An Israeli Settler I Want to Live Beside

Book Review of Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State

Sam Bahour
12 min readJan 2, 2021

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Imagine, God forbid, that you and a friend are being rushed into a hospital emergency room by a life-support ambulance team. One of you is still living; the other died at the scene.

The horrific event that brought you both to this point was perpetrated in broad daylight, creating a public and angry outcry. The public has gathered in the parking lot of the hospital, its anger growing by the second. Inside, the health professionals do their job in a cold, systematic manner, as trained. The first decision is to take the still-living victim to triage and prepare them for a life-saving operation. The cadaver is immediately sent to the morgue with an order for a fast-track autopsy, in order for the growing crowd outside to be addressed with facts to suppress the gossip spreading like wildfire as the media arrives to witness the mayhem.

The two lead medical professionals inside the emergency room have vastly different duties. The physician overseeing the operation cares less about the circumstances that created the mutilated body in front of her. She is laser-focused on all the vital signs of the patient as she makes her…

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