Manifest Destiny -- A Reprise by WP

Wounded Knee 1890 – Gaza 2014

Manifest Destiny in the United States and Israel

"Charles Marion Russell - The Custer Fight (1903)" by Charles Marion Russell - The Library of Congress. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

"There is no good Indian except a dead Indian.” Gen. Phillip Sheridan 1869 

 “Stay as long as you need to stay.  Go wherever you need to go to deal with the vipers nest called Hamas.” Sen. Lindsay Graham 2014

   As the process of extirpating the Palestinians from Israel comes to its final culmination, a little bit of historical comparison between the United States and Israel is appropriate.  Analysis of the prevailing myths and memes can be helpful in understanding how two groups of people living in the same neighborhood can reside on different planets.

    American “Manifest Destiny”, the total conquest of the North American continent by the Europeans from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was the predominant theme of U.S. culture up until the end of the nineteenth century, after which the U.S. joined the colonialists. 

    The final act in Manifest Destiny was the completion of the subjugation of the Native Americans by finally forcing all of the free-roaming Native Americans onto Indian reservations.  From the beginning in the 1600s, the European settlers invaded a land populated by a people who had no effective way to resist the germs, guns, agriculture, and advanced technology of the settlers.  Ultimately, the Native Americans were killed, acculturated, or put on a reservation out of the way of American Progress.  Their primitive societies were fully outmatched by European science and organizational practices.  The indigenous peoples never had a chance of winning. 

 

    The final gasp of resistance to the theft of the continent occurred at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890 on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation when an army troop invaded a camp to disarm it.  The result was a foregone conclusion.  The Hotchkiss guns and repeating rifles killed about 300, comparatively unarmed, Lakota.  90 men killed (now those defending the camp would be labeled as terrorists) 200 women and children killed, and 51 wounded (7 fatally)  When the massacre was over, all Indian resistance within the United States was finished.  Manifest Destiny was complete.  The fallen attackers were honored as heroes, though they were mostly killed by friendly fire. 

    As it is now constituted, Israel is a Manifest Destiny state.  The Zionists view their Manifest Destiny as a land without Palestinians granted to them by the promise of God to Moses.  Israel is in the closing phase of full subjugation of those on the Gaza Palestinian Reservation and the West Bank Palestinian Reservation, shrinking the reservations to minimal sizes.

     Now we have a reprise of Wounded Knee.  Israel is trying to disarm another tribal band on its Gaza Palestinian Reservation using weapons and organizational systems that completely outmatch the defenders.  The desparate inhabitants of the oppressed place are resisting and being killed and wounded by the thousands.  Israel has suffered a mere fraction in number of the casualties imposed on the Gazans. It is a massacre.

      In the current media discourse over Gaza, the MSM refuses to acknowledge or speak about the elephant in the room--the fact that the root of the conflict is the land grab by the Zionists.   The most recent reel of the story, the rocket attacks, is the only one played.  All earlier events are ignored.  The Palestinians are vilified and blamed for their own destruction as bit players in Israel's final act of extirpation in furtherance of its Manifest Destiny meme.

     Many in the U.S. and in Israel view the Palestinians today much as the Americans viewed the Indians in days before the twentieth century.  The Palestinians are seen as a race of vicious, murdering, terrorists not entitled to any civil rights or compassion.  They got this bad rap from resisting their lands being stolen from them, not from some inherited character defect.  They stood in the way of God’s plans for the place so that the Palestinians are now defined by many as a savage people who need to be extirpated without guilt or compromise.  We will not even talk with them, Hamas.  The significant event, the Nabka, is forgotten as was the Cherokee’s Trail of Tears.  Possession of stolen land and destruction of its indigenous owners breeds forgetfulness. 

    The Palestinians have not been very articulate.  For years, their media image is a picture of wildly gesticulating dancing men firing wildly into the air or the dust from the detonation of suicide vests.  The image is counterproductive and off-putting for western people.  The stock image completely fails to communicate the background for these demonstrations or the powerlessness of their desparate youth who have no other style of communication or ability to recover what was stolen from their fathers and grandfathers.

    The juxtaposition between the meme of Manifest Destiny and the ongoing extirpation is not made forcefully and is not understood.  I have always wondered why the Palestinian representatives all do not preface their remarks each and every time they speak with a recitation of the facts from the point of view of the Palestinians much along the following lines:

 “Let us be reminded of why the present warring conflict exists. 

 The Europeans hated the Jews for centuries and engaged in a series of pogroms and exterminations in the mid twentieth Century.  Then, out of guilt and an inability otherwise to remove the hated Jews from their own countries, the west decided to send the Jews to the land where my People have lived for millennia.  They did not consider that we were there and that we, not they, we owned the land.  The encroachers were too cheap and inconsiderate to pay us for what was stolen.

 The western countries enabled the Zionists to steal our land and expel our millions from our orchards and homes without compensation or justice. 

 The western countries turned a blind eye and supplied the munitions that repeatedly massacred or starved millions of us. 

 The west and the Zionists subjugated us, driving us into exile.  They have put us onto ever-shrinking reservations.  The treaties made with us have been ignored and abrogated like the Indian treaties in the US.. 

 We are treated like swine on our own lands.  We are humiliated and murdered with impunity.  

 The crimes against us are accompanied by the cheers of the lovers of Israel and paid for by the Americans and western Europeans.

 Those of us who have pride and resist are branded to be Terrorists.  Our brave  women and children are dismissed as Human Shields and unavoidable casualties.  Our families and culture are important to us, but we are seen as not human.  If we do not resist to be seen in the world, we, like the Native Americans, will be forgotten and perish as a People. 

 This is why we seem to be mad.”

 

    Forgetting or unaware of this history, the great majority of Americans and Europeans, due to the guilt and bigotry of their Manifest Destiny cultures, see the Palestinians as sub-humans who have no right to resist or to be entitled to a nationhood—they are people who hate the US because of its ‘way of life.’  They fail to see that the real reason for the hate against Israel and the U.S. is because these countries have participated in Palestine destruction and exile.  Forgetfulness is central to the memes presented in the MSM and arguments in Congress.  All are "strong supporters of Israel."

     Now the Palestinians are engaged in an existential battle to save themselves.  It is no wonder they fight back.  Though they fight, their fight is really quite pitiful in terms of effect.  Their weapons pose not real threat to the existential survival of Israel any more than did the guns of Crazy Horse or Geronomo. In the late 1800s, the marauding of a few hundred armed Indians hardly created an existential risk to a nation that fielded an army of a million just a few years before and was fast becoming the world's premier industrial giant. 

    The rockets are similarly insignificant and mostly an inconvenience.  Other than as a propaganda tool, the rockets are a pitifully impotent act of resistance compared to the massive amount of ordinance that has impacted within the Gaza Palestinian Reservation.  The rockets are equivalent to bows, arrows and spears against cannon, Henry rifles, and Gatling guns, all of which can kill, but only the industrial weapons can slaughter.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War  Israel is so militarily strong that it cannot be crushed by the weak and random Palestinian rocket fire that has so inconvenienced the summer camps of the Israeli children this month.   

     The Israeli rocket casualties over many years are not even equivalent to the loss of Custer’s troop at the Little Big Horn on one day. 

     While the defeat of Custer was really a small and insignificant pin-prick against federal might, it caused an "emergency" expansion of the U.S. Army to address the “Indian threat.” Like the Last Stand, the Gaza rockets now raise a froth of frenzied anger that far exceeds the consequence of the act. Like the anger against the Indians following Little Big Horn that further mobilized the accelerated destruction of the defenseless Indians, the anger raised by the rockets is directed at a poor and defeated people.  The present anger is raised as justification for the continued extirpation of the Palestinian people from the land of their birthright in fulfillment of the Manifest Destiny of the Jewish state allegedly ordained by God Almighty in the Torah.  The Golani Brigade is admired as the present day manifestation of Joshua’s army and Custer's troop.  The industrial weapons provided by the U.S. slaughter and maim hundreds of young innocents in a frenzy of revenge. 

    In the mind of the Manifest Destiny true-believers, all of the Indian children were maturing blood-thirsty savages and all Palestinian children are vipers who should be destroyed before they can breed.

    No thought is given by the believers in Manifest Destiny to the rights of the subjugated people to defend their continued existence or to accommodate their needs.  The victims of Manifest Destiny must submit and disappear.  All that resist are deemed terrorists.  Never are they seen as desparate people using their wits and limited resources to survive against an overwhelming evil bent on their destruction.

     As adherents to the Manifest Destiny of Israel, men like Bibi Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham seem unable to envision the error of their adherence to the belief structure of Philip Sheridan.  After all, in their view, the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian and the mothers must be killed so that the vipers do not breed.  Too many in America do not know their history or the first reels of the Palestine saga also adhere to the bigotry of Manifest Destiny. 

     The murder will continue until a new vision of Israel can be invented in opposition to Manifest Destiny.  If it does not develop soon, the Palestinians may suffer the fate of the Native Americans or, as likely, the Israelis will lose all support from the American and European peoples to their ultimate doom and destruction. 

    Unlike the Native Americans who died alone and unseen, the Palestinians do have outside friends who are watching now on the Internet. Their anger is growing as is the power of the memes they are inventing.

WP

 

Comments

[DCA]

About a year ago our church (Episcopal) had a talk by a Palestinian Arab woman (the mother of our assistant rector--so yes, she was Christian) about her experiences at the time of the Israeli conquest. Her parents sent her to the US to live with an uncle--they stayed and lost everything. Very evocative and very instructive--and she was still quite angry.

[Cee]

WP,

I read this an hour ago. Came to bed and am still weeping.

[johnf]

Thank you for a really good article, WP, but I think you are being over pessimistic in your comparison.

The wiping out of the native Americans was done in one country and the rest of the world had absolutely no interest in it.

Gaza is taking place before the eyes of an extremely crowded and - outside America - relatively well-informed world. Social media give the world an extremely close-up and vivid sense of what is happening inside this tiny sliver of land. Levels of information are being delivered to the world inconceivable even ten years ago.

Israel can do what it is doing in Gaza not because it is almighty - which America was with its Indians - but because it has a backer and armorer, America, which once might have been almighty but is these days slithering all over the place trying to get serious allies in the Middle East (and elsewhere).

Whatever the result - and there are some signs this could be lining up as a second '06 - Israel's chances of remaining almighty are lessening by the day.

[Poul]

The Palestinians have most definitely shot themselves in the foot with their lack of media savvy. Perhaps they are learning now. Hamas' cease fire demands are in no way unreasonable but getting that point across to Western population is a challenge to say the least.

Unfortunately for the Palestinians the Arab-Israeli conflict was also sucked into the West vs the Soviet-union with the Arabs seen as on the Soviets side.

People like Sirhan Sirhan have no doubt made it much easier to regard Palestinians as enemies in the West, but they also never had a large group of pro-Palestinian ready for damage control when something went wrong.

As for the future I would go with Bantustan-like reservations. Densely populated and poor. Living at Israeli mercy if you can call it mercy.

[Poul]

Brazil has recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv over Israel's "disproportionate use of force" in its ongoing ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Read more: http://dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Jul-24/264966-brazil-recalls-ambassador-from-israel-over-gaza-assault.ashx#ixzz38NkozOMQ
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

South American countries are one of the few bright spots for the Palestinians. They are not caught up in the heritage of past politics.

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks WP! The concept of private and state property [the hunting lands of royalty] has been a driver for Western Civilization as opposed to stewardship or trusteeship of lands for those coming after! Cf. the regard of Native Americans for the land. Exceptions of course such as Inca, Maya, and Aztec!

Exploitation of "owned" lands now poisons the earth and its people.

Like the frog placed in warm water we do not notice the water heats towards boiling.

[Seamus Padraig]

Good on you, Pat! I am not a big fan of Hamas (Muslim Brotherhood = sectarian), but unlike (modern) Fatah, they at least fight back. Life in Gaza is much harsher in Gaza than on the WB, but at least in Gaza there are no more settlements (legal or otherwise).

By the way, there are still Jewish men and women of conscience left in this world who are standing up to the new holocaust. A friend of mine posted this video on Facebook. Watch this brave, earnest young man--an honorable American Jew--go to Israel and protest against Israeli war crimes. Then watch what the Israeli insecurity (not a typo!) forces do to him:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=680935605323935&set=vb.153633174720850&type=2&theater

This is the "middle east's only democracy," as the Zio-heads never tire of telling us. Our hard-earned tax dollars at work!

But that young man makes me truly proud to be an American (hard to do nowadays), and the Jews in this country should be proud to claim him as one of their own.

[jr786]

Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter. I believe this has finally set into the real life consciousness of the Palestinians, at least those living in Gaza. I would be beyond surprised if they are not hearing this in the mosques this Ramadan.

[Abu Sinan]

This is one of the best write ups I have seen on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Thanks!

[r whitman]

Unlike the Indians, the Palestinians have an opportunity to use "asymetric warfare". The threat closing BG airport is one. The turning of anti-Israel demonstrations in Western Europe into anti-semetic demonstrations is another. Perhaps they will get some clever leadership that will think up ideas to antagonize and delegitimize Israel on the world stage.

[Andrew]

Slightly OT, but confirms theories of "tail wagging the heck outta' the dog"...

http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-to-have-offered-lewinsky-tapes-for-pollard/

[FB Ali]

"Media savviness" is important for their image in the West. But do you think it would make the slightest practical difference in their relations with the West if it had been different?

In the East, on the other hand, the reality counts much more than the image. The atrocious treatment of the Palestinians by Israel, backed by the US, is building up a deep wellspring of anger among Muslims everywhere. Some day a price will have to be paid for it all.

Bantustans?........We shall see (but don't count your chickens......).

[tunde]

A brave post Col.
Many Jews of conscience living outside Israel (and a politically besieged minority in Israel) find themselves deeply conflicted by the wanton acts of destruction to which the world is witness.
Cassandra like, you have always pointed out Bibi's long-term strategic vision as ultimately ruinous for Israel and by proxy, the US. Let's hope Bibi's attempt to fix the 'facts around 'the settlements'is rejected by Israelis who refuse to have a cached policy of expulsion used in defense of their legitimate right to exist in peace with their neighbours.
Btw sir, 100 days since the Chibok kidnapping. The Nigerian govt has declared #bringbackourgirls a subversive group with the power to undermine the govt's ongoing negotiations......smh

[turcopolier]

All

I am not WP. pl

[Cee]

They don't have to do that. Israel antagonizing me and others all by themselves! Those f!#*#!'s!

They just bombed a UN school, KNOWING it was a school.

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/displaced-palestinians-gathered.html

[Cee]

LOL! I was thumbing through some of my old books that past few days and came up Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas. He wrote that "Israel planned to use the tapes as a potent weapon if they found their backs against the wall"

[Matthew]

Her family is going to get more company. Ethnic cleansing as humanitarianism. See http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15326#.U9Eeu5sg_q4

This meme is circulating in the social media. The Palestinians have to be "saved" by de-nationalizing them.

[Poul]

I count Europe as responsible too. Israel is vulnerable to economic sanctions in particular from the EU. A simple thing would be a tax on all Israeli goods to the EU to finance the UN expenditures in the occupied territories. Make them pay for every building destroyed.

But our tacit support for the treatment of the Palestinians cannot be separated from our view of them as enemies. And our picture of them as enemies is a historical process.

As for Bantustans... Yes, with the new younger Israeli political leaders like, Naftali Bennett, it could be ethnic cleansing a la 1948 again.

-

I'm perfectly aware that we in the West create people like Osama bin Ladin with our Israel policies. A policy of big costs and few benefits.

The support for Israel in Europe could be a generational thing, a bit like when the German youth in the 60's started to question their parents and grandparents past.

[Charles I]

as for the future , you'd go with a monstrous past that didn't work except, I assume to consign many a unreservedly religious overlord's soul to hell?

More empathy and imagination indicated.

[jdledell]

Here is a Halakhic ruling from Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba. I have to listen to him every time I visit my niece and her family.

“The Torah of Israel guides us in all walks of life, private and public, on how to behave during war and also how to keep moral standards.
The Maharal from Prague (Rabbi Judah Loew – A.K.), in his book Gur Arye, clearly writes that… in all wars the attacked people are allowed to attack fiercely the people from whom the attackers came from and they do not have to check if he personally belongs to the fighters.
Therefore, during war the attacked people are allowed to punish the enemy population in any punishment it finds worthy, such as denying supplies or electricity and also to bomb the whole area according to the discretion of the army minister and not to just simply endanger soldier’s lives but to take crushing deterrence steps to exterminate the enemy.

In the case of Gaza, the Minister of Defense will be allowed to instruct even the destruction of Gaza so that the south will no longer suffer and to avoid harm to our people who have been suffering for so long from the surrounding enemies.”
Any kind of talk about humanism and consideration are moot when speaking of saving our brothers in the south and in the rest of the country and bringing back quiet to our country.”

This is the current mentality of the settlers but it has also infected the rest of Israeli society, especially the IDF which has drawn an increasing number of its recruits from the settlement communities. In Israel talk of EXTERMINATION has increased dramatically. The parallels between American treatment of Native Americans and reservations is increasingly used in Israel for justification of the end result of the conflict with Palestinians. I think my people are losing their moral compass.

[Charles I]

I just read a fantastic historical novel A Good Man, part of a western trilogy, by Guy Vanderhaeghe:

http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Vanderhaeghe/e/B000AQ2610

The book is in part an account of Sitting Bull's eventual surrender under the aegis of the title character, a Major Walsh who goes Indian and then is shunted to obscurity once the deed is done, as told by a former North West Mounted Policeman intent on making a farming life in 1860's Montana at the end of the Indian Wars, and who serves a conduit for Walsh and American frontier authorities as Washington, Ottawa and London plot the fate of the last free, starving Indians.

Highly recco'ed, as are the others of the Triliogy, The Last Crossing, an account of the Cypress Hills Massacre, and the equally enthralling The Englishman's Boy.

I think a lot of attention is now going to be paid to thinking about how to engage in low cost high leverage economic warfare against Israel.

[turcopolier]

All

While I do not disagree with the thrust of WP's post his view of Wounded Knee, is, I think, just wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
The Seventh Cavalry Regiment, not "troop" lost 25 killed at Wounded Knee and the notion that most of those were lost to friendly fire is just Indian activist propaganda. pl

[Matthew]

jdledell: I'm sorry, but they lost their moral compass a long time ago.

And the virus of hate is spreading to our country. See http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/07/christians_united_for_israel_the_most_insanely_pro_israel_conference_of.html

Can you find any "Jesus" in any of this?

[Andrew]

3 m ago..."The Israeli military has put out a new statement about the strikes on the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun struck Thursday...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2014/jul/24/gaza-crisis-palestinian-death-toll-passes-700-live-updates

[ISL]

Thanks WP for an insightful post.

There are four significant differences, which augur for history not repeating, but rhyming.

Of greatest importance are antibiotics and inoculations, which have been proposed as the primary cause of the large disappearance of Native American populations, often before outright hostilities commenced.

Second, is asymmetrical warfare including media, with far more global access to information (including critical non-western audiences).

Third, is that Israel's economy is a basket case, continually kept on life support by US economic subsidies, favorable trade, and the strength of the US economy. It is a fair question whether Israel will reap these benefits when the dollar loses its international exchange status - the US will have bigger concerns at that point.

One and three, in my view, mean Palestinians will survive long enough for the dynamic to dramatically change.

Thanks Colonel for the wikipedia link. The parallel in attitudes towards Palestinians is mirrored uncannily with that during the Indian wars - something about human nature that tends to get glossed over in current discourse.