Are there settler-colonial states in the modern era? Of course, there are. The best example of such a state is Tibet. The Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959. In the past 40 years and counting, 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed constituting one/fifth of the population. The occupiers have destroyed 6,000 monasteries arguably exceeding the total number of Churches in Europe during the Middle Ages. Chinese have moved into Tibet, primarily into the larger cities in vast numbers. Their total numbers are unknowable because they are hidden by the Chinese government but their number grows daily.

This is settler colonialism. Few in the West seem much bothered by these atrocities. Nor is there much knowledge or concern for other ongoing atrocities. Over 52 thousand Nigerian Christians have been martyred at the hands of Jihadi Muslims. Although not strictly speaking an example of “settler colonialism,” over 18,000 Churches have been burned to the ground and Muslim Nigerians simply move into destroyed neighborhoods.

In contrast, the Western world’s myopic attention zeroes in almost exclusively on Israel as a “settler-colonial” state. Israel is branded as illegitimate. Jihadis, other Arab Muslims, and growing numbers of Western leftists share this view. An illegitimate state is necessarily oppressive. Hence, the calls for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” i. e. the elimination of the whole of Israel and all of its Jews.

Support for Hamas for this genocidal project soared after the October 7 massacres with 85% of Palestinians on the West Bank believing the attack was correct while those in Gaza supported it by 57%. This is an extremely important reaction to note because it constitutes an endorsement of genocide in its most barbaric form by the population itself.

Yet, the whole bloody mess is built on a tissue of layered LIEs. Let’s take a look at them from the beginning.

Historical Jewish Presence in the Region

Jews have maintained a continuous presence in the “Holy Land” for the past 3,100 years. This was factually true even during occupations by Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire. The most significant invasion took place in the 7th century when Islamic hordes from the Arabian Peninsula overran and colonized the region.

It is true that the number of Jews ebbed and flowed in the face of alternating conquest and renewal. These conquests were achieved through force and violence which is one of the abiding features of settler-colonialism and was visited upon the indigenous Jews of the region.

Still, the Jews survived and persisted in many places such as Tiberius on Lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, and in mountainous Safed where the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah was forged and flourished in the 1,500s and abides to this very day. Also, in Hebron and in numerous small communities Jews survived.

Jerusalem, of course, was central to the deepest religious impulses of Jews as it is for Christians. As recently as 1850, the first official census was conducted by the Ottoman Empire and found that 50% of the population of Jerusalem were Jews.

At that time, the region had been so neglected by the Ottomans, that depopulation left the region somewhat uninhabited with an optimistic total of only 380,000 persons by around 1880.

The Period in Question and the Rise of Zionism  

The period in question targeted by accusers as foundational to Jewish settler-colonialism is 1878-1948. During that period many Jews began to migrate to this region during the reign of the Ottoman Empire and also when the region remanded to the British mandate following the Ottoman collapse after WW I.

The Zionist Movement was established in 1897 as part of the broader movement for the self-determination of nations that swept the world of oppressed peoples at that time. The principal Zionist impetus for Jews to migrate came from the periodic and rising pogroms in Europe and Russia.

Jews constitute both a people and a religion. The religious dimension was predominate for over 2,000 years. Every year in every family the Ceder was concluded with the words “Next year in Jerusalem”. This was the heart yearnings of displaced people so often marginalized and persecuted in the lands to which they had been exiled while never being fully accepted in their new homes.

Zionist forerunners established some 20 villages before Zionism became an official movement thus adding to the original Jewish population living there. The Ottomans had been in decline and its many absentee owners and administrative operatives were happy and eager to accept Jewish money for land purchases.

The Zionist movement stepped up this process dramatically. The Rothschilds and other means were helpful in this endeavor of land purchases. Most Jews moving to the region were poor. Inspired and resourceful, these settlers made uninhabitable areas livable. Swamp lands which were numerous due to nearly non-existent water management were also plagued by malarial mosquitoes and thus readily sold to immigrants. Ironically, once drainage techniques were employed, some of this land became highly fertile.

The land prospered. As a result, word spread, and many Arabs moved in to participate in the prosperity resulting from Jewish innovations. For the first time in centuries, the area began to show promise and impoverished Arab fellaheen rushed in. It was the time of the greatest prosperity for the poor Arabs of the region. As a result, they moved to the region in droves. For example, as late as 1920, there were 565,000 Arabs, up from 380,000 in 1880. This number soared to 1,247,000 by 1947.

In the early years, this process was almost entirely non-violent although there was a tradition of Bedouin bandits, local feuds, and squabbles to be sure. It’s a stretch, to put it mildly, to fancy this process as some sort of colonial invasion imposed on a resident population. It fails the smell test. It is only brought up in this way to invalidate Jewish presence and smear it as essentially the dirty deeds of dirty, oppressor Jews – a familiar theme in the Middle East and the West from time immemorial.

These decades of Jewish migration involved hundreds, even thousands, of land transfers which are documented in detail, including the political and economic circumstances surrounding the principal transfers. All these were contractual. They were neither the result of land grabs nor conquests. 

Finally, after years of painstaking research, these records from the Ottoman period and the British Mandate were all gathered in the work of Arieh Avneri: The Claim of Dispossession: 1878-1948. The book is a bit of a slog but well worth your time if you wish to go into the land question in depth. Colonialism it is not. Unless paying exorbitant prices en masse beyond a land’s worth equals colonialism.

A Palestinian “national” movement only appeared in the 1920’s. Why so tardy? In part, because it needs to be remembered that the Ummah, or extended community of Muslims of the “House of Peace” transcended the category of traditional nations.

Once a region is conquered by the armies of Islam it remains in the Ummah unless defeated in war. Eventually, its place in the Ummah must be revived. Doing so is a special mission obligatory for true Muslims. For example, it is believed that southern Spain must one day be returned to the Ummah. One way or another. The region of Palestine is no different. The Jewish presence violated this sacred principle of the “House of Peace” and must be eliminated.

In our modern period, nations and national consciousness emerged. The advent of the self-determination of nations represented a necessary tactical adjustment for Jihadis as a workable method for restoring Ummah to lost lands. And so the nationalist movement began in the region.

By 1921, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem began stimulating riots which morphed into pogroms by 1929 when the Hebron Massacre occurred. Ironically, few European or Ashkenazi Jews lived In Hebron. Most were Sephardic Jews, i.e. Arab Jews who lived there for religious reasons from earlier times. Again in the 1930s there were several more pogroms. 

The Grand Mufti, now leader of the Palestinian movement, and Hitler formed an alliance in 1941. By 1943, the Grand Mufti, who by then was the established leader of the nationalist movement, advised Hitler that same year to take the Jews to Poland where the “final solution” was already known to be awaiting them. By then, Hitler had his hands full and couldn’t be bothered.

In 1948, the UN established a partition of a Jewish and an Arab Muslim state. This was the first internationally legalized “two-state solution” which we hear so much about today. By late 1947, the population of the area of what was to become Israel in 1948, contained 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs.

On May 15, 1948, Israel declared its independence. The following day, the armies of 5 Arab nations declared war on Israel. This would be the first of many attempts to prevent a “two-state solution” by Arab nations.

The origins of the specific theory of Israel as a Settler-Colonial state arose as a corollary to Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Lenin argued that while early colonies were based upon a mercantilist advantage to the Mother Country, modern domination of weaker countries was based upon the export of capital and the profits derived therefrom. 

Lenin’s data was compromised primarily in terms of what it omitted. it turned out that most foreign capital was invested in other advanced countries, not in colonies. It also emerged that investments in colonies also stimulated industry and benefitted those nations to some extent in the long run.

The use of the theory of “settler-colonial imperialism” was taken up by the Jihadis and initiated the Marxist radical left’s alliance with Islamism. After all, they have a common enemy in the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (America), the Little Imperialist and the Big Imperialist.

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Next: A Tale Of Two Lies – Part 2: The Two-State Solution and Freedom Caucus Resolution