“Colonization”

A reader writes:

Re: being sick of the Israelis and the Palestinians, as an old two-states-for-two-people hand, I couldn't agree more. But you used one word that I happen to have written to someone about today, and so it is much on my mind: "colonization."

It may seem like too much to focus on a single word, but I think that occasionally, individual words really matter, and while I am deeply, deeply opposed to the settlement project (and it is, indeed, as you describe, "brutalizing"), I find referring to it as "colonization" to be very problematic.

If I work from the assumption that Palestinian nationalism is legitimate, and that the Palestinians are as deserving as any other people to define themselves, and furthermore, if the international community accepts nationalism as the basis on which we're organizing international life (and I'm absolutely not certain that that's a good idea, but the fact is, that's what we've done), then I have to accept/acknowledge the story of Jewish nationalism, as well — and it's rooted in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

This isn't like the English in Ireland or the French in Algeria, because the Jews aren't trying to establish a new, "civilizing" presence but are rather, in the terms of nationalist discourse, coming home.

Now, the fact is, we Jews have to get over ourselves. The Palestinians are in (already were in) their home, too. The fact is our home = their home and their home = our home. So, sharing is the only choice we have, and the Palestinians have already ceded the 78% of their home that they lost through war to us, so we have to be smart (and more aware that we actually WON the war) and cede 22% of our home to them.