This is what is missing in today's educational system. Instead of teaching the historical truths they teach gender dysphoria and DEI and a socialist ideology that for historical benefit to the timeline has never worked. Socialism is only good for the people in charge just like communism. They think socialism is going to make them feel better. Not learning the proper history and just taking the rhetoric of a fake people is going to make them on the right side of Islam there is no right side or the non-believers.
Very helpful overview. It's staggering how such mindless propaganda has so easily taken hold of so many. The universities have a lot to answer for in their blithe promotion of activist positions.
All of written history and now paleo-genomics show populations have continuously been replaced in whole or part. Certainly Jews lived and governed in Jerusalem during Biblical times. This is not relevant to the present. What is, is that the Jewish state exists now and is not going anywhere. There is no place on earth where the ruling population didn't colonize it, and nearly all of those displaced existing peoples. So what.
Sadly, many of them are as bad, push Edward Said’s theories as if they were the Holy Grail. We are now seeing just why Qatar - who also alongside Iran have funded Hamas - have pumped billions into the USA University system.
Just a note. It was Harry St John Philby who aligned with the Saud family, not Lawrence of Arabia, who preferred support for the Hashemite family, traditional guardians of the holy city of Mecca. The Saud family was closely connected to the severely Islamist Wahhabist movement since the 18th century, while the Hashemite family was sympathetic to the emerging Arab nationalist movement.
It’s Palestinians and their supporters that raise the issue of Colonialism by falsely claiming through genetic ancestry that Jews don’t belong there… and feel, through this, they’ve won the political argument.
I’ve shown them clearly that they’re wrong, and thus they’ve resoundly lost the political argument. Any other claims I can shove back up your bum while you’re here?
Since you’re so fixated on shoving things up bums, you’d think you’d recognise when something doesn’t fit. You’re forcing a genetic argument into a political debate like it’s going to settle anything…or satisfy anyone.
Colonisation isn’t about bloodlines or surnames. It’s about land, power, and control. You can’t DNA-test your way out of a political reality.
Your essay spends more time tracing Jewish ancestry than engaging with what actually defines settler colonialism: military dominance, population transfer, and a state built without the consent of those displaced. That’s the real case for Israel as a settler-colonial state.
So no, you haven’t “won the political argument.” You’ve just written a long, defensive ancestry report and hoped no one would notice the checkpoints, the displacement, or the occupation behind it.
Also the fact that the checkpoints and occupation you mention were all but non-existent until 2005, and only came about because of successive waves of terrorist attacks. If you'd travelled in the region extensively before that, which I did between 1977- 1982, you'd have seen that. You could travel from Jerusalem to the Jordan border, or the other way into Gaza all the way to the sea, buy fish there and return... and hardly see a single checkpoint, guard or barrier. And Palestinians too used to move freely, buying in the markets in Israel before returning to Gaza or the West Bank.
Arafat made a proclamation in the mid 1980s, 'We will make life insufferable for the Jews... they will have no choice but to leave.' Thus started numerous intifadas and terrorist attacks... which with the necessary barriers and checkpoints, backfired.
Without Arafat's and hardline Palestinians' intent to ethnic cleanse the entire area of Jews through endless terrorist bombings and attacks... it would be like the 1977-82 period again... hardly any barriers and checkpoints in sight.
Appreciate the nostalgic anecdote but you seem to be confusing your own own ability to travel freely through a militarily controlled zone with the absence of occupation. That’s not how sovereignty works. The fact that checkpoints weren’t yet physically everywhere doesn’t mean Palestinians had autonomy, it just means the control wasn’t yet fully formalised.
It’s also absurd to act like collective punishment through walls, checkpoints, and systemic control is just an unfortunate consequence of bad Palestinian manners. Terrorism in the West Bank was at historic lows in the 2010s and yet the occupation deepened.
Because in the end, it’s not really just about security - it’s about power. And power, once consolidated, doesn’t tend to give itself back.
It’s also absurd to act like collective punishment through walls, checkpoints...
You seem to have coveniently sidestepped the point that these only came about due to Arafat's declaration that they would make life insufferable for the Jews... an intended and planned ethnic cleansing, Two suicide bombings a month sometimes... one of the last before the barriers killed 22 young teens aged 13-19 in an afternoon disco.
Such was the public outrage that there were demands for the barriers to be built. These phrases such as 'collective punishment' are so lame given this context and background.
Were not the waves of suicide bombings a 'collective punishment' against the people of Israel? Afraid to go on a bus or sit in a cafe or allow their teen children to go to an afternoon disco? Of course it was.
It actually sickens me how so many Palestinian supporters use stock phrases without thinking them through.
The security divides were seen as a matter of survival to Israeli society, no more, no less. Also, they were an enormous inconveniece to Israelis too ... no more trips to Nablus or Ramallah for shopping, unless you want to risk getting stoned or knifed. And Gaza post 2005, you risked beeing kidnapped or killed.
So that false claim of 'collective punishment' also worked against the Israelis... all instigated by an intended suicide-bombing led ethnic cleansing aim from Arafat et al.
Trauma isn’t a substitute for analysis, I’m afraid. No one disputes the horror of suicide bombings but that doesn’t grant blanket moral license for indefinite military control over millions of civilians.
Your Arafat reference adds little. Checkpoints, land seizures, and occupation infrastructure were all in place long before his statement or the Second Intifada. Also, the wall wasn’t built on the 67 border as I’m sure you already know.
Collective punishment isn’t a “lame phrase”, it’s a legal term not a slogan. See Art 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Denying basic freedoms to an entire population based on the actions of a few is exactly what it describes.
What should actually sicken you is the amount of Palestinian children who have died under military rule for generations. Not the vocabulary used to describe it.
Massive difference in losing access to shopping in Ramallah and being placed under indefinite military closure, with limited medical access, movement rights, or employment. You don’t erase that reality by pointing to Israeli pain. You just show how trauma can be weaponised to normalise control.
It’s Palestinians and their supporters who use the DNA-Ashkenazi link to try and prove some form of ‘outsider’ colonialism.
Your diatribe also doesn’t address the other key issue raised that ‘colonialism’ generally stems from a mother country spreading its dominance to other regions; or, in the case of Islam, spreading its religion with attached rules and laws, to other regions.
In any case, your whole premise about military dominance and control falls flat from the outset. The first Jewish population arriving and even up until 1948 had no military dominance; they scraped together rifles from Czechoslovakia to defend against the onslaught of five surrounding Arab nations, and it was indeed miraculous that they won.
Also, they accepted the partition plan, and would have been quite happy to live peacefully next to a Palestininian state - rather than one hell bent on Israel’s destruction, and again getting aid from various Arab nations to fulfill that up until 1973… and devolving since into various terrorist groups, again funded by outside Arab nations.
Israel’s military has only gained such strength through having to repeatedly defend against these terrorist Jihadist onslaughts.
Let’s break this down, since you seem to be arguing mostly with a version of the debate you’ve invented. You built your entire essay around DNA, demographic origins, and the idea that Jews aren’t “outsiders,” and now claim it’s Palestinians who are obsessed with ancestry. What I challenged wasn’t the historicity of Jewish roots, but the idea that genetic lineage has anything to do with whether a state qualifies as colonial. It doesn’t. Colonisation isn’t something you can escape through 23andMe and relying on that line of reasoning is as clumsy as it is irrelevant.
Now you’re pivoting to claim colonialism only counts if there’s a mother country involved. That’s just false. Settler colonialism is extensively defined as a structure where a population arrives, displaces or dominates the indigenous population, and asserts sovereignty. No ship back to London required.
As for your 1948 comments, it’s quite irrelevant. Being vulnerable in 1947 doesn’t erase the fact that by 1949, 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled or fled and were barred from returning. That’s a real transformation of power turned into persistent domination.
Again, you’ve conceded the real narrative by omission. If your best argument is that it is not colonialism because some of the settlers were in danger at first, then not only have you confirmed the political structure - you’ve rationalised it. Which means, ultimately, you’ve done my job for me.
You can dress it up with rifles from Czechoslovakia or miracle narratives all you like, but you’re still describing a settler project. Nice revisionism… but still no cigar.
, and the idea that Jews aren’t “outsiders,” and now claim it’s Palestinians who are obsessed with ancestry.
By jove, he's got it. If this wasn't at the root of many Palestinian's claims of Israeli Jews being outsiders, and thus colonialists, it wouldn't have been an issue. It needed tackling, which I did thoroughly.
My 1948 comment is not irrelevant, but your aftermath comment about 750,000 Palestinians leaving/expelled is. With five Arab nations trying to force their will, it was a miracle the Jews won... and if they'd lost, it would have been 600,000 of them fleeing/expelled.
Also, at this same time, some 1 million Jews fled/expelled Muslim nations between 1948-1950. The way Israel/Jews looked at it this was like a 'population exchange', similar to that that took place between Greece and Turkey decades previous. But the Arab nations refused to absorb them, preferring to keep them as refugees as a political weapon against Israel.
One of the first heads of UNRWA, Lt. General Sir Alexander Galloway, was particularly blunt on the issue in an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph as early as 1952: 'It is perfectly clear that the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.'
The arms issue and Israel's initial weakness, you have tried to skirt around unsuccessfully. You can hardly be an invading, colonial nation if you lack the military power to keep at bay the numerous Arab nations bent on your destruction.
Finally, you keep using the term settlers... but you can hardly be an invading 'settler' when in essence you are returning to your own nation and roots, albeit a long gap in between. Ben Gurion on that subject in 1947 to the UN:
'I am afraid, sir I cannot agree with that view, because it implies a few things which we think are not the way you put it, Mr. Chairman. We have no conflict with the Arabs on our side. As far as this country and the Arabs are concerned, what we say is that we were dispossessed from our country, although it was a considerable time ago. But we did not give it up. It is our home. We admit that all those who are living in this country have the same right to it, just as we. We do not say, as in the case of other dispossessed people, that the people who are there ought to be removed.
‘There was such a view held by the Labour Party, adopted only two years ago by the British Labour Party, just before the election, that in order to make more room for Jews the Arabs should be encouraged to transfer to other countries. We did not accept it even then; we did not approve of it. We do not claim that any Arab ought to be removed. Therefore, we have no conflict, as far as we are concerned, with the Arabs. They deny our right to be in our home. If you call this a conflict, then there is a conflict, but it is not a conflict on our side.'
It's a bit like, if you imagine the native US Indians, rather than just being put in reservations, were dispersed to the four winds to live in other nations. If they then returned and made a bid to have a state of their own, or even half a state, nobody would describe them as 'invading settlers', however much of a gap had transpired in-between.
You tackled a straw man about genetics and then claimed victory in a political argument you never actually addressed. You haven’t engaged with the definition of settler colonialism; you’ve avoided it entirely.
Let’s be clear once again: colonisation isn’t determined by who your ancestors were. I pointed out that it’s a meaningless defence, and yet you doubled down on it as if disproving a side point somehow resolved the political question. So if we agree that colonisation isn’t about ancestry, then what exactly have you disproven? Nothing, because you never addressed the structure of domination itself.
Colonialism is defined by what’s done on the ground: displacement, domination, and the assertion of exclusive sovereignty. That’s the reality Palestinians have lived and nothing you’ve said even begins to challenge that structure.
Your “population exchange” argument is a historical sleight of hand. Jewish refugees from Arab states were absorbed and naturalised in Israel. Palestinians were expelled and remain stateless, landless, and under Israeli control. That’s not a reciprocal exchange: that’s a one-sided, unresolved injustice. Pointing to the failures of Arab regimes doesn’t absolve what Israel chose to do or still does.
You say I’m skirting the “arms issue”but I’ve answered it plainly: initial weakness does not disprove colonialism. Plenty of settler-colonial projects began from a position of military vulnerability. What matters is the system that was built: land seizure, native displacement, and dual legal regimes. And you’ve described it perfectly, just with different moral packaging.
Quoting Ben Gurion’s best PR moment doesn’t erase the material facts: mass expulsion, confiscated land, and the ongoing denial of return. Political structures aren’t judged by their mission statements; they’re judged by their outcomes. The same goes for your Native American analogy: if they returned and built an exclusionary state at the expense of others, it would still be settler colonialism, no matter how long the gap.
So again, you haven’t refuted the settler-colonial framework: you’ve just rebranded it as destiny. Which, once again, means you’ve done my job for me. Perhaps soon you’ll realise that.
Thoughtful analysis.
Excellent essay.
This is what is missing in today's educational system. Instead of teaching the historical truths they teach gender dysphoria and DEI and a socialist ideology that for historical benefit to the timeline has never worked. Socialism is only good for the people in charge just like communism. They think socialism is going to make them feel better. Not learning the proper history and just taking the rhetoric of a fake people is going to make them on the right side of Islam there is no right side or the non-believers.
Thanks for this thoughtful and in depth analysis which attempts to fight the sea of misinformation. Its deeply appreciated! 👏
This is an excellent essay. Thank you, John.
Very informative. Such a complicated and multi-faceted history of the peoples and the regions, which you manage to explain so clearly. Thank you.
Very helpful overview. It's staggering how such mindless propaganda has so easily taken hold of so many. The universities have a lot to answer for in their blithe promotion of activist positions.
All of written history and now paleo-genomics show populations have continuously been replaced in whole or part. Certainly Jews lived and governed in Jerusalem during Biblical times. This is not relevant to the present. What is, is that the Jewish state exists now and is not going anywhere. There is no place on earth where the ruling population didn't colonize it, and nearly all of those displaced existing peoples. So what.
Rather than taking a swipe at the students, ask, "who are the teachers?"
Sadly, many of them are as bad, push Edward Said’s theories as if they were the Holy Grail. We are now seeing just why Qatar - who also alongside Iran have funded Hamas - have pumped billions into the USA University system.
Just a note. It was Harry St John Philby who aligned with the Saud family, not Lawrence of Arabia, who preferred support for the Hashemite family, traditional guardians of the holy city of Mecca. The Saud family was closely connected to the severely Islamist Wahhabist movement since the 18th century, while the Hashemite family was sympathetic to the emerging Arab nationalist movement.
The Ummah is nothing if not a colonial project.
The Saudis and Egypt will not be in that coalition that is forming to assault Israel
Ezekiel 37-39
The west will stand on the sidelines
If your best rebuttal to accusations of colonialism is genetic ancestry and economic migration, then you’ve already conceded the political argument.
You’ve got this ass upwards.
It’s Palestinians and their supporters that raise the issue of Colonialism by falsely claiming through genetic ancestry that Jews don’t belong there… and feel, through this, they’ve won the political argument.
I’ve shown them clearly that they’re wrong, and thus they’ve resoundly lost the political argument. Any other claims I can shove back up your bum while you’re here?
Since you’re so fixated on shoving things up bums, you’d think you’d recognise when something doesn’t fit. You’re forcing a genetic argument into a political debate like it’s going to settle anything…or satisfy anyone.
Colonisation isn’t about bloodlines or surnames. It’s about land, power, and control. You can’t DNA-test your way out of a political reality.
Your essay spends more time tracing Jewish ancestry than engaging with what actually defines settler colonialism: military dominance, population transfer, and a state built without the consent of those displaced. That’s the real case for Israel as a settler-colonial state.
So no, you haven’t “won the political argument.” You’ve just written a long, defensive ancestry report and hoped no one would notice the checkpoints, the displacement, or the occupation behind it.
Also the fact that the checkpoints and occupation you mention were all but non-existent until 2005, and only came about because of successive waves of terrorist attacks. If you'd travelled in the region extensively before that, which I did between 1977- 1982, you'd have seen that. You could travel from Jerusalem to the Jordan border, or the other way into Gaza all the way to the sea, buy fish there and return... and hardly see a single checkpoint, guard or barrier. And Palestinians too used to move freely, buying in the markets in Israel before returning to Gaza or the West Bank.
Arafat made a proclamation in the mid 1980s, 'We will make life insufferable for the Jews... they will have no choice but to leave.' Thus started numerous intifadas and terrorist attacks... which with the necessary barriers and checkpoints, backfired.
Without Arafat's and hardline Palestinians' intent to ethnic cleanse the entire area of Jews through endless terrorist bombings and attacks... it would be like the 1977-82 period again... hardly any barriers and checkpoints in sight.
Appreciate the nostalgic anecdote but you seem to be confusing your own own ability to travel freely through a militarily controlled zone with the absence of occupation. That’s not how sovereignty works. The fact that checkpoints weren’t yet physically everywhere doesn’t mean Palestinians had autonomy, it just means the control wasn’t yet fully formalised.
It’s also absurd to act like collective punishment through walls, checkpoints, and systemic control is just an unfortunate consequence of bad Palestinian manners. Terrorism in the West Bank was at historic lows in the 2010s and yet the occupation deepened.
Because in the end, it’s not really just about security - it’s about power. And power, once consolidated, doesn’t tend to give itself back.
It’s also absurd to act like collective punishment through walls, checkpoints...
You seem to have coveniently sidestepped the point that these only came about due to Arafat's declaration that they would make life insufferable for the Jews... an intended and planned ethnic cleansing, Two suicide bombings a month sometimes... one of the last before the barriers killed 22 young teens aged 13-19 in an afternoon disco.
Such was the public outrage that there were demands for the barriers to be built. These phrases such as 'collective punishment' are so lame given this context and background.
Were not the waves of suicide bombings a 'collective punishment' against the people of Israel? Afraid to go on a bus or sit in a cafe or allow their teen children to go to an afternoon disco? Of course it was.
It actually sickens me how so many Palestinian supporters use stock phrases without thinking them through.
The security divides were seen as a matter of survival to Israeli society, no more, no less. Also, they were an enormous inconveniece to Israelis too ... no more trips to Nablus or Ramallah for shopping, unless you want to risk getting stoned or knifed. And Gaza post 2005, you risked beeing kidnapped or killed.
So that false claim of 'collective punishment' also worked against the Israelis... all instigated by an intended suicide-bombing led ethnic cleansing aim from Arafat et al.
Trauma isn’t a substitute for analysis, I’m afraid. No one disputes the horror of suicide bombings but that doesn’t grant blanket moral license for indefinite military control over millions of civilians.
Your Arafat reference adds little. Checkpoints, land seizures, and occupation infrastructure were all in place long before his statement or the Second Intifada. Also, the wall wasn’t built on the 67 border as I’m sure you already know.
Collective punishment isn’t a “lame phrase”, it’s a legal term not a slogan. See Art 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Denying basic freedoms to an entire population based on the actions of a few is exactly what it describes.
What should actually sicken you is the amount of Palestinian children who have died under military rule for generations. Not the vocabulary used to describe it.
Massive difference in losing access to shopping in Ramallah and being placed under indefinite military closure, with limited medical access, movement rights, or employment. You don’t erase that reality by pointing to Israeli pain. You just show how trauma can be weaponised to normalise control.
It’s Palestinians and their supporters who use the DNA-Ashkenazi link to try and prove some form of ‘outsider’ colonialism.
Your diatribe also doesn’t address the other key issue raised that ‘colonialism’ generally stems from a mother country spreading its dominance to other regions; or, in the case of Islam, spreading its religion with attached rules and laws, to other regions.
In any case, your whole premise about military dominance and control falls flat from the outset. The first Jewish population arriving and even up until 1948 had no military dominance; they scraped together rifles from Czechoslovakia to defend against the onslaught of five surrounding Arab nations, and it was indeed miraculous that they won.
Also, they accepted the partition plan, and would have been quite happy to live peacefully next to a Palestininian state - rather than one hell bent on Israel’s destruction, and again getting aid from various Arab nations to fulfill that up until 1973… and devolving since into various terrorist groups, again funded by outside Arab nations.
Israel’s military has only gained such strength through having to repeatedly defend against these terrorist Jihadist onslaughts.
Nice try… but no cigar.
Let’s break this down, since you seem to be arguing mostly with a version of the debate you’ve invented. You built your entire essay around DNA, demographic origins, and the idea that Jews aren’t “outsiders,” and now claim it’s Palestinians who are obsessed with ancestry. What I challenged wasn’t the historicity of Jewish roots, but the idea that genetic lineage has anything to do with whether a state qualifies as colonial. It doesn’t. Colonisation isn’t something you can escape through 23andMe and relying on that line of reasoning is as clumsy as it is irrelevant.
Now you’re pivoting to claim colonialism only counts if there’s a mother country involved. That’s just false. Settler colonialism is extensively defined as a structure where a population arrives, displaces or dominates the indigenous population, and asserts sovereignty. No ship back to London required.
As for your 1948 comments, it’s quite irrelevant. Being vulnerable in 1947 doesn’t erase the fact that by 1949, 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled or fled and were barred from returning. That’s a real transformation of power turned into persistent domination.
Again, you’ve conceded the real narrative by omission. If your best argument is that it is not colonialism because some of the settlers were in danger at first, then not only have you confirmed the political structure - you’ve rationalised it. Which means, ultimately, you’ve done my job for me.
You can dress it up with rifles from Czechoslovakia or miracle narratives all you like, but you’re still describing a settler project. Nice revisionism… but still no cigar.
, and the idea that Jews aren’t “outsiders,” and now claim it’s Palestinians who are obsessed with ancestry.
By jove, he's got it. If this wasn't at the root of many Palestinian's claims of Israeli Jews being outsiders, and thus colonialists, it wouldn't have been an issue. It needed tackling, which I did thoroughly.
My 1948 comment is not irrelevant, but your aftermath comment about 750,000 Palestinians leaving/expelled is. With five Arab nations trying to force their will, it was a miracle the Jews won... and if they'd lost, it would have been 600,000 of them fleeing/expelled.
Also, at this same time, some 1 million Jews fled/expelled Muslim nations between 1948-1950. The way Israel/Jews looked at it this was like a 'population exchange', similar to that that took place between Greece and Turkey decades previous. But the Arab nations refused to absorb them, preferring to keep them as refugees as a political weapon against Israel.
One of the first heads of UNRWA, Lt. General Sir Alexander Galloway, was particularly blunt on the issue in an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph as early as 1952: 'It is perfectly clear that the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.'
The arms issue and Israel's initial weakness, you have tried to skirt around unsuccessfully. You can hardly be an invading, colonial nation if you lack the military power to keep at bay the numerous Arab nations bent on your destruction.
Finally, you keep using the term settlers... but you can hardly be an invading 'settler' when in essence you are returning to your own nation and roots, albeit a long gap in between. Ben Gurion on that subject in 1947 to the UN:
'I am afraid, sir I cannot agree with that view, because it implies a few things which we think are not the way you put it, Mr. Chairman. We have no conflict with the Arabs on our side. As far as this country and the Arabs are concerned, what we say is that we were dispossessed from our country, although it was a considerable time ago. But we did not give it up. It is our home. We admit that all those who are living in this country have the same right to it, just as we. We do not say, as in the case of other dispossessed people, that the people who are there ought to be removed.
‘There was such a view held by the Labour Party, adopted only two years ago by the British Labour Party, just before the election, that in order to make more room for Jews the Arabs should be encouraged to transfer to other countries. We did not accept it even then; we did not approve of it. We do not claim that any Arab ought to be removed. Therefore, we have no conflict, as far as we are concerned, with the Arabs. They deny our right to be in our home. If you call this a conflict, then there is a conflict, but it is not a conflict on our side.'
It's a bit like, if you imagine the native US Indians, rather than just being put in reservations, were dispersed to the four winds to live in other nations. If they then returned and made a bid to have a state of their own, or even half a state, nobody would describe them as 'invading settlers', however much of a gap had transpired in-between.
You tackled a straw man about genetics and then claimed victory in a political argument you never actually addressed. You haven’t engaged with the definition of settler colonialism; you’ve avoided it entirely.
Let’s be clear once again: colonisation isn’t determined by who your ancestors were. I pointed out that it’s a meaningless defence, and yet you doubled down on it as if disproving a side point somehow resolved the political question. So if we agree that colonisation isn’t about ancestry, then what exactly have you disproven? Nothing, because you never addressed the structure of domination itself.
Colonialism is defined by what’s done on the ground: displacement, domination, and the assertion of exclusive sovereignty. That’s the reality Palestinians have lived and nothing you’ve said even begins to challenge that structure.
Your “population exchange” argument is a historical sleight of hand. Jewish refugees from Arab states were absorbed and naturalised in Israel. Palestinians were expelled and remain stateless, landless, and under Israeli control. That’s not a reciprocal exchange: that’s a one-sided, unresolved injustice. Pointing to the failures of Arab regimes doesn’t absolve what Israel chose to do or still does.
You say I’m skirting the “arms issue”but I’ve answered it plainly: initial weakness does not disprove colonialism. Plenty of settler-colonial projects began from a position of military vulnerability. What matters is the system that was built: land seizure, native displacement, and dual legal regimes. And you’ve described it perfectly, just with different moral packaging.
Quoting Ben Gurion’s best PR moment doesn’t erase the material facts: mass expulsion, confiscated land, and the ongoing denial of return. Political structures aren’t judged by their mission statements; they’re judged by their outcomes. The same goes for your Native American analogy: if they returned and built an exclusionary state at the expense of others, it would still be settler colonialism, no matter how long the gap.
So again, you haven’t refuted the settler-colonial framework: you’ve just rebranded it as destiny. Which, once again, means you’ve done my job for me. Perhaps soon you’ll realise that.
Aside from the point about TE Lawrence and the Saud family, an excellent article.