While a long line of Zionist thinkers have recognized the colonial dimension of the Jewish resettling of the Land of Israel/Palestine, this essay argues that the settler-colonial paradigm in Israel Studies is characterized by a reductionist understanding of modern Jewish history, Israeli society, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead of perpetuating the Cold War narrative of Israel as the “internal Occident” of the Middle East, both Jewish nationalism and Israeli statehood should be studied as integral elements of Middle Eastern state formation. In contrast, the settler-colonial paradigm deserves to be historicized as a crucial element of the intellectual history of Arab nationalism and Jewish anti-nationalism.