Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you
The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
They’re settlers. What they do is violently expel people from their homes in order to claim it for themselves.
Settlers are people who do that.
There’s no need to stop calling them the word that correctly describes what they do.
How about: invader, encroacher, intruder, illegal immigrant, trespasser, violator, infringer or conqueror?
You don’t need to say any of that because they’re already settlers. They’re already all those things because that’s what a settler is.
There is no need for another word.
I don’t think the term settler requires the land already be occupied, though it often is so there is that connotation. But there are better words to describe explicitly the invasion of land.
I know of one example of settlers moving into unoccupied land and that claim is disputed.
If in all but one (possibly) circumstance the situation is the same then is the meaning tainted? No. Of course not. Settlers and settlement violently disrupt and displace the occupants of land in order to claim it for their own.
In the context of Israel, settlers is the best word because Israel is a settler colonial state.
Why do you think a different word is needed?
Because the word has been largely washed of all negative connotations, at least across the minds of the majority of the populace in the U.S.
If you are trying to convey what the word settler means in a dictionary by using it in casual conversation, you are likely to find that it is not carrying the full weight of its intended meaning in the mind(s) of the listener(s).
This makes it a FUNCTIONALLY inadequate word despite being a technically correct one.
Why has the negative connotation of the word settlers been removed among people in the United States?
Why has the negative connotation been removed in the state whose subjugation of other nations literally inspired Hitler?
I’m not saying another is needed necessarily, but that others may be more precise. Colonizers, for example, may be so. Settlers is a superset here, and the only reason it nearly always involves occupied land is because most habitable land is currently inhabited. Imagine that we begin to settle Mars, hypothetically. That would be settling without taking the land others are occupying. So the word is just imprecise.
Settlers is absolutely pinpoint precise. There isn’t a need for a different word to describe what’s going on.
Settlers is not a superset of colonizers.
Hypothetical situations don’t matter. There’s no grand council of English language administration that considers every bizarre possibility and issues proclamations regarding them.
The words settler and colonist in science fiction were chosen to invoke our history and imply the question of weather human expansion beyond earth was right at best and used to sell space trades to the same people buying cowboy trades at worst.
I get that you believe that the term "settle" implies expelling others from a land, and if that were the case, you'd have a point. But I wonder if you've considered consulting a dictionary and the possibility that you're mistaken.
What I'm saying is that "settlers" is a superset of what is happening here, since "settle" doesn't imply anything beyond:
I've no doubt that you'll push back on this and claim the definition in your head is better than those found in dictionaries, but the rest of us are just aware what it means.
I’m sorry, if you start with a dictionary definition you’re required to use the five paragraph format and start each one with a topic sentence.
Surely you aren’t seriously suggesting that because the dictionary doesn’t explain the etymology, nuance and history that you have yourself recognized, said nuance, etymology and history doesn’t exist?
That because the dictionary doesn’t say that settlers violently dispossess people of their homes it isn’t so?
May I see even one example of that from (let’s just keep it short, we don’t care about history here, right?) the last 124 years?
That ought to be easy. One example since 1900 of settlers just happening to come across a place to live without pushing some other population out or disrupting their lives or whatever.
Every place that is currently inhabited was settled at least one time when no others lived there. It really doesn’t matter that you want to set the goalposts somewhere that fits some niche definition you are cultivating. You simply don’t seem to know what the word means.
So no?
It ought to be easy! We’re talking about what words mean to people now, surely there’s an example of what you’re saying in the last 124 years that would reenforce the meaning you claim everyone understands!
Come on! Just one example of settlers bumbling their way into uninhabited land and living peacefully with the people around them in the last one and a quarter century!
In place of the dictionary, I recommend you read the book settlers instead.
So... does history matter here or not? Tough to set those goalposts is a way that isn't paradoxical.
And no, I'm not going to contrive some example within your stringent framework because as far as I know one doesn't exist. But, then I can't think of any examples where humans moved in somewhere without breathable air either, so the presence of breathable air must be included in the definition of settle too, right? Do you realize how foolish your claim sounds. Just to clarify, I'm only asserting that "to settle" doesn't require the taking of others land by definition. I said it does generally involve that because all habitable land is currently inhabited, but that is the only reason.
Binary question, does the term require taking land from others? Really think about that. Just because two things are related, even if inextricably linked, doesn't mean the terms are unified to the same meaning. Just because we all breathe air doesn't mean "to breathe" requires air. In fact, fish breathe quite differently. Eating generally involves chewing, but does the term "eat" necessitate chewing? Surely not, since many animals swallow food whole. Don't some animals like birds, bees, wasps, opportunistic ants "settle" places after previous tenants have moved out of a location?
If a people migrated entirely out of a land, would the next people that made use of the land not be "settling" that land since they weren't taking it? It sure feels to me like that is what you're saying, and if you aren't, then we don't disagree. Settling is about coming to inhabit a place whether or not it is currently inhabited.
It doesn’t matter if you can contrive a situation (which has never happened) where someone is referred to as a settler but doesn’t displace someone else because that has never happened.
If over four hundred years, every time the word settlers is used to describe someone they were part of some project to displace someone else then it doesn’t matter that you can imagine some situation where that doesn’t happen, it means that the word settlers means kicking someone out of their home so you can live there.
I asked you to limit your search for peaceful settlers to 1900+ to make life easier on you since it’s shorter time and there’s lots of sources. If you can find a good example before then I’m open to it. The only thing I can think of is Iceland but that’s contentious because there’s the context of controlling fishing and trade routes even though there weren’t people living there permanently (this consensus is changing still and has changed in my lifetime).
Just for clarity, the word settlers came into use in the early 1600s, so examples of settlers from before then wouldn’t really be relevant since we’re talking about the meaning of the word.
What would convince you that you’re wrong and that the settlers are by definition part of the displacement of some other group? Would it be academic work?
While you're correct, the word is misunderstood by the general public. So it doesn't properly convey its meaning
Words don’t properly convey their own meaning.
People do when they use them.
Rather than lament the way you perceive the present understanding in absolutes, why not start using the word settlers appropriately: preceded a cuss or followed by spitting.
If you think people don’t understand how the word settlers conveys historical meaning then do something about it instead of accepting your own transport to another grammatical space wherein you colonize the meaning and context of other words.
I understand. My point is that, for whatever reason (likely generations of white washed education regarding America's colonial history), people in the US don't view the word "settler" with the contempt it deserves.
Yeah. It’s darkly funny that right after the founding of Israel and the nakba the un went and changed the rules so displaced people have no right of return.
Big “”no one’s gonna know” “they’re gonna know!”” Energy.
I think perhaps the best thing to do to be understood is to continue to refer to them as settlers while people are seeing armed attacks and hate.
Then are the people illegally coming to the US "settlers" or are they still refugees ?
Because I'm confused on the difference with that definition.
How about the founding fathers who expelled Native Americans?
Settlers is an accurate descriptor, the problem is generations of Americans have been taught a white washed version of America's colonial history, so the term doesn't hold the negative connotation that it should.
To me it is more about messaging than accuracy. You can describe them accurately using different terms that average Americans immediately understand as negative.
Settlers. The frontier means 'place we can kill and steal from "them" for land and resources'.
But that doesn't undermine my question about refugees.
Does context matter or not ? Because if it does not matter than the Palestinians fleeing death and destruction could be called settlers, too.
No. People coming to the us and integrating into American culture (even if it’s not recognized by the law) aren’t settlers.
A person wrote a book about this called “settlers”. You can read it.