The Decolonization Narrative -- The Atlantic

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How are they not "relevant to broader Israel"? After all, "broader Israel" enables and actively supports these behaviors.


I should have added to my list of settler-colonialist behaviors, "Establishment of a state that discriminates in favor of one specific class of immigrants and against the indigenous people or return of same."


It's an ongoing issue because many of the refugees were never able to fully settle anywhere else. Many of them, and their descendants, are still living in refugee camps after 75 years.


I'm not disputing the right of Israelis to live there. I'm disputing the decades-old denial of the right of the displaced Palestinians to return -- even in a gradual, phased-in sort of way. (I do understand that allowing all of them to return all at once, at the present time, could cause lots of problems.)


I don't know enough about India and Pakistan to know how "colonialist" I would deem this to be. For example, were huge numbers of Hindus forcibly expelled from Pakistan, or was it already an almost all-Muslim area?


It is, but our colonial history is far enough in the past that not much can be done about it, other than to ensure that the U.S. government (for example) honors its treaties with the indigenous tribes and ensure that the rights of indigenous people are protected, both as individuals and as tribes.


My definition is based on the realities of life for the indigenous people. I define settler-colonialism based on a conquering government's actual real-life behaviors toward the indigenous people, both current and historical.

That doesn't mean that your military counterpart doesn't have to follow the rules of war. If a terrorist, a bank robber or an other criminal use you as a human shield or take you as an hostage the police can't blow up the building you are in or start spraying bullets and kill you and then blame the criminal.

If by following the rules of war you mean not committing war crimes, well just as a valuable piece of art is only really worth what some person is actually willing to pay for it, a war crime only matters if there's somebody in a position to prosecute and punish the culprit. That only happens if the war criminal is defeated. In WWII, both sides committed war crimes, but only Axis members were punished. Israel is only ever going to face judgment for war crimes if they are defeated, which in their case means ceasing to exist as a geopolitical entity. Which they seem predisposed to avoid by any means.

The United Kingdom is currently illegally occupying the Chagos Islands (which it calls the British Indian Ocean Territory). The natives of one of the islands, Diego Garcia, were expelled to make room for a naval base.

The UK engaging in colonialism in the Indian Ocean does not mean that the United Kingdom is a nation of settlers who don't have a right to live where they live.


I should have been more precise. It is clearly an issue for those who are still living in refugee camps. It does not seem to me to be an argument against the ongoing existence of Israel.

Then we needn't disagree, because I'm not disputing that they should have the right to return.

14.5 million people were displaced due to the partition of India, about half into modern India and half out of India into modern Pakistan or modern Bangladesh. It's the second-biggest refugee crisis in history, behind only WWII.

Important to remember, though, that just like the partition of Palestine, the partition of India was forced upon the population by the British at the end of the colonial period. In both cases, there have been constant border disputes ever since, especially on the India-Pakistan border. There was a huge war for Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan that caused another major refugee crisis, and for a long time the India-Bangladesh border was a total mess of exclaves (sometimes exclaves containing their own enclaves, and in one instance, Dahala, an enclave within an enclave within an enclave) that has only recently been rationalised in 2015.

At this point, the damage is done. We cannot unpartition either country. The reality is that Israel, Palestine, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh all exist. They should continue to exist for the foreseeable future. They should all try to treat each other well, and there is no excusing when they fail to, but writing any of them off as entirely "colonialist" and delegitimising the states seems to miss the point that we're talking about people who have now lived in these places their whole lives, not powerful outsiders imposing themselves.

No, but we do all have a long history of conquering and genocide. So, is the solution to just let them all fight it out until there's a clear winner and the minority is properly suppressed & oppressed like Indigenous peoples of North America and Australia?

???????????????????
"you don't deserve to live here because your grandparents weren't born here"
I do not see anywhere in what you are quoting where they suggest that.
I don't like putting words into another person's mouth even in their defense, but the obvious crux of what Readydaer was saying was:
"You don't deserve to come here, kick out the original inhabitants at gunpoint, destroy their homes and holy sites, force the original inhabitants who do not share your religion into a "separate but equal" second state, and establish a ethno-religious apartheid state where the non-Jewish original inhabitants are explicitly treated as second-class citizens."
I am baffled. I don't think you're twisting words, I don't think you're making a bad faith argument, I don't think you're that lacking in reading comprehension--i don't know how to interpret this.
Israelis are not comparable to simple migrants looking for a better life. Poles are not moving to England to force the English into refugee camps at gunpoint and establish a Polish-Catholic-supremacist state. Mexicans are not coming to America to establish a Latino-supremacist state. The two are in no way comparable.


Those last three examples are not in very good taste. Native Americans *should* have more say in how this country is run, so they can undo the centuries of genocide and destruction of culture and the displacement of the natives into barren, impoverished reservations. Ditto for Australia (where, may I remind you, the mostly white electorate just voted against a native advisory council for parliament). Whites shouldnt have *no* rights, but they can never claim the same right to this land as those who were always here.

Also....define "Briton". Many Israel supporters act like Muslims have no rights to live in Palestine because Islam did not exist when Judaism did? That sets a precedent that the Anglo-Saxons would *not* like. When will we kick out those filthy, barbarous, warmongering Anglos out of the British isles? The Celts have lived in those islands for centuries before those dirty Germanics came over and made the island the base for their worldwide genocidal projects. And the Celts have suffered horrible oppression by these barbarians for centuries. They were forced into poorer lands, their languages were trampled upon, and the Anglos had the gall to paint those they oppress as drunken, axe-swinging savages.
(Because this is the internet, and an autistic forum, and Poe's Law exists, I feel the need to say I am not actually advocating this. But please consider for a moment what Europe would look like if we followed the precedent Israel has set. Imagine if the English applied the same morals and standards in their evaluation of Palestinians the same way they apply them to the non-Irish population of Ulster--to give just one example.)

The U.K. is also located very far away and has a much longer continuous history. And, while lots of people have gotten displaced from the U.K. itself over the centuries (ending up in the U.K.'s various colonies), none of the descendants of those people are still living in refugee camps as far as I know. Ditto for at least most of the indigenous people who were in turn displaced by the people displaced from the U.K. in at least most of the U.K.'s former colonies.

Back to Israel/Palestine. Currently, only the West Bank settlers are "settlers" in the strict legal sense of being where they are in violation of a treaty. However, the entire state of Israel is "settler-colonialist" in a more general sense of having been founded by an immigrant community forcibly expelling the majority of the indigenous population, within relatively recent history, within the lifetimes of at least some people living today, and whose descendants are still living in refugee camps.


It's an argument (and not the only argument) in favor of Israel becoming a secular democratic Israel-Palestine, instead of an ethnostate, somewhat similar to the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa.


Problem: Israel refuses to allow this, because then Jews would no longer be a majority, and many Israeli Jews fear that the result would be another Holocaust.

Therefore, if/when Israel is ever successfully pressured (by the international community or by the U.S.A. more specifically) to move toward an equitable one-state solution, in lieu of the failed two-state solution, it would need to have a very carefully constructed constitution, to ensure that no ethnic or religious group gets majorly screwed over there ever again.


Big difference between Israel/Palestine and India/Pakistan/Bangladesh: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are all, at least, contiguous land-masses. Palestine, on the other hand, is geographically more like the Bantustans of Apartheid-era South Africa.

The West Bank is divided up into:

- Area A, governed by the Palestinian Authority
- Area B, administered jointly by the PA and Israel
- Area C, occupied and administered solely by Israel

where only Area C is contiguous, and Areas A and B are each sets of many tiny isolated islands in a sea of C. (Alternatively, Area C is a slice of Swiss cheese, with Areas A and B each consisting of many tiny little holes in C.)

It's kind of hard for Palestine to function as an independent country that way.

Israel's occupation of Area C was supposed to be only temporary, but it has gone on for thirty years and shows no sign of ending anytime soon. Problem is, Israel does not want to give up Area C because of (among other things) its military strategic value. The West Bank is mountainous, whereas Israel proper is mostly a coastal plain. Also the "Judea" part of "Judea and Samaria" has great historical value to Jews. Also the West Bank settlers are voting citizens of Israel, and they obviously don't want to give up their new homes.

For all these reasons, the two-state solution is just not working and looks like it will never work.

So it seems to me it's time to start thinking seriously about how to make an equitable one-state Israel-Palestine solution work.