A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Colonising Nationalism: Zionist Political Discourse 1845-1948 Heba Youssef DPhil University of Sussex 2012 Statement I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature Colonising Nationalism: Zionist Political Discourse 1845-1948 This thesis traces the emergence of the Zionist political movement from the mid nineteenth century until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The thesis explores the impetus behind the mainstream political movement which led to the establishment of the State, throwing light on the kaleidoscope of spiritual and political Zionisms. However, the ultimate focus is on the statist form of Zionist ideology which marginalised other forms of Zionism rendering them historical curiosities devoid of meaningful political impact. I analyse the texts of some prominent Zionist ideologues through the theoretical framework of nationalist, colonial and post-colonial theories forging the concept of colonial nationalism to interpret and analyse Zionism. I limit my work to Zionist political texts and their anchor in the surrounding milieu of European nationalism and colonialism in the 19th century. The chapters deal with different trends within the then emergent movement from spiritual Zionism and the religious justification of political Zionism through liberal and bi-national Zionisms. Each chapter engages with Zionist political thought offering textual analysis and historical contextualisation of the major forms of the movement. I argue that at its inception, Zionism was anchored in European ethno- nationalism and colonialism and a modern and highly contingent interpretation of the Hebrew biblical traditions. As such it is rendered a reactionary and regressive form of ethno-nationalist colonialism that, as an ideology in the contemporary world, it can only survive when it is premised on ideas of cultural supremacy. Thus post-Zionism with its espousal of a multiplicity of narratives and valorisation of minority rights is, rather than forging a new de-territorialized identity, a return to a model of diasporic Jewish identity where a common cultural heritage is disparate from citizenship and nationality. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................... 2 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I: ........................................................................................... 13 NATIONALISM, COLONIALISM AND ZIONISM ......................... 13 CHAPTER II ........................................................................................... 46 LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................... 46 CHAPTER III: ........................................................................................ 74 ZIONISM AND RELIGION ................................................................. 74 CHAPTER IV: ...................................................................................... 102 OFFICIAL ZIONISM .......................................................................... 102 CHAPTER V: ........................................................................................ 145 BUBER AND THE BI-NATIONAL STATE PROPOSAL .............. 145 1 CHAPTER VI: ...................................................................................... 176 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 176 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................. 194 2 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge first of all my supervisors Professor Andrew Hadfield, Dr Minoli Salgado and Dr Mick Johnson for their patience and support, academic and otherwise. Their feedback and critiques have been valuable and have shaped my thinking in many ways. I have also benefited immeasurably from feedback and critical appraisals of particular chapters from several friends: Anna Bogen, Argha Banerjee, Chris Guider, Eva Hilberg, Kumiko Kiuchi, Shamira Meghani, and Aaron Winter. I am greatly indebted to all of them. My warm thanks to Dr Vinita Damodaran for taking the time to discuss my project and interrogate my ideas. Dr Daniel Dor has given me valuable advice and insight for which thanks are due. I am very grateful to Professors Alun Howkins, Norman Vance and Laura Marcus for their advice and encouragement. I am grateful to the Graduate Centre in the School of Humanities at the University of Sussex for providing me with facilities and supportive conditions in which to work. Margaret Reynolds, the Graduate Centre co-ordinater, deserves particular gratitude for all her support and encouragement that go beyond her call of duty. I thank my students on the Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures MA course for the discussions and responses which have helped me think from different perspectives. I would also like to thank Sam Elmer from Sussex University IT Services. I am greatly indebted to Professors Omar Abd-el-Aziz, Sami Gamal-E’din, Mahmoud Hassan, Zainab Raafat and Salah Sorour from the University of Alexandria for their kindness, encouragement and support. My heartfelt thanks to Francis Clark-Lowes, Manal El-Sayed, Chris Guider, Eleanor Gregory, Jenny Huynh, Donna MacPherson, Grainne O’Connel, Valerie Pascual and Chris Stokes for their friendship and for cheering me on along the way. Each one of them has been a source of assistance in their own special way. The solidarity and support of my friends Eva Hilberg and Shamira Meghani deserve particularly warm thanks. The extent to which I owe my friends and intellectual allies Anna Bogen and Kumiko Kiuchi is greater than can be expressed here; suffice it to say that the inspiration to continue and not give up has come from them. I am very grateful for the love and support of my mother and my brother. Introduction This thesis is about Zionism. The thesis is not intended as an expose of Zionist thought and discourse, rather it is my exploration of a distinctive movement which is simultaneously an ethno-nationalist and a colonial-settler one, a model which I call colonising nationalism. Colonising nationalism or colonial nationalism (I use the two expressions interchangeably throughout this thesis) involves a category of territorial, ethnic nationalism: a project to establish a nation-state based on Jewishness as an ethnicity. For Jewish communities in different parts of the world, territorial nationalism was ‘different from and alien to the ethnic Jewish way of life’ , therefore, colonising nationalism employed the methodology of European settlement colonies in order to acquire territory and statehood. Colonising nationalism, thus, can be defined as a category of ethnic nationalism that employs an ethnic settlement form of colonialism as a methodology to realise its goals. Khalidi (1971), Rodinson (1973, 1974) and Shafir (1989), among others, have analysed Zionism as colonialism, although Shafir was the first to locate it within the typology of settler colonialism put forth by D. K. Fieldhouse and George Fredrickson (Fieldhouse 1966; Fredrickson 1988). Shafir develops the four-way typology of colonialism offered by D. K. Fieldhouse and George Fredrickson by adding a new category of colonialism, which he calls ethnic plantation settlement/colony. He locates Israel within this colonial model. An ethnic plantation colony is based upon massive European immigration and control of indigenous land and opposition to ethnic mixture with the local non- European population. The concept of colonising nationalism, which this thesis develops, goes further by merging these theories and establishing a causal relationship between them: the ethno-nationalist project uses the model of ethnic colonialism as methodology to reach the national goal. Hence, colonising nationalism is a territorial ethno-nationalist movement that seeks to found a nation-state by settler colonial methods, specifically the ethnic settlement colony, in other words a colony that rejects ethnic mixture with the indigenous population. Furthermore, the colonial nationalist model seeks to erase the indigenous character and culture of the target area and replace it with an ‘invented tradition’, in the Hobsbawmian sense, of the new settlers 2 (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Zionism is the colonial nationalist movement par excellence. Zionism represents an intersection between a colonial enterprise and an ethno- nationalist movement which has aimed to found a secular state that, paradoxically, uses religious texts to justify its ethos. This makes Zionism distinctive amongst other nationalist and colonial-settler movements. This thesis argues that the above combination gives rise to an intriguing discourse that drifts from the nationalistic to the colonial