Various shades of red and orange now decorate trees across the Northern Hemisphere, signalling the arrival of autumn. Those same colours highlight brutally different scenes in Gaza, Palestine. Barbaric bombing campaigns are reminding citizens of the first days of the ongoing genocide, and the present invasion of Gaza City is telling its one million citizens that worse is to come.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, where many of these weapons are designed and manufactured, a well-known holiday is approaching. In just two months, the United States will celebrate Thanksgiving.
If you have watched any light-hearted television series set in New York, you are likely familiar with references to roasted turkey, a grand parade, and tales of Pilgrims. In American schools, children are taught a romanticised version of the past.
According to this story, the Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower in search of religious freedom. After enduring a brutal winter and struggling to secure food, they were helped by Native Americans who taught them how to hunt, fish, and plant corn. The following autumn, the Pilgrims invited their new friends to celebrate a successful harvest. Together, they sat in harmony, shared food, and gave thanks. This is commonly presented as the first Thanksgiving.
The simplified version tells us that a group escaping religious persecution sought an open land for freedom and safety. They needed to be taught how to live in this new land, and then they kindly shared their successes with the native population.
Yet this narrative feels eerily familiar to those who study settler colonialism. The British who arrived were colonists, not simply Pilgrims. Skills were not freely given by Native Americans, but exchanged as part of political alliances against rival Natives.
Those same tribes were later subjected to systematic violence and, in many cases, annihilation. For many Native Americans today, Thanksgiving is not a day of celebration but one of mourning.
It is not only a propagandist narrative that is shared with Israel’s colonialism; the methods of extermination are also the same. The forced removal of the Cherokee Nation in the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act is a chilling reminder of how resettlement campaigns destroy entire peoples and cultures.
By the early nineteenth century, the Cherokee had adopted many elements of European American society. They published a bilingual newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, adopted a constitution modelled on that of the United States, and established schools.
None of this protected them. When gold was discovered on their land, federal and state authorities forced them out. In 1838, American troops expelled sixteen thousand Cherokees from their homes. Four thousand died of disease, starvation, and exposure during the westward march now remembered as the Trail of Tears.
The buffalo slaughter of the nineteenth century was another deliberate strategy, depriving Native peoples of one of their primary food sources and starving them into submission. Epidemics introduced through warfare and settlement compounded the devastation. Starvation and disease became weapons of conquest.
Today, Native American imagery often survives only in mascots or as fragments of history. Many Americans cannot name a single Native person they know personally. Representation in politics is also minimal.
Perhaps ironically, on university campuses across the United States, students from across the political spectrum are now questioning support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Courageous reporting by Palestinian journalists has revealed the use of forced starvation, torture, the targeting of health facilities, and psychological warfare, all directed at breaking the Palestinian people. These tactics echo those once used against Native Americans.
This moment is likely to force young Americans to look inward. After all, modern-day America is to the Native Americans what Israel is to Palestinians. From framing the narrative around adventure and religious freedom (which is currently being eroded by the GOP) to debating whether the erasure of Native Americans technically falls under the definition of genocide, the parallels are endless.
For Israel, the United States is a successful example of settler colonialism. For the United States, Israel represents a mirror of its own past, a nation that claims to be building civilisation from the ground up. The bond between the two nations extends beyond religion or geopolitics. It reflects a shared ideology of conquest and settlement.
If the United States were ever to acknowledge Israel’s genocide, it would also be forced to confront its own history of extermination and land theft. As narratives shift on American campuses, young people may come to see themselves as descendants of violent settlers, not simply heirs of a rosy adventurous past.
The parallels between the two nations also serve to highlight important differences. While the US sold itself as an upholdent of the principles of freedom of religion, democracy and justice for all, Israel is a religious ethno-state, which automatically means that their democracy and justice become questionable. Israel is also an apartheid state, where Palestinians are judged in military courts. The US gives full constitutional rights to Native Americans, and has done so for a while. In many ways, Israel’s settler colonialism is more extreme and ever more brittle.
Yet within the tragedy of the Native American genocide lies another truth. Indigenous peoples survived. They preserved languages, customs, and identities despite campaigns of extermination. They continue to fight for recognition and justice. Perhaps, as moral Americans witness the destruction of Palestine, they will give more attention to the cause of those indigenous to the land.
Omar is an Egyptian-British PhD student at the University of Cambridge and a pro-Palestinian activist. Whilst his research focuses on immunology and disease, Omar has further interests in politics, religion, and sociology.
Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com
Opinions expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect those of their employer, or of The New Arab and its editorial board or staff.