Erasing The Human : Collapse of The Postcolonial World and Refugee Immigration Crisis by Hatem Bazian

Author:Hatem Bazian [Bazian, Hatem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Claritas Books
Published: 2021-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Bouncers and Enforcers

At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost 85 percent of the world’s land surface was subject to either direct colonization or some form of protected status. Africa and Asia were the private dominion of European colonial powers with millions living and existing under the boots of pernicious colonial control relegating them to servitude, bondage, and treatment as mere “beasts” of burden. At the time, a traveler making the journey from Africa’s north to the south, then from east to west, would find that all territories were colonial possessions of the British, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, with only a few areas experiencing any type of independence, self-determination, or freedom. The western hemisphere was under US domination and subject to the Monroe Doctrine.

Movement of raw materials, rendering of services, and cheap labor were the tasks assigned to populations in the colonies by European powers. The pillaging of the southern hemisphere was systematic, structured, and total, leaving nothing untouched in the process—animate or inanimate. In 2018, when the world commemorated the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, we were reminded of the hundreds of thousands of troops recruited from the colonies to fight imperial wars and who sacrificed themselves to protect and defend one European colonial power from another. This, at a time when the colonial man or woman was not considered equal to a European or even considered fully human. The colonized subject was used as a fighting force and, at the same time, brought to inhabit the human zoo126 spaces within the European capitals, to be publicly gazed upon and touched as the uncivilized and subhuman.

The end of World War I did not bring peace to the Global South or end the colonial project itself; rather, it was granted further legitimacy under the newly formed League of Nations and the paternalistically crafted mandate authority127 to extend the control of European colonial powers. As a matter of fact, under the League of Nations supervision the colonial footprint was expanded, and vast swaths of land in the Arab world were brought directly into French128 and British129 possession. The region currently named the Middle East was born, its borders drawn, and the Palestinian dispossession occurred through the facilitation or direction of colonial powers during this period. Likewise, Africa and Asia witnessed further entrenchment of the colonial project and forced a voluntary movement of populations across the globe, as well as intense demands for raw materials and labor to rebuild Europe.

One way to view the dispossession of the Palestinians is to think of it as a process of forced removal of Jews from Europe and Arabs from Palestine, which was facilitated by colonial logic, Eurocentric power, racism, and British strategic planning to protect its trade and colonies. The forced removal of Jews from Europe came on the heels of an intense period of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, England, and France, with the Dreyfus Affair130 being a paradigmatic representation of the time and making Zionism a logical solution to escape the continent’s intensification of anti-Semitism, bigotry, and racism.

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