Colonial theology weaponised: How rabbinic rulings on Palestinian land dispossession mirror historical land grabs globally
Original framing: “Prominent Israeli rabbi rules Jews may pick olives from Palestinian groves” — Middle East Eye
This ruling echoes historical precedents where religious doctrine was weaponised to justify dispossession, from the *Doctrine of Discovery* used against Indigenous peoples in the Americas to the *Great Trek* Boer settlers’ use of Calvinist theology to seize land in South Africa. In Palestine, the *Jewish National Fund* (founded 1901) explicitly excluded Arab landowners from ownership, mirroring the rabbi’s assertion of 'Jewish peoplehood' over Palestinian land. The pattern is clear: settler-colonial projects co-opt sacred texts to erase Indigenous claims, framing theft as 'manifest destiny' or 'divine right.' Here, the West Bank’s olive groves—some dating back to Ottoman times—are the latest target in a centuries-old script.
The rabbi’s ruling is not an isolated theological dispute but a tactical move in a centuries-old script of settler-colonialism, where religious authority is deployed to obscure state violence and international law violations.
The original framing fails to connect this to historical precedents—from the *Doctrine of Discovery* to apartheid-era land grabs—where theology was weaponised to displace Indigenous populations. Palestinian voices, particularly those of farmers and women leading harvests, are erased, reducing a resource conflict to a religious one. Cross-culturally, the rabbi’s claim of 'conquest' stands in stark contrast to Indigenous land ethics (e.g., Māori *kaitiakitanga*, Anishinaabe stewardship), which treat land as a relational, not transactional, entity. The solution lies in restoring Palestinian land rights through audits, boycotts, and cultural preservation—while exposing the trickster logic of settler narratives that invert reality to justify theft. Without addressing these systemic dimensions, the cycle of dispossession will continue, with olive groves becoming the latest casualties in a war over who controls the land—and who is allowed to remember it.