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The phrase "described as colonies" recently deleted should stay out, since the point is not well made and will be lost to most readers. For the record, they were called "colonies" in Zionist literature of the time too (Kolonien in German) and no other word was used more. That's not surprising; the opprobrium attached to the concept of colonization didn't arrive until later so there was no need to choose other words. Zerotalk23:14, 28 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Returning to this question, there is no doubt that moshava was just the Hebrew equivalent of colony as those terms were understood at the time. There no reason that this fact can't be mentioned in the article. The only question is of how to write it and which of the many available sources to cite. Zerotalk12:10, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]