The war in Israel shows us what “decolonization” really is: double standards, antisemitism and total disregard for human life

On Saturday, October 7, Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel. The official death toll, which is still rising, has exceeded 900 Israelis, several foreign nationals and an unknown number of Palestinians, mostly terrorists but also some civilians who were caught in the crossfire. Most of the Israeli victims were civilians, including at least 260 young festival goers. In addition, over 1,500 people were injured, hundreds are still missing, and at least 150 people, including men, women, children and elderly people, were kidnapped from their homes and brought into the Gaza strip. Entire families perished. The media is full of heart wrenching stories from survivors and family members. According to the latest estimates, the death toll is expected to exceed 1,000 Israelis. When Israeli retaliation comes, and it will be a harsh one, there will be many more casualties on both sides.

Some people have compared the attack to 9/11, but it is actually much worse, considering that Israel’s population is a little over 9.6 million as of January 2023. To put it in proportion, imagine the 9/11 terror attacks had killed over 25,000 Americans (or over 30,000 by 2023 standards). 

The full magnitude of the horror is yet to unfold as I am writing these words, but one thing is already clear: Radical left academics and activists have wasted no time advancing their agenda. They are gloating and dancing on the victims’ graves before those graves have even been dug. Apparently, Israel is the only country that is to blame when its own citizens are brutally murdered. 

The social networks are full of social justice warriors, activists for radical peace and love, rejoicing over the acts of “resistance” and “decolonization” of the “indigenous population” against the “murderous settler colonial regime”. Such “resistance” has to be achieved “by any means necessary”. 

They are joined by an army of twitter warriors, including many Jews who celebrate Hamas, the champion of human rights and democracy, for example:

Radical activists of peace and love, like the UVA Students for Justice in Palestine, a couple of professors and a book publisher, remind us that “decolonization is not a metaphor” and that “walls should be broken down”. 

(Assata Shakur is a member of the Black Liberation Army, a radical Marxist militant organization. She fled to Cuba to avoid murder charges and is still wanted by the FBI). 

The BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) organization celebrates the “rise of the resistance” and organizes rallies and marches. 

The world has seen the back-and-forth between Hamas and Israel before, in particular since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007. Hamas fires rockets into Israel, Israel retaliates, and so on. Each cycle brings out the same old messages by the same old usual suspects. One might think that this war is different, though - in the past the number of civilian casualties on the Palestinian side has always been larger and Israel was seen as the aggressor - or at least the big, strong country with a powerful army and an excellent defense system, fighting against a much smaller and weaker population with metaphorical sticks and stones. There were even Israelis who blamed the government for using excessive force. 

This time, however, it was one of the worst days for the Jewish people in recent history. Hamas launched a surprise ground attack, slaughtering and kidnapping hundreds of innocent civilians—women, children, the elderly. The scale of the massacre is unprecedented in the last 80 years. You can’t possibly blame Israel for what happened this time, right? 

Wrong. 

For example, numerous student unions at Harvard published a letter where they openly blame Israel for the murder and kidnap of its own citizens:

https://twitter.com/yaelbt/status/1710875529249792487

---

There is a lot to unpack here. Let’s break it down, shall we? 

What the hell is “decolonization”?

We in academia often see calls to “decolonize our curriculum”, “decolonize our reading list” or “decolonize our minds”. Even STEM is not immune - quite the opposite. Recent articles call for “Decolonizing Chemistry” , decolonizing the science reading list, decolonizing math and more. Even the Federal Government wishes to incorporate indigenous knowledge into public health practices and decision making. 

Others have done a much better job than I could ever do in explaining decolonization. In brief, “decolonial” or “post-colonial” studies are rooted in post-modernism. They interpret everything in terms of power, privilege and oppression, and these structures of power have to be dismantled and destroyed. These “structures of power” are everything that is perceived as Western, white, Eurocentric, patriarchal, cis-hetero-normative, etc. In academia, the goal is to dismantle systems of merit, fairness and equality and replace them with “social justice” values. It is much more than just diversifying the curriculum to allow multiple voices to be heard. It is about dismantling Western society. 

The current situation between Hamas and Israel is not academic, however. Decolonization is not only in the classroom. If you only stick to “decolonizing” papers and essays you are not doing the work, we now are told: 

LOL. 

How come Israel is always the one to blame, regardless of who committed the aggression? 

When framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a decolonial struggle, the above messages start to make sense. You see, the radical left is obsessed with identity and race. The world is neatly divided between oppressors and oppressed. Privileged, oppressive Western whites and marginalized, oppressed indigenous people of color. Israel is framed as an agent of the West. Jews, especially Ashkenazi Jews, are perceived as white and privileged and therefore always the oppressors. Israel is a “Western settler colonial project” and Israelis are outside invaders to the Middle East. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are perceived as “indigenous” and “oppressed”. When framed like this, it is clear who is the bad guy and who is the good guy. There is no nuance, no “both sides”, it is not complicated. According to the radical Leftist viewpoint, the oppressed must resist the oppressor by any means necessary, including killing civilians, in order to be liberated. Therefore, when there is an armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel is always to blame, even if its civilians are brutally murdered, injured and kidnapped. Marginalized people are never the aggressors, even if they commit heinous war crimes.

It should be noted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is many things, but it is NOT a racial struggle. Jews and Palestinians are (generally) not two different races. Also, many people would argue that Israel is not exactly a Western country. It is a developed and high-income country, but Israeli culture is very much a blend between Western and Middle Eastern. 

Don’t these activists only want Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza? 

No. The radical left activists don’t just want Israel to give up the West Bank and strive for a two-state solution, as I was once mistaken to believe. They don’t just “criticize the harsh treatment of the Palestinians by Israel”, as they often present themselves to the world. They want the total annihilation of Israel, nothing less. They do not think Israel, as a settler colonial entity, has a right to exist and therefore it must be destroyed. 

But, these social justice heroes fight for all types of oppression and terror all over the world, right?

Wrong again.

These radical activists of peace and love were silent when the Iranian murderous regime killed, maimed and jailed thousands of Iranians; they did not squeak when the Taliban took over Afghanistan and effectively took away Afghan women’s basic human rights. If they said anything, it was “blame the Americans”; they remained silent when China ethnically cleansed its Uighur population, and they turned a blind eye when Hamas (and to a lesser extent the Palestinian Authority) persecuted and often killed LGBT people. As a matter of fact, they are even Queering for Palestine. 

Let’s see them try to queer in Palestine! 

Academic boycotts have been a common practice among far left activists. Over the years there have been many calls to boycott Israeli academic institutions and even Israeli scientists. Most recently, the Anthropological society (the same one that dropped a session about biological sex from its annual meeting), decided to adopt a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Such boycotts almost never apply to other countries with the exception of Apartheid South Africa. The only example I remember in recent years is calls to boycott Russia following the war with Ukraine. As far as I know (I may be wrong), such calls were highly disputed and rarely adopted. 

How can we explain this shocking double standard? 

There is only one word to describe it: Antisemitism. Pure and simple. Unlike other forms of bigotry, Antisemitism is elusive. It constantly changes and adapts. It shapeshifts. Unlike other forms of ethnic, religious or racial bigotry, it doesn’t simply see the other side as “other” or inferior, but also includes many aspects of conspiracy theory. 

There are several forms of antisemitism. There is the old-school Jew hatred associated with the far right: Caricatures of hook-nosed, beady eyed Jews with thick eyebrows and piles of money, theories about Jews controlling the banks and the media, and theories about Jews being agents of globalization who usher in hoards of immigrants from other countries to replace white people and destroy the West (remember the Charlottesville marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us”?). There is religious antisemitism and blood libels: Jews murder Christian children and use their blood for ritual purposes. And then there is Left-wing antisemitism. It is more insidious and harder to define, which makes it, in many ways, more dangerous. 

In this context, words like “decolonization” and “settler colonialism” are just code words for the same old form of Jew hatred, only from a radical Left point of view. They echo the old tropes of Jews having all the power and being agents of the enemy. The only difference is that the radical Left tries to dismantle Western civilization, and so Jews are perceived as the agents of the West.

Radical left activists will never admit to being antisemitic. They sometimes try to deflect the charges using stupid strawman arguments such as “not every criticism of Israel is antisemitism” (literally no one says that). In parallel, they do what radical left activists do best: Change the definition of words to suit their worldview. In particular, the newly created “Institute for Critical Studies of Zionism'' is trying to challenge the accepted IHRA definition of Antisemitism which includes, among others, the following: 

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor. 

• Applying double standards by requiring behavior from Israel not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. 

• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

What happened to “Only group X can decide what constitutes bigotry towards group X”? See the “double standards” bullet point above. 

Commonly asked questions (my opinions only):

1. Is Hamas a terror organization? Read its covenant and decide for yourselves: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp. Notice the quote from the Hadith, mentioned in the end of article seven: 

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree*, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

*Gharqad, or Nitraria, is a plant that grows in desert areas.  

The covenant not only explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel, but also for the killing of all the Jews. 

2. Are Jews settler-colonizers? For the most part, no. First, you need an empire to colonize anything, and second, you can’t “colonize” your own homeland. I mean, why would the Jews colonize such a small territory with hardly any natural resources when they could have gone for a larger and nicer piece of land? In fact, Some say that Israel is probably the only really successful decolonization project in history, including the successful revival of the Hebrew language. I do, however, think that the occupation and the Jewish settlement in the West Bank is colonial in nature. Right wing Zionists disagree on the latter, and far left activists disagree on the former. You can’t win them all.

3. Are Jews white European invaders? First of all, unlike American Jews, most Israeli Jews are Mizrahi - their families came from the Middle East and North Africa. Some Mizrahi Jews immigrated to Israel out of Zionism, but most fled or were expelled from their home countries following the establishment of Israel. Even the notion of Ashkenazim (Eastern and Central European Jews) as “white” and “European” is relatively new. Jews have always been considered a diaspora group in Europe and were constantly reminded of it through pogroms, persecutions and ultimately the Holocaust. Ironically, not 90 years after European Jews were told that “Europe is not your home. Go back to Palestine”, they are told that “Palestine is not your home. Go back to Europe”. 

4. Are Jews indigenous to Israel? According to the widely accepted definition, yes. Archaeological evidence and historical records tie the Jews to the land of Israel. The Hebrew language, the Jewish culture and the identity of the Jews as a people started in the land of Israel. Despite 2,000 years of exile, there has always been some Jewish presence in the land. The vast majority of Jews (yes, even the “white European” Ashkenazim) carry significant Levantine Middle Eastern genetic ancestry. 

5. Are the Palestinians indigenous to Israel? This is up for debate. Palestinians also have predominantly Levantine genetic ancestry and they have maintained longstanding, continuous presence in the land of Israel. Many of them may be the descendants of the original Israelites who have been Arabized and converted to Islam. However, the Arabic language and culture are indigenous to the Arabian peninsula and not to Israel. In my opinion it doesn’t really matter. Neither of the two sides is going anywhere. 

6. How will it end? Probably not well and not in the foreseeable future. Over the years there have been many missed opportunities, and no feasible solution is in sight. The Israelis claim that they have made several generous offers and the Palestinians rejected them all. The Palestinians claim that these offers were far from generous. In the meantime, both sides keep drifting further and further apart, and the cycle of violence and bloodshed continues. 

And finally, a not-so-fun fact about indigeneity. 

The International working group for Indigenous affairs (IWGIA) maintains a list of indigenous peoples around the world, and neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are on it. The reason is that in addition to continuous presence, ancestral, cultural and historical ties, an indigenous population also has to be a “non-dominant sector of society”. The only indigenous peoples of southern Israel, according to the list, are the Bedouin Arabs. Some Bedouins identify as Palestinians and many have Palestinian relatives, but they are a distinct ethnic group that traditionally lives a semi-nomadic life in Southern Israel, the Arabian desert and North Africa. Many live in poverty and in unrecognized villages in the Southern Israeli Negev desert. So far, the Israeli media has published the names of approximately 300 of the people murdered by Hamas. As far as I can tell from their names, 16 of the victims are Bedouins. 40 more are missing. So much for fighting the oppressor.

---

Appendix: A short (ish) historical background if you are interested

Full disclosure: I am Israeli, born and raised. This means that I possibly can’t be completely impartial. On the other hand, I also consider myself a “lefty Zionist” – a near extinct species who thinks Israel has the right to exist and defend itself, and yet has very harsh criticism of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, and calls for the end of the Israeli occupation of the West bank and the establishment of a two-state solution. As unfeasible as a two-state solution seems right now, it is not less feasible than any other solution to the endless cycle of war and violence and, in my opinion, it is the only moral one. As such, I am aware that my opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is almost certainly bound to make some readers, either on the left or on the right, really angry. 

When discussing the topic, many people (on both sides) exhibit astonishing levels of ignorance, paralleled only by their near comic level of confidence. A common and extremely simplistic narrative among the left, which often infiltrates the mainstream media, goes something like: “The Palestinians lived in peace and harmony in their country of Palestine for 2,000 years until 1948, when hoards of white European Jews invaded and took their land away. They were backed by the European nations who were guilt ridden by the Holocaust, so they let them seize the land, establish their own state and continue to expel and kill the Palestinians”

If I were a young American student indoctrinated by the well-oiled machine of the far left academia, I might believe this tragic story myself. There is one problem: It is almost completely factually false. One can argue about some historical events where one side claims this and the other claims that. However, there are many established historical facts that can be very easily verified, and that prove that the simplistic narrative above is largely BS. Here is a historical overview of Israel and Palestine, from the Roman times to today. 

In what follows I have relied heavily on a very extensive historical background by Israeli historian Dr. Benny Morris in an interview with Coleman Hughes. It is long and detailed, but probably as balanced as could be, considering that Morris is one of the world’s experts on the subject. As a left leaning Israeli, he had the honor of being accused both by pro-Israelis for being too pro-Palestinian and by pro-Palestinians for being too pro-Israel. 

1. Ironically, Palestine is the colonial name. The last sovereign entity in what is now the West Bank and parts of Central and Southern Israel was the Kingdom of Judea, which later became a Roman province in the 1^st century BC. Following a series of failed revolts against the Romans, the Romans eventually merged Judea with the northern province of Galilee, renaming it Syria Palaestina in 132 AD. The name Palaestina has Greek origins and had probably been used for many years. It may be related to the biblical Philistines (who are not related to modern day Palestinians). In the aftermath, most of the local Jews were exiled or dispersed – first into the Roman empire and later into Europe and North Africa. In addition, many older and well established Jewish communities existed throughout the Middle East and West Asia. Remember that all of this happened 600 years before Islam, the Arab conquest and the spread of the Arabic language in the Middle East. Fun fact: There was never a sovereign Arab state called Palestine. 

2. Jews did not suddenly invade Palestine in droves after 1945. There was always a Jewish presence in Palestine, but Zionism started around 1880 as a nationalist, predominantly secular movement of self-determination. The background was a combination of European antisemitism, pogroms and the rise of nationalist movements in Europe. Under Zionism, Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe but later from other parts of the world, started to emigrate to what they viewed as their historical homeland in Palestine and settle there. 

3. Not everyone lived together in peace and harmony. In 1880, Palestine was part of the Ottoman empire. 20-30,000 Jews lived there, in addition to 500,000 Arabs – 90% of them Muslim, the rest Christian. Under Ottoman rule, Jews and Christians were considered “dhimmi” – a protected non-Muslim minority. They were required to pay a special tax and considered in many ways second class citizens. The relationship between the Arabs and the Jews was often peaceful but the dhimmi status, plus the relative ease with which Jews were able to buy land and increase their population, caused occasional violent clashes. Fun fact: Officially, the dhimmi system no longer exists, but differential treatment and even persecution of non-Muslim minorities still exists in many Middle Eastern countries, most prominently Iran and Saudi Arabia. Is it some sort of apartheid? Probably. But according to the radical left, only Europeans (and Israelis) can practice apartheid. Another fun fact: Arabs took more slaves from Africa than Europeans. In some Arab countries the word slave (‘Abid) is a derogatory term for a black person.

4. The British Mandate of Palestine and the birth of the two-state solution: After World War I, Palestine came under British rule. The British were largely sympathetic to the Jewish nationalist cause, which was perceived as a threat by the local Arab population. Influenced by growing Arab nationalism, they wished to free themselves from the British and from Western influence (despite the fact that Palestine had not been under Arab control for hundreds of years). The Jews were perceived as part of that Western influence. In the 1930s the British proposed a partition of the land into two states – a large Arab state and a much smaller Jewish state. The Jews reluctantly accepted the plan, and the Arabs flatly rejected it and launched a rebellion. After World War 2 the British gave up on trying to reach a solution and handed the problem over to the newly established UN. Fun fact: Only in the 1960s did the term “Palestinians” start to exclusively refer to the Arabs of Israel and Palestine. Before Israel was established, everyone who lived in Palestine was Palestinian. There were Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews. Many people don’t know that, and it has caused several amusing incidents over the years, including the one where supermodel Bella Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, shared a photo of Palestine’s soccer team from 1939. Had she looked closely, she would have noticed the star of David and the Hebrew logo on the team’s jerseys. She quickly deleted the post once she realized her mistake, but the internet never forgets. 

5. The UN, the declaration of Israel’s Independence and the refugee problem: The UN general assembly approved a two-state partition plan in 1947. Despite the Jews still being a minority, they were allotted more than 50% of the land. The Holocaust, and the fact that the world stood by and did nothing while Jews were mass murdered, was definitely one of the main reasons for that. Much of the land was meant to accommodate the Jewish Holocaust survivors who were looking for a place to resettle. The Arabs rejected the plan again, claiming that they should not be the ones to pay the price for the atrocities committed by the Europeans, and that being a majority they should get a much bigger part. Israel still went ahead and declared its independence in 1948. The following day, five Arab countries invaded Israel and lost. At the end of the war, Israel’s territory expanded significantly, and the number of Arabs in Israel was greatly reduced. Many of the Arabs were forcibly displaced and others fled or left at the call of their leaders. The Arabs who stayed in Israel became Israeli citizens. Nowadays, they comprise a little over 21% of the Israeli population, or about 2 million. In addition, there are an estimated six million refugees from 1948 and their descendants. 1.5 million of them live in refugee camps in the West Bank and neighboring Arab countries. The question of refugee resettlement, or the “right of return”, is one of the main points of contention between Israel and the Palestinians. 

6. The 1967 war, the occupied territories and beyond: During the 1948 war, Jordan conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In 1967, following the six day war, Israel re-conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The Sinai was eventually returned to Egypt as part of the peace agreement, the Golan Heights were annexed by Israel and the West bank remains occupied to this day, which is the root of much of the current conflict. In the late 1980s Jordan officially renounced its claim to the West Bank, probably for fear of exacerbating the problems the Royal family already had with the existing Palestinian population in Jordan. Therefore, Israel and the West Bank are now stuck together. According to Benny Morris (and I agree), Israel made a terrible mistake by not returning the West Bank to Jordan immediately. Instead, it doubled down and started establishing Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. This started Israel’s expansionist, almost messianic aspirations and has severely restricted the Palestinians’ freedom of movement and livelihood. The Palestinian Authority, established in 1993 as part of the Oslo accords, has partial civil control over the West Bank and until 2007, also on Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and in 2006 the Palestinian authority conducted the second (and so far the last) legislative council elections. Hamas won a decisive victory and took over the Gaza strip in 2007. This means that the West Bank and Gaza are controlled by two different and rival entities. Currently, the Gaza strip is under blockade by both Israel and Egypt. Israel controls Gaza's air and maritime space, as well as six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It also supplies water and electricity to Gaza.

Since 2007, there have been numerous armed conflicts between Israel and Hamas, but the surprise attack on Saturday signals a whole new level. Fun fact: Gaza also borders Egypt. Over the years, Egypt has built a steel wall on the border and has been demolishing homes. It also used water from the Mediterranean to flood the tunnels used to smuggle weapons and cash across the border. You would not hear a word about it from the peace loving twitter activists.