One of the most common claims against Israel in global discourse is that it is a colonial project. According to this narrative, Israel is portrayed as a foreign European outpost, a power implanted in the Middle East at the expense of the local population. The claim sounds familiar, simple, and above all convenient. But it falls apart under almost every historical test.
Colonialism, in its classic sense, describes a situation where a foreign power takes control of distant territory, exploits its resources, and manages it for the benefit of an external center of power. This is how European empires operated in Africa, Asia, and America. Israel does not fit this pattern in any meaningful way. It has no “metropole” from which settlers were sent, and no mother country that enjoys its resources.
The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is not a product of the twentieth century. It exists in a continuous historical, religious, and cultural sequence of thousands of years. Jews lived in the land continuously, even in periods when they were a powerless minority. The Zionist return to the land did not arise from a desire to dominate others, but from an attempt to survive as a collective in a hostile world. It is a national liberation movement, not an imperial enterprise.
The human composition of Israeli society also contradicts the colonial narrative. Half of Israel’s Jews came from Middle Eastern and North African countries, often as refugees expelled from Arab states. They were not representatives of Europe, but natives of the region. Portraying them as “white colonialists” erases their story and distorts reality.
The colonial narrative also ignores the fact that Israel was established through an international process, not as a result of imperial conquest. It ignores the wars forced upon it, and the fact that its borders were shaped through regional conflicts, not through colonial division of spoils. Above all, it ignores the ongoing refusal of regional actors to recognize its right to exist.
The reason this myth succeeds is not historical but ideological. It fits perfectly into contemporary discourse that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed based on identity, color, and origin. Within this framework, there is no room for a complex Jewish story. Israel must be colonial because the discourse demands it.
But when the term colonialism is used carelessly, it loses its meaning. It stops describing a historical phenomenon and begins to serve as a tool of delegitimization, not to understand the conflict, but to close it in advance.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is real, painful, and complex. But it is not a colonial story. Presenting it as such does not advance a solution, it prevents one. It erases the identity and history of one side, thereby strengthening polarization instead of understanding.
Israel is not a project of foreign power. It is the product of an ancient story, modern trauma, and an ongoing struggle for existence. It can be criticized, and it can be disagreed with. But to do so honestly, one must start from reality, not from myth.
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