Your interpretation only makes sense if you grant the premise Israel is a colonial state. He's making the same argument as the Yale academic on the previous page in post #
342. A person can understand Israel is an apartheid state, that is Jewish citizens have more rights than Palestinians, while also knowing the regions history.
There has been a constant Jewish presence in the Middle East for 5,000 years. Before the Muslims, conquest by among others Persians & Romans, many but not all Jews were enslaved and taken from Judea. Later renamed Palestina by the Romans. They kept returning. Jews were expelled and returned to Judea many times before Muslims eventually ruled most of the Middles East. Jews and Arabs are all descended from the same ancient people. Their history is intertwined.
Each side won and lost the land dozens of times through war, not colonialism, not unlike ethnic regional wars in Europe, the Ottomans, the Caucasuses, Asia, Japan, and so many other places. Jews have had a constant presence in Judea / Palestine / Isreal for the entirety of recorded history. Although, not in large numbers for several centuries prior to 1948. The colonial narrative only makes sense if you ignore the fact Jews are originally from Israel.
In 1948 the international community granted the Jewish people a partitioned homeland. Around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result. In response Arab, Iranian, and African countries dispossessed a similar number of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who had lived mostly peacefully with their neighbors in their respective regions for thousands of years. Jewish enclaves in Africa, in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Yemen existed for thousands of years prior to 1948. In 1948 and again in 1973 the Arab states invaded Israel. Israel was vastly outnumbered both times but won anyway and acquired more land.
I'm not trying to argue Jews have more of a connection to Israel than Palestinians, only that the colonization narrative is false and allows for, in polite academic terms, the removal of Jews from Israel.
