There were compelling reasons for European colonialism, created largely in the 19th century, and peaking in the early 20th. Most of them had to do with money: Smallish European countries exploited much larger tracts of territories elsewhere, taking out minerals, selling in their own industrial products, exploiting cheap labor where this made sense, and eventually recruiting large numbers of natives to fight in the European wars of the 20th century. Of course it was more complex, but I think that's a reasonable synopsis. The British, by the way, at least said they were bringing enlightened modernity to benighted primitives, so they had a moral justification; to an extent, this was demonstrably true. The rest of the European colonials don't seem much to have troubled themselves.
Whenever a post-colonial-guilt-ridden-hate-infused critic of Israel sets off on one of their rants about Israel's colonialism, it might be a good tactic to calm then down and ask them, quietly, to describe what precisely Israel's colonial goals are. Certainly not exploitation of Palestinian mineral resources, of which there are none? Selling Israeli produce? To the Palestinians? Huh? Exploiting cheap labor: For a while we were indeed doing this, and the level of Palestinian economic quality of life rose dramatically, but that was before the 1990s; nowadays Israelis employ very few Palestinians because of the security complications, and the sole losers are the Palestinians themselves; the Israelis have replaced them with Africans, Asians and East-Europeans. As for the idea of recruiting them for our wars, well....
Like the British, however, Israel did have the conceit of improving life for the Palestinians. In one case, for example, Israel refurbished the largest hospital in Gaza, and even built an entire second wing, including a large concrete basement.... Yup, this is going exactly where you thought it might be going:
Hamas leaders hiding in basement of Israel-built hospital in Gaza.
takem from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
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