settler colonialist | #TranslateHate
settler colonialist
noun \ ˈset-lər ˈkə-ˈlō-nē-ə-list \
: an occupying force that exploits and displaces native populations from their home to settle and form a permanent society
WHEN IT’S ANTISEMITIC:
The term “settler colonialism” refers to a system of oppression in which a colonizing nation engages in ethnic cleansing by displacing and dispossessing a native or pre-existing population. A classic example is 17th-century Dutch emigrants settling in South Africa, located along the colonial Dutch East India Company’s trade route. This led to the permanent settlement of Afrikaners, white European descendants of these Dutch emigrants. Though the minority, the white Afrikaners gained control over government and enacted apartheid, the brutal systematic oppression of Black people.
Those who oppose the State of Israel as a Jewish state claim that Jews (or Zionists) (see Zionist) have engaged in settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing by dispossessing the Palestinian population. These accusations are categorically false for many reasons. First, the term “settler colonialism” implies the intention to replace or even eliminate an indigenous people. Zionism does not fit this model since Jews themselves are also native and indigenous to the Land of Israel. Historical and archaeological evidence have proven a continuous Jewish presence in the land, dating back millennia. The ancient and continuous connection between Jewish people and the Land of Israel is embedded throughout Jewish rituals and texts as well. Moreover, Zionists never had the goal of eliminating the Arab population living in the region. They accepted the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, which divided British Mandatory Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Furthermore, unlike European settler colonialists who settled colonies to enrich their motherlands, and who maintained a connection to their home countries to which they could return if they so wished, Jews who came to Mandatory Palestine had no motherland in Europe to enrich. Quite the opposite, they were escaping persecution in Europe and returning to the land of their ancestors, Israel.
Go Deeper: Why Israel is Not a Settler Colonial State"
While criticism of Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank can be a part of legitimate political discourse, it is a distortion of the truth and negation of the millennia-long connection Jews have with the land to call Israel a “settler colonialist” enterprise. It also disregards the fact that half of Israel’s population comes from the Middle East and North Africa; it is employed solely to delegitimize Israel’s existence.
When the “settler colonialist” label is used to say Jews do not have the right to national self-determination or to deny Israel’s right to exist, that is antisemitism.
