Israel and "Settler Colonialism"
Exposing a false paradigm
Aside from the Hamas war upon Israel, there is also a global war against Israel’s legitimacy. This centers on a charge that Israel is a settler-colonial regime born in sin. This view of Israel is paramount in academic circles, and unfortunately is even widespread among Jewish academics in Israel-related studies, who are often some of the most insidious enemies of the Jewish People.
The notion of Israel being a “settler colonial” project is a shallow and disingenuous attempt to place Zionism in the same category as entities such as the United States and Canada, which were genuine settler colonial projects. Zionism shares certain aspects with such projects, but has even more significant differences.
First of all, Jews did not come to Palestine in order to exploit its resources for an empire elsewhere – they didn’t have one. In fact, they didn’t come to exploit it at all, but rather to invest in it. It was a relatively barren land, which Jews developed, getting rid of malaria and making it far more productive.
And the Jews came not to become wealthy, but because they needed to survive and had nowhere else to go. Those who made it out of Europe saved themselves from extermination by the Nazis, and they were later followed by hundreds of thousands of Jews who were expelled from Arab countries following centuries of unequal status punctuated by the occasional massacre.
Furthermore, the Land of Israel was not some kind of new country for them, like America was for the Europeans. Rather, it had been the Jewish sovereign national homeland in antiquity, and Jews all around the world had retained with a powerful connection to the land, mentioning it several times a day and keeping its animals and plants and places as part of their culture.
The Jewish People had also always retained a physical presence in the land. Even after most of the Jewish People were exiled or left, they maintained an uninterrupted presence on the land. Additionally, throughout history, Jews from around the world returned to their homeland in various waves and movements, though they were sometimes met with persecution and massacres.
Nor did the Jews, even those who came in the early 20th century, have a plan to take the land by force, or to drive out or oppress the resident Levantine Arabs. In fact, the Jewish investment in the land attracted tens of thousands more Levantine Arabs. The Jews who came purchased land legally, and only obtained more land as a result of the 1948 war - which was started by the Arabs.
Finally, the greatest harm of settler-colonial states like the USA and Canada towards indigenous peoples was that the latter were left with no land to call their own. The colonial powers did not just settle part of the lands, they settled all of them. Levantine Arabs, on the other hand, had plenty of other Levantine Arab territory available - and with the UN’s partition plan, they even had most of Palestine and the vast majority of fertile land within it. It only diminished in size when they refused to accept that the Jewish People had a right to live in large numbers and with sovereignty in any part of their historic homeland, and responded with violence. Unfortunately for all parties, this rejectionist approach never ceased.
I plan to write more about this in the future. Meanwhile, here is a list of articles for further reading:
Johannes Becke, “Historicizing the Settler-Colonial Paradigm.” Medaon 12 (2018), 22. Available online at https://slub.qucosa.de/api/qucosa%3A34621/attachment/ATT-0/
Yoav Gelber, "The History of Zionist Historiography: From Apologetics to Denial," in Benny Morris Making Israel (Benny Morris ed., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 47-80. Available at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mlwpphucd7l971l6lcwcy/9780472115419-ch3.pdf
Alex Joffe, “Palestinian Settler-Colonialism,” online at https://besacenter.org/palestinians-settlers-colonialism/
Derek Penslar, “Is Zionism a Colonial Movement?,” in Derek Penslar, ed., Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 2007), 90–111
Ran Ukashi "Zionism, Imperialism, and Indigeneity in Israel/Palestine: A Critical Analysis," in Peace and Conflict Studies: Vol. 25 (2018) No. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/pcs/vol25/iss1/7
Jarrod Tanney, “Israel Is Not a White Imperialist Project: A Toolkit,” available online at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-is-not-a-white-imperialist-project-a-toolkit/
S. Ilan Troen, “Countering the BDS Colonial Settler Narrative,” Academic Engagement Network Pamphlet Series No. 4, April 2018. Available online at https://academicengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Troen-Pamphlet-Final.pdf.
"The notion of Israel being a “settler colonial” project is a shallow and disingenuous attempt to place Zionism in the same category as entities such as the United States and Canada, which were genuine settler colonial projects. Zionism shares certain aspects with such projects, but has even more significant differences."
Here's another link you might find useful. (I listened to the podcast and recommend that others do so as well. The transcript is somewhat choppy, and missing a lot of the flavor of the conversation.) The quote is from near the very end of the podcast.
https://www.econtalk.org/an-extraordinary-introduction-to-the-birth-of-israel-and-the-arab-israeli-conflict-with-haviv-rettig-gur/
"But there's this book by an Israeli academic, anti-Zionist academic from Ben-Gurion University in the South, Oren Yiftachel, and he has a book in which he considers Zionism to be colonialism. And, at one point in the book, he has a little footnote. And, it's this adorable footnote. It's maybe my favorite footnote in all the history of all academic readings I've ever read. Because, in this footnote, he says--I'm paraphrasing, I apologize, but I can look it up. In this footnote, he says, 'Zionism is absolutely, unquestionably colonialism. There's no doubt about it. There are,' he says, 'a few discrepancies between Zionism and what would be considered maybe classical colonialism. But, nevertheless, it still holds. It is still colonialism.'
And, do you know what those discrepancies were? 'Discrepancy One, for example: It's not primarily an economic project. Most colonialism was. Discrepancy Two: Just about everyone who came to Israel can be classified for one reason or another as a refugee. Again, not typical of colonialism. Discrepancy Three: There's a longstanding Jewish tradition of deep belonging to this land. Again, not usually present in colonialism. Discrepancy Four,'--and he goes on and on.
And, eventually, you just ask yourself, 'What's the diagnostic power of the word anymore? Other than the fact that I have a deep, longstanding tradition of connection to this land, other than the fact--oh, one of them is I come from dozens of mother countries, not a single mother country. Other than that, other than my being a refugee, other than--what is--
....
And, I think that the point is what you've said about me is your own loyalty to the Palestinian narrative. Which is fine. I am a big believer in everybody finding their own intellectual path. But you've just not described me in any way that I recognize by using the term, because you have to make so many footnotes to cut out so much of what colonialism actually is."
Thanks for this article. My brain turns off when anyone argues "settler colonialism." They clearly just read twitter threads and have nothing to add to this conversation as far as I'm concerned.