Colonialism and Israel: A deception in four regards

The term “colonialism,” though much bandied about, is in fact notoriously difficult to define. There’s simply no single template matching the starkly differing cases the term is applied to. Even classic examples like French Indochina and North Africa, British North America and Australia, and the Spanish/Portuguese New World are so disparate that qualifiers must be tacked on: exploitative, settler, penal, trade, etc.

When we add more recent usages of ‘colonialism’ (such as Latin American ‘dependencia’ or the takeover by Western corporations of post-communist Central Europe’s economies – let alone the emergence of modern Israel) a coherent definition of the label becomes elusive in the extreme.

Of course, in everyday parlance ‘colonialism’ refers to when an imperialist country takes control of another, weaker country. That is, colonialism is derivative of imperialism. It involves a combination of military invasion and the seizure of primary resources and their extraction, and sometimes the large-scale settling of the imperial country’s own population in the colonized country.

1) Concerning Israel, precious little of the above applies. For one, late 19th-/early 20th-century Palestine was hardly seized by the army of some Hebrew imperialist state. Rather, beginning in the 1880s individual Jews hailing from all over Europe, the Maghreb, and from Yemen, too, began to settle in Ottoman Palestine. Such was the case for approximately 40 years prior to the creation of British Mandate Palestine and the subsequent brief period of ‘surrogate colonialism’, i.e., when the British genuinely fostered “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

Secondly, Jewish settlement in Palestine took place exclusively via land purchases, and altogether often at exorbitant prices, what with swelling demand for real estate having the impact it everywhere does. This changed only after the State of Israel was declared in 1948. For Israel’s birth met not only with resounding UN recognition (including from the Soviet Bloc), but also with the concerted military attack of six Arab countries. Following its astounding victory, Israel did then increase its minuscule territory – just as typically happens in war. The more salient point is that Israel has repeatedly surrendered conquered territories on behalf of peace – most notably Sinai (twice, no less), but also Gaza in 2005.

2) Many experts on Israeli history turn the accusation of colonialism on its head, stressing that the Jewish bid for self-determination was fundamentally an anti-colonial enterprise – that early Zionism was a national-liberation movement. Its focus was not on securing personal freedoms, but on security and independence for a people. On national liberation above all from the Russian Empire, the Turkish Empire, and lastly the British Empire. This is why so much of the élan of the first years of independence was collectivist, and why socialism could be pursued so successfully. Precisely as in all the other post-colonial states the world over. That was the pattern.

The tiny State of Israel did not arise with pretensions to empire, but as an asylum for scattered, persecuted refugees from dozens of countries – whether in post-Holocaust Europe or across the Muslim world. Moreover, the young state’s leaders accepted at once the UN plan for an Arab state alongside theirs. Palestinian leaders however rejected that solution, refused to recognize Israel, and opted for armed struggle. Just as they have so many times since.

3) In contrast to British settler colonialism around the globe, the Jewish people is indigenous to Eretz Israel. When the significant influx of Jews into Ottoman Palestine commenced in the 1880s (i.e., the First Aliyah), it was therefore a return. A term popularly used was ‘restoration’, with ‘restorationism’ then being a synonym for ‘Zionism’, coined not until 1890. The Jews were returning to their ancient homeland. Indigeneity alone belies colonialism.

My own ancestors, within the scope of British colonialism, settled New England in the early 17th century. But when they began to plow their fields there in Massachusetts, did they happen to churn up coins from Anglo-Saxon times? Did they stumble upon the ruins of the palace where Magna Carta was signed? Did they discover the remains of the theater where Shakespeare staged his plays? Obviously not. The difference with the Jewish return from exile is categorical.

4) Lastly, the sheer hutzpah of today’s pro-Jihadist hasbara in Europe is just staggering, especially its mantra of ‘settler colonialism’. After all, ‘People in glass houses…’ Thankfully, not everyone has succumbed to the gaslighting – the European street well knows that what ‘settler colonialism’ most aptly describes is contemporary large-scale Muslim immigration – all the more so as Muslim diaspora communities across the continent are supported by wealthy Muslim states.

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In a word, the accusation that Israel is a settler colonial entity is simply one of the many deceptive ploys intended to delegitimize the Jewish state.

It won’t work.