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How can a settler colonial state be studied in Graduate school through the post-colonial lens? Is it not disingenuous to say Israel is a post-colonial state when it is very actively—emphasis on actively—colonizing Palestinian lands. Post-colonial studies suggest the subject is past tense; Israel’s colonization of Palestine is past tense. But it’s also present and future tense.

Acclaimed Israeli-British professor and historian Ilan Pappe confronted poignant questions like these last night during a talk he gave at NYU Law School. His advice for the new generations of anti-occupation activists, Palestinian, Jewish, whoever?

Adapt anti-colonization tactics to the 21st Century. “Che Guevara is no longer relevant,” Pappe said. “I wish he was, but he’s not.”

Pappe covered varied topics from the cognitive dissonance of the Israeli left and dove camp to the rightwing, military-style obstinance Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion faced in confronting occupation policies; this debate, of course, continues today with half of the Knesset governing like military generals and the other half toeing the party line.

But paramount in Pappe’s speech was his unequivocal assertion that Israel is a settler colonialist project.

It has been from the outset, protected from international outrage by Israeli and especially American exceptionalism. After WWII, as Pappe said, global politics shifted to a post-colonial mindset; colonial states had been withdrawing from their conquests for a few decades and the second great war completely disavowed the utter lack of respect and downright hostility for indigenous peoples by the world powers, at least in discourse.

But Israel was spared these shifts and allowed to continue colonizing historic Palestine.

Today, the state is run by third generation settlers chomping at the bit to expel or eliminate the remaining indigenous population. Thus the cruelty of a military occupation, the countless videos of IDF soldiers shooting children, the incitement by Israeli politicians, the outlawing and large scale discrediting of human rights groups in the Israeli consciousness.

And this breeds what Pappe called “the discourse of temporality” among liberal American Jews.

After a few visits to the West Bank, a leftist Jew cannot possibly support the state of Israel and its apartheid policies. But the notion that the occupation is temporary is the only way to reckon with the reality.

“People buy into it, because people need to solve their cognitive dissonances. But of course fifty years show you, Israel with the West Bank is definitely not temporary,” Pappe said. “This is it. This is the state of Israel. From the River Jordan to the Mediterranean, there’s only one state, there will always be only one state. It’s called the state of Israel.”

The forty-year peace process was an abject failure. Diplomatic, academic and goodwill energy invested in supposedly a genuine peace process was based on the most sophisticated version of Zionist settler colonialism. The peace process was nothing more than a distraction, all the while allowing Israel to deepen its occupation of the West Bank.

The prevailing discourse over Israel and Palestine has been a hegemonic paradigm, Pappe explained. One that “looks at the conflict as a war between two national movements.”

The peace process was based on this assumption; two national movements fighting for the same piece of land. When outside mediators arrived, especially the United States, they have traditionally considered the issue a business problem, ignoring the constraints of a human problem. This explains the oft-repeated notions of divisibility and partitioning.

But we have seen how this turns out. Since 1948, partitioning has shrunk Palestine to mere pebbles, leaving Israel with the boulder. And the state continues legitimizing West Bank settlements that gobble up more and more Palestinian land. It is actively happening today and the more honest Israeli politicians openly admit it.

Of course business school graduates can’t be trusted with ten dollars, so how can they be trusted to solve a decades old geopolitical conflict?

The insincerity of the peace process according to Pappe is as such: In negotiations, more concessions naturally must be given to the stronger party. Because Israel has always been the stronger party, it has always received more from attempts at reconciliation. At the same time, Palestine being the weaker party has netted it less and less. By this logic, peace means the stronger party, Israel, receives the better deal.

Essentially, the peace process has always favored Israel because it sets the meetings. Meanwhile, it has no incentive to settle because under cover of peace negotiations, the state continues its land grabs and settlement expansion.

Israel was not just a new home to the Jews escaping persecution and death in Europe. It was a new “homeland.” It has propagated this mindset that considers the Jewish state a solution to the existential threat of Europe.

This is why critics of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement so tenaciously label BDS supporters as either anti-semites or “self-hating Jews.”

Pappe, a Jewish Israeli himself, had advice on how to respond to these accusations.

As a Palestine solidarity activist, Jewish or not, criticism of Israel is not anti-semitic. If anything, uncritical support for Israel is anti-semitic because the faces of the current militarized state play right into the anti-semitic stereotypes used against Jews everywhere. Israel’s denial of Palestinians their basic human, civil, economic and social rights—the dehumanization of Palestinians and continuance of the settler colonial project—is the most destructive thing for Jews.

The Jewish people and diaspora culture is heavily rooted in the tenets of social justice and equality. As long as the occupation continues, this message will not get through to anyone, especially the anti-semites.

Instead, Israel gets the support of white Evangelical Christian Zionists, whose values lineup with the same current racist and militarized values of Israel. It is truly a foreboding sign when the biggest supporters of the Jewish state is one of the most anti-semitic groups on earth.

Ilan Pappe’s speech was preceded a film presentation from the Israeli human rights group Zochrot (זוכרות) dedicated to commemorating the Palestinian Nakba. Zochrot means remembrance in Hebrew.

The two short films were Abu Arab directed by Mona Dohar and The Shack directed by Salim Abu-Jabal.

The latter presents the story of Yussuf Hassan and his wife Amna Hassan, both refugees of the 1948 Nakba, living in a shack by the side of the road in Wadi Rushmiya. Their very modest home is demolished by Israeli authorities in order to clear space for a new road to the nearby city of Haifa. The film shows the punitive and harsh Israeli policy of house demolition, a reality known to virtually every Palestinian.

At the opening of his speech, Pappe shared an anecdote that underscored the film’s message: