#50 Massacres and Genocides

The other day, while surfing the internet, I found this image. It depicts Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy brutally attacking poor innocent English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia. But they aren’t just slaughtering men (people their own size), they are also stabbing, slicing, and dicing defenseless women and babies—The Savage Beasts! This is a True Story! Or is it?

It occurred to me that if you delete the props and costumes of this image, and substitute those appropriate for Hamas terrorists, Israeli settlers and Israeli settlements, you would have a clear picture of what happened on October 7, 2023— as painted by all the mainstream corporate news outlets. It is the Official Story, a part of World History…except that…

…now we know that in the early days following the Hamas attacks, We The People were victims of outrageous propaganda designed to produce fear, rage and hate.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahou: “They took dozens of children, bound them up, burned them, and executed them.”
U.S. President Biden: “I never really thought that I would see…have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children”
U.S. Secretary of State Blinken: “A family of four around the breakfast table, the father, his eyes gouged out, the mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off—before they were executed.”
Fox News: “According to local Israeli outlet i24News, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers moved into Kfar Aza, one of the communities Hamas terrorists invaded early Saturday morning, and discovered about 40 dead babies, some decapitated — highlighting the brutality of the invading forces. “

These are all lies.

In today’s digital world where messages can be shared across oceans and continents at “warp speed”, it is hard to maintain a lie unless people want to believe it.

So if Israel and the United States—walking in lockstep, joined at the hip— lied about beheaded babies and sliced and diced families, what else did they lie about? How can we believe anything they say?

While we contemplate that conundrum, let’s return to the image of the Jamestown Massacre. Was the artist an eyewitness? No. His name was Matthäus Merian the Elder and he lived in Frankfurt, Germany. The inspiration for his work probably came from the following story:

“…on the Friday morning (the fatal day) the 22 of March, as also in the evening, as in other dayes before, they came unarmed into our houses, without Bowes or arrowes, or other weapons, with Deere, Turkies, Fish, Furres, and other provisions, to sell, and trucke with us, for glasse, beades, and other trifles: yea in some places, sate downe at Breakfast with our people at their tables, whom immediately with their owne tooles and weapons, eyther laid downe, or standing in their houses, they basely and barbarously murthered, not sparing eyther age or sexe, man, woman or childe; so sodaine in their cruell execution, that few or none discerned the weapon or blow that brought them to destruction…

And by this meanes that fatall Friday morning, there fell under the bloudy and barbarous hands of that perfidious and inhumane people, contrary to all laws of God and men, of Nature & Nations, three hundred forty seven men, women, and children, most by their owne weapons; and not being content with taking away life alone, they fell after againe upon the dead, making as well as they could, a fresh murder, defacing, dragging, and mangling the dead carkasses into many pieces, and carrying some parts away in derision, with base and bruitish triumph…

Neither yet did these beasts spare those amongst the rest well knowne unto them, from whom they had daily received many benefits and favours, but spitefully also massacred them, without remorse or pitty, being in this more fell then Lyons and Dragons, which (as Histories record) have beene so farre from hurting, as they have both acknowledged, and gratefully requited their Benefactors; such is the force of good deeds, though done to cruell beasts, as to make them put off the very nature of beasts, and to put on humanity upon them. But these miscreants, contrariwise in this kinde, put not off onely all humanity, but put on a worse and more then unnaturall bruitishnesse.”

Source: A Declaration of the state of the Colonie and Affaires in Virginia. With a Relation of the barbarous Massacre in the time of peace and League, treacherously executed by the Native Infidels upon the English, 22 March last … (1622), written by Edward Waterhouse, was the Virginia Company of London‘s official publication about an assault by Virginia Indians on the English plantations along the James River that took place on March 22, 1622.

Imagine, if you will, that you could jump into your handy dandy time machine, set a few dials and travel back to 17th century Jamestown. Let’s say that you could observe, but not interact with other humans (you wouldn’t want to change the future). You could use tiny, almost invisible drones to record many interactions among and between the newly arrived English settlers and the People who had lived on that land for thousands of years. How would the drone footage compare to the Waterhouse story—the only one that has survived?

Sadly time machines do not exist. However, we do have a way to travel forward in time. Historical evidence in the form of writings, drawings, photographs, films and other artifacts can serve the same purpose as tiny drones, carrying our world into the future. Without them, human memory depends on myths and legends.

Now let’s return to the stories of the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Israelis claim that they are entitled to return to the land that belonged to the Jews 2000 years ago. The Palestinians, who have lived on that land for at least 2000 years refuse to give it up. These two groups have been at war, off and on, since 1947 when the United Nations voted to take land away from the Palestinians and give it to Zionists so that they could establish their own country–Israel.

The Israelis have been allowed to dominate the story with their version of history. The Palestinian version has been suppressed. Not anymore. The Gaza Genocide has put an end to that. The full story is in plain view. Will you face it or turn away?

Sources and Links

1. Powhatan: American Indian Chief—Powhatan (died April 1618, Virginia [U.S.]) was a North American Indian leader, father of Pocahontas. He presided over the Powhatan empire at the time the English established the Jamestown Colony (1607)…at the peak of his power, he is estimated to have ruled between 13,000 and 34,000 people…The Powhatan empire at the time of the colonists’ arrival essentially covered present-day eastern Virginia, extending from the Potomac River to the Great Dismal Swamp, and its capital was at the village of Werowocomoco. (britannica.com)
2. Jamestown: Legacy of the Massacre of 1622–“Many of the surviving English settlers welcomed the attack as a justification for assaulting the Powhatans and driving them from their lands. Edward Waterhouse wrote after the attack, ‘Our hands, which before were tied with gentleness and fair usage, are now set at liberty by the treacherous violence of the savages … So that we … may now by right of war, and law of nations, invade the country, and destroy them who sought to destroy us … Their cleared grounds in all their villages … shall be inhabited by us’.” (encyclopedia.com)
3. Anglo-Powhatan War, Second (1622–1632) “On March 22, 1622, Opechancanough led a series of coordinated surprise attacks that concentrated on settlements upriver from Jamestown and succeeded in killing nearly a third of the English population. Perhaps assuming that the English were sufficiently humiliated, he did not pursue a final destruction of the colony. What followed, then, was a ten-year war in which the English repeatedly attacked the Indian food supply. After the conflict’s only full-scale battle, fought in 1624, colonists estimated that they had destroyed enough food to feed 4,000 men for a year. Peace finally arrived in 1632, but by then the balance of power in Virginia had tipped toward the English.” (encyclopediavirginia.org)
4. October 7: Forensic analysis shows Hamas abuses, many false Israeli claims – “Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has carried out a forensic analysis of the events of October 7, when Hamas fighters launched an incursion into Israel that has transformed the politics of the Middle East. But the investigation by the I-Unit, which examined hours of footage from CCTV, dashcams, personal phones and headcams of killed Hamas fighters, has also found that many of the stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. These include claims of atrocities such as the mass killing and beheading of babies as well as allegations of widespread and systematic rape – stories that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the subsequent bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed nearly 32,000 people.” (aljazeera.com)
5. Israel’s Hilltop Youth: Thou Shalt Not Kill | Radicalised Youth “In late July 2015, an arson attack on a family home in the Palestinian village of Duma, in the West Bank, resulted in the killing of three members of the Dawabshe family, the youngest of whom, Ali, was only 18 months old. The firebombing also caused seven-year-old Ahmed Dawabshe, Ali’s brother, second and third-degree burns across his body, the scars of which he still bears today. Ahmed, who now lives with his grandfather, remains in Duma, across the West Bank border from his attackers: members of the Hilltop Youth. Residing on outposts often neighbouring areas populated heavily by Palestinians (not to be confused with Israeli settlements) the Hilltop Youth are known for their extreme religious nationalism. Mostly made up of young people between the ages of 16 and 25, the group are followers of Kahanism; an ideology based on the teachings of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. Meir Ettinger, Kahane’s grandson, was one of several settlers charged for the Duma murders, also known as “Price Tag” killings, alongside 21-year-old Amiram Ben-Uliel and an unnamed minor. They were all released after serving minimal prison time.” (Al Jazeera English, YouTube)
6. Investigating war crimes in Gaza I Al Jazeera Investigations This feature length investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict. The I-Unit has built up a database of thousands of videos, photos and social media posts. Where possible it has identified the posters and those who appear. The material reveals a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and murder. The film also tells the story of the war through the eyes of Palestinian journalists, human rights workers and ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip. And it exposes the complicity of Western governments – in particular the use of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as a base for British surveillance flights over Gaza. “The west cannot hide, they cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know,” says Palestinian writer, Susan Abulhawa.This is “the first livestream genocide in history … If people are ignorant they are wilfully ignorant,” she says. (Al Jazeera English, YouTube)
7. The Story Of Palestinian Christians | The Stones Cry Out (2013) | Full Film In 1948 the history of Palestine changed forever, but little is ever said about the upheaval faced by its Christian minority. Christians have lived side by side with Muslims and Jews for almost two thousand years. An integral part of Palestinian society, they have shared in the events of recent history, yet their voices are seldom heard and worse: their existence often ignored. (Journeyman Pictures, YouTube)