In an article titled “37 professors sign pro-Palestine email, face pushback from colleagues,” The Occidental quoted Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (CSLC) professor Jacob Mackey as saying that it is “factually inaccurate and extremely dangerous” to call Israel a “settler colonial” society. We are unsure what this claim is based on or why Mackey in particular is being quoted as an authority on Israel and Palestine. We write to correct the record and explain why Israel is a settler colonial state. It is not dangerous to be honest about this history of settler colonialism. We believe it is necessary if we are to work toward a future of justice, peace and equality in Israel and Palestine.
Settler colonialism is a specific form of colonialism. The term refers to a project of state construction that depends on the killing and expulsion of a native population. By this definition, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel, among others, are all settler colonial societies.
The Zionist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries referred to itself in no uncertain terms as a project of colonization. For instance, the Jewish Colonization Association, founded in 1891, renamed the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association in 1924, was unequivocal about labeling Zionism a colonial project. It was Britain, a colonial power, that set in motion the plan to transform Palestine into a “homeland for the Jews” with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, after which Britain facilitated the immigration of European Jews to settle in Palestine. Many Israelis in the West Bank continue to refer to themselves as “settlers” today. Many Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, refer to the advancement of “settlements” in the West Bank and elsewhere. In this sense, “settler colonial” should not be a controversial term to describe the modern Israeli state. Settler colonialism is a historical structure, not a singular event; its effects continue long after the initial moment of colonization.
There have been Jews living in Palestine for a very long time, but the majority of the Jews who founded Israel were very recent settlers who understood that they were colonizing and building their settlements on lands that had been primarily home to Arab Palestinians. According to Israeli historian Tom Segev’s “One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate” in 1922, early in the British mandate period, Jews constituted 10 percent of the population in Palestine; this percentage rose to 30 percent when Israel declared its statehood in 1948. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Israeli militias destroyed upwards of 530 Palestinian villages (this included the murder of many Arab civilians, as in the Deir Yassin massacre), and expelled 700,000 Palestinians from the lands they had lived on for many generations. The formation of the state of Israel thus produced a massive Palestinian refugee population, and the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, in “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” has described this as ethnic cleansing. The fact that the United Nations granted Israel statehood does not erase this history, nor does the fact that many Jews (including Arab Mizrahi Jews) who became settlers in Palestine were driven from their previous homes.
It is in no way antisemitic to point any of this out. Many Jews in the 1940s claimed that the establishment of a Zionist state “by means of a colonized and conquered territory,” in Hannah Arendt’s words, would disastrously produce a massive Arab Palestinian refugee population and the conditions for long-term conflict. For many Jewish and Israeli signatories of our original statement of concern, studying, coming to terms with and acting on the complexity of this history has been a painful but necessary political project, and they critique Israel in the name of Jewish conceptions of justice. We cannot deny this history of settler colonialism and expect to find a path toward justice and equality. Using this term does not imply, as Mackey contends, that we believe Jews should be driven from the land. But it does mean, as Edward Said argued powerfully in “The Question of Palestine,” that Jewish safety and statehood cannot come at the cost of Palestinian death, expulsion and oppression. One people’s suffering should not count more than another’s.
Debates on terminology and tone are not the priority of the 57 people who signed the statement of concern (20 signatures were added after the statement was first circulated to the campus community; an updated statement was distributed by email on Nov. 10). Our goal is to understand how this history offers necessary context for the catastrophic violence currently unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank, where, as of Nov. 10, Israel has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,500 children, with substantial financial and near-universal rhetorical support from the US government. The IDF’s bombing has targeted hospitals, refugee camps, universities, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and other civilian infrastructure. More Palestinians will die or be displaced as the bombing, ground invasion and refusal of humanitarian aid (including food, water, medical supplies and electricity) continue. As faculty who are committed to Occidental’s Equity and Justice Agenda, we are deeply concerned with the urgent reality of this crisis, and the need for an equitable and just transformation of the situation that has produced it, so that Israelis and Palestinians can coexist peacefully.
Susan Blake, Philosophy
Claire Cahen, Urban & Environmental Policy
Mary Christianakis, Critical Theory and Social Justice
Chekwube Danladi, English
Alexander F. Day, History and Asian Studies
Caitlin Joy Dobson, Critical Theory and Social Justice
Hanan Elsayed, Spanish and French Studies
Sharla Fett, History
Alexandra Fine, American Studies
James Ford, English and Black Studies
Luz Forero, Spanish and French Studies
Regina Freer, Politics
Joel Garcia, Arts and Art History
Michael Gasper, History and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies
David Guignion, Critical Theory and Social Justice
Mary Beth Hefferman, Art and Art History
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, Religious Studies and Asian Studies
Syeda ShahBano Ijaz, Diplomacy and World Affairs
Janna Ireland, Art and Art History
Sohaib Khan, Religious Studies
Ross Lerner, English
Carmel Levitan, Cognitive Science
Promise Li, Critical Theory and Social Justice and English
Vivian Wenli Lin, Media Arts & Culture
Igor Logvinenko, Diplomacy and World Affairs
Shanna Lorenz, Music
Heather N. Lukes, American Studies
Michael Luo, Media Arts & Culture
Samuel Luterbacher, Art and Art History
Amy Lyford, Art and Art History
Viviana Beatriz MacManus, Spanish and French Studies
Martha Matsuoka, Urban & Environmental Policy
Warren Montag, English
Richard Mora, Sociology and Latinx and Latin American Studies
Michael Murphy, Black Studies
Leila Neti, English
Yumi Pak, Black Studies
Julie Prebel, American Studies
Alexandra Puerto, History and Latinx and Latin American Studies
Movindri Reddy, Diplomacy and World Affairs
Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III, Art and Art History
Sami Siegelbaum, Art and Art History
Camilla Taylor, Art and Art History
Anthony Tróchez, Education
Kevin Urstadt, Cognitive Science
David Weldzius, Art and Art History
