Professor relates history of Zionist movement

To the Editors:

I write to provide some historical perspective on the Zionist movement, settler-colonialism and racism. This intervention is motivated by the Zionism=Racism slogan that appeared around campus and has produced accusations of anti-Semitism (because anti-Zionism is assumed to be equivalent to anti-Jewish racism). The slogan clearly does not fully capture the Zionist movement or its histories and debates. Nor does it address the range of motivations and beliefs of the movement’s adherents. But Zionism is certainly a racialized settler-colonial project. For very important strategic reasons, Zionist movement organizations and the advocates of Zionism have historically actively attempted to elide the differences between Jewishness and Zionism, as well as the differences between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The success of the Zionist project, discursively and materially, has required such elisions since at least the mid-20th century. Indeed, anti-Zionists or critical Zionists who are Jewish have often been accused of being “self-hating” or traitors to their community based on this equation. This is not atypical of the policing and disciplining that occurs within many types of communities (nationalist, identity, racial, religious, sexual, gender, etc.). While it may “secure” in some ways the boundaries of a given community, it frequently works to limit the range of critical discussion, thought and future imaginings. An even more frequent accusation, more easily targeted at non-Jews, is that anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism. The discussion below is designed to challenge such an equation. It is certainly not intended in any way to deny the existence of anti-Jewish racism, or to defend it.
Let me begin with the concept of race by noting that racial differences are not “real” in any foundational or essentialist manner. Racism, on the other hand, is very real at ideological, discursive, and material levels and often operates in complex ways. Racism is based on social racializing projects (Omi & Winant 1986) that use certain types of difference (ethnic, phenotypical, religious, skin color, language, etc.) as bases for unequally distributing economic, political, cultural, and other resources. What any given racial project looks like needs to be determined historically and contextually. Moreover, racism is difficult to understand as a “stand alone” since there are other ideological, discursive and material bases for creating social hierarchies (gender, sexuality, class, national origin, migrant status, etc.) and these intersect in ways that produce complicated experiences of inequality (and often identities).
Zionism is a political nationalist movement formally founded by Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) in 1896 with the publication of Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). In it, Herzl argued that the only solution to the anti-Semitism that exists “wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers” was the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in either “Palestine or Argentine” (Laqueur & Rubin 1984, 6, 11). Acutely aware of popular and state European and Russian anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jewish communities — evidenced most dramatically by a number of pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — he contended that “The governments of all countries, scourged by anti-Semitism, will serve their own interests [FH: of getting rid of Jewish populations], in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want” (Mendes-Flohr & Reinharz 1980, 424). By arguing for Jewish nationalism, Herzl essentially agreed with European anti-Semites that “the European Jews were an alien element, unassimilated for the most part and in the long run inassimilable” (Rodinson 1968, 13). Importantly, there was much disagreement among Jews and Jewish leaders as to whether a Zionist state in Palestine was the appropriate response to anti-Semitism (Mendes-Flohr & Reinharz 1980; Rodinson 1968, 12-14; Sachar 1977). And within Zionism, there were a number of differences over strategy and ideology from its inception — even “genuinely contradictory trends” (Flapan 1979, 97) — differences that played out in various ways throughout the 20th century.
By 1897, Palestine (and not Argentina) became the Zionist Movement’s focus for the establishment of this Jewish state, primarily because of its emotional mobilizational power for Jews living in Europe and Russia. The first official statement of Zionist movement intent, the Basel Declaration adopted by the Zionist Congress in August 1897, stated that “The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law” (in Laqueur & Rubin 1984, 11-12). Zionist leaders realized that asking Jews to leave their homes in order to undertake the difficult task of colonization would be more effective if the focus were Palestine, where there was a “shared memory of national sovereignty lost two thousand years before...” (Flapan 1987, 17-18).
Edward Said also points to the importance of the geographic choice in terms of the European audience to which the Zionist movement made its case: “In addition to being a place where there existed a spiritual bond in the form of a covenant between God and the Jews, Palestine had the further advantage of being [perceived by Europeans, both Jewish and non-Jewish as] a backward province in an even more backward [Ottoman] empire” (Said 1979, 23-24). Thus, at the same time that Zionists acknowledged European anti-Semitism, they argued for their civilizational proximity to Europeans and distanced themselves from the “orient” (Ella Shohat’s work addresses the implications of this for Arab or Mizrahi Jews after the establishment of Israel). In a speech at a Zionist meeting in Paris in 1914, Chaim Weizmann made the racialized aspects of such shared assumptions clear: “Maybe England will chance upon an empty piece of land in need of a white population, and perhaps the Jews will happen to be these whites – three cheers for the new match!” (Hertzberg 1959, 576). The Jews in Palestine, Theodor Herzl had argued in The Jewish State, would “[f]or Europe...constitute part of the wall of defense against Asia; we would serve as an outpost of civilization against barbarism. As a neutral state we would remain in contact with all of Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence” (Zohn trans. 1973, 52).
As early as 1881, Zionist Peretz Smolenskin had similarly argued that had “Eretz Israel” (biblical greater Israel) remained in the hand of the Jews, it “would long since have become a center of commerce linking Europe with Asia and Africa” (Hertzberg 1959, 153). The civilizing project was thus also economic and explicitly linked to European imperialism. As Herzl put it in an 1899 speech, while the Turks were “really excellent people and have the best qualities,” they were incapable of undertaking “the modern development and cultivation of the land” (Zohn trans. 1975, 73). It was the Zionists, he stated, who would “rapidly bring civilization to it [the land we need] – railroads, telegraphs, telephones, factories, machines, and above all those social reforms which every civilized person today desires as ardently as he desires rapid transportation, the cultivation of the arts and sciences, and the comforts of life” (Zohn trans. 1973, 155).
The lands of Palestine in these Zionist narratives were often represented as either “barren” and made to flower, or a “wilderness” made productive, by modern Jewish settlers. Indeed, the Zionist taming (cultivation) of what was represented as an insolent, arid, rocky land through tenacity and modern scientific techniques became an important part of the Israeli foundational myth. Herzl published the following in the newspaper Die Welt in 1898: “[W]here human hands have been allowed to be active, an inexhaustible nature has cheerfully helped them to bring forth, as if by magic [and with the greatest speed], a profusion of products. The results achieved by our settlers, particularly those who are standing on their own two feet, are nothing short of amazing. One can see the surrounding rocky, parched area which one such stalwart fellow entered a few years ago – but he has coaxed from that soil an orange grove or a lush vineyard.... His well-kept vineyard is still surrounded by a desert, but industrious people could turn that desert, too, into a garden” (Zohn trans. 1975, 33-34).
Similarly, in the words of American Zionist Louis Brandeis in 1915: “This land, treeless a generation ago, supposed to be sterile and hopelessly arid, has been shown to have been treeless and sterile because of man’s misrule. It has been shown to be capable of becoming again a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’” (Hertzberg 1959, 519). Historian Mark LeVine discusses the ironies of British and Zionist colonial representations of indigenous Arabs as “backward:” “[W]hen Zionists like Arthur Ruppin pointed out that the Arabs ‘could not dream of [draining the] Basin,’ or when Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill commented that ‘left to themselves the Arabs would never in 1,000 years take effective steps toward the irrigation and electrification of Palestine,’ we must realize that the reason for this was...because they were specifically prevented from doing so, [by concessions that the British granted exclusively to the Zionists during the British Mandate period]” (LeVine 1995, 109).
These representations of the indigenous Palestinian population as primitive (if existing at all), were consistent with the ideological philosophy legitimating European colonialism: that “[e]very territory situated outside that world [Europe] was considered empty — not of inhabitants of course, but constituting a kind of cultural vacuum, and therefore suitable for colonization” (Rodinson 1968, 14).
The State of Israel was declared by the Zionist movement on May 14, 1948, on the same day the British formally declared an end to their colonial mandate over Palestine. On May 15, 1948, 20,000 to 25,000 troops, primarily from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, were dispatched to aid the Arab Liberation Army that had been created by Palestinians. In addition to being too little, too late, the effort was compromised by inter-Arab competitions, rivalries and expansionist desires (Wilson 1987), and a general underestimation of Zionist forces (Khouri 1985, 69-81). By the end of the war in 1949, more than 770,000 of a total of 1.4 million Palestinians (J. Abu-Lughod 1987) had either fled in terror or been expelled from areas taken over by the Zionist forces. These refugees were not allowed to return, as required by the international laws of war and United Nations S.C. Resolution 194. In addition, 20 cities and 418 of approximately 518 Palestinian villages were destroyed and/or depopulated of Palestinians (W. Khalidi 1992, xxxii). In the 1948-49 war, Zionist forces captured most of historic Palestine, including west Jerusalem, where Arab land ownership was much more significant than it was in east Jerusalem, while Egyptian troops held onto the Gaza Strip, and Jordanian forces captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The 1967 war led to more expulsions and refugees (over 300,000) and ended with the Israeli military occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine – the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem.
Because Israel, like the Zionist movement, is premised on the Jewishness of the national homeland in Palestine, the focus has always been, as Rhoda Kanaaneh argues, “maximizing the number of Jews in Palestine in relation to non-Jews through immigration, displacement of Palestinians, and selective pronatalism” (2002, p. 28). This is true within the borders of June 4, 1967 Israel, as well as in the Israeli-Occupied Territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem. While all nationalisms, particularly biologically or culturally exclusivist nationalisms, are concerned with demographic questions (and, of course, the sexual, procreative, and marital practices of the members of such communities), a racialized concern with demography is a particular necessity for Zionism since it is a Jewish settler-colonial project (Kanaaneh 2002, 28). Projects of “de-Arabization” and “Judaization” are thus ubiquitous in 20th century Zionist history in Palestine, and they continue today in the state of Israel and the Occupied Territories. The goal of Palestinian displacement has historically been and continues to be largely achieved through the purchase, appropriation and occupation of land and other property (Kanaaneh 2002, 30-31). Most of this land has historically been held “in trust” for Jewish people by Zionist organizations such as the Jewish National Fund, and Jews were prohibited from reselling land to non-Jews (Kanaaneh 2002, 30-34). A recent Israeli High Court decision in which the plaintiff was a Palestinian from Israel has challenged this historic restriction.
Israel is conceptualized and structured as a nation for all Jews. In this regard, Israel’s Law of Return (1950) allows all Jews throughout the world the right to Israeli citizenship and nationality. At the same time, the Israeli Nationality Law (1952) denies citizenship to “non-Jews,” unless they were living in Israel on or after July 14, 1952, or can prove they were born to a parent who fulfills this condition. The latter restriction is designed to exclude Palestinian refugees who were displaced by war before this date. These racialized demographic concerns are captured in recent Israeli state efforts to stop family reunification between Palestinians in pre-June 1967 Israel who marry Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, since it entails granting Israeli citizenship to non-Jewish Palestinians.
To end, Zionism is a settler-colonial project whose success has historically required the dispossession and subordination (or disappearance) of the indigenous non-Jewish population. While all renditions of history are subjective and informed by our relationship to the events under analysis, not acknowledging the issues raised above or, worse, insisting on silencing them, reinforces the often superficial and significantly distorted understandings of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that are hegemonic in the U.S. Maybe more importantly, selective engagement makes it very unlikely that solutions can be fashioned that address the needs and aspirations of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis with a modicum of fairness.
I encourage Oberlin College students to dig more deeply (by undertaking independent research, taking courses and thinking critically) than the current framework of debate allows to explore their own questions and consider solutions. Complete citations for the works referenced above are available upon request and some of the material is adapted from two of my own research works (Hasso 1997, Hasso 2000).

—Frances Hasso
Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Sociology