Events past and present suggest that colonial violence is inherent in Israel

The recent verdicts in the trial of those responsible for the brutal murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the Palestinian teenager kidnapped, beaten and burned alive by Israeli settlers in July 2014, have coincided with the publication of historical testimony that sheds light upon the inherent nature of Israel’s colonial violence.

While specific bloodbaths and massacres have been given more prominence according to testimony and historical narratives, the danger of overlooking other lesser-known violent episodes has resulted in a fragmentation that allows Israel to navigate through occasional scandals and remain on track to achieve its colonial ambitions. Hence, Palestinian memory suffers from both over exposure of well-documented narrations, as well as the magnitude of information that is yet to be disclosed regarding the systematic ethnic cleansing of the territory.

Published in translation in Mondoweiss, a letter written by an Israeli soldier detailing the atrocities committed in Al-Dawayima portrays the precise and premeditated ethnic cleansing of the town. The massacre, which is deemed to be worse than the infamous and more well-known slaughter at Deir Yassin, occurred on 8 November, 1948, six months after the state of Israel was created in occupied Palestine. Early efforts to disseminate what took place were silenced swiftly and military personnel involved in the murders were given an amnesty in 1949.

The letter was addressed to Eliezer Peri, editor of Al-Hamishmar. Written only 18 days after the Al-Dawayima massacre, the contents are the testimony of a soldier who, according to the text, needed “to unload the heaviness of his soul from the horror of the recognition that such level of barbarism can be reached by our educated and cultured people.”

Apart from denouncing the official narrative of battles and resistance in the town, the soldier gave graphic descriptions of the barbaric annihilation to which the Palestinians of Al-Dawayima were subjected. Israeli soldiers, he explains, smashed children’s skulls with sticks; people were locked in their houses and deprived of food and water; two elderly women were locked in a house which was to be blown up. Murder and rape were glorified. Using derogatory language, rape, in particular, was “considered an impressive mission and there is competition on winning this [trophy].”

Towards the end of the letter, the author narrating the soldier’s testimony states, “The soldier told me that Deir Yassin [another massacre, by the Zionist terrorists of Irgun, in April 1948] is not the peak of hooliganism. Is it possible to shout about Deir Yassin and be silent about something much worse?”

The published letter sheds light upon the magnitude of unpublicised crimes committed in the name of establishing Israel’s colonial existence. Restrictions upon archived material, apart from the intentional rewriting of history in order to invalidate Palestinian memory, have contributed to the vacuum. However, Palestinians are suffering additional invalidation through the trend initiated by Israel and assimilated by the international community, of dissociating every violent incident from the creation of the state.

Recent history, in particular the massacres of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip, as well as other state-sanctioned terror committed by soldiers and settlers alike, offers proof of Israel’s inherent violence which it is maintaining through state institutions. Analysing current brutality within a historical framework would go a long way towards achieving contiguity of events, as well as pave the way for combating the incessant selective remembrance which constitutes one of the major flaws in articulating Palestinian memory.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.