Israel was not Founded by Colonists Stealing Land from Palestinians
Jews immigrated normally or were refugees, and then the country split after a civil war
The progressive left has turned sharply against Israel. Leaders of the movement make a number of false claims including that Israel is a “colonial” or “settler” country, and that Israel was founded by taking land from Palestinians. None of those claims are true.
Unfortunately, this false intellectual foundation, which is largely funded by Islamic radicals in Qatar (to the tune of $4.7B over 20 years), has created a false narrative, originating in U.S. universities, which has captured much of the “oppression-oriented left.”
More on the Oppression-oriented New Left here:
Let’s address each of these in turn.
Stealing Land
The false narrative promulgated is that Palestine was a country or at least a people living peacefully in the Middle East, and Jewish militants rushed in, attacked them, and drove them off, thus seizing their land.
In reality, every single Jewish Israeli comes from one of three ancestries or sources
- Jews who have lived in the land of Israel for as long as 3,500 years
- Jews who immigrated to Israel under the Ottoman Empire or the British rule — mostly legally, but some illegally as well
- Jews who came to Israel as refugees, after being driven out of Europe by the Nazis, or out of nearby Arab and Persian countries
All three of these are legitimate ways to arrive in a country, respected by international law. Refugees are guaranteed protections. Immigration was allowed most of the time, and children of illegal immigrants in the 1940s are now natural born citizens and have every right to be there as well.
Israel was founded after a civil war by immigrants and refugees who were attacked by their Arab neighbors.
Land was taken from many Arab families during the 1948 war that founded Israel, which was a sort of civil war that occurred after decades of escalating violence between Jewish and Arab residents of Mandatory Palestine (as the Brits called their territory before the founding of Israel).
In addition to the Jewish citizens, there are also over two million Arab Muslims, Druze and Christians who are full citizens of Israel, because they stayed in Israel during the war when Israel was founded. They are like the indigenous Jewish citizens above.
Winning territory in a war is not theft
So there was a civil war and the Arabs lost most of the territory. Not all — Jordan conquered what is now the West Bank including Jerusalem. Jews were removed from Jerusalem promptly by the Arabs at that time. Along the same lines, Arabs were driven out of their homes during the fighting in Israel proper. Both sides claimed territory for their own ethnic and religious group after the war, in the territory they held.
Then, in 1967, there was another war — not a civil war, but this time an attack by neighboring Arab states including Jordan, and Israel won back the West Bank territory, and Jews returned to Jerusalem. Many more Palestinians were then driven out.
Funny how that works — does anyone ever do well after trying to kill all the Jews?
These are territorial expansions typical after a war. Particularly if there is a hostile population in some territory with a decades-long history of attacks, rather than a desire to return home and live peacefully.
Colonists
Often, a strong power, such as Britain, France or China, takes over a weaker, less-developed country and controls it to extract resources and sell goods there, or for strategic military purposes.
Present-day Israel did briefly have Britain controlling the territory, but the nation of Israel has very little to do with the British colonial period and certainly can’t be blamed for the Brits actions. Israel was founded in the civil war after the British left, by Jews trying to survive the Arab attacks after the Brits were no longer keeping the peace.
Israelis are immigrants and refugees, not colonists.
Settlers
Israel does have a shameful practices of enabling settlers to take over land in the West Bank. They make life miserable for the existing Palestinian residents in most places they go, many of them are violent, and they get support from the Israeli army, who should arrest the settlers for most of what they do, but protect them instead.
However, the Settlers are not the creators or main body of Israel, and the state of Israel was not created by settlers.
It is shameful, but not how the country was founded, or the main nature of the country — which is democratic and pluralistic. Reform is needed, not annihilation or terror attacks.
Again, Israel was founded after a civil war by immigrants and refugees who were attacked by their Arab neighbors.
Summing it up
Jews were peaceful, legitimate immigrants as well as part of the indigenous population of Israel until the cycle of violence was started by intolerant Arabs in the region (a small minority of Arabs in the early 1900s).
The Jewish minority were later attacked by neighboring (Arab) countries, but won. (Funny how that works — does anyone ever do well after trying to kill all the Jews?) Letting the hostile Arabs back in after so many of them had been attacking and killing Jews for decades was not allowed. That may be wrong, but war is hell.
Despite questionable policies in the West Bank and Israel’s refusal to let refugees return after some wars, Jews all arrived in internationally-respected, legitimate ways, and won wars to survive and secure their territory.
No settler-colonialist nonsense here.
