By Christopher Overfelt
It is important to recognize the blueprint the Israeli government is utilizing to displace the indigenous peoples of Palestine. It is the same method used by European powers in their southern colonies and it is the same method used by the U.S. government to displace the indigenous peoples of North America. This system employs violence to physically relocate a population in order that the resources of the land on which they live may be extracted. A system of violence is then set in place to minimize the resistance put up by the indigenous peoples to the theft of their land.
Wealth is not created at the Federal Reserve or at the World Bank. It resides in the land beneath us. Wealth is acquired through the water, food, minerals, lumber, and oil that come from the earth. If you look at the land seized and occupied from Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria by the Israeli government over the last 70 years, you will see that they are strategic points of rich resources. Access to important waterways, fertile agricultural ground, and areas with precious minerals have all been seized and occupied by the Israeli government. It is the same reason the Cherokee people were forcefully relocated from the fertile valleys of Georgia and the Carolinas to the plains of Oklahoma. They were in the way of rich white landowners using the land for cotton.
The Israeli government will continue to employ this method of “population transfer” as long as there are more resources to be taken from the land. There are only two people in the world who can cause this land theft to cease. You and Me. As American citizens, we are the only ones capable of stopping the flow of our taxpayer dollars to Israel to fund this theft. We must let our representative know, Democrat and Republican, that enough is enough.
It is also important to recognize that while this method of violent land theft has been utilized against indigenous peoples for many centuries, indigenous communities continue to thrive and grow. All around the world, indigenous peoples are leading the effort to protect and care for the resources of the earth that sustain us all. From the Sioux people at Standing Rock, to the Lipan Apache in New Mexico, to the Lenca in Honduras and the indeginous people of the Amazon in Brazil, these groups continue to demonstrate the effectiveness of resistance in the face of overwhelming power.
—Christopher Overfelt, a member of Veterans for Peace, serves on the PeaceWorks-KC Board.
