Land Acknowledgement Statement

My home sets on land first explored by English and Scots-Irish freemen who had migrated from their homeland in search of freedom and opportunity or sometimes on the run from the law. The land was settled primarily by Germans from the Palatinate, who, through their industry, created farms, pastures, and orchards where only unproductive, fallow wilderness had existed. These men and women held savage tribes at bay and together created a nation that has been the beacon of hope to the world for over two hundred years. This land was conquered, not stolen, and any acknowledgment we make is owed to those who, with axe and musket, created the most powerful nation in the history of the world and we don’t owe a damn thing to anybody for being proud of their accomplishment.

The Hamas invasion of southern Israel on the October 7 Sabbath marked the largest single loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust. Before this war is over, the civilian death toll will probably exceed that of the 1948 War of Independence. As a testament to the success Marxism-Leninism has had infesting the left, the cordite hadn't cleared from some of the worst of the slaughter before the Sabbath-day massacre of innocents was labeled as a successful enterprise in "decolonization."

Jonathan Van Maren, writing in European Conservative (yes, such a thing apparently exists in the wild — “Decolonization is not a metaphor”), has cataloged a lot of examples, many of which have now been deleted as career prospects made bright by Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity programs are being dimmed by sane people with hiring authority ('Free Speech' Is Not a Get-out-of-Jail-Free Card for Terrorist Sympathizers). Here is a taste of his findings.

Rivkah Brown of Novara Media: 

Today should be a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide, as Gazans break out of their open-air prison and Hamas fighters cross into their colonisers’ territory. The struggle for freedom is rarely bloodless and we shouldn’t apologise for it.

Sarah Shahid, who freelances for Now Toronto and Spring magazine: “What a glorious Saturday. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Nearly thirty Harvard student associations, including the Harvard Islamic Society, the Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus, and the Society for Arab Students, released a public statement declaring that they collectively “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” 

Dr. Jessica Hutchison, an assistant professor of social work at Wilfried Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario: “I hope your upcoming acknowledgements will include support for Palestinians who are taking their land back from settler colonizers.”

Uahikea Maile, an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto: 

As Hawaiians wake up to the news of Palestinian anticolonial resistance in Gaza to Israeli settler colonialism, remember that—from Hawai’i to Palestine—occupation is a crime. A lahui that stands for decolonization and deoccupation should also stand behind freedom for Palestine. 

(The Israelis left the Gaza Strip entirely in 2005.)

Cinthya Martinez, a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz: 

Academics in the area of border studies: you cannot teach about displacement, dispossession, suffering, resistance, decolonization and abolition without Palestine. You can’t be for Abolish ICE, anti-border violence, or anti-carceral without supporting freedom for Palestinians.

Member of Scottish Parliament Maggie Chapman approvingly retweeted Sana Nazar, who stated: 

The OPPRESSED are fighting back for their rights…Don’t let the Western media fool you into thinking it’s terrorism, this is decolonization. 

Walaa Alqaisiya of the London School of Economics and Columbia University: 

Academics like to decolonize through discourse and land acknowledgements. Time to understand that Decolonization is NOT a metaphor. Decolonization means resistance of the oppressed and that includes armed struggle to LITERALLY get our lands and lives back!

The damage to this useful leftist line of attack promised to be so severe and long-lasting that The Atlantic hastened to explain why the Hamas slaughter of Jews was NOT decolonization: The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False.

The decolonization narrative has dehumanized Israelis to the extent that otherwise rational people excuse, deny, or support barbarity. It holds that Israel is an “imperialist-colonialist” force, that Israelis are “settler-colonialists,” and that Palestinians have a right to eliminate their oppressors. (On October 7, we all learned what that meant.) It casts Israelis as “white” or “white-adjacent” and Palestinians as “people of color.”

This ideology, powerful in the academy but long overdue for serious challenge, is a toxic, historically nonsensical mix of Marxist theory, Soviet propaganda, and traditional anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages and the 19th century. But its current engine is the new identity analysis, which sees history through a concept of race that derives from the American experience. The argument is that it is almost impossible for the “oppressed” to be themselves racist, just as it is impossible for an “oppressor” to be the subject of racism. Jews therefore cannot suffer racism, because they are regarded as “white” and “privileged”; although they cannot be victims, they can and do exploit other, less privileged people, in the West through the sins of “exploitative capitalism” and in the Middle East through “colonialism.”

This leftist analysis, with its hierarchy of oppressed identities—and intimidating jargon, a clue to its lack of factual rigor—has in many parts of the academy and media replaced traditional universalist leftist values, including internationalist standards of decency and respect for human life and the safety of innocent civilians. When this clumsy analysis collides with the realities of the Middle East, it loses all touch with historical facts.

If the ideology of decolonization, taught in our universities as a theory of history and shouted in our streets as self-evidently righteous, badly misconstrues the present reality, does it reflect the history of Israel as it claims to do? It does not. Indeed, it does not accurately describe either the foundation of Israel or the tragedy of the Palestinians.

According to the decolonizers, Israel is and always has been an illegitimate freak-state because it was fostered by the British empire and because some of its founders were European-born Jews.

The article is quite good from the standpoint of explaining how Israel doesn't fit into this particular justification for genocide, but it ignores the real problem with colonization. 

Decolonization doesn't just call for "indigenous" people to fake a cultural history or adopt a cutesy name; it demands the current residents of a nation give up homes and culture in favor of people who imagine they have a claim to it.

According to [Eve Tuck (Unangax̂, Alaskan Aleut Community), Associate Professor at the University of Ontario, and K. Wayne Yang, professor at UC San Diego and Provost at John Muir College], a common move of settler innocence occurs when people rely too heavily on the notion to ‘decolonize your mind,’ thinking, or knowledge. This can include efforts to read more Black, Brown, and Indigenous writers, for example. Decolonial curriculum and thinking can, indeed, be a substantial part of the movement. It is a powerful tool for deconstructing colonial influences on knowledge and education. However, they note that while this can feel radical and transformative, it is not the sole or final step in decolonization. 

We cannot only dedicate ourselves to thinking about decolonizing, we must act to decolonize. Additionally, efforts to indigenize (appropriating Indigenous approaches to life or even falsely claiming Indigenous identity) do not contribute to decolonization, but further colonize Indigenous knowledge and identity. Decolonization calls for decentering the narrative by which settlers romanticize Indigenous beliefs and surface culture (indigenization). It calls instead for deconstructing settler-imposed systems that continue to oppress Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Moves of settler innocence domesticate decolonization’s demands of undoing colonialism, eliminating its gendered and racialized hierarchies, and establishing Indigenous sovereignty. 

On October 7, as Israeli families were being massacred, writer Najima Sharif, who one can't help but notice uses the stolen language of my people, offers this observation.

Following the execution of hundreds of Israeli civilians, an academic who is a researcher with @LSEMiddleEast, @Columbia University & EU group @MSCActions says that decolonization theory (a part of CRT) must teach violent armed direct action. In other words, decolonization theory… pic.twitter.com/7UO45Br0ue

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 9, 2023

Exactly. 

Decolonization is a polite, academic-sounding phrase for genocide. These people don't want you to talk smack about our big-D, high-T ancestors settling this land and celebrating "Indigenous People's Day." They want to kill you. And they want you to go along with it just like the machinery of the Holocaust couldn't have functioned without the kapos and sonderkommandos who bought themselves a precious few days by killing others.

Decolonization is a strategy of losers directed at winners. It is a means by which members of failed cultures want to replace successful ones. 

The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel ripped the mask of the decolonization monster and its supporters and let us see them for what they are. Remember This Land Was Conquered, Not Stolen, and if You Can't Acknowledge That Fact at Least Cope With It.