Are the Anglo-Saxons blind or obsessive?

In the last article, we shared with Yeni Şafak readers a sentence from Amy Kaplan's book, "Our American Israel. Kaplan's sentence was as follows: "The parallel histories of settler colonialism have formed the basis of America's identification with Israel." Since October 7, 2023, we have constantly tried to emphasize that not only Zionist Jews are responsible for all the war crimes committed by Israel in Palestine, including genocide and ethnic cleansing. In this framework, we have repeatedly brought up that England and the US are primarily responsible for the crimes committed by the Zionists, and even further, that these countries are direct perpetrators. For anyone wishing to analyze US-Israel relations, the quoted sentence also provides the rationale for this identification. However, the vast majority in Türkiye focus on Jewish power; they believe that Israel governs the US, England, Germany, and France. Yet in countries such as the US, England, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, much more advanced statements are being made about these relations, as expressed in Amy Kaplan's book, with the belief that Israel serves as a mirror for the US and England. The mirror metaphor, also mentioned in the book, is crucial for understanding the relationship between Israel and the Anglo-Saxons and Protestant Europeans. Because this metaphor also tells us where and why we need to look.

Settler colonialism does not fully correspond to the concept of colonialism as commonly used in our language. There is no phenomenon known as semantic softening, but there is semantic narrowing and change. The concept of colonialism leaves many meanings of the term "müstemleke" (colony) outside its scope. Indeed, in everyday usage, it is not difficult to notice that colonialism refers to the exploitation of a country's underground and aboveground resources. This completely eliminates the intellectual context. The term "settler" in settler colonialism, contrary to what many people think, does not carry any positive meaning. In international agreements and legal texts, settler colonialism is recognized as a crime. Settlers are a specific group of people. If we replace the term settler colonialism with other words like usurpation or theft, we experience a semantic narrowing, as with the concept of colonialism. In doing so, we would fail to point to the factual situation, especially in the West Bank. This would remove the context of "parallel histories of settler colonialism," as expressed in Amy Kaplan's book, from the agenda. In the end, we lose the context. What is truly important for analyzing the Israel issue is the context. This context is also important for finding an answer to the question of why the mirror metaphor is so valuable.

It is indeed not easy to lay out all dimensions of a subject in a single article, but it is necessary to dwell on what identification with Israel means, especially for the US. Reducing identification with Israel to submission to Jewish power or the prejudice that Israel governs the US and European countries leads us to completely ignore the ideological and sociological dimensions of the issue. When we try to analyze Zionism as an ideology by considering its roots and various aspects, we encounter a second trap: taking the issue into the context of Jewish theology and Jewish history. Unfortunately, in this case, the parallel histories of settler colonialism are also ignored. Yet Zionism is first and foremost an ideology and falls among the direct consequences of Protestant ethics. Unless Protestant ethics—or, more broadly, Christian Zionism—is reconsidered, it becomes impossible to recognize the ideological and sociological dimensions of identification with Israel. We can only make the ideological dimension understandable within the context of settler colonialism. For two and a half years, there has been uninterrupted genocide in Gaza, and settler terrorism runs rampant in the West Bank. Yet Protestants say Israel has the right to self-defense. Why? Is this denial the result of simple blindness, or is it a reflection of an ideological obsession?

The answer to this question needs to be addressed based on Patrick Wolfe's 2006 article "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native." Let us leave this for later articles, but let us record this sentence: "Settler colonialism aims to destroy and replace. As Theodor Herzl stated in his allegorical manifesto/novel, if I want to replace an old building with a new one, I must demolish it before I build."