Zionist Exclusivism and Palestinian Responses
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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Kent Academic Repository UNIVERSITY OF KENT SCHOOL OF ENGLISH ‘Bulwark against Asia’: Zionist Exclusivism and Palestinian Responses Submitted for the Degree of Ph.D. in Postcolonial Studies at University of Kent in 2015 by Nora Scholtes CONTENTS Abstract i Acknowledgments ii Abbreviations iii 1 INTRODUCTION: HERZL’S COLONIAL IDEA 1 2 FOUNDATIONS: ZIONIST CONSTRUCTIONS OF JEWISH DIFFERENCE AND SECURITY 40 2.1 ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM 42 2.2 FROM MINORITY TO MAJORITY: A QUESTION OF MIGHT 75 2.3 HOMELAND (IN)SECURITY: ROOTING AND UPROOTING 94 3 ERASURES: REAPPROPRIATING PALESTINIAN HISTORY 105 3.1 HIDDEN HISTORIES I: OTTOMAN PALESTINE 110 3.2 HIDDEN HISTORIES II: ARAB JEWS 136 3.3 REIMAGINING THE LAND AS ONE 166 4 ESCALATIONS: ISRAEL’S WALLING 175 4.1 WALLING OUT: FORTRESS ISRAEL 178 4.2 WALLED IN: OCCUPATION DIARIES 193 CONCLUSION 239 WORKS CITED 245 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY 258 ABSTRACT This thesis offers a consideration of how the ideological foundations of Zionism determine the movement’s exclusive relationship with an outside world that is posited at large and the native Palestinian population specifically. Contesting Israel’s exceptionalist security narrative, it identifies, through an extensive examination of the writings of Theodor Herzl, the overlapping settler colonialist and ethno-nationalist roots of Zionism. In doing so, it contextualises Herzl’s movement as a hegemonic political force that embraced the dominant European discourses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including anti-Semitism. The thesis is also concerned with the ways in which these ideological foundations came to bear on the Palestinian and broader Ottoman contexts. A closer consideration of Ottoman Palestine reveals a hidden history of imperial inclusivity that stands in stark contrast to the Zionist settler colonial model. The thesis explores the effects of the Zionist project on Palestine’s native population, highlighting early reactions to the marginalisation and exclusion suffered, as well as emerging strategies of resistance that locate an alternative, non-nationalist vision for the future of the region in the collective reappropriation of a pre-colonial past. The question is broached about the role that Palestinian literature can play within the context of such reclaiming efforts. More precisely, it debates whether Palestinian life writing emanating from the occupied territories contributes, in its recording of personal history, to the project of re- writing national history in opposition to the attempted Israeli erasure. Finally, by drawing a direct line from original Zionist thought to the politics and policies of the state of Israel today, the thesis suggests an on-going settler colonial structure that has become increasingly visible through the state’s use of spatially restrictive measures in order to finally conclude its settlement project. Israel’s obsessive ‘walling’ is discussed in that context as the physical escalation of Zionism’s founding ideological tenets. Total word count: 99, 926 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I could not have written this thesis without the help and patience of the many kind people around me. First and above all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors Caroline Rooney and Donna Landry whose expertise and encouragement have been a constant source of support throughout my years as a research student. This thesis would not have been possible without the generous financial help I received from the University of Kent through one of its Ph.D. studentships. I would also like to thank the School of English for lending its support to my decision to spend a term abroad at Birzeit University; through this experience, I was able to gain invaluable insights, both academically and personally, into the conditions on the ground in occupied Palestine today. Last but not least, I owe special thanks to family and friends who have supported me all along the way and without whose continued words of motivation and understanding I would not have been able to bring this project to its conclusion. ii ABBREVIATIONS Where I have cited from collected works and diaries, I have given abbreviations as follows. I have also abbreviated some of the core literary texts studied. Full references appear in the Works Cited. CDI-V The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl Volumes I-V (Herzl, Theodor, ed. Raphael Patai) ZWI-II Zionist Writings Volumes I-II (Herzl, Theodor) Anl Altneuland (Old New Land, Filiquarian Publishing) (Herzl, Theodor) DNG Das Neue Ghetto (The New Ghetto) (Herzl, Theodor) iii 1 INTRODUCTION Herzl’s Colonial Idea In his 1896 Der Judenstaat,1 Theodor Herzl laid out his Zionist vision for a future Jewish state in Palestine (‘state for/of Jews’ would be a literal translation of ‘Judenstaat’) by highlighting his scheme as a venture beneficial to both the ‘current sovereign authority’ [‘jetzige Landeshoheit’ (34)], that is, the Ottoman sultan, and the European colonial powers ‘under whose protectorate’ [‘unter dem Protektorate’ (34)] the new state would come into being and continue to exist: If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could offer to resolve Turkey’s finances. For Europe, we would form part of a bulwark against Asia there, we would serve as the advance post of civilisation against barbarism.2 With this early articulation of his Zionist blueprint, the Austro-Hungarian lawyer, writer and journalist who is today remembered as the founder of political Zionism, would firmly position his movement as a distinctly European settler project: what he needed from the Ottoman government was the land, a piece of its territory for the establishment of a Jewish sovereignty that the Ottomans would cede in what amounted to an indirect purchase; Europe, more importantly, would be the polity’s guiding ideological model and protector. In his pioneering exposé Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? French Marxist historian and sociologist Maxime Rodinson recognised in Herzl’s propositions a clear manifestation of Zionism as a ‘colonialist phenomenon’ (25): ‘It would have been difficult to place Zionism any more clearly within the framework of European imperialist 1 All subsequent references are to Der Judenstaat: Text und Materialien, 1986 bis heute. Ed. Ernst Piper. Philo Verlag, 2004. The original German text is given in brackets. For my translations, I consulted a 2008 English edition by Wildside Press and modified where I deemed necessary. 2 [‘Wenn seine Majestät der Sultan uns Palästina gäbe, könnten wir uns dafür anheischig machen, die Finanzen der Türkei gänzlich zu regeln. Für Europa würden wir dort ein Stück des Walles gegen Asien bilden, wir würden den Vorpostendienst der Kultur gegen die Barberei besorgen’ (Judenstaat, 34).] 1 policies’ (42).3 Although Herzl also sought to obtain Palestine through direct talks with the Sublime Porte, his alliance was from the start and unequivocally with imperial Europe. At a time when the Ottoman Empire was in Europe widely perceived to be declining, suffering from a well-publicised public debt crisis and further weakened by internal nationalist challenges to its imperial authority, Herzl’s positioning of his movement cannot solely be explained in terms of a posited ideological kinship; he also sided with what he recognised as the locus of contemporary world power. Rodinson argued that, the [Zionist] perspective was inevitably placed within the framework of the European assault on the Ottoman Empire, this “sick man” whose complete dismemberment was postponed by the rivalries of the great powers but who, in the meantime, was subjected to all kinds of interference, pressures, and threats. An imperialist setting if there ever was one. (43) The support of those powers could only be guaranteed, according to Herzl, if the Zionist cause were to ‘make sense to them’ [‘wenn diesen die Sache einleuchtet’ (Judenstaat, 34)]; in other words, only if they saw its realisation serving their own interests. It was in view of this that Herzl’s portrayal of Zionism as a European settler colonial initiative that followed in the footsteps of other such colonisation projects became the key selling point in promoting Zionism to Christian-colonial Europe. In Rodinson’s words: The Europeanism of the Zionists made it possible for them to present their plan as part of the same movement of European expansion that each power was developing on its own behalf. (43) Indeed throughout his writings and speeches, Herzl did not tire of presenting the Zionist idea as a quintessentially colonial one, that is, one that held implied gains for Europe, and indeed the whole of the ‘civilised’ world: ‘The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness’ (Judenstaat, 89). In a 3 With his 1967 article ‘Israël, fait colonial’ (Israel, a colonial fact), Rodinson is commonly credited as the first contemporary ‘Western’ scholar to have re-placed Zionism/Israel within its colonial, and more specifically settler colonial, context. The original French article first appeared in a special issue on the ‘Israeli-Arab conflict’ of Les Temps Modernes in June 1967. In 1973, it was published in English in book- form under the title Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? All citations are from the 1973 English edition. 2 speech he delivered in London in 1899, he reiterates the colonial trope of the civilising mission and attaches it to the specific interests of imperial Britain: We want to carry culture to the East. And once again, Europe will in turn profit from this work of ours. We will create new trade routes − and none will be more interested in this than England with its Asiatic possessions. The shortest route to India lies through Palestine.4 The Zionist movement, so Herzl continues in his speech, will be driven by the new spirit of progress and industry, of which he places Britain at the forefront: What could I, poor barbarian from the Continent, tell the inhabitants of England about these things [progress and industry].