“The Bride is Beautiful, but she is married to another man.”

Zionism, The Jewish Questionand The Question of Palestine

QUESTIONS

• What was the ‘Jewish Question’? • What was ‘Zionism’?• What is the ‘Question of Palestine’?• Can the 2 narratives be reconciled?

The Jewish Question?

The Jewish Question?

…Emerges in the mid to late-18th century among Jews and non-Jews and focuses on how the Jewish people were to break the scourge of anti-Semitism and achieve emancipation.

Moses Mendelssohn (1726-89)

Mendelssohn associated with Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) which imagined Jewish emancipation through assimilation with European Society.

Intolerance and Persecution Continue

Solving The Jewish Question?

• AssimilationIntegration into Bourgeois SocietyIntegration into (Future) Socialist Society

• SeparationCultural / ReligiousPolitical / Secular

Leo Pinsker / Auto-Emancipation (1882)“Wherever Jews reside they form a distinct group unable to integrate into the societies around them. Judaism and anti-Semitism are thus inseparable companions. The Jewish people can regain their dignity only by re-establishing themselves as a living nation forming a country of their own. The Jewish question can only be solved by the formation of a Jewish nation living on its own soil. Such an outcome is only possible through our own efforts – the auto-emancipation of the Jews.

Leo Pinsker Auto- Emancipation (1882)

What was Zionism?• Ideology

Belief in Legitimacy of a separate Jewish Nation equal with other nations.

• Political Movement Program for Emancipation of Jewish nation through State-building.

• Core Idea Return to Zion.

Zionist Counter-memory

• Unbroken Bond Between People / Land• Story has three Phases

• Antiquity (Jewish attachment to Zion)• Exile (Alienation from Zion)• Return to Zion

The Great DivideAntiquity and Exile (Galut)

“This periodization of antiquity and exile requires a highly selective representation of many centuries of Jewish experience…and ignores historical developments that do not fit the principles underlying this mold.”

Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots (1995), p. 17

Herzl, the Jewish Question, and The Jewish State

“I consider the Jewish question neither social nor religious. It is a national question….Let sovereignty be granted to us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation… Palestine is our historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.…The Jews who wish for a state will have it.”

Theodor Herzl The Jewish State (1896)

A Land Without a People?“We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains are not cultivated… …if the time comes when the life of our people in Eretz Yisrael develops to the point of encroaching upon the native population, they will not easily yield their place.”

Ahad Ha’am Truth From Eretz Israel

(1891)

Zionist Dilemma

1881 Population

21,000 Jews 4.2% 470,000 Arab 95.8%

“The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man.”

Yusuf al-Khalidi (Mayor of Jerusalem)

“Who can challenge the rights of the Jews to Palestine? Good Lord, historically it is really your country… But [Palestine is inhabited and immigration will require brute force and bring revolt]. In the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace.”

1899

THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE?

“ The Question of Palestine is therefore the contest between an affirmation and a denial, and it is this contest, dating back 100 years, which animates and makes sense of the current impasse…Palestine was seen as a place to be possessed anew and reconstructed.”

Edward Said (1979)

The Iron Wall

“Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers…This is how the Arabs will behave so long as they possess even a gleam of hope that they can prevent Palestine from becoming the Land of Israel. “Zionist colonization…can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall which the native population can not breach.”

Ze’ev Jabotinksy (1923)