On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice

by Adam Kirsch

A prominent public intellectual tackles one of the most crucial political ideas of our moment.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel last October 7, the term “settler colonialism” has become a center of political debate in the United States. Many progressives, academics, and student organizations justified the attack on the grounds that Israel is a settler colonial state, meaning that it was created on land taken from an indigenous people, and so can never be legitimate. The phrase was new to most Americans, and leading publications like the New York Times and the Atlantic have published articles explaining what it means. But the concept has been influential in academic and activist circles for years, shaping the way many young people think—not just about Israel and Palestine, but about the history of the United States and a host of political issues.

Building on Adam Kirsch’s October 2023 Wall Street Journal article on the topic, this short book is the first to examine the idea critically for a general readership. By exploring the most important writers, texts, and ideas in the field of settler colonial studies, Kirsch shows that it is really a new political ideology, aimed at delegitimizing not only Israel but also the United States, Canada, and Australia. He examines the sources of its appeal, which are spiritual as much as political, and how it turns indignation at past injustices into a source of new injustices today. As a compact and accessible introduction to one of the crucial political ideas of our moment, the book will speak to readers interested in the Middle East, American history, and today’s most urgent cultural-political debates.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Israel, Philosophy, Jewish, Sociology

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 20, 2024

About the author

Adam Kirsch is the author of two collections of poems and several books of poetry criticism. A senior editor at the New Republic and a columnist for Tablet, he also writes for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

Reviews

[Muhammad Ahmad · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some valid criticisms here of the vacuity of recent writings on settler colonialism. But this book seems written with the intention of obscuring the depredations of settler colonialism by amplifying the statements of marginal figures about settler colonialism. No mention is made of that fact that leaving aside scattered students protestors, a couple of native american critics, and a handful of junior academics in sociology departments, the world's most powerful states stand fully behind Israel, supporting it morally and materially, even as it commits mass atrocities elicit hows of protest when committed by others. The author uses an ideological sleight of hand to separate the reality of settler colonialism from what he describes as the "ideology of settler colonialism" and thus spends the entirety of the book slashing at a strawman. In this telling, Israel is a normal state merely going about its businesses but for inexplicable reason, Palestinians keep trying to commit genocide against it (in words, if not in deeds. "From the river to the sea", etc). The occupation is a static reality in this telling, and the proof that Zionism has been great for Palestinians is offered in the form of a quote from a fictional figure in a novel written by Theodore Herzl (really!). If you object to Israel creeping colonisation of the West Bank, or its mass atrocities in Gaza, why you are a Hamas supporter, blinded by—you guessed it—the Ideology of Settler Colonialism. The author simultaneously argues that indigeneity is a myth since no one is really native to a land, and also that Jews have a title to Palestine because of their expulsion by Romans 2000 years earlier. Conquest and displacement are a fact of history, he says (quotes Virgil to support this) but is angered enough by people chanting a slogan he interprets as war-like to write an entire book arguing against it.

[Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute rubbish. If an actual intellectual were to write a response to this book, line by line, dissecting every lie, it would be 10 times longer than this book. Kirsch is a straw man, complicit, ignorant, and vile.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Young people today, who celebrate the massacre of Israelis and harass their Jewish peers on college campuses are not ashamed of themselves for the same reason that earlier generations were not ashamed to prosecute and kill Jews — because they have been taught that is an expression of virtue.” — Adam Kirsch

[Jan Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second Review of On Settler Colonialism by Adam Kirsch
Original review can be found below in comment box of August 13, 2025, and the comments above it, from June, 2025, pertain to it and not this review, which is being written as of August 13.

The author published this book a year ago, that is, on August 20, 2024, to talk about settler colonial studies and its intellectuals and activists. They focus on the U.S., Canada, and Australia, which had been the abode of indigenous peoples prior to settlement by Europeans and, therefore, according to the theory, are permanently illegitimate. In essence, settler colonialism furnishes a political doctrine of original sin.

In extension from those three countries, the designation very much applies to Israel.

The subject matter differs from the study of history by dint of its focus on reshaping the political future; due to its popularity, that focus is indeed having an impact. The book asks how the ideology of settler colonialism has developed and also shows how it's succumbing to the errors of past radical utopian ideologies.

In theory, then, the violence of the original invasion is ongoing, as reflected in the understanding that "invasion is a structure, not an event," and the other ills of society such as racism, sexism, homophobia, climate change, inequality, and so on, are conceived of as emanating from that original violence. Moreover, the descendants of the invaders, meaning anybody whose ancestors weren't indigenous, are always and forever combatants. That way of thinking explains how, while we used to think of Middle East street celebrations of killings as disgusting, and televised executions by ISIS as cringeworthy, we saw widespread Western celebration of the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel -- and even heard complaints if that view couldn't be promulgated.

In settler colonial theory, the replacement of the indigenous population by settlers is the founding genocide, with injustice migrating from a Marxist or antiracist conception to a focus on persistence of that genocide, along with an expanded understanding of what genocide is.

Colonialism, like genocide, is redefined, that is, it refers not only to countries such as Algeria or Rhodesia, but also to countries where it has succeeded to the extent we no longer remember that it happened.

Settler colonial theory can be difficult to dispute, since it's grounded in the language of pursuing justice. And yet it's zero sum -- all or nothing. Nothing can be done to remedy it, short of decolonization. And decolonization is invariably violent. Look at October 7, which itself is indistinguishable from the founding genocide of a designated settler colonial country except by the identity of the invaders.

All of the subsequent relations between settler and native are illegitimate, as is any sort of remedy short of decolonization; for example, assimilation or giving the native full citizenship rights only compounds the problem. Nor is decolonization progressive, since it would require the impossible act of turning back the clock.

The aspirations of people of color don't coincide with those of indigenous people, since Black people are wanting their piece of a pie to which they have no right and that Europeans have no right to distribute to them, since it is and never will be theirs to share. And "immigrants" are themselves nothing but settlers. Settler colonial theory flips the American myth: it's stolen land, not a new promised land.

History is characterized by complexity, while settler colonial theory, in contrast, aims for a morally simplistic picture of who is good and who's not. Settler colonialism is less interested in the actual past than is history. In contrast settler colonial theory focuses on an alternative future based on its moral conception. It uses "noble savage" thinking to moralize against Western sin. To its credit, it examines the myth of civilizing-European-versus-native savage, but it merely flips that myth and stops. leaving us with another myth, this time evil-European-versus-virtuous native.

Natives themselves don't necessarily accept settler colonial theory. They often prefer to seek their rights according to a Civil Rights paradigm and have been known to accuse Europeans of "colonizing" the settler colonial movement out of an identity crisis of their own.

While according to settler colonial theory, "decolonization" is not a metaphor, it's hard to imagine how America, Canada, or Australia, could be decolonized. In a sense, they're too big to fail. We now value multiculturalism, equality, and sustainability, but those aims would not decolonize anything. They would only rearrange the deck chairs on the illegitimate ship of state, so to speak. So instead of out and out revolution, activists might undermine "settler ways," as Adam Kirsch puts it, settler ways being insatiability, rapacity, and greed (as their counterparts, motivation, ambition, and the "pioneer spirit" are now called). Even a voracious appetite for learning is now billed as a kind of greed, according to settler colonial theory. In other words, activists should deflate settler attitudes and in so doing take the wind out of their sails.

The institutions of society also could be undermined. And there we have another aim in common with the radical right wing, albeit reached via a different route: that of institutions requiring dismantlement.

Settler colonial theory also encompasses a blood-and-soil ideology for the political left, given how the ideology binds indigenous people exclusively to their land.

Moreover, an illegitimate state has no right to govern -- an attitude reminiscent of the US "Sovereign Citizen" movement, a conglomerate of people who for various reasons believe the US has no authority over them, so they try to live off the grid rather than cooperate in any way with the government. They are understood to exhibit far right thinking, and yet settler colonial theory gets to a similar point albeit again by a different route.

Thinking about revolution eventually leads Kirsch to a discussion of Frantz Fanon and what Kirsch says is the rehabilitation of political violence for intellectuals. While in the West, adherents have to satisfy themselves with land acknowledgments, virtue signaling, and indirect means of revolution, what if there was a small, relatively new country populated by people whom many others already love to hate? There we would have a setting in which adherents don't have to limit themselves to rhetorical violence.

It is not that hatred of Israel is new in the American left, but that circa 2016, around the time of the Standing Rock pipeline protests by the Sioux tribe, settler colonial theory became reflexively paired with Palestine, with Palestine activists fixated on settler colonial language. The resulting conflagration subsumed many issues under one paradigm and, in addition, energized settler colonial studies. It was as if, with Palestine, settler colonial activists had struck gold. And now a situation can hardly be said to be unjust unless it can be paired with Israel/Palestine. The concept of indigeneity must be retooled, and genocide must be made to fit a situation where population numbers actually have increased, but that has been no obstacle -- even though under Hamas there would be no place for a leftist.

It's a stretch to apply settler colonial theory to Israel. Jews came as refugees. They didn't come to extract the land's resources to send back to a mother country. They didn't have a mother country. They didn't come to have a higher standard of living, with native servants and labor, for example. And, most telling, Israelis fight like a native population, not like settler colonialists, who do have a mother country to return to and can quit when the war is too lengthy or costly.

In fact, historically, Palestinian Arabs have not thought in terms of settler colonial theory. Their thinking has inclined to fundamentalist Islam according to which a foreign entity shouldn't be there. Activism also has been incited by fear-mongering that about an alleged threat to the al-Aqsa Mosque or its sanctity. Settler colonial theory is a Western phenomenon.

Arab neighbors other than the Palestinians have seen that Israel is here to stay.

Kirsch makes a brief tour through the history. I have a review pending of Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict so will put off the history until then. Suffice it to say here that there are and have been Palestinian moderates, and it would be to them we'd need to turn to move forward in a direction other than al-Aqsa Flood.

The past has already happened. It cannot be replayed, and it cannot be perfected. The attempt exhibited hatred and butchery, and compounded the injustice. It is not the solution. Don't destroy; build. Kirsch says we have to give up hope of perfecting the past. Only if we despair of the past can we have hope for the future. This is his last chapter, which is very wise, although hard to accept. The perfect is indeed the enemy of the good.

If we take history (instead of settler colonial theory), then every border, every establishment of a country, every conclusion to every war, in other words, everything that has happened, is a structure and not an event. All of it echoes down through the centuries. We couldn't apply it only to three countries and Israel (which Kirsch says is taking convenient targets, but which to me is a form of identity politics for making self-serving moral distinctions).

I thought it was necessary to study and understand this ideology. Celebrating the October 7 massacre requires that it be justified. There has been ongoing disinformation regarding Israel since 2008 -- before Operation Cast Lead in December of that year -- and that date only represents the point at which I became aware. With this latest situation, Israel has had to be shoehorned into settler colonial theory and opinions treated as fact. So, this is only the latest rationale for Jew-hatred. It's not the be-all, and it won't be the end-all.

What we can do is study history. In itself, history is no answer to ideology, but being grounded in history increases awareness in the face of ideology.

Also we need to stop this segregating of people with different ideas and views: in other words, to do the exact opposite of the campus protesters' efforts to keep Jews out. We need to integrate each other. We need to have concerns about diverse groups and write about them on the same page -- even the ones that we are being enjoined to keep separate because they're "on the other side."

In doing that, we will be re-weaving, repairing, the social fabric.

You know that in addition to all these social wars we're stuck in, we have actual enemies who are happy we're weakened by these rents in the social fabric.

Where would we be in the event of an attack?

We need to heal ourselves.

My first stab at reviewing this book was rather impressionistic, while here I've tried to be more systematic about Kirsch's ideas. I studied those ideas harder as preparation for leading a book discussion, so thought I might as well use them in a review. FYI, several group members didn't care for the book because it didn't give answers. But what I wanted was greater understanding, and I got that.

Final point...for now: Is settler a dirty word? Coincidentally I read a translation of Isaiah 45:18 that translated a word usually translated as "inhabited" or "dwelled" as "settled." So I looked into it. At first I couldn't find any other bible translations using "settled." In this case AI (the one you get with Google) was helpful (and was supported by further checking). "Settle" can mean to establish, to put down roots, as opposed to being a nomad, and the actual Hebrew word, yashab, does in fact carry those shades of meaning. It doesn't have anything to do with taking anything away from anybody else. It is not invasion. It just says God made the world to be inhabited, settled. So, no. Not a dirty word.
You know, some people made Jew a dirty word. Some people made Zionist a dirty word. Settler isn't, either.

[Matt Berkowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a useful, easy-to-read, short book on a concept that’s currently getting a lot of usage in the discourse. Kirsch rightly identifies “settler colonialism” as more of an ideological term than a technical or conceptual term. And this is due to its internal incoherence and how selectively it’s applied. Insofar as it does have a conceptual underpinning, “[s]ettler colonialism means that the violence involved in a nation’s founding continues to define every aspect of its life, even after centuries—its economic arrangements, environmental practices, gender relations. The only way for a society to purge that sin is to decolonize, and the increasing currency of this term is an index of the rising influence of what might seem a recondite academic idea. The command to ‘decolonize’ has become almost faddish; guides have been written on how to decolonize your diet, your bookshelf, your backyard, your corporate board, and much more” (p. 15-16).

The term settler colonialism originated in the 1970s and has taken on several meanings since. It is now fashionably understood in a zero-sum sense: settlers illegitimately stole land from indigenous people which confers a perennial stain on the nation. This makes overcoming settler colonialism seemingly impossible because anything the “settlers” do is irredeemably unjustifiable. Only an irredentist solution is legitimate: all property is surrendered by the settler class, which in many cases is the vast majority of the population. For example, only 3 percent of Australia’s 2021 population of 25 million was Aboriginal. Such surrender simply isn’t going to happen. And even if it were, where would the “settlers” go? They have no mother country besides the one they’re living in.

Because none of this makes any sense, the ideological interpretation of settler colonialism becomes more apparent. As Kirsch explains, “By insisting that settler colonial societies are guilty of an irredeemable crime, it validates the most extreme criticism and denunciation of those societies, as long as it can be cast in the language of decolonization. The goal is not to change this or that public policy but to engender a permanent disaffection, a sense that the social order ought not to exist. One of the most potent ways to do this is to teach Americans a new way of thinking about the history of their country” (p. 35).

At least since MLK Jr. uttered his famous speech about the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice, the narrative of progress has been a popular one through American history. But settler colonialism aims to discredit this narrative. Extending full citizenship rights to Native Americans, for example, “doesn’t just fail to compensate for the original crime of colonization”; “[i]t actually compounds that crime” by suggesting that Native Americans are necessarily defined through the settler order.

Kirsch uses the example of land acknowledgements to show how unserious, performative, and self-flagellating much of the rhetoric is surrounding “decolonization”: “If the struggle against American settler colonialism were a real political struggle, like the ones waged against the French in Vietnam and Algeria, land acknowledgments would be contemptibly hypocritical, since the institutions that make them clearly have no intention of actually vacating the land they blame themselves for occupying” (p. 65). Instead, such rhetoric is used by “settlers” as a way to earn moral prestige through the confession of “sins”—even though such rhetoric is essentially never accompanied by any actual action.

Kirsch eventually turns his attention to the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestine conflict. He notes how the concept (ideology) of settler colonialism doesn’t neatly map onto this conflict, despite many pro-Palestinian activists insisting that the Palestinians are the rightful owners of the land currently called Israel. Yet, the Jews’ habitation on the land goes back much, much further—something rarely acknowledged by ideologues. In this, Kirsch notes a key contradiction amongst settler colonial activists: “[B]ecause recognizing Jews as aboriginal to the land of Israel would turn one of settler colonial studies’ key rhetorical weapons against itself, it simply declines to engage with this idea and its implications” (p. 81). Therefore, in such terms, there is no real solution: “To render perfect justice, the land of Israel would be restored to the Jews, who were exiled from it by the Romans, and also restored to the Palestinian Arabs who lived there before 1948. Not only is this impossible, but any attempt to secure the country for just one of these peoples would inflict suffering on millions whose only sin was being born in a contested land” (p. 114).

My takeaway is that settler colonialism is a terrible construct and has very limited import—if any—in terms of how it ought to be applied to understand geopolitical struggles and in solving such conflicts. Almost every modern country has terrible atrocities in its past, much of which involved one population brutalizing another, stealing their land, and subjugating them, with resulting group-level inequalities that persist to this day. We don’t have to valorize or ignore this history (far from it), but given that many of these misdeeds occurred generations ago, such that people alive today aren’t responsible, I think the only path forward has to involve devaluing irredentist logic, accepting to an extent current geographical boundaries, and resisting the primacy of one population’s national/ethnic/religious story over another’s.

An excellent, highly relevant, short read.

[Jesse Kessler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was short, easy to read, and relevant.

I see a lot of the reviews here focus on the Israel-Palestine content, but what was more interesting to me was the approachable introduction to the various frameworks present in the decolonizing movements across the globe, both recently and now.

Justice matters, and is worth thinking about and acting on with measured, revenant care.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kirsch, a writer known for his exploration of Jewish thought, examines the concept of settler colonialism and its application to Israel, particularly in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on October 7th.

Kirsch highlights the "seismic change" in how young Americans perceive Israel and Palestine, noting the disturbing reality where "more than half of college-age Americans seem to believe that it would be justified for Palestinians to commit a genocide of Israeli Jews." He critiques the use of "settler colonial" as a blanket term to delegitimize Israel, arguing that it ignores the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and often leads to the excusal of violence against Israeli civilians.

As Kirsch points out, the aftermath of the Hamas attack revealed a "frank enthusiasm for violence against Israeli civilians," exemplified by statements from groups like National Students for Justice in Palestine, who declared, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: Not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.” This rhetoric starkly contrasts with previous pro-Palestinian stances that emphasized the protection of civilian lives.

Kirsch argues that "the October 7 attack was perfectly calculated to crystallize this momentous shift in American opinion, because it reversed the usual terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The accusation of colonialism against Israel also carries deeply troubling antisemitic undertones, echoing the historical blood libel that Jews are a foreign, malevolent force seeking to dominate and exploit.

By painting Israel as the ultimate oppressor and the root of global injustice, this ideology casts Jews in a uniquely villainous role, reminiscent of the way they have been demonized throughout history. This not only distorts the historical reality of Jewish indigeneity in the region but also fuels a dangerous account that threatens the safety and legitimacy of the Jewish state and its people.

Kirsch meticulously examines the redefinition of "settler colonialism," contrasting the traditional view focused on economic exploitation with the modern emphasis on the "elimination of native societies." He quotes scholar Patrick Wolfe's influential statement, "Invasion is a structure, not an event," to illustrate the idea that the injustice of settler colonialism is ongoing and permanent. Kirsch argues that this framework is often used to delegitimize Israel by painting it with the same brush as historical settler colonial states, ignoring key distinctions and the long-standing Jewish connection to the land.

He critiques the distortion of concepts like "indigeneity" and "genocide" to fit this paradigm, often to erase Jewish indigeneity and cast Israel as a perpetrator rather than a homeland for a people with deep historical roots in the region. Kirsch notes, "For many academics and activists, describing Israel as a settler colonial state was a sufficient justification for the Hamas attack, because for them the term encapsulates a whole series of ideological convictions—about Israel and Palestine, but also about history and many social and political issues, from the environment to gender to capitalism."

Kirsch’s analysis challenges readers to critically consider the implications of applying the settler colonial framework to Israel, especially given the historical context of Jewish indigeneity and the dangers of erasing it. He argues that this application often results in a distorted view of history and fuels a political agenda aimed at the "destruction of Israel," as evidenced by slogans like "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free." ("Palestine will be Arab" - in the Arabic chant that shamelessly calls for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and their murder in "intifada" or lynching with the red triangle symbolism).

Kirsch's work serves as a crucial examination of the complexities of historical injustice and contemporary political discourse, cautioning against the perils of employing a simplistic and ideologically driven concept to delegitimize an entire nation and ignore the legitimate historical claims of its people. He warns against the "actual effect of the ideology of settler colonialism," which "is not to encourage any of these solutions. It is to cultivate hatred of those designated as settlers and to inspire hope for their disappearance."

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone puzzled & disturbed by how the intellectual perversions of aging campus radicals have come to define the political discourse surrounding one small state in the Middle East.

[Sura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Weak and stupid arguments. Anyone with an ounce of knowledge of the conflict will identify within a few pages how problematic and intentionally vague this ridiculous book is

[Erika Dreifus · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the preface: Kirsch's goal in this slim, clear-eyed book "is to offer a critical introduction to the ideology of settler colonialism as elaborated in the work of theorists, writers, and activists. Focusing on ideas, not individuals or institutions, I look at how this way of thinking developed, what it has to say about America and Israel, and why it falls prey to some of the same crucial errors as earlier radical ideologies."

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know why I read this book, it's classic anti-Palestinian slop. I have no idea how books like this, where the author has no subject-matter expertise or academic background, are published. His only credentials are getting a BA from Harvard and being a literary critic for the New Yorker. A book 10 times its length could not get into everything that's wrong with this one. Half of the book is just recycled talking points you can find on any Zionist instagram page. Absolute propaganda.

[Arthur Read · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nice Try!

Reading this author's expert dissimulation and deceit in defense of Zionism was a surreal experience for me, knowing that he himself once openly discussed in a Jewish publication how Israel was built on a foundation of terrorism.

[Lindsay McBride · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a biased look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with no understanding of nuance. He neglects the Palestinian perspective and homogenizes the opposition to Israeli occupation.

[Ken Knecht · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book exams primarily the contemporary cry for Palestinian freedom and the viewpoint which has led to well reported campus, and other, protests. It gives historical context to the concerns of those with this concern and can help understand from where this argument/concern arises.
It adds historical context as well as other examples of similar concerns.
For the reader it allows you to understand and make a considered decision about whether or not you agree with this most recent concern along these lines.
Some may consider this anti-Palestinian because it points out logical inconsistencies but this is really a part of being intellectually honest

[David Vaisberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for anyone with opinions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Without whitewashing the realities on the ground, the author brilliant makes the case that the whole settler-colonialist ideology has been co-opted and butchered in a way that has resulted in the total dehumanization of Israelis and the justification of October 7. Learning about settler-colonialism is certainly important. Learning about what it actually is and what it is not, in this current climate, is very important.

[H.]

I've been meaning to read Adam Kirsch for awhile, and this one seemed timely, so I picked it up. You have to read it while acknowledging its brevity and intentionally narrow scope. I guess I found the fact that, in academia, postcolonial studies is separate from area studies or history, and subsequently the academics within this field are largely monolingual white people with a limited understanding of world cultures, to be both a devastating burn and really interesting to point out. I studied under an Okinawan historian when I was an undergrad, and she taught me many of the things Kirsch points out as well: that American understandings of colonialism are deeply rooted in our own biases, limited by language and cultural barriers and certain savior complexes, and that this has had an often detrimental impact on US diplomacy and activism.

If the struggle against American settler colonialism were a real political struggle, like the ones waged against the French in Vietnam and Algeria, land acknowledgments would be contemptibly hypocritical, since the institutions that make them clearly have no intention of actually vacating the land they blame themselves for occupying. They are better understood as part of a rhetorical competition among “settlers” themselves, in which the confession of sin earns moral prestige.

One of specific examples I remember from Kirsch's book is on the topic of land acknowledgments that refer to "Turtle Island": Turtle Island is an idea that exists within certain Native American oral traditions (among the Lenapi and Iroquois, for instance), but not all of them, and it's weird (and colonize-y) to apply a particular group's oral tradition to all Indigenous peoples. The idea of a land acknowledgment has never sat quite right with me, either: We acknowledge this has happened but we're definitely not giving the land back. Kirsch brings this to the forefront and articulates what the point of land acknowledgments (if they're decidely not action-oriented) is in a way I'd never quite thought about before. The cherry on top that Kirsch mentions: It was Gary Snyder, a white poet, who popularized the term "Turtle Island" amongst other white people in the first place.

I felt like there was an elephant in the room that Kirsch wasn't mentioning, and I do wonder if he felt he couldn't because he's Jewish: That this confessional culture intent on policing purity of thought and deeply disinterested in practical actions is rooted in Christianity. (Some of the academics and activists prominent in these movements are Christian and have explicitly based their ethics on Christian principles; many are not, and are deeply contemptuous of religion in a way that is dismissive of many peoples and cultures they don't know much about, because they assume, ironically, that all religions are like the one dominant one they're familiar with.) I felt like the ideas he's exploring couldn't be fully addressed without discussing this.

Overall, the book didn't quite have the depth (or honesty?) that I needed for it to stay in my head after I put it down. I think it might be a useful framing, maybe, but I suspect there are other, more helpful books out there.

[Boome Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

The moment I started reading this book I knew it wasn’t for me (to put it lightly), but it was short and I was curious to see where the author was going to go with this.

This book is probably right for you if you’re a easy to please champagne socialist who wants some weak reassurance as to why decolonisation isn’t valid. Or if you’re just a right wing asshole lol.

I highlighted so many parts of this book that made me angry…!

The author uses so many far fetched analogies and examples to try to convince the reader that:
Settler colonialism is not real
Even if it is real, decolonisation will never work
Why Israel is good

Some parts that really pissed me off were
- when he suggested that immigrants are colonisers (yes ofc some immigrants act like colonisers I.e in fucking occupied Palestine .. but to generalise and say that if we called European settlers colonisers then shouldn’t we call all immigrants colonisers..)
- he kept suggesting decolonisation is unreasonable, mostly because the only way he can think of decolonisation is to make everyone except indigenous people leave their countries (violently) they occupy ??? Obviously this is not the only method of decolonisation
- when he criticises the oppressed for fighting back against their oppressors !!? He continues to do this while discussing Hamas. Ofcourse people will fight back ??????
- his fucking inability to get his head around how most social issues are linked to colonialism or even linked period. Or it’s just his own stubbornness which seems to come through in his writing
- a lot of his arguments felt like a little kid saying “there’s violence all over the world why is Israel getting the unfair treatment??? Look over there!!”
- his fucking stupid argument about how Palestinians are homophobic so the queer community shouldn’t care about them instead they should support Israel who loves gay people
- constantly implying that supporting Palestine is “celebrate the massacre of Israelis” and likening it to the holocaust
- his fucking obvious language when discussing the genocide ie “conflict”, Israel “invades” whereas Hamas “massacres”
- HE COMPARED EMPOWERINH ISRAEL TO THE VIETNAMESE !! Mate how fucking delusional are you

I could go on but i cannot give this book any more of my time. Adam kirsch is a coloniser / genocide defender and he didn’t do very well in trying to write a well rationed argument.

I say this so genuinely that while I was reading this all I could think was I would be so fucking embarrassed to write and publish something like this

Ps I’m looking for any avenues where I can send the author hate 💖

[Damion Reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kirsch is not a fan 😆

[Joey · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that intends to clarify the real concept of settler colonialism in the context of Palestine-Israel conflict. It´s a bit challenging though since some of the points are esoteric and above my head as though I was engaging in deeper philosophical discourse. Besides, it´s more of American contextualization.

What the author disregards given that he tries to sound impartial here is to put the conflict in the context of geopolitical dynamics. I flinch at authors who try to be subtle. 😁

[Michelle Leung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Kirsch traces the origins of settler colonialism in places like North America, Australia, and Israel-Palestine, its impact on indigenous peoples and all the ways it has been justified - manifest destiny, terra nullius (the land was “empty” before settlers arrived), and racial superiority.

[Basti Moods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Kirsch betrachtet das Paradigma des Siedlerkolonialismus als Ganzes und besonders im Blick auf Israel/Palästina. Durch die Bezeichnung von Ländern als Siedlerkolonien werden diese insgesamt delegitimiert (8). Da diese Länder nicht legitim sind, wird eine Dekolonialisierung gefordert, hin zu einem Zustand, der oft ethnopluralistisch und nativistisch anklingt: Vor den Siedlern war alles perfekt, die weitere Geschichte hat alles versaut, deshalb müssen wir zurück. Die Siedlerkolonisation wird in allen Fällen als reversibel angesehen, auch wenn es keine Pläne und Vorstellungen gibt, was dies genau heißen soll. Siedler können bspw. nie Einwohner werden und bleiben für immer Siedler, bis das Siedeln beendet wurde (19f., 35f. 59). Es wird ein Zustand der Unversöhnlichkeit heraufbeschworen, der bis zur vollständigen Dekolonisation bestehen bleiben wird; jeglicher Kompromiss mit den Siedlern wird als Teil der Siedlerkolonialen Struktur gesehen.

Die Abstrusitäten der Begriffe von Siedlerkolonialismus (und Genozid im Verständnis der SKS) arbeitet Kirsch sehr anschaulich heraus: SK (bzw. Invasion) ist eine Struktur, kein Ereignis, wodurch fasst alles damit begriffen werden kann. Allein die Anerkennung der Siedler durch die vermeintlich Indigenen wird als siedlerkolonial begriffen. Dies scheint mir auch ein Erklärungsgrund zu sein, warum weltweit Linke die Morde am 07. Oktober an unschuldigen Zivilisten aus über 30 Ländern so framen konnten, dass alle Ermordeten im Staatsgebiet Israel als berechtigte Ziele bzw. Feinde deklariert wurden.

Auch arbeitet Kirsch heraus, dass, wenn man die Prämissen der SKS akzeptiert, es sehr fragwürdig ist, ob Israel überhaupt als Siedlerkolonialstaat infrage kommt (109f., 123f., 139ff., 147).

Neu war für mich die Herausarbeitung des quasi religiösen Aspekts der Siederkolonial Studies: Siedler bleiben für immer Siedler und werden nie Einwohner; Dekolonisation ist die einzige Option, obwohl kein genauer Plan vorliegt, was dies heißen soll (22, 45f.); wenn Dekolonisation noch nicht möglich ist, kann man erstmal bei sich selbst mittels Selbstdekolonisation anfangen (99); Schöpfungsmythen über Völker werden hervor geschworen, um eine wahre Indigenität zu behaupten (119ff.), um gegen Nicht-Indigene vorgehen zu können. Doch was ist wahre Indigenität, wenn der Homo Sapiens in Ostafrika entstanden ist und sich allmählich über die gesamte Welt ausgebreitet hat? Kirsch bezeichnet die SKS als politische Theologie zur Bekämpfung der Krise weißer Identität (50, 115).

Das Nachwort von Tim Stosberg zeigt die bisherigen Auswüchse der SKS in Deutschland auf, insgesamt sehr lesenswert.

Wichtige Zitate:

"Tatsächlich ist es heute unmöglich, linke und fortschrittliche Politik zu verstehen, ohne die Idee des Siedlerkolonialismus und die daraus hergeleitete Weltanschauung zu begreifen." (16)

"Was Geschichtswissenschaften und Settler Colonial Studies unterscheidet, kann man auch so ausdrücken, dass erstere sich in erster Linie für die Vergangenheit interessiert, während letztere hauptsächlich daran interessiert sind, eine Geschichte über die Vergangenheit zur Veränderung der Gegenwart zu benutzen." (69)

[Leah M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I make no secret of my Judaism, I am a loud and proud Jew. My father was a Holocaust survivor, and after the war, was placed in a Displaced Person’s (DP) camp as a safe place, since Polish neighbors had claimed their house and all their belongings once the Jews were forcibly removed and confined in ghettos. The DP camps dotted across Europe were simply repurposed extermination camps. My father, as an early teen, had spent the majority of the war in hiding, and wasn’t exposed to all the horrors of the Holocaust, until he was placed in a DP camp in Austria. It was in the picturesque region of Upper Austria, surrounded by dramatic mountains and lakes. It was also the place where my family was to start to reckon with the destruction wrought on the Jewish people. At 14 years old, he was confined to a place where they were receiving food from American troops, but also to a place where cans of Zyklon B littered the ground, and the ground would regularly shake due to the settling of bodies in mass graves. From there, my family went to the only country that would accept them—the newly founded state of Israel.

As the place where my father first experienced feelings of safety and protection sufficient enough to allow him to experience joys, Israel always held a special place in my father’s heart, and I was finally able to travel there with him before he passed away. He learned skilled trades, and wasn’t under threats that the Jewish people have dealt with since our forced exile from our ancestral homeland. Despite just barely escaping a genocidal war, he eagerly enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces back when there were less than 16,000 soldiers, total. My own and many other Jewish families found peace, acceptance, and joy in the only Jewish state in the entire world. And after nearly 2,000 years of diaspora, yearning to return, it became a reality, offering safe haven to Jews around the world, especially those in danger. It is only due to a random event that I wound up being born in America and not Israel. My father was a fan of facts and history, and always taught us aspects of history that were often overlooked, but also to question things, speak up at injustice, and never, ever to be ashamed of our heritage.

While this might be strange to hear as an opening for a review, I promise, it is important and incredibly relevant. Learning history from firsthand and reliable sources has always been a given in our house, and I met so many people from different backgrounds, but also Holocaust survivors who were willing to share their stories with us. History, archaeology, and military information abounds in our world. At the tap of the button, I can get the answer to basically any question I can think of within a few minutes of searching on Google. But I was taught how to research, how to identify factual and reliable sources, how to develop critical thinking skills, and find answers without turning to the Internet, which we didn’t even have back then. So I have done plenty of factual, historical readings, and learned that not only do Jewish prayers have a yearning for Zion (Jerusalem), there is reliable, peer reviewed research validating the Jewish connection to Israel—historical events, unearthed buildings, archeological treasures, and even DNA studies which show that different diaspora Jewish populations share more genetic material with each other, than with the groups they lived among for centuries, and our genes are significantly different than the people from the areas Jews spend diaspora in. For example — my family spent hundreds of years (as far as I can trace back) living in Eastern Europe. But when I examine my DNA, it comes up with less than 1% of European DNA, and my Ashkenazi Jewish DNA is almost all of the rest. Additionally, there have been Jews present in the area that is known as modern Israel since before the Common Era. Communities who can trace their lineage back to the Second Temple Period (for reference, the second temple was destroyed in 70 CE) remained in the land until the present day.

Now, this may all seem like unnecessary background, but all of this is relevant in Kirsch’s book. Moving from the middle of last century to more recent years, settler colonialism has become one of those buzzwords, and like so many others that ‘progressives’ rely on to make their arguments, the definition has been altered to apply to whatever they see as the biggest evil currently. Ironically, this is also how antisemitism functions: it takes a teeny tiny minority (with less than 16 million people around the world, making up 0.2% of the world population) and attributes the worst social ills of the time to Jewish people. In Nazi Germany, it was because Jewish people were labeled impure, a threat to Aryans, and communists. In communist countries, Jews were labeled as capitalists. Yet in today’s world? Jews are labeled as white colonizers, settlers, child killers, genocide apologists, secret controllers of the world, and in at least one bizarre case, capable of causing forest fires because of a ‘Jewish space laser.’ But perhaps the most persistent misinformation of our time is that Israelis (and diaspora Jews) are ‘white settler colonialists perpetrating a genocide on the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.’ But as I was brought up to question everything by a man who barely survived a genocide as a child, because he knew the risks of just listening to what you’re told to do, regardless of whether it was right or wrong, aligned with or pitted against their morals.

Antisemitism has been called the world’s oldest hate, and it has stayed present in varying levels (but never quite disappearing) throughout history by labeling Jews as what the society feels most negatively about. In the Medieval period, it was for spreading disease, stealing Christian children to use their blood in making Passover matzah, and rejecting Christ; during communism in the USSR, Jews were labeled as intellectuals and plotting against the country; and currently, Jews are referred to as white colonizers, genocidal baby killers, and modern day Nazis. Just like in the past, when it was okay to kill Jews for having ‘impure blood’ that placed the German people at risk from Jewish control, present day has simply substituted ‘Zionists’ for ‘Jews,’ labels their antisemitism as ‘just anti-Zionism,’ and frames them as displacing the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

Settler colonialism is a buzzy word that we see tossed around often, but what does it actually mean? Oxford defines it as “a type of colonialism in which the indigenous peoples of a colonized region are displaced by settlers who permanently form a society there.” Here’s another definition, this one for colonialism, same source: “the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.” So in order to practice colonization, there first has to be a metropole around which the resources from the colony is sent back to.

The book starts by exploring these two concepts, and offering the most widely known versions of settler colonialism: the colonies of America set up by the British Empire, and other British colonies, Australia and Canada. Yet, when does the statute run out? Once America declared independence from England, it was no longer a colony. Yet in many ways, Canada, America, and Australia have all had long histories of displacing and oppressing indigenous populations, and Kirsch discusses how residential schools played a role in this.

Kirsch also dips a toe into the Israel-Hamas conflict, and how it has affected Jewish people worldwide. This quote is especially meaningful:

“Young people today, who celebrate the massacre of Israelis and harass their Jewish peers on college campuses are not ashamed of themselves for the same reason that earlier generations were not ashamed to prosecute and kill Jews — because they have been taught that is an expression of virtue.” — Adam Kirsch

I found myself agreeing to a lot of the statements, and I found myself wondering, how does a historically indigenous people who have maintained a continuous presence in their ancestral homeland since the first wave of settler colonialists manage to get labeled and widely accepted as a colonial project of Britain or America, depending on who you ask. The evidence of Jewish life and culture was everywhere in Israel—every step was like walking on history. In the colonies of America, Canada, or Australia, archaeological evidence isn’t found of the ancient presence of the colonizing power. Yet how can the archaeological record support Jewish presence in the land of Judea for more than two thousand years, through successive waves of Romans, Islamic Caliphates, Crusaders, Byzantines, and British imposing control over the land.

However, the idea that is often repeated throughout the book is that ‘colonization is an idea, not an event,’ while breaking down the logical and historical fallacies inherent in the idea that Israel is a colonial project, and exploring the process of decolonization.

“To make Israel fit its ideologically allotted role, theorists of settler colonialism must similarly redefine two central concepts: indigeneity and genocide.”

By altering the meaning of the two basic tenets underpinning colonial studies, it allows today’s social justice warriors to think that their celebration of Israeli death and torture was righteous and the Hamas attack was provoked by the fact that every single Israeli is viewed as a settler and thereby a threat, no matter how deep Jewish roots run. Our media isn’t always unbiased, and no one is infallible, so having more reliable information is helpful in understanding any situation. Yet fighting an ideology isn’t as easy as fighting an enemy you can grasp. How exactly does one fight an idea? This book doesn’t exactly have any direct examples, but the only successful example of an indigenous population decolonizing their homeland is … Israel. I apologize for such a long and rambling review, but this book resonated deeply with me and evoked a lot of complex emotions, especially in light of current events in the SWANA region. Thank you for letting me get a lot of my frustration off my chest with this review.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short book, and much better than I expected. Not sure why I reserved it at the library, I must’ve seen it mentioned somewhere, but I don’t think I read a real review of it. I worried that it was going to be an extreme right-wing rant. It might be a bit to the right of center, but hardly extreme, I found it thoughtful, and while critical, it was also generous in many ways to proponents of “settler colonialism theory.”

My opinion is that people get way too caught up in “-ism” terminology like “settler colonialism.” People act as if everyone (or everyone who “counts”) understands these terms the same way, and they seem to believe that using these terms to describe a situation thereby shows the situation (and the participants) as essentially good or evil.

Anyway, I’d recommend this book, I thought it was a well-written examination of the issues around the concept of settler colonialism. But if you’re already a firm believer that settler colonialism is evil, or on the other hand, if you’re a true believer that the very idea of settler colonialism is an evil concept, then forget about reading, just go ahead and shout some slogans, just not near me, please.

[Eva Draude · Rating 1 out of 5]

A frustrating read for about 70% of this. A lot of straw man arguments, cherry picking from the most rage-bait, “woke leftist” literature in order to paint this century long conflict as a modern day hyper sensitive liberal issue. At times such illogical arguments that completely miss the point of the research he cites, made me feel like he thought his audience hadn’t gone to school past grade 10, trying to cover up others’ sound reasoning or historical context with identity politics. Telling that few quotes were taken from the most seminal pro Palestinian literature, focusing rather on smaller, less relevant publications. Ultimately I found this both a really poorly written piece from a critical / logical argumentation angle, compounded with what felt like an emotionally charged angle, made it really difficult to take seriously the arguments made that counter current popular leftist messaging which I was genuinely curious to try to understand. Bummer

[Megan Pollenz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I understand the possible reason for writing this book but I wholeheartedly find the book to be weird. Political discourse, especially when discussing a political philosophy or theory, will always leave readers with wanting to continue the discussion. However, by the mid-point of this book it is very clear to see why the author wrote this book; to push a more friendly view of Israel.
Reading the book is useful if you are curious about how the other side views the current Palestinian erasure happening but beyond that you truly learn nothing new.

[Ericka Clou · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aviva Chomsky, writing for ReVista: The Harvard Review of Latin America, said it better than I care to, "Critics of the term, like the Wall Street Journal’s Adam Kirsch in his new book On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, argue exactly the opposite. Kirsh echoes for 'settler colonialism' what right-wing critics claim about 'critical race theory,' complaining that the concept is divisive, hateful and dangerous. Because it denies the legitimacy of existing states including the United States and Israel, it is inherently a call to violence and genocide. Strangely, while Kirsch acknowledges that settler colonial scholars, from Rashid Khalidi to Mahmoud Mamdani to Lorenzo Veracini, all explicitly reject violence and genocide and advocate, for Palestine, either a two-state solution or one state with full and equal rights for Jews and non-Jews, Kirsch continues to insist that the concept inevitably leads people 'into morally disastrous territory.' He also studiously ignores Latin American movements and projects challenging settler colonialism in their continent."

However, Kirsch does point out some valid critiques, ironies, and complications in the settler colonialism philosophy.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book of 120 pages, I made 55 highlights. I write this a day after a truce has been called in the war between Israel and Hamas that's gone on, in its latest eruption, for fifteen months. Kirsch takes this up into his analysis, written in April, 2024, efficiently. He explains how the titular phrase was put into academic discourse by Patrick Wolfe late last century, as he attempted to graft in into the Australian "black armband" decriers of its Western occupation, against those of "white blindfold."

Kirsch eschews facile slogans. He analyzes the origins in anti-semitism (coined in 1879), although he missed a chance to attribute its popularization within Stalinism, in turn marketed by such as Fanon, Sartre, and 1960s radicals to "third world liberation" movements and then, via critical race theory and anti-colonial campaigns both real, as in Algeria or Vietnam, or symbolic on campuses, into today's marches and chants, contempt and calls for "action." He reminds us that China's suppression of the Uighirs and Tibetans, or Syria's massacre of hundreds of thousands of its people, receive very little coverage by contrast. The inconsistent application of "settler colonialism" to the inclusion of the U.S. and of Israel as its biggest offenders stretches even the context of this 20c idea.

Hirsch also wonders where the indigenous nation of the Jews can retreat to, for unlike French pied noirs or those from Rhodesia or South African regimes going back to Britain post-apartheid, where those whose ancestors were driven largely out by the Romans can find a "homeland." And, he usefully notes how the land acknowledgements announced by those at museums or colleges fail to address any practical solution, let alone those in Canada or the U.S. who'd theoretically have to vacate the land of their birth or immigration, in a "decolonized" Turtle Island (that term in turn having its origins in but one of thousands of tribes in North America, not a representative of the other nations, nor accurate for a continent that wasn't so perceived by its occupiers pre-1492.)

As an aside, in Latin America, the Abya-Yala naming by indigenous activists and intellectuals meets similar sidewinding. It's from a tribe in today's Panama isthmus, as once more the vast variety of those living south of "El Norte" didn't grasp an "imaginary" (to borrow a trendy notion from academia nowadays) broad enough to span the thousands of miles of earth, a small fraction of which they dwelt upon and had conceived of...This doesn't arise in the book; it's my comparison...

Kirsch doesn't draw a necessary, however thin, line between another aspect or three. Some Jews managed never to leave Eretz Israel despite its imperial occupation. Palestine pre-1948 referred often to the Jewish territory inhabited by the Zionists. And, that "Arab Syria" stretch was largely owned by absentee Arab landlords, Muslim and Christian, scarcely populated until the Ottomans had rewarded lands to veterans after 1840, so the "time immemorial" ownership of Turtle Island terrain dubiously proclaimed by Native American nations for their own presence (despite DNA to East Asia) earn equally suspect truth-claims when applied to Palestinians. This is remarked upon by Simon Schama in the conclusion to his second volume of History of the Jews (see my recent review.)

[Mark Haunschild · Rating 2 out of 5]

The theory of apologist colonial ideas. Rubbish. Completely misrepresents pro Palestinian activism. Kirsch should stick to his conservative criticism of conservative authors.

[Sara'la · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tad interesting. Basically makes the case that settler colonialism doesn't apply to Israel and that the decolonization lens that the liberal/woke society uses is too abstract and furthermore, dishonest, because 1. real decolonization would mean every person is okay with doing away with capitalism and material convenience which is highly unrealistic and 2. based on a more authentic definition of the term, other countries, empires, and kingdoms have sought to expand their rule, conquer lands, and grow their wealth whereas Israel is a "return" of Jews to their indigenous homeland. The Palestinian Nakba was not necessarily a takeover (as colonialism does) but a displacement due to the consequences of war.

I don't think Kirsch is extensive enough or thoroughly examines the full breadth of the term and the conflict. He tried to touch on too much in too short an amount of pages.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It may seem paradoxical that opposing… ‘the slow violence of settler colonialism’ should lead people to celebrate the quick violence of terrorism. But part of the appeal of radical ideologies, of the right and the left, is that they make violence virtuous”
:(

at ~4 hours, this is more of a surface level essay of an extremely complex and nuanced conflict of hundreds of years but it’s a good starting point. @ the negative reviews- if the stance that perpetuating a genocide to counter a genocide is justifiable, then I fear you’ve lost the plot and the moral argument. this book doesnr have to be (and isn’t) the definitive text on settler colonialism, but its brevity makes it an accessible entry point into a conversation that too many avoid altogether

peace and love