Inversions of History, Morality Falsely Label Israel Colonialist

Alan Dershowitz | Aug 17, 2026

Amin al Husseini reviewing Bosnian SS volunteers during WWII.  By Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-070-04A / Mielke / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

Among the most historically inaccurate libels directed against Israel is the false accusation that Israel was established as a colonial surrogate to imperialist European nations.

Nothing could be further from reality.

Israel was established as a reaction to European colonialism, imperialism and oppression. Palestinianism, as distinguished from Zionism, had its origins in Nazi German colonialism.

The leader of the Palestinian cause before, during and even after World War II was Muhammad Amit Al- Husaini, who spent the war years in Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s protection.

He preached, “In Heaven Allah, on earth Hitler.”

Hitler’s goal was to colonize Palestine for the third Reich, as he colonized areas in Europe, Africa, and the Mideast.

Hussaini agreed with that goal.

Together they planned death camps for the Jewish residents of Palestine, employing killing machines of the kind the Nazis built in Poland.

Only the military defeat of Nazi Germany thwarted this jointly planned genocide.

Hitler regarded Arabs as racially inferior, subject to colonization of the kind he imposed on Slavic and other “subordinate races.”

He did not treat Palestinians as equal partners, as he did fellow Aryans.

But both Hitler and Husaini shared a common belief that Jews were subhuman, subject only to annihilation.

Despite their second-class status under Nazi racist ideology as “untermenschen,” many Palestinians displayed in their homes the picture of their nazi-supporting leader, sometimes along with Hitler’s.

This continued even after Husaini was declared a Nazi war criminal and had to escape to Egypt in order to avoid being tried and executed.

The origin of Palestinianism is therefore colonialism.

While the Jews of Palestine were fighting against British colonialism, the Arab leadership in Palestine was supporting German colonialism over the area.

The Palestinians did not want an independent state of their own, as Hussaini testified at the Peale commission in the late 1930s.

All they wanted was there must not be an independent Jewish state.

They favored colonial control over the region.

They were the colonialists.

The Jews were the anti-colonialists.

The Palestinian leaders were the advocates of genocide.

The Jews were their intended victims.

You wouldn’t know this well documented history if you listened to the ignorant accusations of “colonialism” directed against Israel.

Nor would you know that Israel is virtually the only anti-colonialist nation in the region.

Most of the others were creations of post-World War I colonialism.

Their artificial boundaries were drawn by European cartographers, and their leaders were selected by their colonial masters.

Only Israel is a democracy established, from the ground up, by hard working pioneers (chalutsim) on land historically connected to the Jewish people.

The UN partition of the stateless area that Romans had named Palestine allocated to the Jewish nation only that area with a majority of Jewish residents.

The remainder was allocated to the Palestinians, who refused to create their own nation, rejected the partition and joined the other Arab states in a genocidal attack against the newly declared Jewish nation.

The Jews fought back in defense of their democratic state and their families and won a hard-fought war against overwhelming odds.

This is not colonialism; it is democratic national liberation.

It is anti-colonialism. It is anti-imperialism. It is anti-genocide.

But the current false accusations against the Mideast’s only democracy are based on inversions of history and morality.

• Anti-colonialists are accused of colonialism.
• The victims of genocide are accused of genocide.
• Self-defense is called aggression.

The accusers are in fact guilty of the crimes of which they accuse their victims.

The accused may not be perfect — no nation or group is — but they are more deserving of support than are the hypocritical accusers.

In this pseudo world of inversion, facts and history do not matter.

Identity trumps all.

The phony concept of “intersectionality” divided the universe into victims and victimizers based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and other factors generally beyond the control of individuals.

Status is permanent, without regard to individual culpability or changing circumstances.

This is the propaganda many young people are being fed in high schools and universities.

It is not surprising that so many of them uncritically accept such nonsense.

If the historical truths were to be taught instead of these ahistorical polemics, the complex realities would be better understood.

There are rights and wrongs on all sides of history.

In the case of Israel, the historic rights overwhelm the wrongs.

The Jews were willing to accept a two-state solution in 1938, 1948, 1967, 2001 and 2007.

The Palestinian leadership rejected these opportunities because they wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than they wanted there to be a Palestinian state.

Until that view is categorically rejected, there will be no peace and no two-state solution.

Israel will carry on as an embattled but self-reliant democracy, while Palestinians will hopelessly rely on the pressures of other nations in the true spirit of colonialism.

The boot of colonialism is on the other foot.