Who Are The Real Colonizers In The Israel-Palestinian Conflict?

Jews arise from exile to reclaim their homeland: Following Israel’s War of Independence, the almost one million Jews who lived in the “Arab world” were driven out or fled for their lives from homes in which they had lived long before the Arabs and Islam arrived. Yet the imperialist Arab mentality could not countenance that the original inhabitants of this small sliver—a miniscule fraction of the territory it considers “Dar al-Islam” (“the abode of Islam”) — would throw off its colonizers and return to indigenous rule. 

While some claim that today’s Palestinian Arabs are indigenous to the Holy Land, this is also clearly false.

Before the 20th century—and for the most part before 1964—Jews were the only people who referred to themselves as “Palestinians” (i.e., residents of Palestine). More importantly, the people we call Palestinians today never had a distinct identity—no distinct language, religion, organized society or culture—all required markers of indigeneity.

In fact, they are Arabs, hailing from all over the Arab world. 

Ironically, Jews are the only people in history since the brutal Arab conquest, occupation and colonization of the region who have risen up to reclaim their land. This has been considered an affront to Islam, and it is no coincidence that Hebrew, the indigenous language of the Jewish people, and Zionism, the national movement to return the people to their land, were violently repressed and banned in Arab countries.

There’s no doubt who is the colonizer and who the colonized. There is only one empire in this conflict, and it is not Jewish, a people who have never conquered any territory on the planet not their own, as opposed to the Arab world, which currently encompasses 5,070,419 square miles of land mass.

Rather than condemning Israel, progressives in the West who recoil at “settler colonial projects” should embrace the Jewish state as an example of decolonization—indigenous return and restored sovereignty.

If they were honest, they would stand by the side of tiny Israel—with a population of nine million, surrounded by hundreds of millions who seek its destruction and its return to the huge Arab empire. 

Just ask the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa who lived under Arab repression, discrimination and constant fear of violence for almost 13 centuries—who have finally returned home and make up the majority of the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. Their recent history and experience of Arab imperialism, conquest and oppression reflects a sad, violent tale of Arab Muslim privilege. These Jews truly understand colonialism and what it is like to live under its yoke.