No, it’s been a little over a 100 years of Settler Colonialist Zionism.
Origins of Zionism
Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.
Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.
That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.
Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.
Quote
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction
that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
That is not what I’m saying. The greater Jerusalem area has been in conflict for millennia. It’s shrouded in a different veil over time, but the core conflict remains over control of the Middle East, specifically access to the Mediterranean and control of the trading routes between Africa, Asia and Europe. Over the years this has become entangled with religious fanatische, but at its core, it’s the same conflict that’s been going on since people first settled the region.
Theodor Herzls ideas concerning the region are in no way new or original. He’s making basically the same argument as the church prior to the first crusade.
The crusades were an imperialistic conquest, in that sense we agree there are similarities, but it’s not really related to the origins of Zionism. The current conflict. Zionism is a unique form of Settler Colonialism which drew from the more recent European Colonialism and was backed by the Imperial forces of the time (British, then American).
For most of the thousands of years of history in the region of Palestine, there has been peace and coexistance between them and their different faiths.
But the current conflict is not fundamentally about religion. Zionism is not Judaism. It is a fight between the Colonialist power, Israel, who is ethnically cleansing the native population of Palestinian people, and the people of Palestine, who are fighting against that ethnic cleansing by any means possible.
Colonial narratives, Masalha states, have conflated Palestine’s history with biblical myths which eliminate historical knowledge of Palestine and its status as a distinct geopolitical entity since the Bronze Age. A reading of Palestine from an indigenous perspective shows an uninterrupted sequence in which the land was enriched by different cultures and no attempt to annihilate the original inhabitants and their spaces. Linguistically and territorially, there was continuity. The cultural heritage and Palestinian historical consciousness were also paramount in shaping its national consciousness.
We can agree about the historical continuity in the region. I don’t think however, that Zionism in itself is a new attempt at colonialism. The romans, crusader states and babylonians did likewise. They lacked the weapons and men however to implement it at such a scale. Montefiore has an interesting source from a scholar during the crusades whom I musst paraphrase from memory im afraid since I don’t have his book at hand: „the streets of the Armenian quarter ran knee high with blood when the crusaders came, indiscriminately killing their christian brothers.
It’s a very different type of Colonialism. The Crusade colonies largely ended up integrating with the local Palestinian people and their customs. Zionism, on the other hand, has been set of the eradication of the People and History of Palestine.
Crusades
The Catholic Church, reaching the peak of its political power in the High Middle Ages, called armies from across Europe to a series of Crusades against Islam. The Latin Crusaders occupied Palestine in 1099 and founded the Crusader states in the Levant. Following the great East–West schism of 1054 between the Eastern Orthodox and Latin churches and after the arrival of the first Latin Crusaders in Palestine, the Crusaders appointed a Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem.
The hierarchy of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and high‑minded elite Frankish crusaders in Palestine, who sought to create a European Latin‑speaking colony in the Holy Land, could not prevent the transformation, within a generation or so, of the outlook of many ordinary Latin settlers in Palestine. Some churchy Latin crusaders were deeply concerned that many ordinary European colonists practically went native in Palestine, adopting ‘Oriental’ styles and local customs.
The local Arab Muslim‒Christian bonds in Jerusalem can be traced to early Islam. Following the elimination of the European Latin Crusaders from the city, indigenous Arab Muslim‒Christian shared traditions of convivencia in Jerusalem were re‑cultivated; symbolically, the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were entrusted to two aristocratic Palestinian Muslim families in the city, the Nuseibeh and Judeh al‑Ghoudia. Created by Salah al‑Din shortly before his death in 1193, this post‑Crusader ceremonial tradition added another widely respected layer of daily rituals to the multi‑layered ancient sacredness of the site. Today the ruins of Crusader sites (churches, hostels and castles) are visible throughout historic Palestine and graf f i ti left by Crusaders can still be seen in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
Zionism
Furthermore, place‑naming cartography and state‑sponsored explorations were central to the modern European conquest of the earth, empire‑building and settler‑colonisa‑ tion projects, the Zionist enterprise included. Scholars often assume that place names provide clues to the historical and shared heritage of places and regions. This work uses social memory theory to analyse the cultural politics of place‑naming in Israel. Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs’ study of the construction of social memory by the Latin Crusaders and Christian medieval pilgrims, the work shows Zionists’ toponymic strategies in Palestine: their superimposition of Old Testament and Talmudic toponyms was designed to erase the local Palestinian and Arab Islamic heritage of the country. In the pre‑Nakba period Zionist toponymic schemes utilised 19th century Western explorations of Old Testament ‘names’ and ‘places’ and appropriated Palestinian toponyms. Following the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and the ruptures of the Nakba, the Israeli state, now in control of 78 percent of the land, accelerated its toponymic project and pursued methods whose main features were memoricide. Continuing into the post‑1967 occupation, these colonial methods continue to threaten the destruction of the diverse cultural and historic heritage of the land.
Nur Masalha - Palestine A Four Thousand Year History
It’s the outcome that ended up differently, not the intention, a circumstance your source describes as well. I don’t think we are in opposition about the actual proceedings, but the way we look at it. Am I correct in the assumption that you place more emphasis on the actual proceedings to define a political movement, rather than their school of thought?
No, it’s been a little over a 100 years of Settler Colonialist Zionism.
Origins of Zionism
Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.
Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.
That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.
Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.
Quote
Settlements, Occupation, and Apartheid
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
Apartheid Evidence
Amnesty Report
Human Rights Watch Report
B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Historian Works on the History
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
As per my other comment:
That is not what I’m saying. The greater Jerusalem area has been in conflict for millennia. It’s shrouded in a different veil over time, but the core conflict remains over control of the Middle East, specifically access to the Mediterranean and control of the trading routes between Africa, Asia and Europe. Over the years this has become entangled with religious fanatische, but at its core, it’s the same conflict that’s been going on since people first settled the region.
Theodor Herzls ideas concerning the region are in no way new or original. He’s making basically the same argument as the church prior to the first crusade.
The crusades were an imperialistic conquest, in that sense we agree there are similarities, but it’s not really related to the origins of Zionism. The current conflict. Zionism is a unique form of Settler Colonialism which drew from the more recent European Colonialism and was backed by the Imperial forces of the time (British, then American).
For most of the thousands of years of history in the region of Palestine, there has been peace and coexistance between them and their different faiths.
But the current conflict is not fundamentally about religion. Zionism is not Judaism. It is a fight between the Colonialist power, Israel, who is ethnically cleansing the native population of Palestinian people, and the people of Palestine, who are fighting against that ethnic cleansing by any means possible.
The book Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha goes into the detailed history of the region prior to the beginnings of Zionism
We can agree about the historical continuity in the region. I don’t think however, that Zionism in itself is a new attempt at colonialism. The romans, crusader states and babylonians did likewise. They lacked the weapons and men however to implement it at such a scale. Montefiore has an interesting source from a scholar during the crusades whom I musst paraphrase from memory im afraid since I don’t have his book at hand: „the streets of the Armenian quarter ran knee high with blood when the crusaders came, indiscriminately killing their christian brothers.
It’s a very different type of Colonialism. The Crusade colonies largely ended up integrating with the local Palestinian people and their customs. Zionism, on the other hand, has been set of the eradication of the People and History of Palestine.
Crusades
Zionism
It’s the outcome that ended up differently, not the intention, a circumstance your source describes as well. I don’t think we are in opposition about the actual proceedings, but the way we look at it. Am I correct in the assumption that you place more emphasis on the actual proceedings to define a political movement, rather than their school of thought?