Settler terrorism is the modern incarnation of the Zionist dream
Israeli settlers fire at Palestinians (unseen) while an Israeli soldier stands by in the town of Huwwara in the occupied West Bank on 13 October 2022
Fadi Zatari writes in Middle East Eye on 6 August 2026:
Decades before the Zionist movement’s inception in the late 19th century, the German Jewish thinker Moses Hess proposed in his contentious manuscript Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question (1862) that a Jewish state be established through settlements in Palestine as “socialist agricultural communities”.
He promoted the colonisation of Palestine, viewing the Holy Land as a forgotten corner of the Ottoman Empire; merely an empty land that should be utilised in the interests of the “Jewish nation”.
Twenty years later, in 1882, the Russian Jewish thinker Leon Pinsker published a pamphlet titled “Auto-Emancipation”, in which he pronounced: “The land which we are about to purchase must be productive and have a good situation, and an area sufficient to allow the settlement of several millions.”
Among major Zionist theorists, there is no mention of the indigenous Palestinian nation. In their view, Palestine was “an empty land”.
Even for Pinsker, there is no indication of whom he intended to buy the land from. The primary intention was to build a Jewish settler-colonial state through violence and terrorism.
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Since the Six-Day War in 1967, the subjugation of Palestinians has progressively intensified through military orders, more than 2,500 of which have been issued to confiscate Palestinian land, build and expand Jewish settlements, close streets, and regulate all aspects of life. The intent is to strip Palestinians of their basic rights, including movement, education and freedom.
Over the past decade, Israel has significantly increased its illegal confiscation of Palestinian land and settlement expansion. Around 750,000 Israeli settlers currently live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. This expansion is achieved not only through individual acts of violence and terrorism, but more notably with the state’s full financial and military support.