Israel, the US, and the Settler-Colonialist Paradigm

Israel fits the definition of a settler-colonialist state, just as the United States did, and arguably still does. Both nations have similar myths about their origins, beyond base white supremacy and the fairy tale that God gave them the land and wanted them to have it. The US tells the lie of a natural wilderness, a relative blank slate with nothing but handfuls of savage natives lacking the intelligence to make the most of the land and being too inclined to brutish violence for there to be cooperation between them and the settler-colonizers. Israel tells the lie of a barren desert wasteland, a scattering of ruins and hovels of little value and a backwards and hateful population getting in the way of justice and progress. The precolonial American continents had been settled thousands of years prior to European invasion, the land long since cultivated, and home to millions of people belonging to hundreds of different nations. Palestine was likewise a nation for up to a few thousand years which went through many demographic and governing changes, but the homes and the farms and the land that Palestinians were driven from and robbed of starting in 1948 had been in their families for generations. A difference between Israel and the US is that the latter came entirely from afar and exterminated much of the native population, whereas there was a Jewish base population in Palestine that brought in immigrants, refugees, and foreign militants to exterminate or expel much of the non-Jewish population. The situations were unique, but similar, and the notion that either territory was a blank slate is ridiculous and the idea that either was undeveloped and not rich in resources is stupid and insulting; if they didn’t already hold great value, what would be the purpose in stealing them?

Land theft is one thing, and perhaps an issue of more nuance than the extreme human rights violations, the genocides committed by the United States and Israel. In this they have followed almost identical playbooks, if different in size and time frames. Both have followed the pattern of launching military and paramilitary attacks against the native populations, often on some pretext of violent resistance on the part of the natives, often having provoked or manufactured the resistance, so they can lessen the number of resistors, destroy their infrastructure and resources, and then take the land they’ve been killed on or forced off of. Then, those who’ve survived the assault are forced into smaller and ever-shrinking territory: reservations for native Americans, and what’s left of Gaza and the West Bank for the Palestinians. The dominant oppressive power proposes treaties or cease-fires, which they inevitably violate, and the cycle repeats.

Neither the United States nor Israel has ever been able to abide the existence of sovereign territory and sovereign people, however diminished, within their domains. In both cases, the settler-colonial power has further seized property from native populations through private annexations in willful violation of treaties and international laws. In this tactic, the Israeli government seems to be directly mirroring the United States government, which expanded its territory by encouraging and financing European settlers to encroach on, steal, land from native peoples, fighting and killing those natives who resisted. Israel’s government is doing the same thing today, encouraging and funding Jewish settlers to occupy homes and plots of land on the dwindling Palestinian territory, and then bringing in the military to “defend” those settlers if Palestinians resist the land grabs. The objective of the colonial powers in both situations is the same, breaking up native territory and taking it piece by piece until there’s nothing left and the other nation, already robbed of sovereignty, is effectively eradicated.

For much of human history, this behavior of conquering other nations, stealing land, expelling or murdering the inhabitants, was normal. That’s how nations were expanded and empires built. Looking at these events through the banal lens of history, it is easy to overlook the horrors that occurred. We read about the Romans sacking the Gauls or the Mongols conquering much of a continent and fail to appreciate the extreme violence underlying the bland phrasings. Part of that has to do with the emotional and intellectual distance from past eras and events, and perhaps that our culture, or segments of it, have grown more empathetic, but it largely has to do with the fact that the documenters and scholars of history have been primarily colonial imperialist crackers. History is written by the victors and the victors tend to give their acts of conquest and genocide a rosy tint. There were always detractors, dissidents, critics of the violent and monstrous actions of colonial empires. A major difference today is not only that we are more aware of these crimes against humanity, and it is historically unique that we can witness travesties happening half the world away, but that we are more able to speak and to act as they happen. The Palestinians of today are better able to share their plight and seek solidarity than the native Americans of decades or centuries ago. The victims are speaking now, before the victors have the chance to erase them and rewrite history.