Zionism as settler colonialism

Zionism as settler colonialism is an idea. It says that the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine is a kind of colonization that pushed out the people who already lived there. This idea is mainly used by people who criticize Zionism and Israel.

Early Zionist leaders, like Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, sometimes used words like “colonize,” but the formal idea of settler colonialism didn’t exist until the 1960s. Later, scholars like Edward Said and Maxime Rodinson applied this idea to Zionism. This way of thinking became more popular during the 1960s, when many countries were gaining independence from colonizers.

In the 1990s, some Israeli and Palestinian historians called the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian displacement) an ongoing process, saying Zionism tries to remove or absorb Palestinians, similar to what happened to Native Americans in the U.S. or Aboriginal people in Australia. People who disagree with this idea, like Benny Morris, say that Zionism is about Jewish people returning to their historic homeland and having the right to govern themselves. The argument is really about history, identity, and who has the right to the land.

Background

Many early Zionist leaders openly described their movement as a form of colonization. [1][2][3][4] Vladimir Jabotinsky called Zionism “a colonization adventure,” while Theodor Herzl referred to it as “something colonial” and spoke of “experiments in colonization” in Palestine. [5][6][7] Max Nordau also described Zionism as a large-scale colonization effort, rejecting smaller, gradual settlement. [8]

Major Zionist institutions reflected this identity, with names such as the Jewish Colonization Association, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, and the Jewish Colonial Trust. Early Zionist groups promoted “Hebrew labor,” encouraging Jewish-owned businesses to hire only Jews and acquire land that could never be sold to non-Jews.

Collective farms, or kibbutzim, were created to build self-sufficient Jewish communities and later served as models for settlements beyond Israel’s 1967 borders. [9][10] Chaim Weizmann compared the Zionist project to French colonization in Tunisia, saying he hoped Jewish immigration would make Palestine “as Jewish as England is English.”[11][12]

Anthropologist Scott Atran noted, however, that unlike the French, Zionist colonization sought to replace Arab labor, not rely on it. [13] In 1948, about 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the Nakba, and around 500 villages were destroyed. [14][15] While some Israelis saw this as a tragic consequence of war, some historians describe it as ethnic cleansing. [14] Palestinian lands were seized, and those who remained in Israel were confined to restricted areas. [16][17]

In 1956, Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan acknowledged this reality, saying: “We are a generation of settlers… without the steel helmet and cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home.” [18][19] Historian Arnon Degani argues that the end of military rule over Palestinian citizens in 1966 marked a shift from colonial to settler-colonial governance. After the 1967 war, Israel captured the Golan Heights and the West Bank, displacing large portions of their Syrian and Palestinian populations. [20]

Scholarly development

The “settler colonial framework” for analyzing the Palestinian struggle initially emerged in the 1960s, as decolonization was happening across Africa and the Middle East. This perspective was revived in the 1990s within Israeli academic circles, particularly by Israeli and Palestinian “New Historians.” These scholars challenged Israel’s foundational myths and considered the “Nakba” (the 1948 displacement of Palestinians) an ongoing process. This resurgence coincided with a shift in focus from supporting a “two-state solution” to advocating for a “one-state solution” that mandates equal citizenship for all, thereby challenging the Jewish identity of Israel. [7][21][22]

Activistic use

According to The Economist, the Palestinian diaspora has redefined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — shifting it from “a clash between two national movements” to “a generational struggle for liberation against settler colonialism.”[23] This view has gained strong support among left-leaning university activists. [24][25][26]

References

  1. ↑ Liu, James H. (2022). Collective Remembering and the Making of Political Culture. Cambridge University Press. p. 190.
  2. ↑ Masalha 2012, p. 2: "...for decades Zionists themselves used terms such as 'colonisation' (hityashvut) to describe their project in Palestine."
  3. ↑ Jabotinsky, Ze'ev (4 November 1923). "The Iron Wall" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 September 2024. Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed...Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population.
  4. ↑ Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (1992) Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel. Quotation (as quoted in Donald E. Wagner, Walter T. Davis (2014). Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land', Chapter One: Political Zionism from Herzl (1890s) to Ben-Gurion (1960s) by Walter T. Davis and Pauline Coffman): "The Labor Zionist attitude towards the natives and their predicament was one of denial. The right-wing approach, developed by Jabotinsky, stated bluntly that the conflict was real, that dispossession was real and inevitable, but it was justified to fulfill Zionist plans. ... The right-wing Zionist attitude was one of defiance and confidence. The natives would have to accept their fate—namely an historical defeat. Right-wing Zionism has been quite open, even proud, about the colonialist role of Zionism and about its inherent violence vis-à-vis the natives of Palestine.
    Jabotinsky ... did not play games nor mince his words. He called a spade a spade and Zionism armed colonialism. Jabotinsky never denied the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians. On the contrary, he made it into one of the basic assumptions of his political program."
  5. ↑ Herzl, Theodore (1968). The Jewish State. Dover. pp. 85–96.
  6. ↑ Bar-Yosef, Eitan (2012). "A Villa in the Jungle: Herzl, Zionist Culture, and the Great African Adventure". In Gelber, Mark H.; Liska, Vivian (eds.). Theodor Herzl: From Europe to Zion. De Gruyter. pp. 100–101. ISBN 978-3110936056.
  7. 1 2 Sabbagh-Khoury 2022, Conclusion.
  8. ↑ Nordau, Max Simon; Gottheil, Gustav (1905). Zionism and Anti-Semitism. Fox, Duffield. p. 30.
  9. ↑ Stein, Kenneth W. (1 March 2017). The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939. University of North Carolina Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-4696-1725-1.
  10. ↑ Sayegh 2012, p. 210.
  11. ↑ Michael R Fischbach, Policy of Deceit: Britain and Palestine, 1914–1939 by Peter Shambrook, Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 36, Issue 1, January 2025, Pages 133–136, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etae021
  12. ↑ Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (1949), Volume 2
  13. ↑ Atran, S. (1989), The surrogate colonization of Palestine, 1917–1939, American Ethnologist, 16: 719-744. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1989.16.4.02a00070
  14. 1 2 Collins 2011, p. 170.
  15. ↑ Busbridge 2018, p. 96.
  16. ↑ Gordon & Ram 2016, p. 22.
  17. ↑ Jamal 2017, pp. 60–61.
  18. ↑ Spangler, E. (2015). Four Frames. In: Understanding Israel/Palestine. Teaching Race and Ethnicity. SensePublishers, Rotterdam. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-088-8_9
  19. ↑ Karmi, G. (2007). Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine. Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18dzv0w
  20. ↑ Gordon & Ram 2016, pp. 22–23.
  21. ↑ Sabbagh-Khoury 2022, first section: "The settler colonial paradigm, linked to Israeli critical sociology, post-Zionism, and postcolonialism, reemerged following changes in the political landscape from the mid-1990s that reframed the history of the Nakba as enduring, challenged the Jewish definition of the state, and legitimated Palestinians as agents of history. Palestinian scholars in Israel lead the paradigm's reformulation."
  22. ↑ Jamal 2017, pp. 47–48.
  23. ↑ "Has the war in Gaza radicalised young Palestinians?". The Economist. 3 October 2024. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on 26 June 2025. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
  24. ↑ Schedulers, Jennifer (22 January 2024). "What Is 'Settler Colonialism'?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 22 January 2024. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  25. ↑ Cohen, Roger (10 December 2023). "Who's a 'Colonizer'? How an Old Word Became a New Weapon". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 13 July 2024. Retrieved 10 December 2023.
  26. ↑ Kirsch, Adam (26 October 2023). "Campus Radicals and Leftist Groups Have Embraced the Idea of 'Settler Colonialism'". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 23 August 2024. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
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