Beyond the local settler colonial paradigm; a global settler paradigm? Matan Kaminer, ‘Surplus population nation: Settler-colonial elimination in Palestine and the world’, Dialectical Anthropology, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Beyond the local settler colonial paradigm; a global settler paradigm? Matan Kaminer, ‘Surplus population nation: Settler-colonial elimination in Palestine and the world’, Dialectical Anthropology, 2026

16Nov26

Excerpt: At first glance, Israel’s genocide in Gaza seems an indescribably gruesome confirmation of Patrick Wolfe’s (2006) celebrated thesis that the telos of settler-colonial movements, including Zionism, is “elimination of the native.” For the variant of settler-colonial theory pioneered by the late Wolfe, which has become paradigmatic in Palestine studies in the last few decades (Sabbagh-Khoury 2021), settler-colonial projects are characterized by a drive to destroy indigenous populations, rather than exploit them. The onset of a war of annihilation, coupled with the seemingly final expulsion of workers resident in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) from employment in Israel, appears to corroborate this thesis powerfully. However, other aspects of the conjuncture are not captured as well by Wolfe’s framing. As Palestinians and their sympathizers the world over have observed with horror, Israel’s criminal aggression in Gaza and elsewhere in the region – including Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran – has been undertaken with the fervent backing and generous aid of the US-led imperialist bloc. Not only the United States but also the United Kingdom, Germany, India, and others have provided Israel with money, arms, and intelligence and defended its campaigns in international fora, while Jordan and the Gulf states have collaborated in defending it from Iranian missile attacks. Conversely, majorities almost everywhere except for Israel itself – very much including the United States – are increasingly disgusted with Israel, and the Palestinian flag has been adopted as a homegrown symbol of resistance from Paris to São Paulo.

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