A long thread about colonialism, decolonization, what models can &...

A long thread about colonialism, decolonization, what models can & can't work, and why the Israel-Palestine context is unique. I wish people would slow-read this because many are walking around with outdated models, and may be causing damage 🧵

Caveat: I wrote this as a stream of consciousness with minimum editing so please forgive me if this ends up being meandering or repetitive or choppy. I just find that I write more powerfully and authentically when I'm not trying to edit anything or make it sound good

Let me start from here: There's a subtle but very important difference between "to colonize" and "to colonialize". I know that in some contexts, the words are used interchangeably. But in key ways they are *not*. I cringe when people confuse them.

What is a colony? A colony is a human settlement that exists largely not for its own sake, but for the sake of a "mainland". It's usually not self-sufficient economically or culturally, and should the ties to the "mainland" be severed, it becomes unsustainable

Colonization is the act of establishing a colony where one did not previously exist. If we send people to Mars we'd be colonizing Mars. Our Mars colony wouldn't be self sustaining and will be dependent on (and exist for the goals of) whoever sent it.

That's to colonize. To colonialize, however, is when a society that *already existed for its own sake* is subjugated, dominated, and then turned into a colony. Turned into something that exists not for its own sake but for the benefit of the colonizing power.

It's not easy to force a human community to organize their society not for their own sake - their own prosperity, liberty, etc - but for sake of foreign others. Colonialism is a mode of domination and as all modes of domination, it's rooted in a severe power differential.

So this is the difference, or at least what I claim is the difference:
Colonize = Establish a colony
Colonialize = Convert an existing human society into a colony

(Btw I'm not an academic. Actual academics may not slice it this way, and frankly. I don't care how people categorize me. I'm just here to tell you things as I see them, as someone for whom this is a full time job. This work is my life and it'll be the rest of my life.)

Now, there are broadly two types of colonialism.
- Extractive colonialism seeks to subjugate & colonialize an existing society towards economic gain (basically, mass plunder)
- Settler colonialism seeks to colonialize land and displace/destroy the existing society.

Some good books on extractive colonialism here. A lot of it is about systematic disempowerment, forced economic dependence, and mass plunder. Don't buy all the Western supremacist bullshit about "bringing civilization" (because we're all savages who needed to be civilized)

Settler colonialism seeks to destroy & displace an existing human society in order to steal its land & resources and to establish another society in its place. Some of the world's most important countries today were established as settler colonies: US, Canada, Australia, etc

What's happening in Palestine is settler-colonialism, so I'm going to focus on that.

Here's the thing: We have many examples of settler-colonial contexts where the settlers decisively won. We have rather few where the *natives* decisively won.

About Zionism and settler-colonialism: Early Jewish colonies in Palestine did not displace natives, but kept segregated from them. During, after, and since 1948, however, we saw active ethnic cleansing measures aimed at displacing natives & taking over their land & property

I'm gonna go off on three tangents here.

1. About language. Talking of "occupation" in Israel-Palestine is not incorrect but very misleading; it's like calling theft "transfer of property". It's occupation *with the intention* of land theft, settlement, and ethnic cleansing

2. Not all presence of foreign settlers is colonialism. Like I said, colonialism is a mode of domination. If foreign people came in to live with natives in equality, neither dominating nor dominated, that's not colonial. That's just regular human migration & coexistence.

3. Because settler colonialism displaces existing communities, it has been associated with slavery and/or labor exploitation. E.g. in the Americas so many natives were killed that nobody was left to work the fields, so a new peasant class had to be brutally "imported" from Africa

(In Israel, Thai workers had to be brought in to work the farms because Palestinians were kicked off & pushed into cantons. Note how Israel didn't even count them among the Oct 7 hostages. Here's an HRW report about their exploitation.) hrw.org/news/2015/01/2…

(Since we're on that topic, Israel is now bringing in poor Africans from Malawi to work the farms, now that Thai workers don't want to. A secret deal was signed whose terms aren't clear, but Africans are already being flown into an active warzone.) voaafrica.com/a/malawi-migra…

A note about this: There were incidents during the British Mandate period where Jewish groups purchased land from "absentee land owners" leading to the displacement of locals who lived on it. But the context is very different from the Nakba & after.
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Returning to this point. There are only two major examples (I can think of) where a settler-colonial situation was resolved with the natives decisively *winning*:
1. Algeria
2. South Africa

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There are other instances of the collapse of settler-colonial regimes, or regimes with settler-colonial features - Rhodesia, Namibia, Angola. But I'd argue that Algeria and South Africa are the two *main* models, and therefore the two worth discussing in depth.

Algeria model = National liberation war ending with the expulsion of the colonialists
South Africa model = International isolation & anti-apartheid struggle ends with establishing democracy

In Algeria, French colonialism had aspects of both extractive & settler colonialism. Algeria was part of the French state, not a dependency. The French in Algeria were French citizens; native Algerians were (for most of the colonial period) non-citizens on their own land.

The Algeria model was very influential to the thinking of Palestinian liberation movements, which were formed either during & immediately after the Algerian Independence War. It's understandable that they took it as a model. To me it can *not* be a model.

Why can't it be a model? A few reasons:
- French settlers were no more than 10% of the population
- French settlers could just go to France (they were French)
- Algeria had no religious-historical significance to the French
- France was weakened & exhausted from WW2
- etc

Meanwhile ~65% of Israelis have partial or full middle eastern ancestry (they're not "white"); they're ~50% of the population between the river & the sea; they're the descendants of genocide survivors & refugees and have nowhere else to go; and they have strong & committed allies

I'll have more thoughts on the "Algeria model" in a bit.

But: About the South Africa model - many people even forget that the apartheid regime was *also* a settler-colonial regime. They think somehow that apartheid and settler-colonialism are two different things

Here's a bit about the connection between settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide:
- Settler-colonialism is inherently genocidal (replace natives)
- Where it succeeds, the natives are eliminated
- Where it doesn't, it establishes apartheid

Settler-colonialism and apartheid aren't two different models or framings. Apartheid is what settler-colonial systems do to maintain control when they become a minority. When they can't ethnically cleanse the native population or reduce their numbers.

I don't know how I got this far in the thread without mentioning the dreaded word, "decolonization". There's this widely spread but wrong idea that decolonization means doing a reverse-ethnic cleansing or a reverse-genocide. This is just such weak thinking.

Decolonization does not mean removing people. It means removing domination. Recall what I said earlier, colonialism is a mode of domination. Also recall that the presence of other people on the premise of equality is not colonial.

I mean, South Africa is a major example. The apartheid regime was *also* a settler-colonial regime. When South Africa became a democracy and apartheid ended, South Africa was effectively *decolonized*. Some whites did leave (~20%), but most didn't.

People often fail to make a distinction between an anti-colonial movement and a decolonial one. Anti-colonial = remove the colonial regime (but could want to establish a dictatorship in its place). Decolonial movement = remove the system of domination & heal its impact.

I think the South African model is a far closer model to follow in Israel-Palestine:
- An apartheid reality
- A regime that is long-term unsustainable*
- Minority rule*

Asterisk 1: Will require its own thread (already wrote it, waiting for the right time). Yes Israel is not long-term sustainable.
Asterisk 2: Palestinians already outnumber Jews between the river & the sea (50.16% to 49.84%)

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Still, applying the South Africa model to Israel-Palestine runs into its own difficulties:
- Geopolitical context
- Regional context
- Military situation
- Demographic
- Far more bloodshed
- Role of religion
- History of Jewish persecution
- Nobody tried to 2SS South Africa
- etc

Which model you choose as your starting point - the Algeria model or the South Africa model - will have an enormous impact on your strategy, the kind of movement you build, the kind of power you build, the kind of alliances you create, etc.

Back to the Algeria model: A big part of the Palestine/pro-Palestine movement has been stuck thinking in this mode. Just make Israel unlivable and they'll all leave. It won't happen. Believe me it won't happen and this thinking is a dead end (this is worth its own thread)

But there's another reason this is bad for us even if it were possible. Even those who ascribe to this thinking acknowledge it would mean rivers of blood. As a Palestinian I want a country my children & grandchildren can live in with full dignity. Not "a country without Jews".

No offense to all the radical anti-colonial theorists but we're actually real people with real lives, we're not an intellectual or academic debate. We want a country we can live in. A country "liberated" into a pile of rubble and rivers of blood won't be.

I know someone is going to creep into my mentions to scream "two state solution". It won't happen. It can't happen. This isn't just "pessimism". It's a geopolitical impossibility and an impasse. Explaining this fully will take its own massive thread and I'm already getting tired.

What does "freedom from the river to the sea" mean? It means nobody subjugates anybody, nobody dominates anybody, nobody colonializes anybody. Now, we know we're not going to get there anytime soon. We have to think in intergenerational timescales.

The big question at this point: "how can you even live with these people after what they've done". In a way this isn't even the question to ask when we're talking intergenerational timescales. It's about my children & grandchildren co-existing with their children & grandchildren.

Yes this only scratches the surface of a much longer conversation. I had other thoughts on indigeneity, ideology, etc but this is already a very long thread and not a very good one and I'm a little dizzy now. But ready for your comments. Please be respectful.

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(I hate this thread. Whatever.)