The Colonial Paradigm

Thousands of university papers analyze current social trends in the light of colonialism. We Jews in Israel are the ones most suffering from this stereotyping. In the academy, colonial settlers are the worst, the most sadistic societies bent on nullifying autochthonous populations.

The English are archetypical colonials and slavers. Are they? The Brits in the 18th Century invested enormous resources in patrolling the African Coast, fighting slaving ships and hanging their captains. Patrolling such a large coast with sailing ships cost the Brits a large expense, but for decades they paid this morality tax till the slave trade was exterminated. Now, how can anyone accuse British colonialism of causing slavery?

Not to forget what the slave trade was about. Prosperous farmers in American South, in Cuba and Brazil needed manpower. That was before transatlantic trade and its legal framework was in place. Today, when a farm in California needs manpower and pays reasonable salaries, the manpower will arrive: millions of desperate famished Mexicans and even Africans. No frontiers will stop them. There are unfulfilled jobs in Europe: millions of Africans will literally swim the Mediterranean. Trade was not yet organized in the 17th Century, so the manpower transfer took place on a less voluntary basis.

European colonization is being conceptualized today as cruel and exploitative. Yet the colonizers themselves thought of themselves as civilizing underdeveloped areas, making large personal sacrifices. Thousands of religious people, including Catholic priests moving among savages, sacrificed themselves to teach, humanize and advance them.

European nations regarded the colonies as a financial and a military burden. I have studied two English colonies in detail, Nigeria and Palestine, and Britain never extracted a penny from them; on the contrary, they were bleeding white the mother country's budget. The Palestine Mandate was organized to be self-financing, and emphasis was given to tax collection and a balanced colonial budget, including reserves for the retirement of colonial employees. That was the idea. When England lost its investments and became tired and poor after WW2, it just decided to cut them off and abandoned without sentiments its colonies. Even India with its million Anglo-Indians was allowed to go. In sober analysis, the Brits realized that the real point of having India as a colony was to sell them textiles and manufactures, and that India would continue buying British even after their independence. They still do.

It was the same story with North American colonies. The French organized the Indians to wage war on the British colonies. The expense of defending them was unconscionable for the Brits, and the ungrateful settlers would not tax themselves for their defense. When the settlers declared their desire to go it alone, the colonial power faked resistance and happily let them be. Ben Franklin was sent to Paris to offer an anti-Britain alliance and ask them to de-fund the Redskins, the French hated the Brits but understood that the Brits were gone. They loved Franklin and Franklin loved Paris' courtesans so much that he long overstayed his mission. They sent him a souvenir, a large statue of a semi-nude French lady. It is still standing.

In short, the colonial paradigm exists only in the imagination of contemporary scholars of Black etc. studies. Trying to impose this structure on the Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel forces them to make bizarre mental somersaults. Jews are not exploiting the natives, on the contrary, they are refusing to employ them. Jews are not imposing their culture, language, religion or sex on Arabs, they would like nothing best than having no contact with them. The "colonizers" extract no benefits at all from the "colonized". The colonial model, a totally imaginary structure, cannot be applied here. Yet they insist to the point of absurdity, because the "colonial settler model" is academically approved and there is no other available.

The only aspect of the settler/colonized model that I find relevant is the psychological. Franz Fanon, a Caribbean Black psychoanalyst, described in the fifties how the visible inferiority and impotence of the colonized drives them crazy and psychotic. Fanon diagnosed the mental state of the colonized as sick, and to cure it proposed armed warfare. He himself joined the Algerian rebellion against the French. But Franz Fanon books are unfashionable and forgotten. Let me end quoting him:

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”