Let’s set aside the multiple issues with “I think one of my distant ancestors lived here 2000 years ago, or maybe just other members of my religious group, therefore I have a right to live here today” and assume that yes, that sort of historical/ancestral claim gives comtemporary Jewish people a right to live in Palestine. Even in the most generous light imaginable, it would not give them a right to build an ethnostate by committing genocide on the current inhabitants. Israel is so far past anything that could be reasonably granted from ancient Jews living in Palestine that there is no possible defense along those lines.
Or are we strictly talking about western powers giving the Jewish people a ‘homeland’ after the second world war and the holocaust?
Yes, that’s what people mean when they refer to Israel as a colony of Europe/the U.S.
The giant gaping hole in calling Israel a “western colony” is that it has no homeland. It’s not a British colony, or a French colony, or a colony of any other country. If Israel as a country stops existing, the vast majority of its citizens don’t have citizenship in any other country and have literally nowhere else to go. Therefore it’s not a colony and it’s not colonialism, it’s an independent country.
When the British expelled criminals to Australia they couldn’t return home. Was Australia not a colony? A ton of European immigrants to the American colonies intended their journeys to be one-way trips, and were functionally barred from returning by cost. Does that mean there were no colonies in the Americas?
Besides, throughout history you almost never see settlers leaving en masse when colonial administrations end. Sure, some recent arrivees may turn around, and some administrators who moved there mostly to work in the colonial government may leave, but you really never see the main body of settlers leave. You didn’t even have this in South Africa. They simply have to live under a government where they can’t shoot the locals with impunity.
That doesn’t really address the point though… Israel is independent, and was so from the start. It’s not bound to any other western country’s rule, which is the first requirement for being a colony.
the vast majority of its citizens don’t have citizenship in any other country and have literally nowhere else to go. Therefore it’s not a colony
It directly refutes this.
If you’re leaning on Israel being formally independent, they’re about as independent from the West (particularly the U.S.) as a college freshman getting their tuition paid by Mom and Dad. No one here is talking about Israel being independent on paper, we’re talking about how it interacts with other countries in reality.
Let’s set aside the multiple issues with “I think one of my distant ancestors lived here 2000 years ago, or maybe just other members of my religious group, therefore I have a right to live here today” and assume that yes, that sort of historical/ancestral claim gives comtemporary Jewish people a right to live in Palestine. Even in the most generous light imaginable, it would not give them a right to build an ethnostate by committing genocide on the current inhabitants. Israel is so far past anything that could be reasonably granted from ancient Jews living in Palestine that there is no possible defense along those lines.
Yes, that’s what people mean when they refer to Israel as a colony of Europe/the U.S.
The giant gaping hole in calling Israel a “western colony” is that it has no homeland. It’s not a British colony, or a French colony, or a colony of any other country. If Israel as a country stops existing, the vast majority of its citizens don’t have citizenship in any other country and have literally nowhere else to go. Therefore it’s not a colony and it’s not colonialism, it’s an independent country.
When the British expelled criminals to Australia they couldn’t return home. Was Australia not a colony? A ton of European immigrants to the American colonies intended their journeys to be one-way trips, and were functionally barred from returning by cost. Does that mean there were no colonies in the Americas?
Besides, throughout history you almost never see settlers leaving en masse when colonial administrations end. Sure, some recent arrivees may turn around, and some administrators who moved there mostly to work in the colonial government may leave, but you really never see the main body of settlers leave. You didn’t even have this in South Africa. They simply have to live under a government where they can’t shoot the locals with impunity.
That doesn’t really address the point though… Israel is independent, and was so from the start. It’s not bound to any other western country’s rule, which is the first requirement for being a colony.
It directly refutes this.
If you’re leaning on Israel being formally independent, they’re about as independent from the West (particularly the U.S.) as a college freshman getting their tuition paid by Mom and Dad. No one here is talking about Israel being independent on paper, we’re talking about how it interacts with other countries in reality.