Palestine solidarity activists have claimed their space in mainstream politics and demanded the dismantling of the Israeli settler colonial project. But this has raised a very elementary question: “What is settler colonialism?”
Some commentators were quick to dismiss this charge of settler colonialism against Israel as “just another form of anti-Semitism”. Others insinuated that “settler colonialism” is nothing but a trendy academic theory conjured up by left-wing academics and activists.
But settler colonialism isn’t just an academic fad. It’s a real political project that has scarred the past and present of Indigenous communities around the world.
A central feature of this project is that it seeks to erase the Indigenous population to make way for the establishment of a settler society. Ideologically, this erasure is seen as justified and inevitable because, for the settler, the Indigenous don’t have any distinct peoplehood or any historically rooted claim to the land they inhabit. So, when faced with the civilisational, technological and military superiority of the settler state, it is all but expected that the “barbaric” Indigenous society would simply capitulate and “go away”.
