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It is amazing to me that Jews, murdered by the millions in Europe before some of the remainder fled to Israel, are somehow compared to classical colonialists. In other words, in the eyes of the simple college student, Zionists are no different than the white men who spread out to colonize the world. Or as my mother used to put it: Don't try to make me feel guilty for the sins of the Conquistadors: they were murdering and expelling the Jews in Spain the same time they were ravishing the Americas.
I saw this today, and thought it was worth excerpting:
First of all, Jews did not come to Palestine in order to exploit its resources for an empire elsewhere – they didn’t have one. In fact, they didn’t come to exploit it at all, but rather to invest in it. It was a relatively barren land, which Jews developed, getting rid of malaria and making it far more productive.
And the Jews came not to become wealthy, but because they needed to survive and had nowhere else to go. Those who made it out of Europe saved themselves from extermination by the Nazis, and they were later followed by hundreds of thousands of Jews who were expelled from Arab countries following centuries of unequal status punctuated by the occasional massacre.
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Nor did the Jews, even those who came in the early 20th century, have a plan to take the land by force, or to drive out or oppress the resident Levantine Arabs. In fact, the Jewish investment in the land attracted tens of thousands more Levantine Arabs. The Jews who came purchased land legally, and only obtained more land as a result of the 1948 war - which was started by the Arabs.
Not that I really object to colonial imperialism, mind you. The West's culture and religion and assumptions of human rights and freedom is superior to that of primitive and pagan faiths. Colonialism has been given a bum rap: most of the time, it improved things, instead of the opposite.
Either way, Israel without the Jews would just be a barren and largely empty land today, indistinguishable from vast swaths of the Middle East.
Discussion (16)
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So many falsehoods are promulgated by ignorant people who have few facts but many ingrained lies.
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It's the whole oppressor-oppressed paradigm that Arnold Kling talks about in his book "The Three Languages of Politics." People see everything through that view, so, naturally the more powerful Israelis are the oppressors. It fits without a lot of effort.
Another paradigm in the book is about civilizing and civilization -- development of humankind. For those of us with that view, what happened on October 7 was triumph of barbarism over civilization, and we are horrified.
Regarding western colonialism, I have a friend from Ghana who is an economics professor, and I visited him once when he had a number of highly-educated Ghanians at his house in Florida. I asked the question: Was British colonialism a plus or a minus net-net, and to a man they said it was a curse. Fast-forward to the years I took cabs from Baltimore-Washington International to my home, and I would get cab drivers from Ghana. "What do you think of the effects of British colonialism?" I would ask. The answer was net-positive. "I'm speaking English, aren't I?" was one of the responses.
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Great post. I'm so pleased about your explaining the Jews coming to Israel. Colonialism, my foot!
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The oppressor-oppressed paradigm is like looking into a room through a keyhole. There's a lot of room that can't be seen through the keyhole.
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I agree with everything in the post about Israel.
I dissent on the “benefits” of colonialism for the colonised, certainly in my own former colony.
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