Israel/Palestine and settler-colonialism

Post Reply New Topic

Actions speak louder than words.



True, but truth does not matter to bigots. Antisemitism has been so widespread for so long because antisemites have been very adept at conflating antisemitic tropes to their priors.



That is true of most Israeli Jews.

Most American Jews are descendants of immigrants who arrived here after America was colonized.

What do you mean by that? Do you mean the mere fact that the Israel/Palestine situation gets a disproportionate amount of attention, or do you mean something else?

You omitted, from your quote, the three reasons I gave as to why the Israel/Palestine situation gets so much attention from American leftists, compared to other instances of settler-colonialism (both current and historical).


That is true, and perhaps many leftists should do more to refute anti-Jewish tropes as they arise, as I have tried to do here on Wrong Planet (e.g. in my thread Traditional anti-Jewish tropes and debunkings thereof).


But there has been ongoing Israeli Jewish settler-colonialism in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with lots of material support from both the Israeli government and American Zionists, both Jewish and Christian. See my thread Israeli settler support infrastructure here in the U.S.A..


That is true. The vast majority of American Jews do not have ancestors who were part of the American settler-colonial project.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 21 Dec 2024, 6:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Nested quotes fixed in my reply.]

There are contexts in which it may be relevant. It seems to me that you are being overly defensive here.

What is the context in which your "own elected city council representative" brought this up?


It probably will remain a state, but its founding was far from rosy. Are you familiar with the history of the Nakba? (See Wikipedia article on the Nakba.)

What do you think of the ongoing displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to make way for ever more Israeli Jewish settlers?

Do you even know what I am referring to here?


Yes, but its relevance to settler-colonialism is that the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas was a response to Israel's ongoing settler-colonial project in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

It seems to me that it was an unhelpfully brutal response, and it certainly involved war crimes. But it is far from being the primary cause of the overall situation, which has been going on for much longer. It is one of the causes of only the immediate crisis that has been happening since then.

I mean disproportionate attention. The larger point is hypocrisy. As with the ongoing after-effects of slavery that has gotten a lot of attention, there are ongoing effects from the racial cleansing of native Americans, and they still live on reservations. The objection is to the taxpayer money being used to support Israel, their tax money is being used to keep Indians on reservations and suppressing them, an ongoing situation.


I would add to your three reasons for the cause of so much more attention being given to the Mideast than domestic concerns is what I have been writing about for years, the idea among certain leftists about privileged and oppressed groups that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to fall neatly into. It would be wrong to say October 7th would not have been a trigger for the anti-Israel movement but I think an unpublicized factor is that October 7th happened just a few years after the "George Floyd summer". It made what type of thinking I described above a lot more mainstream and set precedents for how to respond.

Getting back to the after-effects of slavery they have not gone away, but because of the Mideast issues they get a lot less attention.

If I sound defensive it's because I feel strongly about this issue - and because many of the types I've encountered - mainly online who push a settler/colonizer perspective - tend to be extremely toxic.

You ask What is the context in which your "own elected city council representative" brought this up?

Here's the story as briefly as I can describe it: Last year I went to a city hall hearing and noticed the city had a 'land acknowledgement' which is recited during hearings for everyone present to hear. They refer to those present as
indigenous natives and settlers to the land. So, I object to how they are wording it and later in the same week at a public meeting with my councillor, I addressed the issue. I said to her (basically)

'Look, I object to being referred to as a settler. It's inappropriate. I was born in Canada. You guys need to change this. It's unacceptable.'

Her response defended the cities remarks and she also suggested that I (indirectly, she didn't name me) felt guilty about my white privilege.

The councillors remarks are all on record, it was a videotaped meeting. I used to have it on my Youtube actually but took it down. I know that some people in the audience supported me for calling out the BS. They agreed with me that we are Canadians, not settlers. I know I'm not alone in challenging this absurd worldview held by some who fall in this cult.

You later say:

What do you think of the ongoing displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to make way for ever more Israeli Jewish settlers?

Do you even know what I am referring to here?


I am not an expert on the middle East. I try to stay informed. I have opinions that are informed. I don't speak about what I'm not informed about. When topics interest me, I may research them more to expand my knowledge.

At the risk of being accused of defending Israel's battle plan in Gaza, I would like to put forward the following challenge to the basic assumption of this thread as stated in the subject line:

Settler-Colonialism, as discussed with respect to other parts of the world e.g. the Americas and Australia/NZ, is typified by people being sent to these host areas by governments to achieve various domestic objectives or as a way to solidify those governments' hold on those territories by having populations on the ground who would resist efforts of indigenous people to regain control of their territory.

Zionists migrated to Israel on their own. They weren't sent there by anybody back in Europe (yes there was occasional talk about sending Jews somewhere foreign as a way of getting rid of them, but that has almost nothing to do with Zionist Jews actually settling in Palestine). Once there, they had nowhere to go back to. They had migrated for good and faced the imperative of either defending their "right" to remain there, be exterminated, or exiled somewhere else (e.g. Western Australia which would have somehow been a better option???).

When I think of it, the Biblical connection does make genuine sense. Even if you consider the premise that God Himself gave the land to the Jews in perpetuity as nonsense (it certainly is), nevertheless you are talking about a religious community whose scriptural tradition does in fact describe mythical ancestors whose situation was highly analogous, like they migrated to Palestine after exile in Egypt and clearly there were people already there, and the only way they would be able to remain would be to drive existing residents out or at least subdue them to the point where they were no longer a threat. So don't be surprised if people who had nothing other than their religious traditions to guide them acted as their putative ancestors acted according to their scripture. And what other religious group wouldn't behave similarly? I mean we get all indignant concerning Christians and Muslims facing a threat from the IDF but how many times has either group joined in battle on the basis of their religious teaching?

Agreed that there are ongoing effects from the racial cleansing of indigenous Americans, and agreed that American white leftists should pay more attention to indigenous Americans, but you seem to be wrong on some of the particulars.

Indigenous Americans are no longer confined to the reservations. As individuals, they can live anywhere they want to (and can afford to).

Reservations are land reserved for a given tribe, and are governed by the tribal government. Tribal members have the right, but not an obligation, to live there.

And, as far as I can tell, most of the federal tax money spent on Indian reservations is spent on services to the tribes. See, for example, U.S. Department of the Treasury Reaches Major Milestone, Approving Over $500 Million to Support Small Businesses in Tribal Nations, October 17, 2024.

Some services are provided to specific tribes as a treaty obligation, to compensate the tribe for the loss of its traditional means of livelihood.


Indigenous Americans are still an oppressed group too, although their situation has improved in various ways.

Indigenous Americans certainly have much more freedom of movement (these days, at least) than Gazan or West Bank Palestinians.


For most people protesting Israel's war on Gaza, the trigger was not October 7 but, rather, Israel's subsequent slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Some people celebrated Hamas's October 7 attack, but it's my impression that they are a small minority of the people (here in the U.S.A., at least) protesting Israel's behavior in Gaza and American support thereof.

Actually, no. Sending just enough people to solidify an imperial government's control over a territory is colonialism, but not settler colonialism. Settler-colonialism aims to replace the indigenous society, not just exploit or dominate it.

Also, while settler colonialism is usually sponsored or supported by a specific foreign government, that's not part of the definition of "settler colonialism." For example, in Wikipedia's definition of Settler colonialism:


Note the word "typically." The external imperial authority is typical but not essential to the definition.

In the case of Israel, the early Jewish political Zionists did try to get the U.K. involved as their imperial sponsor. When that didn't work out so well for them, they relied, for a while, on just their own militias plus a network of overseas private Zionist organizations to raise money for them. Eventually they found a new de facto imperial sponsor, the U.S.A., plus an additional network of private sponsors, the Christian Zionist organizations.


Ditto for some of the American colonial settlers, e.g. various groups fleeing religious persecution in Europe.

British-sponsored settler-colonialism tended to involve a mix of some people who were "sent" to a given colony and other people who went there on their own, for their own reasons, sometimes desperate reasons.


Things would likely have turned out very differently if they had just "migrated" as ordinary immigrants, rather than as part of an enterprise aiming to displace the indigenous population and take over the land. Their troubles with the local Arabs began when it became clear that they intended the latter.

Had the new Jewish immigrants focused just on draining some coastal swamps, irrigating a few kibbutzim in the Negev/Naqab, and building a few new suburban enclaves, then they likely could have ended up being accepted as part of Palestinian society. But, no, they had to do things like buy large tracts of already-productive farmland from absentee landlords and then evict all the indigenous tenants in favor of Jewish immigrant workers. That, naturally, caused quite a bit of alarm.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 21 Dec 2024, 2:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In other words the same racism, but Israeli version is a lot meaner. Not disagreeing with you but pointing out the hypocrisy of the subset of leftists we are discussing who are demanding Jews give up on having a country of their own while for the most part not at least demanding a right of return for indigenous people whose ancestors were cleansed from the land where they are living.

Not buying the trigger for the explosion of anti Israel activism was Israel's response as the Israeli response had barely begun but the massive increase in activism was almost instantaneous. Reacting to the Israeli actions over the last 75 years yes. A trigging event is not an event that is the main cause of a response but an event releases what has been building up.

Indigenous Americans already have a "right of return" in the limited sense of having all the legal rights of U.S. citizens and being free to live, as individuals, wherever they want (and can afford).

Perhaps you meant to refer to the return of land to the tribes as legal entities? Some tribes, mostly in Western states, have managed to get back some "unceded land" that was illegally taken from them after the most recent treaty between the U.S. government and a given tribe. See The latest on the Land Back movement, in which Native American tribes reclaim land, NPR, September 18, 2024.

Anyhow, some indigenous American political causes have attracted widespread support from left-leaning white Americans. An example that comes to mind is the fight against the Keystone XL Pipeline.


Hmmm. I could be wrong, but my recollection is that the initial protests were relatively small, but attracted a lot of attention due to pro-Israel folks screaming about how "antisemitic" the protesters allegedly were.[*] It is my impression that the protests then got bigger and bigger, as it became clear to more and more people that Israel's retaliation in Gaza was vastly disproportionate to the October 7 attack.

As for how the initial protests managed to get organized so quickly, mostly likely that was because the groups that organized them (e.g. Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace) already existed and probably were already on red alert due to the Israeli government provocations that preceded the October 7 attack. Shortly before October 7, it was already pretty obvious, to anyone paying attention to news about goings-on in East Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount, that some kind of conflict was probably imminent (maybe just the usual round of Hamas rocket attacks landing more-or-less harmlessly, followed by the usual Israeli retaliation -- which, even if it hadn't been nearly as extreme as Israel's response to October 7 turned out to be, would have been a natural occasion for groups like SJP and JVP to protest the U.S.A.'s unconditional support for Israel).

Another thing to keep in mind, regarding the Columbia University protests in particular: Columbia University is in New York City, whose population, compared to the rest of the U.S.A., includes relatively few descendants of the mostly Protestant Christian white folks who seized land from the indigenous Americans. On the other hand, according to Wikipedia's page on Islam in New York City:


I would expect the majority of the earliest protesters to have been Muslims and anti-Zionist Jews. Admittedly I'm not sure of this.

But I do remember thinking that some of the rhetoric of the early protesters seemed like they might have been jumping to premature conclusions. For example, there were people calling Israel's behavior "genocide" at least a couple of weeks before I myself, and my partner, finally became convinced that we were indeed seeing genocide-in-progress.

[*] Anyhow, it does seem to me that there was some anti-Jewish bigotry among some of the protesters, but I don't see that as the primary motive of the protests as a whole, especially given the involvement of groups like JVP from the get-go.

I meant Right of Return as of “you are illegally on my property” get off.
It turns out we both might be right.
Palestinian right of return

So you can understand why Israeli Jews interpret this a desire to at least ethnically cleanse them.


As far as timing goes on October 8, 31 student groups at Harvard signed a letter saying Israel was wholly at fault for what had happened the day before. I started the blowback thread on October 25th. That was two days before the ground invasion but while unprecedented aerial bombardment was going on, and well after genocidal statements were made by a number of Israeli politicians. In my OP I posted articles about the Anti-Defamation League talking about a spike in antisemitism, Jewish students in the library of Cooper Union as anti Israel demonstrators pounded on the door, and an article about hostage posters being ripped down.

It is fair to say that that so far the Anti Israel movement peaked in the Spring of 2024.

As far as the demographics of the protesters not enough information to hazard a guess.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 23 Dec 2024, 7:29 am, edited 2 times in total.