Israel: The Last Outpost of White European Colonialism

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is routinely framed as an ancient religious war between Judaism and Islam or as a battle between Israel, the Middle-East’s only ‘Western-style democracy’ and autocratic regimes in the region..

These narratives obscure a fundamental truth: what we witness today in Palestine is neither about religion or civilization or systems of governance per se. To understand this conflict properly, we must abandon the comfortable myths that present both sides as equally culpable parties in an age-old feud.

Instead, we must recognize Israel as what it truly is: the last outpost of white, European colonial settlement, a state that embodies the same logic of dispossession, racial supremacy, and territorial conquest that characterized five centuries of white colonial expansion across the globe.

The Great European Migration and Colonial Template

To put it more accurately, the state of Israel is nothing more than the continuation of white, European settler colonialism, a  five century old project that began with Christopher Columbus in 1492 to grab land in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

The creation of Israel represents the final chapter in what historians recognize as one of the largest demographic movements in human history. Between 1492 and the early 20th century, an estimated 60-65 million Europeans left their continent in successive waves of migration and conquest. This extraordinary movement of people—primarily to the Americas (71% of migrants), Australia, and New Zealand—established the template for settler colonialism that would eventually be applied to Palestine.

The pattern was consistent across continents: European settlers arrived, declared indigenous lands “empty” or “underutilized,” systematically displaced native populations, and established racially-stratified societies that privileged the settler community. In the Americas, approximately 32.5 million Europeans settled in the United States alone between 1820 and 1932, while Argentina received 6.5 million, Canada 5.2 million, and Brazil 4.4 million. Australia received 2.9 million European settlers between 1821 and 1932, transforming a continent inhabited by Aboriginal peoples for over 60,000 years into a “neo-European” society. (Ironically, it is the white people in all these captured lands that are complaining about ‘migrants’!)

The European Origin Story

The creation of Israel was not the fulfilment of an ancient biblical prophecy or the natural expression of Jewish self-determination. It was, as noted economist Yanis Varoufakis has courageously pointed out, a European solution to a European problem. “This problem was created entirely by Europeans,” he noted in a recent interview. “First we carried out centuries of persecution of the Jews. Then we subjected them to the Holocaust… after the Holocaust, we Europeans got rid of our remaining Jews by supporting their migration to Palestine.”

This European culpability extends far beyond Germany. The complicity in anti-Semitic persecution was continental in scope, involving occupied countries like France, Denmark, and the Netherlands, where local governments actively facilitated the identification, arrest, and deportation of Jewish populations. In Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine, local militias and police participated directly in mass executions. Ordinary citizens across Europe either remained passive bystanders or actively benefited from the expropriation of Jewish wealth and property.

The Holocaust created an unprecedented refugee crisis, but post-war Europe, despite its direct responsibility for the genocide, claimed to be in no position to absorb Holocaust survivors. The solution was elegant in its cynicism: transfer the problem to Palestine, using the mythology of “a land without people for a people without land” to justify what was, in essence, another colonial settlement project following the same pattern established over the previous four centuries.

The Colonial Pattern Perfected

The Israeli settlement of Palestine follows the classic colonial template that had been perfected as part of the historical European expansion. Like the Spanish conquistadors who displaced indigenous peoples across the Americas, the British settlers who transformed Australia through systematic dispossession, or the various European powers that carved up continents for settler colonies, the Zionist project involved the systematic displacement of indigenous populations, the appropriation of their lands, and the construction of a settler society that viewed the original inhabitants as obstacles to be removed or subjugated.

The parallels are not coincidental but structural. The same European racial theories that justified the conquest of the Americas—where millions of indigenous people were displaced or eliminated—and the colonization of Australia—where Aboriginal populations were marginalized and dispossessed—provided the intellectual framework for Zionist colonization. The same legal mechanisms that had been deployed across the colonial world were applied in Palestine: the declaration of land as “empty” or “unused,” the denial of indigenous political rights, and the establishment of racial hierarchies.

What makes the Israeli case unique is not its genocidal methods, which are depressingly familiar to anyone versed in colonial history, but its timing. The creation of Israel occurred precisely as the rest of the colonial world was achieving independence, as the old empires were crumbling, and as international law was evolving to prohibit the very practices that Israel was implementing.

The Persistence of Colonial Logic

Israel today represents more than just a historical anachronism; it serves as a laboratory for techniques of control and domination that have global applications. The Israeli model of managing “surplus populations” through technological surveillance, targeted assassinations, collective punishment, and territorial fragmentation has become a template for authoritarian regimes worldwide.

This is why Israel’s actions receive such consistent support from Western powers despite their obvious violations of international law. Israel is not merely an ally; it is a testing ground for methods of social control that may prove necessary as global inequality deepens and climate change creates new populations of displaced peoples. The techniques perfected in Gaza and the West Bank—drone warfare, algorithmic targeting, biometric control systems, wall construction—are being exported and adapted for use in other contexts where populations must be managed rather than accommodated.

The Racial Foundation

At its core, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is about race and racial privilege in ways that its religious framing deliberately obscures. The Israeli state, like all colonial states established during the great European migration, depends on the maintenance of racial hierarchies that privilege the settler population over the indigenous one. This is why Israel defines itself as a “Jewish state” rather than simply as the state of its citizens—it requires ethnic criteria for full membership in the political community, just as settler societies in the Americas and Australia maintained white supremacist frameworks for centuries.

The colonial nature of Israel’s racial hierarchy is starkly revealed in the treatment of different Jewish populations within the state itself. White European Jews—the Ashkenazi elite who founded and continue to dominate the state—occupy the pinnacle of Israeli society, controlling political power, economic institutions, and cultural narratives. Meanwhile, darker-skinned Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, known as Mizrahi Jews, along with Ethiopian and other African Jewish communities, have been systematically relegated to lower social, economic, and political status.

This internal hierarchy mirrors perfectly the racial stratification found in other settler colonial societies. Mizrahi Jews, despite constituting a majority of Israel’s Jewish population, have historically been concentrated in development towns, lower-paying jobs, and peripheral political roles. Ethiopian Jews face particularly stark discrimination, with documented cases of forced sterilization, residential segregation, and exclusion from elite military units and professional positions. The fact that European Jewish immigrants receive immediate full citizenship and social benefits while non-European Jews face barriers and discrimination reveals the fundamentally racial rather than religious nature of the Israeli project.

The religious language serves to mystify what is essentially a racial project. When Israeli leaders speak of the “Jewish character” of the state, they are not primarily making theological claims but rather asserting the permanent privilege of one ethnic group over another. The Jewish settlers in the West Bank are not motivated by religious devotion but by the same combination of economic opportunity and racial supremacy that motivated the millions of European settlers to capture other people’s continents over the previous five centuries.

The International Dimension

The persistence of the Israeli colonial project depends crucially on the continued support of the former colonial powers, particularly the United States and Britain. This support reflects not just strategic interests but a deeper commitment to defending the principle of settler colonial privilege wherever it appears.

The failure of international institutions to meaningfully constrain Israeli behaviour reflects the same racial hierarchy that structures global politics more broadly. The countries that received the largest numbers of European settlers—the United States (32.5 million), Argentina (6.5 million), Canada (5.2 million), Australia (2.9 million)—remain the strongest supporters of Israel’s colonial project, recognizing in it the same logic that established their own societies.

Beyond Religious Myths

Understanding the Israel-Palestinian conflict as the final phase of the great European colonial migration rather than a religious war opens up different possibilities for resolution. Colonial conflicts are not eternal or metaphysical; they are political and therefore potentially soluble through political means. The transformation of other settler colonial societies demonstrates that even deeply entrenched systems can change when the costs of maintaining them become too high.

The religious framing of the conflict, by contrast, suggests that it represents some fundamental incompatibility between Judaism and Islam, or between Jewish and Arab civilizations. This framing is not only historically inaccurate—Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully for centuries before the Zionist project—but also politically disabling, as it suggests that the conflict is essentially irresolvable.

The Colonial Reckoning

The Israel-Palestinian conflict will ultimately be resolved only when European responsibility for creating the conditions that led to the establishment of Israel is acknowledged formally. It will require accepting the colonial nature of the Israeli project, and developing solutions that address the fundamental injustice of displacement and dispossession rather than simply managing its symptoms. Until this colonial reality is acknowledged, the conflict will continue to produce the horrific violence that we witness today.

And, given that the so-called ‘international community’ for too long has been dominated by the same white, colonial nations, a solution to the problem can emerge only through initiatives from the non-white world. It is only they, the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America, who can bring the era of European colonial expansion – so visible even today in Israel – to its overdue conclusion.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker. He can be reached at [email protected]