Israel Is Not a Colony, It's a Diaspora Return
A colony is a group of people who settle in a distant territory to establish ties with their mother country, usually with the purpose of sending resources back. Carthage was a Phoenician colony established by merchants from Tyre. The Thirteen Colonies of America were English colonies established by settlers from Britain. French Algeria was a French colony established by France. A colony always has a metropole which directs it and to which it’s sending resources. For example: Britain in India, France in Algeria, Spain in Mexico, Turkey in Cyprus, USSR in Kazakhstan, Tibet in China.
As an aside, admit you were surprised by the inclusion of non-European powers. Funny how they always get a pass from modern academia. I wonder why…?
So, if Israel is a colony, whose colony is it? Who is Israel’s metropole?
There is no single country from which the majority of Jews who immigrated to Palestine came from. Most arrived as immigrants and refugees without any support from the countries they left, often fleeing violence and oppression.
Their goal was never to enrich a distant metropole. Rather, it was self-determination in a territory with deep historical and religious significance to the Jews. Israel’s indepdence occurred during a period of decolonization, not colonization.
Clearly, Israel doesn’t match the modern definition of a colony. However, the early Zionists sometimes used the term. Why?
Because words change meaning over time.
The people who came from distant lands to form new settlements in swamps and deserts were colonists in the same sense that people moving to Mars would be colonists, but they were not colonizers.
They used the word “colony” to describe quite the opposite of what is called a colony today, which is a form of occupation. Surely, even the worst critic of Zionism can’t accuse them of occupying anything in 1880…
So what is Israel? I’d argue that the best terms would be a “diaspora return.” While it’s a term one rarely hears these days, it’s hardly unique.
The closest examples that comes to mind are Liberia and (to a lesser degree) Pakistan.
Creating Israel was a reaction to antisemitism in the same way creating Liberia was a reaction to racism and Pakistan to religious prejudice. Israel is similar to Liberia in the sense that a persecuted group moved to a distant land to which it has historic ties to create a nation in which it would be free from persecution. Pakistan, much like Israel, was created by migration born from a partition of an area with mixed population.
The thread connecting all three national projects is that mistreatment and statelessness drives people to demand a territory of their own. The goal is not to enrich a foreign mother nation but to create a place where people can live with dignity.
Now we’re left facing the modern invention of “settler colonialism” which has nothing to do with the original definition of colonialism but instead combines two words leftists teach us are scary to create something very, very scary.
This is a 1919 American artist poster created to promote the “Palestine Restoration Fund” for the Zionist Organization of America.
Basically, settler colonialism means that a more powerful nation is expanding into the territory of a weaker nation, displacing the original inhabitants. At first glance it seems more suitable, but just like calling Israel a colony, it falls apart even at the most cursory examination.
Jews have a continuous, documented presence in the Land of Israel going back thousands of years. The modern Arab population is descended from various waves of migration and conquest over centuries. They certainly have some native blood, but they also have a lot of foreign blood.
If “indigenous” means “first inhabitants,” the answer is deeply ambiguous in a land that has been conquered and resettled dozens of times over millennia. Basically, everyone in the region is a mutt at this point.
Currently, Israel is the sovereign state of the people who settled there. The Jews who settled in Palestine became a self-governing nation, not an outpost of a foreign empire.
The conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel started as a civil war and in a way, this is still what it is, even if it had transformed into something unique due to Israel’s unique insistence not to kick out the hostile population like everyone else had during the previous century.
This is how most nations formed throughout history: migration, displacement, and sovereignty. Russia, Turkey, Britain, France, Spain—all were formed this way yet not a single one of them is referred to as a colony.
If Israel is a settler colony than all countries are, making the term meaningless.
Then, there is the issue of intent.
Settler colonialism involves a deliberate state-sponsored elimination of the native population in the service of the colonizing nation. Zionist immigration was not state-sponsored.
Jews bought land privately and built institutions from scratch. Their intent was survival and self-determination, not the elimination of the Arabs living around them. Most early Zionists explicitly envisioned coexistence even though very few Arabs shared their vision.
The displacement was a consequence of a war fought between two nations, the collision of two conflicting national ambitions. This is hardly unique for a period that saw millions of people displaced as part of vast population exchanges in Europe and Asia, none of which were called settler colonialism by academics.
We saw this in Algeria, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Bhutan, and countless other places. All of these events are largely forgotten because entire populations were expelled and the issue was resolved.
Finally, settler colonialism is driven by power: a dominant group expanding at the expense of a weaker one.
Jews arriving in Palestine, especially post-Holocaust, were among the most persecuted and powerless people on earth, not an expanding empire projecting power outward.
Their victory over five invading Arab armies was nothing short of a miracle. Their decision not to do what everyone else had done in the 20th century and transfer the hostile population was nothing short of insane.
Nevertheless, Israel is not a colony. It’s a diaspora return.
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