Greg Shupak discusses THE WRONG STORY in an interview for Black Agenda Report.
ROBERTO SIRVENT: We know readers will learn a lot from your book, but what do you hope readers will un-learn? In other words, is there a particular ideology you’re hoping to dismantle?
GREG SHUPAK: I hope that my book will help readers un-learn the ideologies of imperialism, colonialism, settler-colonialism, and capitalism. I seek to facilitate that by chronicling three commonplace stories about Palestine-Israel that are told in the media and demonstrating that each of these narratives is profoundly flawed: that “both sides” have suffered and are responsible for the absence of peace to comparable extents; that “extremists,” mostly from the Palestinian camp, need to be marginalized so that “moderates” can be empowered; that Israel has a “right to defend itself.” Instead of these approaches, I contend, Palestine-Israel should be presented as a story about one people colonizing another with the assistance of the world’s sole superpower and, prior to that, of its British precursor; given those dynamics, a more accurate accounting of Palestine-Israel would recognize the qualitative differences and causal relationship between mass Israeli violence in pursuit of subjugating Palestinians and stealing their land and Palestinian resistance that sometimes includes armed struggle, the right to which Palestinians are guaranteed under international law. Ideally, the book will encourage readers to think in similar terms about comparable issues that are beyond its immediate scope such as the colonization of the indigenous populations of the Americas.
Read the full interview here.