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Settler Colonialism is not an Academic ‘Fad’

It is a real political project

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“Settler colonialism includes interlocking forms of oppression, including racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism. This is because settler colonizers are Eurocentric and assume that European values with respect to ethnic, and therefore moral, superiority are inevitable and natural.” 

—Alicia Cox, Settler Colonialism



Israel: A Colonial Settler State by Maxime Rodinson with a very good introduction by Peter Buch, 1st ed. 1973

“Rodinson himself calls for a ‘bloodless’ solution and urges the Palestinians to avoid military methods, even though this may mean resigning themselves to their dispossession. But he rises above others who hold this position by insisting that it is up to the wronged party, namely the Arabs, to determine their goals and methods of struggle and that it is certainly impermissible for their oppressors to morally condemn the victims for the violence of their rebellion. (my emphasis)

Professor Rodinson hopes that the passage of time may be able to assuage the deep and justified Arab resentment and permit the establishment of a modus vivendi based on the historical accomplished fact. To illustrate this var­iant, he cites the division of Ireland-Ulster which at the time of writing (1967) seemed to many observers to be working out. Today [1973], of course, the turmoil in Ireland speaks powerfully against such expectations. The twenty years of patient, largely silent waiting by the Palestinian refugees, before they finally engaged in organized resist­ance, did not relieve their suffering nor prevent their blood from being spilled or their flesh from being seared by napalm. Their exile, unchallenged by active struggle on their part for so long, was thereby made more absolute, more difficult and costly to reverse.

Revolutionary supporters of the Palestinians do not, of course, "incite" them to violence. By far the greater violence involved in a struggle for national liberation comes from those upholding the status quo. A capable political leadership, unlike the desperate and misguided practioners of terrorist violence by a few martyrs, will know how to expose the real source of violence among the oppressors. It will know how to mobilize the Arab masses and world public opinion to hold back the un­limited violence that Israel, with its nuclear capacity and American military hardware, is prepared to unleash. A key factor in halting this violence will also be the devel­opment of a sizable revolutionary movement among
Israeli Jews who reject Zionism and who see Jewish survival linked to a new socialist Palestine. 

The Palestinian national liberation struggle is directed against the whole structure of privilege and exploitation, against both the Zionist and Arab ruling classes, as well as against imperialism.”

—Peter Buch, 1973
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