A quintessential behaviour which we see enacted by colonisers and white supremacists is the projection of their own violence and ugliness unto the indigenous population. This is demonstrated again and again throughout history.
"The Red Indian is savage; they will kill us all if we don't kill them first."
"The natives won't share their resources with us. We have to take it from them by force."
"The African is bloodthirsty, and we must protect ourselves by subjugating them."
These are the types of false characterisations that echo throughout colonial history. It is the chronic demonisation of the very people whose land, lives, freedom, food, family, dignity, work, and culture is being stolen. And these stories leave such deep marks on our collective psyche that, generations later, children are still playing Cowboys and Indians, featuring the "savage" and mysterious subhuman character who grunts words, and wears a feather in his hair.
Disney's 1992 movie, Aladdin, gladly opened with the song Arabian Nights with lyrics: "It's chaotic, but, hey, it's home..." to describe a fictional Middle Eastern location which was based on Baghdad. This hotter-than-hot, chaotic mess that is Arabia. And Western police forces are still being trained to profile civilians with darker skin as more likely to be hostile or a threat.
Projecting - specifically psychological projection - has been defined by some as: "...a defence mechanism where individuals attribute their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or motives to another person." For example, an employee who frequently talks about others might baselessly accuse colleagues of spreading rumours about them. Another common example is a cheating spouse will often suspect their partner of being unfaithful.
Similarly, any colonisation has relied on projecting unto the people being displaced, murdered, and colonised. The cause of the coloniser will always, always depend on his ability to spin the tale of his own victimhood and need for defence, to hide the true face of his own villainy and aggression. And the Israeli occupation of Palestine is no different.
Before "Israel" was illegally declared a state in 1948, the refugees-turned-colonisers instigated violence and oppression towards a native Palestinian population - a population who had welcomed and accepted these Jewish refugees from Europe following the Holocaust.
Every step of the way, the Israeli occupation has spun a narrative about the Palestinians, depicting them as terrorists, dangerous, violent, cruel, backward, and threatening to Jewish survival. Their insistence on the violent Palestinian or Muslim had no basis in reality, demonstrated by the fact that Jews, Muslims, and Christians had lived in peace in Palestine before 1948. But, Zionists have pushed the "Bad Palestinians" story for 75+ years to drown out that reality. And this was the story called upon to explain October 7th 2023 too. Yet, all the while, it was the Occupation who refused to share the land they were guests in. The Occupation refused to be integrated with the natives. The Occupation has slaughtered, stolen, raped, dehumanised, vandalised, assaulted since its conception.
And here comes the insanity of it: any meagre, desperate attempt by Palestinian civilians to protect or defend their family members and neighbours, who were being ruthlessly murdered, was then repurposed and spun into a resounding confirmation: "See, the Palestinian aggression! You see these ruthless Arabs? We told you what they're like!"
Western audiences eat it up. Israeli settlers eat it up, because it confirms the fear they had been taught to feel over and over again.
Adding excessively to the flame of this propaganda is the Western hatred of Arabs, Western Islamophobia, and their underlying racism. The already-laid foundation of hatred only reinforces the portrait being painted of Palestinians.
Can you see the impossible situation Palestinians found themselves in? "Do we die quietly, like lambs led to slaughter, not resisting, not objecting, not defending our toddlers as they are shot, our children as they are stolen, our family as they are bombed? Or do we dare do anything else at all and seem to confirm every horrible thing that has ever been said about us?"
In the States, many black Americans glimpse their own plight in the eyes of the Palestinians, for they too know the reality of holding up their hands and begging not to be shot just for breathing, for living in darker skin, for defending their loved ones, for daring to exist. They know the reality of having their Black Panthers demonised, their leaders called terrorists, their resistance to annihilation being deemed a greater crime than the annihilation itself. Of being viewed as an automatic threat, of bearing the projections of the white man, and being fashioned into the false image of their oppressors.
Ironically, the Western "fear" of the Palestinians was just a disguised sibling to the fear and hatred they'd had towards Jews before, during, and after the horrific events of the Holocaust. History is stuck on a loop, and so many white people never, ever, ever learn. They never truly see themselves as the vehicle of evil. They cling to the victim role like damsels in distress, while wiping their bloodied blades on their skirts. The blinders are superglued on. The fiction of the savage native lives on. And because so many white colonisers are ignorant about their own projecting practices, they remain ignorant of their own guilt and monstrousness.
Thus, today, we see the occupying Israeli mothers and children crying crocodile tears in the streets of Tel Aviv, broadcasted on our news stations each night. Pantomime Colonisers screaming about how "We need to be safe! They will kill us all if we let them! Therefore, we must defend ourselves! We must kill them first!"
Sound familiar?
How deeply disturbing and twisted it is that the aggressor should play the victim. That the oppressor should claim "defence", when they are the only cause of any threat. The hateful, fearful mind of the coloniser is a cannibal. It feasts on itself. It sees monsters in others, while being themselves the only monstrous creature in a nightmare of their own making.
This has been the recycled lie which white colonisers have told about the peoples they have eliminated and oppressed since the beginning, on the soils of Australia, South Africa, India, the US. And this is the lie of the Israeli terrorist state. The lie we are told and retold, packaged and repackaged in so many overt and covert ways that, in the end, it's hard for many Westerners to even realise they have fallen victim to Zionist propaganda.
When Palestine supporters use the phrase: "Every Israeli accusation is an admission", this is what they are referring to: the coloniser's longstanding tradition of projecting their own image unto the colonised. Every fact-checked detail of Israeli claims about Palestinian crimes have been, on closer examination, debunked and rebounded. But by the time one of their lies is proven false, they're on to the next. The propaganda machine churns it out so quickly, that accountability and correction get run over.
The lie of 40 beheaded Israeli babies made it around the world twice, spewed like poison out of a US president's mouth, and landed unchallenged in most Western homes, before it was finally revealed to be a complete Israeli fabrication. Meanwhile, in just 4 short months, the Israelis murdered over 10,000 Palestinian babies and children (October 2023-Jan 2024).
Projecting is very much the reality of the Israeli-led information war surrounding the oppression of Palestinians.
A huge part of fighting Zionism is starting to peel back the mask to reveal the coloniser's true face. When we truly see that face, the coloniser's lie about the indigenous people crumbles into a self-damning heap of ashes. The projection reveals itself to be none other than a self portrait. And we must bravely stare into the bloodshot eyes of that hideous-but-accurate reflection, even if it injures our white sensitivities. Even if we are frightened by change. Otherwise we go on parroting our forefathers who stained the earth with innocent indigenous blood. And we remain their unchanged children.
Confronting the projections we've swallowed means confronting our false narratives, internalised prejudices, self-righteousness, white victimhood, white saviour complex, poisoned information sources, and oafish complacency. It means having the humility to actively pursue correct narratives from the correct sources, told by a far more reliable narrator: namely, the indigenous and the oppressed. The victim is the reliable narrator. Not the offender.
As author Cole Arthur Riley wisely wrote for Black Liturgies, "The oppressor can never be trusted as historian. Our task is preservation. Collective memory is a liberation practice. Remember and tell it.”
If we don't actively, not only question, but dismantle the coloniser's projections, and instead fail to listen to the true narrative, we will once again be enabling the oppressor's lie. We will be guilty of propping up this horrendous mask that covers the abomination.
I'd like to give you a challenge... Next time you listen to Israelis and Zionists describe Palestinians, I challenge you to notice their language. Notice the adjectives they use.
What things do they liken the Palestinians to?
How do they describe their behaviour, their motives, their nature?
What is this portrait they're painting of the human beings they're genociding?
Can you see it - that glistening surface of a mirror?
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