‘Settler Colonialism’ and the Promised Land
The term ‘settler colonialism’ was coined by an Australian historian in the 1960s to describe the occupation of a territory with a view to displacing the original inhabitants. A new society would be created on the occupied territory through the elimination or permanent subordination of the existing people. There is often an element of ethnic cleansing, if not actual genocide. Settler colonialism is distinguished from ‘exploitation colonialism’ where the aim is simply to expropriate natural resources, possibly employing the indigenous population as cheap labour. This distinction has been usefully applied in examining the strategies of European colonial powers in the creation of empires throughout Africa, Asia and the Americas.
Its application to the actions of the Israeli state towards the Palestinian people has, however, been contentious. It is argued that the Jewish people have a special relationship to the land that the state now occupies, dating back to Biblical times. It is the land promised to them by their God. As such, they can be neither settlers nor colonialists but a displaced population retaking their traditional space. For some, this extends to a claim that they have a right to exclude all other occupiers and to live in a pure ethno-religious state. This view is supported by some Christian groups who read the Bible in a very literal fashion.
The current tragic events in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are the culmination of a much longer process, which goes back deep into the 20th century, even before the mass expulsion of Palestinian people in 1947. In effect they recapitulate the westward expansion of the USA or the colonisation of Australia where a vanguard of freelance settlers create facts on the ground and then demand an expansion of state power to defend them. The Promised Land becomes an equivalent of manifest destiny or the civilising mission of empire.
My father witnessed some of this during WWII. Like many veterans, he did not talk much about his experiences. One conversation occurred, however, at the time of the Six Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states in June 1967. Jim speculated that both sides were probably using maps that he had created. He also wondered why it had taken the Arab world so long to push back against the Israeli government’s treatment of their people.
One of Jim’s military roles was as an artillery surveyor. In combat, this involved locating enemy guns and directing those of his own side. When not in combat, the same skills could be used in making maps, particularly in areas where fighting might take place in the future. After the Allied forces blocked the Axis advance across North Africa at the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942, there was no call for his services until the Second Battle of El Alamein at the end of October. Instead he was directed, as a sergeant, to lead a small unit – 5-6 men – to map what is now Northern Israel and the borders with Lebanon and Syria. The latter areas were under a Vichy French colonial administration, which had stayed out of the war but might decide to join in.
Surveying in those days meant spending a lot of time on the ground, renting accommodation from local families and buying food in local markets. It was a quasi-ethnographic experience. The unit became very close to the Arab people who were then living in the area. They heard stories that were silenced for many years in Europe and the USA about the pressure from Jewish groups to vacate the land in which the Arabs had lived for generations. In the natural way of things, farms came up for sale from time to time. They were bought by Jewish purchasers who could outbid locals. Adjacent farmers would then be invited to sell their land. If they declined, olive groves were mysteriously cut down and traditional water rights denied. Occasionally, there would be fights and farm servants or younger family members would take a beating. It was not the degree of violence that is seen today on the West Bank but prefigured it and had been happening since the 1920s. In effect, Jim was observing an early phase of settler colonialism.
My father was not unsympathetic to the Jewish cause. He had a reputation as a ‘premature anti-fascist’ from active opposition to British fascist groups on the streets of his home city in the 1930s. Although never a member of the Communist Party, he was close enough to acquire a security file that blocked him from officer training. At the end of the war, his zeal in compiling cases for the prosecution of German local government officials over their role in sending Jews to death camps clashed with official policy to minimize administrative disruption. It resulted in a sudden notice to return to the UK for early discharge. But he saw and heard what he saw and heard in the late summer of 1942. Well-resourced settlers, inspired by a Biblical vision of a Promised Land, were pursuing a long-term project that continues today.
A substantial body of fundamentalist Jewish and Christian scholars are committed to examining the Bible in minute detail as the unvarnished word of God. There are, however, other scholarly traditions, originating in the work of 19th century German theologians. Drawing on resources from textual, linguistic, historical and archaeological studies, the Bible can be seen as a human product, where virtually nothing was written by the author to whom it is commonly attributed and the selected content reflects debates within Jewish and Early Christian communities rather than any inherent logic. This approach does not exclude the possibility of Divine inspiration but recognizes that it would be filtered through the imperfect medium of human writers.
Ancient states did not have neat borders with customs posts and immigration controls. The Jewish people were itinerant pastoralists who eventually founded settlements, where they co-existed with the other peoples of the Levant, many of whom had also wandered across the same territory with their herds and tents. At some points, these peoples were allies, at others, rivals. During some periods at least some Jews were enslaved by the great empires of the region. The Promised Land is a metaphorical space, a vision of home rather than an exclusive nation state in the modern sense. Biblical references do not document a property title so much as narrate a territorial claim. Some books of the Old Testament may be histories but they are partisan histories to be read as critically as any other partisan history.
Unfortunately, in our secular age, very little of the academic study of the Bible, a key text for understanding Global North cultures, percolates through schools and colleges to ordinary congregations. Civic and political leaders are left ill-equipped to challenge a narrative that is divisive even within Israel itself.
The roots of today’s Palestinian suffering are deeply embedded in the history of the 20th century, as my father and his unit saw. The situation will not change until there is a better understanding of what might be meant by a Promised Land and the creation of a form of governance that accords equal political, economic and cultural rights to all those inheriting connections to the territory from before the first state-led ethnic cleansing of 1947.
