There is an erudite 1997 book by Jurge Osterhammel titled Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview that delineates the various versions of terms associated with colonialism. Humans have been colonizing since our origins, the movement of people is colonizing but not the same as European colonialism. Too many conflate the variation. Thank you for the differentiation, and striving for understanding and peace between cousins
This was an absolutely outstanding article, John! It's also one of the best I've ever read here on Substack! You astutely show how the Jewish people living in the holy land are not colonists but rather the indigenous people returning to their ancient homeland. The vast majority of the Jewish population of the land of Israel left because of external factors that were beyond their control. Those being an economic depression that ravaged entire Roman Empire, a series of failed uprisings and Roman persecution. So, when Jewish settlers started coming back to the holy land starting in the 1840s and intensifying in the 1880s with the horrific pogroms in Tsarist Russia, they were not taking over the land of another people but rather reclaiming what was rightly theirs'. What complicated the situation was the prescience of hundreds of thousands Palestinian Arabs who were descended from Arab settler colonists from various different Arab Muslim Empires, the Romans, the Byzantines, and some of the preexisting indigenous Jewish population. The Zionist Movement and the Jewish settlers came to Palestine intending to rebuild their state, but they had every intention of allowing the Arab population to stay and be equal citizens in the reborn Jewish state. Sadly, the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs hated the Jews, didn't recognize their historic connection to the land and rightful claim to it and wanted them gone. Only a small minority of the local Palestinian Arabs accepted the Jews and most of them were bribed to do so. Returning to the primary focus of the article, there is an allegation made by the Pro-Palestinian side is that the Jews had the assistance of the British Empire in the creation of a Jewish state via The Balfour Declaration therefore that proves that Israel was a European settler colonial project. Okay, well two things in response to that. Number one, the Balfour Declaration was not a promise by the British to build a state for the Jews but rather to turn over the land to the Jews to reconstitute their state on provided they did not infringe on the rights of the local Arabs. That is not colonialism that is in fact decolonization. This is an actual case of a land being restored to the indigenous people by the colonizers. The Balfour Declaration was anti-colonial document if anything. I would also add that the armed Jewish militias in the holy land, the Hagenah, Irgun and Lehi were anti-colonial freedom fighters who fought the British Empire to reclaim their native land. Zionism was an anti-colonial, Indigenous rights movement. The Jewish people are kindred spirits with the Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Inuits, Aboriginal Australians, Maoris, Aleuts, the Ainu People, and other indigenous peoples around the world. The Jewish immigrants who came later like Mizrahi Jews from Arab lands, the black Jews of Ethiopia, the Bene Israel community from India, Chinese Jews, and the Black Hebrew Israelites were not colonists but rather refugees returning to their spiritual homeland where their faith first sprang from. By the way, Ashkenazi Jews are not white. Some of them are light skinned enough they can identify as such, but they are technically not. Ashkenazi Jews can be distinguished from white Europeans and Americans by their darker skin, distinct physical features, curly hair, and Levantine/Middle Eastern ancestry. To be sure, the occupation of the West Bank, the Iron Wall and the blockade of Gaza are restrictive measures that curb the freedom of movement of the Palestinian people. Palestinians have to go through checkpoints anytime they want to go somewhere, have to follow Israeli rules and regulations, are seeing their land encroached on by Jewish settlers, and must cross through a gate with an Israeli soldier in front of it to get to their farmland to tend to it. I sincerely hope someday this won't be the case and the Palestinians will have an independent state. But this is NOT colonialism. The Palestinian Territories like the history of the conflict, is a much more complex situation. Continuing to perpetuate the toxic myth of Israel is a colonial power and the Jewish people as white European colonizers will only inflame tensions between the sides and keep alive this bloody over seventy-year conflict. I think it's important to emphasize how much both peoples have in common. They have similar cultures, both practice traditions rooted in the land, have similar histories given that both have lived in a diaspora and being unwanted all other nations, both have catastrophic events in their history that loom large in their collective memory as a people in the case of the Jews the Holocaust and in the case of the Palestinians the Nakba, are both indigenous to the holy land, and they share a common genetic link given that both are descendants of the Ancient Canaanites and Israelites. This therefore makes them cousins therefore making them family.
1) The Arabs in Palestine aren't colonialists. Most Arabs you know today aren't descendants from Arabia. They are indigenous people who adopted the Arab language and culture over time.
2) The settlers didn't want to live with the Arabs. Their goal was a state with a majority. This was simply not possible in a land with an Arab majority. The only realistic way of achieving their goal was to expel Arabs or to partition the land.
This demand for a majority and the accompanying discrimination of indigenous Arabs is what makes them a colonial movement, as opposed to an anti-colonial one.
I agree that Palestinians need a better solution - but they have continually rejected the one that would actually work: peace. The barriers and checkpoints were established specifically because Palestinians were regularly attacking Jews. If they actually stopped doing that, and tried to live in peace with their neighbors, there would be no need for any of the security measures.
You are using a definition of regular colonialism, when you should look at a definition of settler colonialism. There are other examples (e.g. Liberia) where the descendants of a previously indigenous group colonize other indigenous people.
And the solution to colonialism doesn't have to be "send everyone back". We can look at South Africa for example. The colonial state has been dismantled, but white people are still living there as equal citizens.
Please do your research before making such harmful posts.
Some scholars see Zionism as settler-colonial, others do not.
Certainly, the population of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel have all gone up over the decades.
While the settlement movement in the West Bank has settler-colonial characteristics, I don't think it's correct to assume the wider Zionist project is defined by West Bank settlers.
Those who accuse Zionism of being colonialism are referring to settler colonialism, so this should be the definition you are using if you respond to their argument. Otherwise you would only engage with a straw man.
Most of the arguments you made do not work if you use the definition of settler colonialism and compare it with other real world examples of it.
There is an erudite 1997 book by Jurge Osterhammel titled Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview that delineates the various versions of terms associated with colonialism. Humans have been colonizing since our origins, the movement of people is colonizing but not the same as European colonialism. Too many conflate the variation. Thank you for the differentiation, and striving for understanding and peace between cousins
This was an absolutely outstanding article, John! It's also one of the best I've ever read here on Substack! You astutely show how the Jewish people living in the holy land are not colonists but rather the indigenous people returning to their ancient homeland. The vast majority of the Jewish population of the land of Israel left because of external factors that were beyond their control. Those being an economic depression that ravaged entire Roman Empire, a series of failed uprisings and Roman persecution. So, when Jewish settlers started coming back to the holy land starting in the 1840s and intensifying in the 1880s with the horrific pogroms in Tsarist Russia, they were not taking over the land of another people but rather reclaiming what was rightly theirs'. What complicated the situation was the prescience of hundreds of thousands Palestinian Arabs who were descended from Arab settler colonists from various different Arab Muslim Empires, the Romans, the Byzantines, and some of the preexisting indigenous Jewish population. The Zionist Movement and the Jewish settlers came to Palestine intending to rebuild their state, but they had every intention of allowing the Arab population to stay and be equal citizens in the reborn Jewish state. Sadly, the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs hated the Jews, didn't recognize their historic connection to the land and rightful claim to it and wanted them gone. Only a small minority of the local Palestinian Arabs accepted the Jews and most of them were bribed to do so. Returning to the primary focus of the article, there is an allegation made by the Pro-Palestinian side is that the Jews had the assistance of the British Empire in the creation of a Jewish state via The Balfour Declaration therefore that proves that Israel was a European settler colonial project. Okay, well two things in response to that. Number one, the Balfour Declaration was not a promise by the British to build a state for the Jews but rather to turn over the land to the Jews to reconstitute their state on provided they did not infringe on the rights of the local Arabs. That is not colonialism that is in fact decolonization. This is an actual case of a land being restored to the indigenous people by the colonizers. The Balfour Declaration was anti-colonial document if anything. I would also add that the armed Jewish militias in the holy land, the Hagenah, Irgun and Lehi were anti-colonial freedom fighters who fought the British Empire to reclaim their native land. Zionism was an anti-colonial, Indigenous rights movement. The Jewish people are kindred spirits with the Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Inuits, Aboriginal Australians, Maoris, Aleuts, the Ainu People, and other indigenous peoples around the world. The Jewish immigrants who came later like Mizrahi Jews from Arab lands, the black Jews of Ethiopia, the Bene Israel community from India, Chinese Jews, and the Black Hebrew Israelites were not colonists but rather refugees returning to their spiritual homeland where their faith first sprang from. By the way, Ashkenazi Jews are not white. Some of them are light skinned enough they can identify as such, but they are technically not. Ashkenazi Jews can be distinguished from white Europeans and Americans by their darker skin, distinct physical features, curly hair, and Levantine/Middle Eastern ancestry. To be sure, the occupation of the West Bank, the Iron Wall and the blockade of Gaza are restrictive measures that curb the freedom of movement of the Palestinian people. Palestinians have to go through checkpoints anytime they want to go somewhere, have to follow Israeli rules and regulations, are seeing their land encroached on by Jewish settlers, and must cross through a gate with an Israeli soldier in front of it to get to their farmland to tend to it. I sincerely hope someday this won't be the case and the Palestinians will have an independent state. But this is NOT colonialism. The Palestinian Territories like the history of the conflict, is a much more complex situation. Continuing to perpetuate the toxic myth of Israel is a colonial power and the Jewish people as white European colonizers will only inflame tensions between the sides and keep alive this bloody over seventy-year conflict. I think it's important to emphasize how much both peoples have in common. They have similar cultures, both practice traditions rooted in the land, have similar histories given that both have lived in a diaspora and being unwanted all other nations, both have catastrophic events in their history that loom large in their collective memory as a people in the case of the Jews the Holocaust and in the case of the Palestinians the Nakba, are both indigenous to the holy land, and they share a common genetic link given that both are descendants of the Ancient Canaanites and Israelites. This therefore makes them cousins therefore making them family.
You are wrong about two things:
1) The Arabs in Palestine aren't colonialists. Most Arabs you know today aren't descendants from Arabia. They are indigenous people who adopted the Arab language and culture over time.
2) The settlers didn't want to live with the Arabs. Their goal was a state with a majority. This was simply not possible in a land with an Arab majority. The only realistic way of achieving their goal was to expel Arabs or to partition the land.
This demand for a majority and the accompanying discrimination of indigenous Arabs is what makes them a colonial movement, as opposed to an anti-colonial one.
I agree that Palestinians need a better solution - but they have continually rejected the one that would actually work: peace. The barriers and checkpoints were established specifically because Palestinians were regularly attacking Jews. If they actually stopped doing that, and tried to live in peace with their neighbors, there would be no need for any of the security measures.
You are using a definition of regular colonialism, when you should look at a definition of settler colonialism. There are other examples (e.g. Liberia) where the descendants of a previously indigenous group colonize other indigenous people.
And the solution to colonialism doesn't have to be "send everyone back". We can look at South Africa for example. The colonial state has been dismantled, but white people are still living there as equal citizens.
Please do your research before making such harmful posts.
Some scholars see Zionism as settler-colonial, others do not.
Certainly, the population of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel have all gone up over the decades.
While the settlement movement in the West Bank has settler-colonial characteristics, I don't think it's correct to assume the wider Zionist project is defined by West Bank settlers.
Those who accuse Zionism of being colonialism are referring to settler colonialism, so this should be the definition you are using if you respond to their argument. Otherwise you would only engage with a straw man.
Most of the arguments you made do not work if you use the definition of settler colonialism and compare it with other real world examples of it.