ISRAELI ATTEMPT TO COLONISE NON-PALESTINIAN AREA FAILS

"Selfie" taken by the Israeli spacecraft shortly before crashing.

An unprecedented attempt by Israel to colonise a place that doesn't have any Palestinians living there first was defeated yesterday, when a landing on the Moon ended in failure.

The attempt to land the unmanned spacecraft "Beresheet" on the Moon by the Israeli SpaceIL organisation ended in a crash that completely destroyed the space craft.

As reported by the Independent:

SpaceIL confirmed the Thursday attempt was not successful on the company’s livestream of the event.

“We have a failure of the spacecraft,” said Opher Doron, the general manager of the Israel Aerospace Industries space programme. “We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully.”

If the mission had been successful, SpaceIL would have become the first private entity to land a spacecraft softly on the Moon’s surface, a feat previously only achieved by the United States, China and the former Soviet Union.

The cause of the crash was apparent failure of the main engine.

Some might say that the attempted moonlanding was merely a "scientific research" project carried out by an innocent "non-profit" organisation, but the name of the project and its government funding hints at a more ambitious purpose:

Beresheet, which means “Genesis” or “in the beginning” in Hebrew, was a joint project funded by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries.

The mission, which began in February when the spacecraft was launched into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, has cost roughly $100m (£76.5m) – a fraction of the cost typical for government-funded spacecrafts sent to the Moon

The name of the project is a reference to the Book of Genesis. which tells the story of the rise of the Jewish people and their successful colonisation of the Land of Canaan, which involved the dispossession of the Canaanites. 

Who can doubt that if the landing has been successful, there would have been other landings and even the possible creation of Jewish settlements on the Moon?

Despite its failure, the attempted Moon landing is not without political relevance. In fact it strengthens Israel's claim to former Palestinian territories by clearly demonstrating that Israel is incapable of colonising virgin territories on its own, and that it can only successfully establish settlements in territories that have first been settled by other peoples, like Palestinians or Canaanites. 

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