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Why Israel Is Not a "Settler Colonial" Society
(Fathom-BICOM-UK) Alan Johnson - 100 artists have signed an open letter indicting Israel as an illegitimate "settler colonial" society, akin to the USA, Australia and New Zealand. The Jews are cast as the "white" settler-colonialists and the Palestinians are given the role of the "black" indigenous. This radically misunderstands the conflict, harms the cause of peace, and aligns these activists with Hamas. The Jewish relationship to the Land of Israel is utterly unlike anything in the societies usually identified as "settler colonial." The Jews were returning to a land that had been theirs, in which their religion was born, their Temple built, and their Matriarchs and Patriarchs walked. A land that was at the absolute center of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood. The land from which they had been forcibly expelled. And to a Jerusalem in which they had been a majority since the 19th century. The "settler colonialism" paradigm also erases the facts about a series of international community mandates that nurtured a new Jewish state into being. The League of Nations and United Nations superintendence of the creation of Israel is utterly unlike anything experienced by the "settler colonial" societies. Had the Palestinians done as the Jews did in 1947-1948 and accepted the UN partition plan, instead of starting a war to drive the Jews into the sea and losing it, they would now be celebrating the 73rd anniversary of their own state of Palestine.