[smc]

Originally Posted by ila

So just where should the Israelis live, smc? They are on their ancestral land. The house of Israel and descendants have lived in the area of Israel for millennia. Even when the people of the twelve tribes of Israel were dispersed throughout the world there were still Israelis living in the area we now call Israel. The Arabs and the Israelis trace a common ancestry back to Abraham who, it is supposed, lived in the area of Israel. ...

As promised:

ila raises some good points. Let me begin by defining what I mean by a "colonial-settler state."

Not all colonialism is settler colonialism. For instance, Britain colonized a large part of the world to exploit natural and human resources. Under this type of colonialism, administrators and armed forces (and their families) make up the bulk of the non-native peoples in the colony. Settlement by large numbers of people from the colonizer country is neither encouraged nor typical.

Settler colonialism, though, is about land irrespective of the natural and human resources. Settler families move in. They reproduce. They are sometimes backed up by some imperial power, either directly or indirectly, for a time. Over time, the colonization includes direct or indirect depopulation of the previous inhabitants. This may happen through expulsion, wholesale killing, or (least likely) an accelerated birthrate by the colonizers over time. As historian Patrick Wolfe has put it ?settler colonialism destroys to replace.?

Also over time, the settler population establishes its own colonizing authority.

Now, on to Israel.

In the late 19th century, a political movement called Zionism emerged as a response to anti-Semitism, particularly in Eastern Europe. The Zionists concluded that anti-Semitism could not be eliminated, and began to advocate Jewish emigration to an exclusively Jewish state that would be set up somewhere, anywhere. Theodor Herzl, acknowledged as Zionism?s founder, called in an 1896 pamphlet for a Jewish state to be set up in an undeveloped country outside Europe. He also stated explicitly that this couldn?t happen unless one of the major imperialist powers backed the Zionists. After all, they were busy carving up the world for themselves. Herzl posited that if such support could be found, the Zionist movement would conduct itself like other colonizing ventures.

By the way, the Zionists openly considered a big part of Argentina, Madagascar, and Uganda as places for the new Jewish state. These places have absolutely no connection to Judaism or the ?house of Israel? (to use ila?s term). Some religious Jews suggested Palestine, the so-called Biblical ?promised land.?

By the way, it should be pointed out that the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews, prior to Israel?s founding, opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in the so-called ?promised land.? This was seen as a direct affront to God, who had made a covenant with Abraham and promised that the Jews would be returned to that place by a Messiah. The establishment of a Jewish state there by men was counter to a central tenet of Judaism.

Back to Herzl. He wrote about Palestine becoming a Jewish state that it would form ?a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.? Already, the Zionists were situating their ideas in the context of a system of colonial domination, and referring to the indigenous people of Palestine as barbarians.

Once Palestine was chosen, the Zionist movement attempted to persuade one of the imperialist powers to support the colonization. They approach Turkey and Germany, but were turned down. (Yes, Germany!). The Zionists didn?t care who they allied with. Herzl approached Count Von Plehve, sponsor of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia. He wrote to him, ?Help me to reach the land sooner and the revolt [against Czarist rule] will end.? Herzl and other Zionist leaders offered to help guarantee Czarist interests in Palestine and to rid Eastern Europe and Russia of those ?noxious and subversive Anarcho-Bolshevik Jews.? In other words, the Zionists would help the Czarists get rid of people who wanted to fight anti-Semitism. Von Plehve saw an opportunity, writing: ?The Jews have been joining the revolutionary parties. We were sympathetic to your Zionist movement as long as it worked toward emigration. You don?t have to justify the movement to me. You are preaching to a convert.?

Britain took control of Palestine at the end of World War I, so the Zionists turned their lobbying to the British government. Chaim Weizmann argued, ?A Jewish Palestine would be a safeguard to England, in particular in respect to the Suez Canal.? You see how the Jewish state project begins to have less and less to do with anti-Semitism and more and more to do with traditional colonial interests?

On November 2, 1917, Lord Balfour, the British foreign minister Lord Balfour and a notorious anti-Semite, issued the following declaration: ?His Majesty?s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. ...?

Notably, one of the people who played a very important role in convincing Balfour to make this declaration was General Jan Smuts, the South African delegate to the British war cabinet. Smuts, who later became South Africa?s prime minister (he?s the one who cracked down on Gandhi when he was in South Africa) was a friend of Weizmann?s; the latter often compared the Zionist?s aims in Palestine with the South African idea of creating a racially distinct colonizing population ... and all that entailed. It?s no wonder that later on, when South Africa became an international pariah, the only country that would openly sell arms to the South Africa government and that would invite its athletes to participate in events was Israel!

How did the Zionists create the Israel of today? Small Jewish settlements had existed in Palestine from the late 19th century, but after 1917 the colonization process accelerated considerably. Jewish organizations bought up large areas of land from absentee landlords, displacing large numbers of Palestinian peasants. The Zionists also began to construct an exclusively Jewish ?enclave? economy, organized around the Histadrut, the ?General Confederation of Hebrew Workers? in Palestine. Settlers would refuse to employ Arab labor and they boycotted Arab goods, seeking to destroy Palestinian Arab livelihood in the region.

Then came the 1930s. Fascism was on the rise in Europe. Most Jews didn?t want to leave Europe for Palestine, but the Zionists worked over time to get their colonial power sponsors to encourage such migration. Of all Jewish migrants from Europe in the 1930s, only about 8.5 percent went to Palestine. That number was likely accomplished only because the United States and Britain enacted immigration policies that kept a lot of Jews out, and then encouraged Palestine as an alternative.

[TO BE CONTINUED]