Colonialism and the State of Israel

I am not the first person to put these words together in this way. And, when I raise this topic, I am not talking about imperialist powers of previous millennia and their actions in this area. I am writing about the last 150 years.

Let me be brief and to the point when it comes to the history part. In 1917, Palestine, as it has been called since at least AD 135, was under the rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. It was losing its grip and the European powers were muscling into the area. Britain obtained a mandate to rule the area. There was some increase in agriculture and manufacturing on their watch. The Palestinians who had been there, some from before Israel ever entered the land in Abraham’s day, with more joining their ranks during successive empires in the last millennium before Christ, saw their numbers swelled by Arabs moving in from surrounding nations to take advantage of increased employment opportunities. Muslims were in the majority but there were many Christians, tracing their faith heritage to Christ’s time. Starting in the late 19^th century, the small number of Jews who had made their way back to the land since Rome expelled them in the first century, were joined by increasing numbers of immigrants, mostly from Europe. This led to unrest between them and the Palestinians to the point where Britain tried to stem the flow of Jewish immigrants, but not very successfully.

Then, in 1948, Jewish Zionist visionaries and their armed supporters were granted statehood by the United Nations over a strictly demarcated limited portion of the land the Jews claimed in their biblical heyday, including division of Jerusalem itself. The fledgling nation of Jordan was given power over the non-Israeli portion of Palestine, including East Jerusalem.

Here is where we can see the parallels to what the Israelis have done over the last 150 years to what colonial powers have done throughout history, including Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, Belgium and others. Now, I must grant right from the outset, that the historical circumstances are somewhat different. In the case of European colonials, they were entering into territories where they had not lived before. Here, we have the Jews wanting to return to a land they claimed as theirs going back to a couple of millennia BC. However, the behaviours, the patterns of activities, are very much the same.

As with European powers, Israel began occupying the land, or re-occupying if you will. Likewise, when their moves were met with resistance by the local Palestinians and their allies, they were suppressed, often brutally, with military might. Israel took control of ever more land and ever more facets of life of the previous inhabitants and their descendants. To try to solidify their claims, they adopted an age-old tactic of the victors – rewriting history. Right from the outset, one of the Zionist slogans was, “A land without people, for a people without land.” This was in spite of their being somewhere in the neighbourhood of at least 750,000 Palestinians in some 900 villages spread over this small tract of land, not to mention Jerusalem, Haifa and other growing centres. To this day, pro-Israel writers try to deny Palestinian claims to the land by emphasizing Israel’s historical claims and denying those of the Palestinians, minimizing the duration of Palestinian occupancy and numbers at every turn.

In North America and Southern Africa, there were systems of racial separation for centuries. The conquered were forced to live in reserves or homelands. In Israel and Palestine, they are called refugee camps. The impact is the same. The Palestinians who live in Israel are called Arabs, an attempt by Israel to identify them with their Arab neighbours, as if to say, that is where they came from, that is who they are, and that is where they should be. They don’t refer to Palestinians, so as not to give that name credibility.  The Palestinians who live in Israel are second class citizens in many ways. Israel likes to claim they are the only democracy in the Middle East, with voting rights given to Palestinians living in their boundaries, with their being represented in Parliament by elected members. However, even these are restricted and often jailed on slim pretenses, rendering much of their representation powerless.

Colonial powers have often tried to assimilate their subjects to their way of life. Israel is not even that beneficent, if you can say that about the attempts of the European powers in the past. Israel’s ultimate aim is to push all the Palestinians out and claim all the land given to Palestine in 1948 for themselves and the Jews. Their tactics and pronouncements have demonstrated that ever since the Zionist forces began to make inroads into the land, even before 1948.

The record of the colonial powers in the Americas and the third world has been far from exemplary. However, over time, practically all of the former colonies have regained their independence. In the Americas, this has not meant the indigenous populations gained control. It only meant the settlers and their descendants established their own governments in the former colonies. The ‘natives’ are still largely under the thumbs of the settlers. Well, that is still certainly the case in Israel. In other former colonies though, there has been an increasing awareness of past injustices and attempts begun to right them. To be sure, there are many Jews in Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora who think in those ways too. However, until those elements ever get to form the government, things continue to look pretty bleak for the Palestinians. Indeed, for a variety of selfish reasons of their own, the Western powers continue to support Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, especially the United States. Until they see the injustices they are supporting in the so-called Holy Land, there will be no peace there. For a Christian like myself, the real tragedy here is that far too many so-called Christians blindly support their governments, abandoning their Christian brothers and sisters and forgetting all about Jesus’ and the Prophets’ teachings about love and justice. We continue to hope and pray for change. What else can we do about it? I leave that question to you, dear reader.