The Settler Colonialism Process:

A Continuous Crime against Indigenous Peoples

Rasa - On May ۱۵, Palestinians took to the streets worldwide to commemorate the ۶۸th Nakba (catastrophe), or the ۱۹۴۸ establishment of Israel that dispossessed and displaced ۷۵۰,۰۰۰ Palestinians into refugee camps in neighboring countries.

News ID: 422363

Date: 20 May 2016 - 09:49

RNA - The importance of remembering the Palestinian Nakba is about historical narrative, about realizing and understanding the legality of their struggle for liberty and self-determination. This legal narrative is familiar and speaks volumes to other indigenous peoples around the world too.

For instance, the indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States have had to face the same struggles against settler colonialism that facilitated their ethnic cleansing and genocidal experiences that continue today through similar phases, similar forms, and similar outcomes.

The ethnic cleansing processes against the indigenous peoples of Canada involved mass rapes and massacres, including the placement of indigenous peoples on to enclaves and reservation territories that, like the case of the Palestinians, are given the illusion of self-determination and self-governance. These human rights violations are well documented as in the case of the Palestinians by UN Special Rapporteurs.

The United States is another settler colonial regime. It is infamous for its genocide of indigenous peoples, signifying a consistent Nakba Process as in the case of the Palestinians. In the US, the indigenous peoples were placed on reservation territories with lands seized and colonized along with a mass raping and killing campaign that caused mass deaths and dispossession.

Little wonder Canada offers unconditional support for Israel. It has even taken a new dimension with the signing of the Canada-Israel Public Security Agreement. The deal includes cooperation on ethnic profiling, crime and punishment, imprisonment, corrections as well as the whole security industrial complex.

Similarly, the US continues to be prime financial and military supporter of Israel, whereby Tel Aviv is the highest recipient of US foreign aid, which includes lethal aid. It has worked with Israel very closely in relation to regional security, corrections, and overall death and surveillance technology. Right now, their partnership is more than ever the closest in the ongoing wars on Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya.

The truth is, the settler colonial states, led by the US, the Israel lobbyists and certain Arab officialdom are still doing whatever they can to actually strengthen the far right in Israel. They help the usurper regime to build illegal settlement units and repress the Palestinian people through large-scale intimidation and siege, check points, road blocks, Apartheid wall, levelling of agricultural lands, military incursions, targeted assassinations, setting fires to homes, planting of mines, destroying of villages, torturing of prisoners, and other terrorist activities.

The disturbing fact is that the international law regime is equally colluding with its inaction to put an end to this criminal process both locally for the Palestinians as well as globally for indigenous peoples around the world.

It is time for the international civil society to reject this travesty, recognize its responsibility, heal this unhealed wound, and put an end to the continued Nakba Process against the Palestinians and the indigenous peoples across the globe.

The world community should also recognize the Nakba Day globally, understand the plight of Palestinians as a people oppressed for so long, remember global indigenous struggles, respect the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and restore their indigenous rights truly. Their tears are surely our tears.

R۱۱۱/۱۰۸/C/