Alan Brech 

The Emperor's New Clothes:  Pointing Out Israel's Naked Colonialism

	The Palestinian-Israeli conflict poses a problem for left-wing Western
intellectuals because standard categories of analysisrich and poor, labor and
capital, center and peripherydo not help explain the overall conflict.  Nor do
they help explain the slavish support of the worlds biggest superpower for the
worlds most isolated and economically dependent nation.  It is argued here that
colonialism, which preceded capitalism historically, and is essentially about
real estate, focuses the conflict into something politically understandable by
the masses.  As in America, as in Palestine, lands-grabbed-versus-lands- lost
tells the real story that colonialism tries to hide from itself by citing
violence against its illegal settlers.  The modern left has failed to resist the
same colonialist deceptions and mystifications regarding the Palestinians that
were used 150 years ago against the supposedly violent, lawless, and
ungovernable American Indians.