Indigeneity and the Maori connection

Apparently the Maori, in conspicuous contrast to the New Zealand government, view the Jews of Israel as an inspiration. Here, for instance, the flags of Maori, New Zealand, Israel, and the United Tribes are displayed during a ceremony of apology, called a ‘whakapāha,’ held in 2018 to express regret for New Zealand’s actions in standing against Israel at the United Nations, and to seek forgiveness.

[Photo © Perry Trotter]

Sheree Trotter, a Maori herself and co-founder of the Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, makes the case in Tablet that what links the Jews and the Maori is the concept of indigeneity. Israel nowadays is often portrayed as a product of "settler colonialism", with European Jews coming in to replace the Arabs, but of course the Jews are the indigenous occupants of the land of Israel: the Arabs arrived there in the great post-Mohammed Arabic conquests in the 7th century. It's a point that Israel would do well to emphasise more, in the face of Arab claims to be the rightful owners of the land.

The development of a distinct language, culture, and belief system within a particular land prior to colonization is a defining feature of indigeneity, one shared by Māori and Jews. Many definitions of indigeneity include the characteristic of “nondominant groups of society.” Some scholars have asserted that this provision was a later addition, aimed squarely at preventing Jews from claiming indigenous status. The notion that a people suddenly loses indigenous status by virtue of having achieved their long sought self-determination undermines the very concept of indigeneity. Fiji, for example, gained its independence in 1970, but this did not mean that indigenous Fijians thereby lost indigenous status. While the other aspects of indigeneity are intrinsic to identity as a people, the requirement to be nondominant in society is an external, political, and social feature that is subject to change. An aspiration (in this case self-determination) does not render a people nonindigenous by the attainment of its goal.

So, in regard to Israel, why does this matter? Because a colonialist narrative has taken hold in the popular imagination, by which Jews are seen as foreign colonizers who have displaced the indigenous Palestinian population. The colonialist narrative had its genesis in academia and has filtered down to politics and media. It has been promoted by historians of settler colonialism, Palestinian academics, politicians, and anti-Israel activists. Israel is portrayed as the archetypal intruder. The Palestinian American academic Rashid Khalidi has said, “the modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will.”

The wording may vary, but Khalidi’s view is widely held. In 2016, for example, the Palestinian National Authority attempted to sue the British government over the Balfour Declaration, for supporting the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in what was then Ottoman Palestine. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad-al Maliki stated that “hundreds of thousands of Jews were moved from Europe and elsewhere to Palestine at the expense of our Palestinian people whose parents and grandparents had lived for thousands of years on the soil of their homeland.” This narrative has been strengthened mostly through long and frequent repetition, the most basic of classic propaganda techniques.

But maintaining the claim that Israel is the acme of a settler colonial state is false, and comes at great cost to our understanding of history. It is a politically motivated and highly selective rendering of the past, a distortion rather than a truthful account.

The Israeli historian Benny Morris, while deftly rebutting Khalidi’s aforementioned thesis, has pointed out that the commonly understood notion that colonialism involves an imperial power gaining control over another country and “settling it with its sons” simply does not apply to the Zionist venture. “By any objective standard, Zionism fails to fit this definition,” he argues. “Zionism was a movement of desperate, idealistic Jews from Eastern and Central Europe bent on immigrating to a country that had once been populated and ruled by Jews, not ‘another’ country, and regaining sovereignty over it.”

Harvard historian Derek Penslar also challenges the colonialist narrative, pointing out that the Jews returned to their ancient homeland “not for its strategic value, natural resources, or productive capabilities but rather because of what Jews believed to be historic, religious, and cultural ties to the area known to them as the Land of Israel. Zionism was based in concepts of return, restoration, and re-inscription.”

I would argue that settler colonialism has long been the wrong framework to use for understanding Israel’s history. A better one is the growing field of indigenous studies.

Some scholars of indigenous studies have seen the importance of fighting for the recognition of Jewish indigeneity as a means to address “territorial disputes between Arabs and Jews, the protection of both Jewish and Arab rights, and the rights of indigenous peoples everywhere.” Dr. Nan Greer, former adjunct professor at the University of Redlands, has argued that the indigenous rights of the Jewish people should be enshrined in law. She points out the importance of an indigenous people’s connection to a distinct location rather than a broad, generalized region, “such as Arab-Muslim groups claiming lands in multiple nation-states throughout the Middle East.”   [...]

As much as some academics, politicians, and activists think that the Jews of Israel are colonizers, in reality, indigeneity helps connect the Jewish people to the experience of other indigenous peoples. It provides a counterweight to the false narrative that Jews are foreigners in their homeland, where their distinctive language, traditions, and religion developed. Strong connection to the land and ancestors has been maintained over millennia, and is further confirmed by archeological, literary, and genetic evidence. Embracing indigenous identity at least as much as the identity conferred by historical suffering and persecution in European and Arab lands could be an important tool in resolving various disputes, including perhaps over land ownership.

From Mount Zion to Mount Tarawera, the connection between indigenous peoples and their land is one that endures and remains central to individual and corporate identity. You cannot deny Jews their indigenous rights and identity without undermining the arguments for the rights of indigenous peoples everywhere.

The portrayal of Israel as a "settler colonialist" country is meanwhile firmly rebutted by Alan Johnson in Fathom. Well worth a read.

Comments

[Alan]

There is another aspect to this story that needs to be firmly established and covered in our educational system.

According to Martin Gilbert in his Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli conflict, 580,000 Jews living in the Arab world, some communities going back 2500 years, subject to continual pressure and persecution fled their homes and lands to move to the new sate of Israel. Some colonialists then!!!!

An Arab friend of mine, long-time in the UK, told me that Bagdad was once the Middle Eastern city with the largest Jewish population.

[Mick H]

That's another important argument against the facile "settler colonialism" accusation. A hundred years ago Jews constituted something like 30% of the population of Baghdad. Now all gone.

[John the Drunkard]

Also, the 'settler' narrative implies the pre-existence of some sort of nation called 'Palestine.' Note that doesn't have an Arabic sound at all does it?

If we're going to accept any notion of 'Palestine' based on the division of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, we'll have to accept that every middle-eastern state was carved out by 'colonialists.' A good 80% of post-Ottoman Palestine was immediately sliced off to form Jordan, and placed under the rule of a king imported from Arabia under Anglo-French sponsorship. Do any Palestinian academics complain about this loss? Nope. The conquered peoples of 'Jordan' have never sought to recover their sovereignty. So long as the interlopers are Arab tyrants, no one objects.

The objection to Israel is rooted in hatred of Jews. Turks, Persians, Egyptians, Arabs etc. have all held sway over differing portions of the Levant/Middle East without this hysterical rage in response.

[Dom]

“ The objection to Israel is rooted in hatred of Jews. ”

That’s undoubtedly true, but I think also there is a belief that once an area is Muslim it must always remain Muslim.

[TDK]

I must register a dissenting opinion.

The idea that "indigeneity" gives special privileges over incomers strikes me as uncomfortably close to ideas of blood and soil. The BNP member in Bradford has no more right to the city than any other person born and bred in Bradford.

No the rights of Jews stem from four things
1. The Romans never managed to banish 100% so a tiny residual population remained, or at least in close proximity.
2. The return of Jews to Israel was slow but continuous until the late 19th century when it picked up pace and then quickened by the 1930s. So they have had a virtually continuous presence.
3. The Arabs fought a war of annihilation which they lost.
4. Jews were expelled from Arab countries and were welcomed into Israel.

The Jews are there now. That's far more compelling a reason for them to remain than any idea that they held a right over the land due to "indigeneity".

[Mick H]

Yes, I take your point. I suppose the reason for stressing the issue of indigeneity in the case of the Jews and Israel is because that's the main claim that the Arabs have over the land of Israel/Palestine. In fact it's the only claim: that they're the original inhabitants who've been expelled by the nasty Jews. So it's worth pointing out that it's nonsense.

[TDK]

"So it's worth pointing out that it's nonsense."

Yes agreed.

I find it hard to take such claims seriously. So many famous Palestinians like Edward Said or Yasser Arafat can trace their origins to outside Israel, either directly or within a generation or two.

[Joanne]

I heard that the number of Jews kicked out of Arab lands was something like 850,000.

[Mick H]

Yes, I've seen that figure.