Belgium’s Development Minister, Caroline Gennez, has claimed that Israel is engaged in “colonization” in Gaza. The charge is preposterous.
How can the Jews of Israel be “colonizing” the land that Jews started living on more than 3500 years ago, the land where Jewish history was made? There is no metropolitan power “colonizing” this territory. The Israelis who have settled on state or waste lands, or bought land from Arab owners, or taken over land abandoned by Arabs when they left in 1948, hoping to soon return with victorious Arab armies, have nothing in common with the French colonizing Algeria or the British colonizing Kenya. Jews in Israel have ingathered, returning to the original home of the Jewish people — a home that Jews can be said to have never entirely left, because Jews, albeit in small numbers, have continued uninterruptedly to live somewhere in the Land of Israel during the past 3500 years. In exile, Jews never stopped thinking about the place from which they were driven. When a Jew dies, non-family members offer a traditional condolence — “May God comfort you in Zion and Jerusalem.” “Zion” is synecdoche for the Land of Israel. The true colonizers of the Land of Israel are the Arabs, who arrived in the first half of the seventh century, more than two millennia after the Jews had first been living there. It is Muslim Arabs who came out of Arabia to colonize not just Israel, but all of the land from Morocco to Iran, settling in large numbers, imposing their language and culture and religion on the indigenous inhabitants.
Thus did Egypt go from being a country peopled entirely by Christian Copts to one where, over many centuries, those Copts converted to Islam and adopted Arabic names and accepted Arab culture, so that now 90% of Egyptians identify themselves as Muslim Arabs. The Berbers were the original inhabitants of North Africa, but now a majority of the people living in that area have been thoroughly arabized by the Arabs who conquered their lands in the first few centuries of Islam, and now, while sizable numbers of Berbers, speaking Tamazigh, still exist in Morocco and Algeria, most North Africans see themselves as Arabs. Lebanon, once peopled entirely by Christians, is now 65% Muslim. The Greek Orthodox and Syrian Orthodox Christians of Syria, who once completely dominated Syria, are now only 2% of that country’s population. In Iraq, similarly, a country once consisting of Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Syriac Christians, have been reduced to less than 1% of the population. The Arabs are in fact the most successful colonizers in history, not only for the vast territories that they conquered, but also because they managed to convince those peoples that they conquered that they too, were Muslim Arabs.
What about Caroline Gennez’s charge that Israel is engaged in “ethnic cleansing”? Has Israel been moving whole groups of Arabs out of Israel? Not a single Israeli Arab has been moved out of Israel by the government. Israel took control of Gaza in 1967, when its Arab population was 390,000. Israel pulled out every Jewish civilian and soldier from the Strip in 2005. During those 38 years, no Arabs were expelled from Gaza. Between 1967 and 2005, the Arab population more than tripled to 1.3 million. It is much the same in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank). In 1967, the Arab population of that area was 900,000. Today it has more than tripled, to 3 million. No Arabs have been expelled from the area. A few Arab villages, with several hundred people, have been moved from one part of the West Bank to another, mainly for security reasons, including the need to move civilians further away from, or out of, IDF training sites. But that is very different from being subject to “ethnic cleansing.” And those who claim that Israel is engaged in the “ethnic cleansing” of east Jerusalem are also wrong. In 1967 the Arab population of east Jerusalem was 66,000 when Israel took it over; by 2023, that same population had skyrocketed to 370,000, nearly a six-fold increase. Ethnic cleansing? What ethnic cleansing?
Will any of these facts – these numbers that tell a tale — matter to Belgium’s Minister of Development, who chastises Germany for supporting the Jewish state that, Caroline Gennez claims, engages in “colonization” and “ethnic cleansing”? You and I both know, alas, the answer to that.
DanC says
Actually, going to Square1: Islam is not compatible with 21st century.
tim gallagher says
Israel is surrounded by Muslims who want to wipe all the Israelis out because that insane level of hatred for Jews is a basic part of the sick, degenerate Muslim religious ideology. Colonisation, what a load of complete bullshit. For the israelis it is a battle to stay alive, pure self defence against totally barbaric Muslims.
maria says
Agree . Muslims are worse than hitler and must be defeated
tim gallagher says
No doubt about that, maria. If israel loses against the Muslim scum, then israel will be annihilated by the Muslim barbarians. Israel, the only civilised country in that part of the world, must win.
James Lincoln says
Yes, tim.
Failure is not an option.
Scotsman48 says
islamism is the new nazism.
Rob Porter says
“Colonization”, “colonizers”, “Israeli apartheid”, etc. simply sickly Muslim drivel. Any port in a storm by Muslim liars and deranged morons to discredit Israelis and Israel. Robert Spencer has a vastly more composed way of describing Muslims than I do. After watching all the post-October 7 debates involving Muslims and watching Douglass Murray expose their ignorance and stupidity, my contempt for Muslims, their intellect and total lack of morals, and Islam itself, knows no bounds.
The Istanbulian says
I bet there are more per capita Native Americans than there are native Levantines, Anatolians, & North Africans
Tony Rice says
The woman, bearing in mind her position should be asked by Israeli government to give chapter and verse as to why she makes the allegation she does. Historical facts stand in her way , hence her need to provide PROOF and FACTS as to why she opens her mouth in verbal attack.. Too many persons who do not live in the area but like to put their five eggs in and thus should be made to prove their contentions.
libertyORdeath says
The fact that someone from BELGIUM has the nerve to talk about anither country’s supposed colonialism is rich.
Just look up the Belgian Congo. I’d keep my mouth shut if I was them.
Mike says
That’s correct. King Leopold 3rd was a racist bigot and genocidaire par excellence.
Scotsman48 says
In Belgium today there is a legal political party called The Islam Party and they openly state their political platform as they will turn Belgium into an islamic Nation and that sharia will be the Law of the Land for everybody.
Take note that this political party is based in Brussels which is also the HQ of the EU.
Not a coincidence.
Once Belgium goes so does the Eu and most of Europe.
islamism is the new nazism.
dumbledoresarmy says
Someone should tell this evil, stupid and utterly-ignorant woman just when and where the famous Jewish Sabbath hymn “Ya Ribon Olam” was composed… by a Jewish rabbi living amongst the (oppressed and insecure) native Jewish dhimmi community under the boot of Muslim imperialist invaders and occupiers…He was born in Safed, northern Israel, in 1555; after spending some time with the Jews in Damascus, he lived for a time in Hebron; then spent the second half of his life in Gaza where he was chief rabbi; he died in 1625 and was buried in Gaza.
Furthermore: IN GAZA archaeologists found a mosaic synagogue floor that dates from 508 AD, in the final decades of Byzantine Christian rule, and BEFORE the Muslim Arab invasion and occupation of the land.
There were Jews living in Gaza before ever there were Muslim Arabs!
There were synagogues in Gaza before EVER there were mosques.
(And the entire Land of Israel is chockful of similar archaeological evidence of really ancient and continuing Jewish presence, all of it older than the ruin wrought by the invading and occupying Muslims – first Arabs, then Turks – who seized the land in the mid-late 6th century AD and spent the next 1400 years laying it waste and exploiting and oppressing and periodically raping, robbing and killing its indigenous Jewish and Christian and Samaritan inhabitants, who were forced to live as dhimmis: a condition of humiliation, degradation and perpetual physical insecurity.
(A further point is that in despite of the Muslims the Jews clung to their ancestral homeland by teeth and toenails; there never was a time, even in the darkest days of the cruellest Muslim rulers, when there were not *some* Jews living in the land of Israel; there is plenty of documentary and archaeological evidence of their persistent presence).
dumbledoresarmy says
Israel is not ‘colonising’ Gaza. Israel is DE-colonising Gaza. And indeed, wherever – Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Golan Heights… – Jews are establishing and maintaining sovereignty in their traditional ancestral homeland – eretz Yisroel – in the teeth of ferocious, crazed-with-hatred mohammedan would-be imperial occupiers and oppressors, this should be understood by anyone with commonsense, as DE-colonisation. The ferocious genocidal rage of the mohammedans is the rage of thwarted imperialists who have had to cough up a very small portion of their ill-gotten gains!
Kenneth Birtwistle says
If it stops hamas and islam colonizing it then bring Israel’s colonisation on. Hamas and islam are the new nazis and must be stopped and face trials like the Nuremberg trials after WW2!