Israel Is Not the Last Colony. It Is One of History’s Great Decolonization Stories.

History remembers the twentieth century as the age of decolonization. European empires collapsed, foreign rulers withdrew, and nations across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East reclaimed sovereignty. Dozens of modern states emerged from the ruins of imperial rule, and their legitimacy is rarely questioned today.

There is one remarkable exception.

Israel, established in 1948 during the very same wave of decolonization, is routinely described as a colonial enterprise. It is a claim repeated so often that it has become accepted as fact in many circles. Yet history tells a very different story.

The modern Middle East was not shaped by ancient nation states but by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. Britain and France divided former Ottoman territories through the League of Nations Mandate system, creating the political framework from which Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and other states eventually emerged.

Their borders were drawn by diplomats, not by centuries of national sovereignty. Nevertheless, the international community accepted these countries as legitimate expressions of self determination. No serious movement argues that Iraq or Jordan should cease to exist because their borders were established by colonial powers.

Israel alone is judged by a different standard.

One of the most common accusations is that Israel displaced a sovereign “Palestinian” state. The historical record simply does not support that claim. Before 1948, no independent Arab state called “Palestine” existed. The territory had been ruled successively by........

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