Settler colonialism resonates: Bill Rolston, ‘Ireland and Palestine: the roots of resonance’, Race & Class, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism resonates: Bill Rolston, ‘Ireland and Palestine: the roots of resonance’, Race & Class, 2025

26Jul25

Abstract: This article argues that, despite major differences across time and space, there are similarities between the colonial experience of the Irish in the midseventeenth century and the present-day colonial experience of Palestinians. This is illustrated by a detailed comparison of attacks by the Irish against English and Scottish settlers in 1641 and the Palestinian attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. In both cases, the indisputable violence of the attacks was exaggerated, thereby carrying out a crucial ideological role in underpinning the brutality of the state response. The collective memory of the Irish in relation to their own colonial experience allows for an easy identification of similar colonial experience elsewhere. The suffering of the people of Gaza resonates with people in Ireland in ways that it would not were the Irish not catching echoes of their own past in the contemporary experience of the Palestinians. That is the basis of the strength of pro-Palestinian actions in Ireland. Dismissed by some as evidence of antisemitism, these actions are instead instances of intense international solidarity.

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