Feb. 7, 2024, in response to a Statement of Concern signed by 61 Occidental faculty members, Associate Professor of Classics and Chair of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture Jacob Mackey wrote a Letter to the Editor disputing the description of Israel as a settler-colonial society made in the SOC. In constructing his argument, Mackey analyzes works of settler colonialism theorists, including the Australian historian Patrick Wolfe. Mackey concludes that the application of settler-colonial theory to Israel is “inaccurate, dangerous and distracts from the aim of peace.”
Mackey’s letter misstates a central premise from Wolfe’s seminal essay on settler colonialism related to the definition of the concept. The letter cites Wolfe to argue settler colonialism is achieved through “genocide of the native population.” However, on the essay’s first page, Wolfe writes, “Settler colonialism is inherently eliminatory but not invariably genocidal.” The letter seems to miss the bulk of Wolfe’s article, which goes into great detail about eliminationist strategies that do not involve genocide, such as assimilation and removal.
Mackey’s letter objects to the application of settler colonialism to the case of Zionism in Israel. Although Wolfe is very clear in referring to the Zionist settler project in Palestine as an example of settler colonialism. Indeed, Wolfe cites the actions of major Zionist figures, such as Theodore Herzl’s open declarations of replacement and the racial exclusionary logic of Zionist institutions in Palestine, such as the Kibbtuz and the Histadrut (The General Organization of Workers in Israel) to illustrate his arguments about the nature of settler colonialism. These institutions were prominent in the “Zionist labor” movement, whose primary goal was to pursue the “conquest of labor” through the exclusive employment of Jewish workers. In forming the nexus of the future of the Jewish state, Zionist organizations such as these were instrumental in Israel’s foundation. Wolfe also cites the 1950 Law of Return to support the idea of Israel as a settler-colonial state; the law permits any Jew from anywhere in the world to easily migrate to Israel, while imposing strict naturalization stipulations for non-Jews, including Palestinians who lived in the region for generations.
For Wolfe, these are clear examples of settler-colonial policies. Mackey’s letter stakes its claim that Israel is not a settler-colonial project to a footnote in Wolfe’s piece that refers to Israel as a “partial exception” since there was not a single colonial state overseeing the process of Zionist settlement in Palestine. Yet the very same footnote goes on to point out that Israel had a “collective mother country” and in lieu of a single state, “the Yishuv [the Zionist community in Palestine] co-opted Ottoman, British and US imperialism to its advantage.” As such, Wolfe clearly categorizes Israel as an example of settler colonialism. Wolfe even ends the piece — written in 2006 — quite presciently when he writes that as “Palestinians become more and more dispensable, Gaza and the West Bank become less and less like Bantustans and more and more like reservations (or, for that matter, like the Warsaw Ghetto).” Wolfe uses the analogy between Bantustans, the name given to the “self-governing” Black homelands created by apartheid South Africa, and Palestine to show that the situation in Palestine was already becoming more oppressive than the Bantustans’ situation. Indeed, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere went as far as to say in the 1960’s that Palestinians’ unique misery in Gaza and the West Bank was worse than South Africans, reflecting that, “We [Tanzanians] only lost our independence; you lost your country!”
The letter also claims that settler-colonial analysis of Israel denies the significance of the Jewish claim to the land, but these ideas have little to do with one another. Few doubt the religious significance of the land of Israel/Palestine for Jews, and people ought not to object to Jews returning to the land. Wolfe’s analysis is not based on theology but a description of an exclusionary, eliminationist political project. Wolfe argues that acknowledging this history allows for a more inclusive future.
Besides citing the scholarship of mostly Western academics instead of the growing corpus of Palestinian and Israeli scholars on this topic, Mackey’s letter picks and chooses targets for critique, reinforcing biases against non-Western scholarship. Israeli New Historian Ilan Pappé wrote that Israel is an “unconventional colonialist” motivated by a national impulse and has continually demonstrated the violent means that the Israeli state has used to dominate Palestinian livelihood. Meanwhile, Palestine political economist Lelia Farsakh has considered settler colonialism as “…a key factor in explaining Palestinian economic predicament.” Besides Farsakh, Palestinian scholars such as Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, and Noura Erakat have used settler-colonial analysis in their work to describe the legacy of violence and dispossession that Israeli policies and practices have created. Indeed, many Palestinians have expressed their condition as an “ongoing Nakba” since 1948 to explain and describe Israel’s demographic and territorial expansion since its founding.
The article’s assertion that using settler-colonial analysis posits Israelis as oppressors and Palestinians as victims is a misleading one. One can simultaneously condemn acts of violence perpetrated by victims even while comprehending and contextualizing their suffering. To simply declare that both Israelis and Palestinians have equal claims to victimhood is to render moot the exclusionary and eliminationist history of Zionism as experienced by Palestinians. This reproduces the colonial logic in which the colonized are not permitted to speak.
Palestine’s situation is coming closer to naked apartheid and remains paramount to understanding the present. Human rights organizations such as Al-Haq, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International have labeled Israel as an apartheid state. Israel is employing separate and unequal legal codes to maintain a racial hierarchy of its inhabitants based on Jewish heritage. Palestinian citizens of Israel are excluded from various aspects of citizenship, while Palestinians in the West Bank are ruled by military law. As long as systems of discrimination and violence prevail, there is no hope for a just solution for either Palestinians or Israelis.
On the week of Jan. 28, militant Israeli settlers held a conference called “Settlement brings security,” attended by twelve ministers of the Israeli government, which called for the immediate post-war settlement of an ethnically cleansed Gaza. Coupled with more than 700,000 settlers in the West Bank, the logic of elimination continues to remain unchallenged. The current situation in Gaza, in which upwards of 30,000 people have been killed by the Israeli onslaught, is yet another restatement of that dreadful logic. To deny Israel as a settler-colonial state is to obscure not only the recorded history of ethnic and national exclusion but also the underlying conditions by which we understand Palestine. Without settler-colonial analysis, we cannot make sense of the dynamics of exploitation, violence and territorial expansion that have characterized Israel/Palestine. As the recent International Court of Justice ruling on Gaza has inserted that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide, a perspective that does not acknowledge the settler-colonialist logic would foreclose such findings as out of the norm rather than the product of the history of oppression.
The object of the Palestine Solidarity movement remains entirely devoted to the three objectives: the right of return, universal, equal rights and the end of military occupation. The 1993 Oslo Accords fails to address these core issues. It will only be when the core human, civil and political rights of the Palestinian people are respected that we can even begin to discuss a lasting settlement. Only through settler-colonial theory can one begin to abolish the systematic discrimination, oppression and racial supremacy. A future arises through settler-colonial theory that upholds freedom, human dignity and safety. As the failure of Oslo has shown, the two-state solution, as presented, is deeply problematic not only in addressing the core needs of Palestinians but also in promoting a sustainable road to peace. The oppressive history of Israel’s settler-colonial state urges us to advocate for a secular, unitary state with strong protections for Jews, Christians and Muslims as a viable alternative rather than de facto Israeli rule from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Currently, Israeli politicians protest openly against any Palestinian state.
Not addressing the fundamental source of violence against Palestinians is itself a grave danger that will lead to more violence by obscuring the structures of violence that govern everyday life. By correctly identifying these sources of violence, we can overthrow them. In 2005, a diverse coalition making up Palestinian civil society came together to create the modern-day Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, based on the successful global movement to end South Africa’s apartheid system in the 1990s. The BDS movement represents the largest non-violent mass movement in Palestine, seeking to abolish settler colonialism in favor of a democratic solution fundamentally. As participants in the BDS movement, we strive for non-violent resistance en masse, inspired by the examples of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-apartheid movement. The call for BDS is made to everyone regardless of nationality, religion or identity, and it is the only means forward from a horrible present to realize a free and just future beyond settler colonialism and apartheid.
Considering the grave consequences many faced to even voice their support for Palestinians, to speak, act, and fight on behalf of the Palestinian cause is no “orthodoxy.” Rather, Palestine, like the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-apartheid struggle, is a larger focal point in pursuit of justice that should not overshadow other ones, whether they be in Kashmir, Armenia, the Congo, Sudan, the Philippines or Morocco. The struggle for justice is in every corner of this earth, and until they are settled, freedom is always under threat. As Maya Angelou once reflected, “There is no freedom until we’re all free.”
Occidental Students for Justice in Palestine
