There is nothing new in the assertion that Zionism is a form of colonialism. More recently, some academic analysts have settled on the definition of Israel, more specifically, as a “settler colonial” state. Early Zionists in Palestine were undeniably settlers, at the peak of the colonial era. Is the label therefore justified?
“Israel's relationship to the Palestinians is like Australia's relationship to the Aborigines. In both cases, European intruders strove to dispossess indigenous people and replace them on their land. The name for this relationship is settler-colonialism” (Wolfe, 2007, p. 314).
It turns out that what Wolfe wrote in 2007 was on the mind of one observer 70 years earlier. That observer, when asked about the situation in Palestine, brought up Australia and North America. This general statement in defense of settler colonialism in general, and of settler colonialism in Palestine in particular, seems relevant: “I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”. The statement was presented by Winston Churchill, in evidence before the Royal Commission for Palestine (the Peel Commission) in 1937 (quoted in Gilbert, 2007, p. 120).
Where did Churchill get such ideas?
What do we call the process through which a territory acquires a new political identity, and the indigenous population loses all political power, the way it happened in Australia, New Zealand, or North America? How to best describe what has been happening in Palestine since the nineteenth century? What to call the process of radical transformation which changed the composition of the population and the identity of the regime?
Under the system of settler colonialism, the native population is removed to make room for foreign settlers and their new society. “Whatever settlers may say—and they generally have a lot to say—the primary motive for elimination is not race (or religion, ethnicity, grade of civilization, etc.) but access to territory. Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 388).
Only the framework of settler colonialism can account for the complete transformation of Palestine between 1900 and 1950. The actual creation of the settler state, together with the displacement of the indigenes, took place between 1922 and 1950. An aboriginal population was being colonized and replaced by foreign settlers as Palestine became Israel. The process was not a mystery or an accident; neither was it natural. It took design and a deliberate struggle (Lustick, 1993; Piterberg, 2008; Shafir, 1996).
The native population is removed, to make room for settlers and their new society. In addition to territorial conquest, there is an attempt to transform geography, economy, and demography by bringing in a new population to replace the indigenous one. Creating a new society and a new landscape requires empty space, and so the aborigines are defined as a surplus population, a problem for disposal.
It is true that Zionism did not seek to dominate the natives. It simply wanted to displace them and replace them with settlers. This is the simplest and most accurate description of the situation on the ground and enumerates the Who and the Whom in this story.
As Ben-Gurion put it in 1915: “We are not interested in Palestine in order to control the native Arabs, and we are not looking for a market to sell the products of the Jewish Diaspora economy. We are seeking in Palestine a homeland.” (Ben-Gurion, 1915/1933, p. 4).
Any questions about a mother country are answered here: "The idea of planting a minority of outsiders upon an indigenous majority population, without consulting it, was not calculated to horrify men who had worked with Cecil Rhodes or promoted European settlement in Kenya" (Talmon, 1965, p. 250). The phrasing could not be more explicit. Those who deny the settler colonial context and basic structure of Israel, would have us believe that the total transformation of Palestine in the twentieth century was some kind of a miracle, but what made it possible was an organized effort supported by European powers.
The logic of British support for Zionism was spelled out by Winston Churchill, then a Conservative Cabinet minister: “[A] Jewish state under the protection of the British Crown… would from every point of view be beneficial and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire”’ (Churchill, 1920, p. 5). T.E. Lawrence wrote in 1920 that “…any laying out of foundations of empire in Western Asia…to a very large extent must stand or fall by the course of the Zionist effort…"(quoted in Mack, 1976, p. 253).
This was put even more clearly by the first British Military Governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, who wrote in his autobiography that "Enough [Jews] could return, if not to form a Jewish state ... at least to prove that the enterprise was one which blessed him that gave as well as him that took, by forming for England ‘a little loyal Jewish Ulster’ in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism." (Storrs, 1937, p. 345).
References:
Churchill, W. (1920). Zionism versus Bolshevism. Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, p. 5.
Gilbert, M. (2007). Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
Lustick, I. (1993). Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank/Gaza. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mack, J.E. (1976). A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence. Boston: Liittle, Brown & Co.
Piterberg, G. (2008). The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel. Verso: London and New York.
Shafir, G. (1996). Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Storrs, R. (1937). Orientations: The Memories of Sir Ronald Storrs. London: Nicholson and Watson.
Talmon, J.L. (1965). The Unique and the Universal. London: Secker & Warburg.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8, 387-409.
Wolfe, P. (2007). Palestine, Project Europe and the (un-)making of the New Jew: In memory of Edward W. Said. In N. Curthoys, G. Debjani (eds.). Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual. (pp. 313-337) Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press.
“Israel's relationship to the Palestinians is like Australia's relationship to the Aborigines. In both cases, European intruders strove to dispossess indigenous people and replace them on their land. The name for this relationship is settler-colonialism” (Wolfe, 2007, p. 314).
It turns out that what Wolfe wrote in 2007 was on the mind of one observer 70 years earlier. That observer, when asked about the situation in Palestine, brought up Australia and North America. This general statement in defense of settler colonialism in general, and of settler colonialism in Palestine in particular, seems relevant: “I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”. The statement was presented by Winston Churchill, in evidence before the Royal Commission for Palestine (the Peel Commission) in 1937 (quoted in Gilbert, 2007, p. 120).
Where did Churchill get such ideas?
What do we call the process through which a territory acquires a new political identity, and the indigenous population loses all political power, the way it happened in Australia, New Zealand, or North America? How to best describe what has been happening in Palestine since the nineteenth century? What to call the process of radical transformation which changed the composition of the population and the identity of the regime?
Under the system of settler colonialism, the native population is removed to make room for foreign settlers and their new society. “Whatever settlers may say—and they generally have a lot to say—the primary motive for elimination is not race (or religion, ethnicity, grade of civilization, etc.) but access to territory. Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 388).
Only the framework of settler colonialism can account for the complete transformation of Palestine between 1900 and 1950. The actual creation of the settler state, together with the displacement of the indigenes, took place between 1922 and 1950. An aboriginal population was being colonized and replaced by foreign settlers as Palestine became Israel. The process was not a mystery or an accident; neither was it natural. It took design and a deliberate struggle (Lustick, 1993; Piterberg, 2008; Shafir, 1996).
The native population is removed, to make room for settlers and their new society. In addition to territorial conquest, there is an attempt to transform geography, economy, and demography by bringing in a new population to replace the indigenous one. Creating a new society and a new landscape requires empty space, and so the aborigines are defined as a surplus population, a problem for disposal.
It is true that Zionism did not seek to dominate the natives. It simply wanted to displace them and replace them with settlers. This is the simplest and most accurate description of the situation on the ground and enumerates the Who and the Whom in this story.
As Ben-Gurion put it in 1915: “We are not interested in Palestine in order to control the native Arabs, and we are not looking for a market to sell the products of the Jewish Diaspora economy. We are seeking in Palestine a homeland.” (Ben-Gurion, 1915/1933, p. 4).
Any questions about a mother country are answered here: "The idea of planting a minority of outsiders upon an indigenous majority population, without consulting it, was not calculated to horrify men who had worked with Cecil Rhodes or promoted European settlement in Kenya" (Talmon, 1965, p. 250). The phrasing could not be more explicit. Those who deny the settler colonial context and basic structure of Israel, would have us believe that the total transformation of Palestine in the twentieth century was some kind of a miracle, but what made it possible was an organized effort supported by European powers.
The logic of British support for Zionism was spelled out by Winston Churchill, then a Conservative Cabinet minister: “[A] Jewish state under the protection of the British Crown… would from every point of view be beneficial and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire”’ (Churchill, 1920, p. 5). T.E. Lawrence wrote in 1920 that “…any laying out of foundations of empire in Western Asia…to a very large extent must stand or fall by the course of the Zionist effort…"(quoted in Mack, 1976, p. 253).
This was put even more clearly by the first British Military Governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, who wrote in his autobiography that "Enough [Jews] could return, if not to form a Jewish state ... at least to prove that the enterprise was one which blessed him that gave as well as him that took, by forming for England ‘a little loyal Jewish Ulster’ in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism." (Storrs, 1937, p. 345).
References:
Churchill, W. (1920). Zionism versus Bolshevism. Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, p. 5.
Gilbert, M. (2007). Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
Lustick, I. (1993). Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank/Gaza. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mack, J.E. (1976). A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence. Boston: Liittle, Brown & Co.
Piterberg, G. (2008). The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel. Verso: London and New York.
Shafir, G. (1996). Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Storrs, R. (1937). Orientations: The Memories of Sir Ronald Storrs. London: Nicholson and Watson.
Talmon, J.L. (1965). The Unique and the Universal. London: Secker & Warburg.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8, 387-409.
Wolfe, P. (2007). Palestine, Project Europe and the (un-)making of the New Jew: In memory of Edward W. Said. In N. Curthoys, G. Debjani (eds.). Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual. (pp. 313-337) Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press.