Still Echoes

"I do believe that the same racist impulse that considers Israeli lives worth more than Arab lives is at play here." As'ad AbuKhalil a political scientist from the University of California declared this bold statement in an interview with Al-Jazeera. This statement might be shocking to many a white middle class Canadians but there is a degree of truth to it that is unavoidable.

This truth is an echo from the past but one that still continues to ring in the heads of Arabs, Africans, First Nations peoples and many more. Having been colonized, they learned the lesson that the paler the skin, the higher value the life. The lives of these coloured people don't count as much as those higher up on the hierarchy (I strongly urge you to click this link and read this article).

In Israel and Palestine, the equation seems to be that one Israeli life equals ten Palestinian lives; it's no different in Lebanon and Gaza in 2006. In news reports on the 2000 Intifadah this dismal equation always seemed to strike me. It was always without fail 10 to 1. A Palestinian suicide bomber might have taken 10 Israeli lives on a bus but in return the Israeli punishment would terminate the lives of 100 Palestinians, give or take a few. If the Israelis assassinated a group of ten Palestinian "militants", the response claimed the life of one Israeli settler in the West Bank. This is a miserable equation, that seems to be agreed upon by both sides, is one that I have always clearly observed.

Of course, I have no doubt that globally a Jewish Israeli life is considered worth less than a white life and possibly a Japanese or Chinese life (the next stage down?). So Israelis are also caught up in this racist condition of the modern world. They are just playing their part as are we Canadians. Why do you think western states like Canada withdrew all those pretty white people when the bombs started falling? Death and suffering wasn't meant for them but for others.

Until we all together decide that this condition is meant for the scrapheap of history, expect more bombs to rain down on Lebanon and Gaza and the response, and ability to escape, to be commensurate to the colour of your skin.