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Deradicalization is the word of the day. Not of Israel, its genocidal apartheid regime, and the fanatic society that sustains it and drives it to ever greater extremes. But of the Palestinians it has dispossessed, of those who have lived under its jackboot for almost eight decades, and particularly of Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip that has experienced two years of genocide.
It is the main item of the first article of the Trump-Netanyahu twenty-point initiative. Needless to say it has been enthusiastically embraced by the editors of the New York Times. One can similarly imagine the NYT reporting from Poland in 1943 and publishing an editorial that sanctimoniously proclaims that the main impediment to peace in Europe is the Bolshevik virus that has infected the continent’s Jews.
The concept of deradicalization has a long pedigree. At heart, it is based on the premise that colonial subjects have no grievances towards their foreign rulers. They are empty vessels, with not a thought in their heads, happily farming fruit and vegetables in their sunny fields, grateful for the many improvements their overlords have generously bestowed upon them.
More to the point, they are so backwards and ignorant they are completely unaware that they can or should have grievances. Until, that is, nefarious outsiders appear on the scene and plant diabolical ideas about freedom, equality, and liberation in their simple minds, and terrorize them into participating in revolts and rebellions.
The natives, duly infected with ideas like independence, social justice, and the redistribution of wealth, need to be deradicalized so that the natural order of things can be restored. The outside agitators need to be cleansed from the body politic, and the natives re-educated to once again thoughtlessly till the fields, concerned only about the harvest and making sure the chickens have enough to eat.
The Palestinian case is no different. They hate Zionism and Israel only because they have been taught and terrorized into doing so by Haj Amin al-Husseini, Yasir Arafat and the PLO, Hamas, and of course UNRWA. If we can only reform the Palestinian school curriculum yet again, Palestinians will learn to peacefully co-exist with dispossession, apartheid, and genocide.
Imagine, for a moment, that Palestinian schoolchildren were to start the day singing Hatikva, are taught that the Holy Trinity in fact consists of Yitzhak Shamir, David Ben-Gurion, and Theodor Herzl, spend an hour a week studying Binyamin Netanyahu’s addresses to Congress, dutifully rising from their seats every time the seals that swim in the Capitol give him yet another standing ovation, and are made to chant “Death to the Arabs” a dozen times before going to sleep under a Maccabi Tel Aviv poster.
Does anyone in their right mind genuinely believe Palestinians can be taught to peacefully co-exist with dispossession and oppression?
If Palestinians are indeed radicalized, the agents of their radicalization are Israel and its policies, not least its compulsive murder of their children. The only available formula for deradicalization is Palestinian rights, first and foremost their inalienable right to self-determination.
The beauty of Trump’s initiative is that “deradicalization” is not defined, and with ever-shifting goalposts moved at Israel's discretion can therefore never be achieved. And until it is, Israel will be free to continue radicalizing Palestinians with its bombs, bullets, and bulldozers with total impunity.