Palestine in Haitian Imagination

January 1st 2024 marked the 220th anniversary of Haiti’s independence. Once again, a heroic nation enjoyed a double celebration of being the first independent Black republic in history on the first day of the new year in solar calendar. The same day also marked the 87th day of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza in response to a surprise attack conducted by HAMAS on October 7, 2023, which coincided with Yom Kippur, the first day of the new year in Hebrew calendar. Haiti and other Caribbean states joined many nations around the world condemning HAMAS. While all Caribbean states clearly distanced themselves from Israel soon after by voting in favor of the UN resolution for immediate ceasefire in Gaza proposed by the UN Secretary General António Guterres, Haiti was one of the few nations in absentia.

The absentee vote was a matter of curiosity as well as a trigger to once again think about these two nations together. Despite the 6,500 mile long distance, both nations share similarities that are compared within the fields of conflict and security. In a briefing on July 6th 2023, for instance, António Guterres had mentioned Haiti and Palestine together when he raised his concerns about the gang violence in the capital Port-au-Prince and Israel’s air strikes against the Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank.

Correlating Haitians and Palestinians is not new. According to progressive thinkers, the common denominator is the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle. Although this aspect deserves attention in its own right since the struggle in question is mainly about freedom and self-determination, it falls short to catch the punching line by focusing on the United States as an imperialist third party that the struggle is waged against. The American foreign policy towards the Caribbean and the Middle East should be the subject matter of a separate debate. The focus should be about the interactions between the occupier and the occupied, thereby help to surface a much more accurate comparative analyses and nuanced critiques to take off with this striking question:

What would be the Haitian equivalent of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians?

An equally striking answer would be this:

If the Palestinian suffering is applied into Haitian lives, then the extinct Arawak speaking Taino natives have to come back to life, claim the land as theirs, receive enormous foreign military aid, prevent Haiti’s independence, massacre Haitians, kick them out their houses and settle Taino tribesmen inside those houses, annex much of the country and give it whatever name fits best into the perception of their invented state: Let it be “Eretz Arawakia”, perhaps Tainoland” or “Tainistan”…

This is exactly what Haiti’s Israel would be.

Moreover, under such circumstances, Haitian refugees from all over the country -Black and Mulatto alike- have to flee for their lives to Port-de-Paix in the extreme north and to Jeremie in the extreme south…

And this is what the Haitian equivalent of West Bank and Gaza would be.

And last but not least, let us imagine the sovereignty of Port-au-Prince to be designated under a special status by the United Nations….

This would be Haiti’s Jerusalem.

Would it be too fictitious to imagine the Taino State as the Israeli State?

Thought-provoking similarities can be found between the two. For instance, the ancient Taino spiritual gods are called, the Zemi. The most important symbol of the Zemi religion is the Zemi stone, which is shaped as a triangular star. The top of this triangular star represents a sacred mountain that points to the sky where the Creator-god Yaya resides. Sounds familiar? The symbol on the Israeli flag is the star of Zion, which is shaped as a compound of two equilateral triangles. The star of Zion received its name from a sacred mountain named Mount Zion where the Creator-god Yahweh resides.

If the Taino were forcibly deported to other countries far from the Caribbean -instead of being completely wiped out, it would not be unrealistic to picture centuries-long anti-Taino sentiments to emerge and escalate over time due to the fact that the Taino had distinct physical appearances, traditions, languages, and religious beliefs. Under such circumstances, who would not sympathize with an indigenous people’s right to return to their ancestral lands, especially if it was promised to them by their god Yaya? Have they themselves not been the victims of a genocide 500 years ago? Perhaps a political movement fighting for their right to return could emanate from centuries of discrimination and appear on the political scene with the Zemi stone as the banner of their resilience.

This imaginary so-called “Zeminism” would be the Zionism that Haitians would have to endure.

Imagine the Taino “Zeminists” alleging that the Haitians have nothing do with the island. That argument would uphold a stronger claim to the land in question compared to the Zionists. Zionists themselves falsely claim that Palestine has never existed, but the Palestinians can contravene such fallacy. However, it would be substantially arduous for the Blacks and the Mulattos to construct a historical narrative for Haitian indigenousness in defiance of Taino version of Zionism because there were no traces of Africans nor Europeans in the Caribbean prior to the discovery of the Americas. Therefore, the Taino “Zeminists” could have easily deny the very existence of all Haitians. Even the word “Ayiti” itself is an Arawak word. The only state in history they recognize would only be Saint-Domingue, which was a French colony. It was Saint-Domingue that the French had officially settled while bringing Africans in it and creating the Mulatto as an additional race. Even the term British Mandate of Palestine has the word “Palestine” in it, but the French Colony of Saint-Domingue neither has the words “Black” nor “Mulatto” in it. Could Haitians not go to the other islands or return to Africa since both Blacks and Mulattos have African in them? There are 22 Arab states and 48 Muslim majority countries in the world for Palestinians to be expelled. Nevertheless, there are 54 African countries in the world for Haitians to be expelled. The imaginary Taino “Zeminism”, therefore, would represent an indigenous nationalism of an indigenous group no matter how tribal and archaic it sounds. 

The only problem with this narrative no matter how one could genuinely be sympathetic to it is that it only makes sense for the occupying party. It is doomed to be one-sided forever because it is based on a narrative that denies the existence of the other party. The vital question here is not “what is Zionism?”; rather it is “what does Zionism do?”, and what it exactly does is the denial of the existence of Palestinian identity in its entirety.

Zionism promotes permanent occupation, which is also called annexation. Before occupying West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem during the 6 Day War in 1967, Zionists had already annexed the remaining Palestinian lands in 1948. After the 6 Day War, West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem were officially recognized by the United Nations as OPT or the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. What has not mentioned even up to this day is Israel itself being the already “Annexed Palestinian Territory.” Occupation is foreign domination over a sovereign territory carried out by military invasion. Annexation, on the other hand, is a complete take over of land, an expansion by ingestion of territory perpetrated through encroachment of civilian settlements. The U.S. military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, led to the American occupation of these counties. Zionist annexation of Palestine, on the other hand, led to the swallowing of Palestinian territories to be incorporated into the State of Israel. If the imaginary State of Tainoland had to be established inside Haiti, then Haitians had to end up being stateless and homeless in their own country. This is what the Taino version of Zionism would do in Haiti, which would be nothing other than coercing Black and Mulatto Haitians to vacate their residences the same way Israel coerces Muslim and Christian Palestinians.

How would the occupied party react? What would Haitians do to become more Palestinian-like? Would they not hope for Caribbean unity at first and put faith in “Pan-Caribbeanism”? Who in Haiti would not cheer for a Caribbean version of Egyptian President Gamal Abdulnasser and his success on establishing a “United Caribbean Republic”? Who in Haiti would not lament the defeat of Caribbean armies mobilized to liberate their land from Taino occupation and annexation? Surely, Haitians would also take the matters into their own hands and change course from Caribbean nationalism to a more suitable Haitian nationalism.

Imagine an umbrella organization formed by the name “Organizasyon pou Liberation Ayisyen” (OLA), as in Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Then, the OLA would conduct guerrilla attacks against the Taino State they refuse to officially recognize from Port-de-Paix and Jeremie, as well as from their bases in  neighboring Caribbean islands they took refuge in. Yet, factionalism could lead to disagreements and split within the OLA, such as Konkèt or the Haitian version of Fatah and the Fwon Popilè pou Liberasyon Ayiti (FPLA) or the Haitian version of Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PLFP).

As a nation of several Black and Mulatto revolutionary heroes, Haiti would easily produce their own version of leaders such as Yasser Arafat and the Christian Marxist George Habbash.

Perhaps Konkèt and the FPLA would highjack passenger ships in the Atlantic and the Pacific to increase global attention to their cause similar to Fatah and PFLP’s highjacking of passenger planes. They would easily be demonized by the Western media as vicious pirates or simply as terrorists while Port-au-Paix and Jeremie Haitians were continued to be molested, arrested, massacred, and bombed. This would be the Haitian version of Palestinian life throughout the 1970s.

Because the Taino State would deny the existence of Haitianness, it would call its own non-Zemi citizens as “Taino Africans”. This is what the Haitian version of the term “Israeli Arab” would be. Haitian nationalists would definitely raise their objection against it and call it another invention of “the Zeminist Entity” as in the Palestinian objection of what they call “the Zionist Entity.”

Although the Israel-like Taino State would claim that all of its citizens have equal rights under a democratic constitution, any Haitian patriot would vehemently reject that perception because the so-called democratic constitution disregards the organic Haitian identity and replaces it with an artificial modification. Despite Zionist revisionism, Palestinian identity has always been present in Palestine. What never has existed in history is the so-called “Israeli Arab”. Thus, it would be the duty of every Haitian to resist, especially when the Taino State would relentlessly practice an apartheid regime and respond only by shooting bullets to Haitian kids throwing stones at Taino bulldozers that are constantly demolishing their homes, while the Western world would shamelessly call it “the only democracy in the Caribbean”. For the people of Port-au-Paix and Jeremy, however, the so-called Zeminist Taino State would be nothing but the only “annexocracy” in the Caribbean.

Imagine young generation of stateless Haitian civilians starting an uprising in the 1980s and call it “soulèvman” in Kreyol. This would be the Haitian intifada.

Also imagine while the secular nationalist Haitian Liberation Organization (OLA) suffering several defeats and carry the burden of the Taino State’s wrath, a more religious nationalist group emerging amongst the masses such as Mouvman Rezistans Kretyen (Christian Resistance Movement) as in HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement), and Kwazad Kretyen Ayisyen (Haitian Christian Crusade) as in PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad).

As we come near the recent times, imaginations can become more clear but they also have to be a lot more bloodier as the imagined Israel-like Taino State becomes more brutal. Imagine encroachment of illegal Taino settlements in Port-au-Paix making life unbearable for Haitians in the north, while tiny Jeremie is blockaded by land, sea, and air. How would Haitians survive under the abyss of the Two State Solution? Or do they destined to face Final Solution? Could the Caribbeans, Africans, and conscientious members of the remaining world agree on envisioning Tainos as the righteous indigenous victims defending their God-given homeland against monstrous cannibal zombies laying in ambush from underground tunnels?…

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The idea of imagining an Israeli-styled Taino state returning back to life in Haiti does not only validate anti-imperialist national liberation struggles, such as the one that Haiti ended up being victorious itself, but also helps us understand why peoples of the third world as a whole must not devite from embracing values of modernity against all traces of backwardness. It is not a simplistic imagination but a perspective of a profound analysis which clarifies the distinction between modern human rights values and advanced bigotries with conniving manipulations. It necessitates maintaining a firm stance to the commitment

Despite propoganda campaigns that are filled with constant insults and deam