Zionism as settler colonialism

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Zionism as settler colonialism is a paradigm that views Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a case of settler colonialism. Patrick Wolfe, the most influential theorist of settler colonial studies, considered Israel an example and discussed it in his widely cited essay "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native". Other influential scholars who have used a settler-colonial analysis of Israel/Palestine include Edward Said, Fayez Sayegh, Maxime Rodinson, George Jabbour, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Baha Abu-Laban, Jamil Hilal, and Rosemary Sayigh. This paradigm has become increasingly prevalent in the twenty-first century, although it is not a dominant framing as of 2022.

Portrayal of Zionism as a colonial movement is rejected by most Israeli Jews, and perceived either as an attack on the legitimacy of Israel or a form of antisemitism. David Hirsh describes the comparison between Zionism and settler colonialism as a selective Anti-Zionist method.

Background

In contrast to classical colonialism, in settler colonialism the focus is on eliminating rather than exploiting the original inhabitants of a territory. Commonly cited cases of settler colonialism include the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As theorized by Patrick Wolfe, settler colonialism is a structure, not an event. Settler colonialism operates by processes including physical elimination of the native but also can encompass projects of assimilation, segregation, miscegenation, religious conversion, and incarceration.

Incidence

In 1905, jobless Jewish settlers invented the idea of Hebrew labor arguing that all Jewish-owned businesses should only employ Jews. Zionist organizations acquired land that was restricted so it could never pass into non-Jewish ownership. Later on the kibbutz—collectivist, all-Jewish agricultural settlements—developed to counter plantation economies relying on Jewish owners and Palestinian farmers. The kibbutz was also the prototype of Jewish-only settlements later established beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from the area that became Israel. Arnon Degani argues that ending military rule over Israel's Palestinian citizens in 1966 shifted from colonial to settler-colonial governance.

According to Patrick Wolfe, Israel's settler colonialism manifests in immigration policies that promote unlimited immigration of Jews while denying family reunification for Palestinian citizens. Wolfe adds, "Despite Zionism's chronic addiction to territorial expansion, Israel's borders do not preclude the option of removal (in this connection, it is hardly surprising that a nation that has driven so many of its original inhabitants into the sand should express an abiding fear of itself being driven into the sea)."

Salamanca et al. state that Israeli practices have often been studied as distinct but related phenomena, and that the settler-colonial paradigm is an opportunity to understand them together. As examples of settler colonial phenomena they include "aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, home demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration regarding security arrangements".

Historiography

According to Uri Ram, the characterization of Zionism as colonial "is probably as old as the Zionist movement". One influential early analysis was that of Palestinian writer Fayez Sayegh in his 1965 essay "Zionist Colonialism in Palestine", which was unusual for the pre-1967 era in specifying Zionism as a form of settler colonialism. Sayegh later drafted the UN's "Zionism is racism" resolution. After Israel assumed control of all of Mandatory Palestine in 1967, settler-colonial analyses became prominent among Palestinians. In Israel, the New Historians, a movement that emerged in the 1980s, were associated with colonial analysis. Along with explicitly settler colonial analysis, another persistent view is that the "Zionist national project has been predicated on the destruction of the Palestinian one".

Scholars of settler colonialism have analyzed Zionism's external supporters, either private organizations or various states (such as the United Kingdom, France, or the United States), as a metropole. A settler-colonial analysis has been used to explain the positive relationship between Israel and other settler-colonial states such as the United States and Australia. According to Martin Braach-Maksvytis, Germany invested in Israel after losing its colonies and that this relationship later became a kind of "redemptive proxy colonialism".

Although settler colonialism is an empirical framework, it is associated with favoring a one-state solution. Rachel Busbridge argues that settler colonialism is "a coherent and legible frame" and "a far more accurate portrayal of the conflict than the picture of Palestinian criminality and Israeli victimhood that has conventionally been painted". She also argues that settler colonial analysis is limited, especially when it comes to the question of decolonization.

Anthropologist Anne de Jong says that early Zionists promoted a narrative of binary conflict in order to deflect criticisms of settler colonialism. In 2013, historian Lorenzo Veracini argued that settler colonialism has been successful in Israel proper but unsuccessful in the territories occupied in 1967. Historian Rashid Khalidi argues that all other settler-colonial wars in the twentieth century ended in defeat for colonists, making Palestine an exception: "Israel has been extremely successful in forcibly establishing itself as a colonial reality in a post-colonial age".

Criticism

Portrayal of Zionism as a colonial movement is rejected by most Israeli Jews, and perceived either as an attack on the legitimacy of Israel or a form of antisemitism. Some critics highlight aspects such as Zionism's non-exploitation of indigenous labor or lack of a metropole as reasons not to consider it a colonial movement.

In his book "Contemporary Left Antisemitism", sociologist David Hirsh describes the comparison between Zionism and settler colonialism as a selective Anti-Zionist method aimed at demonizing Israel. He wrote: "It is difficult to understand how anybody could believe that Jews in the refugee camps in Europe and in British Cyprus, recovering from starvation and from existences as non-humans in concentration camps, were thinking of themselves as standard bearers of 'the European idea'".

According to sociologist Moshe Lissak, the most significant weakness of the settler colonial thesis is the failure of its adherents to recognize that Zionism is a national movement, "the most comprehensive expression of the modern national movement of the Jewish people … to create a political entity in what was defined by all parts of the Jewish people as their historical territory." Since the Zionist movement was both a national movement and a settlement movement at the same time, Lissak concluded it could not, by definition, be a colonial settlement movement. Lissak argued that Labor Zionist ideology, which led the settlement project, prevented the Land of Israel from developing colonialist symptoms, though such potential did exist in the moshavot.

References

^ Sabbagh-Khoury 2022, Conclusion.
Wolfe 2006.
"Forum on Patrick Wolfe". Versobooks.com. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
"What is at Stake in the Study of Settler Colonialism?". Developing Economics. 26 October 2020. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
Sabbagh-Khoury 2022, first section.
^ Busbridge 2018, pp. 97–98.
^ Hirsh, David. Contemporary Left Antisemitism. Routledge. pp. 193–194. ISBN 978-1-138-23530-4. OCLC 1011418661. A clear illustration of the selective method of antizionism is its portrayal of Israel as nothing but a colonial enterprise in the image of white European settler-colonialism... It is difficult to understand how anybody could believe that Jews in the refugee camps in Europe and in British Cyprus, recovering from starvation and from existences as non-humans in concentration camps, were thinking of themselves as standard bearers of 'the European idea'
Busbridge 2018, p. 92.
Busbridge 2018, p. 95.
Svirsky 2021, pp. 80–81.
^ Svirsky 2021, p. 81.
^ Busbridge 2018, p. 96.
Degani 2015, p. 84.
Wolfe 2006, p. 401.
Salamanca et al. 2012, p. 2.
^ Busbridge 2018, p. 94.
Behar 2020, p. 221.
^ Sayegh 2012, p. 206.
Behar 2020, p. 227.
^ Sabbagh-Khoury 2022, The Settler Colonial Paradigm in the Israeli-Palestinian Context.
Anonymous 2021, p. 375.
Busbridge 2018, p. 104.
Busbridge 2018, pp. 92–93.
Busbridge 2018, p. 93.
de Jong 2018, p. 364.
Veracini 2013, p. 38.
"Introduction: Historical Landmarks in the Hundred Years' War on Palestine". Institute for Palestine Studies.
Moshe Lissak, "'Critical' Sociology and 'Establishment' Sociology in the Israeli Academic Community: Ideological Struggles or Academic Discourse?" Israel Studies 1:1 (1996), 247-294.

Sources

Anonymous (2021). "Palestine Between German Memory Politics and (De-)Colonial Thought". Journal of Genocide Research. 23 (3): 374–382. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1847852.
Behar, Moshe (2020). "Competing Marxisms, Cessation of (Settler) Colonialism, and the One-state Solution in Israel-Palestine". The Arab and Jewish Questions. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-55299-8.
Busbridge, Rachel (2018). "Israel-Palestine and the Settler Colonial 'Turn': From Interpretation to Decolonization". Theory, Culture & Society. 35 (1): 91–115. doi:10.1177/0263276416688544.
Degani, Arnon Yehuda (2015). "The decline and fall of the Israeli Military Government, 1948–1966: a case of settler-colonial consolidation?". Settler Colonial Studies. 5 (1): 84–99. doi:10.1080/2201473X.2014.905236.
de Jong, Anne (2018). "Zionist hegemony, the settler colonial conquest of Palestine and the problem with conflict: a critical genealogy of the notion of binary conflict". Settler Colonial Studies. 8 (3): 364–383. doi:10.1080/2201473X.2017.1321171.
Sabbagh-Khoury, Areej (2022). "Tracing Settler Colonialism: A Genealogy of a Paradigm in the Sociology of Knowledge Production in Israel". Politics & Society. 50 (1): 44–83. doi:10.1177/0032329221999906.
Salamanca, Omar Jabary; Qato, Mezna; Rabie, Kareem; Samour, Sobhi (2012). "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine". Settler Colonial Studies. 2 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648823.
Sayegh, Fayez (2012). "Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965)". Settler Colonial Studies. 2 (1): 206–225. doi:10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648833.
Svirsky, Marcelo (2021). "The Reproduction of Settler Colonialism in Palestine". Journal of Perpetrator Research. 4 (1). doi:10.21039/jpr.4.1.79.
Veracini, Lorenzo (2013). "The Other Shift: Settler Colonialism, Israel, and the Occupation". Journal of Palestine Studies. 42 (2): 26–42. doi:10.1525/jps.2013.42.2.26.
Wolfe, Patrick (2006). "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native". Journal of Genocide Research. 8 (4): 387–409. doi:10.1080/14623520601056240.

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