Learning from the Past

Dear George,

Too many people simply misunderstand what Gaza is all about. It is not an imperial war, nor is it a colonial war. It is an indigenous war, a war aimed at forcing a native people off their native land. It’s all about real estate and the acquisition of fallow native land for future development.

Most natives are basically content to work their land and live their lives in peace, and it’s bad form for a bunch of Whiteguys to attack pastoral natives without cause. So, what the Whiteguys have to do is goad the natives into an act of aggression that becomes the propaganda “trigger” that justifies the subsequent slaughter and seizure of the native’s land.

I hate to do this to you, Big Guy, but I’ve got to run a little history past you. I’ll try to make it as brief and painless as possible.

Let’s take a quick look at Pontiac’s Rebellion.

In 1760, the French lost control of North America when the British kicked their butts in the French and Indian War. Prior to their expulsion, the French, being French, had treated the Native American’s as equals. They intermarried with them and showered the natives with gifts, including gunpowder and ball so the natives could hunt game and have enough to eat.

Another important difference was that the French weren’t big on settlers, so they kept their numbers low. The British, on the other hand, flooded the area with colonists and kept seizing Indian lands for their settlements. (Sound familiar?)

The puritanical morality of the British military commander of the British North America, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, was offended by this gift giving, which he equated with bribery. And, he wasn’t too keen about giving the Indians gunpowder and ball. I also suspect that he was appalled at the underutilization of land occupiedby, but not legally deeded to, the Indians.

He needed a trigger.

So, he stopped the gift giving, and the Indians went hungry because they had no powder and ball with which to hunt game.

The Indians rose up in revolt, and Amherst had his trigger.

The only problem was that the Indians kicked the British’s ass. The British had a string of forts that ran from Green Bay to Pittsburg. The Indians took every one of them, except for Detroit and Fort Pitt, which they had under siege.

Well, Lord Jeffrey wasn’t going to stand by and let a bunch of uppity savages make him look bad. He well understood that in indigenous warfare it’s no holds barred. So he wrote to one of his commanders, Colonel Henry Bouquet, and asked, “Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.”

Bouquet wrote back, “I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.”

During a parley at Fort Pitt, the Fort’s commander, Simeon Ecuyer, did just that.

The British had small pox; the Israelis have white phosphorus

In the end, the British were forced to sue for peace and strike a treaty with the Indians, knowing that the sole purpose of any sort of agreement with natives is to break it.

The Israelis, of course, are old hands at indigenous warfare and know full well how to create a trigger. On Nov. 4, they broke a long-standing truce with Hamas by attacking Gaza and killing six people. This goaded Hamas into lobbing rockets into southern Israel and gave the Israelis the trigger they needed to begin their war of expulsion.

We forced our natives into smaller and smaller reservations; the Israeli plan is to force their indigenous people into smaller and smaller cantonments. It’s simply a matter of crowd control.

Some look at Gaza and see a wanton brutality bordering on genocide. I look at Gaza and see the ongoing march of civilization as it offers the gift of progress to an indigenous people.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones