External superpower endorsement of sacral claims intensifies settler-state repression

Evidence

The outspoken, unqualified backing of Israel’s moves in Jerusalem and provocations of US officials has led to increased anger among Palestinians both in the city and outside it. In fact, it caused rising upheaval in the city and the commencement of the March of Return in the Gaza Strip on March 30, 2018. On the first day, while Friedman’s embassy was being officially opened in Jerusalem with prominent US and Israeli politicians, millionaires, and religious leaders in attendance, in Gaza, Palestinians who marched in protest near the walls that enclose the Strip demanding their right of return were indiscriminately shot at by Israeli military snipers, resulting in 60 Palestinians dead and 2,771 injured in one day (Dabashi 2018). This staunch backing of the US position led, as I see it, to a sense of omnipotence for Israel and justified the increase of repression on the state’s part, as well as the acceleration of its settlement process, its Judaization of Jerusalem, and its codifying of ever more racist laws. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1026

Categorization

• QUESTION: The counterfactual here is powerful for the threat-removal research question: if external backing (the threat of correction) were removed, would repression decay, or would a new enemy be manufactured?
• XREF: connects to: A settler-colonial regime whose founding narrative is sacred cannot secularize without renouncing that narrative; Evangelical Christian messianic doctrine directly shapes US foreign policy on Israel — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1022

Broader Connections

• A settler-colonial regime whose founding narrative is sacred cannot secularize without renouncing that narrative #expands (0.78)