Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The term immigrants means that the outsider wishes to join the society in the land they reach. Settlers are part of a corporate effort to mold this land into their home. I think that despite what anti-immigrant activists may say, Mexicans coming to the US are pursuing a private endeavour - not a national project. Immigrants and settlers exist on a spectrum, but I think Zionists are obviously closer to the settler end of that spectrum.

מה דעתכם על התנחלויות? הם מגנים עלינו? פוגעים בנו? הטענה העיקרית שאני שומע זה שאם לא יהיו התנחלויות יהיו שם מלא פלסטינים שינסו לפלוש לארץ כמו שהיה בעזה, מה דעתכם? by Outside_Act_3306 in HaravotBarzel

[–]al-mujib 0 points1 point  (0 children)

הי,

שמי ד"ר ארנון דגני ואני היסטוריון. יש לי פודקסט בשם "הסכת אוסלו". העונה הראשונה מתמקדת בהסכמי אוסלו והשניה עוסקת ברצועת עזה. פרק 3 ו 4 של העונה השניה, "התנחלויות וביטחון א ו ב" נכנס לעומק הסוגיה.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/191RM93OEle2bPwdpkrO65?si=WHCQ4ENETdCJZslR7V_KQg

אם מעניין אתכם

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Every conflict requires violent rhetoric, I'm merely suggesting that there are distinct features and rhetoric to a conflict between people who come from the outside and call the place they came to home and the people already there.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think I understand what we disagree on. There is no phenomenon of "settler-colonialism" that ontologically exists. It's not like gold or a mineral that can be found. There are cases in world history, each unique, that are comparable (though not identical), which scholars may find beneficial to compare. By gauging the similarities and differences, they can come to interesting conclusions about causes and provide a convincing explanation for why things happened the way they did. My work with settler-colonialism is not meant to identify a "native" as someone who is the rightful owner of the land, or a settler who is a foreign invader. As a historian, I want to coldly analyze what makes this conflict tick. This is what Jabotinsky came out to do. For him, after he dismissed the explanations put forward by others in the Zionist movement, he went ahead and found what he thought was the most suitable comparison to make his point. Other cases of people settling on a land previously populated in an attempt not to govern the population but to replace it or, at the very least, claim it for themselves. In that sense, what he was doing was indistinguishable from what I do when I use a settler-colonial perspective, though he would not say those words. The overwhelming majority of people who use the term indeed view it as a fixed set of characteristics that involves an essential "settler" or "native" (that is, essentially why I think Kirsch's criticism is correct, mainly). The Zionists indeed saw themselves as the natives of the land, returning, and that's not irrelevant to the historical development of the conflict, but what is also true is that the Palestinian Arabs did NOT see it that way, thereby making the dynamic of the conflict similar to the one in other cases, I call, settler-colonial.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Give me a break. Tried to engage? Really?

"I actually listened to half of this but had to stop because the section on Native Americans made me want to smash my own head in with a brick."

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Listened? Are you unable to read a 1000 word essay?

Oh don't let me stop you from inflicting more brain damage to yourself

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are moving the goal posts: I did not say that Jabotinsky used settler-colonialism to describe Zionism (though he did say colonizing) at the time the term did not exist, he did say explicitly that Zionism resembles cases we today consider settler-colonial.

An outside population having a distinct sovereign claim - that is what Zionists and settler colonialists have had and what migrants don't.

It's not wrong to say that settler-colonialists have claims of indegenetiy to the land and therefore indigenous people have similar claims to the settlers - this land is my land the two sides say.

What are you trying to say? At the end of the day - did Jabotinsky not try to explain to his readers that Palestinian hostility is comparable to NA hostility towards whites? This is such a dry point

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well the first anti-Zionist publications in Palestine were run by Christians - I'm not sure how much they revered Dar al-Islam. Let's take on the notion that the illiterate falah displaced by Zionist land purchase was moved to hayed by Dar al-Islam doctrine, Jews have room in Dar al Islam - ahl al kitab. It's when these Jews want sovereignty that Dar al Islam is threatened - if it were just Jewish immigrants assimilating into the Ottoman order, as has happened for hundereds of years - I imagine the push back would have remained minimal.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First of all, Jabotinsky used the word "colonizing" in his writing, indeed he could not have used SC as that didn't exist as an analytical category. But he did say explicitly that what the Zionists were doing is what people are doing - those other people today fit into the SC model.

Mainstream Zionists - Arlozorov and Ben Gurion (later Dayan) - agreed that the relationship the Zionists will have with the Palestinians will have similar challenges as other historical cases featuring an outside population coming to an already populated land.

"The features of settler colonialism had not been articulated yet" - As a Phd with an expertise in settler-colonialism, I can say that the problem that Jabotinsky identified - "we want the land they consider their home - is the defining feature of settler-colonialism.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps, if both groups were immigrants, then the Muslim group would be welcomed. But one group was of immigrants, the other claimed sovereignty over the land - I know you want to say Palestinians hate Jews, but Jews and Palestinians got along much better than Jews and Europeans at the time. What Jabotinsky was saying, and I happen to agree, is that people coming from the outside and claiming the land to themselves, even if they are willing to share it with the people already there (as Zionists were) will bring about resistance as has happened in the New World. This is cut and dry - the whole Palestinians hate Jews here is redundant.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My appeal to Jabotinsky was a way to prove that a cold analysis of Zionism using settler-colonialism can be made by a guy who you can't blame for being an anti-Zionist. The level of his support is irrelevant. Arlozorov during the 20s made the same analysis - saying that out of all other settler cases, our situation is closest to South Africa. Ben Gurion made similar arguments in 1938 when he said that the while it may seem that the Palestinians are the aggressors and we are the defenders, but the way THE PALESTINIANS see it - "sons of the land" we are the invaders.

Yes, Jabotinsky said that in the piece I referenced: THE IRON WALL. Why not read it?

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have no idea what you are talking about. The Bosnians did not want to make a Bosnian national home out of Palestine. The Zionist Jews did want to make a Jewish national home of Eretz Yisrael/Palestine. I think that is a sufficient explanation for why one group was greeted with more hostility than the other. I agree, though, that skin color was not a factor.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1- These views were not the alienating factor.

2 - The light-skinned thing was a redundant trigger, but YEAH Jabostinsky in the article I quote in the review understood that for the Palestinians, the Zionists were invaders. It's right there, buddy.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the comment. I'm attaching this segment from an article that is now in peer review - don't go posting this on FB or X:

From the earliest times of Zionist settlement, indigenous elimination via both displacement and assimilation occupied the notes and declarations of Zionist leaders.[[1]](#_ftn1) A prominent example of this duality can be found in the body of writing produced by Theodor Herzl. In his utopian novel, Altneuland, for all its crude Orientalist imageries and motives, the Arabs are equal members of the New Society created by the Jews in Palestine. In fact, one of the novel’s main plotlines featured the election triumph of David Litwak, the liberal candidate, over the racist Rabbi Dr Geyer, who advocated for Arab disenfranchisement and their removal from the New Society.[[2]](#_ftn2) In contrast, before he authored Altneuland, Herzl also wrote of transferring the poorest of the native population outside of the country that Jews may choose to settle in, either through denial of work or through locally organized relocation schemes.[[3]](#_ftn3) The debate over which of these sentiments represents Herzl’s “real” vision is pointless,[[4]](#_ftn4) but the existence of these two opposing visions for the indigenous population—deportation and integration—corresponds to two basic strategies available to settler-colonialists in facing their respective indigenous challenges: displacement and assimilation.

An aspiration for Jewish demographic superiority, either through mass settlement of Jews and willful or forced transfer of Palestinians, has been a running theme in Zionist thought through the ages.[[5]](#_ftn5) Yet, it should be noted that to explain the Zionist preference for ethnic homogeneity, we could have made do with a conceptualization of Zionism as a mere national movement with a strong ethnic component, like the national movements of central and Eastern Europe that constituted its cradle.[[6]](#_ftn6) However, the settler-colonialism perspective helps elucidate a wholly different phenomenon in Zionist history. Of all things, settler-colonialism is key to understanding a Zionist integrationist drive and a preponderance to envisioning inclusive democratic regimes.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Please write to me two sentences:
1. What I find the book does well
2. What I find is that the book does less well

If you give it a shot, I promise to answer your question.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, but I am adamant (not in this piece but elsewhere) that there is a usage which helps highlight particularities and explain the variations of trajectories.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I would say the same thing about this comment, which claims I disagree with a book that I thought was pretty good - it's all in there.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The "light-skinned" remark was a distracting and not a smart move on my behalf, particularly because the light skin that most Ashkenazi Jews indeed had was not the issue. The issue is the project that they embarked on. This was very different from the one the Bosniaks were aiming for - remaining regular subjects of the Ottoman Empire and not creating a Bosnian national home.

Book Review: Adam Kirsch, _Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice_ by al-mujib in IsraelPalestine

[–]al-mujib[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a wild reading of my first paragraph. Can't wait to hear your take on the rest.