Sometime ago, a number of European nations threatened to imminently recognize a Palestinian state over the war in Gaza, a political entity which has never existed. To this point, before Israel reclaimed its historic homeland in 1948, the British had colonial control over the land of Israel, before them it was the Ottomans, before them the Mamluks, before them the Crusaders, before them the Arabs, before them Rome, before Rome it was the indigenous Jews/Judeans who had briefly retaken control of their ancient homeland of Judean/Israel from the Greeks (this is the story of Hannukah), then obviously before this brief stint of Jewish political sovereignty the Greeks had occupied Judea, before them the Persians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and then before them the land of Israel was controlled by the native Judeans/Israelites in the Iron age period, and before this, during the middle bronze age while the ancestors of the Jewish people were still in the land, it was fought over and controlled by the colonial empires of Egypt and the Hittites.
To be clear, Israel, the indigenous homeland of the Judean people, has been colonized on and off by other peoples for thousands of years, yet in all that time there was never a “Palestinian” state. All of this is historically verifiable and undeniable. Even the term “Palestine” is a colonial fiction similar to “North America” which is not what any of the indigenous people ever called it. “Syria-Palestina” is what the Roman conquerors renamed ancient Israel/Judea around 135 C.E, which then was shortened to “Palestine” in the 4th century, while many for a few centuries still called it Judea. There was never a political entity called “Palestine,” or a people called the “Palestinians,” such is a modern invention that was concocted in the latter half of the 20th century for the purpose of erasing Jewish indigeneity and delegitimizing the Jewish state. Before this time Arabs in the land of Israel always just called themselves Arabs, and Arabs and their language originated in their indigenous homeland of the Arabian Peninsula, not in the land of Israel. Arabs came into the land as conquering colonial settlers just like Europeans did in Turtle Island and others indigenous lands around the world. Jews on the other hand have always been in Israel, even when most of us were in exile; Hebrew our native tongue is a Canaanite dialect which along with a number of other undeniable realities, attests to our indigenous status as descendants of the Canaanite peoples. Near Eastern Scholar Mary Ellen Buck speaks to this when she writes, “The Israelites were themselves part of the Canaanite tradition, having emerged out of the Late Bronze Age culture, retaining their Canaanite culture, religion, and language.”
Given the history and the realities, I have ever so briefly laid out, such a recognition of an Arab state called “Palestine” is an aggressive colonial act of erasure towards the indigenous Judeans of the land, rewriting history and making a colonial foreign people “native” to a region they have no indigenous ties too. It is also an act of colonial support, in that other nations guilty of colonialism both in the past and today, such as France, Canada, Saudi Arabia, etc., are supporting a proposal for an officially sanctioned colonial-settler state, and yet equipped with revisionist histories that spew blatant ignorance, people are celebrating such a bluntly colonial act as the exact opposite, namely, their calling colonialism, decolonialism. Which is so far from the truth as to be laughable!
That a number of European and Arab nations as well as some contemporary colonial-settler states, all of which have a history of telling Jews and other indigenous people where they can and cannot live, are calling for a partition of indigenous Jewish land and are so-called “recognizing” an Arab colonial-settler state, should not at all be surprising since they have been doing these kinds of things for a long time, but it is nonetheless an absolute act of colonial injustice. That many European colonizers are siding with another group of colonizers, namely Arab ones, it is to be expected. Why does anyone trust that the majority of Arab and Europeans colonizers have any interest in supporting an indigenous people? What in their past would give any support to such a conclusion? Moreover, can anyone imagine if the Māori, Lakota, or the Aboriginals or any other indigenous people regained some of their land with political sovereignty from European colonizers, and then the UN, as well as European, and Arab states called for the partition of their indigenous land, and for a “recognition” of a Euro-state, how unjust such an act would be? What colonial audacity that would be! Stolen land remains stolen land as long as it has not been given back. But such a thing is really happening right now in the ancient homeland of the Judean people, namely in Israel! Jewish land in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza is continually occupied as stolen land from the native Judeans, and many countries are trying to partition that indigenous land to create another official colonial-settler state.
In lieu of proposing yet another Arab colonial-settler state which would perpetuate a history of Arab colonizers bulldozing over yet another indigenous group in North Africa and Southwest Asia, what we should be calling for is a one state solution for the indigenous Judean people of Israel. As well as a recognition of political sovereignty for indigenous nations within colonial-settler states like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, just to name a few, with a commitment to work toward fully returning 100% of the land back to its indigenous peoples and a return of Europeans and other non-indigenous peoples slowly, probably over decades, to Europe and their other original lands, a sort of Gentile Aliyah. This combined with a Muslim Aliyah out of Europe back to their own lands.
If people actually want to see justice, they should be calling for the recognition of states for actual indigenous peoples and for the systematic, thoughtful, and potentially slow dismantling of colonial-settler states, not the creation of new ones. If you want to call for justice, call for the Europeans to give back lands to Native Americans here in Turtle Island, call for a recognition of a free Aboriginal state, a sovereign Māori political entity, call for the Arabs to give back the lands they stole from the Kurds, Jews and other indigenous peoples like the Copts of Egypt. If you really want justice, then say no to European and Arab colonialism, support decolonialism, be a Zionist. But don’t call for the recognition of another Arab colonial settler-state and pretend or delude yourself into thinking you’re somehow not doing what your ancestors have been doing for hundreds of years. The colonial apple has not fallen far from the colonial tree. Giving a foreign people a colonial settler-state is never just or the right solution to a conflict which is ultimately rooted in a struggle between an indigenous people, i.e. the Jews, and a historical colonizer, i.e. the Arabs and all the other people who have colonized the Judean people. A “Palestinian” state would unfortunately just be another colonial arm of the Arabs and would not bring peace between Jews and Arabs, it would not bring human flourishing, and it would not heal the deep systemic racism and colonialism the Arabs have been guilty of for a long time. The bottom line is that a “Palestinian” state would be a colonial-settler state, and thus “freeing Palestine” is a mask for reasserting and perpetuating Arab colonialism.
Consulted Works
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Buck, Mary E. The Canaanites: Their history and culture from texts and artifacts. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019.
Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003.
Dorsey, James. “Wij Zijn Alleen Palestijn om Politieke Redden.” Trouw, March 31, 1977.
Faust, Avraham. Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance. London: Equinox, 2006.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Free Press, 2001.
Killebrew, Ann E. Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel 1300–1100 B.C.E. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
Konner, Melvin. Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews. New York: Viking, 2003.
Lewis, Bernard. “The Palestinians and the PLO.” Commentary Magazine, September 3, 2015. https://www.commentary.org/articles/bernard-lewis/the-palestinians-and-the-plo/.
Matthews, Victor H., and Don C. Benjamin. Social World of Ancient Israel: 1250–587 BCE. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993.
McDermott, Gerald. “Genocide in Gaza?” First Things, May 16, 2025. https://firstthings.com/genocide-in-gaza/.
Meir-Levi, David. History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression. New York: Encounter Books, 2007.
Sommer, Benjamin. “The Origins of the Nation Israel: Biblical, Historical, and Archaeological Data.” JTS Zionism. Youtube.
Trotter, Sheree. “Incongruous and Ill-Conceived: Israel as Settler Colonialism.” Indigenous Coalition For Israel, May 29, 2025. https://www.indigenouscoalition.org/articles-blog/incongruous-and-ill-conceived-israel-as-settler-colonialism.
