Is Israel a Settler-Colonial State?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

During the recent Hamas-Israel conflict, many critics of Israel referred to it as a “settler colonial state.”

 

By their own definition, the label “settler” doesn’t just refer to Jews born elsewhere, including nearby Middle Eastern countries like Egypt and Iraq, but to all those in the state who have dispossessed the non-Jewish/ inhabitants and oppressed and marginalized them.

 

As for “colonial,” that indicates the type of state they created, one that privileges the Jewish group. This, for them, remains the case even though Israel is today independent and no longer the possession of Great Britain.

 

This language has been part of a sustained disinformation campaign carried out against the Jewish state since the 1970s. Beginning with the resolution asserting that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1975, by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), attacks leveled at Israel’s very legitimacy have been percolating through the western world for decades and have overtaken public discourse on Israel.

 

The branding of Israel as a “genocidal apartheid country” was later introduced as a formal charge at the 2001 United Nations sanctioned “World Conference Against Racism” in Durban, South Africa. The final NGO Forum declaration at Durban stated that Israel was guilty of “genocide,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “settler colonialism,” and “racism.”

 

Since then, we have seen the rapid rise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement promoting economic warfare against Israel, and the annual “Israel Apartheid Week” on numerous college campuses. Both continue to gain strength.

 

Recently, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream announced that it would cease selling its ice cream in the occupied West Bank, following a campaign by activists to force the company to pull out of Israel.

 

Despite the absurdity of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany by using the term “genocide” or linking the country to the former South African apartheid regime, more people have uncritically accepted a narrative in which facts and language have been reconstructed for the purposes of disinformation and deception.

But you’d never know from this discourse, now repeated endlessly everywhere, that, even if this were true, Israel is not particularly unique in this regard.

Canada, which was created by white British and French imperialists through the conquest, murder, and even genocide, of its native inhabitants, is also such a country. Our own governments tell us so, especially with the recent horrific discoveries of unmarked graves of children who died at the notorious residential schools. Canada’s flag has been flying at half-mast at federal buildings ever since.

So too are Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, among many others, including the Latin American republics created by the Spanish settlers who extinguished the Aztec, Inca and many other indigenous political entities.

The original peoples in this country were forcibly removed, stripped of all rights, including even the vote, and relocated on reserves – a system Israel’s enemies would, I think, no doubt label as apartheid.

And unlike those Jews who founded Israel, the non-indigenous settlers in Canada can’t claim that, long ago, their ancestors lived here but were evicted, or that they were promised the land by their biblical God.

As for who the original inhabitants of today’s Israel were, that of course depends far back in history you go.

But whereas no trace can be found in Canada of Europeans prior to the arrival of the Vikings, ancient Palestine has archeological, historical and theological references to Jews and Judaism for many centuries before it was conquered in 636-637 by the Arabs under Caliph Umar.

So there may be a silver lining in this anti-Israeli cloud. Many people now realize, thanks to being incessantly harangued by the Canadian left, that Canada too is a “settler colonial” state, so why single out Israel? If that country needs to be dismantled, by the same token so does Canada -- and we presumably don’t want that. So maybe we shouldn’t be so tough on Israel.

And by the way, the word “settler” is itself used as an ideological weapon. Large numbers of Arabs migrated into the pre-1948 British Palestine Mandate from nearby countries because Jews were developing its economy. Why are they not also called “settlers?”