Dehumanization, Racial “Othering” and The Colonizer Mindset

"“When you have only ever experienced privilege, equality feels like oppression.” ― Adam Rutherford

Zionism and The Colonizer Mindset

The rage of the Zionist when we presume to talk about their issues of religious extremism and Jewish supremacy is immediate and visceral, and it feels to them like an assault.

Meanwhile it is fine for them to delineate the experiences of those that they instinctively “other” without realization or regard. Like any “superior” colonizer, they have placed themselves on the upper pole of a dynamic where they are the ones who expect to define their own and also others experiences.

They do this by disregarding the lived experience of the people that they “other” and by defining what those people’s wants and needs are, which are invariably, by definition, less than their own.

Zionists cast the Arabs or Palestinians or Muslims as being their inferiors (even as they usurp their identity and most likely, secretly admire the strength and resilience of Palestinians). They assume that if you can delineate and define a peoples borders then you can presume to define and map their experience.

The Zionist reality is a supremacist world view in which you get to discuss the colonized in dismissive and demeaning ways while doling out to them their “freedoms” and rights according to your own convenience.

To be a colonizer is a mindset; one where the colonizer or oppressor assumes that the “other” doesn’t have the same agency, emotions or complexity of feeling or thought, which is a part of the dehumanization process.

It’s the same agency that Jane Eyre was fighting for when she told Rochester that: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you—and full as much heart!”

Jane Eyre was fighting for her freedoms as a woman – and not only a woman but a female dependent, from a lower social class, at a time when class boundaries were rigid and sharply delineated.

Ironically enough, all the while, it was Rochester’s ex-wife Bertha Mason who was designated “mad” and confined to the attic - despite the fact that the fortune that made Rochester who he was, was amassed from her families sugar plantations.

Incidentally, while Jane was making impassioned speeches for her rights, demonstrating to the aristocratic classes that visited Rochester that her plain appearance belied a powerful inner being of complexity and depth, it was the racially different woman who was the real subject of exploitation, hidden away and demonized..

Jane Eyre’s narrative constituted a Russian doll’s nesting of othering within othering, where to ostensibly give one group a voice and vocalize their grievances came at the expense of ignoring another; the exploited and colonized “other” whose collective wealth constituted a good layer of the substratum of English aristocratic fortune.

The novel was radical partly because it would be unthinkable for a woman of her background to speak to her upper-class employer so freely. And yet, it is remarkable how it is the vicissitudes of fate and chance that determine our status and freedoms, our authority to vocalize our own experiences to the same degree as others.

It is the accident of birth that propels some people into an environment where they must swallow their feelings of frustration and anger, and accept whatever they are handed, whilst others assert misplaced authority over them and flaunt their own status of wealth and privilege.

The Zionist-Racist World View

“Most if not all Israelis don’t really see the Palestinians as equal human beings with equal rights in this land…” Gideon Levy

Zionism is a deeply racist movement and Zionists are people who insist on clinging onto this most virulent manifestation of colonialism that opportunistically rides a religious narrative in order to not only steal land and trample over indigenous rights but to exact maximum destruction.

Therefore, just like any interaction with a racist, the dynamic is one of a natural assumption of superiority on the part of the Zionist, and an implicit expectation that we, the racially “other”, must play our part willingly and submissively; any indication of asserting our own identity – even if it isn’t an assertion against something – is taken as defiance, because an identity premised on superiority in this way, does not allow for the reality or views of the “other”.

This dynamic is not exclusive to the geographical location of the “conflict” but extends to all representatives everywhere around the world. If you support Palestine you are cast as somehow “inferior” and the Zionist assumes that they can abuse you for expressing your allegiances, and that the right to define another’s world view or experience extends only in one direction – from them to you.

Furthermore, the disingenuous conflation of Zionism with Judaism and the strain of Jewish Supremacy that ties this all together into a real, modern-day scourge, makes Zionists feel immune to any criticism and indignant of any rebuke.

This explains their extreme arrogance when we talk about them; in the world view of the racist colonizer, they get to define their experience and your experience, whilst you are not “allowed” to discuss either; indeed, just as Gideon Levy pointed out, most “Israeli’s” do not see Palestinians as equal human beings; and this dynamic is imprinted as a whole onto the interaction between the Zionist and those who support Palestine.

From the point of view of the person who has a stunted mind and character, their own psychological and emotional limitations prevent them from truly conceiving the humanity of others; but strangely enough this is subjectively perceived by them as them being superior and others lacking humanity.

It takes a particular lack of imagination to perceive other human beings as having no inner world, needs or desires, richness of humanity just because of their race or religion.

Of course, there is no innate lack of humanity inherent within any particular religion or persuasion; but there is a lack of humanity in every extremist manifestation of a religion. When people become extremist, their mindset becomes black and white. This is why there is a world of difference between those who support Palestine – and by extension, humanity; and those who are Zionists.

Zionist Fragility and their Version of “Graciousness”

The current “position” of many Zionists today is that it is seemly to acknowledge that “Israel” has “gone too far”. Inherent in this position, is the reasoning that since the world can now see, for the first time, the nature of “Israel”, damage limitation will consist of acknowledging the “now” to save the longer-term prospects of “Israel” and the Zionist project.

It would look “unreasonable” not to agree that starving a civilian population and raining down bombs and explosives on hospitals, on children in refugee tents and queuing for food is bad – so therefore the maximum damage limiting position is to “accept” that they have gone a little far in their “reaction” to Hamas (where their skewed narrative still starts).

Of course, the people within “Israel” who appear on news programmes or TV interviews are so far gone in their inability to see out of their bubble of privileged impunity, that they regularly reinforce their position, double down and lie through their teeth in the full public eye.

But Zionists around the world are seriously worried; not because Palestinians are being killed in every way possible, but because they fear this could spell the end of “Israel”. Therefore, they graciously allow that “Israel” has “gone too far” – and what is more, they expect our gratitude for this. Of course, expecting gratitude for being only mildly racist, and professing to be a benevolent, rescuing force, acknowledging the predicament of the oppressed and even making tiny concessions to it, is sometimes known as colonial “saviour complex”.

Making minor acknowledgements of “Israel’s” heinous acts, even though it ultimately serves the purpose of self-preservation, is supposed to be met by us with humble thanks – if we dare to comment, call out and criticize the violence, as we see it, and on our terms, we are trampling over their boundaries.

This is why, when Zionists and Jewish Supremacists say they feel “unsafe” at seeing a Palestinian child’s poster on a school wall, while Palestinian children actually have no schools to go to because they have all been bombed – they are probably telling the truth - their own severely twisted truth. Only a truly pathetic “identity” steeped in self-victimization and “fragility” is so self-regarding and self-aggrandizing to act as “Israeli’s” and Zionists do.

The Hierarchy and Colonizer Boundaries

“In this struggle, our courageous people decided to take up arms against terrorism. We were surprised to learn that imperialists refer to them as armed groups or militarized groups, while calling people in Europe who take up arms to defend their homeland patriots.” Ibrahim Traore

In Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe details the arrival of the missionaries who destroy the traditional fabric of their society. Some adopt a more forceful approach while others are more stealthy and subtle – in both cases, it is clear that none of them really view the indigenous people as their own equals.

When Zionists “acknowledge” the faults of “Israel” they water down their description of what “Israel” is doing and refer to “a few extremist” politicians, before they turn the narrative back on Hamas. It’s a very prevalent strategy at the moment, that serves the purpose of redeeming “Israel” and the original Zionist vision in a soft-footed and insidiously underhand way.

If we “insist” on advancing our own opinion or attempting to wind back the narrative to pre-October 7^th, the tone then changes to annoyance. Their agenda is to obfuscate the actual reasons why October 7^th happened, the nature of it’s being a reaction to decades of oppression and apartheid; and to redeem “Israel” even though it is a settler-colonial project premised on erasing indigenous people.

But it is also about claiming the narrative and reinforcing the boundaries; the anger that meets any attempts to define one’s own understanding and narrative, indeed to “reclaim” the narrative, is met with the hostility that defines the oppressor and their assumption of natural superiority.

Soft Zionists want to display that they are “good people” and that they are understanding – but only within their own framework and on their own terms. You can’t push your own understanding of the situation – which ultimately underscores the fact that in their books, this is not a dialogue of equals, and you are being presumptuous to expect to voice your position on equal terms.

Ethnic Women and Extremist Zionist Trolls

This is why Zionists get angry when we speak; it is why frequently on TV shows, several racists will repeatedly interrupt and heckle when a pro-Palestinian is speaking but allow respectful, uninterrupted time for Zionists to “voice” their truth.

It is also why ethnic females like myself, are repeatedly trolled and harassed on social media, such as this site and others, primarily by Zionist and racist males. There is nothing that offends their sense of hierarchy and position more, than an ethnic female with a voice; they commonly use words like “stubborn” and “defiant” to describe women like Dr Rahmeh Aladwan and Dr Sabrina Ghaffar Siddiqui – women who refuse to cower, and who insist on proudly speaking their truth; these descriptors are never used for Zionist women who are merely expressing what is “true” and “right”.

Ethnic women have to push to speak, and they have to tolerate extremist abuse every day, if they do not gratefully and humbly accept their position; we get push back not just from Zionist and racist men but from their complicit female counterparts who experience us voicing our truth as a transgression and violation of their boundaries, especially if it involves us commenting on phenomena like Jewish supremacy and Zionism.

But the fact is that Jewish supremacy is very much at the heart of what is happening in Palestine today, and how this is played out in the wider international sphere; It is colonialist land grabbing, it is racism – but without Jewish supremacy, it lacks the same virulent potency, and simultaneously, dangerous impunity.

We should all be able to call this out and to discuss it openly; the gross asymmetry in rhetoric and voice between the two sides needs to be levelled and equalised; for it is when one side is repeatedly silenced and the truth suppressed, that supremacist attitudes like this are allowed to fester and propagate themselves; there is no room for colonialism or ethno-supremacy in a modern, multi-polar world – the kind of world that we should aspire to create for coming generations.

And there is absolutely no place for Zionism, a violent and racist movement akin to the worst of white supremacy.

Free Palestine from “Israel” From the River to the Sea. And Dismantle Zionism.