Zionism as settler colonialism

**Zionism as settler colonialism** is an idea. It says that the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine is a kind of colonization that pushed out the people who already lived there. This idea is mainly used by people who criticize Zionism and Israel.

Early Zionist leaders, like Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, sometimes used words like “colonize,” but the formal idea of settler colonialism didn’t exist until the 1960s. Later, scholars like Edward Said and Maxime Rodinson applied this idea to Zionism. This way of thinking became more popular during the 1960s, when many countries were gaining independence from colonizers.

In the 1990s, some Israeli and Palestinian historians called the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian displacement) an ongoing process, saying Zionism tries to remove or absorb Palestinians, similar to what happened to Native Americans in the U.S. or Aboriginal people in Australia. People who disagree with this idea, like Benny Morris, say that Zionism is about Jewish people returning to their historic homeland and having the right to govern themselves. The argument is really about history, identity, and who has the right to the land.

## Background

Many early Zionist leaders openly described their movement as a form of colonization.   Vladimir Jabotinsky called Zionism “a colonization adventure,” while Theodor Herzl referred to it as “something colonial” and spoke of “experiments in colonization” in Palestine.  Max Nordau also described Zionism as a large-scale colonization effort, rejecting smaller, gradual settlement.

Major Zionist institutions reflected this identity, with names such as the Jewish Colonization Association, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, and the Jewish Colonial Trust. Early Zionist groups promoted “Hebrew labor,” encouraging Jewish-owned businesses to hire only Jews and acquire land that could never be sold to non-Jews.

Collective farms, or kibbutzim, were created to build self-sufficient Jewish communities and later served as models for settlements beyond Israel’s 1967 borders.  Chaim Weizmann compared the Zionist project to French colonization in Tunisia, saying he hoped Jewish immigration would make Palestine “as Jewish as England is English.”

Anthropologist Scott Atran noted, however, that unlike the French, Zionist colonization sought to replace Arab labor, not rely on it.  In 1948, about 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the Nakba, and around 500 villages were destroyed.   While some Israelis saw this as a tragic consequence of war, some historians describe it as ethnic cleansing.  Palestinian lands were seized, and those who remained in Israel were confined to restricted areas.

In 1956, Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan acknowledged this reality, saying: “We are a generation of settlers… without the steel helmet and cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home.”  Historian Arnon Degani argues that the end of military rule over Palestinian citizens in 1966 marked a shift from colonial to settler-colonial governance. After the 1967 war, Israel captured the Golan Heights and the West Bank, displacing large portions of their Syrian and Palestinian populations.

## Scholarly development

The “settler colonial framework” for analyzing the Palestinian struggle initially emerged in the 1960s, as decolonization was happening across Africa and the Middle East. This perspective was revived in the 1990s within Israeli academic circles, particularly by Israeli and Palestinian “New Historians.” These scholars challenged Israel’s foundational myths and considered the “Nakba” (the 1948 displacement of Palestinians) an ongoing process. This resurgence coincided with a shift in focus from supporting a “two-state solution” to advocating for a “one-state solution” that mandates equal citizenship for all, thereby challenging the Jewish identity of Israel.

## Activistic use

According to _The Economist_, the Palestinian diaspora has redefined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — shifting it from “a clash between two national movements” to “a generational struggle for liberation against settler colonialism.” This view has gained strong support among left-leaning university activists.

## Related pages

- Israel-Palestine conflict
- Colonialism
- Zionism