One of the most persistent slurs against Israel among progressives is that it is a 'settler colonial state'. The truth is that the only empire has been Arab and Muslim, and Israel is an example of 'decolonisation' . James Sinkinson pens this punchy piece in JNS News:
Ironically, Jews are the only people in history since the brutal Arab conquest, occupation and colonization of the region who have risen up to reclaim their land. This has been considered an affront to Islam, and it is no coincidence that Hebrew, the indigenous language of the Jewish people, and Zionism, the national movement to return the people to their land, were violently repressed and banned in Arab countries.
There’s no doubt who is the colonizer and who the colonized. There is only one empire in this conflict, and it is not Jewish, a people who have never conquered any territory on the planet not their own, as opposed to the Arab world, which currently encompasses 5,070,419 square miles of land mass.
Rather than condemning Israel, progressives in the West who recoil at “settler colonial projects” should embrace the Jewish state as an example of decolonization—indigenous return and restored sovereignty. If they were honest, they would stand by the side of tiny Israel—with a population of nine million, surrounded by hundreds of millions who seek its destruction and its return to the huge Arab empire.
Just ask the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa who lived under Arab repression, discrimination and constant fear of violence for almost 13 centuries—who have finally returned home and make up the majority of the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. Their recent history and experience of Arab imperialism, conquest and oppression reflects a sad, violent tale of Arab Muslim privilege. These Jews truly understand colonialism and what it is like to live under its yoke.
Sinkinson should also write about white Jewish supremacists distorting history of the Shoah, to exclude the persecution and murder of the Brown Jews outside continental Europe, in Europe's French and Italian possessions, and in Iraq. Yad Vashem, it's partners and followers, define France and Italy as countries located only in continental Europe, while only METROPOLITAN France was located in continental Europe. Therefore, yad Vashem persistently promotes the Shoah as the destruction of European Jews. But, Shoah was not an event, but a SERIES OF PROCESSES,in the Nazi attempt to annihilate all the Jews in the world. Edith Shaked, Facts and Logic About Shoah's History - FLASH
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