Towards a visualisation of the Zionist Sabra 1930-1967 JC Torday A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Brighton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2014 1 Declaration I declare that the research contained in this thesis, unless otherwise formally indicated within the text, is the original work of the author. The thesis has not been previously submitted to this or any other university for a degree, and does not incorporate any material already submitted for a degree. Signed JC Torday Dated February 2014 2 Abstract (page 3) Introduction (page 5) Research Approach (page 16) Arab Villages and colonisation (page 24) Cultural Memory and collective memory (page 31) Chapter 1: Theoretical considerations and influences on Zionist photographs (page 39) Critics of and theories about photographs (page 39) Influences on Israeli photography (page 45) Chapter 2: Zionism and colonialism (page 71) The rise of Zionism (page 71) The Iron Wall (page 76) A view from 1947 (page 81) Zionism and anti-Semitism (page 84) Zionism and Fascism (page 87) Zionism and nationalism (page 90) Colonialism (page 93) Colonialism and Zionism (97) Three waves of Jewish immigration (page 102) The Sharon Plan (page 105) Colonialism and photographs (108) Biblical archaeology (page 113) Ethnocentric myth (page 119) Chapter 3: Photography in the Holy Land and beyond (page 121) Beginnings (page 121) Photographs in the Yishuv (page 130) Photographs in Israel (page 147) Chapter 4: The Sabra (page 174) The myth of the Sabra (page 177) The Kibbutz (page 188) The Sabra in fiction (page 207) Chapter 5: Uncertainty and photographs (page 225) Manipulation (page 225) Imagination (page 243) Capa and the Falling Soldier (page 255) The Altalena photographs (page 270) The USS Liberty (page 280) Conclusion (page 294) Bibliography (page 305) Word count 84000 3 Abstract This study examines ideas about and photographs of the Sabra, a small yet influential grouping within Zionism that emerged in Jewish Palestine circa 1930 to play a heroic role in the creation of Israel. Drawing inspiration from labour Zionism, at its height the movement is claimed to have numbered twenty thousand people. The Sabra had its own ideals and values that were emulated throughout Jewish society in Palestine. The Sabra became one of the appealing myths in Zionism because of the sacrifice in combat, role in military leadership, and (subsequently) in government. Zionist agencies promoted the Sabra as the fulfilment of the Utopian new Jew, lauded in the press and in fiction. However, a group of intellectuals in the 1960s, assaulted and soon eroded, the mythical status of the Sabra, arguing that their devotion and sacrifice to the state at the expense of individual needs and aspirations was both unhealthy and encouraged a view of the chosen few whose commitment to the state was of a higher order than that of ordinary men and women serving their country, a view that many rejected. Some scholars dismiss the Sabra as an irrelevance, a product of fiction, or propaganda campaigns of early Zionism, and of marginal factual significance in Israeli history. Aside from prominent figures, many Sabra rank remain unknown, so many of the photographs shown here are inventions of what young pioneers should look like, show what was expected of them, and whose main purpose was about persuading others to join the cause and build a country. There is no doubt that myths and folk-tales were as important to Zionism as they were to National Socialism. Both were premised on a blood and soil ideology, and it is Sabra ideals as expressed in photographs that are considered here. The Sabra ethos underpinned the colonial aspirations of Zionism. This study examines Zionism as a colonial movement. 4 Introduction This study is caught between the myths of Zionism, of which the Sabra was an inspired example, and the myths of propaganda photographs used to bolster the rhetoric of Zionist publicity campaigns. The Sabra represented an ideal, a goal to aspire to, rather as similar elitist movements had done in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Not only did these ideologies share the desire to build their nations anew they also shared a need for pioneers to carry out the task. Whilst pioneers in Israel were often dragooned into service, many volunteered needing no convincing about the cause they were serving. The term Sabra was coined to capture the zeitgeist of the period rather than refer to a formal corps of pioneers of that name. The Sabra existed in stories, films and photographs as evocations of what young pioneers should be like and frequently the images of public figures were interspersed among them. The title of this study, namely, ‘towards a visualisation’ of the Sabra is to suggest the possibility that contained within the Israeli archives are photographs that reflect the romanticism of a generation and of the dreams of the Zionist spin doctors of a bygone era. Additionally, the Sabra stories written by men who themselves belonged to elite militias and at the time were regarded as the role models of their generation. In fact some photographers were also involved with the militias, and at times it feels as if the writers, photographers, and publicists, were engaged in recording a colourful and heroic account of their own history. Zionism was receptive to the colonisation of a peopled country. Creating a ‘New Jew’ was seen an ideal instrument with which to build the bonds of a new society and the Sabra myth was the vehicle used to disseminate the values of the New Jew. 5 The argument premised here is that Israel was built upon the same foundation as European and American expansion in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Zionists emulated this practice to settle their own populations, to exploit the resources and govern the indigenous population politically. From the perspective of Palestinians the Zionist publicity photographs of the pioneering years is a story of their exclusion and erasure from the Israeli narrative. A largely Jewish state in Arab Palestine was in the end achieved through a settler colonial regime with all the attendant consequences, including military campaigns. Colonialism was explored in Maxine Rodinson’s (1973) Israel: A settler colonial state? Because of the occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Rodinson was asking this question afresh and probing the relationship between Zionism and colonialism. Although this connection is now both recognised and explored in Israeli historical research, it is still limited with respect to photographs and in part prompted this study. The New Historians, who emerged in the 1980s to challenge official Israeli history, were largely responsible for opening such avenues of inquiry. They claimed that Israeli history was more controversial than hitherto believed.1 Prominent, were questions about what really happened in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Israelis were critical of Arab states, claiming they had betrayed the Palestinian cause, citing their own collusion with Trans-Jordan in preventing the creation of a Palestinian state. The 1948 War was fought for 20 months, beginning hours after the UN resolution in November 1947. It ended in July 1949, a few months after the cease-fire, with an armistice agreed between Israel and Syria. Arab Palestine had been destroyed and Israel, one year on from independence had gained spoils it had hardly dared 1 In 1987a group of academics, researchers and journalists in Israel and elsewhere comprised the New Historians. It included Yosi Amital, Myron Aronoff, Benjamin Beit Hallahmi, Uri Ben-Eliezer, Lev Grinberg, Baruch Kimmerling, Yagil Levy, Ian Lustick, Joel Migdal, Uri Milstein, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Yoav Peled, Yoram Peri, Uri Ram, Gershon Shafir, Michael Shalev, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Mark Tessler, and Yael Zerubavel (Mahler 1997, Lustick, 1996). 6 hope for. That the war had enduring consequences can be seen in all the subsequent Arab- Israeli wars, in the Cold War as it was played out in the Middle East and in the rise of the Palestinian armed struggle. All trace their heritage directly to 1948. Post Second World War Middle East was one of newly independent states shedding colonial rule, but most nationalist leaders who led their countries through transition were swept aside after the defeat of Palestine. It resulted in Israel seizing 77% of Mandate Palestine and circa 750,000 Palestinians driven from their lands. Jordan took most of the West Bank and Egypt administered the Gaza Strip. In 1987 Israeli historian Benny Morris took up the sensitive issue of the fate of Arab refugees, describing their flight as a violent expulsion. He was censured for his conclusions and denied tenure at most of the country’s universities.2 Morris, who coined the term New Historians believed two factors triggered revisionism.3 The first was the expiration of the thirty-year embargo on state archives, and the second was that most historians were born after the 1948 war. They grew up at a time when Israeli society was both more confident but also more self-critical. Many of the earlier generation of historians had been active in state building prior to 1948 and had put aside doubts given circumstances that required action ahead of introspection. The idea dismissed by New Historians was that Arabs were responsible for the refugee problem in 1948. Received wisdom held confrontation with Arabs was unforeseen and painful, but an indirect consequence of Zionist development not a constituent part of it. 2In 1996 he was summoned by President Ezer Weizman and asked to affirm Israel’s right to exist. Thereafter, he was given a post at Ben Gurion University (Ben-Ami 2008). This is by no means an isolated case as a number of Israeli academics have faced censure of this kind and remains the case.