The Colonialism Illusion

A historical reflection & clarification on Israeli Independence Day

“Why do you look so worried, Senator Biden? We don’t worry, senator. We Israelis have a secret weapon. We have nowhere else to go.” - Golda Meir

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History has long been dominated by empires – powers expanding their reach through conquest, crushing resistance, and imposing their will onto weaker peoples. This practice, known as colonialism, has shaped much of the modern world.

But while we still live in a world of competing powers, classical colonialism is dead. In the post-colonial era, Western nations no longer claim the right to overwrite other cultures in the name of empire. Today, we recognize that no people has a moral license to steamroll another.

So where does Israel fit into this story?

Let me be clear: I’m not addressing the complex and painful events of 1948 – what Palestinians call the Nakba. The question of Israel’s founding is a much deeper debate, and it must be assessed with more context than I’m providing here.

What I want to challenge is something else: the reductionist claim that Israel is a colonial enterprise. In this view, Israel is a Western settler colony – morally illegitimate and, most importantly, destined to collapse under enough violent pressure, like the British in India or the French in Algeria. This is why protesters at anti-Israel rallies have chanted for Jews to “go back to Europe.”

At first glance, the comparison might seem plausible. Some argue that Israelis are simply “white Europeans” who displaced indigenous, darker-skinned Palestinians, bringing Western norms to a region they viewed as backward.

But this is an illusion – worse, an illusion that has become the default lens in much of modern discourse, justifying violence as “resistance.”

Let’s be clear about what colonialism actually is. A classic colonial power is typically a foreign entity that invades and exploits a land for the benefit of a distant empire. But Jews are not foreigners in Israel. I don’t even need to argue that Jews are indigenous, though the case is strong. What must be acknowledged is that the Jewish people have a millennia-old connection to the land.

There were continuous Jewish communities in Israel long before the Islamic conquest of the Middle East. Jewish cultural memory, religious practice, and longing for the land have been central to Jewish identity since the destruction of the Second Temple. The Hebrew Bible, Jewish prayer, medieval poetry, and halakhic texts all speak with one voice: our heart is in the East. Archaeological finds – coins bearing Hebrew inscriptions, ancient synagogues, Jewish names still in use today – make the Jewish presence undeniable. The deep connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel is why Jews have lived there continuously, even when it was nearly uninhabitable.

Israel may share features with Western democracies – representative government, an independent judiciary, civil liberties – but its culture is unmistakably Middle Eastern and Mediterranean. From its music and food to its social norms and street life, Israel is not an imitation of Paris or London. The language is Hebrew, an ancient Semitic tongue revived by the Zionist movement. The cuisine draws from Middle Eastern, North African, and Mediterranean traditions. The street life and markets feel closer to Cairo than to Copenhagen.

There is nothing colonial about Israeli culture. It is not imposed. It is not foreign. It is homegrown – an organic expression of a people re-rooting themselves in ancestral soil. Israel is not comparable to the British in India or the French in Algeria. Whether or not one wants to call Jews “indigenous,” the idea that they are foreign in Israel is untenable.

And if we still insist on calling Israel “colonial,” then we must ask: Who is Israel colonizing for? What empire sent them? What global power stands behind this supposed project of domination? Is it “the Jews”? That’s not only vague, but it’s also conspiratorial. There was no Jewish empire before 1948. The Zionist project wasn’t sponsored by any colonial power. In fact, it often clashed with them, especially the British. Jews built Israel not as agents of empire, but in defiance of them.

At this stage, some critics shift their argument. If Israel doesn’t fit the mold of classical colonialism, they say, then it must be settler colonialism – outsiders displacing a native population for their own sake, rather than for an empire.

This reframing deserves scrutiny. When it becomes clear that no foreign power dispatched the Jews and no empire reaped the benefit, the accusation doesn’t disappear, it simply mutates. “Settler colonialism” becomes a catch-all phrase, preserving the charge of foreignness while discarding the imperial context. But in doing so, the term loses analytical precision. If it now means any migration that results in tension or demographic change, then it becomes indistinguishable from most nation-building projects in history.

Worse, it functions less as a description than a condemnation. It implies that the Jewish presence is illegitimate not because it served an empire, but because Jews came, stayed, and built a state. In this framing, permanence itself becomes the crime, and indigeneity is defined not by roots, language, or culture, but by who was living there in the moment before political power shifted.

Some may still argue that the problem is that Israel imposed itself on another people. That is a serious moral question – but it is not the same as colonialism. The Zionist project was not motivated by conquest, extraction, or domination, but by return and survival. It was built by refugees and survivors, not imperial administrators. These were not people in search of indigenous populations to subjugate, but a people seeking refuge in the only place where they could be assuredly safe, where many of their Jewish brethren already lived.

From the very beginning, the vision was not one of domination, but of coexistence. As the Israeli Declaration of Independence proclaimed:

WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

This was not the language of colonial rulers imposing foreign control. It was the offer of partnership from a people returning home under fire – an invitation to build a shared future in the land both peoples called their own.

The main issue is that the term colonizer doesn’t just describe; it prescribes. It implies that Israel must be dismantled, and that violence against it is not only justified but redemptive. But Israel is not a colony, and Israelis are not colonists. There is no metropole to return to.

This is what makes the logic of “resistance through violence” so hollow. The fantasy that Israel will collapse under enough violence as if it were a European colony is just that: a fantasy. Choosing to cast Israel as a “colonizer” doesn’t help the Palestinian people, it only hurts them. It persuades them that enough bloodshed will make the Jews go elsewhere. The result is not freedom but tragedy – escalating violence, deepened suffering, and greater restrictions on Palestinian life.

The colonialism lens doesn’t clarify the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it distorts it. It reduces a complex national struggle into a simplistic morality tale of oppressors and oppressed. And it justifies violence by dressing it up as resistance.

The lesson for the West is this: shouting “colonizer” in the streets doesn’t help Palestinians. It traps them in a fictional reality – and it obscures the only path forward: mutual recognition, and peace.