The ‘Colonialism’ Lie That Fuels the War Against Israel

In trying to understand the factors underlying the surge of extreme hostility toward the State of Israel in certain circles, it is striking that so many of the manifestations of this hostility come back to one theme: that Israel is an illegitimate state because it is part and parcel of the historic movement known as colonialism, the great sin of the Western world. 

Sometimes this is expressed directly and bluntly. Many times it is the obvious, and not so obvious, underpinning of other charges against the Jewish state. Even as, through the years, Israel was becoming more and more accepted in the international community, and even in some parts of the Arab world as seen in the Abraham Accords, the theme of Israel being a manifestation of the sin of colonialism was lingering and waiting for the occasion to burst forth as the underlying basis for attacks on the Jewish state.   

It has been noted that immediately after the massacre of October 7, the greatest tragedy of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, hostility toward Israel or rationalization of the events of October 7 surfaced around the world. Instead of the normal sympathy that a monumental terrorist attack like October 7 evokes, one was hearing that this was part of a legitimate resistance, and in the most extreme version, that the Israelis got what they deserved. 

This, of course, was framed in terms of Israel’s occupation of territories and the continuing struggles of Palestinians under Israeli rule. While Palestinian issues are legitimate sources of criticism of Israeli behavior, what was so startling about these initial reactions to the massacre of Israelis is that it was committed by a terrorist organization which, for decades, has had only one policy toward the Jewish state: its destruction and the murder of its Jewish population. 

Support for Palestinian sovereignty and criticism of Israeli occupation had nothing to do with what Hamas was about, and to see a terrorist group being defended for murdering men, women and children was a step beyond. In order to do so, one had to hold a picture of the Jewish state and its inhabitants of such an evil character as to justify their elimination. It was the original sin of colonialism that enabled people to feel comfortable taking what would seem to be the most immoral view possible: justifying murderous terrorism, and all before Israel had taken any steps to defend itself.   

Once Israel launched its war on Hamas after October 7, the critics simply ignored the massacre and shifted to introducing two other words to describe the Jewish state: apartheid and genocide. Both were used indiscriminately, without any connection to reality, but both were made possible by the original extreme accusation, that of colonialism. 

To accuse the democratic, pluralistic State of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, of apartheid is to grossly distort reality. It could only be persuasive if one believed that the very existence of the Jewish state was illegitimate. And the path toward that conclusion rests on the notion that the Jews were simply Western invaders of an indigenous Palestinian entity. Once that becomes the reality one sees, a denigration of the state, in whatever form it takes, becomes automatic. The very fact that Israel is deemed a state ruled by Jews, even though it is pluralistic with minority rights embedded in its history, laws and values, unlike other states in the region, opens it up to the false charge of being an apartheid country. Nothing could be further from the truth, but again the claim of colonialism, by rendering Israel illegitimate, allows these distortions to become normalized. 

So, too, with the outrageous charge of “genocide.” It is, of course, deeply ironic that the Jewish state, the survivor of the greatest genocide, the Holocaust, and the recent victim of a modern atrocity in the massacre of October 7, has now become the country most often accused of this gravest of all sins. Again, its connection to reality is nonexistent. Israel seeks to avoid civilian casualties when it goes after Hamas, warning communities to evacuate before attacking the terrorist group, which embeds itself deliberately amidst civilian populations both to protect itself from the IDF and to exact a reputational price on Israel when civilians are caught in the attacks.   

The combination of Israel warning civilians and the fact that Hamas was consciously exposing its own civilian population to Israeli attacks makes the entire genocide charge absurd and deserving of ridicule rather than legitimacy.

The simple reality is that Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people in their historic homeland, was the product of a three-millennia attachment to the land of Israel and bears no resemblance to anything approaching colonialism. Colonialism’s defining characteristic is the complete absence of any connection between the Western invader and the land they were dominating.

To Jews who for centuries at their Passover Seders prayed for “next year in Jerusalem,” and whose whole identity surrounded the exodus from slavery in Egypt and the traversal of the desert to the land of Israel, this was the ultimate return home.  

And for those who say that others had a claim to the land as well, there were, and hopefully will be, future opportunities to find expression in the land, if they are willing to coexist with a Jewish state. 

In sum, when everything is seen through the prism of illegitimacy, it becomes far easier and more comfortable to distort reality. This goes a long way toward explaining the apathy toward October 7, the description of Israel’s war of self-defense as genocide, and the portrayal of Israeli society as “apartheid.”

If the false colonialism accusation were to find its place in the dustbin of history, so too would much of the hostility and name-calling against the Jewish state. That should be the main mission of those who seek peace in the region.