Star Trek DS9: Bajor as a Metaphor?
76There seems an underlying trend for Star Trek races to be equated to some cultural or political grouping in real life. Whether it is the Klingons as a metaphor for the old communist-era Soviet Union or the Cardassians being painted as modern-day Nazis. One race that seems to have not stayed put in any box that it has been placed in is the Bajorans, an odd mix of religion, persecution, ancient customs and agrarian values that fails to tally with any one ethic grouping. In this essay we will look at the different facets of the Bajoran race and discuss their resonance in our own history or even the present world.
The Displaced People
One of the obvious allegories made with the Bajorans when they first appeared in The Next Generation was to various grouping displaced from their homelands, in particular the Palestinians as the most noted of these people. This to be fair is a rather superficial comparison as the reasons for the displacement and the situation at that time bear little similarities. A large number of Bajorans fled from the planet Bajor to escape the Cardassian occupation, the Cardassians having taken the planet by force from their own and with a small occupational contingent using the local populace to strip out any useful resource, This is clearly not the situation with Israel, and it would be very much frowned upon in most circles trying to equate the Jewish nation with the Cardassians.
This leads us to other people displaced from their homelands. Most of these, at least in modern times, occur due to war or some other form of internal strife in their home nation. The people flee across the borders to escape the danger or to seek resources that have been destroyed or disrupted. Such an example is the terrible situation that befell Rwanda, where the two ethic groups that had lived there began a bitter conflict. This type of situation also does not work for the Bajorans, as that would have required the Cardassians to have been resident on the planet to begin with or at least have settled peacefully before the conflict and occupation occurred. Which leads us to one of the major times in history where an outside power seized land by force and held it for a significant time, that is during World War II. Specifically in the case of Europe, the armies of Nazi Germany moved into numerous countries throughout Europe and set up occupying governmental structures. However, even here there is a significant distinction to make, not only did this occur to numerous nationalities and ethnic groups but the German forces sought to unify the land not to rape it of its resources and leave when it was spent. This slash and burn mentality only really existed in the ancient world, where a victorious power in war would destroy much of the infrastructure of the losing civilisation so that they could not rise up again to challenge them so quickly.
In the end, this leads to the conclusion that the Bajorans are really just a stereotype of a displaced people at this stage and do not directly relate to any one particular group in history. While having some similarities to certain groups, they are only superficial and the Bajoran situation is reassuringly unique.
Ancient Social Disorder?
One of the interesting facts that has come about regarding the Bajorans, apart from the extreme age of the society, is the fact that at some stage they were locked in a rigid caste system known as the d'jarras. This is definitely not without precedent in our civilisation, social structures like this abound throughout history but only a few are so arbitrary as to set someone's career path based on their parentage.
Many social systems disadvantage groups due to being from poorer families, such as the samurai-peasant relationship of feudal Japan, or based on ethic background, which is the case with racial inequality that has been seen in many nations perhaps most notably Pre-Civil War America and Pre-Apartheid South Africa. However, the caste system explained for the Bajorans set a persons exact line of work (soldier, artist, religious figure) based entirely on their family line.
The only system that this resembles is the strict caste structure of India, where based on your karma you are reborn into a role on Earth. If you did good deeds in your last life then you move up the social ladder, and if not then you go down perhaps even becoming one of the untouchables that deal with dead bodies and other unsavoury tasks. This bottom layer of the caste does appear in the Bajoran system, however it all seems a lot more arbitrary, the Bajoran does not seem to have any benefit for good deeds leading to their station. But then it must be said, we are totally unaware of what the Bajoran stance on death and reincarnation is, it may be that there is a Bajoran form of karma (based no doubt on the person's "pagh") which could lead to you being born into a better family and so a better caste.
Civilisation at a Plateau
It seems that at some stage in the distant past, the Bajoran civilisation simple settled out and did not progress much further for centuries. From various comments, and the fact that they did not populate the entire quadrant and got invaded by the Cardassians, it seems that their technology reached a peak well before any neighbouring cultures but went no further. The Bajorans had advances astronomy, space flight and various other highly developed technologies during our middle ages. It could be that the Bajorans never went through the periods in our culture that induced the most change, namely the World Wars, and it must be noted if it were not for the suppression of knowledge during the so-called dark ages our culture would be a lot further advanced than it is now.
This level of knowledge in an ancient culture is reminiscent of people such as the Babylonians, Egyptians or even the Meso-American civilisations. In fact some of the ancient myths of the lost city of Atlantis claim they had developed man-powered flight. Yet while all of these cultures were full of technical marvels, they are by our standards much more primitive from a sociological point of view, such as our distaste for the Mayan practice of ritual human sacrifice of the losing side in warfare. The look and feel of the Bajoran culture fits right into this view of one of the ancient Earth civilisations, with its golden domes and stone minarets. There is a hint of Babylon in the views of the capital city and you can almost imagine finding a version of the Hanging Gardens somewhere.
Terrorism as a Way of Life
The next facet of the Bajoran people that we get to chronologically is during the Occupation itself, when a good portion of the populace became dedicated to driving off the Cardassians. Lacking the military force to do so, they of course had to resort to the hit and run tactics of guerrilla warfare. This type of action walks a fine line with terrorism, which is I am sure how the Cardassians viewed it totally. However, when the agent views the entire race as their enemy, the distinction between a soldier and a civilian often becomes blurred to them.
This aspect of the Bajorans has been corresponded by a few people to the activities of the French Resistance during World War II and to groups such as the IRA in Northern Ireland. In making these comparisons we see the prime example of this schism, while most people would view the actions of the French Resistance as heroic I doubt the Nazi forces at the time had such a rosy view of it. This seems to bear nicely with the situation of the Bajoran people. The comparison to the IRA and similar groups is more difficult, this is because while there are supporters of the group who have championed their cause as righteous and actions necessary, many would say that they crossed the line completely and are nothing more than terrorists. An interesting view of this is given in the first episode to deal with the Bajorans in fact, in "Ensign Ro" we see the Bajoran Resistance blamed for an unprovoked attack on a Federation colony. By assaulting a third-party and a non-combatant, they made their position untenable and a Admiral was convinced to deal with them. As it turns out, it was all a Cardassian ploy to turn the sympathies against the Bajorans, playing once again into their role as a manipulative and devious race.
Pious Unity
One of the core identities of the Bajoran race is their religion, the first time that Star Trek has really created a major featuring people that are so overt in their beliefs over the agnostic view the Federation and the series as a whole. As discussed in another essay on the religion, it bears similarities to a range of human faiths. Few comparisons have been made by fans on the whole with this aspect of the Bajoran culture. Perhaps it is because the tenets are quite different from western religions and the nature of their gods more easy to qualify.
Conclusion
The only conclusion that can therefore be raised is that although the Bajorans bear similarities to a number of different races at various times and considering the many facets of the culture. In this way they are both unique and like any other culture you can think of.
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@Nerys This article isn't spectacular by any means but you took that quote out of context. The "Zionist European Jews" you refer to had centuries-old connections to Israel/Palestine. The cultural memory of having to flee due to Babylonian and Roman aggression, for instance, not to mention the Hebrew Bible. The Jews wanted Israel for its own sake, not simply as a resource. In the early 20th cent. British Palestine was an ecological backwater with little developmental infrastructure, a tiny strip of land whose resources were nothing to write home about. The Cardassians took Bajor for its resources, nothing more. They were not the least bit interested in relocating to Bajor and making a home there. By contrast, Israel has never been about resources. A ridiculously large amount of time and money has gone into developing what is now Israel. In strictly business terms, it was a risky investment at best. If resources were all the Jews wanted, they would never have bothered with such an enterprise. (Here's a piece of free advice: it's never a good idea to quote wikipedia if you want to be taken seriously).
Yes, the invasion of Bajor was a different event than the creation of Israel. Ignoring that back story, the negotiations and conflicts between the Cardassians and Bajorans do feel a lot like Palestine and Israel. Perhaps the writers of DS9 were influenced by the contemporary world around them as brought to them by NPR. During these times, the Palestinians and Israel started fighting over the Israel settlers. I don't think DS9's main point was to be a metaphor, but it's natural that DS9 could become a stage for playing out some of the problems that were occurring in our world at the time: Neither side wanting to forgive the other, both people hating each other over war crimes, one side suffering occupation.
Perhaps ten or twenty years from now, people will look back at this serious and see it containing themes for another conflict where the religious overtones are large and there is an insurgency. When I watched the show when it originally aired, I think the majority of viewers often saw the same problems occurring with Palestine and Israel.
And then the alpha quadrant changed everything . . .
@Maira:
The "cultural memory of having to flee due to Babylonian and Roman aggression?" Seriously? You're going to bring up events that happened not just centuries, but entire millenia ago, and did not involve anyone even remembered as having been alive by those living today?
Using that as justification enough to take someone else's land and home is a fallacy. That'd be like if Americans decided to go and violently conquer Ireland, with the justification that Irish immigrants came to America centuries ago, originally from Ireland - so they're returning to a place that once was (but is no longer) theirs.
Sorry, if you left, you left. You don't get to call "Save my seat" about a home that you haven't lived in for generations.
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Also: "The Jews wanted Israel for its own sake, not simply as a resource...By contrast, Israel has never been about resources."
If that's true, then perhaps the Israelis wouldn't mind sharing in the fruits of the labor (the majority of which is Palestinian manual labor, by the way). Perhaps they wouldn't kick out the Palestinians or refuse to allow them to build in the land that was (and should be) theirs.
If it wasn't about resources, control, and domination, then they wouldn't mind living side-by-side. If it was just about making a home, then why the refusal to live in a neighborly, peaceful, and equitable fashion?
Instead, they take advantage of Palestinians - repressing their economy, their rights, their wages and compensation, their homes, even their lives. Because it's about controlling the populace and the land, and their products. It's about domination. It's about annihilating a culture with racist policies and actions.
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Finally: "A ridiculously large amount of time and money has gone into developing what is now Israel. In strictly business terms, it was a risky investment at best. If resources were all the Jews wanted, they would never have bothered with such an enterprise."
Yeah, but the thing is, it wasn't an investment on the part of the Jews.
Israel has received immense financial, material, and political support from Western powers (including, but not limited to, the United States). It's not just the Jews in those country financing it - it's all of us.
That "ridiculously large amount of time and money" comes from my pocket, as a taxpayer, even though I'm not a Jew. That risky investment is being made with my money - and the investment continues, as the support keeps flowing, year after year.
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Sorry, but I think it's pretty clear the Bajoran-Cardassian situation is quite analogous to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but guess what - just like every oppressive, racist group of people, the Israelis are the bad guys in this case.
@TheSisko
You seem to forget that in 1948 the first Israeli government accepted a two state solution that was endorsed both by the UN and the British (who defacto controlled Palastine at the time) .
The Palestinians refused this solution and the surrounding Arab nations moved in to destroy Israel .
The following war turned a lot of Palestinians into refugees , and changed the 1948 borders of Israel many times over .
The surrounding Arab nations tried to invade and Destroy Israel again and again and again (Iran is still at it) .
So please tell me how the Israelis get the blame for turning the Palestinians into refugees in the first place (???) and how did Israel became Cardassia ?
@Tony
You seem to forget that the 1947 partition plan proposed by the UN (the "two state solution" you refer to) allocated over half of British Mandatory Palestine to the rather arbitrarily-defined "Jewish people" (arbitrary in that there was already a population of Palestinian Jews living side-by-side with Muslims and Christians long before the first European Zionist settlers arrived), while Jews made up around one-third of the total population of the area. "The Palestinians" did not reject this plan. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, a former religious leader appointed by the British to speak on behalf of the Palestinians, is the person who rejected the plan. Even with that qualifier, you, Tony, likely would've rejected such an unfavorable plan as well. Jews who lived and had land in the area allocated to the Arab state would have been stuck in a state run by Arabs who would likely have been naturally hostile to the Jews they'd formerly lived with but now would perceive as stealing from them. Arabs who lived in the area allocated to the Jewish state would have been victims of a Zionist government that did not want them around and interfering with a state-creation project built solely on idealized "Jewish labor".
This was at the end of 1947. In December of 1947, David Ben-Gurion enlisted the Haganah to begin testing an ethnic cleansing program outlined in Plan Dalet. This ethnic cleansing would continue from December 1947 through the span of the first Arab-Israeli war which began May 15, 1948 (the day the Zionist movement declared the independence of the state of Israel). During the course of Plan Dalet, up to 800,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes, villages, and cities, most at gunpoint and the rest fleeing for fear of Zionist violence.
Despite what the 1948 war looks like on the surface (an overwhelming Arab force attacking a nascent Jewish state), Israel commanded roughly double the manpower of all the Arab armies and volunteers combined, as well as far superior weaponry and military training. In the "Six-Day War" (or "June War") of 1967, it was not Israel who was attacked, but rather Israel who struck first at Egypt and Syria. As far as today is concerned, Iran is not and has not threatened any type of attack against Israel. Indeed Iran has never attacked any other country, unless one counts the assistance given to the United States by the Iranian special forces in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The closest the Iranian regime has come to even threatening Israel is President Ahmadinejad (who does not command Iran's military) quoting the deceased Imam Khomeini, who said, "This regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."
To answer your question, the Israelis get the blame for turning the Palestinians into refugees in the first place because it was the Israelis (first the Haganah -- which would become the Israeli Defense Forces after independence -- assisted by the terrorist groups Stern Gang and Irgun Z'Vai Leumi) who expelled the Palestinians from their land, both at gunpoint and through threat of violence, thus turning these Palestinians into refugees. Israel becomes Cardassia because the analogy is apt -- the Cardassians came from a place other than Bajor and occupied it, ruling over and exploiting its indigenous population in a racist system where Bajorans were second-class citizens in their own land, and turning many Bajorans into refugees in the process. The Zionist immigrants to Palestine (who were the leaders of the Zionist movement -- the Palestinian Jews already lived there and weren't interested in creating a Jewish state) came from Europe and occupied Palestine, ruling over non-Jewish Palestinians and exploiting them, turning many of them into refugees through forced expulsion, and erecting an apartheid-like regime where non-Jewish Palestinians are second-class citizens in their own land and even see their labor exploited in order to build settlements and walls that further infringe on their own land and lives.
By the way, the British didn't just "de facto" control Palestine prior to their withdrawal in 1948 -- this implies that British rule of Palestine wasn't backed by law. Palestine was a British Mandate by international law: the League of Nations charged the United Kingdom with administrating Palestine after its seizure from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Ergo, Britain was both "de facto" and "de jure" in control of Palestine. I suggest you do some more rigorous research, Tony.
@Nth Republic.
Do some more rigorous research yourself. The British Mandate under the League of Nations was to prepare Palestine to become a Jewish homeland. The Hagganah and the Irgun were created in response to Arab violence against Jews that began in 1920, including against the native "Palestinian Jewish" population. And not all Arabs who fled were expelled. Thousainds of Jews were also expelled from their homes in mandatory Palestine. Thousands of Jews had lived in East Jerusalem, but 0 Jews were allowed there after the 48 war.
And who comes up with this "Arab labor" bs? Not someone who studied any Israeli history whatsoever.
In DS9 the parralels that seemed to be there from the Arab-Israeli conflict in TNG were replaced with parralels that looked more like the Nazis vs. the Jews. And on TNG, which was the only time the Bajorans could have been considered Palestinians, was when they were at their least sympathetic.
@Maria "Using that as justification enough to take someone else's land and home is a fallacy. That'd be like if Americans decided to go and violently conquer Ireland, with the justification that Irish immigrants came to America centuries ago, originally from Ireland - so they're returning to a place that once was (but is no longer) theirs." First of all Jews have every right to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Unlike your Irish scenario Jews didn't leave Israel willingly they were forced out by the Romans and even then many Jews still remained in Israel through the exile. Jews have always yearned to return to their homeland, everyone knows that. What if the Native Americans reclaimed North America would you consider them to be racist oppressive bad guys? That's exactly what the Jews did in Palestine, they returned to reclaim what is rightfully theirs from the Arabs who have been occupying it. The Palestinians are an invented people and have no claim to Palestine. They even admit it themselves "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." - Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein
That's from the horses mouth and I seriously don't see any connection that these fake people have with the Bajorans who are a legitimate race.
Palestinians are Arab from other Arab countries they are not a legitimate ethnicity and there is nothing distinct about them to indicate that they are a nation unlike the Bajorans. Palestine was never a country unlike the Bajorans which did have a country/homeworld. Palestine was only a country when Jews were there and it was called Judea before the Roman occupation when they renamed it from Judea to Palestine after the nemesis of the Jews as an attempt by the Romans to erase Jewish rights from the land. In fact it's the Arabs that are the actual occupiers, most Arabs living in Palestine were settlers from the Ottoman empire. They were not Palestinians back then so why all of a sudden are they Palestinians now? Even before 1947 the Arabs refused to call themselves Palestinians because that was what Jews called themselves. Once Jews made their own state and declared independence as Israeli's the Arabs quickly adopted the Palestinian title. It's funny how people raise so many questions about Israel and Jews, yet they never raise the same questions about the Arabs and Palestinians. Yasser Arafat the god father of modern day Palestinianism was himself an Egyptian so why do you so many people think of him as their leader? He wasn't even born in Palestine. If Israeli's are the racist oppressive group as you claim them to be then why are the Arabs flocking to live in Palestine? That doesn't fit with your accusations of racism. The fact is that Israel and Israeli's are far from racist although the same can't be said about the Arabs that want a "Jew Free" state, it was their official message to the white house a few months ago. If life is so terrible for them why do they continue to live there when they can go live in any Arab country in the entire Middle East or even any European country? The Bajorans and Palestinians are worlds apart and anyone trying to make them seem similar is either ignorant, a liar or both.
Actually, the Bajoran/Cardassian relationship does resemble a real world counterpart in nearly all areas. The relationship between the European Nations who occupied, in force, the many nations of Africa for their resources and land.
It is referred to as "The Scramble for Africa" by the Europeans who participated. As defined by wikipedia: "The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914."
The major European powers that participated in this "Scramble" include the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Those European powers would be the Cardassians in this juxtaposition. Both Africa and Bajor were home to Ancient and advanced cultures which were plundered, destroyed and then denied to be associated with it's native population (Until this day it is denied that the native Afro people of Africa occupied and controlled northern Africa for thousands of years because of the historical implication that comes with that fact.).
Both, Africa and Bajor, suffered rigorous amounts of Bigotry and genocide among it's native people by the occupying nations. Both peoples were displaced from a large portion of their homeland and forced to migrate or suffer persecution under the occupation. Both had their natural resources plundered, some with the assistance of native collaborators who were treated better than their populations. Both had their women raped and or exploited by the males of the occupying force. Both had resistance fighters who fought against the occupying force. Just like the Bajor resistance, some African nations succeeded in expelling or defeating the occupying nation with a much smaller military presence. And just like Bajor, some those nations where usually treated as enemies of the European nations.
The similarities are virtually endless and quite obvious to anyone who is well educated in the long history of the relationship between Africa, Asia and Europe. I can understand why some people either did not see or refused to see the connection between the two, especially if you are of the nationality of the people whom are associated with the Cardassians in that particular scenario.
African Moors did something very similar to Eastern Asia and Southern Europe in 700AD, and who's descendants stayed in power for over 700 years. This is not the history they usually teach us in history class. Remember, history is written and rewritten by the victors of conquest. It is very rare for the winning side of a conflict to give an unbiased depiction of the events, and it is even rarer for them to keep the real history, of the conquered people, intact. I always try keep this in mind when researching the written, spoken and visual history of our world.
Nerys 21 months ago
"A large number of Bajorans fled from the planet Bajor to escape the Cardassian occupation, the Cardassians having taken the planet by force from their own"..."This is clearly not the situation with Israel"
I'm not sure how this is not exactly what happened with the Palestinians and the Zionist European Jews
(refer to http://www.alnakba.org/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exod http://www.al-nakba-history.com/)