"Partha Chatterjee: Why I Support the Boycott of Israeli Institutions"
"Yet
judgments had to be made. On Palestine, my judgment was clear. Jews
from Germany and Eastern Europe had found hospitality in the United
States and Western Europe. Nevertheless, they insisted on a state of
their own, moved into the British territory of Palestine and, after the
British left, began to seize the lands where Palestinians had lived for
centuries, driving them into refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and
other Arab countries. I remember the war over Nasser’s nationalization
of the Suez Canal – a last desperate attempt by a pathetic British
aristocracy to hold on to the vestiges of its colonial empire. From then
on, the United States became the guardian angel of the Zionist state as
the latter emerged as a major military power in the region, armed with a
nuclear arsenal it refuses to acknowledge. More ominously, it became a
security state singularly aimed at the protection of one section of its
population – the Jews – and treating its Arab citizens as lowly
barbarians threatening to swamp the Jewish nation with their
fast-breeding families and actively assisting the hostile forces ranged
across the border. Israel continues to build walls to fortify the Jewish
population, imposes a ruthless regime of passes and security checks
that every Arab-Israeli or Palestinian has to daily negotiate, and
ignores every international norm to build Jewish settlements in
Palestinian lands in order to permanently scuttle all chances of a
sovereign Palestinian state coming into existence. I don’t need to
mobilize any scholarly knowledge at all: my inherited common sense tells
me what I need to know. This is colonial rule as well as apartheid,
both based on the exercise of brute force." (thanks Robin)
judgments had to be made. On Palestine, my judgment was clear. Jews
from Germany and Eastern Europe had found hospitality in the United
States and Western Europe. Nevertheless, they insisted on a state of
their own, moved into the British territory of Palestine and, after the
British left, began to seize the lands where Palestinians had lived for
centuries, driving them into refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and
other Arab countries. I remember the war over Nasser’s nationalization
of the Suez Canal – a last desperate attempt by a pathetic British
aristocracy to hold on to the vestiges of its colonial empire. From then
on, the United States became the guardian angel of the Zionist state as
the latter emerged as a major military power in the region, armed with a
nuclear arsenal it refuses to acknowledge. More ominously, it became a
security state singularly aimed at the protection of one section of its
population – the Jews – and treating its Arab citizens as lowly
barbarians threatening to swamp the Jewish nation with their
fast-breeding families and actively assisting the hostile forces ranged
across the border. Israel continues to build walls to fortify the Jewish
population, imposes a ruthless regime of passes and security checks
that every Arab-Israeli or Palestinian has to daily negotiate, and
ignores every international norm to build Jewish settlements in
Palestinian lands in order to permanently scuttle all chances of a
sovereign Palestinian state coming into existence. I don’t need to
mobilize any scholarly knowledge at all: my inherited common sense tells
me what I need to know. This is colonial rule as well as apartheid,
both based on the exercise of brute force." (thanks Robin)
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