Zionist Settler Colonialism, Alienation, and the Racialization of Palestinians

The international dialogue surrounding racial oppression has intensified once more since 2014, following the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. This incident ignited a series of protests throughout the United States, which were met with a severe, militarized response from law enforcement, paralleling Israel’s Operation Protective Shield offensive that caused significant destruction in the Gaza Strip. In this context, protesters in both Palestine and the United States renewed their efforts to reference and draw parallels between their respective struggles. This wave of solidarity, initially centered on Gaza and Ferguson, revitalized numerous enduring historical connections between the struggles of Black Americans and Palestinians against oppression. These connections are situated within a broader geographic framework with deeper historical roots that trace back to the late nineteenth century. Considering these wider contexts highlight the significant influence of empire as a historical, political, and social construct, alongside the divisions of labor, in shaping the processes of racialization and the concepts of racial belonging and solidarity in twentieth-first century Palestine and Israel. We investigate the Zionist settler colonialism’s racialization of Palestinians alienates – the slow process of identity erosion (and perversion) – and dehumanize them to facilitate their dispossession. We contend the functioning of race as a category in Palestine is determined by both local circumstances – primarily, Zionist colonization– and a broader phenomenon racial capitalism, which posits that settler colonialism can only achieve its violent dispossession of people through the racialization of their identity, reducing them to disposal objects.