Decolonize Palestine Debunked: Israel is Defending itself (Guest Post)

Adin Haykin
6 min readOct 27, 2021

This article was written by “DecolonizeJudea” (on Twitter @Dec_Judea)

In this article by “Decolonize Palestine” they claim that Israel right to defend itself is a “myth”

the very claim that Israel defending itself being a myth, is in of itself a myth.

The truth is, the early Zionists did not believe that the Palestinians never had a right to self determination, actually, this is false. Many cases, the Zionists would have been fine with the Arabs getting a state as their goal was to settle and help build up the land.

British historian Paul Johnson noted, Zionists were hardly tools of imperialists given the powers’ general opposition to their cause. “Everywhere in the West, the foreign offices, defense ministries and big business were against the Zionists."

The fact is, yes it was INDEED the Arabs who attacked the Jews first (Nebi Musa riots, Hebron massacre, Safed massacre ECT) before the Haganah or any Jewish defence groups ever had gotten strong enough to pose a threat in the 1920s

The next thing they compare the IDF to SADF because of similar names, then we hit an appeal to bias, which is a logical fallacy. Next, the colonialism slander.

"Zionist settler colonialism" which actually ironically is an oxymoron, the definition of colonialism?

"the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically"

Truth is, the Zionists did not exploit "Palestinians", since colonialism also extends to subjugation of one people to another. are the palestinians actually subjugated? No, they really are not because they are not exploited at all.

Infact the truth is, it’s actually the Palestinians doing the colonialism by building illegaly to seize resources and land on territory that is de-facto Israeli.

https://t.co/Z8qbmLPOj5?amp=1

Mainly because Israel sometimes let’s them get away with land grabs to exploit it for "economic or political gain" for subjugation of Israel so they can chip land off of the Jewish state.

https://t.co/EYuVYtO0mX?amp=1

https://t.co/c3MxAxGDTb?amp=1

By planting trees, they can claim land that truely isn’t theirs and that land could have some recources in it This would mean that technically there is colonialism, since after all, this is funded by the Palestinian authority who resides in area a and B.

https://t.co/mdEyCRQN0N?amp=1

"what does it mean when a settler colony has to defend itself from the natives it is colonizing?" This is a begging the question argument and after all, I can just apply the same logic to the Palestinians, does Israel really negate the concept of Palestinians?

No it doesn’t, as the final borders or previous proposals have nothing to do with "denying Palestinians", rather it is wanting to end the conflict. Since nothing worked out, there hasn’t been peace talks ever since because Abbas rejected these proposals.

"settler colonialism" involves the replacement of indigenous populations with an invasive settler society, Jews are not invaders. They are an indeginous population. Infact, once more, it is the Palestinians also performing settler colonialism

https://t.co/1inl5SHB4j?amp=1

Also, the "Nakba", a mythical catastrophe wouldn’t be needed to secure a "Jewish demographic Majority", mainly because 53,510 Jews were held in camps in Cyprus and we’re waiting to move to Israel, adding in the 60,000 Jewish refugees from Gaza and Judea and Samaria,And then adding in the mizrahi refugees who would have been forced to migrate anyways, it wouldn’t really be useful to "expell 700,000 people"

Either way, if Israel wants to "occupy Palestinians, torment them, besiege them, ethnically cleanse them and steal their land", they could easily do it way quicker and way more efficiently than they do at this rate, which is already contradicted by the fact Israel will sometimes greenlight Palestinian construction or legalize illegal structures even if the Palestinian structure was built on stolen Israeli land.

Next, we have an ad hominem attack, not an argument against Zionism, but an attack against people.

"It boggles the mind that we have people demanding that the colonized and militarily occupied population must guarantee the safety of their oppressors and tormentors. It is akin to a mugger claiming self-defense when their victim fights back against their mugging"

Ironically, this same statement is true for Palestinians who play the defence card when they provoke a retaliation from Israel, the Palestinian militants want to "Colonize and militarily" occupy Israel and throw many of the Jews to the sea except for the ones who they seem useful. Only problem is, the Palestinians can have their allies hijack the UN to send resolution after resolution against Israel.

Which can be argued to be "International" levels of oppression, because it is attempting to claim that anything Israel does via self defence or not, is "oppression", "terrorism", and "Apartheid". Just look at the wall Israel built to stop suicide attacks, it’s called an "apartheid wall", by the same people who supported the suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. "colonial forces throughout history have always sought to frame their racist colonialist expansionism as “self-defense” or as acts of mere “self-preservation”.

Ironically this is true more for Palestinians because framing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians is considered "self defence", in their same article.

Hamas and fatah both stated on occasions (politicians and even citizens or supporters) that their goal is to "free Palestine", originally used as a means to unite the Arab world under pan Arabism. And they still say, it is their desires to throw Jews into the sea.

The last claim is that Israel has "No legal right to exist" which "has no basis in international law", except that would be true if it wasn’t for the LON setting the mandate for Palestine up to "create a Jewish national home in Palestine".

The next claim is essentially trying to say Gaza and the west bank are "Occupied, Seiged, and colonized", this is false because Israel does not occupy Gaza, Hamas rules Gaza. Area C is Israeli. Where B and A are The PAs, however I can apply the same occupation logic to the PA.

The Geneva conventions and international law actually don’t favour the Palestinians but favour the ISRAELIS. To start off, article 5 of the mandate of Palestine says:

"The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power."

Hamas comes from the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood, and Fatah(PA) came from Kuwait. Thus making it foreign governments. Most of the Palestinians are also not natives either. Meaning, this further collapses your point.By declaring the west bank and Gaza occupied by Israel, you are violating international law because they were supposed to become part of a "Jewish national home". Not organizations from Kuwait and Egypt. That actually violates International law,

That is litteraly trying to force Israel to cede former mandate territory to organizations or people who actually are not natives, which contradicts your "Occupation". Next is the semantics, which already becomes irrelevant now that I have destroyed the occupation myth.

Contrary to the claim of israel’s denial of Palestinian self determination, it’s actually the Palestinians who want to throw Israel to the sea which also, means Israel can "resist" that desire since in such a scenario, they would be fighting against losing their right of self-determination, next, the victimhood claim that Israel demonizes Palestinians when ironically the Palestinians do the more demonizing, some outright say the Holocaust is "Zionist propaganda" to usurp Palestinian land. "resistance" isn’t firing rockets at civilians, kidnapping Israelis, stabbing guards, provoking the IDF, and trying to train people to kill Jews. Therefore, Israel’s claims to self defence are not false, where as the Palestinian claim of fighting colonialism is false.

Thus, the only imperialist colonialists are the Palestinians who want to rip away the Jewish self determination and force their own self determination and likely oppression, onto the Jewish population of Israel, which actually violates international law.

• • •

--

--

Adin Haykin

Israeli, IDF soldier and researcher of Israeli history and wars