Colonialism and consequences.

Once upon a time, there was a group of Europeans who left Europe. They didn’t really want to, but felt they had no choice. By leaving, they escaped religious persecution and were able to found a new nation that they could run along the lines of their own enlightened principles. It would be a place where they could be safe from oppression and have unlimited economic opportunity.

In this, they had some support from European powers and were granted a territory to call their own. Of course, as is so often the way of things, the land that they were to build their colony upon was not entirely unoccupied. There were a few people, of a sort, already living there. Not many, and not the kind who mattered, just non-European infidels.

Besides, they were poor, backward, and weak. In the end, they were unable to militarily defend themselves, which turns out to be relevant because many of the locals were inexplicably violent—as though they resented having their land taken from them by outsiders—and had to be beaten down. Things got messy.

Now, I don’t want to say that the colonists committed genocide, as such, but the aboriginal population had to make room for them. And whenever people are forcibly relocated en masse, there are going to be some causalities. The natives weren’t killed off entirely, just pushed aside and relegated to inferior status, where they remain.

Decades passed. More immigrants flooded in to settle this new land, crowding out the locals further. History happened. There were wars and independence and more wars. All along, there was colonial oppression and what we would call terrorism. And there was, despite the latter and because of the former, growing prosperity. At least for the people who mattered: the colonizers.

Flash forward to the present. This new nation, conceived in liberty, was wealthier and more advanced than its neighbors, but its success had been built upon a foundation of colonialism and injustice, and much of the latter was ongoing, albeit somewhat evolved. Now its special position is maintained by military power, exceptionalism, and a disregard for international norms.

That’s how we got here. The question that remains is what can we do do about it today? Or, more simply, now what?

Well, the obvious answer is to reverse history. Send the Europeans back to Europe, where they (presumably) belong, at gunpoint if need be. Confiscate their wealth and leave everything behind to the natives; or to their descendants, anyhow. Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy, and wrong: this is it.

But before we move on to better alternatives, we should probably resolve some ambiguity: what nation are we even talking about? There’s an obvious answer, and it fits, but it’s not the only one. Yes, this could be the history of the United States of America, but it could also be the history of the State of Israel. In key ways, this would even fit the history of the Republic of South Africa. Colonialism happens all over and all the time, and is all much the same.

Let’s focus on Israel. The idea that it ought to exist is called Zionism, and it is not entirely uncontroversial. This controversy existed even before the country did, even among Jews. These days, there are many critics of Israeli policy, particularly regarding the civil rights of its aboriginal people; the Palestinians. Some of these critics would go so far as to call themselves anti-Zionist, but what does this really mean? Well, by definition, it is a rejection of the idea that Israel, as the Jewish state, should exist.

There are people for whom this entails a great expulsion, sending the Jews back to Europe, where they (presumably) belong. For others, the Jews would simply be deported six feet under, much as in a certain Final Solution. Really, these two plans are pretty much the same in the end: forced relocation at gunpoint means a lot of guns going off, and genocide means a lot of people fleeing to avoid being massacred by their former neighbors.

The people supporting these ideas are, to put it bluntly, crazy and evil. We are no more going to kill off or expel the European colonizers from Israel than from America or South Africa. As horrible and bloody as the history of colonization is, decolonization cannot entail genocide. What needs to be expelled is the colonialism, and the inequity it generates.

It could be argued that the Jews did not and do not deserve a state of their own, particularly one created on top of an existing state and its people, and Israel should never have been reinvented in the 20th century. It could be, but that would be a moot point. Israel exists and can either continue its current path, be destroyed, or improved. That last option is a saner sort of anti-Zionism.

This form is defined as the opposition to the notion that the Jews deserve an ethnostate of their own; a country where Jews are first-class citizens and non-Jews are second-class, and not necessarily even citizens. In other words, it is an opposition to Israeli Apartheid, which is called Hafrada (literally the same word, only in Hebrew instead of Afrikaans).

What this means is that Israel should continue to exist as a state, but not an ethnostate. It should not have the Jews (or anyone else) installed as the permanently-dominant ethnic group. It should not have a backdoor for Jews, and only Jews, to emigrate. It should separate church and state fully, instead of giving the Jewish religion power over secular matters, including marriage and immigration.

This anti-Hafrada stance is anti-Zionism for those who are not sociopaths or antisemites, but that antisemitism is the elephant conspicuously in the middle of the anti-Zionist room. Antisemites, particularly among the populists on the far left, use criticism of Israel as a cover for their hatred of Jews.

As liberals, this puts us in the odd position where nothing we say is acceptable. When we criticize Israel for its apartheid, we are grouped together with the antisemites and their bigotry against Jews. When we criticize antisemitism, we are grouped together with the Zionists and their bigotry against Palestinians. Both of these extremes are wrong and there is a sane middle ground for liberals to occupy that consistently rejects bigotry instead of siding with one form over another.

These extremes map partially to the left/right continuum. Knee-jerk support for Israel, with a concomitant demonization of Palestinians, is endemic to the far right, even among overt antisemites, but also to the older generations of American Jews. Knee-jerk opposition to Israel, with a concomitant demonization of Jews, is endemic to the far left, even though they are nominally opposed to bigotry. It is only the moderate, liberal left that avoids these two traps by rejecting bigotry without engaging in it.

I could go on about the problem of Israel providing fuel for antisemitism by claiming to be the Jewish homeland and therefore the global representation of an ethnic group, or into the details of the many forms of anti-Zionism, some of which preceded the creation of modern Israel, or into single-state vs. two-state solutions. I could, but I won’t, because these are just details.

Instead, I will end by saying that bigotry—all bigotry, always—is wrong. No matter your political leanings, if you find yourself supporting bigotry, you have gone beyond the pale. If you love or hate a nation beyond the limits of what it earns, you are a nationalist. If you side with extremists, you become an extremist. There is a sane middle ground, and we should all stay in it, even though it means offending those extremists.

Now I’ll leave you with a recommendation: watch this video to understand why people seem to care so much about what’s happening in Israel: Why the world is obsessed with Israel and Palestine.