Note to Readers
Are you black on the right side?
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Which brings me to this piece. It’s been sitting in my “draft” pile. It’s another piece that references “Star Trek,” specifically the episode “Let that be your last battlefield” from Season 3 of the original series. When it aired early in 1969, it contained a powerful indictment of racism based on skin color.
It made me think of the racism we see today that works against the Palestinians in Gaza. Obviously, the genocide in Gaza isn’t being driven solely or even primarily by racial animus, but vilification and dehumanization of an enemy as barbarous, primitive, violent, and the like is nothing new to history.
So, with that caveat, here’s a “draft” piece from my slush pile. I hope it’s worth reading.
BEING BLACK ON THE WRONG SIDE
In 2012, William Pfaff asked what he termed a serious question: What would Israel like to do with its Palestinian population? The Israeli government’s answer now seems clear: Eliminate some and push the rest out of Gaza altogether. Even apartheid conditions, with Gaza as an open-air prison, now appear too merciful to hardline Israelis today. They want instead to end the occupation of Gaza by ending Gaza: by getting rid of all the Palestinians there, after which Gaza will be reconstituted as part of Israel.
Israelis and Palestinians, both Semitic peoples, are trapped in a death match where one side, the Israeli obviously, has complete dominance. Even so, Israelis increasingly see Palestinians as violent and uncivilized, unreachably so, which put me to mind of this classic "Star Trek" clip. Palestinians, it seems, are simply black on the wrong side, therefore they must be subjugated or eliminated.
Again, Jews and Palestinians are both Semitic peoples, for whatever that is worth. They both have a history in Palestine. (I’m not getting into the contentious argument over whose “claim” to the land is more legitimate, as ultimately that matters far less than respect for fundamental human rights and due process under international law.) Yet far too many Israelis, supported especially by the United States, see Palestinians writ large as both inferior and dangerous, even Palestinian children.
It recalls Nazi ideology that saw Jewish people as inferior, as dangerous, as a pox on the superior German Volk. Following the twisted logic of Nazism, Jewish people had to be eliminated precisely because they were inferior, dangerously so. What’s driving the elimination of Palestinians in Gaza is a similar mindset shared by many in the West, whether consciously or unconsciously.
In the “Star Trek” episode referenced above, the planet in question, Cheron, is torn apart by warfare between peoples whose only real difference is whether they’re black on the right side of their face, or the left side. It sounds ridiculous, but is it, really?
You've hit on the episode I've always thought to be the most daring, politically charged, and relevant to the U.S., Bill. It's an absolutely scathing commentary on the racism prevalent here at that time, and still ongoing. It's quite brilliant, IMO.
But yes, it's applicable anywhere there's discrimination. From my lifelong reading, I understand that the continual turmoil in the Middle East stems from religious/tribal differences that have existed for millennia, regardless of similar (Semitic) heritage. For example, look at the Sunnis and Shi'as, forever fighting to the death over the legacy of Mohammed (not to say that Christian sects don't have equally....questionable.... differences). My rambling point being that, yes, that Star Trek episode really drives it home that people share an unequivocal, fundamental sameness, and fighting over superficialities is ultimately SELF-destructive.
I find it strange that William Pfaff should in 2012 ask what Israel wanted to do with the Palestinians.
That question was definitively answered even before 1948, but put into action that year for everyone to see: get rid of Palestinians either through eviction or elimination and that process has been proceeding ever since. It is the basis of Zionism.
While it is satisfying to think of things as simple intolerance of the other as the Star Trek episode does, in fact conflict is hardly ever a case of two equal sides with equally legitimate claims going at each other just because they are different.
I think we can all agree that no matter how terrible was the holocaust, no matter how injured one party might be, that party cannot go elsewhere to evict a group that had nothing to do with the terrible offense. That is precisely the case with the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Zionists declared a foreign land should be theirs exclusively even before the holocaust, as a result of European antisemitism that had nothing to do with the Arabs in Palestine or elsewhere. Because Judaism was practiced in Palestine thousands of years ago in no way legitimizes the complete expulsion of those who live there today because they are not Jews.
While many will talk of how Israel is a necessity for Jews to be safe, Americans, Jewish or not, know that it is absurd because of the lived experience here. The explosion of accusations of antisemitism in the US is entirely a pro-Israel red herring fully supported with big money. We are getting no news of any Jews being attacked in the US, yet Netanyahu is telling us the US is Germany in 1938. Does anyone believe this nonsense?
Israeli is now building a worldwide opposition to it that cannot be defended with all the American weaponry that exists. The pen and voice of diplomacy just might prove to be mightier than the sword. Zionism is revealed for the ugly project it always has been. The one and only reason that Israel has been able to last 76 years is the sympathy that came from the holocaust combined with the Palestinians being nobodies to the West. Were Israelis not Jews, but another other group that had not suffered the holocaust, the ethnic cleansing would have been denounced from the start. In fact Zionism was faltering before WW2 and even afterward the Jews who survived overwhelmingly wanted to go to the US, not Palestine.
There is such a thing as right and wrong and nothing is ever as simple as what Star Trek presented, which was an abstraction from reality, not an example of it. The real answer to human conflict is to never let one group gain great power over another. The lesson of the United States and its creation, the UN, is that a universal body is helpless if a member of that body has enough power to prevent anything that universal body might do in the name of justice.
Might making right is THE issue we have to deal with. The UN, by the original American design, cannot deal with it. For Americans, having the most might, we have seen the result of our unchecked power over and over again, now outrageously endorsing the great might of Israel against a helpless population that dares to resist and is slaughtered for doing so.
Did you see Nikki Haley is in Israel signing American bombs with "Finish them! America loves Israel." This from a person who considers herself presidential material in the land of liberty and justice for all. Talk about black is white and white is black! America has completely inverted what the founding fathers intended. And so many do not see this but revel in it, like Haley.