September 6, 2024
Israel and Colonialism
Colonialism was ideally justified as a civilizing mission by the superior European civilization (the "white man's burden," as Kipling put it), often linked to Christian missions. In practice, it involved seizing local resources and exploiting cheap local labor. Israel has no intention of civilizing the Arabs (absolutely not), and converting them to Judaism would be sacrilegious. As for labor, Israel no longer trusts the Arabs and instead relies on Filipinos and other Asians (many of whom were killed on October 7th, despite having nothing to do with the conflict). Thus, there is nothing resembling 19th-century colonialism here; rather, it’s about settlers in the sense of farmers (the famous kibbutzim) and, later, everything that comes with industrialization.