Lebensraum
District 666 - MET - 59
I have my friend Dick to thank for pointing out that Israel’s assault on Gaza is, technically speaking, neither a holocaust nor a deliberate attempt to wipe out the entire Palestinian population.
He was right. The intention of this apparent genocide of the inhabitants of Gaza is far more calculated than either of those.
I’m neither an historian nor an expert on any of these subjects so I’ll leave the matter of definitions to them. I just see what I see, hear what I hear, read what I read, and I try to connect the dots by imagining what South Africa’s apartheid state would have done in Israel’s shoes.
So I’m putting this out there because I have nowhere else to put it.
I was fully intending to defend my original claims until yesterday morning when Israel’s Finance Minister, the awesomely named Bezalel Smotrich, announced that Israel’s Supreme Planning Council had approved plans to build 3,500 new “settlement units” in the occupied West Bank.
My quote marks.
"This year we have done great things for the settlements. Along with the housing unit approval, we are promoting the series of settlements, land surveys, security, roads, and other announcements in Judea and Samaria on an unprecedented scale,” said Smotrich.
Bells began to ring. Or clang.
It reminded me, inevitably, of those notorious days of white South African hegemony that culminated in the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of black South Africans to the so-called tribal homelands they had never lived in. But it went further and deeper than that.
It was alarmingly familiar but it wasn’t P.W. Botha’s “Rubicon” speech.
It wasn’t Hendrick Verwoerd’s notorious:
“I say it unequivocally that the people of South Africa cannot accept the consequence of a multi-racial state unless the Whites, the Coloureds and the Indians are prepared to commit race suicide.”
Nor was it B.J Vorster’s infamous:
“…the policy of separate development can be tested by any unprejudiced person against the requirements of Christianity and morality, and it will be found to meet all those requirements. For conditions such as those in South Africa there is no other policy, for without it you will have chaos and ultimately bring about the downfall of all population groups here in South Africa.”
Speech as Prime Minister, 23 January 1962
Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/john-vorster/
It was a lot like the story of District Six, a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town which was razed to the ground and rebuilt as a "whites only" neighbourhood under the Group Areas Act in 1966.
And not unlike like District 9, the film that was based on it.
But it was deeper and darker even than that.
I went through my notes. I resuscitated tabs lost and forgotten. I dug deep into my Google search history, deleting in the process as many embarrassments as I could bear to live without.
I read Smotrich’s announcement again.
The State of Israel will continue to grow and develop in all areas, and the settlement will continue to grow, prosper, and flourish…
This year we have done great things for the settlements. Along with the housing unit approval, we are promoting the series of settlements, land surveys, security, roads, and other announcements in Judea and Samaria on an unprecedented scale.
Bezalel Smotrich - 06.03.2024
Hmmm….
Territory.
Settlements.
Land.
Continue to grow and develop in all areas…
Land surveys.
Living space.
And suddenly it hit me: Lebensraum.
I came across this speech when I was wondering whether the default tropes comparing Netanyahu to Hitler were as trite and reductive as they first seemed.
Our strength is our quickness and our brutality. Genghis Khan had millions of women and children hunted down and killed, deliberately and with a gay heart. History sees in him only the great founder of States. What the weak Western European civilization alleges about me, does not matter. I have given the order – and will have everyone shot who utters but one word of criticism – that the aim of this war does not consist in reaching certain designated geographical lines, but in the enemies' physical elimination. Thus, for the time being only in the east, I put ready my Death's Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Only thus will we gain the living space (lebensraum) that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?
Adolf Hitler, at the conclusion of his Obersalzberg Speech on 22 August 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland.
The Holocaust would ensue in due and horrific course. But everything here is about the Poles. And, most significantly, “Only thus will we gain the living space that we need…”
So I looked it up:
The Nazis considered Poles to be racially inferior. Following the military defeat of Poland by Germany in September 1939, the Germans launched a campaign of terror intended to destroy the Polish nation and culture and to reduce the Poles to a leaderless population of peasants and workers laboring for German masters.
In the weeks following the German attack on Poland, German SS, police, and military units shot thousands of Polish civilians, including many members of the Polish nobility, clergy, and intelligentsia. In the spring of 1940, the German occupation authorities launched AB-Aktion, a plan to systematically eliminate Poles considered to be members of the “leadership class.” The aim was to remove those Poles seen as most capable of organizing resistance to German rule and to terrorize the Polish population into submission. The Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests, and other intellectuals in mass killings. Nazi officials sent thousands more to the newly built Auschwitz concentration camp, to Stutthof, and to other concentration camps in Germany where non-Jewish Poles constituted the majority of inmates until March 1942.
Hitler intended to “Germanize” Poland by replacing the Polish population with German colonists. Only enough Poles would be retained as were needed for basic labor, the rest would be driven out or killed. As a first step, Nazi governors in the annexed territories (such as Arthur Greiser in the Warthegau View This Term in the Glossary and Albert Forster in Danzig-West Prussia) forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Poles into the Generalgouvernement. More than 500,000 ethnic Germans were then settled in these areas. In 1942–43, SS and Police units carried out Germanization actions in the Zamosc region of the Generalgouvernement, forcibly removing some 100,000 Polish civilians, including 30,000 children. Families were broken up, many victims were sent to concentration camps or to forced labor, and over 4,000 children were shipped to the Reich as suitable for Germanization. In all, at least 20,000 Polish children were taken from their families, transferred to the Reich, and subjected to "Germanization" policies.
While the war lasted, however, Germany needed Polish labor. Nazi officials imposed a labor obligation upon able-bodied Poles that came to include children as young as 12. The German authorities dictated where and how Poles were employed and could conscript Poles to perform labor in the Reich. Police grabbed Poles off streets and trains, from marketplaces and churches, and in raids on villages and neighborhoods to fill labor quotas. German officials sent Poles who tried to avoid labor conscription to concentration camps and punished their families. Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were deported to German territory for forced labor. Hundreds of thousands were also imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/polish-victims
Yes, Hitler’s speech is about racial superiority. Yes, it has a genocidal intent. Yes, it called for the indiscriminate slaughter of millions of Polish innocents.
But the bottom line is about the aggrandizement of Polish territory to provide more living space for the German people. More living room. More Lebensraum.
Yesterday we heard Bezalel Smotrich’s version. It clicked.
It’s now clear that Israel’s actions in Gaza aren’t primarily a genocide. They’re a demolition.
The point isn’t to erase the Palestinians from the face of the earth. The point is to flatten the earth of Gaza in preparation for the “settlement units”, the Palestinian-proof housing estates, and the luxury beach-side condominiums with glorious views of the tranquil Med they’re going to build there when it’s done.
Like District Six is now.
Look at the pictures. Hardly a building is still standing. They’re giving their developers a head start, that’s all.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians just happen to be getting in the way.
How blindingly, barbarically and brutally obvious.