Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States: Unmasking Israel's deliberate erasure of Palestine

As Emile Badarin argues in his book Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States: Normalising Dispossession and Elimination in Palestine (IB Tauris, 2025), recognition politics in liberal thought "morphs into a deceptive normative cover for acts of elimination, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and ultimately genocide."

Although completed just a month before Israel's genocide in Gaza began, Emile’s book offers a critical examination of earlier colonial erasure by the West.

It reveals how what is known as 'recognition politics', shaped by the coloniser and endorsed by liberal thought, ultimately serves to erase and eliminate the colonised. For the colonised, recognition politics becomes a means of breaking free from colonial conditioning and “finding value outside the colonial order.”

That being said, Emile’s central premise is that recognition politics functions to subjugate the colonised population.

“Colonial transformation is a graded phenomenon. And when placed on a continuum, the eliminatory logic of colonialism becomes evident,” the author observes.

He illustrates this with examples of Western colonial destruction of indigenous populations — through the erasure of their languages, cultures, and landscapes — highlighting that at the far end of this spectrum lies genocide and the replacement of indigenous populations with settler-colonists.

Recognition, therefore, is exploited and established by the coloniser. Rather than fostering emancipatory politics, the liberal approach to recognition keeps the connection to colonialism alive. It is the coloniser that determines and imposes the recognition of its own structure.

Israel's obsession with indigenous elimination

Emile identifies three key recognition processes: the international, the internal, and the alienation elimination.

Through recognition, which defines legitimacy and nationhood, the process of eliminating the indigenous population aids the construction of the settler-colonial society. 

The author stresses that Israeli colonialism is not an anomaly when compared to other colonial states. It has been shaped in the same way as earlier imperial projects that formed settler-colonies elsewhere.

For example, religion was used to justify colonial conquest in European settler-colonial projects, leading to the elimination of indigenous populations. This mirrors how Zionism justifies the erasure of the Palestinian people.

As Emile puts it, recognition politics in Israel’s settler-colonial enterprise takes several forms. One significant example is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been used to criminalise anti-colonial resistance.

The IHRA definition, Emile notes, became central to Israel’s recognition politics, where anti-Semitism is used as a means to absolve colonialism and racism, thereby granting recognition and legitimacy to Israel’s colonial existence and violence.

Emile also explores the precedents for Israel’s recognition and the exclusion of Palestinians in the book.

He highlights the early demands of Zionism, including the racism and elimination in the language of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1947 Partition Plan — which Israel had no intention of heeding — the international community’s acceptance of the 1948 Nakba, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) recognition of Israel.

The latter clearly highlights the discrepancy in recognition politics: while the PLO recognised Israel, Israel merely recognised the PLO — not as a Palestinian state, but as a representation of the Palestinian people.

Given that recognition politics serve the coloniser, Palestinian anti-colonial resistance has been framed as anti-Semitic.

Emile discusses the ongoing process of indigenous elimination by settler-colonial entities, noting that it is an ongoing phenomenon, starting with the establishment of the first settler-colonies in Palestine in 1882 and continuing to manifest today, particularly through Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“The indigenous presence entails standing in the way of the settler-colonial state’s progression towards the vanishing endpoint,” Emile writes.

Recognition politics versus anti-colonial resistance

When discussing the early stages of Zionist settler-colonialism, Emile explains how Palestinians refused to participate in liberal recognition politics.

For instance, Palestinians refrained from attending the 1947 meeting of the UN Special Committee, as “taking part,” Emile explains, “would bestow recognition and legitimacy upon the Jewish Agency’s endeavour to partition Palestine.”

This Palestinian stance has often been framed as a rejection of “missed opportunities,” but in reality, Palestinians were distinguishing between recognition politics and their own anti-colonial resistance.

This stance was later overturned when the PLO recognised Israel’s “right to exist” and denounced all forms of anti-colonial resistance.

Emile asserts, “As recognition is unconditional, that is, it does not require Israel to end its occupation/colonisation, it implies an Israeli outright entitlement to an existence undisturbed by any form of Palestinian resistance.”

Colonialism unveiled

For Emile, Israel embodies the Western liberal thought that promotes recognition as justice and equality, while simultaneously colonising, excluding, and eliminating the colonised.

Throughout the book, Emile illustrates how recognition politics in settler-colonial entities normalise dispossession, viewing the colonised population as a means to assert dominance and undermine indigenous sovereignty.

Indigenous recognition, therefore, concerns “non-colonial ways of being,” as Emile exposes the settlers' predetermined tendency to view indigenous people as outsiders, while critiquing the politics of liberal recognition that reinforce the colonisation process rooted in earlier European colonialism in South America.

In contrast to recognition politics, Palestinian resistance — which includes sumud — offers Palestinians a means to build a non-colonial future in a decolonised land.

Emile highlights the role of land in recognition politics, which drives colonial expansion, and its role in anti-colonial resistance for a non-colonial future.

“The form of decolonisation offered by the Eurocentric international order remains inherently colonised, even when it involves the indigenous recovery of land,” Emile states.

As Israel continues to extend the colonial process, the West provides the political support necessary for Israel’s recognition.

On that note, whilst Israel uses genocide to further its recognition, Emile’s book is a timely read which dissects the imperialist politics and rightly shows that the Palestinian struggle is not just against Israel but the prevailing European colonial framework.

Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer, and blogger specialising in the struggle for memory in Chile and Palestine, colonial violence, and the manipulation of international law

Follow her on X: @walzerscent