Talk:Zionism as settler colonialism/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Unbalanced

This article has a serious problem of neutrality, as many editors have already pointed out. The two main questions, as I see them, are:

• How can we accurately explain that this entire paradigm is mostly promoted by activists and academics associated with one side of the conflict?
• What should be done regarding the lack of criticism points regarding this much controversial article that almost entirely ignores the Jewish history of the land?

This is the first time I have heard of a settler colonial state in which its inhabitants are descendants of its ancient indigenous people and of the only independent kingdoms in the area that were actually ruled by the local, indigenous population. Please do not remove this tag until these issues are solved. Thanks. Tombah (talk) 09:06, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

The first point is a valid question; the second point, i.e.: the sense of land entitlement, is part of mindset that makes up the paradigm. The ancient history is only indirectly related to the conceptual framework by way of said mindset. But the indigenous polemics need to be left at the door: it's no more relevant than a claim to Asia by descent from Genghis Khan sperm. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:20, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

On the first point, this also seems to have been already addressed with your addition to the lead - though ofc it should attend the body too (MOS:LEAD). Iskandar323 (talk) 10:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Once again, we are presented with source free opinion and no evidence. We need relevant sources rather than assertions, failing which, the article tag has no place and has been removed several times already for lack of same. Selfstudier (talk) 09:47, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

"mostly promoted by activists and academics associated with one side of the conflict?", is, to be blunt, horseshit. You dont get to assign academics to "one side of the conflict" because you object to their academic work. "this much controversial article that almost entirely ignores the Jewish history of the land?" is likewise complete nonsense. The "Jewish history of the land" has absolutely nothing to do with this topic. It may be a justification for Zionism, but it has absolutely nothing to do with discussion of Zionism as a form of settler colonialism. And no source raises that in relation to the two, making the wish to include a violation of our core policy against original research. nableezy - 17:32, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

For #1, just read the sources. Two of them are cited on lede. For #2, I happen to disagree. Even if the Zionist movements did have some characteristics typical for colonial settlement movements, it's pretty clear that, when looking on the historical facts, it is really another kind of phenomenon. Maybe the correct term is yet to be invented (Maybe "decolonization through resettlement"? Or "reclaiming old homeland via resettlement"? Here are some ideas for a PhD). As you said, Wikipedia is not the place for original research. Nevertheless, some of the sources added before did touch on these problems. But unfortunately, they were all removed. Tombah (talk) 17:52, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Then since 1 is addressed already and 2 is just more irrelevant rambling, kindly remove the tag. Selfstudier (talk) 18:04, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

The sources were removed because they didnt directly discuss the topic of this article, that being the argument, for or against as supported by sources, that Zionism is a form of settler colonialism. I really dont want to go in to the same WP:FORUM territory you seem to want this talk page to degrade in to, but the idea that a group of (mostly) Europeans "decolonized" the Holy Land is on the same level as "mostly promoted by activists and academics associated with one side of the conflict". I believe Ive used my quota of the term to describe thay level already today. nableezy - 19:00, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

European *Jews*, descendants of the indigenous people who inhabited, ruled and prospered in the Holy Land for thousands of years. But this is obviously not the place to debate this. My questions remain. The sources state that the paradigm is mostly advocated by Palestinian scholars and activists, and explains their arguments in detail. The Israeli/Jewish viewpoint is almost non existent. All I'm asking is for us to be aware of that and do whatever we can to resolve that. I would appreciate the help of the experts here, as I admit - I'm not an expert in this subject. Intellectual integrity is important. And until it's done, the tag should remain. Tombah (talk) 19:59, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Please dont do that, make contentious statements for which you know sources seriously dispute (eg European Jews are descendants of *the* much less *an* indigenous people in Palestine, as though the Palestinians are not, and as though that was not something that is in serious dispute). Of the sources cited in this article, Moshe Behar is Jewish, Rachel Busbridge doesnt seem to be Palestinian, neither does John Collins, nor Arnon Degani, Neve Gordon is an Israeli-Jew, and his co-author doesnt look especially Palestinian. Please stop making things up, there are more Israeli-Jews cited here than there are Palestinians. nableezy - 20:29, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Once and again, we both remind the other that this is not a forum. But we keep on debating other stuff. I have no choice but answering these two-three assumptions/statements you have just made. (1) Genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews have already shown that they are of Levantine ancestry. The Khazar myth is mostly disregarded by serious scholars today as a myth. (2) I haven't said anything about the origins of Palestinians, nor denied any connection to the Holy Land whatsoever. In fact, there is a proven, deep genetic overlap between Palestinians and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. To me, the implications are pretty clear. Anyway, it is not me, but the sources here who make the connection between this paradigm and Palestinian academics and activists. Tombah (talk) 20:48, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

No, the sources do not do that. Yes, activists have increasingly cited this in their positions. But unlike how you originally claimed that it is "mainly by activists and Palestinians scholars in Israel", what those sources actually say is that it has increased in usage by activists and additionally, though not as widely, by academics without ethnic-badging any of those academics. An ethnic badge that is manifestly untrue and any editor who in good faith even briefly peruses the sources would see to be tendentious bs. And the other source says that Palestinian scholars in Israel lead the paradigm’s reformulation, not that they are the people that mainly use it. Your attempt to make this in to a Palestinian vs Israeli/Jewish (as though those two are equivalent to begin with) ignores that Israelis and Jews are cited over and over in this article. Please stop making these statements that even a brief analysis shows to be total nonsense, I wouldnt dream of insulting your intelligence by claiming something so obviously untrue to be fact to your face, so kindly return the favor. As far as genetic studies, they also show significant European ancestry. But we both know this wildly off-topic, and absent you bringing reliable sources that relate any such material to the topic of this article it remains OR by SYNTH. nableezy - 22:42, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, there does seem to be a serious lack of neutrality and there does seem to be bias in the article. I believe the Israel view point ought to be presented. Homerethegreat (talk) 16:59, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

There have still been zero sources presented to demonstrate any issue with neutrality here. If they are not presented in due time I will be removing the tag. You dont get to just say I dont like what this says, you need to make arguments grounded in Wikipedia policy. This section has none. nableezy - 14:42, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Again, a tag is not meant to deface an article, if there is no active effort to discuss or demonstrate an issue with the balance there is no cause for the tag. Accordingly, I am again removing it. You cannot just say I dont like what this article says so it is unbalanced. nableezy - 16:04, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Again, you may not simply deface an article because you dislike its contents. The tag requires ongoing discussion of POV issues. Not just I forever hate this article and I shall tag it. It is absurd to do so with there being no changes while it is on the Main Page. Exactly what is the POV issue here? That material that isnt related to the topic isnt included? That isnt a POV issue. Where is the NPOV/N thread to address it since there has been no consensus for changes here? Where is the RFC? You cant just deface an article indefinitely. nableezy - 14:12, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Especially with no one having bothered to continue the discussion either here since 9 June, or in the NPOV thread above since 10 May. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:26, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

recent OR additions

Regarding this revert, there are several problems with these sources:

• Tablet does not once mention colonialism much less settler colonialism
• op-ed by non-experts, Ethan Roberts is the director of government affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), Rhona Shwaid is the co-director of the Twin Cities Chapter of Zioness, and Jacob Millner is the director, Minneapolis-St. Paul American Jewish Committee (AJC)
• PBS does not once mention colonialism much less settler colonialism
• Jewish Rights in Palestine pre-dates Israel, much less any claim of Israel being a settler colonialist enterprise. Obviously does not mention the topic of this article
• Israel Studies usable, Ill work this in to the existing article after this edit
• Random blog
• Forward Community section effectively a blog, but regardless by a non-expert and regardless does not discuss the topic of this article
• The Samaritans under Mamluk and Ottoman rule and during the 20th century, from a Hebrew book. Now obviously with the information provided I cant find that source, but just off of the chapter title it cannot possibly be related to the topic of this article
• France 24 on an Iraqi troops liberate Christian town of Bartella from IS group not related to this topic
• Philosophy in the Middle Ages Indianapolis, 1973, p. 204 - very obviously unrelated to the topic of this article
• Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 187 - again, very obviously unrelated to the topic of this article

In sum, there is one source in the entire list that has anything to do with this article. nableezy - 16:04, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I added that one source to the article now. nableezy - 16:11, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

POV tag

Totally imbalanced article. There is only one or two sentences in the article dedicated to contrary views on a very controversial viewpoint and subject. Loksmythe (talk) 19:46, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT DarmaniLink (talk) 04:35, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Tag should go as nothing has been done to balance the article except this rhetorical disput. Here, for argument's sake, I don't agree with a statement, and I say it is balanced enough. ౪ Santa ౪^99° 14:38, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, without details on NPOV issues the tag is meritless. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Should we act accordingly ? I mean, should we remove it? ౪ Santa ౪^99° 19:47, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Done, no reasoning no tagging. nableezy - 19:54, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Sources

A potentially useful source which is not cited in the current article or the one on settler colonialism is the 2006 article by Bashir Abu-Manneh[1][2][3] in New Formations Volume 2006 Issue 59 called "Israel in US Empire"[4]. A copy is stored on the University of Kent archive here.

A source which is cited in the current article, but not in the one on settler colonialism is Elia Zureik's "Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine, Brutal Pursuit" (2016, Routledge Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict). A full copy of the book is available at the cdn.lbryplayer.xyz domain.

Some other sources making references which are perhaps of interest:

1. "Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict" (2015) by John B. Judis:

Page 82.4 / 970 of the electronic edition:

"Ben-Gurion and the socialist Zionists wanted to avoid being seen as colonialists, but they ended up replacing the colonialism of the European settler in Africa who exploited the native laborers with the colonialism of the European settler in North America who displaced rather than employed the Native Americans who lived on the lands they coveted. Moreover, in justifying their displacement of Arab labor, the Zionists invoked the same arguments that European settler colonialists had used in Australia, Africa, and North America: they were putting to good use lands the Arabs had desolated."

With regard to "Zionists [invoking] the same arguments that European settler colonialists had used", examples found elsewhere in the book include:

Page 65.0 / 970:

"Herzl’s appeal was geopolitical but also cultural, reflecting the widespread European justification of imperialism as an instrument of civilization. The new state, he promised, “should there form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” The writer Max Nordau, who would become Herzl’s second-in-command in the Zionist movement, agreed. “We will endeavor to do in the Near East what the English did in India. It is our intention to come to Palestine as the representatives of culture and to take the moral borders of Europe to the Euphrates.” ... But, like other Europeans during this age of imperialism, he viewed the natives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as lesser beings who could be bought off—and, if that failed, subjugated."

Page 79.3 / 970:

"Gordon’s vision of a Jewish nation and state could be described as an ethnocracy. It excluded not only Arab labor but the Arab people themselves. Gordon acknowledged that Arabs had “a historical right to the country, just as we do,” but he claimed that the Jewish right “is undoubtedly greater.” “And what did the Arabs produce in all the years they lived in the country?” he asked. “Such creations, or even the creation of the Bible alone, give us a perpetual right over the land in which we were so creative, especially since the people that came after us did not create such works in this country, or did not create anything at all.”58 Gordon added: “Some hold that when we come to Palestine to settle upon the land, we are dispossessing Arabs who are its natural masters. But what does this term mean? If mastery of the land implies political mastery, then the Arabs have long ago forfeited their title.” Ahad Ha’am’s vision of Palestine left an opening for compromise with its existing inhabitants. Gordon’s did not; and Gordon’s vision of nationhood eventually superseded that of Ahad Ha’am. Ben-Gurion, Katznelson, and the socialist Zionists who arrived during the Second Aliyah still gave some adherence to international socialism, but they subordinated the dictates of the international class struggle to the attempt to create a Jewish state. Zeev Sternhell calls them “nationalist socialists.” Within nationalist socialism, there was still room for concern about Arab workers and their fate; and at intervals over their first thirty years in Palestine, some of the socialists would voice support for a more democratic or binational Palestine."

Page 294.8 / 970:

"Faced with an Arab challenge, backed up by Europe’s fascists and Nazis, Labor Zionists declared themselves victims of a “feudalist-imperialist” coalition. The Arab “savages” were now part of this “feudalist-imperialist” coalition led by Nazi Germany. Over the next decades, even after the Allied victory in World War II and the collapse of Western colonialism in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, Zionists and later Israelis would continue to view their conflict with the Arabs through this twin prism of higher versus lower races and democracy against fascism and Nazism. They continued to describe Arabs as savages and barbarians, and their leaders as the heirs of Hitler. That included the mufti after World War II, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, PLO leader Yasir Arafat, and Hamas’s Khaled Meshal. Such a view highlighted Zionism as a national liberation movement for oppressed Jewry and ally of the world’s advanced democracies and obscured its role as a settler-colonial movement that had displaced or driven out a native population."

Page 324.1 / 970:

"Declaring that “colonization on a large scale is the greatest work of national life,” Asher asserted that the Jews were following the example of the British in Southern and Central Africa and in Australia and New England who had turned “barren deserts … into places of habitation … The attempts of other nations in other parts of the world give us courage.”"

Page p368.8 / 970:

"One factor that may have encouraged this was the imperial mind-set with which many Americans and Europeans viewed Palestine’s Arabs. Herzl had displayed this mind-set in saying that Palestinian Arabs could be won over to Jewish rule by the prosperity that Jews would bring to Palestinians. More advanced peoples might covet self-rule, but primitives would be satisfied with bread on the table. Brandeis and his circle shared this view. Palestine’s Arabs, Wise wrote, “do not desire anything particularly except food. They are … in the depths of primitive life.” ... Americans, of course, didn’t have to look to Europe to acquire a hierarchical view of humanity that justified conquest. Americans had invoked the need to civilize savage races to justify Indian removal and Manifest Destiny. Brandeis and his circle viewed the Zionist settlers as “pioneers,” “pilgrims,” and “puritans” and the Arabs as “Indians.” The comparison was partly an apt one. America was the original settler colony where the immigrants displaced the native inhabitants and eventually established a state of their own. Brandeis saw it as justifying Jews displacing Arabs in Palestine. Until well after World War II, the rout of the Indians was seen as a triumph of civilization over savagery. In his Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt wrote of the Indian Wars that “the struggle could not possibly have been avoided. Unless we were willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghenies should remain an unpeopled waste, the hunting ground of savages, war was inevitable … It is wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker race.” Brandeis and other progressives saw the conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine similarly."

Page p629.0 / 970:

"The Zionist leaders preferred that Arabs in a Jewish state become citizens of the Arab state. In that case, Ben-Gurion said, “we would be able to expel them.”"

2. "Dear Palestine, A Social History of the 1948 War" (2021) - Shay Hazkani:

"For many early Zionists, including the founding father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, European settler colonialism — especially the German experience before the First World War — was a model. In the German case, the Colonization Commission (Ansiedlungskommission), set up in 1886 by Otto von Bismarck, worked to transfer lands from Polish to German ownership in Poznan and West Prussia in order to transform the demographic balance there and reduce the Slavs to a minority population, subdued and depoliticized. The commission bought large farms from Poles, divided them into small parcels, and settled German farmers on them. Arthur Ruppin, who headed the Palestine office of the Zionist Organization (ZO), was born in Poznan and explicitly sought to replicate this model to transform the demographic balance in Palestine in favor of the Jews. To centralize the purchase of Arab lands and prevent the resale of Jewish-owned land to Arabs, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was established in 1901. By 1907 Ruppin helped set up the Palestine Land Development Company (PLDC) along the lines of the German Colonization Commission, and even hired a former official from the German commission as a special advisor. The PLDC aimed to create homogeneous groups of Jewish farmers and support new agricultural settlements. Many of those farmers were Jews from eastern Europe, where antisemitic violence intensified in the late nineteenth century."

    ←   ZScarpia   12:50, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

3. "Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century" (2005, Routledge) - Caroline Elkins, Susan Pedersen (eds.): The Introduction defines settler colonialism and outlines different types and variations. Chapter 2, "Settler Citizenship in the Jewish Colonization of Palestine", by Gershon Shafir, deals specifically with Palestine. In the introduction to Part 1, how later settler projects learned lessons from earlier ones, including Zionism from the French experience in Algeria, is noted.

4. "Colonialism and the Jews" (2017) - Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, Maud S. Mandel (eds.): A review of the book by John Strawson in Fathom Journal may be read here. As noted, in Part 3, the "the focus of the debate is whether the Yishuv can be mainly characterised as an example of settler-colonialism." Chapter 8 discusses Zionism in the context of the "emigrant colonialism" pushed by European states which came late to the race to establish colonies, a category which should perhaps be added to the article on colonialism. Something which is not mentioned much elsewhere, though straying from the subject of the current article, is how various European states pushed for the establishment of colonies for their 'surplus' Jewish populations, which in turn led them to support Zionists in their efforts to create a state for themselves in Palestine. The influence which the settler colonial activities of the German Settlement Commission in West Prussia had on Alfred Ruppin is mentioned on page 174.

"A Century of Settler Colonialism in Palestine: Zionism’s Entangled Project", an article in edition Fall/Winter 2017, volume xxiv, issue i of The Brown Journal of World Affairs by Tariq Dana and Ali Jarbawi of Birzeit University, may be read here.

Some Wikipedia articles on topics of potential interest: Palestine Jewish Colonization Association[5][6][7]; Jewish Colonisation Association[8].

    ←   ZScarpia   23:32, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Slater 2020 pp. 40-41 is a section called "Is Zionism Colonialism?" and available via Google Books preview. TLDR he says maybe pre-67, definitely post-67. Levivich (talk) 19:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Another one I came across, Pappe 2020 (free): Still, despite a body of scholarship and research that frames the Zionist movement as a settler-colonial project—including the relatively new Settler Colonial Studies, a journal that, at this writing, has already devoted two special issues to Palestine—such a depiction is not accepted in mainstream academia (or the media generally). By and large, Israel/Palestine is still perceived as a conflict between two national movements that are equally responsible for violence—one of them a Western-style democracy that occasionally resorts to excessive power, and the other an Arab society endowed with a violent political culture. Levivich (talk) 19:47, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Rouhana 2017 p. 3: Many scholars now accept the premise that the Zionist project that aimed at establishing a Jewish state in Palestine is a settler-colonial project (for just a few examples, see Lloyd 2012; Mamdani 2015; Pappé 2012; Robinson 2013; Rouhana 2014; Sabbagh-Khoury 2015; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2015; Shihade 2011; Veracini 2010; and Wolfe 2006, 2012). - Rouhana, Nadim (2017). "The Psychopolitical Foundations of Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State". In Rouhana, Nadim N.; Huneidi, Sahar S. (eds.). Israel and its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State. Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–35. ISBN 978-1-107-04483-8. Levivich (talk) 04:45, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

In the same book, in another chapter that Rouhana co-authors with Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, p. 397: The descriptor 'settler colonialism' has been applied intermittently over the past several decades in analyses of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; especially when scholars have examined how the Zionist movement (and later the Israeli state) sought to control and accumulate land before the 1948 Nakba (see, for example, Hilal 1976; Rodinson 1973; Shafir 1989). Many accept the application of the term 'settler colonialism' to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (for example, Reuveny, 2008; Veracini, 2013). Palestinian historians and intellectuals in general conceived the Zionist project as a settler-colonial project (see, for example, Khalidi 1992, 2009; Said 1980). But, interestingly, there is a burgeoning tendency among Palestinian and other scholars to return to the colonial framework to analyze the Israeli–Palestinian history and present (Nasasra 2012; Rouhana 2014; Rouhana and Sabbagh-Khoury 2014; Sabbagh-Khoury 2015a; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2015; Shihade 2011; Wolfe 2006). Levivich (talk) 05:12, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

"was not part of the process of imperial expansion in search of power and markets."

schould be deleted becouse of beeing false. Weizmann letter 1914: “… should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in 20 to 30 years a million Jews out there – perhaps more; they would … form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal.”

(1916): "The British Cabinet is not only sympathetic toward the Palestinian aspirations of the Jews, but would like to see these aspirations realized" … “England … would have in the Jews the best possible friends, who would be the best national interpreters of ideas in the eastern countries and would serve as a bridge between the two civilizations. That again is not a material argument, but certainly it ought to carry great weight with any politician who likes to look 50 years ahead" The zionist movment did often apeal to british national interrest and Britten. And the succes of the Zionist project was obviously in there interrest concerning markets in Asia (espacially India). not so sure if this is the right place sry if not but the statement ist simply wrong. Also see rashid khalidi newest book. 109.43.177.222 (talk) 05:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

One might add that Ronald Storrs, the British military governor, drew specific parallels with Ireland, stating that Zionism provided the opportunity to form "a little loyal Jewish Ulster" (See page 8 of this work). Iskandar323 (talk) 08:05, 7 November 2023 (UTC)