Colonial Dreams: America and Israel 

Parallel Histories of Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure

This piece is dedicated to Hind Rajab who was a five-year-old Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip killed by Israeli forces alongside six of her family members and two paramedics coming to her rescue.

Love at first conquer 

It is frequently the case in history that the way events unfold tell you a lot about how they will end. America and Israel are a case in  point. Their histories are primarily driven by colonial aspirations and similar behaviors toward indigenous people. This similarity may help explain why no American leader with power has ever spoken out against Israel and held Israel accountable for flagrant violations of international humanitarian law. Our leaders, Democrats and Republicans, are imbued with the same ethos of Manifest Destiny, and national exceptionalism as Israelis. We are kissing cousins, so to speak. 

American Foundations

In the beginning, relatively few European settlers landed on the shores of  ‘America’. They faced hardship as they arrived in a new land full of possibilities. They created towns and colonies for legal jurisdictions to govern themselves. They began to develop their own holidays and celebrations. 

Governor Winthrop, governor of the English colony that later became Massachusetts, threw the first Thanksgiving party on record. It was a celebration for settlers who burned villages and killed and enslaved 700 Pequot indigenous people. The colonialists lost no time in passing laws that forbade the Pequot to speak their language or practice their culture. 

Settlers, in order to make theft of indigenous land more acceptable, propagated the ideology that surrounding lands were empty and open for taking. The settler cry went out; claim the land, fence it, and own it. Yet, according to historical estimates, there were 10 to 12 million indigenous people that inhabited communities and villages throughout the country. The land was empty only of European settlers.

Israeli Beginnings

Israel, before it became a state, was increasingly populated by European settlers who traveled by ship from Europe in the 1920’s, well before WWII. Their leaders, called Zionists, quipped that their ship should be known as the Jewish Mayflower. The diaries of several Zionist leaders, uncovered later, referred to Arabs in the area as  “savages”, much like Indians in the territories. Many Zionists propagated the strategy of an “iron wall” of military force that would be used against local Arab inhabitants because they reasoned, “like any colonized people they will fight against new settlers.”

Jewish settlers basically stole land from Palestinians. They claimed that the land was empty of people, like the colonialists in America. Historical records, however, reveal something different in a land that was to become Israel. It indicates that there were between 690,000 and 2 million Palestinians (Palestinian Jordanians) who lived in the area between 1914 and 1948. Palestinians had a thriving commercial community including textiles, trading and farming. Jews, by contrast, never amounted to more than 17% of the population until mass immigration was triggered by WW II from 1939-1946. 

Liquidation of indigenous peoples was a clear goal of the American government. Indigenous people in America were killed in mass numbers in the 18^th to 19^th century, 45,000 to 70,000, and during the California genocide, 1846 to 1873, roughly 12,000 to 16,000 were systematically targeted and killed. These killings were not disease related. 

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu’s father, an early colonialist in Palestine from Poland, would have agreed with the American government when he stated that, “Arabs only understand power, and as a colonialist we should take the land, and drive the Arabs out; turn off their electricity and starve them if we have too.” Mr. Netanyahu’s father taught him to hate Arabs as a young child, and Mr. Netanyahu tried unsuccessfully on many occasions to have interviews with his father blocked because they so openly revealed a family attitude toward Arabs.    

As we all know, “Indians” in America ended up as captives on reservations; coerced with starvation or military warfare to sign treaties that appeared legally binding. This, at first, followed multiple cease fires that resulted in more land grabs, war and devastation. When tribes united to defend themselves or assert their rights, the settlers utilized advanced weapons and military force to attack and kill them with public support. 

A white man, according to records that I researched in Healdsburg, California, could shoot a ‘red man’ in the back killing him, and then make the claim that he was intoxicated and should not be held accountable. The judge dismissed the charges of murder, and framed it as an unfortunate act. The settler was free to go. 

Cultural Erasure

Cultural destruction was sanctioned by the state. The U.S. military, over 150 years, wiped out indigenous village life and culture. Village life and arts were all but destroyed, and later resurrected on reservations. Indigenous cultures reportedly “lost” their way of life to modernity, while their arts found their way into museums and tourist attractions. Museums further denigrated indigenous art by categorizing it as “folk art”, which is worth less than ‘high art’ created by Western artists. 

Israel, over the last 77 years, has followed the American example. It has actively stolen land from Palestinians under claims of arbitrary security or outright denied land rights to Palestinians based on excerpts from the bible. It couples land theft with suppression of culture. It has systematically denied the ability of Palestinians to hold funerals and exercise burial rights; to paint certain art images, for example, watermelons which are seen by authorities as containing Palestinian protest colors; to write poetry and read it in public, or practice farming olive trees without harassment and terror. 

The internationally known Palestinian poet, Darwish, was arrested and thrown in jail no less than nine times over the years for reading his poetry in public. Israel denied his last rights request to be buried near his mother’s grave. Even in death, Israel refused the rights of a living Palestinian to determine the location of his burial. 

Cultural repression of Palestinians is promoted by almost every major American institution –  museums, universities, and corporations. Facebook, for example, automatically excludes Palestinian political promotion or causes. The U.S. and Israel share the penchant to silence Palestinian voices and those who express solidarity. They are colonialists together in an enterprise dedicated to the superiority of their culture, state, and in the end, weapons. 

Violence as Policy

Between 1940 and 1948,  Zionists formed paramilitary groups and fought as terrorists against British and Arabs. These terrorist groups morphed into the Israeli Defense Forces. On September 17, 1948, three members of a Zionist militant organization, Stern Gang, in coordination with a Jewish Army Jeep, cordoned off a motorcade transporting the UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte. One of the gang members reached into Count Bernadotte’s car and fired a submachine gun into the back seat mortally wounding him and Colonel Andre Serot.

The three men were hidden by friends in Tel Aviv for years, until the statute of limitations on murder expired. One of the three who participated in the killing, Yitzhak Shamir, became the seventh prime minister of Israel, serving two terms. Killing those who you disagree with is an ingrained part of Israeli political practice. 

The Israeli Defense Forces have been used to unleash a scorched Earth policy against Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians have been forced to live in walled-reservations with 24-hour electronic surveillance. Israel controls permission for Palestinians to come and go from the area. Tel Aviv, a major city, for instance, is walled off from Palestinian territories. Yet, it is only 44 miles from Gaza where over 40,000 bombs were dropped, 65,000 persons killed, and 95 percent of infrastructure destroyed. Daily reality for Israelis inside “the fort,” continues as normal. 

No Israeli soldier has ever been tried or held accountable for killing Palestinians, or state representatives, even when real time images show them shooting children or unarmed men and women. Israelis, like colonialists, are exempt from the law. Killing Palestinians is an acceptable pastime, like Governor Winthrop’s Thanksgiving party long ago.  

It’s time to reframe the struggle by Palestinians against Israel as an anti-colonial one, with a set of social and political alternatives to rule by the U.S. and Israel. What would a genuinely free Palestine look like from the ground up; from the top down; from the portals of freedom to the harbors of commerce; to develop and sustain Palestinian identity and culture. It’s an opportunity that the indigenous people in America never got.  

Sources

*History of Israel, Jewish Virtual Library, Assassination of Count Bernadotte 

* Demographic History of Palestine, 1931, 1939, 1945, 1947 

* The Lancet (Medical Journal) over Three Million Life-years Lost, November 15, 2025 

* Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society, Healdsburg 

* 972 Magazine: The late Benzion Netanyahu’s appalling views on Arabs

Dedication

This piece is dedicated to the memory of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old child from Gaza.

On January 29, 2024, Israeli forces fired from a tank and killed her, silencing her final, desperate pleas for rescue made to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. We honor her, the six members of her family – her uncle, aunt, and four cousins – killed in the same vehicle, and the two courageous paramedics who were killed while attempting to reach her. Here is her full story.

Please donate to the Hind Rajab Foundation mainly dedicated to the quest for justice in response to the crimes against humanity, war crimes and human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli state against Palestinians.