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[Guest essay] Seeing Jeju in Gaza
Posted on : Dec.15,2023 15:16 KST Modified on : Dec.15,2023 15:16 KST
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One of the worst civilian massacres in 20th-century Asian history took
place on Jeju Island at the dawn of the Cold War. On this “hauntingly
beautiful island,” Bruce Cumings writes, “the postwar world first
witnessed the American capacity for unrestrained violence against
indigenous peoples fighting for self-determination and social justice.”
John R. Eperjesi
Over the past two months, a civilian massacre on the other side of
Asia, in Gaza, has been unfolding, one that many scholars, journalists, and activists are
calling a genocide. This humanitarian crisis can be compared to the Jeju April 3 Incident
because Palestinians in Gaza have also been fighting for self-determination and justice, and
against an Israeli military occupation, since 1967. We can see Jeju’s past in the unrestrained
violence raining down on Gaza now.
The US military occupation of South Korea began in 1945 when the World War II defeat of
Japan ended 35 years of colonial rule in Korea. Frustration and anger at the military
occupation built up slowly at first, then accelerated and exploded three years later on Jeju
Island. John Merrill points out that “violent opposition on this scale to a postwar American
occupation occurred nowhere else in Asia or Europe.”
Like Jeju Islanders at the inception of the Cold War, over the past 56 years, Palestinians in
occupied Gaza have been routinely subjected to multiple forms of state violence designed to
terrorize them into submission: beatings, torture, executions, interrogations, curfews,
deportations, property destruction, financial sanctions, blockades and indiscriminate
bombings. In 1987, 20 years after the Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank
began, the first Palestinian uprising, or “intifada,” occurred. This was a mostly nonviolent
uprising, led mainly by women and inspired in part by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King
and Gene Sharp.
Just as the entire population of Gaza is being punished for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas
militants, the entire population of Jeju was subjected to state terror after the April 3 uprising.
The US military government and the newly formed Republic of Korea administered “collective
punishment” on the entire island, a war crime prohibited by the Hague Regulations (1899)
and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). Between 1948 and 1954, an estimated 25,000 to
30,000 Jeju islanders were killed, or one-tenth of the population. Nearly every family on Jeju
was impacted by the violence.
Over the past two months, over 18,000 Palestinians have been killed and close to 50,000
have been injured, with 7,780 missing. Every family in Gaza has been impacted by the
violence. In Jeju, one-third of the victims were elderly, women, or children. In Gaza, 70% of
those killed have been women and children under the age of 18. At least 7,729 children have
been killed.
In Jeju, scorched-earth campaigns destroyed 95 percent of mountain villages, and 80,000 to
90,000 villagers were forcibly relocated to internment camps along the coastline. Corey
Scher of New York’s CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State
University “found that almost 900,000 buildings across Gaza have suffered severe
destruction and damage from Israeli bombardments, including places of worship, hospitals,
schools, and residential buildings.” The UN estimates 80 to 90% of the population of Gaza is
internally displaced. According to the UN World Food Programme, Palestinians who have
been forced out of their homes are now stuck in overcrowded shelters, makeshift tents, and
open areas without enough food, clean water, proper sewage or sanitation. More people may
end up dying from diseases — bloody diarrhea, jaundice, measles, meningitis, chickenpox,
viral hepatitis — than from bombs and missiles.
Smoke rises from the vicinity of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where the IDF has begun staging a ground war, on Dec. 6.
(EPA/Yonhap)
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza
Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting
human animals, and we act accordingly.” Israel’s Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Arieh King said,
“They are not human beings, and they are not animals, they are subhuman and that is how
they should be treated.” Asian peoples, from Palestine in the west to Korea in the east, have
often been subjected to dehumanizing stereotypes and slurs. In the United States,
derogatory terms like “yellow peril,” “gook,” “sand nigger,” “raghead,” “chink,” “Jap,” “Nip,”
“slope,” and most recently “China virus,” have historically enabled acts of racist hate, both big
and small, both foreign and domestic, ranging from the massacre of civilians in the
Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, to the brutal attacks on Asian Americans during
the pandemic which gave rise to the #StopAsianHate movement.
Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, views the murder of civilians and destruction of Gaza
as part of a global clash of civilizations. “This is a war that is not only between Israel and
Hamas. It’s a war that is really intended, really, truly, to save Western civilization,” Herzog
has said. The state of Israel, propped up with billions of dollars in military aid from the US, is
broadcasting the interrelated practices of racism, apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic
cleansing and genocide that helped build Western civilization, and viewers from around the
world are horrified by what they are seeing.
Many are dusting off their copies of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” (1978) to make sense of
what is happening in Gaza. An equally relevant text, I would suggest, is “Discourse on
Colonialism” (1950) by the great Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire.
When the US was the only country to veto the UN Security Council resolution demanding an
immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, I thought of Césaire’s words: “I make no secret of
my opinion that at the present time the barbarism of Western Europe has reached an
incredibly high level, being only surpassed — far surpassed, it is true — by the barbarism of
the United States.” A barbaric form of American exceptionalism is thriving in the 21st century.
The horrific attack by Hamas militants on Oct.7 killed 1,200 Israelis, and their deaths should
be mourned along with Palestinians. Massive protests around the world are calling for a
ceasefire to stop the violence. In the US, many of these protests are being led by Jewish
groups and their allies.
In 1953, the Armistice Agreement stopped the senseless killing of the Korean War, but the
ceasefire was never followed up by a formal peace treaty. Unending war has resulted in
massive military buildup, divided families, authoritarian governments, travel restrictions,
sanctions, famine, and mandatory military service. Everyone on the Korean Peninsula, and
indeed in the Asia-Pacific region, lives under the threat of a return to total war. There are
plenty of hawks in the United States who would love to do to North Korea, and China, what
Israel is doing to Gaza.
If the new cold war turns hot, the entire Korean Peninsula, both North and South, will be
reduced to rubble while American bombers fly overhead, emblazoned with the slogan,
“Saving Western Civilization.”
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
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