In recent essays, I introduced two tools that have proven remarkably effective at slicing through political narratives masquerading as “theory.”
The first is the falsifiability audit, a razor-sharp test that simply asks: Does a theory depend on assumptions that can be disproven? And if those assumptions are false, does the theory collapse?
(Falsifiability definition here.)
This is the method I used to demonstrate that the “Gaza genocide” accusation is not only false, but logically impossible once one identifies that one of a triad of load-bearing assumptions must be true for the accusation to be possible, and none of them hold. It is easy to make grand claims — it is much harder to survive a falsifiability audit.
The second tool is a distinction I drew last week between two competing models of truth in academia: Correspondence truth, used most often in hard sciences, where statements must match reality, and Coherence truth, usually seen in social sciences, where statements need only fit into an internally consistent narrative to be considered true. My argument was that much of modern academic theory has abandoned correspondence entirely and functions instead as a coherence machine. A theory survives not because it is true, but because it can endlessly reinterpret facts so they remain congruent with the internal story.
These two tools — falsifiability and coherence-testing — turn out to be extraordinarily effective when applied to perhaps the trendiest theory around: settler colonialism theory (SC).
In this article, I use both methods to demonstrate two related but distinct points:
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Israel does not satisfy the defining assumptions of settler colonialism, and therefore SC cannot be applied to Israel.
This is a falsifiability failure.
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Settler colonialism theory itself becomes incoherent when tested against real history, because it continually absorbs contradictory evidence rather than correspond to reality.
This is a coherence failure.
We will demonstrate that settler colonialism fails at the applied level and at the theoretical level.
It is not an analytic framework. It is a narrative.
PART I: Israel Fails the Falsifiability Audit — Settler Colonial Theory Cannot Apply
An analysis of academic papers finds that the number that argue that Israel is a settler-colonialist state outnumber those that argue the opposite by about 100-1 (and those that assume Israel's settler colonialism as fact dwarf these numbers.) But academic consensus does not equate to truth.
Settler colonialism has several load-bearing assumptions, both explicit and implicit. These are not optional. They define the theory. If even one is false in a given case, the application collapses.
Nearly all of them fail when applied to Israel within settler colonialism's own framework.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of the core assumptions and the corresponding disproofs.
1. Territorial Primacy Assumption — Settlers come for land as a resource
Settler colonialism presumes the settler group seeks territory for generic reasons: land, extraction, agriculture, strategic depth. But Zionism is unique in world history: Jews rejected alternative homelands like Uganda that have expansive areas to use (and exploit, under SC's model), and instead insisted on a tiny piece of land, much of it desert, where they have religious, historical and cultural ties.
Their motivation was identity, not acquisition. This alone disqualifies Israel from the model.
2. Non-Indigenous Settler Assumption — Settlers must come from outside with no ancestral ties
Jews view themselves as indigenous to the land of Israel. They have had a continuous physical presence, unbroken ritual and legal memory, linguistic, cultural, and genetic continuity and a documented history of forced exile and repeated attempts to return.
This collapses the core settler/native binary that settler colonialist theory requires.
3. Eliminatory Structure Assumption — Settlers must seek to erase or replace natives
Early Zionist writings, from Herzl to Ahad Ha’am, explicitly envision Arab-Jewish cooperation. Land was purchased, not seized. Arabs remained, grew, gained citizenship, representation, and full civil rights.
The prominent forms of Zionism never were eliminatory ideologies. They emphasized more Jews entering, not Arabs being expelled or eliminated.
This falsifies another load-bearing assumption of settler colonialism.
4. Racial Hierarchy Assumption — Settler identity must be racially supremacist
Israel is the least plausible racial project in modern history. The state absorbed Jews from Yemen, Morocco, Syria, Persia, and more recently Ethiopia and India.
The idea that Israel rests on a racial hierarchy is contradicted by Israel’s actual demographic composition and civic norms.
One can argue that settler colonialism is not really racially based, but its centering of capitalism as a key component of the settlers' incentive appears to be directed at European settlers more than any other kind.
5. Assimilation-as-Destruction Assumption — Native identity must be dissolved
Arabs in Israel speak their language, maintain their religion, run their schools, hold political office, operate independent media and maintain distinct cultural identities. The Israel Museum has major exhibits on Islamic and Christian Arab history in the land. Muslim archaeological sites are unearthed and preserved. Arabic is on highway signs, stamps and currency. Any attempts to explain this away veers into conspiracy theory.
No cultural elimination has occurred. Israel does not satisfy this assumption either.
6. Clear Native/Settler Boundary Assumption — Settler and native must be distinct categories
Significant numbers of Arabs migrated into Palestine during the late Ottoman and Mandate periods for economic opportunity, complicating the native/settler binary. Are they "settlers" under this model?
Jews were the majority of Jerusalem residents decades before modern Zionism emerged. Are they "natives" who were being eliminated by the settlers?
Reality does not produce the neat binaries the theory requires.
7. Invasion-as-Event Assumption — Settlement must occur through seizure or conquest
Most Zionist land was purchased legally from private owners. There was no invasion, no imperial metropole, no seizure campaign. The mechanism is incompatible with the theory’s model which is based on the concept of invasion.
Under the falsifiability audit, if a theory requires certain assumptions and those assumptions are false, the theory cannot be applied. As we have seen, many if not most of settler colonialism's load bearing assumptions do not fit Israel.
Therefore the classification is not merely mistaken. By settler colonialism's own rules, Israel fails its criteria.
We have now falsified nearly every defining assumption of settler colonialism as applied to Israel. No matter how many academic papers argue otherwise, if they cannot answer these straightforward points, they are simply wrong.
PART II: Settler Colonialism Theory Fails the Coherence Test — It No Longer Corresponds to Reality
A good theory fits reality. A bad theory retrofits reality. Whenever a critic points out that settler colonialism doesn't explain something real, it explains away the new fact as fitting the theory.
This means that settler colonialism is unfalsifiable - and that makes it essentially a conspiracy theory.
1. The Central Claim — “Invasion is a structure, not an event” — Is Empirically False
Patrick Wolfe’s famous line is the entire theory in seven words. If invasion is permanently structural, then indigenous empowerment within that model should be impossible.
But it is happening everywhere.
In Canada, indigenous sovereignty is expanding, land is being returned, and cultural revival is celebrated. In Australia, native title is recognized, indigenous parliamentary bodies exist and the government apologizes for past harm. In New Zealand there is shared governance, native language revival and treaty settlements.
If “invasion is a structure,” then these developments cannot occur. But they do. Therefore the core claim is false, which means that the theory collapses.
2. To Survive, the Theory Reinterprets Contradictions as Confirmation
Instead of accepting the failure, settler colonialism theorists resort to “coherence mode." Empowerment becomes “co-optation, ” sovereignty becomes “managed sovereignty," cultural revival becomes “neoliberal containment,” legal rights become “symbolic gestures, ” reconciliation becomes “masking the structure.”
This is exactly what a coherence-based worldview does: no evidence counts against the theory.
The colonial history of Latin America simply does not fit the settler-colonial model. European colonists intermarried extensively, adopted indigenous languages and customs, and created hybrid societies in which indigenous peoples were incorporated - often coercively, but not eliminated. This is the opposite of the rigid settler-native binary assumed by settler colonial theory. Yet SC theorists retroactively redefine cultural blending and mestizaje as forms of “elimination” so they can force the entire continent into a framework that was never designed for it.
That move exposes the theory’s core weakness: it survives not by describing reality, but by reshaping reality to preserve the theory.
SC advocates say that every counter-example is really part of a larger pattern of continued invasion, or that they are examples of native pushback and not settler accommodation. But no matter what happens, they cling to the theory over reality. The theory is unfalsifiable - no matter what the facts are.
A theory that cannot be wrong is not a theory. It is an ideology.
3. The Capitalism Criterion Reveals an Anti-European Bias, Not an Analytic Category
Settler colonialism claims to be universal but restricts itself to post-1492 European contexts. The capitalism requirement excludes the Arab conquest of the Levant, Chinese settlement of Tibet and Xinjiang, Mongol replacement systems, African and indigenous American expansions, and Ottoman demographic restructuring.
These are functionally identical phenomena. There is nothing magic about "capitalism" that changes the either the settlers' actions or the effect on the natives. These other examples are excluded only because the theory’s purpose is political, not descriptive.
This is why the capitalism criterion works like a proxy variable: a way to smuggle an anti-European lens into a theory without admitting it.
4. Real Migration Is Too Complex for Settler Colonialism’s Binary Boxes
Human history includes refugees, persecuted minorities, voluntary migrants, shifting demographics, hybrid cultures, assimilation, resistance, revival, conquest and reversal. The Puritans came to America not to exploit land but to escape religious persecution. White and non-white people migrated to America in the 19th century for many reasons, and some themselves were discriminated against in the New World.
Settler colonialism cannot handle this complexity. It needs binaries - settler vs. native, dominator vs. dominated - that history simply does not obey.
5. Jewish History Further Exposes the Theory’s Contradictions
I have posited in the past that Jews are almost invariably a factor that confounds simplistic philosophies and theories. It is true here as well.
Jewish migration to America, Canada, and Australia was involuntary (fleeing persecution), non-imperial, non-capitalist, largely urban (not land-based,) and itself the target of racial and social exclusion.
Under SC logic, they are "white settlers." But this is absurd and, frankly, an antisemitic classification.
Thus SC must either classify Jews fleeing persecution as settlers, or invent an exception to avoid that conclusion which is intellectually dishonest.
Either way, the theory cannot explain reality.
Conclusion
Using the falsifiability audit and the coherence test yields two clear, unavoidable conclusions: Israel is not settler colonialist under the settler colonialist framework, and the framework itself cannot pass the coherence and falsifiability audits.
Its core prediction is false. Its resistance to disproof is ideological. Its criteria selectively shield certain histories and target others. It survives through coherence with progressive thinking, not correspondence to reality.
Social sciences often adopt the vocabulary of falsification and rigor, but resist their discipline. Settler colonialism theory is a perfect example: when subjected to scientific standards, it collapses, and then tries to rewrite reality to save itself.
A theory that cannot describe reality, that has no predictive power and cannot survive falsification has no place in serious analysis.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
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