One of the most insidious ways that anti-Israel activists seek to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist is by denying the Jewish People’s historical connections to the land. And while some critics do claim that some Jews have no history whatsoever in Israel, others assert that while individual Jews may have presence in the Levant, the State of Israel, however, is a settler-colonialist enterprise which has no place in the Middle East.
This claim that the modern nation of Israel is little more than a colonialist state has not appeared in a vacuum; it has grown in popularity in recent years, coinciding with a wider focus on colonialism in the mainstream news media.
Anti-Israel activists often accuse Israel not just of being a colonialist state, but of being a settler-colonialist state.
As argued by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions) movement’s official website, colonialism is “the practice of a foreign state or group of people exercising control over another country or area,” and Israel is allegedly guilty of this crime. But that’s not all. Israel is also allegedly a ‘settler’ state, which according to its detractors, means it seeks to “control land and resources and establish their own economy and system of governance.”
So how do these claims stand up to scrutiny?
Accusing Israel of being a settler-colonialist state, while undoubtedly politically expedient in the contemporary milieu, represents a wanton assault on three thousand years of Jewish history, and which purposefully ignores a number of key facts which separate truth from fiction.
According to the BDS movement, colonialism is “a foreign state or group of people exercising control over another country or area.”
But Israel is not a foreign state. For three thousand years, the Jewish People have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel. This indisputable fact is hardly in doubt; Israel is filled with extensive archaeological proof showing the millennia-old Jewish presence in the region.
While immigrants to pre-state Israel came from around the world, including Europe and across the Middle East, it is an inversion of history to suggest that they were foreign interlopers and colonialists. In fact, they were returning to the indigenous land of their ancestors.
Moreover, if Israel is a colonial outpost in the Middle East, it is unclear which foreign power Israel is representing in its alleged goal of conquest.
No foreign power forced Jews to settle in pre-state Israel. While the United Kingdom, as the power overseeing the British Mandate for Palestine, did support the reconstitution of a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel, it often sought to strangle the establishment of a Jewish nation-state. In a 1939 White Paper, the British government set out to severely limit Jewish immigration as well as the ability of Jews to purchase land.
As for the allegation that Israel is a settler-colonialist state, meaning that it is seeking to take land by force from its native inhabitants, this too is a falsehood.
Not only does this contention utterly omit thousands of years of Jewish history, it also rewrites the Zionist movement’s goals. The modern Zionist effort to resettle the land of Israel did not seek to impose its will on the Arab population in the region. Its goal was singular: to establish the State of Israel in the ancient Jewish lands. Prescribing a villainous agenda to the Zionist movement and attempting to tie it to European colonial powers is historical revisionism.
Perhaps the most perverse claim that Israel is a settler-colonialist state is not only that it is demonstrably false, but that it represents a total inversion of the truth.
Israel is not only not a settler-colonialist state, but it is the polar opposite. Israel, as the Jewish State, is not a foreign imposition on the Middle East, but a reconstituted homeland of a people in their ancestral homeland.
Scholars may debate the impact and significance of colonialism for years to come, but one thing is clear: Israel is the furthest thing from a colonial enterprise; in fact, it represents the collective achievement of an indigenous people rebuilding a nation-state in their historic homeland.
Accusing Israel of being a settler-colonialist state is not only false and defamatory, and indeed a reversal of the facts, but it is also an insult to the memory of those around the world who suffered at the hands of colonial powers, who often traveled halfway around the world to enslave locals and plunder their natural resources. To tarnish the Jewish founders of Israel with this brush is simply beyond the pale.
