[News] Israel has distilled western colonial war techniques, but fails to quell resistance
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Jul 14 20:37:36 EDT 2025
middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-genocidal-war-draws-on-western-colonial-techniques>
Israel has distilled western colonial war techniques, but fails to
quell resistance
Mathieu Rigouste
July 14, 2025
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Palestine <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> is bearing
the brunt of the imperial boomerang: in globalised capitalism, regimes
of domination adapt to those who resist them by circulating techniques
of war, surveillance and repression between colonial and metropolitan
battlefields.
Although this imperial mechanism has propelled the colonisation of
Palestine from the beginning, it has failed to extinguish the "arts of
resistance
<https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300056693/domination-and-the-arts-of-resistance/>".
Since the start of the British
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uk> Mandate in Palestine,
colonial domination has suffered regular counterattacks. To maintain its
hold, the occupier <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/occupation>
articulated methods of counterinsurgency - that is, war within and
against populations - tested in the empire and throughout the history of
western colonisation.
This dynamic gained momentum in the face of the Arab Revolt, the
Palestinian uprising
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-strike-history-explained-revolt>
against the British Mandate and its support for Zionism that took place
from 1936 to 1939.
Officer Charles Tegart, who led the counter-guerrilla operations, had
made a career in intelligence in Northern Ireland during the Irish War
of Independence before heading the Calcutta police, where he was
notorious for the widespread <https://find.uoc.ac.in/Record/347558/TOC>
the use of torture against separatists.
In Palestine, where he was sent in 1937, he ordered the building of
numerous fortified police stations, a border fence and torture centres.
A vast system of registration, mass arrests and administrative
detention was combined with torture, collective punishment,
deportations and summary executions
Another senior office in Mandate Palestine was General Orde Wingate,
originally from a family of British settlers in India.
He served in Sudan <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/sudan>
before being dispatched to Palestine, where he developed the "Special
Night Squads". These police commandos made up of Jewish settlers were
tasked with punitive expeditions against Palestinian villages. These
paramilitary militias helped found the Israeli
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> army.
French <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/france> colonial
expertise also played an important role. Like in Haiti, where it was
used to re-establish slavery in the early 19^th century, paramilitary
units and dogs were used to hunt insurgents. Modelled
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/britains-pacification-of-palestine/67969BBBDFB9CF57200581CBB61C4427>
on French colonial methods in Syria
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/syria> and Algeria
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/algeria>, a vast system of
registration, mass arrests and administrative detention was combined
with torture, collective punishment, deportations and summary executions.
All of these techniques profoundly influenced the early Israeli military
and security apparatus, but none was sufficient to quell the sumud, the
spirit of Palestinian resistance.
A global and permanent war against Palestinians
The Israeli state was concretely forged on the basis of a colonial war
involving the destruction of numerous villages, mass expulsions and
massacres in the classic style of western colonisation.
Facing persistent indigenous resistance like his European predecessors,
the Israeli officer of the Carmeli Brigade tasked with "de-Arabising"
Haifa in August 1948 seized on the genocidal dynamic. He ordered
<https://oneworld-publications.com/work/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine/>:
"Kill any Arab you encounter; torch all inflammable objects and force
doors open with explosives." Palestinian refugees were bombarded with
mortars.
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-why-frantz-fanons-words-are-more-relevant-today-ever>
War on Gaza: Why Frantz Fanon's words are more relevant today than ever
Faced with the reorganisation of the rebellion, Israeli
counterinsurgency methods continued to evolve through regular exchanges
with western colonial powers.
In January 1960, two Israeli generals, Yitshak Rabin and Chaim Hersog,
future prime minister and president respectively, observed French
techniques of "counter-revolutionary warfare" in Algeria: separation
walls, population displacement and mass internment, widespread torture,
rape and enforced disappearances, massacres by bombing and chemical
weapons, all combined with industrial propaganda following a dynamic of
general militarisation of society.
This savoir-faire similarly failed to break the determination of the
Algerian people, but it has continued to resonate through the methodical
crushing of Palestinian lives. In 1967, during the so-called Six Day
War, patrols sent to Gaza were trained to throw grenades into homes
before entering them. Soldiers were ordered to shoot and kill any
civilian who resisted the raids.
Mechanisms of extreme violence also governed the invasion of Lebanon
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> in 1982 and the war
launched in 2002 against the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Intifada. During
Operation Defensive Shield, the military-police lockdown of the West
Bank city of Jenin likewise failed to overcome the rebellion.
These methods are taught to security forces around the world and
thereby contribute to updating global counterinsurgency
It served however as a model for the new imperial wars in Iraq
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iraq> and Afghanistan
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/afghanistan>, and for urban
security planning
<https://www.versobooks.com/products/2128-cities-under-siege?srsltid=AfmBOopvva2XVUW-RgPsBGilCvMAiUpdfCoIkC--6x6qrVUt_zlb46PJ>
in the world's major cities.
Mass racial internment has also structured the global history of
counter-insurgency since the first concentration camps created by Spain
in Cuba at the end of the 19^th century or those established by Germany
to intern the Herero and Nama people in Namibia as part of the first
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/11/6/reckoning-with-genocide-in-namibia>
genocide
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/meaning-definition-what-genocide-israel-gaza>
of the 20^th century.
Israel has seized
<https://orientxxi.info/lu-vu-entendu/l-incarceration-des-palestiniens-cle-de-la-colonisation-israelienne,4774>
on it as a "social engineering" technique aimed at emptying the "human
terrain" and reformatting the inmates' personalities. These principles
guide the arbitrary, sometimes indefinite, incarceration of thousands of
Palestinians and the transformation of Gaza into an open-air
concentration camp.
Nevertheless, Palestinian resistance perseveres and continually
reorganises itself beyond the walls.
A laboratory for counter-insurgency
As early as 2010, researcher Laleh Khalili described
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/abs/location-of-palestine-in-global-counterinsurgencies/0E9FF0406FA3781CBF06D129CD8B0632>
Palestine as "an archetypal laboratory and a crucial node of global
counterinsurgencies". Researcher Jeff Halper, for his part, sees
<https://www.plutobooks.com/9781849649735/war-against-the-people/>
Israel as a model of "security state" based on a form of permanent
counterinsurgency. In this framework, deploying extreme violence against
civilians constitutes a rationalised doctrine.
For example, Israel recommends shooting in the head to kill
(shoot-to-kill policy), as well as the principle of "escalation
dominance" that justifies the intentional use of disproportionate force
to subdue the enemy. These techniques are integrated into a concept
known as "cumulative deterrence" that advocates the systematic
conjunction of violent treatments.
The war against the people has caused human carnage while largely
benefiting the military-security industries. However, it has failed
to eradicate the spirit of liberation of the oppressed
These methods are taught to security forces around the world and thereby
contribute to updating global counterinsurgency.
They constitute commodities valued in the same way as all the weapons
tested by Israel against the Palestinian people and then labelled
"combat-proven" in the international fairs of war and control. In the
era of security capitalism, the crushing of Palestine constitutes a
global political economy.
Since the counterattack of 7 October 2023, this economy has been
operating at full capacity to benefit a "Greater Israel" plan to
colonise the entire region through the destruction of Gaza
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza> and its inhabitants.
Armed, financed and given impunity by the Western bloc, this phase of
intensified genocidal warfare operates through the systematic bombing of
civilians. This technique, too, is rooted in colonial history, dating
back to 1911 when an Italian plane struck a camp in Libya
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/libya> in the first
<http://www.lesprairiesordinaires.com/le-gouvernement-du-ciel-histoire-globale-des-bombardements-aeacuteriens.html>
aerial bombardment in history.
Israel is innovating by integrating
<https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/>
artificial intelligence technologies to automate, maximise and
accelerate the mass killing of civilian populations. Algorithmic
extermination thus joins the global counterinsurgency repertoire.
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-bread-or-blood-israel-planned-social-collapse-how>
Blood or bread: Surviving Israel’s vicious hunger regime in Gaza
In Gaza, the Israeli state is destroying homes, schools and hospitals,
refugee camps and facilities delivering vital supplies. Humanitarian aid
and access to healthcare are blocked through a strategy known as "food
and resource control" that was used by the United Kingdom in South
Africa during the colonial era and by the United States
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> military in Cuba, the
Philippines and Vietnam.
Israel stands out by weaponising humanitarian aid to massacre
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/execution-site-palestinians-face-death-collecting-food-us-israeli-gaza-aid-points>
starving populations.
Chemical weapons such as white phosphorus and toxic gases that have been
used to make Palestine uninhabitable resonate with the use of mustard
gas by France and Spain against the anti-colonial resistance in the
Moroccan <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/morocco> Rif, as well
as the use of napalm and Agent Orange against the Algerian and
Vietnamese revolutions.
On each of these battlefields, the "war against the people" has caused
human carnage while largely benefiting the military-security industries.
However, it has failed to eradicate the spirit of resistance of the
oppressed.
Following Haiti, Vietnam or Algeria, Palestine embodies what rises up
and holds firm against global counterinsurgency. Across borders, against
the imperial boomerang, its name resonates through international
solidarity, showing the determination of the oppressed to resist in
order to exist and to unite for emancipation.
/The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye./
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