . Examples of this type of transfer are the forced removal
of Cherokees from Georgia, and the expulsion of Palestinians from
their homes during the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948.

Transfer by conceptual displacement: when indigenous peoples
are not considered indigenous to the land and are therefore perceived
as exogenous. Indigenous South Africans could therefore become “foreign
natives” and “Africans”. Similarly, Palestinians and Algerians could
become “Arabs”.

Civilisational transfer : when indigenous peoples in their sup
posed traditional form are represented as putative settlers. The
already mentioned New Zealand tradition representing Maori as
“Aryans” and French representations of the Algerian Kabyles empha
sising, in contradistinction against local Arabs, their independence,
sedentarism, secularism, and democratic social organisation are
examples of this type of transfer

Perception transfer: when indigenous peoples are disavowed in
a variety of ways and their actual presence is not registered. Examples of a systematic propensity to “empty” the landscape of its original inhabitants are
ubiquitous: indigenous people are not seen, they lurk in thickets;
ultimately, even if they were around, they may have been wiped
out by a variety of what the Massachusetts Puritans called Prov
idence’s “wonderful preparation”

Transfer by accounting: when indigenous people are counted
out of existence. It is indeed significant that both the United States and Australian
constitutional texts explicitly ruled out the possibility of including
indigenous peoples within the national census

We can find more types of transfers here along with examples that happened in many settler colonies⁴

So a genocide is not necessary to categorise a regime as a settler colonial one. Setting up of structures that enables these kind of transfers are enough to say that the settlers are indeed trying to displace the indigenous community. They have a variety of ways to do this.

May be the settlers will attack some land. They might say that this land was empty and uninhabited. They might claim that there were no indigenous people here to begin with. They might bring in people from other countries and let them stay in places where indigenous people used to live. They might force people to move to an open jail with bare minimum resources and land, and control water, electricity, airspace and challenge basic sovereign rights . They might do carpet bombing to those areas saying there are too many terrorists in this area that we had to kill around 13000 children to clean the area.
I assume we all should have got the point by now .

Israel is not committing genocide. ?

There are many reasons to deny this claim. According to the United nations, genocide is

a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group, in whole or in part⁵

Do we have any sound argument to argue that acts of Israel do not come under this definition?

According to an article titled “Rights expert finds ‘reasonable grounds’ genocide is being committed in Gaza”

“Following nearly six months of unrelenting Israeli assault on occupied Gaza, it is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of, and to present my findings,” she said. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.” ⁶

The article further says

Citing international law, Ms. Albanese explained that genocide is defined as a specific set of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

“Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent: causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group,” she said.

Furthermore, “the genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians,” she continued.

Can we reject this with claims like – “Human rights experts don’t know much about Genocide better than Adam Kirsch”?

According to another article titled – Genocide in Gaza and the Politics of False Equivalencies

The International Court of Justice reinforced South Africa’s claim, however tempered, that Israel is waging genocide and must ‘take all measures within its power’ to uphold its obligations under Article II of the Genocide Convention (CBC News, 2024)⁷.

Can we reject this is a left conspiracy.

According to another article written by
Muhannad Ayyash

Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada.

It is now clear that Israel is engaging in a genocide of the Palestinian people⁸

Can we reject this by saying that this a muslim sociologist or the article is in Al Jazeera hence not credible.

Jewish historian Ilan Pappe has warned that Israel may extend its genocidal actions from Gaza to the West Bank unless Western powers reconsider their pro-Zionist policies.

“What Israel commits in the Gaza Strip is genocide by all legal definitions,”.⁹

What shall we say to this ? Can we reject this by labelling Ilan Pappe as a jewish traitor.?

Craig Mokhiber wrote this in his resignation letter to the UN

As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate¹⁰

According to Jeff Halper another Jewish Anthropologist

Our job is to re-focus attention to the genocide and what is happening in the West Bank. A re-framing is needed because this is not about Israel’s need to defend itself. This is Israel pursuing its settler colonial agenda. Under international law, Palestinians have every right to defend themselves as they fight for their own rights

According to latest reports, around 43 percent of the total dead in Gaza are children.

over 9000 people are injured. Hence we don’t have any rational standpoint to say that Israel is not committing a genocide.

The scholars from Jewish side, the news reports from Gaza, The UN human rights experts, International Court of Justice , countless academic papers all agree that things happening in Gaza is an example of genocide

If still these won’t consider as genocide- what are the standards that we could set for a genocide ?

What about others ?

Mr. Rakesh continues with the point that

2011 മുതൽ നടക്കുന്ന സിറിയൻ ആഭ്യന്തര യുദ്ധത്തിൽ ആറ് ലക്ഷം മനുഷ്യർ കൊല്ലപ്പെട്ടു. ഈ ക്രൂരതകൾ ഒരിക്കലും വംശീയഹത്യകളായി മുദ്രകുത്തപ്പെടുന്നില്ല. 2023-ൽ മാത്രമാണ് സിറിയയുടെ ഏകാധിപതിയായ ബാഷർ അൽ അസദിനെതിരെ അന്താരാഷ്ട്ര നീതിന്യായ കോടതി കുറ്റം ചുമത്തിയത്, അതും വംശീയഹത്യ കുറ്റം അല്ല, പകരം മൂന്നാം മുറ പീഡനങ്ങൾ നടത്തുന്നു എന്ന കുറ്റം മാത്രമാണ്

I am not sure about this argument is trying to do but it seems like a case of whatboutery.

Either the conflict in Syria is a genocide or it’s not. Either way, how does that prove whatever happening in Gaza is not a genocide ?

Does proving what happened in Syria changes the status of what is happening in Gaza? If yes – how ?

On the other hand I can see multiple articles articulating the genocide case of Syria¹¹¹²¹³.

So the claim that attrocities in Syria are never labelled as genocide is false. Not only that , the status of Syrian crisis doesn’t negate the genocidal events in Gaza

Some students believe some things so it is bad ?

Mr. Rakesh further says

ഇന്നത്തെ പല വിദ്യാർത്ഥികളും ഒക്ടോബർ 7 -ലെ ജൂതരുടെ കൂട്ടക്കൊല ആഘോഷിക്കുകയും കോളേജിൽ വെച്ച് അവരുടെ ജൂതരായ സമപ്രായക്കാരെ ശല്യം ചെയ്യുകയും അതിൽ ലജ്ജിക്കാതെ ഇരിക്കുകയും ചെയ്യാറാറുണ്ട്. കാലാകാലങ്ങളിലായി ജൂതരെ പീഡിപ്പിച്ചവരുടെ അതേ മാനസികാവസ്ഥയാണ് ഇത്. ഒരു തരം പുണ്യപ്രവർത്തി ആയിട്ടാണ് അവർക്കത് തോന്നുന്നത്. ഒക്‌ടോബർ 7 ആക്രമണത്തെക്കുറിച്ചുള്ള അമേരിക്കൻ കോളേജ് വിദ്യാർത്ഥികളുടെ പ്രതികരണങ്ങളിൽ നിന്ന് മനസ്സിലാവുന്നത് ലോകത്തിൽ നിന്ന് എല്ലാത്തരം അനീതികൾ തുടച്ചുനീക്കുന്നതിനുള്ള താക്കോൽ പലസ്തീൻ വിമോചനമാണ് എന്നവർ ധരിച്ചുവച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു എന്നതാണ്. 2023 നവംബറിൽ നോർത്ത് വെസ്‌റ്റേൺ യൂണിവേഴ്‌സിറ്റിയിലെ വിദ്യാർത്ഥികളുടെ പത്രം അറുപത്തിയഞ്ച് വിദ്യാർത്ഥി സംഘടനകൾ ഒപ്പിട്ട ഒരു കത്ത് പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചു. “നദിയിൽ നിന്ന് കടലിലേക്ക്, പലസ്തീൻ സ്വതന്ത്രമാകും” എന്ന മുദ്രാവാക്യം വിശദീകരിക്കുന്നതായിരുന്നു ആ കത്ത്. മെഡിറ്ററേനിയനും ജോർദാനും ഇടയിലുള്ള ജൂത രാഷ്ട്രം ഇല്ലാതാവുക എന്നാണിത് അർത്ഥമാക്കുന്നതെങ്കിലും നദി മുതൽ കടൽ വരെ എന്ന് പറയുമ്പോൾ പലസ്തീൻ സ്വതന്ത്രമാകുമെന്ന് വിദ്യാർത്ഥികൾ സങ്കൽപ്പിക്കുന്നു, കൊലപാതകവും വംശഹത്യയും പിന്തുണക്കുന്നില്ല, ഇത് ഇസ്‌ലാമോഫോബിയ, യഹൂദവിരുദ്ധത, വർണ്ണവിവേചനം, സൈനിക അധിനിവേശം എന്നിവയില്ലാത്ത ഒരു ലോകത്തിന്റെ സങ്കൽപ്പം ആണെന്നവർ പറയുന്നു. ഒരു ആഹ്വാനം എന്ന നിലയിൽ ഇത് അസംബന്ധമാണ്. പലസ്തീൻ വിമോചനം കൊണ്ട് ചൈനയിലോ റഷ്യയിലോ ഇറാനിലോ സൈനിക അധിനിവേശത്തിന് അന്ത്യം കൊണ്ടു വരാൻ സാധിക്കുമോ? ലോകത്തിലെ വർണവിവേചനമോ മ്യാൻമറിൽ റോഹിൻഗ്യകൾക്കെതിരെ ഉള്ള അക്രമണമോ ഇല്ലാതാകുമോ?

The whole point is some students believe and celebrate antisemitism . And some students think standing with Palestine solves world problems.

Lets’s grant Mr. Rakesh’s point that some students are antisemite. Which is bad and should be condemned and stopped. How does that prove Israel is not settler colonial project or is it something that I am missing ?

It is not at all clear what is the argument trying to prove here.

Lets also grant Mr. Rakesh’s point that some students believe that standing with Palestine will solve lot of world problems. Again -how does that contribute to any discussion on Israel Palestine issue ?

Students might be mistaken to believe that this will solve all world problems. Does that mean we shouldn’t stand with Palestinians. Will we only accept colonial regime of Israel only if it solves issues in China ? If students are mistaken to believe that world problems can be solved via freedom of Plaestine that doesn’t make it the case that Palestine doesn’t deserve freedom

I find this section of the post from Mr. Rakesh not contributing anything towards the dialogue on Israel Palestine conflict.

Till now I don’t see any arguments brought forward to argue why Israel is not a settler colonial project.

May be we can find it as we analyze later parts of the post in an upcoming post