Book review of Adam Kirsch's On Settler Colonialism

 

Book review

On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice. By Adam Kirsch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2024. 142 pages.

Reviewed by Hendrik van der Breggen

 

Adam Kirsch’s On Settler Colonialism should be required reading in colleges and universities across Canada and the U.S. For Kirsch, an American Jew who is a poet, literary critic, and editor at Wall Street Journal (Weekend Review section), the impetus for writing his book was the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. The Hamas attack was disturbingly evil, to say the least. But Kirsch was also disturbed—rightly so—by the “enthusiasm for violence against Israeli civilians” displayed by many Western academics (students and professors) and by the fact that “more than half of college-age Americans seem to believe that it would be justified for Palestinians to commit a genocide of Israeli Jews.” (Kirsch, On Settler Colonialism, pages 4 & 1; hereafter references to Kirsch’s book will simply be the letter K.) Clearly, this deep hatred for Israel and Jews shows something has gone wrong in Western higher education. Kirsch’s book is an attempt to set things right.

Critical theories in general

Before I go on with Kirsch’s book, a few words about so-called critical theories may be appropriate, for the sake of getting our intellectual bearings (roughly). Critical theories are popular in the present academic scene. These theories attempt to provide an overall background understanding or diagnosis of what is the main problem with the world. Typically on such theories, a more powerful group is seen as an oppressor and a less powerful group is seen as oppressed. Often there is some very real injustice that the theories pick up on, but then they run amok in diagnosing every evil in terms of the theory and in providing solutions. Some critical theories see economic classes as the root of all evil. Think of Marx’s idea of economic class division and conflict. On this view social problems arise because the powerful rich (capitalists) oppress the poor (the workers). The solution is to create a classless society with communal ownership of factories and farms, and to achieve this goal may require a violent revolution. History shows such solutions tend to fail dismally and disastrously (think of the former Soviet Union). Another critical theory—critical race theory—sees racism as the root of all evil. On this view most problems arise because whites (usually heterosexual males of European descent) oppress non-whites (everyone else). The solution is to create a society in which diversity, equity, and inclusion reign. Recent history has shown—and is showing—that such a solution tends to create a mess.[1]

Settler colonialism

Enter the ideology of settler colonialism—and Kirsch’s book.

According to Kirsch, settler colonialism is a species of critical theory which sees the major root of all evil as stemming from a country’s origin, more specifically, an origin having to do with conquest and settlement. Examples of such countries, on this view, are the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Europeans are the oppressing colonizers, and indigenous peoples are the oppressed victims. A more recent example, according to settler colonialism, is Israel and its oppression of native Palestinians. (Reminder: Israel became a state in 1948, i.e., much later than America, Australia, and Canada.) On settler colonialism, the country’s origin is a sin because it is founded in genocide, understood broadly to include not only the killing of a native people but also their physical transfer and/or their cultural assimilation. Moreover, this sin is ongoing, that is, it’s not merely a one-off event but a “structure.” The conquerors continue their conquering by promoting “settler ways of being.” (K 7, 58) Thus, on settler colonialism, even if a citizen is a mere descendent of a settler or has immigrated to the settlement-born country, whether the citizen is white, black, or whatever, that citizen is a settler and therefore complicit in guilt. Even though the original settlers may be long gone, settler ways of being continue to impinge unjustly on the native inhabitants. The original invasion of long ago continues. The solution: “deconstruct the social order founded by settler colonialism.” (K 58) More specifically, in the words of two settler colonial theorists, reported by Kirsch: “[this] requires the abolition of land as property and uphold[ing] the sovereignty of Native land and people” and “repatriating land to sovereign Native tribes and nations.” (K 30)  The goal is to return the land to “the pristine nature that existed before Europeans arrived.” (K 54) And, because of the violent founding of the country, violent resistance may be appropriate—even virtuous.

Kirsch argues that the people who hold to settler colonialism as an ideology tend to understand and criticize present problems a priori primarily on the basis of that ideology. Such problems range “from selfishness to strip mining to the scientific method.” (K 58)  The ideology is a totalizing interpretive lens, and all history and the goings-on in history are seen through this lens. On this view, bad things today are a legacy of settler colonialism. Bad things today are bad because of a society’s origin via conquest and settlement. Settler colonialism is the original sin.

It turns out that today many Western academics and students view the West in general through the ideological-interpretive lens of settler colonialism (witness the prevalence of “land acknowledgements”) and thus negatively—very negatively.

Kirsch goes on: The settler colonialist ideology gets a grip on people because they are indignant about injustices. And, as Kirsch rightly points out, there are in fact injustices to be indignant about. So far, so good.

But, Kirsch points out, things run amok quickly. It turns out that the ideology of settler colonialism serves as a Procrustean bed in its causal analysis of the injustices and in its attempts to resolve them.[2] There are injustices involved in the history of conquest and settlement, to be sure, and in fact the whole history of the world is rife with conquest and settlement. But the goings-on in the world are much more complex—and so too the possible solutions—than the ideology allows. In effect, settler colonialism serves as an ideological rolling pin (my change of metaphor) that flattens the historical and moral landscape to reflect the ideology rather than letting the actual landscape present its own complex peculiarities (not all of which is bad, as Kirsch rightly also points out).

According to Kirsch, “the actual effect of the ideology of settler colonialism…is to cultivate hatred of those designated as settlers and to inspire hope for their disappearance.” (K 117–118) Indeed, viewing one’s society now as illegitimate, as the ideology of settler colonialism requires, and thus trying to undo the injustices of the settler colonial past which led up to the present with its inherited and ongoing settler sins, runs, according to Kirsch, into the problem of creating more injustices.

Enter: Israel

Israel is of particular interest to settler colonialist ideologues because, compared to other Western countries, Israel’s inception is much more recent and the Israel-Palestine conflict is ongoing, so serious societal change is, for settler colonial ideologues, a live option. The abstract ideological rubber can more easily meet the reality of the road, so to speak (my words). If one takes Israel’s comparatively-recent inception as unjust, which settler colonial ideologues typically do, and if one also sees such injustice as justification for killing Israelis—as believed by apparently not a few settler colonial ideologues at university campus protests, and as approved by Hamas on anti-Jewish Islamist Jihadist grounds—then the October 7th slaughter in Israel becomes legitimate. Today’s Israeli people are not innocent, according to the ideology. They are bad, and deserve their punishment. And so killing them is a legitimate part of Palestinian “resistance” to the original and ongoing sin of settler colonialism.

Moral problems

On settler colonialism, the end, that is, the undoing of the original genocide of indigenous people perpetrated by settler colonialists, justifies the means to achieve this end, that is, more violence—this time against the settler colonialists. And so such a means is seen as virtuous. But, as Kirsch correctly points out, this is a deep moral problem for settler colonialism. If one hasn’t bought into the ideology of settler colonialism, that is, if one hasn’t ideologically numbed one’s pre-theoretic moral intuitions (my phrase, not Kirsch’s), then October 7—the targeted slaughter (and torture and rape) of civilians, including children, women, and the elderly—is a new injustice.[3] So the alleged virtue of settler colonialism’s ideology results in more conflict, more hatred, more killing of innocents—more moral abominations.

Historical problems

Another problem for settler colonialism when applied to Israel, Kirsch also argues (also rightly), is that the actual history of Israel’s inception—unlike that of the U.S., Australia, and Canada—does not fit the settler-colonial model and thus Israel’s history is forced or flattened by ideologues to fit the ideology. The few pages Kirsch devotes to this historical point are worth the price of the book, it seems to me. The following points from Kirsch deserve to be emphasized here. Unlike the cases of colonial settlers and their settling of the U.S., Australia, and Canada,

• many Jews were indigenous to the land (too);
• for the Jews the land plays a “constitutive and defining” role;
• Jews who immigrated to the land were refugees (often persecuted);
• the Jews were not attracted to the land because of its natural resources;
• there was no mother country for whom the Jews were colonialists;
• Jews did not commit genocide toward the land’s non-Jewish inhabitants.

A shortcoming of Kirsch’s book is that he does not develop the last point about Jews not committing genocide to the land’s non-Jewish inhabitants during Israel’s inception. The view that Jews did commit genocide at Israel’s inception is a highly popular view. But it is false and should be challenged. Kirsch should have set out the evidence for this falsity and put more responsibility/ blame on the Palestinian Arabs. The fact is that in 1947 the Palestinian Arabs started (and later lost) a genocidal war against the Jews, a war that was an attempt by the Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab states to bring Hitler’s “final solution” (extermination of Jews) into the region of Palestine. But the Jews refused to be victims (again) and successfully resisted the Nazi-sympathizing Arab oppressors. The 1947–49 war, started by Palestinian Arabs, was the cause of the displacement of many thousands of Palestinian Arabs, often referred to by Arabs as the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”). Yes, many Arabs, especially those deemed hostile to Israel, were forced out by Israel in 1948. This is truly tragic. But it was war—a war started by the Arabs. And these facts remain: Many Arabs left Israel willingly to get out of harm’s way because a war (to exterminate Jews) was at hand (and these fleeing Arabs planned to return to Israel after Israel was destroyed); many Arabs left Israel because the surrounding Arab nations (wishing to wage genocidal war on the Jews) ordered them to leave to facilitate the war effort (and return later to a Jew-ridden land); many Arabs who were not hostile to Israel stayed in Israel (as citizens of Israel). In other words, the criterion for Arabs being forced out of Israel was not whether they were Arab, but whether they were hostile to Israel. Thus, embedded in the criterion of expulsion is a distinction that shows the Nakba was not genocide, not ethnic cleansing. Hostility, not ethnicity or religion, was the concern. This is a significant distinction that should not be missed (but often is) and it refutes the genocide/ethnic cleansing charge.[4]

Practical problems

Back to Kirsch’s general criticism of settler colonialism: According to Kirsch, using the ideology of settler colonialism to attempt to render justice to the indigenous peoples of the U.S., Australia, and Canada is also problematic in practice in the sense that it fails to address what parts should be returned to which tribe. Moreover, which warring tribe has priority: the most recent conquerors or the previously conquered (and what about the tribes before the previously conquered tribes)? And what should be done with the non-indigenous people now living on the land whose number is huge compared to the remaining indigenous people and whose actions are so far removed from the actions of the original settlers that their responsibility for those actions is tenuous if not near-zero? Attempts to undo the effects of the long and many previous histories of conquest and settlement, much of whose historical records is lost, would result in chaos and additional injustices. Surely.

Talmudic “despair” as a possible way forward

As important as the above insights from Kirsch are—and they are important—here I wish to share briefly what I take to be Kirsch’s perhaps more important insights on how to move forward and get beyond the faulty ideology of settler colonialism.

Kirsch argues that we should acknowledge the sad and terrible truth that the entire history of the world has in fact involved an awful lot of conquest and settlement and that, contrary to what ideologues seem to assume, there is no “pure” previous country or utopia to which to return. (Note from me for the religious: Even the Garden of Eden is guarded by an archangel with a flaming sword to keep us out!) The fact of history is that the conquered of the past were also conquerors in the past. Still, says Kirsch, we should try to deal with past injustices, “recognizing that the wounds we inherit can’t be undone, but perhaps they can be healed, even if they’re guaranteed to leave a scar.” (K 129) How? By looking, as much as we can, at the actual goings-on in history without the pre-judgments of the settler-colonial ideological lens. And by employing the Talmudic concept of “despair.” (The Talmud is a multi-volume compilation of centuries of rabbinic debate about law, philosophy, and biblical interpretation. It is a source of wisdom, whether one is Jewish or not.)

Kirsch quickly adds that the Talmudic concept of “despair” is not justice per se and does not pretend to be. But it is “knowing that perfect justice often cannot be achieved” (K 130), especially in the face of the chaos and greater injustice that would likely ensue if we attempt to seek an impossible-for-humans perfect justice concerning the past. It is to seek goodness, as far as is humanly possible, even though past injustice cannot be undone. We despair of the past, yes, but do not despair of the future.

Kirsch explains well, so I quote him in extenso:

“[I]f what we want is hope for the future—for the possibility of ending conflicts, rather than renewing them; for reconciliation, rather than righteous hatred—then it may be necessary to despair of the past….” (K 128–129)

“A model for this kind of despair can be found in the Talmud’s discussion of the legal status of lost and stolen items. If a person loses a possession or has it stolen, does he remain its legal owner? It might seem obvious that he should: after all, he never agreed to give it up. But suppose a thief stole a cloak and sold it to a merchant, who sold it to a customer. If the garment still belongs to the original owner, then he would have the right to go to the customer and take it back. In remedying the original wrong, however, this would create a new wrong, since the new owner acted in good faith and paid for his purchase…. Now imagine a case involving not just a cloak but homes, land, and political sovereignty, over a span of centuries.…” (K 129)

“A legal system that held out hope of reversing every loss would create more chaos and injustice than it remedied.” (K 130)

“For this reason, Jewish law introduces the concept of ‘despair.’ Under certain circumstances, the law presumes that a person who loses a possession despairs of getting it back and thus relinquishes ownership. The Talmud’s examples include coins lost in a public place, a donkey taken by a customs collector, and a garment stolen by a bandit. A person who despairs is still entitled to monetary compensation and damages, but he or she can no longer demand the return of the original item, and its subsequent chain of title is valid.” (K 130)

Kirsch again: “Is despair justice? No. It is what the law offers instead of justice, knowing that perfect justice often cannot be achieved. And what is true of individuals and their possessions is infinitely more so of nations and their histories. To render perfect justice, the land of Israel would be restored to the Jews, who were exiled from it by the Romans, and also restored to the Palestinian Arabs who lived there before 1948. Not only is this impossible, but any attempt to secure the country for just one of these peoples would inflict suffering on millions whose only sin was being born in a contested land.” (K 130)

Ditto for other countries born of conquest and settlement and the many more millions whose only sin was being born in a contested land. Yes, we should honour treaties and provide legitimate compensation as is possible, but we should not demand the humanly impossible and we should not create more injustice.

According to Kirsch, acknowledging this despair and not succumbing to settler colonialism as an ideology permits us to build and “hope for a better future, instead of perpetuating grievances and blood feuds.” (K 131)

I think Kirsch is correct.

 

Notes

1. For additional thought on critical theory, see Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, andIdentity—and Why This Harms Everybody (Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020). On the mess that has been created in recent history by critical theories, see Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).

2. From Merriam-Webster (on the origin of the term “procrustean bed”): “Procrustes was one of many villains defeated by the Greek hero Theseus. According to Greek mythology, Procrustes was a robber who killed his victims in a most cruel and unusual way. He made them lie on an iron bed and would force them to fit the bed by cutting off the parts that hung off the ends or by stretching those people who were too short. Something Procrustean, therefore, takes no account of individual differences but cruelly and mercilessly makes everything the same. And a ‘procrustean bed’ is a scheme or pattern into which someone or something is arbitrarily forced.” (I add the etymology and definition of “procrustean bed” here because, sadly, I have come to believe that many young people are not aware of the meaning and origin of the term.)

3. Reminder: Hamas targets civilians, whereas Israel does not. Also, for a defence of moral intuitions, see chapter 2 “Moral Philosophy” of my Miracle Reports, Moral Philosophy, and Contemporary Science (PhD dissertation, University of Waterloo, 2004).

4. For my view on Israel’s inception, which complements Kirsch’s view but puts more responsibility/ blame on the Palestinian Arabs for their Nazi-collaborating Islamic Jihadist behaviour, see my Settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing: Two false assumptions about Israel’s inception, APOLOGIA, October 8, 2024.

 

Interviews with Adam Kirsch

In the Spotlight: Adam Kirsch (Jewish Broadcasting Service) (24 minutes)

Settler Colonialism and Drivers of Anti-Israel Sentiment with Eric Kaufmann and Adam Kirsch (Manhattan Institute) (44 minutes)

The Campaign Against 'Settler Colonialism' (Quillette) (30 minutes)

Why Are Jews Called 'Settlers Colonialists' w/ Adam Kirsch (Jewish News Syndicate TV) (42 minutes)

Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosopher who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada.

Settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing: Two false assumptions about Israel’s inception

Haj Amin al-Husseini in Berlin (photo: Jerusalem Post). Al-Husseini (1895–1974) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian people before, during, and after World War II—and he was a zealous anti-Semite.

Settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing: Two false assumptions about Israel’s inception

By Hendrik van der Breggen

Two currently commonplace assumptions in academic circles and on social media are these: (1) that Israel in its 1948 inception was a settler-colonial regime, and (2) that Israel in its inception engaged in ethnic cleansing (often called the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe”).[1,2] And thus, or so subsequent reasoning goes, Israel is not a legitimate state. And thus, too, or so some people also reason, Israel should be destroyed.[3] But the two assumptions on which such reasoning is based are, I dare say, false.[4]

In Part 1 of what follows I argue that Israel was at its inception not a settler-colonial regime. In Part 2 of what follows I argue that Israel in its inception was not engaged in ethnic cleansing.

For the sake of clarification I should point out that although I am a Christian, in this essay I do not appeal to Christian Zionist theology. Confession: Whether such theology should be accepted or rejected, I do not know.[5] Rather, in this essay I take issue on non-theological grounds with the above two non-theological assumptions that many people take to be true. Again, in what follows I take no position on Zionist Christian theology. Nor am I criticising the above assumptions from the point of view of Zionist Christian theology. Rather, I will criticize the above non-theological assumptions from the point of view of critical thinking (careful reasoning) and historical evidence (which is publicly-accessible). Are the two commonplace assumptions about Israel reasonable to believe to be true? It seems to me that the answer is no. I believe they are false—or at least highly dubious.

My hope is that this article will help reasonable people of good conscience (whether Christian, Muslim, Atheist, or whatever) discern what is true about Israel.[6] Truth, it seems to me, is a necessary condition for peace.[7] 

 

Part 1: Israel at its inception was a settler-colonial regime?

I have three reasons for thinking that Israel was at its inception not a settler-colonial regime (these three reasons work together as a strong cumulative case argument). First, the concept of colonial does not apply to Israel, so neither does “settler-colonial.” Second, Israel’s inception is better understood as a shedding of, or move away from, colonialism. Third, Israel’s inception was part of a Jewish existential resistance to a genocidal war launched by Nazi-collaborating Arabs—it was a resistance to the continuation of the Holocaust.

 

Reason 1: The concept of colonial does not apply

Keeping in mind that many Jews lived in the Palestine region prior to Israel’s inception in 1948 (and even prior to the waves of Jewish migration before 1948), we should notice that, although there were waves of Jewish settlers into what would become Israel, Israel at its inception was not a settler-colonial regime. Why not? Because it was not an instance of colonialism at all.

To understand this, let us first get clear on the notion of colonialism. According to Merriam-Webster, colonialism is the “domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation: the practice of extending and maintaining a nation’s political and economic control over another people or area.” According to Encarta World English Dictionary, colonialism is “a policy in which a country rules other nations and develops trade for its own benefit.”[8] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy understands colonialism “as a broad concept that refers to the project of European political domination that began in the early sixteenth century.”[9] A Dictionary of Political Thought defines colonialism (and clarifies the aforementioned project of European political domination) as follows: “The theory and practice of colonization” which is “[t]he establishment of a ‘colony,’ i.e., a collection of people whose origin is in some ‘mother country,’ and who retain the language, customs and allegiances of that country, but whose social and economic life is sustained in the place to which they have moved.”[10]

Now consider the following incisive critique of the Israel-is-a-settler-colonial-regime claim from political analyst Rich Lowry:

An academic cottage industry is devoted to deeming Israel a decades-long exercise in “settler colonialism,” and Hamas itself is partial to the term.

The use of the word “colonial” in all its forms [when describing Israel] isn’t meant to accurately describe reality or clarify anything; rather, it is a term of abuse wielded to delegitimize Israel and justify every means of resisting its very existence.

The “colonial” smear can’t survive contact with the slightest critical scrutiny.

First of all, the original Jewish settlers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries weren’t sent by any mother country to set up enclaves for the honor and profit of the homeland. To the contrary, they were escaping countries that, in many cases, didn’t want them. It would have been perverse for Jews to have sought, say, to establish an outpost of Russia in the Levant, given the atrocities routinely carried out against them on Russian soil.

They thought of their venture as a return to a place that Jews had inhabited for thousands of years.

Indeed, the colonialism charge raises the question of how an indigenous people can be colonizers.

The Jewish people have had a connection to Israel since Abraham. The people became fundamentally identified with the land; indeed, they were synonymous. The land was a locus of the Jewish faith—the site of its holy city, Jerusalem; the place where many religious commandments, the mitzvot, were supposed to be performed; the object of yearning after the dispossession of Ancient Israel (“Next year in Jerusalem”).

There is a reason that Zionists had no interest in settling in Uganda, as was proposed in the early 20th century.

On top of this, Israel has been willing at key junctures, notably right at the beginning in 1948, to accept a two-state solution.[11]

Also, in an interview with The Free Press, Haviv Rettig Gur, senior analyst for The Times of Israel, echoes Lowry’s assessment. Gur sets out the following reasons for thinking Israel is not a colonial project (my paraphrase):

• the Jews came as refugees (often persecuted);
• there was no mother country (in fact, there are many countries represented by the Jews);
• Israel was a nation-building project (not about exploiting resources for a mother country);
• there is an ancient Jewish tradition of return to the land (i.e., the land of their ancient ancestors).[12]

Israel’s inception, then, does not fit the definition of “colonial.”

But Gur does not stop in his critique. To further the case against the Israel-is-a-settler-colonial-regime claim, Gur sets out a reductio ad absurdum argument as follows.[13] If one takes Gur’s (and Lowry’s) above-described characteristics of Israel also as features of colonialism, then, according to Gur, “the word ‘colonialism’ no longer contains any analytical value…it becomes an empty vessel.”[14] In other words (mine), by applying the term “colonialism” to Israel’s founding the term gets redefined in such a way that the salient features of colonialism are also not the salient features of colonialism. By applying the term “colonialism” to Israel’s founding as if doing so is appropriate, the crucial features of colonialism are negated. That a mother country is being expansionist/imperialistic by sending its people to the land to exploit the land for the people’s mother country; that the sent people have no ancestral, historical, or cultural connection to the land and thus are not returning to their homeland; that the sent people are not refugees avoiding actual and probable pogroms due to their ancestral, historical, and cultural connection to the land—all these features are not true for Israel. But to say they are is to place a logical self-contradiction into the meaning of colonialism. Thus, the notion of colonialism is gutted (because a contradiction is logical nonsense/meaningless). An empty vessel, indeed.

Moreover, and significantly, the subjective effect (on unwary listeners or readers) of the application of the newly gutted term to Israel in discourse about Israel serves to transfer illegitimately onto Israel the negative connotations previously associated with colonialism (the non-gutted version). The effect of this, as Lowry points out, is to smear Israel. In other words, applying “colonialism” to Israel is a logic-and-language-abusing case of changing the meaning of the term for some political end—an anti-Israel end.[15] As such, it is a convoluted form of deception now commonly known as gaslighting.[16]

Lowry and Gur are, then, correct. The Jews in the region of Palestine, part of which later became the State of Israel, were not settler colonialists because they were not colonialists at all. Some Jews were living in the Palestine region long before the 1948 formation of Israel as a state and many Jews who came to the region before 1948  (and after) were a people seeking refuge from persecution by moving to the ancestral land of the Jews—their ancestral land. In other words, many Jews were indigenous to the land and many Jews with ancestral connections to the land were refugees fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms or persecution. So the concept of colonial does not apply to Israel and thus the descriptor “settler-colonial” does not apply to Israel either.[17]

 

Reason 2: Israel’s inception is a shedding of colonialism

At this juncture, I wish to go further and add support to Lowry’s and Gur’s arguments against thinking Israel’s inception was a colonialist project by pointing out that, historically, Israel’s inception was more akin to a move away from or shedding of colonialism. The following brief historical overview of the formation of the State of Israel will be helpful background to understand this:

• Prior to World War I, the geographic region called Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire (emphasis on Palestine being a geographic region, not a state);
• Jews had been purchasing (and continued to purchase) land in Palestine (often the land was otherwise unwanted desert or malaria-infested swampland, sold to Jews at exorbitant prices);
• the Ottoman Empire was defeated militarily in World War I by the British Empire and its allies (the Ottomans had sided with Germany which was defeated and which was one of the main aggressors in World War I);
• after World War I, in which the Ottomans were defeated and thus lost political control of the lands of the Ottoman Empire, the British gained control over the Palestine region via the “mandate” system (note: the era of empire was coming to a close and the age of nation states was emerging; the mandate system was an attempt by former empires such as Britain and France, encouraged by the U.S., to help distinct peoples become self-determining nation states; the British mandate included Iraq and Palestine, the latter of which included modern-day Gaza, West Bank, and Jordan, whereas the French mandate included Lebanon and Syria);
• subsequently, because there had been much Jewish migration (often due to persecutions) to the region of Palestine, in which many Palestinian Jews already lived, and because many Palestinian Arabs also living in the region were greatly annoyed (even though Arabs had Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan), the British sought to divide the region of Palestine (promised previously to Jews, but now without Jordan/ Transjordan) into a Jewish state and an Arab state, to allow for two distinct peoples with legitimate claims to the land to co-exist as two nation states;
• leading up to and during World War II, the Palestinian Arabs were led by Haj Amin al-Husseini, a.k.a. the Grand Mufti (more on the ideological nature of this leadership below);
• World War II and the Jewish Holocaust (in which 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis) ended in 1945;
• leading up to, during, and after World War II, many European Jews sought the safety of a Jewish state in the Palestine region (though many were turned away).[18]

Keeping the previous historical sketch in mind, we can see that the situation in the region of Palestine prior to Israel’s statehood was, for lack of a better word, messy. In this context the British at first encouraged Jewish immigration and then, to appease Arabs, thwarted Jewish immigration. Jewish Zionists resented and sometimes violently resisted the British for this thwarting. In addition, Arab and Jewish paramilitary groups were often in violent conflict with each other. Not only was there Arab-Jewish conflict, but also there was a push in the region of Palestine by both Jews and Arabs against the British Empire. Frustrated by the volatile situation, the British handed the mess over to the League of Nations, later to become the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, in an attempt to appease both Jewish nationalists (Zionists) and Arab nationalists (anti-Zionists), the UN voted in favour of an independent Jewish state in the Palestine region along with an independent Arab state, much to the chagrin of the Arabs (more on the nature of this chagrin below). Whereas the Palestinian Arabs, led by Haj Amin al-Husseini, immediately rejected the plan and began waging war against the Jews (this first part of the Arab-Israel war prior to Israel’s statehood is known as the “civil war”), Israel declared itself an independent state on May 14, 1948, a date that also marked the lowering of the Union Jack and the (continued) withdrawal of the remaining British Empire forces. On May 15, 1948, armies of several Arab-Muslim countries (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria) attacked Israel with the explicit intent of destroying Israel. Approximately 750 thousand Palestinian Arabs fled Israel (to get out of harm’s way and/or to make way for the Arab armies) or were pushed out of Israel (by Israel), many expecting to return after the Arabs defeated Israel. The Arab-Israeli war ended March 10, 1949.

Surprisingly, the Arabs, who started the war against Israel and expected victory, i.e., expected to wipe the fledgling State of Israel off the map, lost. As a result, Israel continued its existence as a legally established UN-approved independent state. Subsequently, about 800 thousand Jews fled or were pushed out of nearby Arab countries to find safety in Israel and elsewhere.[19]

The above historical sketch shows that Israel’s inception was (along with the inception of some Arab states) a move away from—a shedding of—British empire and colonialism. The historical bits that are significant to our present discussion are worth repeating here for the sake of clarity. After World War I and the defeat of the Ottomans, the era of empire was coming to a close and the age of nation states was emerging. The mandate system was an attempt by former empires such as Britain and France (encouraged by the U.S.) to help distinct peoples within the former Ottoman Empire become self-governing nation states. The British mandate included Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine, whereas the French mandate included Lebanon and Syria. The British and French colonial empires were on their way out, and self-governing nation states were on their way in. All this to say (again) that Israel’s coming to be as an independent state in the region of Palestine was, historically, a move away from, or shedding of, colonialism, not an instance of colonialism.

But it was not merely a shedding of colonialism, it was a fight for survival—which brings us to reason 3.

 

Reason 3: Israel’s inception was part of a Jewish existential resistance against a genocidal war launched by Nazi-collaborating Arabs—it was a resistance to the Nazi continuation of the Holocaust

To make the case that Israel’s inception was also an existential resistance—a fight for survival—against a genocidal war launched by Nazi-collaborating Arabs as a continuation of the Holocaust, it should be noticed and emphasized that the Arab Higher Committee (founded in 1936[20]), which was the main Arab political organization in Palestine, was chaired by Haj Amin al-Husseini.[21] Al-Husseini was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian people before, during, and after World War II. Why should this be noticed and emphasized? Because the Grand Mufti was a Jew-hating Nazi collaborator. In fact, during World War II he lived in Berlin and worked for the Nazis (with a large salary from the Nazis), visited with Adolf Hitler (the Jew-hating German Nazi dictator), associated repeatedly with Heinrich Himmler (a major organizer of the Holocaust), and helped organize a Muslim SS (an elite murderous military guard of the Nazi Reich/Empire). The Grand Mufti characterized his friendship with the Nazis as their being united in wanting to get rid of the Jews. They hoped that as Field Marshall Erwin Rommel moved the German army victoriously through northern Africa during World War II, the Jewish holocaust that was being carried out by the Nazis in Europe would also be carried out in the Middle East (fortunately, Rommel’s army was stopped by the British). This sheds important light onto the situation in which the Israeli state was born: Palestinian leaders were as anti-Jewish as Nazis and, like the Nazis, Palestinian leaders wished to kill all Jews. To survive this existential threat—to survive this continuation of Jewish genocide of World War II—the Jews had to come together politically to resist.

Is this bit about the Nazi-Arab alliance just a non-evidence-based opinion, offered here as pro-Israel propaganda? No. Consider what follows.

In the recent essay “A Historian for Our Moment” author Sol Stern discusses important findings by American historian Jeffrey Herf concerning the pro-Nazi influence in Palestine before and after the founding of Israel. Here are some significant snippets from Stern’s article:

Herf’s most important scholarly discovery was of Nazi Germany’s campaign to win ideological and political adherents in the Arab world by using radio broadcasts and printed materials. This massive propaganda effort was supervised by Haj Amin al-Husseini—also known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem—who was the undisputed political and religious leader of the Palestinian Arabs from 1921–49….

As Herf has shown, what occurred in Berlin was “a meeting of hearts and minds—a cultural fusion of Nazism and Islamism.” Husseini personally contributed to the efforts of the German war machine by recruiting Bosnian Muslims to the Waffen SS and organizing intelligence operations in the Middle East. In turn, the Nazis celebrated him in an official proclamation as “one of the great personalities of the Islamic world who had led the struggle of the Palestinian Arabs against onrushing Jewry.”

After the military defeat of Germany and the ideological defeat of Nazism, the center of radical Jew-hatred shifted from Europe to the Middle East….

[A]fter World War II, revolutionary antisemitism enjoyed a second life in the Middle East, specifically “in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in Husseini’s leadership of the Palestine Arabs in the 1947–1948 war to prevent the establishment of the state of Israel, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Hamas Covenant of 1988, the ideology of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Islamic state.”[22]

Permit me to repeat part of the last sentence so the reader will linger on the words I put in italics:

[A]fter World War II, revolutionary antisemitism enjoyed a second life in the Middle East, specifically “…in Husseini’s leadership of the Palestine Arabs in the 1947–1948 war to prevent the establishment of the state of Israel.”[23]

Elsewhere Stern writes:

New archival research by the German historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cuppers reveal that the Nazis had drawn up a plan for the physical destruction of the Yishuv [the Jewish community in the Palestine region] that would have been set in motion if Erwin Rommel’s Afrikacorps had achieved victory at El Alamein [in Egypt]. Mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen, which were used to kill Jews on the Russian front, were attached to Rommel’s army. The Nazi plan called for the mufti to be flown back home to help carry out another Final Solution for the Jews of Palestine.[24]

Israeli historian Benny Morris, author of the highly acclaimed book 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War,[25] writes the following in Quillette:

Palestine’s Arabs—like most of the Middle East’s Arabs—would have preferred a Nazi German victory and the defeat of the Western democracies. The British were seen as the common enemy of the Germans and the Palestinians. As Sakakini, a Palestinian nationalist, relates in a diary entry of 1941, the Arabs of Palestine “had rejoiced when the British bastion at Tobruk [in Libya] fell to the Germans,” and “not only the Palestinians rejoiced … but the whole Arab world.”

This support for Hitler wasn’t merely a matter of the old adage that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” [Haj] Muhammed Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Palestine national movement, was an outspoken antisemite. He aided the 1941 pro-Nazi revolt in Baghdad. When it collapsed, he fled to Berlin, where he spent the rest of the war years enjoying a handsome salary for his work as a Nazi propagandist and a recruiter of Balkan Muslims for the SS.

Palestine’s Arabs thus assisted in the destruction of European Jewry in two ways: They successfully pressured the British into closing the gates of Palestine to European Jews fleeing the Holocaust; and they supported Germany’s efforts to win the war. In radio broadcasts from Berlin, Husseini called on the Arab world to rebel against Britain and “kill the Jews.”[26]

After investigating the relevant historical evidence concerning al-Husseini, Harvard Professor of Law (emeritus) Alan Dershowitz writes the following:

It is fair to conclude that the official leader of the Muslims in Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a full-fledged Nazi war criminal, and he was so declared at Nuremberg….. [He] helped to organize many former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers against Israel.

It is also fair to say that Husseini’s pro-Nazi sympathies and support were widespread among his Palestinian followers, who regarded him as a hero even after the war and the disclosure of his role in Nazi atrocities. According to his biographer, “Haj Amin’s popularity among the Palestinian Arabs and within the Arab states actually increased more than ever during his period with the Nazis,” because “large parts of the Arab world shared this sympathy with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.” Nor was it merely a hatred of Zionism that animated this support for Nazi ideology. The grand mufti’s “hatred of Jews…was fathomless, and he gave full vent to it during his period of activity alongside the Nazis (October 1941–May 1945).” His speeches on Berlin Radio were anti-Semitic to the core: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them—this pleases God, history and religion.” In 1948, the National Palestinian Council elected Husseini as its president, even though he was a wanted war criminal living in exile in Egypt.[27]

In view of the above information about al-Husseini and the Nazis, Joseph S. Spoerl, Professor of Philosophy (emeritus) at Saint Anselm College (Manchester, New Hampshire), observes the following:

Given this background, it is hardly surprising that fear of another Holocaust was a major motive driving Zionist forces to fight in 1947–8. Zionist leaders were well aware that Hajj Amin al-Husseini had supported Hitler and the “final solution.” The Jews of Palestine were outnumbered by Arabs two-to-one within Palestine and by a much larger factor if Arabs outside of Palestine are counted. Most Palestinian Arabs revered someone [i.e., al-Husseini] who had openly called for genocide against Jews—all Jews—and who rejected any compromise regarding Palestine.[28]

Spoerl sums up the historical evidence for the Arab-Israel War of 1947–49 as follows:

[I]t was a war of self-defence [by Israel] against a ruthless, pro-Nazi, and openly genocidal Palestinian leadership that enjoyed enormous popularity among the Arab and Palestinian masses.[29]

All this to say: Israel’s inception was also a resistance to the genocidal war against Jews begun by fanatical Nazi-like, Jew-hating Palestinian Arabs. At the end of World War II, Jews in the region of Palestine were aware of the horrors of the Holocaust and the Arab-Nazi alliance. Instead of succumbing to a repeat of World War II’s Nazi slaughter of Jews en masse but this time carried out by Nazi-embracing Islamic jihadists,[30] Jews organized themselves politically to become a Jewish state and they militarily resisted the Arab-initiated attempted slaughter—the Arab continuation of the Holocaust—and they survived.[31]

 

In sum, Israel was not a “settler-colonial regime” at its inception, contrary to popular opinion. Rather, Israel at its inception was (a) a non-colonial state for Palestinian indigenous Jews and for Jewish descendants/ refugees often fleeing persecution, (b) a state whose inception contributed to the withdrawal of British colonial forces from the Middle East, and (c) a state whose inception was in part an existential act of self-defence against an attempted Nazi-like genocide of Jews by Islamic Arabs who sought to expand the Holocaust into the Middle East.[32]

 

Part 2: Israel at its inception was engaged in ethnic cleansing?

War is terrible. Nevertheless, in its inception in the midst of war the State of Israel did not attempt to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Palestinian people (though there may have been some Israelis who wished to do so). To understand this, it helps to get some clarity on the so-called Nakba.

The Nakba (“catastrophe”) of the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli war refers to the fact that 750,000 Arabs were displaced from Israel. It should be noticed that the term nakba was originally used by Arabs to refer to the embarrassing-to-them defeat of Arabs by Jews when in 1948 the Arabs attacked the new State of Israel. The goal of the Arabs, led by Nazi-collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini and company, was to exterminate the Jews and dominate the whole of the Palestine region. But the Arabs failed miserably. And this failure was for Islamic Arabs a humiliation of epic proportion—a catastrophe. Why? Because of a culmination of at least three reasons.

First, the catastrophe was a self-inflicted wound. Arabs started the war—and lost. As Schwartz and Wilf point out: “For the Arabs, the results of the war were a complete humiliation—a small community of some 650,000 Jews succeeded in overpowering Arab Palestinian militia and the combined Arab armies of the surrounding states.”[33] And one of the results of the war (begun and lost by the Arabs) was the flight of 750,000 Arabs out of Israel. So Arabs were the main cause of the refugee problem. If the Arabs had not started the war, which they lost, there would be no refugee problem.[34]

Second, the Arab defeat was an (alleged) injustice against God. According to Islamic doctrine, all once-Muslim lands always belong to Islam. This includes the Palestine region—once part of the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic caliphate—which was to be divided by the UN between Arabs and Jews. But in 1948–49 the Muslim Arabs lost the once-Muslim land to the Jews in a war started and lost by the Muslim Arabs. Such a loss is a violation of Islam’s Allah-ordained domination of the world. Daniel Pipes, an American historian and president of the Middle East Forum, elaborates:

Islamic doctrine holds that once a land has been conquered by Muslims, it becomes part of the lands of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and an inalienable Islamic patrimony (a waqf). Accordingly, its loss constitutes a robbery, and Muslims must exert to bring it back under their rule…

Palestine became a part of Dar al-Islam after its conquest by Muslims in 638 CE, six years after the Islamic account records the death of Muhammad. Muslims then ruled it until 1917, with the exception of two centuries, from 1097 to 1291, when Crusaders controlled parts of it. The British ruled all of it from 1917 to 1948 and Israel, most or all of thereafter. This history has created a deep sense of entitlement: Palestine belongs under Muslim control.[35]

Third, according to Islam, Islam is the “true religion” whereas Judaism, the religion of the Jews, is not (nor is Christianity or any other religion[36]). For Islamists, that is, for Muslims who take Muhammad seriously as their prophet and revealer of God’s will, Muhammad’s later hateful and violent teachings against Jews (teachings that abrogate the prophet’s earlier peaceful views of Jews) are to be taken seriously.[37] Indeed, very seriously. For Islamist Muslims like the popular al-Husseini and his many followers in the Arab world, Jews are less than human, like disease-laden “microbes” or “mangy dogs.”[38] And they should be treated as such.[39] According to al-Husseini: “The world will never be at peace until the Jewish race is exterminated... The Jews are the germs which have caused all the trouble in the world.”[40] Thus, Spoerl writes: “In March 1948, [al-Husseini] told an interviewer in a Jaffa newspaper that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but ‘would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated and the whole of Palestine became a purely Arab state.’”[41] The reality, then, of a Jewish state simply cannot be the case for Islamists. A Jewish state is anathema to Islam (especially fundamentalist Islam, what I am calling “Islamist Islam,” as followed by al-Husseini and many Arabs, which takes Muhammad’s teachings against Jews seriously). Hence, the defeat of Arabs by Jews was a deeply embarrassing catastrophe—a Nakba.

But now Nakba has a meaning used by Palestinian propagandists to divert attention away from the Arab anti-Semitic (i.e., anti-Jewish) violent aggression of 1948 and instead promote Palestinian victimhood. Nakba now means an alleged 1948 ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel by Israel. But this narrative is false. Yes, many Arabs, especially those deemed hostile to Israel, were forced out by Israel in 1948. This is truly tragic. But it was war—a war started by the Arabs. And these facts remain: Many Arabs left Israel willingly to get out of harm’s way because a war (to exterminate Jews) was at hand (and these fleeing Arabs planned to return to Israel after Israel was destroyed); many Arabs left Israel because the surrounding Arab nations (wishing to wage genocidal war on the Jews) ordered them to leave to facilitate the war effort (and return later to a Jew-ridden land); many Arabs who were not hostile to Israel stayed in Israel (as citizens of Israel). In other words, the criterion for Arabs being forced out of Israel was not whether they were Arab, but whether they were hostile to Israel. Middle East expert Denis MacEoin observes: “It is true that the Israelis expelled some Arabs, but they were mainly those in frontline areas and who were known to be cooperating with the enemy. But they were only a small percentage of those Arabs who became displaced.”[42] Thus, embedded in the criterion of expulsion is a distinction that shows the Nakba was not genocide, not ethnic cleansing, Hostility, not ethnicity or religion, was the concern. This is a significant distinction that should not be missed (but often is) and it refutes the genocide/ethnic cleansing charge.

This distinction is additionally significant because it also refutes the oft-heard theft charge, i.e., the charge that Israel stole Arab land. That is to say, the distinction shows that in 1948 many Palestinian Arabs forfeited the ownership of their houses and land by siding with those who waged war on the Jews with the intent of murdering all the Jews. Is “forfeited” too strong a word? No. As MacEoin points out, “The Arabs in Palestine were being told: ‘You can leave now, you can get out of the way, let the armies—let the Egyptian army, the Jordanian army—let them do their work, and then when you come back you can have all the properties that belong to the Jews when we have wiped them out.’”[43] Surely, abandoning one’s property (even with intent of doing so only temporarily) so thereby one aids and abets a genocidal war against one’s neighbours constitutes no legitimate grounds whatsoever for one’s complaint of theft concerning the abandoned property’s subsequent appropriation by those neighbours (as a nation state) when the genocide attempt is stopped by those neighbours.

Thus, contrary to popular thought, Israel in its inception did not ethnically cleanse Arabs.[44,45]

(For additional perspective, keep in mind that whereas 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were pushed out of Israel during the 1948 war, in subsequent years about 850,000 Jews were expelled from surrounding Arab countries.[46]

Conclusion

As I have argued, two commonplace assumptions in academic circles and social media today are false (or at least highly dubious). As I have argued, Israel in its inception was not a settler-colonial regime, and Israel in its inception did not engage in ethnic cleansing. Thus, insofar as these assumptions undergird criticisms of Israel’s legitimacy as a state, such criticisms fail. And thus, too, insofar as these assumptions undergird calls for Israel’s destruction, such calls are unfounded.

My hope is that this article will help reasonable people of good conscience (whether Christian, Muslim, Atheist, or whatever) draw nearer to what is true about Israel. And thereby may we also draw nearer to peace.[47]

 

End notes

1. For examples, see the abundance of news about protests against Israel by students and professors on many major university campuses. Also (and closer to home for me), see Yousef Kamal AlKhouri, “Engaging the Bible in Bethlehem: Encountering Palestinian Christians,” Didaskalia, Volume 31 (2023–2024), 68–74. (Didaskalia is an academic journal published by Providence Theological Seminary. Before I retired I taught philosophy at Providence University College.)

2. For the sake of thoroughness, I should add that another popular assumption today in academic circles and on social media is that strong nations are ipso facto oppressors and weak nations are ipso facto oppressed. (Ipso facto is a Latin phrase that means “by the fact itself.”) This oppressor-versus-oppressor assumption, however, is often too simplistic and often ignores relevant complexity. As an assumption it often serves as an intellectual rolling pin that flattens the intellectual landscape. In fact, the oppressor-versus-oppressor assumption does not adequately capture the complex goings-on in the Israel-Arab conflict. Evidence of the actual goings-on in history should be taken into account, and given primacy in our evidence-based reasoning—which is what the present essay will attempt to do.

3. See the Hamas Charter.

4. I use the phrase “I dare say” because taking the side of Jews in our present era of Jew-hatred (often disguised as “anti-Zionism”) can make one a target of such hatred, even if one is not a Jew.

5. See, for starters, G. M. Burge, “Zionism,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 3rd edition, edited by Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2017),  960–962. For a more in-depth look, see Donald M. Lewis, A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2021). Update: See, too, N. T. Wright, “Does modern Israel play a role in End Times?” Premier Unbelievable? (28 minute video), October 27, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtdVmRaA2s8.

6. For replies to other objections set out against Israel—objections such as Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, or Israel’s military response in Gaza is not proportional—see Hendrik van der Breggen, Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War (Amazon KDP, 2024), https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XWl5EKbtv-ixhSwYVz9uFJFFKVLMPP8B/view.

7. Love and forgiveness are two other necessary conditions for peace. No doubt there are more such conditions.

8. “Colonialism,” Encarta World English Dictionary (New York: St. Martin’s/ Bloomsbury/ Microsoft/ Macmillan, 1999), 360.

9. Margaret Kohn & Kavita Reddy, “Colonialism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman, eds., https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/colonialism/.

10. Roger Scruton, “Colonialism” and “Colonization,” A Dictionary of Political Thought (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982), 74.

11. Rich Lowry, “Israel is not a colonial state,” National Review, October 10, 2023, https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/israel-is-not-a-colonial-state/.

12. Haviv Rettig Gur, “The Gathering Storm” (interview with Bari Wiess), The Free Press, March 21, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVc7PsRr6dY.

13. Gur does not explicitly call his brief argument a reductio ad absurdum argument, but he seems to rationally intuit it as such. Reductio ad absurdum is an argument strategy that employs logic to tease out the truth that another argument or claim is flawed. How? By reducing it to absurdity. In a reductio ad absurdum argument, we assume, temporarily for the sake of argument, that the view under investigation is true. We approach the view in question with the attitude, “Okay, let's say it's true. What follows?” If the logical consequences of the view's assumed truth are false or logically contradictory, then it follows that the view under investigation is false or at least deeply problematic. For further thought, see Hendrik van der Breggen, “Reductio ad absurdum,” Truth, Logic, Knowledge: Articles of Critical Thinking (Amazon KDP, 2023), 63–66.

14. Gur, “The Gathering Storm.”

15. For additional clarity: The gutted term (what Gur calls “empty vessel”) is given a new and differing meaning that is used to negatively describe (or “smear,” per Lowry) Israel. This manoeuvre can also be understood as fallacious equivocation. According to logician Trudy Govier, “The fallacy of equivocation is committed when a key word in an argument is used in two or more senses and the premises of the argument appear to support its conclusion only because these senses are not distinguished from each other.” (Trudy Govier, A Practical Study of Argument, 7th edition [Belmont, California: Wadsworth/ Cengage Learning, 2010], 66.) In other words, the fallacy of equivocation occurs when in the course of an argument the meanings of an ambiguous word or phrase are traded unfairly to get us to accept the conclusion when in fact we should not. For further thought, see van der Breggen, “Fallacy of Equivocation,” Truth, Logic, Knowledge, 149–154.

16. To gaslight is to tell lies (some bigger than others) so eventually we will doubt truth and believe a falsehood (or an ideology).

17. For additional thought on the problems with thinking Israel is a colonial state, see Alan Dowty (Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and a Visiting Scholar at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies), “Is Israel a settler colonial state?” Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington, November 10, 2022, https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/israel-hebrew/why-israel-isnt-a-settler-colonial-state/. In addition, see Alan Dershowitz’s section “Israel Is Not a Colonial, Imperialist State” in War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism (New York: Skyhorse Publishing/ Hot Books, 2023), 7–11. See, too, Dershowitz’s chapters 1, 2, 3, 8, and 11 in The Case for Israel (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2003). And see Jake Wallis Simons, Israelophobia: The Newest Version of the Oldest Hatred and What To Do about It (London: Constable/ Little, Brown Book Group, 2023), 100–101. Also, see the section “Colonialism and imperialist support” in Alexander Yakobson & Amnon Rubinstein, Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish nation-state and human rights (New York: Routledge, 2010), 65–75. Yakobson (a professor of constitutional law) and Rubinstein (a historian) assess and find wanting Ilan Pappé’s popular view that Israel is a settler-colonial state.

18. For a helpful history of Israel (which does not shy away from legitimate criticisms of Israel), see Daniel Gordis, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn (New York: HarperCollins Publishers/ Ecco, 2016). For a popular-level history of Israel (which also does not shy away from legitimate criticisms of Israel), see Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth (New York: Free Press, 2021).

19. For additional thought, more detail, as well as historical background about the formation of the state of Israel, see Einat Wilf and Dan Senor, “Exploring Israel’s Statehood and the Palestinian Refugee Issue: A Conversation with Dr. Einat Wilf,” StartUp Nation Central, February 28, 2024 (77 minute video), https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=TQDbqOUgSB0. Einat Wilf has a PhD (Cambridge) in political science, is a former Israeli politician and long-time critic of UNRWA, and she is co-author (with Adi Schwartz) of the book The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (New York: St. Martin’s Publishing/ All Points Books, 2020). See too Tishby’s chapter “A State Is Born” in her book Israel. And see Gordis, Israel.

20. For much more detail about the goings-on in the year 1936, see Oren Kessler, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield, 2023). See too Eylon Levy’s 54-minute interview with Oren Kessler, “The 1936 Arab ‘Revolt’: Oren Kessler on what the FIRST First Intifada taught the Arabs,” Israel: State of a Nation with Eylon Levy, July 3, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gj6JGhEQ9c.

21. Full name: Mohammed Amin al-Husseini. The term “Haj” (sometimes spelled “Hajj”) is an honorific title given to Muslims who have completed a pilgrimage to Mecca.

22. Sol Stern, “A Historian for Our Moment,” Quillette, January 10, 2024, https://quillette.com/2024/01/10/a-historian-for-our-moment; italics added. Also see Jeffrey Herf’s “The Importance and the Limits of Husseini’s Influence in Nazi Berlin” which is chapter 5 in Jeffrey Herf, Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist (London and New York: Routledge, 2024).

23. Stern, “A Historian for Our Moment.”

24. Sol Stern, A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred (New York: Encounter Books, 2011), 29.

25. Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008).

26. Benny Morris: “The NYT Misrepresents the History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Quillette, February 27, 2024, https://quillette.com/2024/02/27/the-nyt-misrepresents-the-history-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/. For further evidence concerning the complicity of Palestinians in the Jewish Holocaust, see Joseph S. Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust,” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 26, No. 1/2 (Spring 2014), https://www.jstor.org/stable/44289822.

27. Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2003), 56.

28. Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust,” 25.

29. Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust,” 15. A relevant aside: In chapter 4 of Ten Myths about Israel (London & New York: Verso, 2017), the popular (anti-)Israeli historian Ilan Pappé mistakenly paints the Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini quite positively as someone who “came under the influence of Nazi doctrine” when evidence actually points to the fact that al-Husseini hated Jews at the get-go and thus embraced Nazi doctrine. For more on this, see Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust.”

30. The German political scientist and historian Matthias Küntzel calls the 1948 Arab war against Israel an “aftershock” and argues that the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was connected to the Nazi war. See Matthias Küntzel, Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II (London & New York: Routledge, 2024).

31. For an additional look at the Nazi and Islamic antisemitism prevalent at the time of the formation of the state of Israel, see Küntzel, Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East. Also see chapters 3, 4, and 5 in Herf, Three Faces of Antisemitism. For an additional look at Haj Amin al-Husseini and his Nazi connection, see Oren Cahanovitc, “The Nazis and the Arabs of Palestine: The Untold (yet Documented) Connection,” Travelling Israel, August 7, 2024 (18 minute video), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka4Lz-u_BgY. (Cahanovitc is a tour guide in Israel, but not merely a tour guide. He has a master’s degree in Israeli history.)

Not so incidentally, Nazi-like Jew-hating fanaticism continues to the present day as can be seen from the Hamas Charter of Gaza and from the fact that an apparently well-studied copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf was found in Gaza early in the Israel-Hamas war that began on October 7, 2023. For a look at the Hamas Charter, see Dershowitz, “Appendix C: Hamas Charter,” in War Against the Jews, 149–175. On the discovery in Gaza of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, see Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, “Arabic copy of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ found inside child’s room in Gaza,” New York Post, November 12, 2023, https://nypost.com/2023/11/12/news/arabic-copy-of-adolf-hitlers-mein-kampf-found-inside-childs-room-in-gaza/.

32. For a more general philosophical-legal defence of the legitimacy of the formation and continuation of the state of Israel, see Ruth Gavison, “The Jews’ Right To Statehood: A Defense,” Tikvah, Summer 2003, https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/the-jews-right-to-statehood/. The late Ruth Gavison earned a D.Phil. in philosophy of law from Oxford University and was Professor Emerita of Human Rights in the Faculty of Law at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

For further thought about the historical and legal aspects of the founding of the State of Israel, see Whose Land? (London: UK Lawyers for Israel, 2024). This 19-part video series is narrated by retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp and features insights from various historians and lawyers. Each part is quite short, ranging from 5 minutes to 15 minutes, for a total of about 3.5 hours. Whose Land? is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0ed8kmlimbptNpoK1-v5LYqeKLu4Kl7y. Helpful written excerpts from the film’s script are available here: https://uklficharity.com/whose-land/.

See also Wilf and Senor’s YouTube conversation, “Exploring Israel’s Statehood and the Palestinian Refugee Issue.” As noted previously, Wilf has a PhD in political science from Cambridge University and is a former Israeli politician. As not noted previously, Wilf is an atheist, so does not subscribe to Zionist Christian theology, yet she is a Zionist and makes a powerful secular case for Zionism.

33. Schwartz & Wilf, War of Return, 28.

34. See, again, Schwartz & Wilf, War of Return, 2–3, 5–6, 17, 32.

35. Daniel Pipes, Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated (New York & Nashville: Wicked Son/ Post Hill Press, 2024), 32–33. See, too, Robert Spencer et al., Islam: What the West Needs to Know, DVD (98 minutes), produced and directed by Gregory M. Davis and Bryan Daly (Lorain, Ohio: Quixotic Media Productions 2006), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mllMkm8pcVU. (See comments at 51:25–52:36 by Serge Trifkovic.) For further thought, see Mordecai Kedar, “Arabs and Muslims Will Not Accept Israel as the Jewish State,” The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, January 18, 2018, https://besacenter.org/muslims-israel-jewish-state/.

36. For a look at how to arbitrate between the truth claims of competing religions vis-à-vis pluralism, see Hendrik van der Breggen, “Religious Pluralism x 3,” APOLOGIA, November 21, 2013, https://apologiabyhendrikvanderbreggen.blogspot.com/2013/11/religious-pluralism-x-3.html. And for a look at how to arbitrate between the truth claims of Islam and Christianity, see Hendrik van der Breggen, “Islam and Christianity,” APOLOGIA, March 16, 2017, https://apologiabyhendrikvanderbreggen.blogspot.com/2017/03/islam-and-christianity.html.

37. It would be reasonable to describe Islamists as what Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls “Medina Muslims,” i.e., they follow the violent teachings of the Prophet Mohammed when in Medina the prophet effectively became a warlord after his peaceful approach to spreading Islam in Mecca was rejected (“Mecca Muslims” follow the Prophet Mohammad’s peaceful teachings when he first began his religion in Mecca). For more on the distinction between Medina Muslims and Mecca Muslims, see Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Islam Is a Religion of Violence,” Foreign Policy Magazine, November 9, 2015, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/09/islam-is-a-religion-of-violence-ayaan-hirsi-ali-debate-islamic-state/.

38. Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust,” 17.

39. For further thought about Islam’s view of Jews, see Mark A. Gabriel, Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle (Lake Mary, Florida: Charisma House, 2003). Also see R. C. Sproul and Abdul Saleeb, The Dark Side of Islam (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2003).

40. Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009), 184.

41. Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust,” 24.

42. Denis MacEoin, in “The Status of Jerusalem, the 1949 Armistice Lines, and Refugees,” Whose Land? Episode 12 (London: UK Lawyers for Israel: 2024), https://uklficharity.com/whose-land/whose-land-episode-12/. MacEoin has a PhD in Persian/ Islamic Studies from Cambridge University, was a lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University, and was a senior editor at Middle East Quarterly.

43. MacEoin, “The Status of Jerusalem, the 1949 Armistice Lines, and Refugees.”

44. Of course, and sadly, atrocities happen in war, and Israel, like most other countries, is guilty of engaging in such behaviour. But sometimes atrocities get blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes. One atrocity that has been blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes is the killing of 107 Arab civilians and soldiers by the Israeli military in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948. For clarity on this, see Mitchell Bard, “Israel War of Independence: The Capture of Deir Yassin (April 9, 1948),” Jewish Virtual Library, no date, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-capture-of-deir-yassin. And see Jacob Schwartz, “What is Deir Yassin and the Nakba?” Unpacked, September 5, 2019 (11 minute YouTube video), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezAsaKzQQtE. And see Noam Weissman, “Deir Yassin: The Battle for Truth,” Unpacked, October 5, 2023 (26 minute audio podcast), https://unpacked.education/podcast/deir-yassin-the-battle-for-truth/ (transcript: https://jewishunpacked.com/deir-yassin-the-battle-for-truth/).

45. To support the claim that at its inception Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing, some scholars refer readers to Ilan Pappé’s book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London: Oneworld Publications, 2006). But it very much appears that the scholarly merit of Pappé’s work is dubious. In a review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (and of two other books by Pappé) the highly-respected Israeli historian Benny Morris says the following: “At best, Ilan Pappé must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. In truth, he probably merits a place somewhere between the two.” (Benny Morris, “The Liar as Hero,” The New Republic, March 16, 2011, https://newrepublic.com/article/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian.) Apparently, Pappé has postmodern interpretive leanings and thus is much more open to allowing his subjectivity and ideology to influence his historical work than is Morris. Some helpful discussion (and links) concerning the differences in Pappé and Morris’s approaches to the study of history can be found on Reddit: “Nobody should be quoting Ilan Pappé or his works,” https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/18wb3ia/nobody_should_be_quoting_ilan_papp%C3 %A9_or_his_works/.

Speaking of Pappé’s work, permit me at this juncture to point out that Pappé’s work on the topic of colonialism is sloppy, too. (I add this comment here instead of in my above section on colonialism because, from a pedagogical point of view, I felt readers first needed to understand or have a brief refresher on the historical background I set out in the various sections above.) In chapter 4 of Ten Myths about Israel (London & New York: Verso, 2017), Pappé attempts to change the meaning of colonialism (what Pappé calls “classic colonialism”) so it applies to Israel (as “settler colonialism”). Pappé argues that Israel is an instance of “settler colonialism” but is different from “classic colonialism” (i.e., colonialism) in three respects. But, contra Pappé, the first two of those three respects show that Israel’s case is not colonialism at all and the third respect is simply a flagrant falsehood foisted onto Israel.

The first respect or difference, according to Pappé, is that Israel’s survival at its beginning depends on the empire “only initially and temporarily” and that its people (i.e., the Jewish settlers who became, along with the Jews already there, the State of Israel) “do not belong to the same nation as the imperial power that initially supports them” (Pappé, 41). In reply, we should notice that if the Jewish settlers do not belong to the British or any other empire, they are not colonialists from that or any other empire. In fact, the Jews at the time of Israel’s inception consisted of Jews already living in the region of Palestine and Jews from a variety of countries which were often persecuting them. Many of the Jews who immigrated to Israel came as refugees from Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yemen, Poland, Lithuania, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran, (Nazi) Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Greece. And probably, because most were fleeing, none or almost none of these immigrants were being supported by their countries of origin. True, the British did provide support initially by way of the Balfour Declaration (1917), but the British also withdrew that support via the White Paper (1939). Be that as it may, the temporary support was not that of a “mother country” promoting its colony; it was to help establish a national home for a people other than the British, that is, a national home for Jews who besides living in the land already were also people from other countries with ancestral connections to that land. And, as indicated by the UN Partition Plan (1947), it was also to help establish a national home for Arabs in the region. Contrary to what Pappé would have us think, then, this difference means that Israel is not an instance of colonialism at all.

The second difference, according to Pappé, is that the Jews were “motivated by a desire to take over land in a foreign country” instead of “[coveting] the natural resources in its new geographical possessions in its new geographical possessions” (Pappé, 42). In reply, we should notice that the Jews were motivated to take over some land in the geographic region known as Palestine (while respecting the human and civil rights of those already there) but, contra Pappé, that land was not a country. As I pointed out in the main body of my essay above, the land was part of a region lost by the Ottoman Empire to the British as a result of World War I (recall that the Ottomans sided with Germany). Moreover, because the age of empire was coming to a close, the region became a part of the British mandate to allow for peoples in the region to develop into self-governing nation states. And the taking over of the land by the Jews was not for the sake of a colonial expansion or coveting natural resources; it was to be a place of refuge from persecution, and a place of national self-determination of a people. And the land was not foreign; the land was the land of the Jews’ ancestors who were forcefully dispersed the land, a land to which the Jews were returning, a land on which many Jews already lived. Contrary to what Pappé would have us think, then, this difference means (again) that Israel is not an instance of colonialism at all.

The third difference, according to Pappé, “concerns the way they [the Jews] treat the new destination of settlement” (Pappé, 42).  According to Pappé, the Jews engaged in “annihilation and dehumanization” of the native Palestinian Arabs and thereby “remove[d] the natives from their homeland” (Pappé, 49). In other words, Pappé charges Israel with ethnic cleansing. In reply, we should notice that aside from being a questionable characteristic difference concerning colonialism per se, when it comes to being attributed to Israel, Pappé’s claim is false—and grossly so. These historical facts remain and are ignored by Pappé: (1) Israel was fighting to resist annihilation by Jew-hating Nazi-collaborating Islamists (as I argued above in Reason 3 of Part 1 of the present essay); (2) the flight and displacement of many Arabs from Israel was primarily due to the Arabs beginning and losing the genocidal war they waged against Israel (as I also argued above); and (3) Israel was not engaging in so-called ethnic cleansing (which I have argued in Part 2). It seems that Pappé is attempting to divert attention away from the Arab anti-Semitic (i.e., anti-Jewish) violent aggression of 1948 and instead promote Palestinian victimhood by alleging (falsely) that there was in 1948 an ethnic cleansing (“annihilation,” “dehumanization,” removal) of Arabs from Israel by Israel. But, again, this narrative is false. To ensure the reader understands, permit me to repeat my above reply to the allegation that Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing. Yes, many Arabs, especially those deemed hostile to Israel, were forced out by Israel in 1948. This is truly tragic. But it was war—a war started by the Arabs. Nevertheless, many Arabs left Israel willingly to get out of harm’s way because a war (to exterminate Jews) was at hand (and these fleeing Arabs planned to return to Israel after Israel was destroyed); many Arabs left Israel because the surrounding Arab nations (wishing to wage genocidal war on the Jews) ordered them to leave to facilitate the war effort (and return later to a Jew-ridden land); many Arabs who were not hostile to Israel stayed in Israel (as citizens of Israel). In other words, the criterion for Arabs being forced out of Israel was not whether they were Arab, but whether they were hostile to Israel. Middle East expert Denis MacEoin observes: “It is true that the Israelis expelled some Arabs, but they were mainly those in frontline areas and who were known to be cooperating with the enemy. But they were only a small percentage of those Arabs who became displaced.” (MacEoin, “The Status of Jerusalem, the 1949 Armistice Lines, and Refugees.”) Thus, embedded in the criterion of expulsion is a distinction that shows that the ethnic cleansing charge fails. Hostility, not ethnicity or religion, was the concern. This is a hugely significant distinction that should not be missed (but often is).

Clearly, then, Pappé’s postmodern interpretive leanings (i.e., his subjectivity and anti-Israel ideological leanings) influence his historical work in the direction of, to use Morris’s term, sloppiness. And thereby Pappé casts onto Israel, to use Lowry’s term, a smear.

For further assessment of Ilan Pappé’s view that Israel is a settler-colonial state, see the section “Colonialism and imperialist support” in Alexander Yakobson & Amnon Rubinstein, Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish nation-state and human rights (London & New York: Routledge, 2010), 65–75. On pages 76–82 of this book, Yakobson and Rubinstein also refute the claim that there is no historical continuity of the Jewish people. (Yakobson is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the late Rubenstein was dean of the Radzyner School of Law in Herzlia, Israel.)

46. Tishby, Israel, 297. My pointing to the expulsion of Jews from Arab states along with pointing to the expulsion of Arabs from Israel is not to suggest that two wrongs make a right. Two wrongs do not make a right. Rather, I am merely providing context to show that Palestinian Arabs were not the only ones who suffered.

47. Again, for replies to other objections set out against Israel—objections such as Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, or Israel’s military response in Gaza is not proportional—see Hendrik van der Breggen, Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments. See, too, Rosa Freedman, David Hirsh & Odeliya Lanir Zafir, eds., Responses to 7 October: Law and Society (New York: Routledge, 2024).

 

 My other writings on Israel

 

Book (free pdf) 

Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War (Amazon KDP, 2024).

 

Articles 

Untangling Anti-Israel Propaganda for Today’s College Students, APOLOGIA, May 23, 2024. 

The Problem of the Misleading Headline: Yet another way news media promote anti-Israel bias, APOLOGIA, June 19, 2024. 

Correction of mistakes, again, APOLOGIA, May 9, 2024. 

Correction of mistakes, APOLOGIA, April 18, 2024. 

In defence of Israel, APOLOGIA, October 28, 2023.

 

Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor (formerly Associate Professor of Philosophy at Providence University College, Manitoba, Canada).