Geopolitical Genesis and Prospect of Zionism
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International Journal of the Humanities Volume 2, Number 2 Article: HC04-0190-2004 Geopolitical Genesis and Prospect of Zionism Mohameden Ould-Mey, Associate Professor of Geography, Department of Geography, Geology and Anthropology, Indiana State University, USA Edited by Tom Nairn and Mary Kalantzis International Journal of the Humanities Volume 2, Number 2 This paper is published at www.Humanities-Journal.com a series imprint of theUniversityPress.com First published in Australia in 2004-2006 by Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd at www.Humanities-Journal.com Selection and editorial matter copyright © Common Ground 2004-2006 Individual papers copyright © individual contributors 2004-2006 All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. ISSN 1447-9508 (Print) ISSN 1447-9559 (Online) The International Journal of the Humanities is a peer-refereed journal published annually. Full papers submitted for publication are refereed by the Associate Editors through an anonymous referee process. Papers presented at the Second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy, 20-23 July 2004. Editors Tom Nairn, The Globalism Institute, RMIT University, Australia. Mary Kalantzis, Dean, Education, Language and Community Services, RMIT University, Melbourne. Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of the Humanities Juliet Mitchell, Cambridge University, UK. Paul James, Globalism Institute, RMIT University, Australia. Krishan Kumar, University of Virginia, USA. David Christian, San Diego State University, California, USA. Giorgos Tsiakalos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University, USA. Mick Dodson, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Stanford Humanities Laboratory, Stanford University, USA. Nikos Papastergiadis, The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, Australia. Bill Kent, Monash Centre, Prato, Italy. Felicity Rawlings-Sanaei, Global Movements Centre, Monash University, Australia. Chris Ziguras, The Globalism Institute, RMIT University, Australia. Eleni Karantzola, Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean, Greece. Bill Cope, Common Ground, Australia. Geopolitical Genesis and Prospect of Zionism Mohameden Ould-Mey, Associate Professor of Geography, Department of Geography, Geology and Anthropology, Indiana State University, USA Abstract Zionism and its supporters take for granted and teach three central claims: (1) Zionism is a “national liberation movement” of the Jews, by the Jews, and for the Jews, (2) the Jews are a special “Semitic people” with an exclusive inheritance “right” over the territory of Palestine and the heritage of the Biblical Israelites, and (3) the State of Israel should and will remain an exclusively “Jewish state.” This paper raises critical questions about these claims and envisions the prospect of a non-Zionist Palestine. Keywords: Zionism, Palestine, Israel, Geopolitics, Jews Zionism1 and its supporters take for granted and Theodor Herzl was the founding father of Zionism, teach three central claims: (1) Zionism is a “national and the publication of Herzl’s booklet, The Jewish liberation movement” of the Jews, by the Jews, and State, in 1896 was the beginning of the history of for the Jews, (2) the Jews are a special “Semitic Zionism (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2004). people” with an exclusive inheritance “right” over This claim is supported by Zionist scholars who the territory of Palestine and the heritage of the continue to deny linkages between Zionism and Biblical Israelites, and (3) the State of Israel should imperialism and present the State of Israel as an and will remain an exclusively “Jewish state.” These anti-imperialist creation (Penslar, 2003:84; Peretz, claims attempt to justify Zionism’s historiography 1997:8). But a closer look at the genesis of Zionism and ideology often by fabricating history, shows that it was not a national liberation movement impersonating others, and fuelling conflict. Drawing of the Jews, by the Jews, and for the Jews. As the upon a multidisciplinary geographic synthesis, this following brief analysis shows (more details are paper raises critical questions about these claims. found in Ould-Mey, 2002), Zionism was much more First, it takes issue with the “national liberation” the child of European geopolitics than European argument, deconstructs its discursive portrayal of Jewry. colonization as liberation, and shows that Zionism Plans to settle European Jews in Palestine were was essentially a child of European geopolitics, not developed by non-Jews long before Theodor Herzl European Jewry. Second, it questions the Semitic was born and were not aimed at the liberation of the claim made by Zionism on behalf of contemporary Jewish Pale of Settlement where the bulk of world Jews by presenting the conclusions of some major Jewry lived for over a millennium. Zionism was critical findings in history, archaeology, linguistics, initially rooted in the Reformation and Counter- and genetics. Third, it envisions the prospect of a Reformation conflict. The Protestants stressed non-Zionist Palestine in light of the great injustice Jerusalem and the Palestinian origins of Christianity committed against the Palestinians and the inability in order to demarcate themselves from the Catholics, of Zionism to solve the Jewish Question, achieve win European Jews on their side, and undermine normalcy for the State of Israel, or erase Palestine Rome and Roman Catholicism. In this context came from the map. German Martin Luther’s Jewish-friendly booklet “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew” (1523) in which The Non-Jewish Origin of Zionism he explained his scheme to “win some Jews to the According to the “national liberation” claim, Vienna Christian faith” and sarcastically begged his “dear (Austria) was the birthplace of Zionism, Hungarian papists” to denounce him “as a Jew” (Luther, 1971:200–1). In this context came also English Oliver Cromwell’s readmission of the Jews to England in 1655, French Napoleon’s Jewish 1 In this paper, the term “Zionism” refers to the international Proclamation of 1799 and the Paris Great Sanhadrin colonial movement designed to make Palestine an extraterritorial of 1807, and the establishment of the London-based nation-state for world Jewry. The term “Zionists” refers to the Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of this movement. It should be Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews noted that critical studies of Zionism have often been tabooed and in 1809. With the Eastern Question (which power considered polemical and/or anti-Semitic in mainstream U.S. will occupy which part of the declining Ottoman media, politics, and culture. For example, the unabridged version of the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the Empire) and Jewish Question (Jews living among English Language (1986 Edition) has gone as far as defining anti- non-Jews), European powers were competing to use Semitism as any “opposition to Zionism” and/or “sympathy with European Jews as a fig-leaf for the colonization of opponents of the State of Israel.” International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 2, Number 2 • www.Humanities-Journal.com Copyright © Common Ground • ISSN 1447-9508 (Print) • ISSN 1447-9559 (Online) Paper presented at the Second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy, 20-23 July 2004 • www.HumanitiesConference.com International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 2, Number 2 the Holy Land in the heart of the decaying Ottoman ancestry for the British and the Jews, before other Empire and the emerging Arab world (Ould-Mey, claimants got on the line. 2002). After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, British The Non-Semitic Origins of policymakers began to adopt Napoleon’s Zionism Contemporary Jews for “the maintenance” of the British Empire The Jewish Semitic claim made by the Zionists in (Crawford, 1838:188–90). For a long time the the name of contemporary Jews is a social construct British had viewed the Catholic and Orthodox drawing largely on the global dissemination of the Christians as archenemies of British Zionism and as Bible, the confusion about the origins of disparagers of the Old Testament in preference of contemporary Jews, and the assumed non-Arabian the New Testament (Crawford, 1838). In this origins of the Israelites. Its construction was rooted context, an anonymous memorandum on the in European geopolitics and the Eastern and Jewish “Restoration” of the Jews was widely circulated by questions, while its racial tone was partly related to British Zionists and was discussed by Lord French-backed Prussian Jew Moses Hess’ obsession Palmerston and Queen Victoria in 1839 (Restoration with “race struggle” and British baptised Jew of the Jews, 1840). By the 1840s the British had Benjamin Disraeli’s popularization of the new racial appointed a vice-consul to Jerusalem and assigned term “Caucasians.” American Jewish writer Lenni Colonel George Gawler to develop the nuts and Brenner argues further that the Zionist claim over bolts of a plan to settle Jews in Palestine. His plan [Semitic] “blood” and [Palestinian] “soil” was was entitled “Tranquillization of Syria and the East rooted in the German National Socialist dogma of through