Zionism in a world of nationalism and imperialism

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Zionism in a world of nationalism and imperialism

• Prof. Noam Pianko, January 21, 2009

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Lecture Goals

• Review European Nationalism and the Origins of
  Zionism
• Understand Jewish quest for a homeland in larger
  context of European Imperialism and world
  history, 1897-1917
• Compare conflicting Arab and Jewish narratives of
  this process

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Origins of Zionism

• Historical Roots
• Jewish experience
• European ideologies
• Ideological Tensions

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Political Zionism
Theodore Herzl, 1860-1904
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Achad Ha-am-Cultural Zionism
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Religious ZionismAbraham Kook, 1865-1935
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Zionism Continuity or Rupture?

• Modern nations and all their impedimenta
  generally claim to be the opposite of novel,
  namely rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the
  opposite of constructured namely human
  communities so natural as to require no
  definition other than self-assertion. Whatever
  the historic or other continuities embedded in
  the modern concept of France and the
  Frenchand which nobody would seek to denythese
  very concepts themselves must include a
  constructed of invented component. (Hobsbawm,
  The Nation as Invented Tradition)

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The New (Hebrew) Jew
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Judaism, Israel, and Zionism

• CONTINUITY

• RUPTURE

• Am Yisrael (People of Israel)
• Land of Israel/Redemption
• Historical Narrative
• Myths and symbols

• Secular
• Nationhoodstatehood
• Redemption
• European Ideals of New Jew

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Herzls Diary, 1897

• Were I to sum up the Basel congress in a wordit
  would be this At Basel I founded the Jewish
  StatePerhaps in five years, and certainly in 50,
  everyone will know it.

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The Ottoman Period (1517-1917)
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Jews in the Turkish Empire

• Palestine in Province of Syria
• Population in 1880
• 470,000 Arabs
• 24,000 Jews

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Jews and Arabs Under Turkish Rule

• Arabs
• Beduins turned sedentary
• Live in Hills, not in coastal areas
• Feuding villages, clans
• Land owners outside Palestine
• Jews
• Live in 4 Holy Cities
• Jews are dhimini-Second Class Citizens

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Dream or Reality?

• Funds to Purchase Land
• Alliance with Great Powers
• Arab Population
• What is his strategy?

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Herzl and the Sultan, 1901

• No support for Jewish Homeland
• Jewish Immigration Banned

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The British Empire

• 1903 Uganda Offer
• Split between territorialist and Zionist
• 1905 rejected at Zionist Conference
• Why help the Jews?

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New Imperialism
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Zionism, imperialism and the Arabs

• A Land without people for a people without a
  land (1854 by Lord Shaftesbury.)
• We abroad are used to believing that Eretz
  Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert
  that is not sowed.. But in truth this is not the
  case. Throughout the country it is difficult to
  find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes
  and stony mountainsare not cultivated. Ahad
  Ha-am 1891

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Theodore Herzl, Old-New Land, 1904

• What a question! It was a great blessing for all
  of us, returned Reschid. Naturally, the
  land-owners gained most because they were able to
  sell to the Jewish society at high prices, or to
  wait for still higher ones,

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Zionism and Colonialism

• Orientalism and assumptions about Arabs
• Civilizing Mission dessert bloom

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Zionism and Colonialism

• No colonizing state
• Limited exploitation of Arab workers
• Jewish nationalism is anti-colonial