Timestamp 1:30:23 through 1:35:35. Captions will help to hear the question
Interesting take by Vijay here. I think I agree with him, although not surprised to hear him say that he had pushback from others.
He was asked what he thinks of settler-colonialism as a framework and how, or whether, it can be theoretically combined with imperialism.
His answer was that settler-colonialism is not useful. In the case of Israel, he thinks it is better addressed as a supremacist ethnostate and should be dismantled on that basis. If the issue is compressed into a settler-colonial model, then the implication is that the solution is to remove all Israelis from the land, which he finds objectionable. Furthermore he doesn’t want “a world of Israels”, a world of ethnically defined nations who are entitled to resist intrusion by other groups. Vijay instead argues that the end goal needs to be plurinational states that can tolerate diversity.
It’s late and I can’t watch the video right now but I think we’ve seen plenty of examples that decolonizing doesn’t mean ethnic nationalism. Decolonizing Israel doesn’t need to mean kicking out all the “Israelis,” it means taking away their power over everyone else. Calling it a supremacist ethnostate over a settler colony implies that “Israelis” are from there and have a right to be there, which is not the case. Not having the right doesn’t mean you can’t have the privilege, but you need to be able to live in a place which has preexisting culture, customs, and norms which you won’t necessarily have a say in. This is what immigration entails everywhere and should be no different for Europeans and Americans who decide to immigrate to Palestine.
I believe this is more or less what he means and wants. There are many recent and obviously unjust scenarios of Israeli settlers having stolen land/homes from living Palestinian families. These wrongs should be righted as a prerequisite of any long-term solution. Vijay argues that settler-colonialism does not really capture the complexity of Israel and also does not afford new insight not offered by an imperialist framework.
The last part is, I believe, a miss on his part. The settler nature of the ideology adds specific variables which are unaccounted for in the imperialist framework