The recent popular assault on the analytical theory of settler colonialism has been concurrent with the Israel and U.S. genocide of the Palestinian people. Circulating widely in public discourse—especially (although not exclusively) in the U.S. media and beyond—the attack on any framework of colonialism to discuss Israel-Palestine has arguably become even more pronounced since October 7, 2023. The global media—especially in Western states— (mis)represent Israel’s campaign in Gaza as though two armies are fighting over religion (as an “ethnic conflict”), whereas we understand it to be specifically settler colonial in nature.

The backlash against deploying the concept is part and parcel of the broader political crackdown and is, among other things, an attempt to quell political solidarity with Palestinians grounded in mutual recognition of structural similarities across different geopolitical terrains. For example, Michael Powell in The Atlantic dismisses settler colonialism as “academic jargon” that is “in vogue among activists and academics on the left.” He argues against “shoehorning a Middle Eastern war—or American history—into a trendy academic theory” because it “constructs a morality tale stripped of subtleties—a matter not of politics, but of sin.” He further challenges the linking of Palestinian struggles to those of Indigenous Peoples, while decrying the use of Turtle Island as an Indigenous name for North America. Echoing his hostile assessment, Jennifer Schuessler, writing for The New York Times, suggests that the concept “can land as a moral slander.”

Indeed, in February 2025, Hunter College announced a position for a Palestinian studies professor that led New York Governor Kathy Hochul to order the listing’s removal within an hour after finding it offensive. The original announcement read: “We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine, including but not limited to settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality.” As reported in Jacobin, according to Hochul’s office, “Hateful rhetoric of any kind has no place at CUNY or anywhere in New York State.” The “hateful rhetoric” in question included settler colonialism, which centers on genocidal violence in the service of a land grab—dependent on the elimination and replacement of the Native peoples already there (not merely any colony with settlers).

This Theorizing the Contemporary forum focuses on the necessity of understanding settler colonialism as an analytic. The genocide in Gaza and the intensification of Israeli settler colonial violence makes Palestine an urgent site through which the broader operations of settler colonialism are rendered visible, albeit with differentiated and localized geographies and forms.

Beyond the concept, settler colonial studies has emerged as a distinct field of scholarly inquiry, one arguably grounded in a critique of anthropology as a discipline. In his 1999 book, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, Patrick Wolfe offered a re-reading of the history of Australian anthropology by tracing the links between metropolitan anthropological theory and local colonial politics from the nineteenth century to the present—focusing on the ideological and sexual regimes that characterize it. He interrogated the ways in which anthropologists had been embedded in a particular mode of domination that enabled him to conceptualize settler colonialism as a distinct form of colonialism. As Wolfe put it, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event” (Wolfe 1999, 2), an assertion that corresponds with Palestinians’ insistence that the Nakba (catastrophe) stemming from the violent creation of Israel in 1948 is ongoing, structuring the political, economic, and social landscape.

Wolfe subsequently produced a theory that travels across both time and place, expanding his analytical framework in a 2006 oft-cited article speaking to genocide studies scholars, “Settler Colonialism and the Logic of Elimination of the Native.” Notably, he compared three societies that are otherwise arguably quite different from each other—the United States, Australia, and Israel. As such, and as the essays herein show, given settlers’ desire for access to territory in a bid for permanency (not to presume settler colonialism itself is permanent) this form of dispossession/expropriation is typically achieved (at least initially to reduce the demographic threat the native population poses) through genocide proper and ethnic cleansing. As Wolfe argued, these two primary forms of elimination constitute “frontier-era” violence, which may be followed by coercive forms of bio-cultural assimilation targeting the remainder (once deemed negligible in number), which (like forced removal) he theorized as forms of “structural genocide,” a way to eliminate without enacting mass killing (Wolfe 2006, 403). As Wolfe argued, settler colonialism “destroys to replace” the original peoples of the colonized territory with a new society of settlers (typically from the colonial metropole).

Wolfe’s theory of settler colonialism as eliminatory resembles Fayez Sayegh’s concept, which focused on Israel. In 1965, as the founder of the Research Center of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Sayegh published “Zionist Colonialism in Palestine.” His theory of settler colonialism hinges on what he termed “racial elimination” undergirded by Zionism—an ideology that rejects co-existence or assimilation—to displace and replace Palestinians in the settler quest for territorial expansion to make way for a “national home” for the Jewish people. As Wolfe later argued, settler colonial societies each have their own “racial grammar,” one in which race “is made in the targeting” (Wolfe 2006, 388).

Returning to the point about settler colonialism as both an accusation and an analytic, we must note two developments encountered while co-editing this collection. In one case, a scholar we invited to contribute—whose research mainly focused on Native America—declined, citing their public university’s policy that conflates criticism of Zionism (a political ideology) with Judaism (a religion), branding all questioning of Israel’s state power as “antisemitic.” We knew such false equations and surveillance politics well but questioned how their institution’s stance affected published scholarship. In turn, the scholar explained to us that even though they hold the position of full professor, they could be fired for criticizing Israel as evidence of engaging in “conduct involving moral turpitude.” In the second case, after Trump’s call for the deportation of non-citizens from the United States (including those in the country legally), casting people who protest the genocide as “Hamas supporters”—branding them “terrorists”—one of our contributors was compelled to withdraw their essay fearing similar reprisal.

The title of this collection points to our refusal of exceptionalist framings of settler colonialism. Horrifically devastating in terms of the speed and scale of death and destruction of Palestinian life (given the high-tech weaponry and massive amounts of continuous funding by the U.S. government) as a land-centered project, Israel’s “elimination of the native” resembles other settler colonial genocides. The challenge is to make explicit how exceptionalism has historically isolated Palestine (politically and epistemologically) from other cases. We reiterate the urgency of the Palestinian condition and the role of Palestinian resistance in shaping global anti-colonial thought. As The Red Nation put it, “We have always believed Palestine is the tip of the spear in the fight against colonialism, the guiding light toward liberation and decolonization everywhere.” Thus, we center Palestine as an urgent site that compels our analytic (and ethical-political) attention, not as a singular or definitive instance of settler colonialism, but one which is streaming live in real time—revealing the core logics of domination, elimination, dispossession, and replacement that have been underway across diverse geographies and temporalities and in different stages of violent elimination (both historically and in contemporary times).

Maya Mikdashi offers a critical reflection on what settler colonial studies and Indigenous studies bring to the study of the Middle East and vice versa. Teresa Montoya focuses on the Diné (Navajo), where European settler colonialism has consistently disrupted human and non-human relationships with the environment, perpetuating intergenerational violence. M. Bianet Castellanos examines the gradual entrenchment of Mexican settler colonialism in the Maya context, highlighting new phases of dispossession and reconfiguring of resistance. Joseph Weiss delves into the dynamics of white supremacy and settler futurity in Canada where a façade of moral legitimacy perpetuates settler dominance. Micaela Sahhar turns to the crackdown on protest and civic disruption for Palestinian liberation which is framed as necessary for maintaining order and thus obscures the violence of the settler states. Lara Deeb extends the analysis to Lebanon, where the expansionist nature of settler colonialism converges in territorial acquisition and cultural erasure. In the case of Kashmir, Mohammad Junaid examines how Kashmiris are denied coevality, their historical agency erased to secure a settler-colonial future for India. Ather Zia frames settler colonialism as an iterative temporal dynamic, underscoring the adaptive temporality of Indian settler colonialism that weaponizes postcoloniality and democracy to justify ongoing occupation and dispossession. Randa Wahbe’s article examines how Palestinians resist Israel’s dehumanizing “corpse confiscation policy” through acts that transform the dead into sites of anticolonial defiance and assert Indigenous sovereignty, identity, and a future beyond oppression. Meanwhile, Leeve Palray introduces us to a layered temporality of settler colonialism in Taiwan, where multiple generations of Han Chinese settlers claim indigeneity, perpetuating structural inequalities and racial hierarchies. Marianna Hovhannisyan examines the rapid Azerbaijani settler colonial project in Artsakh that suppressed Armenian culture and identity with swift military offensives. Tamar Blickstein traces a specific settler-colonial, genocidal campaign against Indigenous peoples, exemplified in the 1924 Napalpí Massacre in Argentina. Concluding our compelling collection Rana Barakat’s essay offers a powerful lesson from Palestine, a prayer for homecoming lam or jama’ shaml grounded in land, centered on Shadi Barghouti’s liberation from prison and return home after the ceasefire deal.

Each case of settler colonialism presented here reveals a unique genesis shaped by the specificity of different contexts, while all share the core logic of elimination, dispossession, and replacement. The temporality of settler colonialism traces a deliberate, maleficent, and dynamic process that is continually contested and reshaped by the interplay of power and resistance. Thus, the collection illuminates the common structural dimensions of settler colonial projects across the globe.