What is meant by colonialism when discussing Israel/Palestine?

[The Magistrate]

2. It's A Sort Of Fundamentalist Attachment, Sir

To propaganda lines current in the Cold War sixties, when Israel was essentially a pre-positioned NATO force in the Near East, and as such in poor odor with domestic leftists. It was complicated by a falling out between Jews active in the Civil Rights movement and rising Black Power types.

The general modern meaning of colonialism is a circumstance where one country exercises control of another's political and economic life, in order to directly benefit the ruling country's economic and political power. This is a very poor fit with the situation of Israel, now or at any other point in its history.

There is an older meaning of the term colony, defining it as the seizure of land to settle a polity's excess population, on the backs or the graves of the original population. This is a bit closer, but it also describes the circumstances of most every country in the world, if one bothers going far enough back.

Basically, at this point it's just a term of abuse, stripped of any meaning save the conveyance of the speaker's distaste for the party the epithet is directed at.