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The geoeschatology of settler colonialism: Ophira Gamliel, ‘Zionist Land Fetishism and Genocidal Iconoclasm’, Palestine/Israel Review, 2026

21Sep26

Abstract: The article argues that Israel’s genocide is grounded in political theologies originating in early-modern Europe alongside colonial exploration and expansion. It characterizes Israel’s genocide as iconoclastic, due to settler-colonial land fetishism that originated in the millenarian–messianic alliances between Christians and Jews in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The article traces the evolution of Judeo-Christian knowledge production from burgeoning European long-distance maritime networks, building on Delno West’s (1992) concept of geoeschatology. It demonstrates how epistemic erasure of Indigeneity stems from imagined biblical landscapes in the works of Jewish scholars throughout the centuries of colonial expansion. Arguing that the Judeo-Christian construct is a structural feature of settler-colonial societies, the article analyzes the theological license for the epistemic and physical erasure of Indigenous populations by Zionist settler colonialism. It follows the development of Judeo-Christian alliances around the coproduction of geoeschatological knowledge between the 1500s and the 1900s, centering on the works of Jewish scholars such as Abraham Farissol, Menasseh Ben Israel, Naphtali Hirtz Weisel, and Naḥum Sokolow. This intellectual history is entangled with Hebraist networks of Catholics and Protestants alike, demonstrating shared knowledge systems and continued support of the Zionist settler-colonial project and its ongoing genocide.


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