For many who are tuned in to what Walter Benjamin called ‘the tradition of the oppressed,’ ” writes John Collins of St. Lawrence University, “the centrality of Palestine is almost axiomatic.”1 But an axiom is not a truth; it is a statement that must be accepted as true in order for a system of thought to function. For the ideology of settler colonialism, Palestine is axiomatic in just this sense: it is a premise from which many conclusions are drawn, and not just about Israel. The fact that many of these conclusions are false and harmful should lead us to question whether the axiom is sound.
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