Redrawing the map of the world in blood, By Owei Lakemfa

THE world commemorated the first year of the 7 October, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel with no clear vision to end the ongoing carnage. In the First World War, there were about 22 million deaths. Humanity vowed: “Never again!” Never again will we allow such mass scale slaughter. To ensure this, the League of Nations was created in 1920 to preserve world peace and promote international cooperation. Nineteen years later, the Second World War began on 1 September, 1939. This time, the slaughter was so horrendous that Russia alone lost over 22 million people, that is a higher figure than the combined slaughter in the First World War.

This time, we created the United Nations (UN) for the maintenance of international peace and security, well-being of the people of the world and international cooperation. These, 79 years later, are precisely the things that are missing in the world.

However, while in the past wars, we shouted “Never again!” These times, we have lost our collective voices and resolve. We accept genocide, even when the footages are brought right into our bedrooms. Admittedly, there are differences. In the past wars, there were some restraints, especially when it came to children, women and the elderly. For instance, young men were so disproportionately killed in the Second World War that there was a severe shortage of men to begin families.

Many men who returned from the war, were traumatised. But in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East it is children and women that are the main targets. In the first year of the so-called War in Gaza, over 42,000 have been killed with about 70 per cent of these victims being women and children. An indication that those carrying out the slaughter in today’s world do not care about the target; all they want is to exterminate the populace.

Some make the mistake of assuming that the ‘Gaza War’ which is actually an Israeli-Palestinian war, began on 7 October, 2023. No. Even months before that attack, Israel had killed over 250 Palestinians.

This war, is also, not a matter of disagreements between two neighbours. The issue is one of a settler colony where a people migrate from one part of the world to seize or colonise another part, militarily dominate and settle in it at the expense of the indigenes. To be able to do so in a sustainable way, the indigenous population has to either be subjugated or exterminated.

The United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are such settler colonies where Europeans pacified the indigenes. There were bloody attempts in Kenya and Algeria by Britain and France to achieve the same aims. Uprisings by the Mau Mau in Kenya and heroic resistance by the Algerians who lost two million people, stopped these unholy plans.

The Germans wiped out two thirds of the Namibian people in a failed attempt to make it a settler colony. In the case of Zimbabwe, British businessman, Cecil Rhodes, seized it and made it a settler colony until the people won the war of independence in 1980. In South Africa, the Europeans established their first settlement in 1652 and the indigenous people did not regain control until 342 years later.

But the Israeli case is unique. First, the European settlers claim to have been indigenous to the territory thousands of years earlier before going into exile in the 6th Century. Secondly, their leading lights did not regard the indigenous peoples they were going to meet as nationalities with equal rights. Rather, they regarded them as dispensable barbarians. Thirdly, they regarded themselves as Europeans going to establish a new European country as was done in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada, and was being done in South Africa and Zimbabawe, then called Rhodesia.

In fact, Theodor Herzl, the Austro-Hungarian journalist who founded the Zionist Movement  and is regarded as “The Spiritual Father of the Jews”, wanted to create Israel in the image of colonial Rhodesia. In 1902, he wrote Rhodes: “You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… it is something colonial.”

One of the arguments of Herzl was that Europeans of Jewish ancestry or who had adopted Judaism, were being discriminated against and profiled as unscrupulous. This was depicted in the “Merchant of Venice”, a play written in 1596-97 by William Shakespeare. In it, an unscrupulous businessman of Jewish origin, Shylock, wanted a pound of flesh from a Christian, Antonio.

Herzl proposed a solution to rid Europe of the Jewish problem by securing lands for them in Palestine, and simultaneously, building a new European country in Asia. This way, the Jews will also have a homeland and simultaneously, help Europe to police the Middle East.

But what would happen to the indigenous Palestinian People? Herzl has a simple solution: “We must expropriate gently the private property (Palestinians) on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

The Palestine was then under the Ottoman Empire and Herzl, in 1901, met Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He offered Jewish assistance and £150 million for Jewish settlement. He said: “If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine… we should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilisation as opposed to barbarism.” But the Sultan refused.

However, the Ottoman Empire was in decline and Britain, the new emergent power, offered the Zionist Federation, Palestinian lands. In a 2 November, 1917 letter, then British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, wrote: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Armed conflicts ensued between the new settlers and indigenous peoples. In 1948, the former won the first war, seized 77.9 per cent of the lands and expelled the indigenes. Following another victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israelis seized East Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.

A two-state solution agreed under the 1993 Oslo Accords have now been rejected by Israel which wants the entire Palestine with an eye on Lebanon and Syria, and possibly Jordan.

Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.