A South African elder once stood in the rubble of a demolished home in the West Bank, shaking his head. “We’ve seen this before,” he said quietly. “Different uniforms. Same system.”

That is the common thread connecting communities forged in resistance, South Africans under apartheid, Native American nations pushed off ancestral lands, Indigenous Australians stripped of sovereignty, Black African diaspora activists battling imperial rule, and Irish republicans living under British occupation. These peoples know the machinery of dispossession because they have survived it. And when they see the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, they recognize its gears turning.

Israel is one of the youngest nations in the modern world, created in 1948, long after the supposed death of formal colonial expansion. Its swift ascent in military and technological power was not achieved in isolation. In its early decades, it drew on sustained support from powerful allies, even in the most guarded realms like nuclear development, an undertaking that requires external transfer of expertise, not just domestic ingenuity.

From its founding, Israel’s territorial expansion into occupied land has followed a well-worn colonial blueprint: displacement for demographic control. It mirrors the United States’ seizure of Native American territories, treaties shredded, entire nations expelled, and land claimed under the banners of “security” or “civilization.”

In North America, Indigenous nations were forced onto reservations, stripped of rights, and targeted for cultural erasure through boarding schools. In Palestine, more than 55,000 structures have been demolished since 1967; over 457 homes were destroyed in 2023 alone, displacing families and children. Military checkpoints, permit restrictions, and zoning laws fracture Palestinian life into isolated fragments. Wikipedia, dci-palestine.org.

Across Africa, colonial powers relied on collective punishment, indefinite detention, curfews, and the destruction of villages to maintain control. Gaza’s siege, blocking aid, closing borders, denying permits, has been condemned under international law as “collective punishment.” Unemployment in Gaza reached over 45% by 2022. Health care, water, and education systems collapse under militarized control. Gisha, World Bank, UNCTAD.

Under the British Raj, India endured famine-inducing quotas, the crushing of dissent, and segregation codified in law. Palestinians now live under two legal systems: settlers under civil law, Palestinians under military law. This duality is no accident, it is a colonial control method dressed in modern legality.

Irish republicans, shaped by centuries of land seizures, plantations, and internment, recognize in the West Bank a familiar map of domination: Areas A/B/C, roads for some but not for others, borders that choke rather than connect.

Indigenous Australians, once declared inhabitants of “terra nullius,” endured the forced removal of children, denial of land rights, and a systematic assault on cultural continuity. Palestinians face a similar erasure: homes demolished, permits denied, ancestral lands fenced away. Wikipedia, B’Tselem.

South Africa’s apartheid regime enforced racial separation through passbooks, group areas, and the crushing of dissent. Today, major human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, apply the label apartheid to Israeli rule over Palestinians. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that the risk of genocide in Gaza was “plausible” and ordered Israel to take immediate protective measures. AP News, The Guardian, The New Yorker.

Why the Pushback Doesn’t Hold

• “Security necessity.” Self-defense is legal under international law, but so is the prohibition of collective punishment and demographic engineering in occupied territories.
• “Unique conflict.” Every history is unique, but the mechanisms, two-tiered law, forced displacement, systematic deprivation, are recognized patterns of oppression.
• “False equivalence.” This is not about equating suffering but identifying state practices that echo those once used against the very peoples now speaking out.

Conclusion

International human rights law claims universality, yet enforcement bends under the weight of geopolitical alliances. How can governments condemn war crimes while selling the weapons to commit them?

For those who have lived through dispossession, the answer is clear: law and morality, when filtered through the interests of empire, often serve power over justice. The survivors of colonialism see their own past etched in Palestine’s present.

And they refuse, absolutely refuse, to bless the hand that redraws the same lines on another people’s land.

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