Asim Qureshi

That legacy continues today across the Zionist political spectrum, further indicating how and why the continued genocide of the Palestinian people cannot simply be limited the current actions of the Netanyahu regime, but rather how it sits on a much longer colonial trjectory.

As we approach Nakba Day on 15 May 2025, it is important to note and understand how Zionism is itself, an ideology that is rooted in a particular form of European settler colonialism, one that was informed to a great extent by fascism.

While Sai Englert's work shows the trajectory of Zionist thinking learning from settler colonialism during the period of European colonisation, what is less known, is the extent to which Revisionist Zionism is heavily influenced by fascism.

Benzion Netanyahu was deeply influed by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and his book 'The Iron Wall' which continues to find salience in the current Likud Party. Benjamin Netanyahu fully accepts the role tha Jabotinsky's writings have had in informing his politics and beliefs.

Professor al-Arian highlights how the founding principles of Revisionist Zionism - now in power in 'Israel' - requires belief in territorial maximalism, and thus the exclusion of all Arabs.

Benzion Netanyahu was originally born on 25 March 1910 as Benzion Mileikowsky, changing his name to Netanyahu (meaning 'God has given') when arriving in Palestine in 1920. European Jewish settlers would often change their names as a means of masking their European origins.

Central to the expert report by @DrSamiAlArian is how the current Likud Party, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, has its political ideology informed by his father Benzion, and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founders of Revisionist Zionism.

Building on the work of Dr Sai Englert, Professor @DrSamiAlArian's report focuses on how Zionism as an ideology, has always had maximalist expansionist goals, ones that have always sought the complete displacement of the Palestinian people.
www.hamascase.com/volume-ii/10...

The purposeful displacement of the Palestinian people and their cantonement in a suffocating small open air concentration camp, for Dr Englert, led to a cocktail of conditions that resulted in the attacks on 7 October 2023 - a day that cannot be divorced from setterl colonialism.

The settler colonial identity of the Zionist state cannot be denied, as it drew so heavily on colonisation as a model for its own existence. This would be crystallised in the thinking and works of Zeev Jabotinsky - the ideological forebear of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The idea of a loyal Jewish state surrounded by Arab hostility wasn't just one that occupied the imagination of the founding Zionists, it has remained central to British interests in the region, and later to the US as well. The colonial character of Zionism is well understood.

Citing extensively from early Zionist sources, he evidences how from the very founding documentation, the emphasis of Zionists was always on the population displacement of the Palestinian people.

After setting out a detailed record of what settler colonialism is, Englert explains that the existence of 800,000 settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory leaves no room for doubt that 'Israel' is a settler colony. A fact of its own founding literature.

He sets how settler colonialism is a strategy of "accumulation on a world scale" - that is builds lasting societies that control land and territory, at the expense of Indigenous peoples.

Dr Sai Englert's report on Settler Colonialis, Zionism and the Genocide in Gaza provides a specific insight that connects long histories of European colonialism and racism to the establishment of 'Israel' as a settler colonial state.
www.hamascase.com/volume-ii/23...

Two of the reports addended to the application were by Dr Sai Englert and Professor @DrSamiAlArian - the former writing on settler colonialism, while the latter explaining Zionism as a maximalist ideology.

To understand Zionism at its core, the team at Riverway Law representing Hamas, wanted to ensure that adequate material was made available to the Home Secretary in understanding settler colonialism - the root of Zionist presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

For Shlaim, this is all made much more profound by the Zionist state's ultimate status as an apartheid regime - one that like John Dugard, cannot be looked past. Thus, due to the apartheid nature "the whole debate about Israel's so-called right to exist becomes an irrelevance"

In the process of their demands for international recognition, they have attempted to create a hostile environment for anyone who critiques Zionism and the Zionist state - by labelling all such criticisms as antisemetic.

What his report does, is to express how utterly ludicrous the demands of both the Zionist Labour and Likud parties are of the Palestinian people - and Hamas in particular.

As Professor Shlaim explains - the UK government's proscription of Hamas directly relates to the refusal of the group to recognise 'Israel' as a legitimate state, but that has little to do with its legitimacy or Hamas being a terrorist organisation. This has much wider effects.

In a similar vein to Professor Dugard, Professor Avi Shlaim wrote one of his three reports for the application on the concept of the Zionist state's right to exist - arguing that no such right exists under international law:
hamascase.com/volume-ii/13_s…

As someone who lived through apartheid, John Dugard makes plain how the Zionist state is not exempt from the ostracisation that was levelled at the white South African apartheid regime.

Professor Dugard further questions the legality of the Zionist state's present policies: the unlawful occupation and status as an apartheid state.

After the end of the British Mandate on 14 May 1949 and the declaration of the Zionist state, the correct position under international law is that 'Israel' forcibly seceded from the Mandate Terroritory. Making its moral claim not only dubious, but incorrect.

He shows that 'Israel' attempts to assert its right to recognition in its declaration of independence in 1948 - after its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people - the Balfour Declaration in 1917, 1922 League of Nations Mandate, and the 1947 UNGA partition.

Dugard provides the example of Rhodesia, which unilaterally declared itself a state in 1965, but who was denied that claim by the UK and the UN. Similarly, Tibet has declared its right to exist, only to be denied by China - and the list goes on with Catalonia and Kurdistan.

Professor Dugard's report begins by stating explicitly: "The right of a State to exist is not a concept recognized by international law." This sets the tone for his argument, that ultimately international law requires a degree of recognition from others.
hamascase.com/volume-ii/14_d…

In this regard, we had Professor John Dugard, the former ad hoc judge to the ICJ, and Professor Avi Shlaim, an expert on Israeli history, write explicitly on the debunking the notion that 'Israel' has a right to exist.

As part of our submissions, we were keen to express how Zionism as an ideology, and 'Israel' as a state, do not have an inherent right to exist - regardless of what its allies and those complicit in its settler colonial apartheid machinations might argue.