As the saying goes, knowledge is recognizing that tomatoes are a fruit, but wisdom is knowing not to put them in your fruit salad. In other words, sometimes there is a gap between words’ technical meaning and real-world usage. This principle similarly holds for an academic field of study currently enmeshed with a social movement – and, for the average Jew, it is much less important to know what “settler colonialist theory” actually is than to understand what anti-Israel advocates mean when saying it.
While still taking sufficient time to explain settler colonialist theory, Adam Kirsch demonstrates this point in his concise and well-argued On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice.
In only 132 pages, Kirsch delves into the origins of this academic theory, shows how it became focused only on the Western world (to the exclusion of other more apt, contemporary examples of settler colonialism still ongoing today), and lays bare the fixation settler colonialist theory has with Israel, in particular.
Much of Kirsch’s polemic can be distilled to the following: Settler colonialism best describes immigration (and aboriginal displacement) patterns like those of the United States, Canada, and Australia. However, people who today are most angered by the impacts of these movements know that “decolonizing” such massive countries – their true wish – is unrealistic. In Israel, something different and alluring exists – its “settler colonists” (i.e., Israelis) could be displaced more realistically than, e.g., the 350 million Americans from the US. So, even though Israel hardly fits the theory of settler colonialism (for a host of reasons, Kirsch explains), anti-Zionists foment against the Jewish state, considering it a so-called settler colonialist enterprise.
That followers of this theory can obsess in such an illogical way reveals what Kirsch argues is central to understanding the movement against settler colonialism – that although it masquerades as an academic discipline (even having its own journal), it is more of an ideology or social movement. This folly leads those who espouse it to accept all sorts of obviously false axioms, such as the notion that were Israel to be “defeated,” it would also erase capitalism, discrimination, inequality, and anything else a person might deem evil.
The most damning indictment of settler colonialist theory’s application to Israel is not that it is technically wrong, though it is. Instead, it is its effects, which Kirsch amply documents. Unlike in places like Algeria or Rhodesia, where attacks against actual settler colonists could lead to the settlers going back to their home countries, there is no such possibility for Israelis.
Most Israelis fled persecution from other lands, especially within the Arab Islamic MENA region, and have nowhere else to go. Kirsch argues – and I agree – that the settler colonial activists’ pipe dream of ending Israel harms the chance for meaningful peace between Israelis and Palestinians. This influence should concern all parties.
As he puts it, settler colonialist theory “cultivate[s] hatred of those designated as settlers and to inspire hope for their disappearance,” and “insofar as the ideology of settler colonialism nourishes such dreams, it helps to ensure a worse future for everyone living ‘between the river and the sea.’”
Another misguided and misleading impulse of those who try to squeeze Israel into the box of “settler colonialism” is their determination to argue that Israel is committing genocide. A neutral observer might hold serious concern for Palestinian suffering – and even, e.g., oppose the war in Gaza or believe Israel has committed war crimes – while still scratching their head at this puzzling assertion.
After all, in the time Israel has purportedly been committing genocide, the population of Palestinians has dramatically grown; either Israel is terrible at committing genocide, or there’s something else happening here. And there is. As Kirsch explains, settler colonialist theory insists that settler colonialism, by definition, involves genocide. So, if one is committed to arguing that Israel is a settler colonist state, then it must be guilty of genocide – facts to the contrary be damned.
In the end, the best rebuttal to offer to this disingenuity might be what Kirsch uses to assess the new trend to deem anything in Western history, culture, or present evil: “Turning a myth upside-down only produces a different myth.” These are the same words we should use in assessing the arguments of settler colonialist theory against Israel. Israel’s government deserves plenty of criticism in general and in its waging of war in Gaza. Israeli and Jewish myths about the land and state – and about Palestinians – have their flaws, too, to be sure. But constructing a new, more vicious myth to take their place gets no one closer to truth or peace.
