Israel Is a Settler Colonial State - and That’s OK
Repulsed by UC Berkeley’s ’Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis’ course? ‘Settler colonialism’ may have been eagerly adopted by the BDS movement – but early Zionist leaders weren’t shy about identifying with it either.
Arnon Degani Sep 13, 2016
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.741813
Haaretz -
Appalled and outraged posts appearing on the feeds of pro-Israel advocates announce that this coming fall semester, UC Berkeley students can attend a course titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis.” The course, offered as part of Berkely’s “DeCal Program”, will be taught by a undergraduate student named Paul Hadaweh, and supervised by Dr. Hatem Bazian, one of the most vocal and industrious anti-Israel scholars in American academia.
The fact that a one-unit course headed by an undergraduate student is creating such waves is telling of the level of anxiety that the term “settler-colonialism” evokes when the Israel-Palestinian conflict comes up. This shouldn’t be the case.
For almost a century, Zionism’s intellectual enemies, especially from the left, have considered it part and parcel of European colonialism. In recent years, the addition of “settler” to colonialism has gained much traction among scholars who engage in anti-Israel activity, particularly BDS, as well as intersectionality activists. Settler colonialism conveys an unarguable sense of delegitimization, racial exclusion and financial exploitation. If anything, it sounds more biting (perhaps because Israel still actively sponsors settlers) and acerbic, but it also tends to be incorporated willy-nilly into research and public commentary.
