Early Zionists literally self-described as colonialists
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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It's very inconvenient when the founders of your movement are like "we explicitly want to invade this country, drive it's people in to exile, and steal their stuff. We're going to say this over and over so everyone clearly understands out intentions."
100+ years later: “the history is complicated”.
The colonialism was the their selling point to the British! Their whole sales pitch was that “hey, we’ll do colonialism in Palestine but will serve the interests of the British Empire!
They literally met with Jan Smuts and Hendrik Verwoerd, the architects of apartheid in South Africa.
theodor herzl's letter to cecil rhodes
They also proudly and openly call themselves settlers lol.
This article tries very hard to imply that it's a fundamentally novel concept (adopted by naive young activists) to conceive of Israel as a colonial enterprise. He doesn't say this directly, but this works very well with the "youth support Palestine because they're brainwashed by TikTok" narrative.
It doesn't seem to occur to the author that the reason he'd never heard it before is because the US has just never really seen such vocal defense for Palestine.
Anyways in case anyone encounters this bird-brained position in the wild I'm linking to Fayez Sayegh's Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965)
Very inconvenient that theodore fucking herzl calls it colonization. Or it would be if liberals ever encountered history in a dark alley.
Or go further back and listen to jabotinsky's words in "the iron wall", a formative document that explicitly frames the Zionist national project in terms of colonialism and ethnic cleansing http://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
Except for those who were born blind, (moderate Zionists) realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.
Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.
Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.
Whoah good pull I'd never heard of that
One thing I've noticed with liberals is that when they hear about something they've never heard before, they assume it must be brand new and no one else has ever heard of it either. They can't imagine that someone else knows more than they do.
Second-to-last sentence:
Colonialism has given way to post-colonialism and neocolonialism, whatever those sweeping labels may encompass.
Imagine spending money on a NYT subscription and getting this lazy-ass article.
Ah yes, those hot new buzzwords that definitely don't have a century-spanning body of literature attached to them. Frantz Fanon? Never heard of em, probably just some naive college kid who hasn't figured out how the real world works 
Literally reading the definition of neocolonialism reveals this article for the drivel it so so they name checked the concept while acting like it’s too complex to explain. Just incredible writing.
Yeah, that ending paragraph actually confused the shit out of me on a first read. Because I (naively, I guess) assumed that the point of an article was to, well, make a point or argue for something. But this article seems to exist to argue for nothing. Just legitimately I think this article exists so libs on the internet can link to it when someone calls them out for supporting colonialism. And given that, it makes sense that the last paragraph would be some wishy-washy meaningless drivel. It doesn't have to be anything else. In fact, it's maybe even better if it argues nothing and comes to no solid conclusions.
When you’re writing an essay and realize mid-sentence that you hit the word count requirement
And the first sentence of the article is a massive fucking lie
Also
Colonialism, once equated by the West with civilizing progress, became synonymous with iniquity.
No it just got rebranded as "development" to depoliticize assimilation and genocide
Then
Israel as a colonial enterprise is “a significant category error.” It cannot apply to a conflict involving “two indigenous peoples.” It is misplaced given that the 20th-century influx of persecuted European Jews came from a historically indigenous “population of refugees not sent by any empire.”
“Israel’s creation was endorsed by the United Nations.”
In other words people love to play dumb about the UN and the international order.
once equated by the West with civilizing progress
And equated by literally everyone else as genocidal crimes against humanity.
once equated by the West with civilizing progress
Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
Well, you see, what Europeans did to Africa wasn’t colonialism because actually humans came from Africa so it was a fight between indigenous people.
That's a really good analogy. Gonna use that the next time someone pulls "actually Jews are indigenous to Israel" bullshit on me.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the libs you use that on end up agreeing with your rhetorically intententional ridiculous analogy.
Why do they call themselves "settlers" then?
They're really serious about their games of Catan.
Damn i hate when the subaltern weaponizes an old world to correctly describe my socio-historical role as a colonizer and the resulting present day economic and political oppressions that stem from that!
It is deeply inconvenient for my current arguments and so yes I also hate it
What a disgusting article, so many weasel words and dancing around genocide.
On the Israeli claim to Palestine:
and an intense emotional attachment that, by 1946, had led large numbers of Jews to flee centuries of persecution and Hitler’s annihilation “solution” in Europe to head to Palestine. Jews generally tried their best to overlook the indigenous Arab presence and viewed their own indigenous claim as equally valid.
Zionists did this, not Jews. In any case, how exactly did the situation progress in say 47-48 when the contradiction between "overlooking" a people that exists came to a head, Mr Cohen? Fucking euphemistic coward.
It is misplaced given that the 20th-century influx of persecuted European Jews came from a historically indigenous “population of refugees not sent by any empire.”
Pure lies, early Zionist settlers specifically came to Israel because they were pushed by the British and other allied powers who's rampant antisemitism was so strong that even the Holocaust didn't cause them to go "maybe we should make our societies safe places for Jewish people". They were armed, aided and abetted by the British empire specifically as a geopolitical proxy because Jews were less important to the British than "true" Englishmen, but the brits nevertheless had plausible deniability about it being a tool of the empire.
The problem with this horseshit is that all major figures of Zionist history have been proud colonialists and Europeanists, their openness with fascism and white supremacy undermines liberal Zionism
The point of articles like this of course isn't to describe history, it's to lie and extol western ignorance in defense of the indefensible, it's modern day germanic aryan studies in both form and conception
The problem with this horseshit is that all major figures of Zionist history have been proud colonialists and Europeanists,
I'd kinda like to know more, if you have a link or something.
New York Times: How a word, new, stayed the same old weapon
However, for Yuval Shany, a professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, dealing with the establishment of Israel as a colonial enterprise is “a significant category error.” It cannot apply to a conflict involving “two indigenous peoples.” It is misplaced given that the 20th-century influx of persecuted European Jews came from a historically indigenous “population of refugees not sent by any empire.” It cannot be applied to the many other Jews from Muslim North African and Middle Eastern countries who arrived in Israel after they suffered expulsion.
I was prepared to do an elaborate dissection, but lol, I am just rant
Were all the american settlers sent by empire?
It's not important if your father or grandfather was persecuted and expropriated, you still don't get to rob other people of land! I thought a professor of law knows that? And they were not kicked out of fucking Palestine! They were kicked out of other arab countries! Why do the Palestinians have to pay for the Iraqi Ba3th's/Egypt's/Marocco's deeds? How does it make a mizrahi indigenous to Tel Aviv?
The Mizrahim are only brought up as a thought terminating clichee when the question is whether Gazan families get bombed and Palestinian kids have to grow up in some horrible refugee camp, land gets stolen etc or if they get the right to return and democracy! If the mizrahim as a the majority block wouldn't vote genocidal fascists into power, you could get some right to return to their grandparents' country of origin worked out (as if they wanted to)! You just want your critics to shut up!
By the way, the Pantherim Skhorim (Mizrahim) had things to say about Israel's character as a colonial entity...
“The idea of an imposed power is wrong,” Professor Shany said. “Israel’s creation was endorsed by the United Nations.”
Oh, we are talking about the UN? Thought that was an antisemitic cabal? There is a bunch of stuff they also decreed...
I think this guy's implication that the US settlers weren't "sent by an empire" and therefore weren't colonisers is a very careful and deliberate tactic.
this is a tiny part of the slight of hands going on here, they also want to move the discussion into the realm of philosophical ideas, as it happened multiple times with people who really despise BLM and need their harvard chair. The next is the intellectually lazy "context makes comparisons awkward" claim which is NEVER really backed up, but just hinted and gestured at
But anyway, German Wiedertäufers were not sent by empire, the puritans were not sent by empire, the immigration waves in the 19th and 20th century were not sent by an empire. Nordau, Herzl, Jabotinsky all called the zionist immigrators Settler, I have not read the Labor Zionists, but they probs also did, btw they were mostly premarxian and not some die hard socialists who just couldnt bear antisemitism
It's so frustrating, because there is so much sleight of hand, so many lies, so much deception, that attacking any one point still leaves dozens of other points unassaulted. So they can act like their position is a superior one because anyone trying to point out the flaws gets bogged down trying to tackle every incorrect point one after another, and it is always easier to just make up bullshit than it is to combat it.
I am not completely happy with what I wrote, but I was just too angry with this BS to think straight... I decided I should still post it
You're not alone. The only people who buy the NYT's bullshit are Western PMC who have a preexisting ideological kinship with Israel as a political project and extension of US dominance. As @[email protected] pointed out, reading Herzl and early Zionists works and political projects will easily debunk the article.
The article is a soothing balm, to reference that one redsails article, to these PMC's in being okay with ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Just some things to point out, that despite the overwhelming power and slaughter by Israel and the US, are:
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There's a downward trend of people who will believe Israel's justification and response.
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People on social media can see the way Israelis broadcast their own mockery of Palestinians with genocidal and dehumanizing fervor.
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Most people support a ceasefire.
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Israel supporters in the West already have institutional support but are now having to rely on overt, brazen, and active state repression against pro-Palestine protestors.
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Social media broadcasts the carnage and aftermath.
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There are massive demonstrations all over the world.
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Tensions are escalating across MENA.
This massacre will either come to a dark conclusion in Gaza, with the expulsion of a majority of Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai, Iraq, and Turkey, or Palestine will continue to bleed out and endure this violence at Israel's own ruination. The longer this goes on, the longer Israel's reputation - in tatters abroad - will be tarnished in the West that intervention and the first sprouts of liberation will manifest.
This massacre will either come to a dark conclusion in Gaza, with the expulsion of a majority of Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai, Iraq, and Turkey, or Palestine will continue to bleed out and endure this violence at Israel's own ruination. The longer this goes on, the longer Israel's reputation - in tatters abroad - will be tarnished in the West that intervention and the first sprouts of liberation will manifest.
Your assumption is that liberals actually got a conscience - maybe the Gen Z people do, but among millenials the split is pretty fucking wrt support in my place. Don't get me started on the "leftists"
Um actually sweaty it’s not colonizing when we do it.
Good. Let me stab America in the heart with this new weapon.
Trump is going to win the zoomers just by shit-talking Netanyahu
You are. Duh.
“We are witnessing neocolonial instincts in the West,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said last month
There's scores of people you could quote to discuss neocolonialism, but let's make a snide effort to make anti-colonialism seem like a Russian thing.
Good thing that a huge amount of settlers in settler colonial projects weren’t the poor or people from oppressed minorities. Then this entire argument about being ‘sent by empire’ might seem ridiculous.