Colonizers claimed superior minorities descended from Israelites to rule through them.

Evidence

Western Christians, perhaps most acutely British and American Evangelicals, were prone to see traces of the Bible everywhere. As missionaries and others encountered exotic peoples a discourse was generated that potentially served white, Western interests in a variety of ways. One tactic was to single out a particular minority from the mass of “natives,” to argue that this group was in some way connected with the ancient Israelites and to attribute to this minority moral characteristics rather close to the self-image held by the British or the Americans of the time. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 305