Settler Colonialists In Israel And The United States Francis Menton
Of all the epithets of the left that don’t make any sense, the term “settler colonialist” is one of my favorites. We live in a world where the ability of people to relocate, even to places thousands of miles distant, has increased greatly over time. These days, many millions of people per year pick up and relocate, or try to relocate, from one country to another. By far the biggest mass migrations going on currently are into the U.S. and into Europe from various poorer countries. This November 2023 piece from NPR puts the number of “migrants” crossing the U.S. Southern border illegally in 2023 at about 2.4 million. That would be in addition to about 1 million legal immigrants to the U.S. each year. The European Commission at this site from April 2024 gives a figure of 42.4 million people living in the EU who were not born there, about 9% of the population. That would suggest something like 1 million or so new arrivals per year.
So are all these people “settler colonialists”? Try to find that term applied to any of these millions of annual migrants, and I will bet that you cannot. The legal entry of millions into the United States, and the illegal invasion of millions more, is cheered on by all on the left. Meanwhile the derogatory term “settler colonialist” is reserved for much smaller numbers of migrants who have been designated as disfavored based on criteria that I have never seen rationally articulated.
And yet, find yourself in a disfavored group making a relocation, and get ready for an unrelenting stream of invective. Of course, Jews are the ultimate such disfavored group.
It appears that some numbers of Jews, in the tens of thousands per year, continue to relocate into areas referred to as the West Bank, otherwise known as areas that Israel took control of after a war back in the 1960s. Is there any reason why Jews should not be allowed to move into these areas? None that I can think of. People of all ethnicities and all religions move into my country and city on a daily basis. We allow them all, even when their presence in the country is contrary to federal immigration law. We loudly proclaim ourselves to be a “sanctuary city.” Down on the Mexican border, many towns now have populations with a majority who were born in Mexico. People came across the border and moved in.
Of course, Muslim countries are universally extremely unwelcoming of non-Muslims. Almost all of the Muslim Middle East and North Africa is near 100% Jew-free after decades of appalling treatment of Jews since World War II. (The treatment of Christians in these countries has been only slightly less appalling.). The treatment of such minorities by Muslims should be considered unacceptable in a civilized world where everybody needs to get along. Somehow I see almost no criticism of this behavior, aside from a few specialized websites like the Gatestone Institute.
On July 27 the Guardian had a long piece with the headline “The Biden-Harris administration needs to stop illegal Israeli settlements.” The premise of the article is that there is something uniquely evil about Israeli Jews moving a few miles across the border into the West Bank and building homes for themselves. A few excerpts:
Under the Netanyahu government, there has been an open spigot for the settlements . . . . [A]t least 25 new outposts have been established and dozens of roads, estimated to stretch tens of kilometers, have been constructed. Additionally, 24,193 dunams (about 6,000 acres) were declared as “state land”, and plans for 8,721 housing units have been promoted. . . . The Netanyahu government has doubled the budget for the Ministry of Settlements and increased funds for the Settlement Division. This includes 7bn shekels ($1.9bn) for roads and 409m shekels ($111m) allocated for special projects in settlements despite a broad budget cut in other sectors.
The numbers are kind of trivial compared to the numbers of people flooding into the U.S., and to the cost of dealing with them.
Recently, at a meeting led by [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, his bragging was recorded, unbeknownst to him, by a Peace Now staff member and was later released to the media. He talked about the money flow he was enabling to build new roads in the West Bank, a necessity for new settlements. When I drove through there this July, I saw evidence of his handiwork – not only new roads already built, but also new roads being dug, gravel being bulldozed.
Nefarious!
Muslims move into Dearborn, Michigan and become a majority and run the city. And then hold regular demonstrations where protesters shout “Death to America!” No problem. I’m not understanding why different rules apply to the different groups of settlers.
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