Colonial ideology can naturalize its own project as primordial law while denying nature elsewhere.

Evidence

Jabotinsky fully recognizes that colonization operates by its own sovereign logic: there is not a “solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population.” Even when “the colonists behaved decently … the native population fought with the same ferocity against the good colonists as against the bad.” Thus, no matter “which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims,” the Palestinians will resist. Yet, the Palestinians do not seem to apprehend what they are facing, and have little understanding of “us” as colonists. In horrific Schmittian language, Jabotinsky reminds the natives and his own readers alike that “Colonisation carried its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab.” It is “unalterable” because it is the highest truth, from which there is no escape. Colonization lies “in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.” Note here that for Jabotinsky nature is not only manipulable but also subject to change, control, and domination. But the only primordial aspect of it is colonization: it is the Law that governs all other laws. Domination is god, and it is in the name of this sovereign god that Jabotinsky seals the fate of the Palestinians. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 391

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The rhetorical machinery here — colonizer as sovereign deciding nature’s fixity for the colonized while reserving mastery over nature for itself — is a dense, layered double-standard that resists one-sentence summary.
• SHARE: Would send to a friend working on settler-colonial theory: Jabotinsky’s explicit admission that no colony was ever established with native consent shows how ‘sovereign logic’ was openly confessed rather than hidden.