Bilal Barakat 🍉 on Nostr: An excellent older (2015) piece by David Graeber full of insight. On the logic of the ...

An excellent older (2015) piece by David Graeber full of insight.

On the logic of the settlements:

»First, the settlements. They were originally the project of a relatively isolated, if well funded, collection of religious zealots. Now everything seems to be organized around them. The government pours in endless resources. Why? The answer seems to be that since at least the ‘90s, rightwing politicians in Israel have figured out that the settlements are a kind of political magic. The more money gets funneled into them, the more the Jewish electorate turns to the Right. The reason is simple. Israel is expensive. Housing inside the 1948 boundaries is exorbitantly expensive. If you are a young person without means, you increasingly has two options: to live with one’s parents until well into your 30s, or find a place in an illegal settlement, where apartments cost perhaps a third of what they would in Haifa or Tel Aviv—and that’s not to mention the superior roads, schools, utilities, and social services. At this point the vast majority of settlers live on the West Bank for economic, not ideological, reasons. (This is especially true around Jerusalem.) But consider who these people are. In the past, young people in difficult circumstances, students, well-educated young parents, have been the traditional constituency of the Left. Put these same people in a settlement, and they will, inexorably, even without realizing it, begin to think like fascists. Settlements are, in their own way, giant engines for the production of right-wing consciousness. It is very difficult for someone placed in hostile territory, given training in automatic weapons and warned to be constantly on one’s guard against a local population seething over the fact that your next-door neighbors have been killing their sheep and destroying their olive trees, not to gradually see ethno-nationalism as common sense. As a result, with every election, the old Left electorate further dissipates, and a host of religious, fascist, or semi-fascist parties win a larger and larger stake of the vote. For politicians, who can barely think past the next election, the lure is inescapable.«

https://davidgraeber.org/articles/hostile-intelligence-reflections-from-a-visit-to-the-west-bank/

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