The other day, I was arguing with someone israel and Palestine, and they brought up the whole “everybody has done settler colonialism before” trope. While it’s an idiotic argument even if true (directly contradicting their whole “rules based international order” sthick), it did get me wondering.
I’ve assumed up until now that settler colonialism is a phenomena unique to the capitalist phase of history, but how true is that exactly?
What even was the point they were trying to make? It happened before and that makes it okay now?
It was something like “everybody has done settler colonialism, therefore, Palestinians should just accept Israeli annexations”.