Imperialism = the policy of extending rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.
Per the above definition, Israel is not an imperialist state. The reasons are as follows…
- Imperialism, by definition, entails settler colonialism. Countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina are imperialist states because they were founded on settler colonialism. The modern State of Israel was not founded on settler colonialism. It was founded (or rather, re-established) on the blood, sweat, tears, hopes, and dreams of a repatriated indigenous people. It is ludicrous to equate a native people returning to its homeland with European adventurers in the “New World”, and anti-Zionists know this (hence why they are so hellbent on whitewashing Ashkenazi Jews, thereby denying their origins in the Levant).
- Imperialism requires a mother country. Israel does not have a “mother country”. Israel IS the mother country. Jewish returnees did not establish cities like “New Warsaw” or “New Prague”. They instead revived their ancestral language and took the ancestral, pre-colonial names of Israeli cities and reapplied them to their corresponding locations.
- In the decades leading up to Israel’s re-establishment, its non-Jewish population primarily consisted of Arabs, who are themselves the product of an earlier imperial conquest (and, to a smaller extent, recent immigration). While Palestinians have an undeniable right to self-determination (and have, at times, been treated quite terribly by Israel), it is nonsensical to suggest that their experience is comparable to that of indigenous peoples under imperialism.
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