This Palestinian says Zionism is not colonialism

[Richard D]

Written by Palestinian-British writer, John Aziz

The claim that Zionism is a form of colonialism is at the heart of a lot of anti-Zionist narratives. The story goes that white, Western Jews decided to colonise Palestine, and displace the native Palestinian Arab population.

But there were multiple earlier Jewish polities in the Holy Land across history, with the most recent independent Jewish entity ending with the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 AD, after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD following the First Jewish-Roman War.

The result of the Roman colonisation of the land was the enslavement and expulsion of many of the pre-existing indigenous Jewish population, who became scattered across the former Roman Empire in Europe and the Middle East.

Similarly, the ancestors of the Palestinians are not only from later Arab conquerors, and the Romans and Byzantines themselves, but they are also descended in large part from parts of the Jewish population that stayed on the land in spite of Roman rule, and later converted to Christianity or Islam.

The reality of Zionism is that it was the descendants of Jewish People who had previously been displaced from Palestine (or the Land of Israel, or whatever you want to call it) trying to return to the homeland of their ancestors.

There's a lot more to this article. It deserves a careful reading.

https://open.substack.com/pub/futureofjewish/p/zionism-is-not-colonialism-according?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2r9s5y

[marybourg]

1. Who knew?

[underpants]

2. Well good. I'm glad that's settled