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Israel, a Colonial-Settler State?
Examines the Zionist colonization of Palestine and how the State of Israel was formed.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Maxime Rodinson
41 books57 followersMarxist historian, sociologist and orientalist. He was the son of a Russian-Polish clothing trader and his wife who both died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After studying oriental languages, he became a professor of Ethiopian (Amharic) at EPHE (École Pratique des Hautes Études, France). He was the author of a rich body of work, including the book Muhammad, a biography of the prophet of Islam.
Rodinson joined the French Communist Party in 1937 for "moral reasons", but later turned away after the party's Stalinist drift. He was expelled from the party in 1958. He became well known in France when he expressed sharp criticism of Israel, particularly opposing the settlement policies of the Jewish state. Some credit him with coining the term "Islamic fascism" (le fascisme islamique) in 1979, which he used to describe the Iranian revolution.
Rodinson joined the French Communist Party in 1937 for "moral reasons", but later turned away after the party's Stalinist drift. He was expelled from the party in 1958. He became well known in France when he expressed sharp criticism of Israel, particularly opposing the settlement policies of the Jewish state. Some credit him with coining the term "Islamic fascism" (le fascisme islamique) in 1979, which he used to describe the Iranian revolution.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 23, 2024
a very clear-cut and to-the-point look at the situation in palestine before '48. answers the question from the title with a resounding yes, and debunks the main arguments from zionists which they use to oppose that thesis. also offers a quick analysis from the socialist perspective.
February 11, 2021
Maxime Rodinson’s basic thesis of this very short, concise and brilliant book is that Israel was established as a result of a colonial conquest, justified by an enthusiastic and racially exclusive ideology. An axiomatic thesis to the seasoned reader, but Rodinson goes further with his argument by showing that Zionism, as a political ideology, was marked by the same 'chauvinist attributes toward the peoples of underdeveloped lands as other European bourgeois nationalist doctrines in history'. Maxime also tries to dispel the myth that this view isn’t radical. If one remembers, Zionism was deeply enmeshed with socialism, and could very easily have lead the average person to draw the implicit conclusion that a society so deeply permeated with the leaven of socialism and Marxist theory cannot be termed imperialist or colonialist. Not to mention that the Arab world was/is portrayed as being feudal, anti-western/modernity and in many cases fascist – like some mustachioed dictator I could mention, which also gets imported in that kind of orientalist discourse. (See Edward Said’s work for clarification)
Assimilated Jews returning to their “homeland” and establishing a socialist society was not necessarily colonialist or imperialist per se in the motivations fundamental to that choice. However, the single crucial element that allowed the amalgam of aspirations of the Jewish people in Palestine was one small detail they overlooked; another people already inhabited Palestine. On the land called Palestine, there existed a huge majority for hundreds of years, “a large pastoral, a nevertheless socially, culturally, politically, economically identifiable people whose language and religion were largely Arabic and Islam, respectively”. Therefore, any thought about the native inhabitant problem had not disturbed the utopian ideas of Judaism or Jewishness. This indifference was linked to European supremacy that had imported the colonialist framework which had implanted in the minds of many that any territory outside Europe was open to European occupation.
Maxime draws parallels with Israel’s colonial conquest of Palestine with European expansionism in the nineteenth and twentieth century by drawing on the long history of Zionism and fitting it into the overall, general framework of colonialism. Maxime also predicted the coalescing of Judaism with Zionism, thus making it incompatible with democracy - as we see Israel today continuing it’s expansionist policies that are partly driven by literalist interpretations of scripture.
I may need to read this again to fully grasp the more recondite points Maxime makes, but for what it accomplishes, this is a masterpiece and should be read along side two other books; Edward Said’s, “Question of Palestine” and David Hirst’s, The Gun and The Olive Branch.
Assimilated Jews returning to their “homeland” and establishing a socialist society was not necessarily colonialist or imperialist per se in the motivations fundamental to that choice. However, the single crucial element that allowed the amalgam of aspirations of the Jewish people in Palestine was one small detail they overlooked; another people already inhabited Palestine. On the land called Palestine, there existed a huge majority for hundreds of years, “a large pastoral, a nevertheless socially, culturally, politically, economically identifiable people whose language and religion were largely Arabic and Islam, respectively”. Therefore, any thought about the native inhabitant problem had not disturbed the utopian ideas of Judaism or Jewishness. This indifference was linked to European supremacy that had imported the colonialist framework which had implanted in the minds of many that any territory outside Europe was open to European occupation.
Maxime draws parallels with Israel’s colonial conquest of Palestine with European expansionism in the nineteenth and twentieth century by drawing on the long history of Zionism and fitting it into the overall, general framework of colonialism. Maxime also predicted the coalescing of Judaism with Zionism, thus making it incompatible with democracy - as we see Israel today continuing it’s expansionist policies that are partly driven by literalist interpretations of scripture.
I may need to read this again to fully grasp the more recondite points Maxime makes, but for what it accomplishes, this is a masterpiece and should be read along side two other books; Edward Said’s, “Question of Palestine” and David Hirst’s, The Gun and The Olive Branch.
October 11, 2021
An effective argument for understanding Israel as a settler-colonial project - an argument which is more essential than ever given the slow criminalisation of this perspective by the cynical champions of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The book's strong historical analysis is, however, limited by a left-liberal political perspective. The introduction in my edition (by Peter Buch, a Cliffite) does a good job of highlighting and correcting Rodinson's political problems, so combined with that introduction it was overall good: a very worthwhile and quick read on a super important subject.
August 14, 2023
A good book, but certainly dated - it was written in 1973 and aimed specifically at debunking certain French socialists' arguments that Israel was somehow a socialist project. Despite how much has changed on the ground today in Israel/Palestine, his arguments still hold up all these year later, and it is still worth a read.
May 31, 2023
This is a decent book on the colonization of Palestine by european forces and eventually the Jewish people seeking a homeland after centuries of persecution. It was very informative to see the other side of this issue but some of the language in this is offensive and implying some harmful stereotypes of "clandestine Jewish organizations." Not entirely it's fault but the book is out of date by now. Very informative with lots of sources.
August 3, 2021
Very astute observations by Rodinson, given it was published in 1967 originally. Outlines the settler colonial nature of the Zionist project. Perhaps offers too many contextual justifications for the domination of one people by another.
April 26, 2008
Great stuff if you're interesting in the topic, and can find a copy.
March 30, 2018
A pretty concise, solid argument: yes. Where to from here? Not the point of the book.
October 30, 2025
Maxime Rodinson, a Jewish specialist on the history of the Mideast, argues that Israel was at its founding a colonial-settler state. But as he points out, such a state doesn't stay that forever, otherwise the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other states would still be colonial-settler states. And not all the Jews who moved to Palestine were Zionists (for the role of Zionism in Europe, see The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon. Jews went because both during and after the war there was no other place they could go. Few people know that once Israel was founded, almost all of the Mizrahi Jews (those who had already lived in the Middle East and North Africa, sometimes for centuries) were forced out of their homelands.
Members of the party I support, The Socialist Workers Party, demanded that the US "Open the doors to victims of Hitler's Nazi terror," but Roosevelt had cut the quotas for Jewish refugees, and even these quotas weren't filled. The bourgeois leadership of the Jews didn't protest. See Founding of the Socialist Workers Party and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. I read I.F. Stone's writings in Underground to Palestine: And Other Writing on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East on the formation of Israel and have a different opinion now than when I first read Rodinson. One can perhaps describe Zionism (a form of Jewish nationalism) as having a settler-colonial character--although there were people who called themselves Zionist--like I.F. Stone and Albert Einstein--who rejected the idea of a Jewish, as opposed to a binational state.
Zionism played a big role in the formation of modern Israel, but Israel came into being because almost no one cared what happened to the Holocaust survivors--they had to find a way on their own.
If revolutionary Marxists had been in the leadership of the Soviet Union (see Trotsky's The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany and Fascism and Big Business), Hitler would never have come to power! While more and more people during the war discovered and publicized the "final solution," it had nothing to do with allied war aims. They refused to bomb the train tracks leading to the death camps. When US GIs opened the camps as Nazis fled, they viewed themselves as liberators. But death camp residents continued dying. There was no plan for what would happen to survivors. Their homes had other people living in them, and all their property and money had been confiscated. People didn't by magic stop hating Jews. The United States, the richest country in the world, took in even fewer Jews than the few their quota system in theory allowed. The Balfour Declaration gave Jews a semi-legal opening to go to Palestine, although Britain, facing colonial revolt in much of the world, tried to prevent it. That is why Israel exists. Anyone who says "it has no right to exist" is calling for continuing the final solution.
At one time anyone with the slightest criticism of Israel was called an anti-Semite or a self-hater. Those days are over. And the hatred for Arabs in the Israeli capitalist state is on the decline, not rising. More Arabs, who have no obligation to, are joining the IDF, including as officers. Israel has never met the Leninist definition of an imperialist country, but for some years it was an expansionist country. There are still hostile settlers moving to Arab areas, but the US has a president talking about seizing foreign territory by force.
Trump is crude, but he's not a fascist. Anyone familiar with Cold War history knows that the US dominated much of the world. Those countries were not bourgeois democracies--they were countries "willing" to be dominated by the US. If they weren't, the US attempted coups and/or invasions.
Today the Democratic Socialists of America call Roosevelt a democratic socialist. A man who did nothing to save the lives of Jews, and who soon after arranged to have the Socialist Workers Party leadership indicted under the Smith Act for refusing to support the US imperialism in the war. (Some liberals will assume that we resisted the draft, but that's not the proletarian approach to war--We go with the working class into the army, although we preferred getting our members into war industry and the maritime unions). (See 'Teamster Bureaucracy and Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial. For Roosevelt's real record, see While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy.
The PLO played an important part for some years, since at first, both Israel and the US refused to admit there was such a thing as a Palestinian! But the PLO had the chance to form a Palestinian state and failed to do so. The Palestine Authority is a bureaucratic organization that engages in Jew-baiting and refuses to negotiate. Hamas has even less to do with a national liberation movement--they are Nazi-like pogromists! People who support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions are not necessarily aware of the role of Hamas in it, but after a while it becomes clear that it is an organization of Jew-haters, some from the "left" and some from the "right."
If one has conspiracy theories involving Jews, what difference does it make which of these one calls oneself? They're all from the self-titled "enlightened meritocracy" and are on a road that may well move them toward fascism (see 'Are They Rich Because They're Smart?).
There is nothing unique about Israel; most nation states are formed by the conquest of one group by another, usually involving "ethnic cleansing." The US could not have been formed without genocide against the Indians. Today those Palestinians who live in Israel have better lives than most people in the neighboring countries. Is there racism against them and against Ethiopian Jews? Yes, just as there's still racism in the US, but no one says, "the United States has no right to exist." Why? The fight against racism begins at home, and there's still Indian land being stolen and still racism.
I realize that I haven't said much about the book, but I wrote about what is important NOW. It goes without saying that if someone is "Woke" and views history with "Presentism," they will disagree with me on this, and pretty much everything, including the nature of reality.
Members of the party I support, The Socialist Workers Party, demanded that the US "Open the doors to victims of Hitler's Nazi terror," but Roosevelt had cut the quotas for Jewish refugees, and even these quotas weren't filled. The bourgeois leadership of the Jews didn't protest. See Founding of the Socialist Workers Party and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. I read I.F. Stone's writings in Underground to Palestine: And Other Writing on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East on the formation of Israel and have a different opinion now than when I first read Rodinson. One can perhaps describe Zionism (a form of Jewish nationalism) as having a settler-colonial character--although there were people who called themselves Zionist--like I.F. Stone and Albert Einstein--who rejected the idea of a Jewish, as opposed to a binational state.
Zionism played a big role in the formation of modern Israel, but Israel came into being because almost no one cared what happened to the Holocaust survivors--they had to find a way on their own.
If revolutionary Marxists had been in the leadership of the Soviet Union (see Trotsky's The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany and Fascism and Big Business), Hitler would never have come to power! While more and more people during the war discovered and publicized the "final solution," it had nothing to do with allied war aims. They refused to bomb the train tracks leading to the death camps. When US GIs opened the camps as Nazis fled, they viewed themselves as liberators. But death camp residents continued dying. There was no plan for what would happen to survivors. Their homes had other people living in them, and all their property and money had been confiscated. People didn't by magic stop hating Jews. The United States, the richest country in the world, took in even fewer Jews than the few their quota system in theory allowed. The Balfour Declaration gave Jews a semi-legal opening to go to Palestine, although Britain, facing colonial revolt in much of the world, tried to prevent it. That is why Israel exists. Anyone who says "it has no right to exist" is calling for continuing the final solution.
At one time anyone with the slightest criticism of Israel was called an anti-Semite or a self-hater. Those days are over. And the hatred for Arabs in the Israeli capitalist state is on the decline, not rising. More Arabs, who have no obligation to, are joining the IDF, including as officers. Israel has never met the Leninist definition of an imperialist country, but for some years it was an expansionist country. There are still hostile settlers moving to Arab areas, but the US has a president talking about seizing foreign territory by force.
Trump is crude, but he's not a fascist. Anyone familiar with Cold War history knows that the US dominated much of the world. Those countries were not bourgeois democracies--they were countries "willing" to be dominated by the US. If they weren't, the US attempted coups and/or invasions.
Today the Democratic Socialists of America call Roosevelt a democratic socialist. A man who did nothing to save the lives of Jews, and who soon after arranged to have the Socialist Workers Party leadership indicted under the Smith Act for refusing to support the US imperialism in the war. (Some liberals will assume that we resisted the draft, but that's not the proletarian approach to war--We go with the working class into the army, although we preferred getting our members into war industry and the maritime unions). (See 'Teamster Bureaucracy and Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial. For Roosevelt's real record, see While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy.
The PLO played an important part for some years, since at first, both Israel and the US refused to admit there was such a thing as a Palestinian! But the PLO had the chance to form a Palestinian state and failed to do so. The Palestine Authority is a bureaucratic organization that engages in Jew-baiting and refuses to negotiate. Hamas has even less to do with a national liberation movement--they are Nazi-like pogromists! People who support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions are not necessarily aware of the role of Hamas in it, but after a while it becomes clear that it is an organization of Jew-haters, some from the "left" and some from the "right."
If one has conspiracy theories involving Jews, what difference does it make which of these one calls oneself? They're all from the self-titled "enlightened meritocracy" and are on a road that may well move them toward fascism (see 'Are They Rich Because They're Smart?).
There is nothing unique about Israel; most nation states are formed by the conquest of one group by another, usually involving "ethnic cleansing." The US could not have been formed without genocide against the Indians. Today those Palestinians who live in Israel have better lives than most people in the neighboring countries. Is there racism against them and against Ethiopian Jews? Yes, just as there's still racism in the US, but no one says, "the United States has no right to exist." Why? The fight against racism begins at home, and there's still Indian land being stolen and still racism.
I realize that I haven't said much about the book, but I wrote about what is important NOW. It goes without saying that if someone is "Woke" and views history with "Presentism," they will disagree with me on this, and pretty much everything, including the nature of reality.
April 16, 2026
Brilliant book. To think that this book was written in 1967 by a jewish marxist, at the time when prominent left-wing intellectuals;such as Sartre; were taking a defensive stance of the zionist entity, makes this even more admirable. I do think that some of the author’s conclusions can be considered to be biased, and i am of this opinion, but that is something the reader can definitely look past.
September 7, 2024
Great essay on the character of the Israeli state. At the time this was not a usual description in Europe of the terror state. It came at a moment when lots of the left still had illusions in Israel and the arguments are still standing today.
June 1, 2025
I appreciate the factual outline of events of Palestine.
The facts speak for themselves, presented clearly in a timeline that allows the reader to understand the dilemma that didn’t need to exist.
The land was not Britains to give away.
The land belongs to the Palestinian people.
The facts speak for themselves, presented clearly in a timeline that allows the reader to understand the dilemma that didn’t need to exist.
The land was not Britains to give away.
The land belongs to the Palestinian people.
September 16, 2014
Maxime rodinson is very clever I love his views. The conclusion of the book is very nice and visionary in a sense.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews