Israel is a "Settler Colonial" state

EuroYankee | Jan 14 2024

Until recently, I was not aware of the whole “settler colonialism” debate as it pertained to Israel.

Wikipedia defines settler colonialism as follows:

Settler colonialism occurs when colonisers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonisers

Wikipedia also confirms that Israel is a settler colonial state:

“…scholars who have used a settler-colonial analysis of Israel/Palestine include Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Fayez Sayegh, Maxime Rodinson, George Jabbour, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Baha Abu-Laban, Jamil Hilal, and Rosemary Sayigh..

Moreover, as Wikipedia mentions, many of the fathers of Zionism themselves described their project as colonialism, such as Vladimir Jabotinsky who said “Zionism is a colonisation adventure”.

Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, Zionist Israelis insist that there never was “a nation called Palestine”, and therefore there could be no Palestinians, and no “existing society” to replace.

The eradication of indigenous identity is something that happens in every settler colonial project, whether it was in Palestine or in America.

Indeed, I myself have made the argument (in this article) that the United States and Israel have “shared values” that are based in settler colonialism. They both insist that they, as “civilised” people, have simply conquered a “wilderness” that was sparsely inhabited by “savages” who were not proper “stewards” of the land.

Settlers are ascendant

The settler colonial spirit is most robustly embodied in the modern-day Israeli settlers who are setting up towns, farms and so-called “outposts” on Palestinian land in the West Bank.

These settlers are the most violently Zionist, and represent the most ardent supporters of the biblical arguments for Eretz-Israel. They are not interested in a Palestinian state. They believe that God gave them the land that the Palestinians are now only “temporarily” occupying, and they feel completely justified in taking the land, the houses, the property of the Palestinian “interlopers”.

The illegal settlements in the West Bank have surged in recent years. There are now almost 500,000 settlers in over 200 settlements. Violence against Palestinians in the supposedly “safe” West Bank has also surged.

These settlers are far right extremists — and they are armed. Itamar Ben Gvir, the Israeli minister responsible for security and police, is himself a settler, and he has decided to distribute assault rifles to the settler population in the West Bank.

As a result, hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Zionist settlers since October 7 alone.

Hamas sums it up correctly

In 2017, Hamas issued a new charter document consisting of 42 separate articles, one of which addresses the settler colonial nature of what they call “the Zionist project”:

17. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.

Recognition of the State of Palestine

Perhaps the most stark testimony to the fact that Israel is a settler colonial enterprise took place when it came time to officially recognise the State of Palestine.

The map below shows those states that recognise Palestine (dark green) and those who refuse (gray). As you can see, the nations that recognise Palestine are almost all themselves former victims of settler colonialism; the ones who refuse to recognise Palestine are themselves settler colonialist societies.

In fact, as Hamas noted, settler colonialism has “disappeared from much of the world”, and it is no surprise that those countries in which settler colonialism was defeated were the ones who voted to recognise the Palestinian State.

[source]

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Also see: Israel is an Illegal State