Several years ago, in connection with a family trip to Israel, I looked into the issue of Israeli “settlements” in the areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I then had a post in June 2017 titled “Do You Know The Difference Between ‘Settlers’ And ‘Immigrants’?” .
The Israeli settlements, and the “settlers” who inhabit them, have come in for constant attacks from the international left, culminating in condemnation from a UN Security Council resolution in 2016. The resolution was approved by a 14-0 vote in 2016 (on which vote the U.S., during President Obama’s tenure, abstained, rather than exercising its right to veto). Yet viewed in a broader context, the Israeli settlements are a tiny part of annual migrations of millions of people around the world, going from one political jurisdiction to another. All, or nearly all, of these other migrations are applauded by the international left. Indeed, these other migrations are applauded even when they are clearly violative of the law of the destination — illegal immigration into the United States being the most prominent example.
So what makes the Israeli settlers so subject to widespread condemnation while other migrants are applauded? I thought the answer was not difficult to discern, but the intervening years made things even more obvious. In those years we have seen the ascent of another one of these trendy academic concepts, this one going by the name of “settler colonialism.” The basic idea is that you can tell the difference between (bad) “settler colonialists” and other (good) immigrants by a combination of racial identity and hatred of places that practice freedom-based economic systems.
But how do we know where to draw the line between the “settlers” and the “immigrants”? You can count on the left to take this immediately to the extreme. On May 19 the Black Lives Matter group tweeted its support for “Palestinians” in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, and in the process associated Israel itself with the term “settler colonialism”:
Black Lives Matter stands in solidarity with Palestinians. We are a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation. (always have. And always will be.)
So it’s not just those few hundred thousand Jews who have moved into East Jerusalem and the West Bank who get branded with the derogatory term “settler”; it’s all of Israel, presumably because most of the Jews there have immigrated from elsewhere (although they might have roots in the Holy Land going back many generations).
Which probably leaves you wondering, what about the United States? We are often referred to as a “land of immigrants.” But are we really instead a land of “settler colonialists”? You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the academic left has long since beaten us to this conclusion. Google “settler colonialism” to find long lists of academic articles, conferences and books on this subject, most within the last few years. For example, here’s detailed information on a conference with the title “Settler Colonialism in the United States,” that was held at Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. The lead-off speaker was one Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on the topic of “Settler Colonialism as Genocide.” From the abstract:
The history of the United States IS a history of settler colonialism. The objective of settler-colonialism is to terminate and replace the presence of Indigenous Peoples as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of genocide.
If you start reading some of these things, you can quickly go from the merely self-loathing to the completely insane. Here is a piece from the California Law Review in November 2020 (author: Monika Batra Kashyap) that somehow manages to link up “U.S. Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and the Racially Disparate Impacts of COVID-19.” I’ll give you an excerpt from the conclusion to see if you can make heads or tails of it:
When settler colonialism is viewed as a social determinant of health, the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 in Indigenous communities can engender reform efforts that acknowledge and compensate for the lasting health-related impacts of the residential boarding school program––impacts that increase susceptibility to COVID-19. Similarly, the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 in Black communities can engender reform efforts that acknowledge and compensate for the lasting health-related impacts of slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration––impacts that increase susceptibility to COVID-19.
Anyway, the good news for Israel is that what are called the “settlements” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are a tiny part of the issue almost to the point of irrelevance. In the eyes of the progressive left, or at least a large swath of it, all of Israel is a “settler colonialist” enterprise, and therefore fundamentally illegitimate in the same way as the settlements. But that’s OK, because the entire United States is the same. And how about Canada? I can’t think of why not.
But meanwhile immigration of large numbers of people into the U.S. from the south, or into Europe from the east, get viewed in an entirely different light. It’s the usual progressive racism and hatred of anyone who practices a freedom-based economic system.
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