Zionism emerged at the height of European settler colonialism and was realised just as the world turned toward decolonisation. Today, as international law loses force, Israel’s actions are again enabled by the prevailing global order.

Zionism’s late 19th century origins fitted the colonial era, but its fulfilment in 1948 contrasted with the movement towards decolonisation. Today with an apparent decline of a rules-based international order, Israel may again be in line with the times.

Zionism was a European political movement whose origins lay within sections of the European Jewish community, with strong secular strands alongside more religious elements. Early protagonists of Zionist ideas in the 1880s were writing at the time of European colonial consolidation, and final expansion into the lands of “lesser peoples”. They could readily conceive of a settlement outside of Europe because this was then the model of major European states. The colonial division of the Caribbean, the Pacific Ocean, South and South-East Asia were already largely established. At the infamous Berlin Conference of 14 nations in 1884-5 most of Africa was acknowledged as the possessions, or euphemistically named “protectorates”, of European powers.

Settler colonialism which had been so successful in the Americas, Asiatic Russia, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa now extended to Kenya, Rhodesia, Algeria and elsewhere. The Zionist model of settler colonialism was in line with the times: it sought a geographically defined region for those Jewish people who chose resettle there.

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