Barbara Taylor refers to Israel as a colonizing power. The definition of “colonization” is a foreign nation settling in and exerting control over an indigenous people. How are the Jews not an indigenous people of Israel?
Egyptian hieroglyphics refer to Israel; ancient Roman and Greek writings refer to Israel; a plaque in the Roman Coliseum states that it was built using the wealth stolen from Jews during the conquest of Jerusalem. Zionism was born in what was called Palestine (a renaming of Judea by the Romans to insult the Jews) during a 19th century era of nationalism across Europe and Asia in which many borders changed. European Jews went to Palestine to join the indigenous Jews already there. They represented and still represent a smaller proportion of the Jews in Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven out of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Iran. Many went to Palestine where all inhabitants were called Palestinians.
The League of Nations created the Mandate for Palestine following WWI, administered by Britain (the real colonizer after the Ottoman Empire), giving most of Palestine to the Jordanian Arabs and a smaller portion to the Jews for a state, but the Arabs refused and attacked the Jews after they declared their independence as Israel.
The Arabs lost the war they started and much of the land that had been offered to them.
A two-state solution offering much of the land lost by Palestinians in wars has been offered many times and refused by Palestinians. Until after the1967 war, the West Bank was controlled by Jordan and Gaza was controlled by Egypt. They didn’t want the land back when Israel offered it.
I don’t feel Israel should continue its policy of expansion in the West Bank, but please provide evidence that all of Israel once belonged to or was fully inhabited by Palestinian Arabs. This is not about land. If it were, Americans would be returning their illegally purchased land to its indigenous peoples.
No volunteers? What is your right to be here? What is mine? Perhaps, as a Jew, I should go back to where I came from. But then I would be condemned as a colonizer.
Mark Cantor, Salt Lake City
