In 2016, Haaretz published an Op-Ed titled “Israel is a settler colonial state – and that is okay,” which criticized Israeli concerns regarding the growing awareness of Zionism as a settler colonial project. The author argues that this concern among Israelis isn’t justifiable, citing the example of “Many prosperous and democratic nations (that) fall within this rough definition, most notably of course, the world’s only superpower — the United States of America.” He continues: “the comparability of Israeli history to that of the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, pulls the rug from under the agenda of singling out Zionism and its deeds as particularly evil.”
While this was textbook Zionist propaganda, the author of the Op-Ed is nonetheless not a typical Israeli propagandist. A quick search shows that he wrote the chapter on Palestine/Israel in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism and has published in journals such as Settler Colonial Studies. This particularly struck me, as I felt it illustrates a potential distortion in the meaning of settler colonialism, dismissing the concept into a mere historical metaphor of no moral consequences. Over the following years, Israel has often been described as a settler colonial or apartheid state, and Palestine has become a central focus in academic rhetoric on decolonization. At least it appeared that nearly everyone in the Western critical academy agreed on this framing, so much so that while writing my doctoral thesis, I whispered to a colleague of mine that the fact that it had become so easy for us to speak of the colonial nature of Israel was beginning to worry me.
Conversations I had with colleagues about recent events underscore the validity of my concerns. Many of them, who have been working on settler colonialism and decolonization for years, believe that Israel has the right to defend itself. Some have swiftly joined a campaign in the Western media to decontextualize the October 7 events and have even dismissed any contextualization as relativism. Others, at best, spoke of condemning the two sides and refused any association of violence with decolonization. When I wrote to a group of friends and fellow researchers that decolonization is not a metaphor, a colleague responded, “Maybe it is?”
Another shared a tweet that reads, “If this is decolonization, I will be celebrating Columbus Day in the coming years.” When discussing with another group of colleagues the ways in which we could mobilize against this genocide, one friend, who has been organizing and writing about decolonization for years, rejected even the notion of an economic or academic boycott of Israeli individuals. She said the recent events showed how much Israeli individuals are targeted, and it’s not the right time for such discussions.
The campaigns in Western media, academic, and cultural institutions to delegitimize Palestinians are shocking and disturbing on several levels. They have unveiled the deeply ingrained Eurocentric patterns of constructing knowledge about Palestine. During moments of tension, these patterns tend to resurface, peeling back layers of critical academic rhetoric and political correctness. This was not only clear in the genocide-promoting coverage of mainstream media but even in statements made by several Western universities, like Harvard’s, and in cultural events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest forum for books and literature, where a Palestinian writer’s award was canceled.
Yet what is more important is the impact of such campaigns on individuals who have, in calmer times, held a critical viewpoint regarding the situation in Palestine. Recent events have shown that while we may have assumed a shared understanding of Israel’s settler colonial nature, we might have only merely agreed on the words we should use. The real issue isn’t just how we interpret Israel or the frameworks we apply to understand violence but the real-world consequences of such frameworks. Just as the Haaretz Op-Ed, even labeling Israel as a settler-colonial state can be used to normalize colonial violence.
While it’s necessary to acknowledge the wrongfulness in some of what Hamas did, the discussion goes beyond the mere justification or condemnation of Hamas’ actions. Rather, it is about the necessity of understanding the events on October 7 and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza within the broader context of a century of colonialism. Understanding Palestine through the lens of settler colonialism, decolonization, or apartheid is crucial to contextualizing this violence. As the late Patrick Wolfe, a prominent figure in this field, aptly noted, violence is not merely an event; it is a structure.
We find ourselves today in an era of academic metaphors where many have divorced academic recognition from the recognized reality. Many academics write on decolonizing curriculums, epistemologies, methods, perceptions, and disciplinaries but hardly engage with actual forms of undoing injustice. Do we stand against settler colonialism only when it has already succeeded and when reversing colonization is deemed impossible? Has it become convenient to acknowledge that our campuses sit on stolen lands because returning them seems untenable? Do Palestinians have to become a minority so their killing isn’t polarizing anymore?
In today’s Palestine, we confront an organized campaign to decontextualize recent events, thereby delegitimizing the suffering of Palestinians. This aligns with the arguments made by scholars in settler colonial studies who contend that the elimination of Palestinians is ongoing, not just a historical relic. Israeli officials openly discuss such plans, while Western media campaigns dehumanize Palestinians, depicting them as “human animals” whose deaths are essential for Israel’s defense. At best, they are inevitable collateral damage. In the face of this complex reality, understanding the long history of violence and recognizing that no event can be isolated from this structural context is the very minimum one can do. If we fail to do so now, our rhetoric of decolonization is just meaningless, and maybe then we should all start celebrating Columbus Day.
