Michael Hudson again

posted before and posting again because of interesting comments. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/04/michael-hudson-the-truth-about-the-destruction-of-the-palestinians.html Pepe Escobar commentary https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/04/15/the-gaza-genocide-as-explicit-policy-michael-hudson-names-all-names/ one comment. vao April 15, 2024 at 4:19 am Everything that Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere throughout Israel was all pioneered in Vietnam. Many — if not most — of what Israel is doing against Palestinians has a solid colonial tradition that predates the Vietnam war. Thus, at the same time the USA was implementing strategic hamlets in Vietnam, the Portuguese were proceeding with a “rural reorganization” of their colonies, concentrating the native population in “villages” (aldeamentos) — enclosed with barbed wire and with a small military post in the centre (so that the locals would act as a human shield in case of attacks by the guerrila). But neither the American nor the Portuguese had invented anything: the French had already practiced the same policy with their “regrouping centres” (centres de regroupement) during the Algerian war — where they ended up parking 2.5 millions natives. And they were not the first to have done something like that: the British created the “new villages” during the “Malayan emergency” — again, concentrating people in villages enclosed with barbed wire, watchtowers manned by guards with instructions to shoot to kill. It’s been carved up into districts requiring electronic passes from one sector to another to go into Israel, to go to Jerusalem, or to go to Israel for jobs to work. Again, a standard colonial practice. In French colonies, the native population was assigned to districts, within which it could move freely. To travel to another district, it was necessary to get a written authorization, presenting a roadmap (where one wanted to go, when, and the route). Woe to those who, when presenting their laissez-passer, were found to be infringing its roadmap. In addition, the local population was subject to curfews. A similar system (including curfews) existed in Belgian colonies, but it was possible to obtain a travel permit valid for a limited period (typically 2 months), renewable for a fee. In Portuguese colonies, natives had to carry a “native booklet” with which they had to justify their presence in any place outside their district. It was basically a log book dated and signed by the employer or civil servant. Also curfews. Other colonial powers also had a variety of comparable approaches for imposing the control of movement on local populations. Even the segregation practices in occupied Palestine (roads reserved to Israelis, streets where one side is for Palestinians and the other for Israelis, settlements that Palestinians are not allowed to enter, hospitals where maternity wards are separated by ethnic background, etc) are actually inspired by colonial practices. Italians were the most extreme in that matter, followed by Portuguese, Belgians, British, Dutch, French. Apartheid itself was a colonial system in a post-colonial world — it did not invent anything that had not been already implemented in the colonial realm before (especially in Italian colonies under fascism). Genocide? A typical colonial practice. We could go on. It is useful to realize that, if the zionist movement was led by, and the State of Israel created by Jews originating largely from Eastern Europe (Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Jabotinski, Sharett, etc), the foundation and build-up of zionism was largely the work of Jews originating from Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire (Herzl, Arthur Ruppin, Franz Oppenheimer, Davis Trietsch, Otto Warburg). And for them, the models to apply in order to build a state for the Jews were to be found in the German and French colonies.