Settler colonialism describes how imperial states capture a territory, migrate there, displace or eliminate the “barbarian” indigenous population and dominate its land and resources.
Ireland was a pioneer settler colony of England, as was graphically documented in the recent four-part RTÉ documentary series, From That Small Island. Many of the imperial techniques used here in early modern times were replicated by the British Empire in North America, the Caribbean and later in Australia and New Zealand – and by others too, such as the French in Algeria.
But as Jane Ohlmeyer, one of the editors and principal contributors to the documentary points out in her book Making Empire, Ireland, Imperialism & The Early Modern World, “colonisation was not a single occurrence but an iterative and durable process that impacted different parts of Ireland at different times”. Nonetheless, the agenda of scorched-earth reprisals against resistance, civilising barbarous savages and seizing land for improvement was first practised here – even though many people born in Ireland became soldiers, employees or governing agents of that empire in later times too.
Applied to Zionism and Israel, the concept reveals a displacement logic against Palestinians in what one of Palestine’s principal historians, Rashid Khalidi, describes as a radical social engineering project in “a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will”.
READ MORE
But he too recognises that Zionism “was and is a very particular colonial project” – like British settler colonialism in Ireland, with which he draws parallels. Zionism relied on successive imperial powers and “became over time a national confrontation between two national entities, two peoples”, amplified by the profound resonance for Jews of the biblical connection to the historic land of Israel. That blinds many Bible-reading Protestants in Britain and the United States to the modernity of Zionism and its colonial nature: “for how could Jews be ‘colonising’ the land where their religion began?”
[ Jane Ohlmeyer: How Ireland served as a laboratory for the British empireOpens in new window ]
This helps explain why settler colonialism is rejected as an explanatory framework by many Israeli historians, politicians and commentators. There are Irish parallels, particularly among unionists who say it distorts the complexities of their role in Irish history. However most Irish people support Palestinians because they recognise a similar process to be at play there as here, notwithstanding the nuances.
Critical race theory (CRT) has developed in the US since the 1980s to explain the intersection of law, race and power in US society. It argues that through law, racism is historically embedded there. Like settler colonialism, CRT has been vilified and weaponised mainly by conservative activists who reject its premises and implications for the future of white power. The explicit and implicit links with Zionist defences of Israel against settler colonial theories have become a powerful political force in Trump’s US, not least through the same Bible readers.
Ireland comes into focus through the links between such offensive academic theories and everyday US politics. Official Ireland must take such arguments seriously since they are part of the explicit US Senate mandate given to the new US ambassador here, Edward Walsh. Jim Risch, the republican chairman of the Senate’s foreign relations committee, said Ireland’s recognition of the state of Palestine is a mistake, while Senator Ted Cruz attacked Ireland’s support for the International Criminal Court’s case against Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
[ Fintan O'Toole: Ireland has a proud history of opposing anti-SemitismOpens in new window ]
Since objective historical forces place Ireland in this dilemma, there is a limited extent to which canny diplomacy can play a part. The direct experience and memory of imperial violence, coercion and ideology informs Irish perceptions of similar behaviour from Netanyahu’s Israel against Palestinians. Our political leaders recognise that, although their actions vary according to contemporary interests and values.
Revisionist historians in Ireland applied scientific techniques to Ireland’s nationalist historical mythologies of colonial oppression and heroic resistance, concentrating more on those than on the imperial behaviour that gave rise to them. In Israel, revisionist historians similarly interrogated that state’s foundational myths. They framed Zionism as a settler colonial project responsible for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948 war of independence. Some, such as Benny Morris, defend that as necessary for the Israeli state’s survival.
Both settler colonial and critical race theory have been validly criticised for portraying the societies they analyse as irredeemably divided – and therefore immune to coalitions of race, ethnic or class interests against the systems of power.
Irish historians and citizens have absorbed the revisionist controversy and moved on to fashion a more sophisticated account of imperial power, colonisation and diverse peoples living together in Ireland’s history, according to the RTÉ documentary. The same cannot be said for Israel’s profoundly polarised debate on its future.
