Sai Englert

Throughout the genocide in Gaza, Israeli workers and unions have supported - and participated in - the Israeli state's exactions. In doing so, it did not deviate from historical precedent. It acted as settler labour movements have throughout the last 150 years, in Palestine and elsewhere. Why have Israeli workers repeatedly been at the forefront of fighting for greater exclusion of Palestinians from the Israeli state and economy - even against their own bourgeoisie? Why do Israeli social and labour movements continue to systematically exclude Palestinians and their demands from their struggles? Why do they continue to support Israel's wars against the Palestinian people? Through historical and contemporary analysis, Englert argues that this repeated pattern is not accidental but structural-rooted in Israel's character as a settler colony where Israeli workers benefit materially from Palestinian dispossession. At the heart of this, he argues, lies the fact that as Israeli workers fight their bosses for better wages and conditions, they simultaneously contest the distribution of the "colonial loot" extracted from Palestinians through land confiscation, resource exploitation, and labour subordination. As genocide unfolds in Gaza, many liberals still hope Israeli labour and social movements might become allies of Palestinian liberation. This book demolishes that illusion.

From the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Apartheid, to First Nations' mass campaigns against pipeline construction in North America, Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of some of the crucial struggles of our age. Rich with their distinct histories and cultures, they are connected by the shared enemy they face: settler colonialism. In this introduction to the subject, Sai Englert highlights the ways in which settler colonialism has and continues to shape our global economic and political order. From the rapacious accumulation of resources, land, and labour, through Indigenous dispossession and genocide, to the development of racism as a form of social control, settler colonialism is deeply connected to many of today's social ills. To understand settler colonialism as an ongoing process, is therefore also to start engaging with contemporary social movements and solidarity campaigns differently. It is to start seeing how distinct struggles for justice and liberation are intertwined.

From the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Apartheid, to First Nations' mass campaigns against pipeline construction in North America, Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of some of the crucial struggles of our age. Rich with their distinct histories and cultures, they are connected by the shared enemy they face: settler colonialism. In this introduction to the subject, Sai Englert highlights the ways in which settler colonialism has and continues to shape our global economic and political order. From the rapacious accumulation of resources, land, and labour, through Indigenous dispossession and genocide, to the development of racism as a form of social control, settler colonialism is deeply connected to many of today's social ills. To understand settler colonialism as an ongoing process, is therefore also to start engaging with contemporary social movements and solidarity campaigns differently. It is to start seeing how distinct struggles for justice and liberation are intertwined.