Tikva Honig-Parnass discovers a letter she wrote to her family in October 1948, inked on letterhead she found in a gas station that had belonged to a Palestinians who was likely expelled by her unit. Looking back Honig-Parnass reflects how it came to be that she never considered who owned the gas station, and what happened to him, a skill she developed as a youngster in Israel’s 48 Generation: “This complete ignoring of the personhood of the “enemy,” the serenity lacking in all feeling-without gloating or hatred were characteristic of the remote stance, the apparent lack of affect, of the 48 Generation towards the Palestinian Arabs. This stance was congruent with the perception of the latter as an “environmental nuisance” which should be dealt with in a rational manner, and without hatred, and when necessary-as in the case of the stationary–to make use of the spoils left behind after their removal. By then I was already experienced in the mental acrobatics involved in ignoring the ‘nuisance.'”

Tikva Honig-Parnass challenges the widely accepted claim that the nature of Zionist settler colonization is unique: “The class analysis of the colonial group itself, reveals features of Zionism to be similar to those of other colonial projects, including apartheid South Africa, with which comparisons are often made. These projects seek to dispossess and subdue the indigenous people, and whenever needed, exploit their cheap labour for the benefit of capital. Capitalist class interests dominate the colonial states’ “peaceful resolution” of the conflicts with the colonized, aiming to retain the rule of capital and, in the globalized era, to enable economic neoliberalism.”