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We had a wonderful vacation and I have lots to say about it, and what we return to, but can't quite wrap my mind around it all. The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip engages my attention...
Most of the media, including the liberal media is focusing on the hardships of the settlers being forced to withdraw. Very little is being said about the Palestinians who occupied the same land for centuries and how they were forced into poverty and homelessness in 1967 when the Israelis moved in, contrary to the opinion of the world court. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who have systematically marginalized a nation and defied world opinion for forty years so they could occupy a land they never paid for. The land doesn't even have any Biblical significance. It's colonialism in its worst form. I *am* sorry that some people bought into the notion that they were making a new Israel. But they really should have read a newspaper before committing their lives to a piece of land upon which they had no right to be.
On that note, we've recently returned from a visit to North Carolina, specifically, Cherokee. Most of the modern American/Europeans in this country don't know at what expense their livelihoods arrive. Most of the Eastern United States is dominated by the colonizing Europeans. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But. There were already people here. It's rather like someone walking into your living room and planting a flag in the name of the country they came from. We crossed an ocean. We found land. We don't really much care that you are already here. It's ours.
I am infuriated on a number of levels. I can't really articulate how incensed I am. 17,000 Cherokee people were forced to march from North Carolina to Oklahoma with no life sustaining assistance. A third of them died on the way. But we didn't care, because we got to take over the land and be "free".
It makes me wonder at what cost my own freedom comes. Who did I displace in order to enjoy the life I have?
Ah, it was a wonderful quiet vacation, but it was also an enlightening one.
August 16 2005, 21:08:50 UTC 6 years ago
If any of us go far back enough, we find someone needing to be displaced. How far back do you consider safe to feel blameless?
August 16 2005, 21:28:51 UTC 6 years ago
August 16 2005, 22:38:07 UTC 6 years ago
From the time that the horse people came down off the steppe and conquered the primitive farming villages conquest has been the way of the world for most of the last 60,000 or so years. The concept of purchasing land in fair trade only came about with advancing civilization, and civilization was a result of conquering people developing a collective conscience.
August 16 2005, 23:25:13 UTC 6 years ago
August 16 2005, 21:09:46 UTC 6 years ago
August 16 2005, 21:10:17 UTC 6 years ago
Eugenic deaths
In fact, there was a fine theory that the Indians should die out, as primitive and inferior, and the U.S. government jsut quietly helped that along for centuries. (Removing Indian kids from their families and trying to kill native languages was the "better lit" side of this: offering Progress to those who w/could take it.)August 16 2005, 21:40:23 UTC 6 years ago
Re: Eugenic deaths
Yes, I noticed that of the native population remaining, they tried to ship most of the children off to boarding school because "they'd assimilate better if they didn't live in their own culture", and then systematically stripped them of their language, dress, culture, and anything they could to purge them of being Cherokee.Brainwashing at its worst.
August 17 2005, 16:02:29 UTC 6 years ago