Chomsky on Colonialism and Gaza

Photo: AP

A couple days ago I had the opportunity to do an interview with Noam Chomsky. The bulk of the interview was on the economic crisis, but I would have felt guilty not asking him about Gaza given what's going on.

The whole interview is definitely worth reading (like everything Chomsky does) but this line particularly struck me:

I think one of the reasons for popular support for [the Israeli occupation and military offensives] in the United States is that it resonates very well with American history. How did the United States get established? The themes are similar.

Colonialism looks very similar no matter where it occurs. How similar are the ideas of "manifest destiny", which basically said that all land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans belonged to European settlers, and the zionist notion that the land between the Jordan River and the Red sea belongs to Jews?

And of course the really striking thing is what kind of blinders folks in the U.S., Israel, and mainstream media all over the world have to be wearing to not be able to see that. As a friend of mine commented yesterday, if a thousand trees were cut down in a forest, there would be outrage. If a thousand animals were killed in a zoo there would be disgust. A thousand Palestinians - eh, that's ok, I guess. Very disturbing.