Distorting the historical narrative is a mechanism of control.
On few other issues, however, can it have been applied with a heavier hand than on Israel’s genocide in Gaza where by early July, more than 57,000 people had been killed.
By starting the conversation on 7 October 2023, for instance – thus ignoring the 77 years of occupation and ethnic cleansing that precede it – a colonial project is re-imagined as a nation under threat.
And engaging with the entire history takes us beyond Palestine. From countries in Africa to Latin America, Israel has helped to destroy Indigenous communities, exporting weapons and tactics “conveniently tested on occupied Palestinians, then marketed as ‘battle-tested’,” writes Antony Loewenstein in his 2023 book The Palestine Laboratory.
In Guatemala, the site of some of Israel’s most abhorrent war crimes outside of Palestine, the reality of Israeli warmongering is well documented. Israel’s instrumentality in the decades-long civil war and state-sponsored genocide of the Indigenous Maya provides critical context for the genocide of Palestinians today.
Current relations between Israel and Guatemala are bound to this bloody history and fueled by the relationship between Zionism and an Evangelicalism informed by two biblical interpretations.
The first is a manipulated version of the biblical Book of Genesis according to which God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who do not. Genesis actually states that the blessing applies to all descendants of Abraham (or Ibrahim, as Muslims call that prophet).
The second, and more outlandish, is an apocalyptic omen derived from the Book of Revelations postulating that Jewish settlement in and control over Palestine is a precursor to Christ’s return.
The consequence of this Christian Zionist phenomenon – described by Palestinian Reverend Munther Isaac as “an imperial theology” that “serves the interests of the empires of today at the expense of the weak and defenseless” – constitutes a conflation between faith and geopolitics that breeds solidarity with Israel, as was seen in Bolivia in recent years. (more...)
From Guatemala to Gaza, genocide denial thwarts justice
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