The False Narrative of Settler Colonialism

On October 7th, Hamas killed four times as many Israelis in a single day as had been killed in the previous 15 years of conflict. In the months since, protesters have rallied against Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. But a new tone of excitement and enthusiasm could be heard among pro-Palestinian activists from the moment that news of the attacks arrived, well before the Israeli response began. Celebrations of Hamas’s exploits are familiar sights in Gaza and the West Bank, Cairo and Damascus; this time, they spread to elite college campuses, where Gaza-solidarity encampments became ubiquitous this past spring. Why?

The answer is that, long before October 7, the Palestinian struggle against Israel had become widely understood by academic and progressive activists as the vanguard of a global battle against settler colonialism, a struggle also waged in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries created by European settlement. In these circles, Palestine was transformed into a standard reference point for every kind of social wrong, even those that seem to have no connection to the Middle East.

One of the most striking things about the ideology of settler colonialism is the central role played by Israel, which is often paired with the U.S. as the most important example of settler colonialism’s evils. Many Palestinian writers and activists have adopted this terminology. In his 2020 book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, the historian Rashid Khalidi writes that the goal of Zionism was to create a “white European settler colony.” For the Palestinian intellectual Joseph Massad, Israel is a product of “European Jewish Settler-Colonialism,” and the “liberation” referred to in the name of the Palestine Liberation Organization is “liberation from Settler-Colonialism.”

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Although Israel fails in obvious ways to fit the model of settler colonialism, it has become the standard reference point because it offers theorists and activists something that the United States does not: a plausible target. It is hard to imagine America or Canada being truly decolonized, with the descendants of the original settlers returning to the countries from which they came and Native peoples reclaiming the land. But armed struggle against Israel has been ongoing since it was founded, and Hamas and its allies still hope to abolish the Jewish state “between the river and the sea.” In the contemporary world, only in Israel can the fight against settler colonialism move from theory to practice.

Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/how-settler-colonialism-colonized-universities/679514/?gift=jcG3tmvWxz4sWOuHjwSa6_jpO9BAC77lYsOjpEP5ee4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share