By Hudhaifa Hassen Karolia
Eugenics, a highly controversial branch of science riding on the back of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Human Evolution, is a field of study involving the promotion of growth of certain classes of people, deemed to be of ‘superior genetic breeding’. It seeks, in scientific terms, to aim or direct the supposed path of human evolution. On the darker side of the coin, it seeks to prevent the spread of undesirable genetic characteristics to future generations of humans; in other words, to inhibit the growth of ‘inferior’ races. Eugenics is, behind its elaborate façade of pseudo-scientific lies and misconceptions, nothing more than racism at its worse.
Conceptual eugenics, in its current form, was developed by a European, Francis Galton, as early as 1883. It was readily accepted by many European scientists, particularly those involved in the fields of genetics and evolution. Universities all over Europe began offering courses in the instruction of eugenics. It was thus that the eugenics model spread throughout the world, leading to the creation of such racially bigoted groups as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), amongst many others.
Perhaps the most infamous example of the application of eugenic policies was Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Under Hitler, the Nazi Party used the idea of Aryan nationality and superiority to undertake a mission to eradicate the ‘inferior’ races, including the Gypsies, Slavs and Jews. The Jewish population was targeted particularly, leading to the cold-blooded murder of around six million Jews, and the expulsion of thousands of others, in the space of a mere twelve years. It must be clarified, at this point, that Jews were not targeted as a result of their religion, but rather because of their racial characteristics.
Another example of eugenics in action was the Apartheid government of South Africa. The methodical application of racism, or eugenics, was imported to South Africa by Hendrik Verwoerd, who studied Eugenics and Social Darwinism in Germany. Verwoerd’s various eugenicist views were translated into numerous discriminatory laws, including, amongst others, the Population Registration Act, the Bantu Education Act, and the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act. Needless to say, the Apartheid system used the idea of Afrikaner nationalism and superiority to carry out its objectives, which were severely oppressive and suppressive of the native (and other non-white) populations of South Africa.
The most recent and contemporary example of eugenics in motion is that of the illegal, illegitimate, colonial, Neo-Nazi Apartheid State of Israel. Despite the Jewish people having been on the receiving end of Nazi Germany’s eugenic policies, the Zionist movement has used the idea of Jewish nationality and racial supremacy to create a new state, based on the principles of racial prejudice and discrimination. This discrimination is supremely all-encompassing, incorporating aspects of both Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa, as well as many other white supremacy groups, such as the KKK.
From its very inception, Israel has embodied the very worst of eugenics. On the Second of November 1917, the Balfour Declaration was signed, granting to the Zionist movement a land that belonged neither to the Jews, nor the British. This opened the way for the expulsion of the native Palestinian population, the overwhelming majority of whom were Arab Muslims. By the 1930s, plans for the ethnic cleansing had been put in place, to be orchestrated by the various Zionist forces, under the leadership of figures such as Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Allon.
The Zionist expansionist ideology which permitted the rapid and cancerous growth of Israel was fuelled by the underlying belief that the Jewish race was superior. This errant belief was supported by countless rabbis, who did not hesitate to preach that the Jews were the ‘Chosen People of God’ and were set above the rest of humankind. This created a twisted mentality amongst Zionist settlers in the newly-declared land of Israel: that Jewish life held more value than other life. The wholesale slaughter and massacre of the People of Palestine was thus justified in the eyes of Zionism, as is illustrated by the fact that no Israeli soldier or military commander was ever held accountable for the use of disproportionate force, despite the commonality of incidents such as the Deir Yassin Massacre of April 1948.
As little ago as 2013, tales have been emerging from Israel about the on-going eugenics program which it has been fanatically following. Israel is home to a large Jewish Ethiopian community, numbering well over 100 000. However, over the past few years, this group’s birth rate has decreased by around twenty percent. It has been alleged that this is due to the racist Apartheid Israeli government forcibly sterilising Ethiopian women, often without their knowledge, let alone consent, in a manner reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s forced sterilisation of Jewish women. These allegations have not been denied by the Israeli government and its Health Ministry.
Furthermore, the Israeli administration regularly approves major land grabs, which result in an ever-shrinking Palestine and an ever-engorging Israel. This has left the Palestinian land deeply stratified, with isolated pockets of land left to the Palestinian People. Looking at the Palestinian map alongside the Apartheid South African map, it is practically impossible not to notice the similarity between Israel’s isolation of Palestinian-inhabited zones and the Bantu Homelands system of Apartheid. Furthermore, as with Apartheid South Africa, the Freedom of Movement of the native population is denied; Israel prohibits Palestinians from crossing from one area to another, much the same way as Africans in South Africa were prohibited from leaving their designated areas without the infamous ‘Dompas’.
The recent Gaza-Israel Conflict has, once again, exposed Israel’s total lack of respect for human life. In a period of only fifty days, Israel took the lives of over two thousand Palestinians, over seventy percent of whom were civilians. Hundreds of those Martyred were women, while hundreds more were young children. Israel takes part in, in the military’s own words, “Mowing the lawn,” or cutting down the size of the Palestinian population. This total lack of respect for human life is brought about by the Zionist eugenicist ideology that Jewish lives are superior, while other lives are inferior.
The similarities do not, by any means, end here. Many more incidents are available to illustrate the so-called State of Israel’s eugenicist, racist, Euro-centric ideologies and practices. A full comparison would require not a single article, but an entire book. My plea to you, respected reader, is to educate yourself with regards to Palestine. Countless sources of information are available, on the internet, in libraries and on YouTube in particular. Everybody is capable of raising awareness, on his or her own level. The battle is in our hands. Together, we can put an end to Israeli aggression. Together, we can liberate Palestine.
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