Patrick Wolfe’s article about the settler colonialists and their aim of erasing and eliminating the native was very interesting to me since I could relate some of the things he was saying (in the reading but also the video of the American University of Beirut) to other situations that I have witnessed in our region, the Middle East. The first situation that came to mind was the Israeli settlers in Palestine, which is also quite an obvious one to most people living in the Middle East – and to some extent others outside the region as well. The Israelis have by now assimilated to the land to some extent, and claim to be somehow native to the land as well, using religion as their main way to justify and prove that Palestine was theirs to begin with and that it was never a ‘Palestine’ anyways. The way in which the Israeli colonial settlers have continued to settle and maintain their own system in a land which they are not native to is very interesting to me and I hope to explore it further in this discussion post.
One of the main reasons for Israel’s continuing existence is the support they get from the western powers, who at this time in the world, are some of the most powerful and influential nations. The Israeli occupation of Palestine has been met with violent backlash from its neighboring Middle Eastern countries who have waged war against it, but they have also received overwhelming support from European countries. For example, the US is probably Israel’s biggest supporter and advocate for Zionism, Germany paid reparations to the Jewish state and supported its creation as a result of their guilt after it committed the Jewish holocaust, and the British are the main reason as to why the zionists state came to be after they gave Palestine to the Zionists since Palestine was a mandate under the British empire. Since the global system is reliant on and built by the Americans and the Europeans, then being spread around the globe and enforced on other nations through colonialism, the West’s support for Israel played a major role in why the zionist state continues to exist. The west’s support helped Israel in many ways, for example, it helped Israel win wars over the Arabs. However, I would like to argue that the western powers may have also helped the Israelis learn how to rule as a colonial state because Israel’s actions seem to regurgitate and recreate the actions and beliefs of the previous European colonialists and settler colonialists. The west was very successful in colonizing many areas of the world and colonizing not just the people as subjects, but also by colonizing their minds and indoctrinating in them certain ideas such as orientalist perspectives of themselves, thus creating an ‘Other’ who despises that others himself. Although the Europeans may not have any colonies anymore, that does not mean that they lost control over colonizing nations and people, as we see in modern-day, the west is heavily involved in international affairs and is in control of certain systems and international institutions like civil societies, e.g. the United Nations. So did they really lose their power, their colonies, and their subjects?
The idea of a post-colonial world suggests that colonialism has ended, which doesn’t seem to be true since lands and people still seem to be colonized by others, however this time its done indirectly (most of the time) without the invasion and genocide, or at least one that is obvious to the people from the colonial state. So are we really living in the post-colony? In my opinion, no not really, we’ve just been told to believe so and we did so because the ones often saying this and claiming that this is a post-colonial world are ones from the colonial states. If it is so, then Israel wouldn’t exist, but the fact that it does proves Patrick Wolfe’s point about settler colonialism as a structure, not an event. It’s not something that happens once and then becomes a part of history, rather its a whole system that is ingrained within different aspects of life in the colony, like the society, the government, and even the individual’s mind. Structures have already existed in these lands and settler-colonial structures attempt to erase that and implement their own, however, to do that and maintain the existence of the settler-colonial structure even in the ‘post-colonial’ era, they would need to weaken the previous structure and get rid of it. This is where the colonization of the mind becomes important.
Settler colonialists aim to weaken the previous structure by colonizing the individuals and their minds in order to implement their own system without any repercussions. So one way of colonizing the people is by encouraging assimilation to the native group, assimilating them into the settler’s society and culture so that the colonized would repeat the settler’s ideologies rather than their own, thus erasing the existence of another ideology or presence within the land. An example of this would be the white settlers in the United States and Canada using ‘Indian Residential Schools’ to assimilate and ‘civilize’ the native Americans into white society. This is why they were rarely used for slavery because slavery would require them to actually exist and breed more ‘slaves’, but since they were the natives of the land, the settlers felt threatened and so assimilation was the safest way of erasing the native identity. Rather, slavery was reserved for black Africans who were seen as people who cannot even assimilate because of their race, so the commodification of people served the settlers without any threat. We see this in Israel where the Palestinians are forced to assimilate by being forced to take on an Israeli passports, learn and speak Hebrew, and basically let go of their Palestinian identity and be labeled as Arab-Israeli and treated as inferior. This relates to Wolfe’s idea that these colonial settlers follow that to homogenize is to divide, which may sound like a paradox, but homogenizing erases the differences between the groups and as Israel tries to establish a national identity, they need people to forget their previous identities by embracing this new identity that divides them from their native one. This elimination of the natives creates an empty space, who’s going to serve the settlers?
In Israel’s case, it’s the Mizrahi Jews and any other Jew who is not Ashkenazi (European). Throughout the existence of Israel (73 years), despite having an Askenazi minority compared to the other groups of Jewish ethnicities, every single prime minister has been an Ashkenazi. Non-European Jews and Arab Israelis are treated as second-class citizens in Israel. Israel has also tried to erase the idea of ‘Arab Jews’ as a way to separate and divide them from Arabs, which weakens the Arabs, strengthens the Arab Jews’ loyalty to Israel, and can also disable them from sympathizing with the Palestinians. A lot of Arab Jews have accepted this idea and have instead started to label themselves as either just Israeli or a Mizrahi Israeli, because of their history in the Arab countries. Some Arab Jews have felt excluded and are angered, rightfully so, by the way, Arab governments have treated their Jewish minorities who are native to the land but have been treated horribly because of their religion. Israel has exploited this to their benefit by fueling their anger towards Arabs and creating a national identity that excludes ethnicity, or at least it claims to, and aims to bring all jews and anyone willing to live in and support Israel together as equals.