* 1955 Wall St. Jrnl. 30 Dec. 1/3 The Communist Party Boss: Again accused the West of colonialist aims.
* 1958 Manch. Guardian Weekly 12 June 8/3 Mr. Bandaranaike's Government uses methods which it would denounce as ‘colonialist’ if they were employed by others.
* 1959 ‘M. Derby’ Tigress ii. 85 ‘And you were ― ?’ ‘A colonialist, Madam. I exploited these unhappy natives to make a fortune for myself.‥ We colonialists thought only of private gain.’
Just because it wasn't used as pejorative doesn't mean that the meaning then is something we today should consider it not a problem. What they meant was the same thing we do now. Its just that we now consider it something not all that nice.
Golda Meir told explicitly to NOT send poor, old, sick, and Holocaust survivors(!!!))
Because zionists wanted only healthy strong and ideologically zionist people to settle the land.
Zionists even signed agreement with Adolf Hitler (at the time when entire world boycotted Nazi regime) and opened the doors for rich German jews to escape Germany (~40k people across Germany), while completely throwing all other millions of jews to the holocaust
> Colonialism is a leftist ideology created by college professors in the 1970s
And that matters because…?
> Furthermore, there is no colony without a mother country.
I think you’re picking and choosing a definition of colony that fits your argument.
Here’s a more applicable one:
“ a body of people who settle far from home but maintain ties with their homeland; inhabitants remain nationals of their home state but are not literally under the home state's system of government”
Instead of making ad hominem attacks and playing semantics, why not argue against the actual ideas?
I’m sure the people of Israel would have loved to maintain ties with their homeland but they have been run out of Europe and the Middle East. so where is this Jewish homeland that the colonists in Israel are maintaining ties to?
I don’t know that I see a particular difference between ideas and semantics when the assertion is “Israel is a European colonialist project”
> I’m sure the people of Israel would have loved to maintain ties with their homeland but they have been run out of Europe and the Middle East. so where is this Jewish homeland that the colonists in Israel are maintaining ties to?
Much better.
I personally wouldn’t call Israel a European colonization effort. I don’t think Jews really had a homeland per se. AFAIK they were a nation without any land. It seemed like Israel was part reparations for the holocaust and part installing a strategic ally in the Middle East.
Maybe that’s a thin line.
I can absolutely see how someone could make that argument, though, when framed like this:
A fairly western style country, funded by wealthy western countries, taking and keeping hold of some land in a very not western style part of the world.
> I’m sure the people of Israel would have loved to maintain ties with their homeland
Oh yeah, there's definitely no ties between the two. EU states definitely didn't send 1.76 billion euros ($1.9bn) (in arms) to Israel in exchange for the "security" Israel offers. /s
But also
> Israel is a society of immigrants and their offspring: 23 percent of the Jewish majority as of 2018 was foreign born, 32 percent was comprised of the second generation (Israeli born to immigrant parents), and 47 percent was third generation (Israeli born to Israeli-born parents).
Herzl, Zionism’s founder explicitly described Zionism as colonialism in the 1890s:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_coloniali...
You got me there, luckily I don't have to retract my snark because it has been deservedly flagged.
Still I stand by that "colonialist" was not used as a pejorative until much more recently.
Colonial countries used it freely in the 1880s.
By the 1950s it was recognised as a slur
* 1955 Wall St. Jrnl. 30 Dec. 1/3 The Communist Party Boss: Again accused the West of colonialist aims.
* 1958 Manch. Guardian Weekly 12 June 8/3 Mr. Bandaranaike's Government uses methods which it would denounce as ‘colonialist’ if they were employed by others.
* 1959 ‘M. Derby’ Tigress ii. 85 ‘And you were ― ?’ ‘A colonialist, Madam. I exploited these unhappy natives to make a fortune for myself.‥ We colonialists thought only of private gain.’
examples taken from full O.E.D entry
Just because it wasn't used as pejorative doesn't mean that the meaning then is something we today should consider it not a problem. What they meant was the same thing we do now. Its just that we now consider it something not all that nice.
Golda Meir told explicitly to NOT send poor, old, sick, and Holocaust survivors(!!!))
Because zionists wanted only healthy strong and ideologically zionist people to settle the land.
Zionists even signed agreement with Adolf Hitler (at the time when entire world boycotted Nazi regime) and opened the doors for rich German jews to escape Germany (~40k people across Germany), while completely throwing all other millions of jews to the holocaust
1. https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/1844464179287355571
2. https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story35...
> Colonialism is a leftist ideology created by college professors in the 1970s
And that matters because…?
> Furthermore, there is no colony without a mother country.
I think you’re picking and choosing a definition of colony that fits your argument. Here’s a more applicable one:
“ a body of people who settle far from home but maintain ties with their homeland; inhabitants remain nationals of their home state but are not literally under the home state's system of government”
Instead of making ad hominem attacks and playing semantics, why not argue against the actual ideas?
I’m sure the people of Israel would have loved to maintain ties with their homeland but they have been run out of Europe and the Middle East. so where is this Jewish homeland that the colonists in Israel are maintaining ties to?
I don’t know that I see a particular difference between ideas and semantics when the assertion is “Israel is a European colonialist project”
There are some great answers in r/askhistorians
Here is one : https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17ika73/why_...
Read it and you get a much more nuanced idea of the topic.
> I’m sure the people of Israel would have loved to maintain ties with their homeland but they have been run out of Europe and the Middle East. so where is this Jewish homeland that the colonists in Israel are maintaining ties to?
Much better.
I personally wouldn’t call Israel a European colonization effort. I don’t think Jews really had a homeland per se. AFAIK they were a nation without any land. It seemed like Israel was part reparations for the holocaust and part installing a strategic ally in the Middle East.
Maybe that’s a thin line.
I can absolutely see how someone could make that argument, though, when framed like this:
A fairly western style country, funded by wealthy western countries, taking and keeping hold of some land in a very not western style part of the world.
1 reply →
> I’m sure the people of Israel would have loved to maintain ties with their homeland
Oh yeah, there's definitely no ties between the two. EU states definitely didn't send 1.76 billion euros ($1.9bn) (in arms) to Israel in exchange for the "security" Israel offers. /s
But also
> Israel is a society of immigrants and their offspring: 23 percent of the Jewish majority as of 2018 was foreign born, 32 percent was comprised of the second generation (Israeli born to immigrant parents), and 47 percent was third generation (Israeli born to Israeli-born parents).
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/israel-law-of-return...
So like... not only does Israel have ties with it's "mother country" but even the Israelis themselves do have ties to their own personal homelands.
7 replies →