Colonial countries used it freely in the 1880s.

By the 1950s it was recognised as a slur

* 1955 Wall St. Jrnl. 30 Dec. 1/3 The Communist Party Boss: Again accused the West of colonialist aims.

* 1958 Manch. Guardian Weekly 12 June 8/3 Mr. Bandaranaike's Government uses methods which it would denounce as ‘colonialist’ if they were employed by others.

* 1959 ‘M. Derby’ Tigress ii. 85 ‘And you were ― ?’ ‘A colonialist, Madam. I exploited these unhappy natives to make a fortune for myself.‥ We colonialists thought only of private gain.’

examples taken from full O.E.D entry

Golda Meir told explicitly to NOT send poor, old, sick, and Holocaust survivors(!!!))

Because zionists wanted only healthy strong and ideologically zionist people to settle the land.

Zionists even signed agreement with Adolf Hitler (at the time when entire world boycotted Nazi regime) and opened the doors for rich German jews to escape Germany (~40k people across Germany), while completely throwing all other millions of jews to the holocaust

1. https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/1844464179287355571

2. https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story35...

Just because it wasn't used as pejorative doesn't mean that the meaning then is something we today should consider it not a problem. What they meant was the same thing we do now. Its just that we now consider it something not all that nice.