The New Post-Zionist Historians

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THE NEW POST-ZIONIST HISTORIANS
Yoav Gelber
DOROTHY AND JULIUS KOPPELMAN INSTITUTE
ON AMERICAN JEWISH-ISRAELI RELATIONS
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
THE NEW POST-ZIONIST HISTORIANS
Yoav Gelber
The mission of American Jewish Committee is:
—To safeguard the welfare and security of Jews in the United States,
in Israel, and throughout the world;
—To strengthen the basic principles of pluralism around the world as the
best defense against anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry;
—To enhance the quality of American Jewish life by helping to ensure
Jewish continuity, and;
—To deepen ties between American and Israeli Jews.
To learn more about our mission, programs, and publications, and to join
and contribute to our efforts, please visit us at www.ajc.org or contact us
by phone at 212-751-4000 or by e-mail at [email protected].
DOROTHY AND JULIUS KOPPELMAN INSTITUTE
ON AMERICAN JEWISH-ISRAELI RELATIONS
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
Contents
Yoav Gelber, a professor of Land of Israel Studies at
the University of Haifa, is currently a visiting professor
at the University of Texas in Austin. After a career as
an officer in the IDF in paratrooper units, he earned a
Ph.D. in history from the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. Head of the Herzl Institute for Research
and Study of Zionism since 1987, he was the chair of
Haifa University’s School of History.
Copyright © 2008 American Jewish Committee
All Rights Reserved.
May 2008
Preface
v
1
Post-Zionism and Anti-Zionism
1
Innovation, Objectivity,
and Politicized History
4
Post-Zionism and
Postmodernism
8
The Uniqueness of
Jewish Nationalism
10
Opposition to Jewish Nationalism
12
The Denial of Jewish Nationality
13
The “Israeli Nationality”
14
iii
Preface
The Colonialist Paradigm of Zionism
20
Post-Zionists and Other Detractors
22
Why Zionism Is Not Colonialist
26
A New History of the
Arab-Israeli Conflict
31
The Holocaust and Jewish Statehood
35
The Alleged “Zionist Appropriation”
of the Holocaust
38
From “Melting Pot” to
Multicultural Society
41
Influence of the New Historians
46
Notes
49
Scholars of a nation’s history often find themselves embroiled both
in questions of national identity and in historical controversies with
attendant contemporary political implications. The old adage “He
who controls the past controls the future” is doubtless an exaggeration, but it is suggestive of the enormous role that historical narratives play in formulating contemporary political positions. At a
minimum, the study of history touches upon collective historical
memory, which is essential to formulating national culture and
identity. At a maximum, how one reads a particular historical incident or epoch may shape policy prescriptions for future directions.
Israel as a nation-state has been no stranger to historical controversies. In the early years of statehood, Israeli historians were often
referred to as the “Zionist school of historiography.” Israeli historians underscored the overall continuity of the Jewish experience and
identified territory and homeland as the essential elements of that
continuity. In effect, their historical writings validated Israel’s claims
to constitute fulfillment of age-old Jewish aspirations. These historians generally downplayed Diaspora Jewish existence as an extended
detour rather than as a center of Jewish creativity. Similarly, Israeli
archaeologists uncovered the material evidence for Jewish presence
in the Land of Israel in biblical and post-biblical times.
In terms of public education, history, in effect, became a training ground for Israeli citizenship, providing a coherent narrative
with which young people could identify and take pride in the Jewish return to homeland and sovereignty. Or, as the Zionist philosopher Ahad Ha’am put it in his justly famed essay “Past and Future,”
nations, like individuals, survive on the basis both of collective
v
vi preface
memory of where they have been and future aspirations of where
they wish to be.
Yet by the late 1980s a counterschool of historians was rewriting
large portions of the “heroic” narrative of Israel. For these younger
historians Israel as a nation-state had been born in sin. For some,
the sin constituted Zionist exploitation of the Holocaust as moral
weapon. Others depicted Israel as colonialist—dispossessing native
Arabs and evoking the specter of “ethnic cleansing.” Still others
reconstructed the Six-Day War as an unnecessary military adventure
eagerly sought by overzealous Israeli politicians. Lastly, still others
pointed to internal Jewish sins, such as poor treatment of Holocaust
survivors or Jews who had fled Arab countries. Perhaps most shocking was the charge of some intellectuals that contemporary Israelis
had become the Nazis of our time.
In a limited sense, these historians were acting as a corrective to
some of the excesses of more traditional Zionist historiography. By
deconstructing some of the myths of the Zionist narrative, these historians were adding a more nuanced and balanced view of Israeli
history. Yet in the broader context, these revisionist historians
formed a critical element within the broader cultural phenomenon
of post-Zionism. Post-Zionist intellectuals maintained that Zionism, at best, had run its course as a political ideology and, at worst,
had defined Israel as a tool of Western imperialism in the Middle
East. Indeed, the agenda of post-Zionism was quite ambitious.
Seeking to integrate Israel into the Middle East, post-Zionists criticized Israel’s relationship with world Jewry as retarding the process
of integration. They viewed the concept of Jewish peoplehood itself
as problematic. Israel’s Law of Return, bestowing automatic and
immediate citizenship to any Jew the world over upon immigration
to Israel, symbolized all that was wrong with the Jewish state.
Instead they sought to redefine Israel as a state of all of its citizens.
In their view the Israeli national anthem, Hatikva, constituted an
offensive statement that upheld the historical aspirations of the Jews
as a people while negating the claims of Arab-Israeli citizens.
Moreover, post-Zionism drew upon the energies of diverse aca-
preface vii
demic disciplines. The “new archaeology” in some respects was most
dangerous, for it denied the material claims of Jewish presence in
the homeland as an artificial and ex post facto construction. Similarly, post-Zionist sociologists challenged Israel’s treatment of
minorities and called into question its self-definition as a liberal
democracy.
At the core of post-Zionism, however, lay the critique of the
new historians. To some extent, these individuals formed part of a
global postmodernism that challenged the very idea of historical
truth. All history, in this view, constituted merely “narratives” rather
than objective facts that could not be denied. Thus postmodernism
mutated into an historical relativism that dismissed questions of
right and wrong in favor of viewing the past as a collection of viewpoints in which “truth” was merely a function of which group had
power.
How important is post-Zionism? Certainly its significance does
not lie in vast numbers. Nor are its intellectual arguments particularly compelling. Professor Shlomo Avineri of the Hebrew University, for example, has dismissed these arguments as echoes of an older
anti-Zionism rather than consisting of new and original ideas.
Yet the influence of the post-Zionists should by no means be
underestimated. Given their prominence at leading Israeli universities and their access to significant Israeli media, their impact far
transcends their numbers. Arab-Israeli intellectuals often invoke
their arguments in their efforts to redefine the nature of Israel as a
nation-state. Some post-Zionists have taken up key academic positions in Europe, where they often serve as public intellectuals who
are “exceptional Israelis.” Similarly, Israel’s detractors in the United
States, e.g., the recent volume by Professors Stephen Walt and John
Mearsheimer, frequently rely upon evidence marshaled by postZionist historians to buttress their case against continued American
support for Israel.
The American Jewish Committee commissioned Professor Yoav
Gelber of the University of Haifa, and currently a visiting professor
at the University of Texas, to demystify the phenomenon of the revi-
viii preface
sionist historians and assess their role within Israeli society. A decade
ago, AJC published Post-Zionism by Rochelle Furstenberg, a monograph that provided a detailed overview of post-Zionism as an intellectual current. Professor Gelber’s work assesses historical writings
published within the past decade and engages their arguments concerning Israel’s alleged misdeeds. His work should prove an important resource in understanding both how reading of the past affects
contemporary politics, and how the case for Israel remains very
much part of contemporary debates concerning the role of ideas in
society and politics.
Steven Bayme, Ph.D.
Director, Koppelman
Institute on American
Jewish-Israeli Relations
Harold T. Shapiro, Ph.D.
President Emeritus,
Princeton University,
Chairman, Koppelman
Institute on American
Jewish-Israeli Relations
Post-Zionism and Anti-Zionism
Zionism, the ideology that connected European-born Jewish
nationalism with the Land of Israel, has been considered, since
1948, when Israeli independence was declared, one of the most successful creeds of the twentieth century. During the last three
decades, however, it has come under growing attack—first abroad,
and then within Israel—from those who deny Jewish nationalism at
large, reject its affiliation with the land, and accuse it of colonialism
or Orientalism. At the spearhead of this onslaught demonizing
Zionism and Israel’s past and present have stood academics, artists,
and journalists who define themselves as post-Zionists. Sometimes
they also call themselves new historians or critical sociologists.
Since the 1980s, postcolonial and postmodern fads have occupied a growing place in public and academic life in Israel and have
posed new challenges to Israeli historiography and cultural discourse. Post-Zionism consists of two distinct aspects. The first is
mainly an internal development within Israeli academe stemming
from Western influences; the accessibility of new source material;
the introduction of new research methods, and the suggestion of
new interpretations. Controversial issues have been debated, mainly
in professional academic circles, and the participants have articulated their opposing stances in scholarly books and journals.
The second aspect is a broad meta-historical debate, with postZionists challenging the values, beliefs, assumptions, methodologies, and objectivity of their Zionist colleagues. This debate has
spawned a public and ideological atmosphere of controversy that
the writing of op-eds, essays, and academic studies emanate from
and reflect at the same time.
1
2 the new post-zionist historians
Post-Zionists, and others who quietly support and follow them,
accuse Zionist scholars of enlisting voluntarily in the service of
Zionist ideology and trying to impose “hegemonic” Zionist concepts on Israeli culture and national identity.1 Such criticism may be
true in specific cases of articles or books, but there are no grounds
for an implied sweeping generalization.
Post-Zionism is difficult to label, and definitions are not universally agreed upon. Sociologist Uri Ram of Ben-Gurion University in
Beersheva, who was the first to coin the term post-Zionism, defined
it vaguely as a fashion. He emphasized its cultural features and
noted that it should be understood in the context of the changing
world: the impact of globalization, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism; the transformation of “identity” and its competing concepts such as “otherness,” “difference,” and “hybridism.”2
Ram himself focused on the writing of Israeli history. Like
European national historiographies, he argued, Zionist historiography was intended to cultivate national identity. Post-Zionism corresponds to posthistoricism, dismantling national identity and the
“historical laws” that shaped it. Historicist memory built nations,
and posthistoricist memory shatters them. Post-Zionist historiography writes the history of “others,” while Zionist historiography
leaves room only for the history of self-identity.3
Another sociologist (and radical left-wing activist), Avishai
Ehrlich, defines post-Zionism as the Israeli form of assimilated antiZionism. This genre of anti-Zionism, which was earlier represented
in the United States by the American Council for Judaism,4 a group
formed in the 1940s to oppose the notion of a Jewish state, hardly
existed in Palestine during the Mandate period and early years of
statehood. In Ehrlich’s view, post-Zionism of the liberal variety is a
product of capitalist globalization, and therefore is the opposite of
the anti-Zionism that derives from religious (ultra-Orthodox) or
socialist convictions.5
Historian Eyal Naveh, who teaches American history at Tel Aviv
University, and his colleague, Esther Yogev, have portrayed postZionism as a contemporary “mood”: the inclination of scholars,
post-zionism and anti-zionism 3
thinkers, journalists, and artists to challenge Israel’s collective memory and the Zionist narrative. They have identified a variety of
sources for this mood: the traditional anti-Zionism of the Diaspora;
groups on the periphery of the Zionist movement and the Yishuv
(the prestate Jewish community in the land of Israel), such as the
Canaanites or Brit Shalom; persons not admitted into the Israeli
academy; and the impact of imported postmodernist crazes.6
Mordechai Bar-On—a retired IDF colonel and former Meretz
(left-wing) member of Knesset turned scholar—has made the most
systematic effort to define post-Zionism, and describes two variants:
The first considers Zionism an ideology and movement that accomplished its goals and became redundant. Bar-On calls this trend,
which ponders what should succeed Zionism, “post-Zionism”; others prefer to call it “neo-Canaanism.” Prominent examples of this
vogue are novelist A.B. Yehoshua of Haifa, one of Israel’s most
famous and prolific writers; the philosopher, literary scholar, and
publicist Menachem Brinker of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem; and historian Motti Golani of the University of Haifa.7
The second variant of post-Zionism rejects the Zionist ideology
and its basic assumptions lock, stock, and barrel. It disapproves of
the Zionist movement’s policies in all fields and all time periods,
rebuffs the very notion of the existence of a Jewish nation, and
denies the need for a Jewish nation-state. Post-Zionists deny the
connection between historical Judaism and the State of Israel and
strive to transform the nation-state of the Jewish people into a liberal, multinational, and multicultural state. Their ideal state would be
devoid of any Jewish identity, secular or religious, and of any unique
moral and social pretensions. They call it “a state of all its citizens,”
but do not mean a pluralistic society on the model of the United
States or Canada. Their goal is a binational state, as proposed by
Hashomer Hatza’ir and the political parties of immigrants from
Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, or a Palestinian state as envisaged
by the British White Paper of May 1939 (and rejected by the Palestinians)—that is, “a one-state solution.” In Bar-On’s eyes, this brand
of post-Zionism is simply a new form of the old anti-Zionism. He
also dismisses the sincerity of those anti-Zionists who claim that
they do not oppose Israel’s existence, but only its exclusive nature as
a Jewish nation-state.8
Innovation, Objectivity, and Politicized History
When he coined the phrase “new historians” in its Israeli context,
Benny Morris—then a freelance scholar and now a professor at BenGurion University, author of several books on the Arab-Jewish conflict that received wide academic and public recognition—meant
primarily historians who use archival material comprehensively,
without self-censorship of unpleasant events. On the basis of the
archival sources, the new historians question the older, official version of Israeli historiography.9
In contrast to Morris, post-Zionists such as sociologist Uri
Ram; Ilan Pappé, a radical pro-Palestinian activist and lecturer on
Middle East history who recently left the University of Haifa and
joined the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom; and Baruch
Kimmerling, a professor of cultural sociology at the Hebrew University who died recently, have stressed the ideological rather than
the methodological facets of the “new history.” Unsophisticated
opponents frequently have disregarded this basic difference. The
more recent split between Morris and his former comrades
emanates precisely from this distinction.
The new historians have described themselves or have been portrayed as a movement within Israeli historiography. However, they
are not a school and not even a coherent group sharing a worldview,
program, or methodology. They are individuals who come from
diverse backgrounds and hold distinctive stances and professional
approaches. Trying to characterize the new historians, Anita Shapira, who heads the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at
Tel Aviv University and is a leading historian of the Zionist labor
movement, underlined the differences that make any generalization
about them difficult. She suggested age (biological and academic) as
a common denominator, but even this observation is unsatisfactory,
as the new historians vary in age and academic seniority. Some are
innovation, objectivity, and politicized history 5
not much younger, if at all, than their colleagues who do not share
their revisionist approach.10
Ram attempted to classify Israeli historians according to the
template of knowledge (objectivists vs. relativists) and the body of
knowledge (apologetic vs. critical).11 This analysis, too, yields
stereotypes that do not stand up to close examination. Not all the
objectivists are apologetic, nor are all the critics relativists. Furthermore, applying these concepts to Israeli historiography becomes
ideological rather than methodological when every Zionist historian, according to Ram’s analysis, is considered apologetic, and every
anti-Zionist critical.
Kimmerling insisted that a Zionist worldview contradicts the
norms of the academic community. He accused the Zionist historians of preferring Zionist values over academic ones whenever the
two conflict. Kimmerling also held that the true division was not
between old and new historians, but between more and less ideologically committed historians.12
To read this sermon against ideology from Kimmerling’s pen
produces an odd feeling in light of his most recent book, Politicide.
Kimmerling has written extensively on both sides of the Israeli-Arab
conflict, and his books make him a qualified authority on the topic,
whether one concurs with or opposes his conclusions. None of these
books, however, prepared the ground for his last book nor support
its content in terms of relevant historical evidence.
Kimmerling’s Politicide is an inventory of past sins allegedly
committed by Israel, the IDF, and Ariel Sharon, in particular,
against the Palestinians since the 1950s. The list begins with young
Major Sharon’s actions as commanding officer of Unit 101 and later
of the paratroopers fighting fedayeen in the 1950s, through Major
General Sharon’s campaign against Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza
Strip during the early 1970s, to the politician Sharon’s patronage of
the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, on to the 1982 war in
Lebanon, and finally to Sharon’s tenure as prime minister and his
repression of the second intifada. Basing his allegations on what he
claims to be common knowledge (i.e., gossip), Kimmerling cites
hardly any references.
Politicide is neither an academic study nor a synthesis of previous research. It is a polemical and propagandist pamphlet, openly
motivated by resentment, frustration, and fear—bordering on hate.
Its object is Sharon, but the ad hominem onslaught masks a powerful subtext rebuking Israeli society at large for allowing Sharon’s
career to flourish for several decades and electing him (democratically) to lead during the crisis of the second intifada. At the same
time, Kimmerling’s subtext glorifies the cadre of Israeli dissidents
who identify with the Palestinian cause.13
Sharon deserves criticism for various acts committed during his
long military and political career, as well as praise for his accomplishments (which Kimmerling chose to ignore). One does not
have to be a sociology professor to praise Sharon or condemn him,
nor does a professorship endow political criticism or praise with any
special scientific or moral authority. To be convincing, allegations
require a documentary basis that is lacking in Kimmerling’s book,
and without that, there is nothing scholarly, original, or innovative
in his comments.
Politicide is a clear illustration of the abuse of academic status
for ideological and political ends. Of course, Kimmerling was entitled to his views, but regretfully, he did not stop at presenting his
personal opinions, but waved his academic credentials to support
them. Disguising personal views behind titles and studies, thereby
leading readers to regard a book as the product of knowledge gained
through research, is—in my view—academically and ethically inappropriate.
The proclivity for innovation that the new historians boast also
implies objectivity and open-mindedness. Allegedly, these qualities
are lacking in the old historians, who belong to the generation that
implemented Zionism and who are therefore biased, take one-sided
positions, and display emotional involvement.14 However, onesided viewpoints are no less typical of new historians, and probably
more so than among old ones. Interdisciplinary Center lecturer
Idith Zertal’s Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, about
Zionism’s exploitation of the Holocaust to advance its cause, Ilan
innovation, objectivity, and politicized history 7
Pappé’s later books, and Baruch Kimmerling’s above-mentioned
Politicide are examples of politicized history.15 Emotional investment is not a monopoly of the old historians. Every historian brings
some degree of emotional involvement to his subject, and the difference is not in the involvement but in the emotions: loyalty, admiration, and, occasionally, excessive idealization among the old
historians as contrasted with self-hatred, cynicism, and disrespect
for their objects among the new ones.
The new historians have succeeded, at least partly, in revising
the accepted account of Israel’s birth. However, their different
methodological approaches, the varied quality of their scholarship,
and the validity of their analyses and interpretations are open to
criticism no less than those of their predecessors and “old” contemporaries. Their claim to be free of bias, sympathies, and ideological
loyalties is totally groundless. Derek Penslar, an American Jewish
historian of Zionism of the University of Toronto, has noted that
the new historians’ claims to objectivity notwithstanding, they are
motivated by exhaustion from the ongoing Zionist struggle rather
than by objectivity and incline toward cynicism rather than irony.16
Ram views these controversies as an outcome of “the end of the
creative phase of the project of settling and building the Israeli
nation-state.” The disputes articulate the transition from a homogeneous historical recognition of a dominant version, or a grand story,
to a variety of versions typical of “a civil, consumer and, perhaps,
multicultural society.” In Ram’s eyes, the controversy is not in fact
over historical issues, but rather symbolic of:
A [political and ideological] struggle over collective memory in
Israel ... that is likely to bring about transformation of the definition of Israeli identity.... On the contextual level, this is a
comprehensive controversy about the official, national, historical consciousness of Israel, which is also the dominant popular
consciousness, namely Zionism.17
In this debate, Israeli sociologists play a role similar to that of
literary theorists in the West who engage in debates about historiography: They release the discussion from the rules of the discipline
and transfer it into a speculative and ideological plane—changing it
from a debate about what happened in the past into a dispute about
what should have taken place or what should occur in the future.
Post-Zionism and Postmodernism
Many, in Israel and abroad, perceive post-Zionism as a particularly
Israeli brand of the postmodernist torrent that flooded the world in
the 1980s and 1990s.18 The Israeli version, however, is more political than the Western prototype. The Israeli postmodernists are less
interested in epistemological and methodological abstractions.
What interests them most is using these issues to advance political
goals, primarily the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state.
Post-Zionism has applied postmodern theories and discourse to
the Israeli reality. Pappé pointed to “a leap from positivist prehistory
to postmodern meta-history” in the development of Israeli historiography. In Israel, as elsewhere, the majority of participants in the
theoretical debates about history are not historians. Nonetheless,
Pappé asserted, the postmodern discourse influenced Israeli historians indirectly through indicating ways “to dismantle the domination of the hegemonic, white and masculine narrative over the
historical story of the ‘others’ and ‘otherness’ in this country.”19
In the Israeli version of postmodernism, the native postmodernists endeavor to undermine the Zionist order. For that purpose,
they attack both the history of Zionism and its study. Their criticism aims to destroy the “Zionist discourse,” depicting it as a deliberate distortion of historical truth. They strive to shake up Israeli
historical consciousness, deconstruct Israeli identity, take apart
Israeli collective memory, and present it as a Zionist meta-narrative
that has usurped Jewish history and identity.
To the usual list of the deprived and discriminated-against victims of modernism, Israeli postmodernists have added the Palestinians, in Israel and abroad; the former dwellers of the ma’abarot (the
transit camps for new immigrants) and their descendants; the second generation of Holocaust survivors, and those who spent their
childhood in the shared children’s homes of the kibbutzim. They
post-zionism and postmodernism 9
have taken theories of identity and “otherness” drawn from poststructuralism, Foucault’s doctrine that “knowledge is power,” and
the postcolonialist and antiorientalist discourses in the West, and
then applied the techniques of deconstruction. Nevertheless, the
connection between the parables of a Michelle Foucault (the French
philosopher who was one of the gurus of postmodernism), Jacques
Derrida (the French-Jewish literary critic and founder of deconstructionism) or Edward Said and the Israeli and Middle Eastern
referents is strained and artificial.
Most post-Zionists are faithful to the postmodern axiom that
historiography is politics. By dismissing Jewish nationality, condemning the negation of the Diaspora, describing the surviving
remnant of the Holocaust and Jews from Muslim countries as the
prey of Zionist manipulations, and the Palestinians as innocent victims of collusions and atrocities, they add weight to the allegation
that Israel was conceived and born in sin. Pappé, who led this line
for years, abandoned all academic disguise at the beginning of the
second intifada and enlisted in the service of Palestinian propaganda
in Israel and abroad.20
Humility and modesty are often discarded qualities among
Israeli “posties.” They lavish superlatives upon one another sometimes without regard for attendant realities. For example, Tom
Segev, the Ha’aretz journalist and historian who wrote The Seventh
Million, One Palestine Complete, and 1967, declared that the new
historians “are the first to make use of archival source material.... It
is the first generation of [true] historians. They plow a virgin soil.”21
Knowingly and deliberately, Segev thus distorted the truth: Many
historians of Zionism and the Yishuv worked in Israeli, British,
American, and other archives, long before the advent of the new historians, simultaneously, and subsequently. Yehoshua Porat, Anita
Shapira, Shabtai Tevet, and myself are but few examples of historians who utilized archives long before Morris or Pappé.
The difference between those who speak of being innovators
and those who dispute them is not in the use of archives. It lies in
the difference between the often pervasively ideological writings of
the new historians (though they do sometimes innovate and illuminate) and the more academic writing (which does sometimes
require deviation into various ideological directions) of those who
do not identify themselves with this adjective.
The Uniqueness of Jewish Nationalism
The post-Zionists were not the first to dispute the national element
of the essence of Judaism. Since its emergence, modern Jewish
nationalism was the subject of a heated debate over the question of
how deeply rooted was the national idea in Jewish history: Was it a
revolutionary innovation or had it manifested continuity? This
debate took place between Zionists of competing trends as well as
between Zionists and their opponents—i.e., between supporters of
other versions of Jewish nationalism and those who objected to any
form of it. Some participants in this discussion have argued that
nationalism is foreign to Judaism and constitutes a revolt against the
anomaly of Jewish history, an attempt to break from the unique
Jewish past and return to world history. Others have retorted that
Zionism is the outcome of Jewish history’s continuity, but have
offered a new interpretation.22
Modern Jewish nationalism emerged in the footsteps of a general nationalist awakening in Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe
following the Napoleonic Wars. It was influenced by this revival and
adopted many of its concepts and vocabulary. Nonetheless, it differed in several significant respects from the European prototype.
Just as Judaism defied any comprehensive theory—religious, Marxist or postcolonialist—so it also posed a problem for theories of
nationalism and dissented from the model on various issues.
The familial roots of Jewish nationalism, as well as its ethnic,
linguist, and cultural origins, are much older than those of the
European national movements. As a historical phenomenon,
Judaism antedated them by many centuries, though after the
destruction of the Second Temple, Jewish history lacked political
and military expression, but played out in the religious, cultural,
communal, social, and economic dimensions. Zionism also differed
the uniqueness of jewish nationalism 11
from other European national movements in its attitude toward its
national language. The East European movements cultivated local
vernaculars as a counterweight to the languages of the imperial
authorities—German or Russian—and as means to shape national
identities and cultures. Zionism discarded the Jewish vernaculars—
Yiddish and Ladino—and returned to ancient Hebrew as a basis for
creating a modern national Jewish culture and identity.
A territorial basis—the foundation of any national movement—was theoretical in Diaspora Judaism and was expressed
mostly in the prayer book. Zionism revived this dimension by
revolting against the reality of Jewish life in exile and advocating the
transfer of the Jews to the national territory of the Land of Israel.
Just as the Jews saved their language as a holy language, so they had
maintained throughout history their affiliation with a particular territory that they regarded as their holy homeland. This linkage was
based on distant historical memories, religious doctrine, and messianic expectations for the future. The traditional religious and spiritual affiliation to the land shaped the consciousness that eventually
led Jews to regard the Land of Israel as their national territory. In its
early years, the Zionist movement wavered between loyalty to the
land and concern for the people. The decision was made only after
the crisis created by the Uganda Plan of 1904. Ever since, the Zionist movement has regarded Jewish nationalism as inseparable from
the Land of Israel and rejected any other territorial solution to the
Jews’ plight.23
Zionism contrasted with other national movements, such as
those of Poland, Serbia, or Bohemia, that had revived and highlighted a relatively close past that preceded their occupation by ruling
empires. The Zionists rejected the recent historical experience of the
Jews, namely the Diaspora, and described Zionism as the opposite
of exile. To reach the distant historical experience that it sought to
revive, Zionism had to skip 1,800 years of communal Jewish life in
exile and return to the political history of the Jews in their land
prior to the revolts against the Romans.
Of all the elements that constitute a national movement—lan-
guage, territory, culture, economy, and common destiny—the Jews
had mainly a common heritage that shaped their identity. One
could adopt Jewish tradition as it was, as did the Orthodox, use it
selectively or reinterpret it as did the Reform and Conservative
movements, but no one, including the opponents of tradition,
could simply ignore this heritage.24
Opposition to Jewish Nationalism
From its beginnings, Zionism has provoked adversaries who objected to Jewish nationalism or, at least, to its linkage with the Land of
Israel. Orthodox, Marxist, and assimilated liberal Jews regarded
Zionism as a panicked response to anti-Semitism, an imitation of
European nationalism, and a distortion of Judaism’s true essence
and image. These varieties of anti-Zionism were mainly a phenomenon of exile. Post-Zionism, by contrast, is “blue and white”—a
product of Israel, produced by people who were born and/or educated in Israel.25
The post-Zionists’ arguments against Jewish nationality, and
against Zionism as its principal expression, echo the liberal and
Marxist anti-Zionist polemics in the beginning of the twentieth
century. These two sources of anti-Zionism rejected outright any
Jewish national identity and accused Zionism of making it up. The
liberals opposed any expression of Jewish difference except for religion (which they called the “Mosaic religion,” since “Jewish religion” had a national and exclusivist connotation). The Marxists
considered the Jewish question a problem of civil equality, not a
national issue. Marxist Jews did not negate only Zionism, but the
future of Judaism generally. In their eyes, Jewish nationalism was a
move backward, opposed to historical development and social
progress.
Nonetheless, the dispute between the Zionists and the antiZionist Marxists in Eastern Europe took place within a common
framework that recognized the acuteness of the Jewish problem.
The Marxists argued that Zionism did not provide a true and practical answer. Subsequently, they added that the insistence on settling
the denial of jewish nationality 13
in Palestine did not solve the Jews’ plight but created a new one (the
Arabs’) and opened new avenues for Jew-baiting. Unlike the Jewish
Communists in the Soviet Union and the Bund in Poland, the PKP
(the Palestinian Communist Party) totally ignored the Jewish problem in exile and identified entirely with the national Arab stances.26
The post-Zionists in many ways carry forward the tradition of the
PKP. Like their predecessors during the riots of 1929 and during the
Palestinian rebellion of 1936-39, they oppose Zionism, and this
opposition brings them to identify with its Palestinian adversaries.
The Denial of Jewish Nationality
The objection to Jewish nationalism derives support from relatively
new theories of nationality and colonialism. Primarily, the postZionists quote Cornell University professor emeritus of International Studies Benedict Anderson, who defined a nation as an
“imagined community”—imagined by its members, and manipulated by bureaucrats and educators. Additionally, they frequently cite
British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm’s thesis that the allegedly
old national traditions of Europe were invented in the nineteenth
century to cultivate national myths. Usually, they ignore or refute
other theorists of nationalism, such as Anthony D. Smith, editor-inchief of the scholarly journal Nations and Nationalism, who regards
nationality as the continuation of an older ethnic identity, or the
late Ernst Gellner, who asserted that nationalism is an outcome of
modernization. They hardly relate to earlier scholars of nationalism,
such as Hans Kohn or Friedrich Hertz, and they disregard completely the original philosophers of nationalism such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Johann Herder, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte.27
Theories that link nationalism with modernization, like Gellner’s, may explain the disintegration of traditional corporative society, emancipation, and assimilation—trends that are opposite to the
development of Jewish nationalism—but they ignore the growth of
Jewish self-consciousness, whose roots were in the ethnic elements
of Jewish existence. Thus, Smith’s theory, if any, appears more suitable for explaining Jewish nationalism.28
To deny Zionism being a national movement, the post-Zionists
portray it as a colonialist phenomenon. A nation that does not exist
(i.e., the Jewish nation) cannot have a national movement and does
not need a nation-state. At most, they would define it as “national
colonialism”—but Israeli, not Jewish. Thus, they prepare the ground
for a new Jewish religious millet that would exist in a future Palestinian state, as it did in the Ottoman Empire. Nonreligious Israeli Jews
would then assimilate with Palestinian Arabs, just as they assimilated
with the surrounding peoples in Europe and America. Dedicating
his recent book on the history of modern Palestine to his sons,
Pappé, in this spirit, wished them a peaceful life in the modern
Palestinian state that would replace the Jewish nation state.29
The “Israeli Nationality”
Since they reject Zionism as an authentic articulation of Jewish
nationalism, the post-Zionists have made up an “Israeli” nationalism. Pappé has put together a theory of his own to explain its
essence. In peculiar ways, he mobilizes the reputation of Benedict
Anderson, Hobsbawm, and other historians to support his claim.
His principal argument asserts that “Israeli nationalism” is a Middle
Eastern phenomenon that should be studied in the framework of
national movements in the Third World. His ulterior motive is
transparent: denying Zionism’s origins in the Jewish question in
Europe and its endeavor to offer a solution to that question, by
turning it from a movement that emerged from the Jewish plight in
Europe into a territorial-colonialist local phenomenon in the Middle East, in the manner of South Africa.
Pappé’s theory is based on a bizarre reading of Anderson’s Imagined Communities (see above, p. 13) and a selective choice of examples from that book. Checking the references to Anderson hardly
reveals any support for his arguments. When he brings his own
examples, Pappé demonstrates embarrassing ignorance. Thus, for
example, he confuses the Norman Duke William the Conqueror,
who became England’s King William the First in the eleventh century, with the Dutch Prince Willem of Orange who became Eng-
the “israeli nationality” 15
land’s King William the Third after the revolution of 1688, among
other factual errors.30
The denial of Jewish nationality and its replacement with Israeli
nationality are not original contributions of Pappé. They come from
a seemingly authoritative source—Eric Hobsbawm.31 However,
Hobsbawm is not an authority on Jewish or Middle Eastern history.
His expertise is in the history of Europe and Latin America. He is an
anti-Zionist Marxist who, long before Pappé, denied the existence
of Jewish nationality and Zionism as its expression. Hobsbawm
coined the phrase “Israeli nationality,” but deliberately refrained
from stating to whom it referred.
Hobsbawm held that identifying the historical-religious yearning of the Jews for the Land of Israel, their pilgrimages to the country, and hopes to return to it after the coming of the Messiah with
the aspiration to concentrate all Jews in a modern territorial state in
the Holy Land was illegitimate. Like the British historian-philosopher Arnold Toynbee, who preceded him with a peculiar thesis on
Judaism being a fossilized relic of “Syriac civilization,” Hobsbawm
takes a position that is nothing but an odd personal view, not
derived from evidence or erudition.32
According to Hobsbawm, religion becomes a significant force
in nationalism only when the national movement matures and turns
into a mass movement, not in its infancy, when it is still a minority
movement. He bases his opinion on a “Zionist” example: “Zionist
militants in the heroic days of the Palestine Yishuv were more likely
to eat ham sandwiches demonstratively than to wear ritual caps, as
Israeli zealots are apt to do today.”33
This statement is biased and ill-informed. Most Zionists came
from traditional homes in the Diaspora. The vast majority of the
Yishuv treated tradition with respect. Though the majority did not
observe all the commandments, Jews in Palestine were married in
religious ceremonies, circumcised their sons, observed the sanctity
of Yom Kippur, even if they did not fast, and were buried in a Jewish traditional ceremony. This was true also for most pioneers of the
Second Aliyah (1904-14).34
Even at present, Jewish nationalism is far from confined to
those who wear kipot (yarmulkes), and its ranks are full of people
who freely enjoy ham and nonkosher varieties of seafood. Hobsbawm and his imitators, however, will not let the facts confuse
them. They totally ignore the immanent linkage in Judaism
between nationality (“ethnos,” as they prefer to call it) and religion.
This connection differs from any other nation and religion, where
religion can be common to several nations, a nation can consist of
believers in various creeds, and religious conversion does not mean
severing the ties to one’s nation and community.
In its attempt to skip two millennia of history and return to its
pre-exilic past in the Land of Israel, Hobsbawm argues, Zionism
ignored and negated real Jewish history. For him, the Jews’ language
has been Yiddish, and he scornfully compares the revival of Hebrew
to attempts to revive interest in the Druids in Wales. This strange
comparison only testifies to his ignorance of modern Hebrew culture.35
Hobsbawm’s statements about Zionism in his books on nationalism, like his articles and papers that relate to Israel, have not relied
on any erudition. If one ceases to be impressed by his worldwide
horizons, one finds that the statements of Pappé’s opinionated guru
derive from nothing but his own hard feelings toward Zionism and
Israel.36 There is more than a trace of deception in Pappé’s attempt
to depict Hobsbawm’s ideological and political stance as authoritative for a theoretical and apparently scientific claim.37
Similarly, Pappé abuses another prominent historian, the American William H. McNeill, telling his readers:
In McNeill’s eyes, Zionism is ... a partial lesson to the Holocaust’s lesson [!]. The lesson is that human assimilation has been
bound to fail.... Therefore, nationalism, which is the belief in
exclusivity and the antithesis of assimilation, won.... In the case
of Zionism, he thinks that the Jews, who were the victims of the
assimilation’s failure, caused another conflict between Jews and
non-Jews ... the victim of nationalism made others the victims
of its own nationalism.38
This is a misleading representation of McNeill, who wrote that
Nazi-German racial nationalism had contradictory impacts after the
Second World War. On the one hand, it damaged the idea of ethnic
unity within the framework of the state, because this notion smelled
of Nazi doctrines. On the other hand, Jews in particular, and also
other ethnic minorities, abandoned in the wake of the war the ideal
of assimilation into the dominant national group. After a short
description of the enthusiastic and successful incorporation of Jews
into German society during the era of emancipation, McNeill continues:
If assimilation provoked such a brutal response in the heart of
European civilization, what is the use of continuing it elsewhere? Wouldn’t it be better to comply with the differences and
even to stress them? And, perhaps, immigration to Israel was
preferable? However, ironically, the new Jewish homeland that
was founded in 1947, instead of solving ethno-religious tensions between Jews and others, as the founders of Zionism
hoped, precisely aggravated them and turned them international by creating a population of Palestinian refugees that refused
to comply with its removal from lands that were seized by the
Jews.39
“Ethno-religious tensions between Jews and others” have been
international concerns since the end of the nineteenth century, long
before the Palestinian refugees. McNeill writes about the lack of
hope for assimilation, and laments the irony of fate that the Jewish
state, instead of solving the problem, escalated the friction between
Jews and Arabs because of the Palestinian refugee problem. There is
a considerable distance between what McNeill wrote and its distortion by Pappé.
Purporting to draw on “the view of many scholars of nationalism, including Anderson” (though I have not found any reference in
Anderson’s book to this claim), Pappé declares that “Zionism does
not differ essentially from other national phenomena in the Third
World.” Yet, in Pappé’s view, Zionism also does not correspond
completely to Anderson’s model of imagined nationalism, because it
is a mixture of nationalism and colonialism—“a national movement
that has used and is still using colonialist tools for achieving its
goals.” He also makes Britain the “imperialist motherland” of those
Jews from Eastern and Central Europe who wished to practice their
nationalism in Palestine.40 He leaves for the reader to wonder why
Britain undertook responsibility for Jews from the continent and
whether there has been any parallel situation in the history of imperialism and colonialism.
Pappé’s take on Jewish nationalism is not unique, and other
post-Zionists share it to various degrees. Tel Aviv historian Shlomo
Zand—who is not exactly post-Zionist because he was never a
Zionist but rather grew up in a Communist family and youth movement—deems Zionists “a community of immigrant-settlers” that
legitimized its claim for Palestine by transforming the Bible from a
holy religious canon to a national history textbook.41 Ram maintains that, contrary to the conviction of the graduates of the Israeli
school system that a Jewish nation has always existed, the Zionist
movement invented a tradition for a nation that had not existed
before and would not have been created without the Zionist invention. Ram further claims that modernity:
... did not relieve from its chains a Jewish nationalism that waited for two thousand years to be liberated, but ... tore to pieces
the prenational Jewish identity. Jewish nationalism did not
burst out from Jewish identity, but was thrown to it as a lifesaver when it was about to drown in the whirlpool of modern
times.42
Ram asserts the self-evident: Until the eighteenth century, no
nationalism in the modern sense of the word existed in Europe. Like
the identities of the European aristocracy, clergy, burghers according
to their branches of commerce and artisanship, and peasants according to their level of serfdom, Jewish identity was also corporate.43
Compared to its environs, the medieval and early modern Jewish corporation featured a high degree of solidarity, a highly developed autonomous and communal organization, a religious
affiliation with the Land of Israel, and an expectation for the
redemption of all Jews and their return to Zion, which from time to
time surfaced in the form of messianic movements. Zionism translated these qualities into modern concepts—not as “politics of identity,” but as a response to the constraints and pressures that Ram
and his comrades blatantly ignore. True, Zionism was not a thousand-year-old phenomenon as its pious advocates maintain and
sworn enemies deny. It was a historic movement that emerged in
Eastern and Central Europe at the end of the nineteenth century in
response to contemporary needs and desires of the Jews who lived in
those countries, but it derived its legitimacy and convictions from
much older origins.44
The post-Zionists and their favorite theoreticians of nationality
take no notice of the external impacts on the shaping of Jewish
nationalism. In addition to self-definition and internal awakening,
Zionism was a product of outside definition and attitudes. The
Jews’ patterns of response to European nationalism and modernization were not “strategies of identity,” as post-Zionists hold. They
were not texts, but real-life experiences. Zionism responded to the
distress of the Jews, particularly where they lived in dense concentration. Its principal purpose was solving the plight of the Jews, and
only secondarily, that of Judaism. The condition of Judaism in the
face of modernity preoccupied Zionist thinkers like Ahad Ha’am,
but it hardly bothered the field activists who built the Zionist movement and the masses who joined it.
The plight of Judaism gave birth to various suggestions as to
how to construct a modern Jewish identity, such as the idea that the
Jews’ special mission on earth was to disseminate monotheism (or
pure morality). None of these suggestions provided an answer to the
existential distress of the Jewish masses, and none acquired any popularity. Only two real answers were suggested to the Jewish misery: a
national solution in the Land of Israel, and a pluralist solution
through emigration overseas. The American immigration laws of
the 1920s put an end to mass emigration and indirectly had a crucial impact on the scope of the Holocaust and the founding of
Israel.45
A common argument often used to deny the historical existence
of an ancient Jewish people who created a modern national movement claimed that, prior to the emergence of Zionism, there was in
Eastern Europe a “Yiddish people.” This argument was made by
Jewish Communists, Bundists, and liberals alike. Zand continues
the tradition of the Bund and Simon Dubnow’s doctrine of national autonomy that seemed to have vanished in the Holocaust, and
describes the Yiddish language as the center of Jewish identity and
life in Europe: In describing the “Yiddish people,” he writes about
Yiddish culture, the Yiddish middle class, and the anomaly of “Yiddishist life” in Europe.46 The anomaly, however, was not in the language, but in the socioeconomic reality. Yiddish culture prospered
as a national culture no less or more because it was socialist or
autonomist. It prevailed not only in the Bund, but also in the Zionist parties that wished to communicate with the masses and so published newspapers, journals, and brochures in Yiddish.
The Colonialist Paradigm of Zionism
Since the shaping of the new order in the Middle East after the First
World War, the Palestinians (then known as the Arab inhabitants of
Palestine) have portrayed themselves as a national liberation movement struggling against a foreign colonial power (the Zionist movement) supported by the military might of British imperialism,
which tried to usurp land that belonged to others. The Palestinians
rest their case on the resolutions of the Palestinian congresses from
the beginning of the 1920s, in their appeals to the British government and the League of Nations, and in their official and unofficial
deliberations with the various commissions that sought a solution to
the Palestine problem in the 1930s and 1940s. At that time colonialism was considered legitimate, and their arguments did not
attract much attention. World public opinion did not consider
them more convincing than the Jewish plight in Europe before, and
certainly after, the Holocaust.
Circumstances changed for the Palestinians after the completion of the decolonization of the Third World. Since the late 1970s,
their arguments have fallen on receptive ears, particularly in West-
the colonialist paradigm of zionism 21
ern Europe, tattered by postcolonialist guilt feelings. Inspired by
Edward Said (an American professor of literature, of EgyptianPalestinian origin, the author of Orientalism), Palestinian intellectuals have embarked on demonstrating to the West the colonialist
nature of Zionism.47 The accusation of “colonialism” that they hurl
against Zionism rests on dubious historical evidence (that usually
points to the opposite conclusions). It derives mainly from tendentious interpretations that mix up past and present and serve to
advance Palestinian viewpoints on the persisting Israeli-Arab conflict.
Denying the existence of Jewish nationality, Israeli post-Zionists have joined Palestinian scholars in their attempts to prove Zionism’s colonialist nature.48 However, portraying Zionism as a
colonialist movement did not begin with post-Zionism. It’s as old as
the Arab-Jewish conflict, beginning with the first Palestinian Congress that convened in Jerusalem in January 1919—if not earlier.
Rashid Khalidi, an American scholar of Palestinian origin, described
a 1911-13 incident of Jewish settlers arriving in Fula (Merchavia) as
an early example of the insurrection of Arab tenants against Zionist
dispossessors.49
What was the extent of Arab opposition to the Zionist enterprise at the beginning of immigration and settlement? Kimmerling
found four examples—spread over twenty-two years—of press articles and petitions against the purchase of land by Jews. He claimed
that these prove the Arabs’ political and national objections to land
purchases by Jews in Palestine. This is scant evidence for the existence of genuine national opposition. He did not specify the scope
of land transactions between Jews and Arabs concluded during
those twenty-two years, which might have shown that opposition
was the exception rather than the rule.50
An American Jewish scholar, Lawrence Silberstein of Lehigh
University, who shares some of the post-Zionists’ stances, praised
Kimmerling and Joel Migdal’s Palestinians as “a first effort by an
Israeli scholar to present a balanced and comprehensive description
of the social and political development of the Palestinian nation.”
Apart from the grave question marks that hang over many arguments of these authors, these remarks reveal that Silberstein seems
to think that Israeli historiography began with Kimmerling. He
ignores the Jerusalem historian Yehoshua Porath’s two volumes on
the history of the Palestinian national movement that appeared in
the 1970s, to say nothing of earlier works by journalist Michael
Assaf and veteran diplomat Ya’acov Shimoni.51
Kimmerling, Migdal, and San Diego sociologist Gershon Shaffir (who wrote a book on Zionism and labor) also did not break new
ground by blaming Zionism for the dispossession of Palestinians
and depriving them of their land and rights. They had been preceded by Jewish communists that already in the 1920s objected to the
Zionist enterprise because of its alleged colonialist nature. Their
Jewish comrades in Palestine backed Arab nationalism, accused
Zionism of being a tool of imperialism, and regarded settlement on
the land as a capitalist extortion of the Arab tenants.52 They did not
mask their stances as the fruits of academic research and preached
them openly as an ideology and politics. In the wake of the Jewish
communists came Matzpen, a small radical anti-Zionist group that
was active in the 1960s and 1970s and blamed Zionism for all the
sins of old and new capitalism.53
Post-Zionists and Other Detractors
Several critical publicists outside Israeli academe have published
books that criticized the Zionist past and the Israeli present. Prominent among them were the military historian and convicted spy (for
the USSR) Israel Ber, journalist and former MK Uri Avnery, and
Aharon Cohen, an autodidact scholar who founded and headed the
Arab department of Hashomer Hatza’ir and Mapam.54 Since the
late 1970s, the center of this genre has moved from Israel to the
West. Several books by former Israelis as well as by American and
French Jewish activists of the New Left presented an antiIsraeli/anti-Zionist version of the history of Zionism and Israel. Particularly, they have stressed the injustice that the West inflicted on
the Palestinians by the very foundation of Israel, regardless of its
post-zionists and other detractors 23
borders. Some of these authors were academics from such diverse
disciplines as mathematics, chemistry, linguistics, and psychology,
including Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak, Moshe Machover, and
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. Others were well-known journalists such
as Simha Flapan.55
The post-Zionists follow in the footsteps of these earlier Israel
detractors and have elaborated on their arguments. Under the disguise of “comparative history,” they have cultivated the stereotype of
the colonialist Zionist immigrant by comparing the farmer settling
in the old colony of Rosh Pina or the pioneer in Kibbutz Degania to
the Dutch officials in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) or the
French colons in Algeria. One of their favorite comparisons matches
up the Jewish settlers in the Land of Israel to the Boers in South
Africa. They also have correlated the acquisition by the United
States of Louisiana from France in 1803 and Alaska from Russia in
1867 to the piecemeal purchase of tracts of land from the Arabs in
Palestine by the Jewish National Fund. Similarly, they equate the
attitude of the Jews to the Arab tenants who tilled these tracts with
the Americans’ treatment of Hispanic settlers in Texas.56
“Political Zionism,” Kimmerling stated, “emerged and consolidated on the threshold of the colonial period in Europe, when the
right of Europeans to settle in every non-European country was
taken for granted.”57 Presumably, this statement represents the
“comparative approach,” but it should not take an expert in colonial
history to know that the colonial era in European history began
much earlier, in the sixteenth century. Zionism emerged toward the
end of this long era and not on its threshold, and West European
colonialism had been preceded by other colonialisms—Arab, Turkish, German, and Russian. The comparison of the acquistion of
Louisiana and Alaska to the land purchases of the JNF is not persuasive. Many problems would have been solved had the Zionist
Movement possessed sufficient funds and the opportunity to buy
the Land of Israel in several fell swoops, as the United States did for
large parts of its westward expansion in the nineteenth century, and
had Britain and the other powers supported Zionism in the manner
that Kimmerling and his comrades claim. Precisely the slow pace of
the Zionist enterprise’s growth, due to the need to purchase the land
and the scarcity of resources to do so, testifies to its noncolonial
character.
In the name of “comparative history,” Pappé compared Zionism
to missionary activity in West Africa and to previous attempts by
Christians to settle in Palestine and expel the Arabs from the country (i.e., the Crusades). He found an “astonishing similarity”
between the secret hopes of Henri Gerren, the French traveler and
explorer of nineteenth-century Palestine, and those of Zionist leader
Menachem Ussishkin, the chairman of the Jewish National Fund:
Gerren strove to revive the Crusaders’ kingdom of Jerusalem, while
Ussishkin aspired to revive the kingdom of David and Solomon.
Drawing on bizarre and unverifiable sources, Pappé determined
that from the beginning, Zionist settlers in the Land of Israel aimed
to dispossess the Arabs. He brings an untrustworthy quotation from
a rabbi of Memel who never set foot in Palestine, a “well-known
Zionist leader” by the name of Itzhak Rielf, who, according to
Pappé, called in 1883 (fourteen years before the establishment of
the Zionist organization!) for expelling the Arabs from the country.
The most “convincing” is Pappé’s reference to the Palestinian historian-propagandist Nur Masalha, who chose a random assortment of
citations taken out of their original contexts to prove, in his mind,
Zionist intentions to dispossess and expel the Palestinian Arabs.58
Masalha, Edward Said, and even Benny Morris have quoted a
single entry from Theodor Herzl’s diary that spoke of spiriting “the
penniless population across the borders by procuring employment
for it in the transit countries while denying it any employment in
our own country.”59 All three missed or ignored the continuation of
Herzl’s words later in the entry: “Discreet, delicate investigations
should first be carried on regarding the financial needs, the internal
political situation, and currents in these South American republics.”
Herzl did not write this diary entry with reference to Palestine and
Arabs. In 1895, before the publication of Der Judenstaat in 1896
and the First Zionist Congress in 1897, he was still oriented toward
post-zionists and other detractors 25
Latin America, not the Near East, as a haven for the Jews. The
whole construction built on this reference by the Palestinians is
flawed.60
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, a post-Zionist historian at Ben-Gurion University, offered other grounds for equating Zionism with
colonialism. He criticized two facets of the Zionist attitude toward
the nexus between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel: the
emphasis on the continuity of Jewish presence in the land, and the
romantic views of young immigrants of an earlier era who considered the Arabs descendants of the ancient Jews and, therefore, a
model for imitation. Both approaches, he maintained, “did not
leave room for the Arabs and their consciousness.” The Zionist perception conditioned their appraisal. In his view, this was the beginning of total denial of the Arabs’ claim for national rights in the
country.61
It was this emphasis on a continuous Jewish presence and an
unremitting affiliation to the Land of Israel, according to RazKrakotzkin, that served the Jewish claim for rights to the country.
He maintained that Zionist historiography was clearly linked to the
Zionist Organization’s diplomatic activity. The historical claims, he
argued, were the foundation of the Zionist demands on Britain to
adopt an exceptional policy in Palestine that would disregard the
national aspirations of the indigenous population and deny their
right for a state or other political entity of their own.
There is no evidence to prove that the British read, were supposed to read, or were affected by Zionist historiography. It is highly doubtful that any British statesman or official ever read the
writings to which Raz-Krakotzkin refers. Certainly they did not
sway Lord Balfour when he wrote to Prime Minister David Lloyd
George after the opening of the Versailles Peace Conference that
Britain considered Palestine an exception to the principle of selfdetermination and rightly so, because the Jewish question outside
Palestine had worldwide significance that outweighed the wishes of
the local population.62 British statesmen might have been influenced by Hebraist Christian scholarship (as Raz-Krakotzkin sug-
gests in another context), but not by Zionist historiography.63
Looking everywhere for colonialist conspiracies, RazKrakotzkin regarded the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a symbol of Zionist colonialism. Since its foundation, he argued, it was a
colonialist university, established not for the indigenous population
but for immigrants, and thus hindering the establishment of universities for the natives. Hence, he accused the university of being “a
political weapon that prevented education from the majority of the
populace.”64
By indigenous population, he did not mean the graduates of
Jewish high schools in Palestine, who until the Second World War
usually went abroad for higher education, but rather the local Arabs.
However, what education did Palestine’s Arabs need? In 1925, the
year of the Hebrew University’s establishment, Palestine had fortynine Arab elementary and high schools in towns (twenty-nine for
boys and twenty for girls) and 265 rural schools (all elementary, of
which eleven were for girls). They were attended by 16,146 boys
and 3,591 girls. Most pupils attended school for four or five years.
Twenty years later, in 1945, the total number of Arab pupils had
risen to 71,468, but only 232 studied in the eleventh and twelfth
grade classes and so constituted a potential pool for Arab higher
education.65 The Arab population needed elementary schools, not a
university, and the British Mandate did develop Arab education
considerably. The argument that the establishment of the Hebrew
University prevented the development of Arab education is simply
ridiculous.
Why Zionism Is Not Colonialist
Indeed, Zionism required immigration and colonization—just as
the Spanish conquistadors in South America and the Pilgrims in
North America did. For a while, Zionism was assisted by an imperialist power, Britain, though the reasons for British backing were
more complex than simply imperialism. Here the similarity ends,
and the comparison with colonialism fails to explain adequately the
Jewish national revival.
why zionism is not colonialist 27
Unlike the conquistadors and their like, Jewish immigrants to
the Land of Israel did not come armed to the teeth, and made no
attempt to take the country by force from the native population.
The pioneer immigrants conceived of the normalization of the Jew
in terms of a return to manual labor, not to exerting military power.
Until the First World War, the idea of creating a Jewish military
force for achieving political aims was confined to a few visionaries,
and even at the end of that war, volunteering in the Jewish battalions of the British Army was controversial among young pioneers in
Palestine.
If we take a semiotic approach, until 1948 the Hebrew word
kibbush (meaning occupation, conquest) referred to taming the
wilderness and mastering the skills of manual labor and the arts of
grazing; in its most militant form, it referred to guarding Jewish settlements. Terms such as gedud (battalion) or plugah (company)
referred not to military but to labor formations. The armed Jewish
force emerged late, in response to attacks and threats on the part of
the Arabs, and the key word in the process of its building was
“defense.” The ethos of using force was, as Anita Shapira showed in
her book Land and Power, defensive—at least until the Palestinian
rebellion of 1936-39.
After that rebellion, “defense” was not perceived necessarily in
tactical terms. Tactically, the Yishuv’s youth became aggressive. Yet
the use of the word “defense” symbolized a broader perception of
the Zionist enterprise as constantly threatened by its Arab surroundings and, sometimes, also by other powers. The word implied
that the Yishuv was the responder, not the initiator of the threats,
even if and when tactically it took the initiative by unleashing the
first blow or firing the first shot.
Unlike the white settlers in the British colonies, Zionism voluntarily undertook restrictions compatible with democratic principles
of self-determination. It strove to arrive at a demographic majority
in the Land of Israel before taking political control of the country.
The Zionists considered Jewish majority a precondition for Jewish
sovereignty. They believed that this condition was attainable
through immigration, not by expulsion or annihilation in the manner accomplished by the whites vis-à-vis Native Americans or Aborigines.
Economic theories of colonialism and sociological theories of
migration movements are equally inadequate when applied to the
Zionist experience. Palestine differed from typical countries of colonialist emigration primarily because it was an underdeveloped and
poor country. Usually, Europeans had immigrated to countries rich
in natural resources and poor in manpower in order to exploit their
wealth; by contrast, Palestine was too poor even to support its
indigenous population. At the end of the Ottoman period, natives
of Palestine—Jews and Arabs alike—emigrated to seek their future
in America and Australia.
Zionist ideology and the import of Jewish private and national
capital compensated for the lack of natural resources and accelerated
modernization. These two factors—ideology (except for missionary
zeal) and import of capital—were totally absent in other colonial
movements. Imperialist powers generally exploited colonies for the
benefit of the mother country and did not invest beyond what was
necessary for that exploitation. By contrast, the flow of Jewish capital to Palestine went one way only. Neither Britain nor the Jewish
people derived any economic gains from the Zionist enterprise.
A central argument made by those who claim that Zionism was
a colonialist movement concerns the taking over of land and the dispossession of Arab tenants. The argument barely stands up to critical test. Until 1948 the Zionists did not conquer or expropriate,
but—unparalleled among colonialist movements—bought land in
Palestine. Kimmerling wrote that between 1910 and 1944 the price
of land in Palestine rose by a factor of 52.5. According to his data, in
1910 the price of agricultural land in Palestine was twice its average
price in the United States, while in 1944 the proportion was 23:1.
Between 1936 and 1944 the land prices rose three times more than
the cost of living index.66
Under these circumstances, the Palestinians could not resist the
temptation to sell land to Jews. The sellers represented all the
why zionism is not colonialist 29
prominent clans of the Palestinian land-owning elite. Palestinian
and some post-Zionist Israeli scholars put the blame for the land
sales and eviction of the Arab tenants on foreign landowners and
conceal the role of indigenous elite families, who led the Palestinian
national movement, in such transactions.67
The complaint about the dispossession of tenants is only partially justified. This was the case in the early land deals of the late
nineteenth century, e.g., the founding nuclei of Rehovot and
Hadera, where Arab tenants who lived on the land but did not own
it were removed through the exigency of the Ottoman police. Ahad
Ha’am and some of his contemporaries commented on the bad feelings this practice generated among the Arabs. Therefore, from the
second decade of the twentieth century, the JNF and other public
companies that purchased land tracts allocated sums for compensating the evacuated tenants and helping them to resettle. No such
arrangements were in force in transactions among Arab buyers and
sellers.
Upon statehood, circumstances changed. State land was requisitioned, and private lands were expropriated. But the state compensated private owners, either with money or alternative tracts, and
individual Arabs continued to sell off their holdings. Land trade has
always been full of deceit and unsavory transactions on all sides, but
that cannot obfuscate the Palestinians’ fiasco in checking the sale of
land, despite the violent steps they took and the numerous assassinations of land-sellers and dealers throughout the twentieth century.
By contrast to the pattern in other countries of immigration
and colonialist settlement, the Jewish immigrants did not wish to
integrate into the existing, mainly Arab, economy, and also did not
try to take it over. With some exception for the colonists of the First
Aliyah, they laid foundations for a new and separate economy, without the relations of mastery and dependence that had characterized
colonial societies.68 During the Mandate period and in the early
years of statehood, Jewish immigrants competed with indigenous
Arabs and Arab immigrants from the adjacent countries in the
urban and rural, public and private manual labor markets—as agri-
cultural laborers, in the building industry, as stonecutters, road
builders, porters, and stevedores.69 Kibbush ha’avoda (the conquest
of labor) had ideological, economic, social, and political motivations, but such competition between white settlers and natives was
inconceivable in colonial countries.
A cultural appraisal, too, excludes Zionism from the colonialist
paradigm. Contrary to the colonialist stereotype, Jews who immigrated to the Land of Israel severed their ties to their countries of
origin and their cultural past. Instead, they revived an ancient language and, on the basis of Hebrew, created a new canonic and popular culture. The revival of Hebrew began in Eastern Europe and
preceded Zionism, but the Zionist Movement and the Yishuv
implemented it fully. In the Land of Israel, Hebrew became the
national language spoken by all—from the kindergarten to the
academy.70
Furthermore, all over the world colonialist emigrants either
quested for a lucrative future or sought to escape a dreary present.
Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel shared these motives, but
their primary, unique impulse, which distinguished them from
colonialist movements, was to revive an ancient heritage. This aspiration was not typical of colonialist movements, but of national
revivals.
The above arguments should suffice to refute the identification
of Zionism with colonialism. This seemingly historical issue, however, impinges significantly on the present. Long after most other
national liberation movements have achieved their goals and thrown
off colonialism, the Palestinians are still in the same place, if not
worse. This fact alone should have led Palestinian intellectuals and
their Western and Israeli sympathizers to reexamine their traditional
paradigm. By cultivating the Zionist-colonialist prototype, Israeli
historians and social scientists continue to provide the Palestinians
with an excuse to avoid such reexamination, and to encourage them
to proceed along a road that has apparently led nowhere.
With the colonialist paradigm as their point of departure, the
post-Zionists focus on three central issues in the history of Zionism:
a new history of the arab-israeli conflict 31
its attitude toward the Arabs, toward the Holocaust and the surviving remnant, and toward Jews from Muslim countries. This selection was not accidental: Apart from undermining Zionism as the
expression of authentic Jewish nationalism, the post-Zionists assault
the justification for Zionism and Jewish statehood with regard to
three sets of relationships: between Israel and its surroundings; Israel
and its people; and Israel and its purportedly discriminated-against
Jewish citizens.71
A New History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
The first issue, the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, has been the
most charged and complex. The Arab-Israeli conflict is an ongoing
encounter whose end is not yet visible. The persistence of the conflict attracts attention to its current aspects and represses its historical roots. The origins of the conflict appear to lose their relevance.
Ignorance is widespread, memory is short, public opinion as well as
politicians are impatient, and under these conditions, propaganda
competes successfully with historiography.72
Like their Palestinian colleagues, post-Zionists describe the conflict as taking place between one side that is all bad and another that
is all good. In their eyes, being a victim is tantamount to being
righteous, making the suffering party “good” and “just,” regardless
of the reasons for his victimized situation. Triumph, by contrast, is
indiscriminately “bad” and wrong. Hence Zionism, the victorious
side, is nothing but colonialism of the worst kind, disguised as a
national liberation movement and social revolution. By the end of
the twentieth century, the post-Zionists maintain, the mask has
been removed. Israel has been exposed as an imperialist stronghold
in the Middle East, and Israeli society, despite the seemingly socialist labor Zionism that shaped it, appears as a sick capitalist society.
During the 1950s and 1960s, early Israeli historiography and
fiction exalted the War of Independence as a miracle. Reminiscent
of ancient models such as David and Goliath, it was portrayed as
the triumph of the few over the many, the weak successfully challenging the strong, the righteous cause winning out against the
unjust one. This naïve approach gradually changed with the
progress of academic research on the war and its outcomes.73
Early effects of the changing attitude in the Western academic
world and media appeared in Israel in the mid-1980s. In 1984, Tom
Segev published his book 1949: The First Israelis, in which he criticized the prevailing interpretation of Israel’s history and attempted
to show that the growing polarization of Israeli society in the 1980s
had been endemic to the Jewish state since its foundation.74
Segev continued this line in his later books, The Seventh Million,
One Palestine Complete and, more recently, 1967.75 Written with skill
and much talent, these books do not propagate post-Zionist arguments openly. In a more sophisticated way, Segev seemingly focuses
on empirical research, but he is highly selective in his choice of
sources (especially in One Palestine Complete), in his preferences
(especially in The Seventh Million), and his transparency. In 1967 he
brings references that cover a broad variety of issues, but fails to
mention which source refers to a particular issue, thus rendering a
critical reading almost impossible. His last two books do not pretend to present comprehensive pictures, but rather are collages of
life during the Mandate and in the year of the Six-Day War—and
collages are selective (and, hence, tendentious) by their very nature.
Segev uses a broad array of sources—official, semi-official, and
private—to portray a complex vision of the Six-Day War as a turning point in Israeli history. His book merges political and military
history with a grassroots portrait of the common people. Yet, he
admits that even this broad collection of sources is partial and does
not reveal the full picture, which must await a future opening of
additional archives and sources. The book is highly critical, sometimes annoyingly so, and not without errors and disputable
emphases; but the bottom line is that 1967 is an interesting, challenging work that falls somewhere between the traditional and the
revisionist Israeli historiographies. Despite its length and plethora of
details, it is nevertheless far from “definitive.”
In the late 1980s, Morris, Avi Shlaim (an Israeli-British historian of Iraqi Jewish origin, who teaches at Oxford), and Pappé shifted
a new history of the arab-israeli conflict 33
the focus of their research from Israel’s accomplishments in 1948 to
the Palestinian ordeal. Their books portray the Palestinians as victims of violence and oppression (Israeli), collusion (Israeli-Jordanian), and treacherous diplomacy (British and Arab). The appearance
of these books in the West, as well as some in Hebrew, generated an
intensive public debate on their findings and interpretations and
contributed to the growing interest in Zionist history and historiography. The debate expanded beyond the academy into the public
discourse in Israel and abroad.76
The self-chosen designation as “new historians” implies an
objectivity and open-mindedness, as opposed to the allegedly partisan “old historians.” Nonetheless, the new historians’ varying
methodological approaches, standards of professional performance,
and patterns of historical analysis have been subject to criticism no
less than those of their predecessors and “old” contemporaries.77
Nor is there cause to assume that the revisionists have been impartial and free of ideological bias more than any other historians. They
have rendered an invaluable service to the Palestinian charge that
Israel was conceived and born in sin, by sketching the Palestinians
of 1948 and after as innocent victims of conspiracies and atrocities.
The Palestinians have indeed been victims—in 1948 and since—
but the picture is complex and they have been far from “innocent.”
First and foremost, they have been the victims of their own pugnacity, intransigence, and lack of realism.
Morris linked the emergence of the new historians and their
revision of the picture of the Arab-Israeli conflict to the change of
generations and the opening of archives. Kimmerling argued that
the more significant development was the growing openness of
Israeli society.78 Initially, Pappé shared Morris’s approach and maintained that the new history emanated from archival findings, and
“not necessarily from awareness of the change in historians’ self perception and even not out of awareness of the passage of time.”79 A
few years later, Pappé modified his stance, adopting a seemingly
moralistic position that asserted, “It is not the historical materials
that open for us interesting and troubling questions in regard to our
past, but a new moral consciousness does it.”80
Whatever the reasons for their emergence, the new historians
have never been a unified “school” transmitting a common message.
They held varied stances and independent approaches and used various methodologies to revise the accepted version of the conflict.
Morris, an empiricist, has remained faithful to the documentary evidence, though his interpretations and conclusions may occasionally
be disputed. He refuted both accounts of the birth of the refugee
problem, the Israeli and the Arab. However, he refuted the Israeli
version very loudly and the Arab version in a whisper. His critics and
advocates both ignored what he wrote about the Palestinian narrative and quarreled over his critique of the Israeli narrative. Recently,
Morris has been blamed by his former buddies for returning to “the
old narrative” because he refused to join their propaganda campaign
that accused Israel of a deliberate “ethnic cleansing” in 1948.81
Shlaim uncovered the bond between the Jews and King Abdullah and the contacts between Israel and the Syrian dictator Husni alZa’im. These stories had been disseminated earlier through the
grapevine, and Israel Ber (a military historian and advisor to the
Ministry of Defense, who was arrested for spying for the USSR in
1961) mentioned the alleged collusion of the Jewish Agency and
Abdullah in a book that he wrote in prison.82 Shlaim adopted the
gist of Ber’s thesis and endeavored to give it documentary basis and
historical explanation.
During the 1990s, Pappé presented himself as a relativist historian who claimed the right of the Palestinian narrative to be equally
heard. At the turn of the millennium, however, he apparently had a
revelation and turned into a positivist, discovering the existence of
“objective and definitive truth.” This “objective” truth is the new
Palestinian narrative that claims there was no war in Palestine in
1948, only an ethnic cleansing, initiated and planned by the Jews.
Pappé insists that everyone who does not accept this “ultimate
truth” is a “Nakba denier.” He holds that the events of 1948 “should
be reconstructed on the basis of its victims’ testimonies rather than
on that of their victimizers’ documents.”83 Apparently on the basis
the holocaust and jewish statehood 35
of such evidence, he argues that “only the Egyptian army invaded
the Jewish State in 1948.” Thus, by a stroke of the pen (or keyboard), he has changed the UN Partition Resolution and excluded
from the Jewish state the Jordan Valley, the Bisan Valley, and the
Sharon, which were invaded and attacked by the Syrian and Iraqi
armies.84
Such events are insignificant trifles in Pappé’s eyes. He declares
openly that historical research and writing have a political goal.
Everything—truth, honesty, integrity, and methodology included—
is subordinate to this end.85 His demand for legitimizing an ideological approach to history covers over ignorance and
methodological negligence. Morris found in one of Pappé’s recent
books dozens of elementary errors of fact and chronology that
should shame a high school student.86
Dodging the need to explain the violent Palestinian opposition
to Zionism and the massacres of non-Zionist Jews in Hebron and
Safed in 1929, Pappé completely ignores the pre-1948 phase of the
Arab-Jewish conflict. He argues that in 1948 the Palestinians and
the Arab League did not wage a war to frustrate the UN resolution
on partition and the establishment of a Jewish state, but that the
Israelis launched an “ethnic cleansing,” thus preceding the Balkan
wars of the 1990s, where the concept originated.87
The Holocaust and Jewish Statehood
The chronological proximity between the Holocaust and the founding of Israel has tempted many to regard Jewish statehood as a direct
outcome of the Holocaust, an epilogue to it, or a compensation that
the world, through the United Nations, granted the Jews for their
suffering, at the expense of the Palestinians. Palestinian sympathizers in Israel have amplified this paradigm, implying that it is time
for the world to compensate the Palestinians for its error in November 1947. First and foremost among them is, again, Pappé who
asserts that the Zionists used the Holocaust experience as a moral
weapon to obtain American support for gaining control of Palestine
and expelling its Arab inhabitants.
The Shoah per se did not play a role in the founding of Israel,
though it has increasingly replaced Israeli society’s pioneering ethos
as the core of its collective identity. The notion of a nexus between
the Holocaust and Jewish statehood has spread to various circles in
Israel and abroad, among academics and laymen, far beyond Pappé
and his ilk. “The link between the two events remains indissoluble,”
wrote Idith Zertal, meaning not a causal connection between them,
but the role of the Shoah in shaping Israeli identity.88
In his book on the controversy among German historians in the
1980s, Charles Maier, a Harvard professor of international history,
asked, Who benefited from the Holocaust? He promptly replied:
Israel, the Zionists, and Jews generally, since after the Second World
War, their identity depends on the Holocaust. He added that the
Holocaust has helped establish the legitimacy of the Jewish state,
even if it has not legitimized particular policies or borders.89 Maier’s
view has advocates in the United States and Europe, as well as in
Israel, but it is no more than a slogan that testifies to a short memory. The contingency of Jewish statehood had been on the agenda
before World War II, and its legitimacy derived not from the Holocaust but from earlier Jewish history.
Appealing as it may appear, a causal linkage between the Shoah
and Jewish statehood is false. The Holocaust did not bring about
the founding of Israel. Moreover, it almost ended the prospects of
Jewish statehood, since the human reserve of the future Jewish state
perished in Europe during the war. The surviving remnant in the
DP camps did play a central role during the three years from the
end of the Second World War to Israel’s establishment by insisting
on going to Palestine, but this was part of a concerted effort after
the war by the Yishuv, American Jewry, and the survivors, partly as a
reaction to the Holocaust, but not as its outcome.90
Unlike illegal immigration before the Second World War, which
was part of a general mass flight of Jews from the Third Reich and
hardly Zionist, the illegal immigration of survivors after the war was
the epitome of Zionism. It was mainly motivated by the will to
the holocaust and jewish statehood 37
arrive in Palestine—the only place in the world where another war
was surely awaiting the immigrants. True, they were influenced,
even indoctrinated, by a host of emissaries from Palestine—thousands of Jewish soldiers in the British army and later hundreds of
civilian agents. This indoctrination, however, fell on receptive ears.
Zertal, Segev, and their comrades consider this instruction one
of the awful sins of the Zionist Movement in that it did not show
empathy with the survivors’ suffering and cynically manipulated
them to promote its political goals by exposing them to further
ordeals. In their view, the natural response should have been to
empathize with the survivors, feel sorry for their torment, and let
them disperse across the world and try to rebuild their lives. Had
the Zionist leadership taken this course, probably no Jewish state
would have been founded and the post-Zionist historians would
have been satisfied. David Ben-Gurion and his associates thought
otherwise. They realized that this was the last chance to connect the
plight of European Jewry with a Zionist solution to the Palestine
question. Before the war, they had failed to persuade the Jewish and
general publics on both sides of the Atlantic, to say nothing of their
governments, that Palestine could solve the aggravating Jewish
problem, economically and politically. Their success in linking the
two issues after the war derived primarily from the drastic reduction
in the scope of the Jewish problem which made Palestine a feasible
solution. In the second place, it derived from the readiness of the
majority of survivors to follow the Zionists’ lead.
One might cynically say that the Holocaust thus facilitated Jewish statehood, but this is not the post-Zionists’ argument. They
claim that before the war a Jewish state was inconceivable. As a
result of the Holocaust, the Americans and Russians changed their
attitude and backed its creation because they wanted to compensate
the Jewish people, and particularly the survivors, for their agony
during the war. This theory has no grounds in historical evidence
and requires a highly distorted interpretation.
The Alleged “Zionist Appropriation”
of the Holocaust
Two issues that have attracted post-Zionist historians are the Zionists’ alleged appropriation of the Holocaust and their claim of its
uniqueness. The Israeli philosopher Adi Ofir of Tel Aviv University,
one of the leading post-Zionists and the founding editor of their
journal Teoria U’bikoret (Theory and Criticism), calls the demand for
the uniqueness of the Holocaust a “dangerous myth,” because it
establishes “an endless distance between one atrocity and all other
horrors.” His examples of “other horrors” include the wars in Biafra,
Cambodia, and Kurdistan. Ofir also claims that the uniqueness of
the Holocaust, which he calls its mythologizing, is equal to its vulgarization.
Another Israeli philosopher, Ilan Gur-Zeev, of the University of
Haifa’s School of Education, defined the demand for exclusivity
“immoral.” In his unexplained view, it denies the genocides of other
peoples—mainly the Palestinians.91 Portraying the Palestinians as
“victims of genocide” is immensely cheapening—not only of the
Holocaust, but of the term genocide and the peoples who have suffered genocide, such as those mentioned by Ofir.
These two philosophers ignore the bilateral nature of the wars
to which they compare the Shoah—a unilateral campaign against
the Jews. Truly, when reduced to a personal level, all wars have one
shared element, the agony of individuals, but a view that ignores or
blurs the contexts of the individual cases is not historical and hardly
philosophical.
At the same time, the extreme opposite view that goes so far as
to exclude the Holocaust from history is also inappropriate. The
Holocaust was part of history and not a meta- or ahistorical phenomenon. It took place on earth and not on another planet, and
precisely its historical context make it unique in comparison with
other, apparently similar, events.
The Holocaust was genocide, but as Yehuda Bauer, one of the
leading scholars of the Holocaust in the world, and others have
shown, it was much more than just mass killing.92 What made it
the alleged “zionist appropriation” 39
different was the motivation behind it—the intent to wipe out an
entire people based on a theory of race—and it is precisely this
increment that post-Zionists in Israel and elsewhere deny by likening the Holocaust to other atrocities, using the trendy slogans of
comparative and interdisciplinary studies.93
As a basic component of post-World War II Jewish identity, the
Holocaust has fed impassioned arguments among Israelis and Jews
outside Israel as to whether its essence and lessons are universal or
uniquely Jewish, humanist or nationalist. Sixty years after the end of
the Second World War, the axiom that the Shoah was the ultimate
justification for the Zionist solution to the modern Jewish question
can no longer be taken for granted. Zionism’s prewar ideological
opponents, who seemingly vanished after the Holocaust, have
reemerged under the current guise of post-Zionism.
Since the end of the Second World War, the Shoah has been
mobilized to various ends by Israeli leaders and politicians. As early
as 1947, Ben-Gurion compared the mufti with Hitler. On the eve
of the Six-Day War, Egypt’s ruler Gamal Abdul Nasser was the
Hitler of the day. Menachem Begin used to make analogies between
Yasir Arafat and Hitler. During the Gulf War, it was Saddam Hussein’s turn to be likened to Hitler, and now it appears that Hassan
Nasrallah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have succeeded him. On
one extreme of the Israeli political spectrum, Shulamit Aloni compares Israel’s rule of Judea and Samaria to the Nazi occupation in
the Second World War, while on the other end, equally extreme
right-wingers compared the Disengagement from the Gaza Strip
and later evacuations of settlers to the deportations of Jews to the
East during the Holocaust.
The opponents of Jewish nationalism in the West were the first
to denounce the “appropriation” of the Holocaust by the Zionists.
Eric Hobsbawm accused Zionism, and particularly the Likud governments of Israel since 1977, of utilizing the Holocaust as a myth
to grant Israel legitimacy, and of silencing and repressing studies
that do not accept the Zionist view of the Shoah, such as Raul
Hilberg’s monumental work (by not translating his writings into
Hebrew).94 It is true that, in the past Yad Vashem’s scientific committee had reservations about translating Hilberg’s book, mainly
because of the passive role he assigned to the Jews. However, Hobsbawm’s identification of the committee, then led by Israel Gutman
and Yehuda Bauer (both prominent members of the left-wing
Mapam Party), with the “right-wing government” demonstrates an
awkward ignorance.
Criticizing the monopoly that Zionism allegedly usurped, the
post-Zionists have accused Israel of using the Holocaust cynically to
justify its attitude to the Palestinians, the “occupation,” the strongarm tactics, and other evils it has allegedly caused. In Israel and
abroad, the detractors introduced this linkage as early as the 1970s,
beginning with Israeli scientist and philosopher Prof. Yeshayahu
Leibowitz’s catchphrase “Judeo-Nazis” and similar slogans. The
analogies between Zionism and Nazism drawn by Leibowitz and
others were not original. As far back as 1942, disappointed German
immigrants in Palestine used terms like “Yishuvnazim,” “Nazionismus” or the “spirit of Der Stürmer that has taken over the Yishuv.”
Ha’aretz publicist Robert Weltsch resorted to similarly blunt language during the anti-British struggle of 1945-47.95
Jerusalem historian of Germany Moshe Zimmerman attacked
the Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) by calling
their youth Hitlerjugend, and compared the Bible with Mein Kampf—
two new landmarks in analogizing Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians to the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Zimmerman extended
the analogy from the territories to Israel within the pre-1967 lines by
likening his personal condition in 1995—a tenured professor at the
Hebrew University who received public appointments, appeared
often in the media, and embraced odd stances—to the situation of
his father in Germany in 1938, the year of Kristallnacht.96
Disapproval of the Holocaust’s excessive role in Israeli public
life has come from many circles of Israeli society, not necessarily
only post-Zionist. Its targets have included the organized youth
trips to Poland, the shifting of emphasis from the victims to the survivors, the materialist struggles from the days of reparations and
from “melting pot” to multicultural society 41
compensation to the days of insurance policies and blocked Swiss
bank accounts, and the trivialization of terms originating in the
Holocaust, such as Judenrat or Auschwitz, in political polemics or
propagandist campaigns. Like the Israeli messianist right’s abuse of
the Shoah in its campaign against the Disengagement, the radical
left’s attempts to use it to promote the Palestinian cause have no
connection to the justified criticism of the Holocaust’s too-central
place in Israeli public life.
From “Melting Pot” to Multicultural Society
Historical study of the third key issue in Israeli history—the absorption and integration of the masses of immigrants who arrived in the
1950s and shaped post-Yishuv Israeli society—began late. In the
1960s and 1970s, sociologists of the Hebrew University were the
first to study the absorption and integration of immigrants. They
criticized various aspects of this process, but agreed upon the necessity of modernization or what was called, at the time, bringing the
immigrants into the “melting pot.” In recent years, post-Zionist
social scientists and historians have reproached their predecessors
for concealing alleged ulterior motives behind this absorption and
ignoring the immigrants’ cultural repression. They have gone so far
as to suggest extending the colonialist paradigm described above to
Zionism’s attitude to Jews from Islamic countries.97
An original and peculiar view of the Zionist attitude to Jews of
the Arab countries is offered by Tel Aviv sociologist Yehuda Shenhav, one of the founders of Hakeshet Hamizrachi, a membership
organization promoting the rights of “Oriental” Jews, and editor of
Teoria U’bikoret. He describes the work of a team of Jewish engineers and craftsmen in Abadan, Iran, during the Second World War
as “Zionist colonialist settlement” that served British interests—i.e.,
taking over Iranian oil—but also the national interests of the “Zionist project” through the establishment of contacts with Iraqi Jewry.98
Shenhav portrayed the team as symbolic of the alliance between
Zionism and Britain. He wrote about Abadan, but implied the
entire Middle East, Zionism, and Israel’s role in the area:
The Abadan project took place in a hybrid territory, partly
British, partly Zionist. It was like a Zionist bubble that moved
in the colonial space under the protection of Great Britain, cut
the territorial, cultural and ethnic continuity in the area and
reorganized it.... The Abadan project is an act of deterritorialization that appropriates a continuity that was apparently unified
and homogeneous, and redefines it.99
Anyone who observed the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, the two
Gulf Wars, and what has taken place in Iraq since 2003 can only
wonder where Shenhav found (or made up) the homogeneity and
unity that he ascribed to this region—torn and split among various
national, tribal, ethnic, religious, and other conflicting identities—
and how the Abadan project appropriated them.
In point of fact, the team arrived in Abadan in the service of the
Allies’ war effort to build a new refinery and maintain it. The company undertook a similar project in the Bahrain Islands, where there
were hardly any Jews. The members’ parleys with Iraqi and Iranian
Jews were limited to the small neighboring communities of Abadan
and Basra, and their role in establishing the links between the Yishuv
and Iraqi Jewry was secondary. The main effort to that end was
done in Baghdad by the emissaries of the Jewish Agency and the
Pioneer movement, assisted by Jewish soldiers in the British Army
serving in Iraq and by local Zionist activists. Contrary to Shenhav’s
assertion, the Abadan project did not play any significant part in
preparing the ground for what he calls “Jewish migration to
Filastin.”
Sociologist Yagil Levy and political scientist Yoav Peled of Tel
Aviv University have asserted that mainstream sociologists who
wrote about “Israeli society” meant Jewish Israeli society, disregarding the Arabs. Sami Samocha, a sociologist from Haifa, added that
Israeli democracy was not consensual but ethnic—for Jews only.
And Ben-Gurion University’s Oren Yiftachel, the geographer
among the post-Zionists, developed the concept of an “ethnocracy.”
Shlomo Svirski, a freelance sociologist who left the University of
Haifa and established the Adva Institute for the Study of Social and
Educational Gaps, and Shenhav have portrayed the absorption of
the 1950s mass immigration as a conspiracy of the Ashkenazi establishment to exploit and repress the immigrants. Together with Kimmerling, Raz-Krakotzkin, and Pappé, they argue that the
approaches and findings of the mainstream scholars are affected by
their being part of the “elites,” by their high place on the social ladder, or by their being Ashkenazi males, and for all these reasons,
they have adhered to the Zionist narrative.100 Of course, many of
the critics belong to the same white, male, Ashkenazi “elites.”
Methodologically, sociologists are not committed to the
research methods of historians, and are entitled to their own professional views and conclusions. Although many of them have written
on the past, their findings are not historical studies nor should their
allegations about the absorption of immigrants be taken as such.
The few historical studies that have coped with these issues categorically refute all suggestion of a deliberate conspiracy against immigrants, whether Holocaust survivors or Jews from Islamic lands.
They do, indeed, describe many mistakes made at the time, albeit
innocently and under dire conditions, which the post-Zionists purposefully ignore.101
Several post-Zionist historians and social scientists have accused
Zionist historians of haughty, patronizing, and “Orientalist” writing
about the Jews from Muslim countries. Historian Gabriel Piterberg—who left Ben-Gurion University for UCLA—applied Said’s
theory to how “Zionist discourse” related to the Oriental mentality,
showing how this discourse influenced the exclusion and marginalization of Oriental Jews. He repeats the gist of Ram’s and RazKrakotzkin’s criticisms of Ben-Zion Dinur and Itzhak (Fritz) Baer,
the founders of the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew
University in 1935, in whom, apparently, Zionist historiography
begins and ends, and Piterberg’s main contribution was accusing
them of Orientalism.102
Henriette Dahan-Kalev, a political scientist at Ben-Gurion University, attacked the Israeli melting-pot concept of the 1950s and
1960s from a different angle—autobiographical, feminist, and Oriental. In a bitter paper articulating a profound feeling of discrimina-
tion, she characterized herself as a multiply opressed woman, a victim of European, colonialist, Western, and Zionist discrimination,
who had struggled for her right to be recognized as “other.”103
Unrelated to the anti-Zionist propaganda of Shenhav and his
ilk, the organized Yishuv’s attitude toward Jews from the Middle
East was indeed haughty and alienated. Many, particularly in the
Zionist Labor Movement, identified them with the “East” and relegated to them what they had known or imagined as Eastern or Oriental: the Sephardi old Yishuv in Jerusalem and the fallahin of the
villages near their kibbutz. This issue had been discussed long before
the post-Zionists mobilized it to dismantle Israeli identity.104 Apart
from the postmodern jargon and references to theories of Foucault
and others whose relevance is doubtful (such as the theory that the
Abadan project was “a laboratory for crossbreeding ethnic identities”), Shenhav and his comrades’ innovation with regard to the attitude of the Zionist Labor Movement or the Yishuv to the Jews from
the Arab countries is infinitesimal.
Contrary to the hegemonic image that post-Zionists ascribe to
it, the melting pot was simply the social revolution that Zionism
attempted to generate and partially succeeded in implementing.
The image of the “new Jew” stood at the center of this revolution.
This vision articulated romantic and anti-intellectual notions, such
as Herzl’s colleague Max Nordau’s aspiration to replace the scholar
of the yeshiva with the muscular Jew. It also conveyed elements of
rebelliousness that were visible in Be’Ir Hahareiga (In the City of
Slaughter), national poet Chaim Nachman Bialik’s protest against
the cowardice, passivity, and compliance of the young men of
Kishinev during the pogrom of 1903.105
The model of the new Jew emerged from a combination of
negation of life in the Diaspora, particularly in the Russian Pale,
socialist ideology, and vanguard elitism. These combined with a
realistic appreciation for the hardship of life in the Land of Israel,
which was the lesson of the pioneers’ experiences during the Second
Aliyah. The result was the ideal type of the pioneer: mobilized for
the sake of his people, the country, and society; working manually,
taming the wilderness, reviving the Hebrew language, and shaping
the new Hebrew culture. Since the Arab rebellion of 1936-39,
enlistment in the defense of the Yishuv was perceived as equal to the
pioneering mission.106
Contrary to the impression that the post-Zionists have endeavored to create, the melting pot approach—intended to remove the
disabilities of the Diaspora and build the basis for a new, healthy
society in the Land of Israel—was not invented to assimilate Oriental Jews or suppress their culture. Originally and primarily, its target
was the Jewish youth of Eastern Europe. The youngster from the
shtetl who arrived in hachshara (training camp for pioneers) at
Klosova or Gorochov in Poland voluntarily underwent a Spartan
process of “reeducation” that overwhelmed even visitors from Palestine, such as Labor leader Berl Katzenelson.107
All immigrants during the Mandate period, as well as the Oriental Jews of the old Yishuv and immigrants who arrived just after
statehood, struggled with the pioneering ethos that represented the
melting pot and absorbed them. Most immigrants merged into it.
Some remained alienated, and all influenced the image of the person of the Yishuv in the melting pot and distanced that typological
figure from the original and desired vision of the “new Jew.”108
German Jews who arrived during the 1930s found in the country a core of veterans who expected them to merge and conform. To
a large extent, the immigrants from Eastern Europe fulfilled this
expectation, as they did in the 1950s. The German-speaking immigrants from Central Europe, however, disappointed those who
expected them to accept Yishuv society, whose roots were in Eastern
Europe. They tried either to change it or to adhere to their German
language and culture.109
The model of the “new Jew” that guided the melting pot concept was apt for the Zionist social experiment of the 1920s. Even in
those years, most immigrants did not meet the declared stringent
criteria of the Zionist organization. The gap between the preferred
and the given widened during the next decade. Against the background of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 and the subsequent
deterioration of the situation of European Jewry, circumstances
changed and the pioneering nucleus had to absorb large masses:
Between 1931 and 1936, the Yishuv’s population more than doubled, and in the years 1948-52, once again it swelled by a similar
magnitude.
The two periods of mass growth and the years between them
were also the era of the Arab rebellion, the Second World War, the
anti-British struggle, the War of Independence, and the hardships of
recovery from that war—days of austerity and rationing. During
those years, the nucleus of the veteran Yishuv society successfully
stood the test of absorbing the masses, despite the hardships
encountered by veterans and immigrants alike, and in spite of the
many mistakes that the absorbers made and the bitterness of the
absorbed. The post-Zionists’ criticism—based on the wisdom of
hindsight and shifting the focus from the center to the margins—
disregards this essence and focuses on lesser matters.
“Israeliness,” Kimmerling asserted a few years ago, is a vanishing invention.110 The melting pot concept may appear to have been
a fiasco, now that the winning catchword is multiculturalism. The
present quandaries of Israeli society, however, shed very little light
on the past. The rise of a multicultural society is due, not to the failure of absorption in the 1950s and 1960s, but to a variety of
processes that have affected Israeli society over the past two or three
decades: decreasing external pressures, new waves of Russian and
Ethiopian immigration, an influx of foreign laborers, a growing
minority consciousness, widening economic gaps, and, mainly, the
changing societal ethos from collectivist to individualistic. On the
negative side, multiculturalism and the politics of identity and
memory can also encourage the abandonment of social solidarity
and pave the road to the domination of global capitalism, accompanied by individualism and hedonism—in Israel as everywhere else.
Influence of the New Historians
When the new historians and critical sociologists first came to the
fore, most of them were outsiders attacking an alleged establishment
influence of the new historians 47
of historians and sociologists. Today, they all belong to the academic community in Israel or abroad, with university positions and
tenure. Their polemics have extended from research and writing to
teaching and supervising. They produce students in their own
image, and these students, in their turn, get university positions in
Israel or abroad. Numerically, they are still a minority, but they are
more committed to their views than some of their colleagues and so
their voices sound much louder than their actual weight.
Excluding Morris and perhaps Segev, the influence of the new
historians in Israel is limited. Pappé, for example, has been ignored
by most of his peers for several years. A few new historians have
moved to the UK or U.S., where their presence draws more attention. The main reason for their prominence abroad is that as Israelis
who conform to the views of the local new left, they can use their
academic credentials to criticize Israel. They are accepted as authoritative by their local comrades, and often also by naïve colleagues
who have little firsthand knowledge of the issues and are impressed
by their striking presence in the media and in public debates. In
conferences and panels about the Arab-Israeli conflict, they are
often invited ostensibly to “represent” the Israeli side.
However, few colleagues who do not belong to their circle
would rely on them or take part in their panels and conferences. A
sympathetic observer like Shlomo Zand has remarked that the intellectual originality and the fruits of the research of post-Zionist historians are poor. He praised his colleagues for skillfully storming the
media front, but at the same time criticized them for neglecting academic work and for meager scholarly achievement.111
The new historians and their sociologist colleagues are only the
tip of the iceberg. They should not be viewed in isolation from the
general post-Zionist trend that tries to undermine the Jewish state
and replace it with a “state of all its citizens.” So far, the impact of
this trend has been limited mainly to former communists and their
offspring, some of the younger generation of the once-Zionist left,
and a few others of diverse background, including some secondgeneration Likud leaders. The vast majority of Israeli society—and
even of Israeli academics—have rejected post-Zionist ideology.
However, post-Zionist practices are far more widespread than their
ideological convictions. The debates persist, and against the background of growing ignorance of Jewish history, can lead in many
directions. Post-Zionism will either win new partisans or lose some
of its current supporters, as has happened since the beginning of the
new decade, because of the intifada. Like all of Jewish history, this
phenomenon, too, reflects an interplay of domestic developments
and outside influences.
notes 49
Notes
1. Baruch Kimmerling, “Academic History Caught in the Crossfire:
The Case of Israeli-Jewish Historiography,” History and Memory 7:1 (June
1995), p. 41ff.
2. Uri Ram, “Zikaron Vezehut: Soziologia Shel Vikuach Hahistorionim
BeYisrael” (Memory and Identity: Sociology of the Historians’ Dispute in
Israel), Teoria U’bikoret (Theory and Criticism) 8 (Summer 1996), p. 14.
3. ___, “From Nation-State to Nation—State,” in Ephraim Nimni, ed.,
The Challenge of Post-Zionism: Alternatives to Israeli Fundamentalist Politics
(London and New York: Zed Books, 2003) pp. 21-22, 36.
4. The American Council for Judaism was founded in the 1940s by dissenting Reform rabbis who believed that Judaism was strictly a matter of
faith or confession and did not have a national element. For decades they
fought strenuously against the idea of a Jewish state. The council still exists,
but with a much diminished presence.
5. Avishai Ehrlich, “Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Post-Zionism,” in Nimni,
ed., The Challenge of Post-Zionism, p. 64.
6. Eyal Naveh and Esther Yogev, Historiot: Likrat Dialog ‘Im Ha’etmol
(Histories: Toward a Dialogue with Yesterday) (Tel Aviv: Bavel, 2002), pp.
118-20.
7. A.B. Yehoshua, Bizchut Hanormaliyut: Chamesh Masot Bishelot
Hazionut (In Favor of Normality: Five Essays on Issues of Zionism)
(Jerusalem: Schocken, 1980); Menachem Brinker, “Achrei Hazionut” (“After
Zionism”), Siman Kriah 19 (1986), pp. 21-29; Motti Golani, Milchamot Lo
Korot Me’atzman (Wars Do Not Just Happen) (Tel Aviv: Modan, 2000).
8. Mordechai Bar-On, “Post-Zionut Veanti-Zionut: Havchanot, Hagdarot,
Miyun Hasugiot Vekama Hachra’ot Ishiyot” (Post-Zionism and Anti-Zionism:
Observations, Definitions, Classification, and a Few Personal Decisions), in
Pinchas Genosar and Avi Bareli, eds., Zionut: Pulmos Ben Zmanenu (Zionism: A Contemporary Polemic) (Sde Boker: 1996), pp. 475-508.
9. Benny Morris, “Revising Zionist History,” Tikkun 3:6, Nov.-Dec.
1988.
10. Anita Shapira, “Politika Vezikaron Kolektivi” (Politics and Collective
Memory), in Yechi’am Weitz, ed., Bein Hazon Lerevizia (From Vision to
Revision) (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1997), p. 370.
11. Uri Ram, “Zionut U’post-Zionut: Haheksher Hasoziologi Shel Vikuach
Hahistorionim” (Zionism and Post-Zionism: The Sociological Context of the
Historians’ Controversy), in Ram, ed., Hachevra Haisraelit: Heibetim Bikor-
tiyim (Israeli Society: Critical Perspectives) (Tel Aviv: B’rerot, 1993), pp.
275-89.
12. Kimmerling, “Academic History Caught in the Crossfire”; idem.
“Haim Lihiot Chelek Min Haumah Hu Tnai Hechrechi Le’ivut Hahistoria?” (Is
Being a Part of the Nation a Necessary Condition for Distorting History?),
Ha’aretz, Dec. 23, 1994.
13. ___, Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War against the Palestinians (London and
New York: Verso, 2003).
14. Benny Morris, “The Eel and History: A Reply to Shabtai Teveth,”
Tikkun 5:1 (1990), pp.19-22 and 79-86.
15. Ilan Pappé, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Idit Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and
the Politics of Nationhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
16. Derek J. Penslar, “Narratives of Nation Building: Major Themes in
Zionist Historiography,” in David Myers and David Ruderman, eds., The
Jewish Past Revisited (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 105.
17. Ram, Zikaron Vezehut, p. 20.
18. Yosef Dan, “Post-Modernism Neged Medinat Israel” (Postmodernism
against the State of Israel), Ha’aretz, June 24, 1994; Eliezer Schweid,
“Hazionut Bitkufa Post-Zionit” (Zionism in a Post-Zionist Era), Davar, June
24, 1994; idem, “Lemahuta Uleriq’ah shel Hapost-Zionut” (On the Background and Essence of Post-Zionism), Gesher 131 (Summer 1995), pp. 1826.
19. Ilan Pappé, “Seder Yom Chadash Lahistoria Hachadasha” (A New Agenda for the New History), Teoria U’bikoret 8 (Summer 1996), p. 124.
20. Pappé, “Seder Yom Chadash,” p. 135; idem, “Israeli Attitudes to the
Refugee Question,” in Naseer Hasan Aruri, ed., Palestinian Refugees: The
Right of Return (London: Pluto, 2001), pp. 71-76; idem, “Demons of the
Nakba,” Al-Aharam Weekly, May 16, 2002; his articles on the Tantura Affair
and his various interviews with radical left media around the world can be
found disseminated on the Web.
21. Gabriel Piterberg, “Domestic Orientalism: The Representation of
‘Oriental’ Jews in Zionist/Israeli Historiography,” British Journal of Middle
Eastern Studies 23:2 (November 1996), pp. 129-32; Tom Segev, “Hahistorionim Hachadashim: Lama Hem Margizim Kol Kach?” (The New Historians:
Why Are They So Annoying?), Ha’aretz, Sept. 16, 1994.
22. Shmuel Almog, “Hamemad Hahistori Shel Haleumiut Hayehudit” (The
Historical Dimension of Jewish Nationalism), in idem, Leumiut, Zionut,
notes 51
Antishemiut (Nationalism, Zionism, Anti-Semitism) (Jerusalem: Zionist
Library, 1992), pp. 25-26.
23. ___, “Al Am Ve’aretz Baleumiut Hayehudit Hamodernit” (On Peoplehood and Land in Modern Jewish Nationalism), in ibid., pp. 61-75.
24. ___, pp. 34-35; Shlomo Avineri, “Hazionut Vehamasoret Hadatit
Hayehudit: Hadialectica Shel Geula Vechilun” (Zionism and the Jewish Religious Tradition: The Dialectics of Redemption and Secularization), in
Almog, Jehuda Reinharz, and Anita Shapira, eds., Zionut Vedat (Zionism
and Religion) (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1994), pp. 13-16.
25. Ya’acov Shavit, “Leumiut, Historiografia Verevizia Historit” (Nationalism, Historiography, and Historical Revision), in Genosar and Bareli, eds.,
Zionut: Pulmos Ben Zmanenu, pp. 264-76.
26. Shmuel Dotan, Adumim: Hamiflaga Hacomunistit Beeretz Israel (Reds:
The Communist Party in Palestine) (Kfar Saba, 1991).
27. Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York:
Verso, 1991) (First ed., 1983). On the validity of these and other theories to
the case of Zionism, see Hedva Ben-Israel, “Teoriot Al Haleumiut U’midat
Chalutan ‘Al Hazionut’” (Theories of Nationalism and their Validity in the
Case of Zionism), in Genosar and Bareli, eds., Zionut: Pulmos Ben Zmanenu,
pp. 203-22.
28. Gideon Shim’oni, “Haleumiut Hayehudit Keleumiut Etnit” (Jewish
Nationalism as an Ethnic Nationalism), in Shim’oni, Jehuda Reinharz, and
Yosef Salmon, eds., Leumiut Yehudit U’politica Yehudit: Perspectivot Chadashot
(Jewish Nationalism and Jewish Politics: New Perspectives) (Jerusalem:
Merkaz Shazar, 1997), pp. 81-92, and especially, pp. 83-86.
29. Pappé, History of Modern Palestine.
30. ___, “Hazionut Bemivchan Hateoriot Shel Haleumiut,” in Genosar and
Bareli, eds., Zionut: Pulmos Ben Zmanenu, pp. 223-63, especially p. 262, note
41. See also Benny Morris’s review of Pappé’s History of Modern Palestine, in
The New Republic, March 22, 2004, where he enumerates dozens of similar
cases of ignorance and negligence.
31. Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 13-14; Pappé, “Seder Yom Chadash,”
p. 128.
32. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 47-48; idem, “Outside and Inside
History,” in idem, On History (London: Abacus, 1998), p. 11; idem, Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life (London: Allen Lane, 2002), pp. 21-25.
33. ___, Nations and Nationalism, p. 68.
34. David C’na’ani, Ha’aliyah Hashnia Veyachasa Ladat Velamasoret (The
Second Aliyah and its Attitude to Religion and Tradition) (Tel Aviv: Sifriat
Po’alim, 1977).
35. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 99 and 110; idem, “The
Sense of the Past,” in idem, On History, p. 21.
36. ___, Nations and Nationalism, p. 175, and especially, note 19.
37. Pappé, “Seder Yom Chadash,” p. 129, and idem, “Hazionut Bemivchan
Hateoriot Shel Haleumiut” (Zionism Tested by National Theories), p. 251.
38. Pappé, “Seder Yom Chadash,” p. 129, and idem, “Hazionut Bemivchan
Hateoriot Shel Haleumiut,” p. 251.
39. William H. McNeill, Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), pp. 71-72.
40. Ibid., pp. 253-63.
41. Shlomo Zand, “Hapost-Zioni Kesochen Zikaron Lo Murshe” (The PostZionist as an Unauthorized Agent of Memory), Alpayim 24 (2000), p. 215.
42. Uri Ram, “Hayamim Hahem Vehazman Hazeh: Hahistoriografia
Hazionit Vehamtzaat Hanarativ Haleumi Hayehudi; Benzion Dinur Uzmano”
(The Past and the Present: Zionist Historiography and the Invention of the
Jewish National Narrative: Benzion Dinur and his Era), in Genosar and
Bareli, eds., Zionut: Pulmos Ben Zmanenu, pp. 126-59 (quotation from p.
134).
43. Israel Bartal, “Micorporatzia Leumah: Yehudim Kemi’ut Etni Bemizrach
Eiropa” (From Corporation to Nation: Jews as an Ethnic Minority in Eastern
Europe), in Shulamit Wolkow, ed., Mi’utim, Zarim Veshonim: Kvutzot Shulayim Bahistoria (Minorities, Foreigners and Others: Marginal Groups in History) (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 2000), pp. 37-49.
44. Shmuel Ettinger, “Hazionut Umitnagdeiha’” (Zionism and its Opponents), in idem, Historia Vehistorionim (History and Historians) (Jerusalem:
Merkaz Shazar and Mossad Bialik, 1992), p. 185.
45. For a critical Weberian analysis of the Jews’ ways of coping with
modernity in Europe, see Shmuel Noach Eisenstadt, “Hanisayon Hahistori
Hayehudi Bemisgeret Historia Klal-Enoshit Mashva” (The Jewish Historical
Experience in the Framework of Comparative World History), Tarbut
Democratit 8 (2004), pp. 19-53.
notes 53
46. Shlomo Zand, Haintelectual, Haemet Vehakoach (The Intellectual, the
Truth and the Power) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000), pp. 142-47.
47. Elia T. Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1979).
48. Uri Ram, “The Colonization Perspective in Israeli Sociology,” in Ilan
Pappé, ed., The Israel/Palestine Question (London: Routledge, 1999, sec. ed.,
2007) pp. 55-80, and Gershon Shafir, “Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach,” in ibid., pp. 83-96.
49. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern
National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp.
96-111.
50. Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial
Dimensions of Zionist Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983),
pp. 14-15.
51. Laurence Silberstein, The Postzionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in
Israeli Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 107-08.
52. Matityahu Minz, “Haumah Hayehudit-Amtza’ah Zionit? Beshuley Pulmos Hahistorionim” (The Jewish Nation—A Zionist Invention? In the Margins of the Historians’ Controversy), in Genosar and Bareli, eds., Zionut:
Pulmos Ben Zmanenu, pp. 31-35.
53. Arie Bober, ed., The Other Israel: The Radical Case against Zionism
(New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1972).
54. Aharon Cohen, Israel Veha’olam Ha’arvi (Israel and the Arab World)
(Merchavia: Sifriyat Po’alim 1964); Israel Ber, Bitchon Israel: Etmol, Hayom
Umachar (Israel’s Security: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) (Tel Aviv,
Amikam 1966); Uri Avnery, Milchemet Hayom Hashvi’i (The War of the Seventh Day) (Tel Aviv, Daf Chadash, 1969).
55. Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians (London: Croom Helm,
1979); idem, The Birth of Israel: Myth and Realities (London: Croom Helm,
1987); Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the
Palestinians (Boston: South End Press, 1983); Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland (London: Quartet Books, 1987); Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins:
Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel (London: Pluto Press, 1992).
56. Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory; Yehuda Shenhav and Hanan
Chever, “Hamabat Hapostcoloniali” (The Post-Colonial Outlook), Teoria
U’bikoret 20 (Spring 2002), pp. 9-22; Uri Ram, “The Colonization Perspective in Israeli Sociology,” in: Pappé, ed., The Israel/ Palestine Question, pp. 5580; Gershon Shafir, “Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach,”
ibid., pp. 83-96.
57. Kimmerling, “Academic History Caught in the Crossfire,” p. 41.
58. Ilan Pappé, “Hazionut Kecolonialism” (Zionism as Colonialism), in
Yechi’am Weitz, ed., Bein Hazon Lerevizia (From Vision to Revision)
(Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1997), pp. 345-65.
59. Raphael Patai, ed., The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Vol. I.
(New York: Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, 1960), see entry for June 12,
1895, p. 88.
60. Ibid., p. 92.
61. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Representation of the
Diaspora: Zionist Historiography and Medieval Jewry,” Ph.D. dissertation
submitted to the University of Tel Aviv, 1995, p. 305.
62. Lord Arthur Balfour to David Lloyd George, February 19, 1919,
PRO, FO 371/4179.
63. Raz-Krakotzkin, Ph.D. dissertation, pp. 322-23.
64. Ibid., pp. xii and 324-326.
65. The data is from A.L. Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine
(London: Luzac and Company, 1956), pp. 45 and 49.
66. Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory, p. 11.
67. An undated list (probably from 1944 or 1945) of more than fifty
Palestinian notables of all clans who sold land to Jews, including the offices
the sellers held, and the location of the parcels sold, Central Zionist
Archives, S 25/3472.
68. Anita Shapira, “Hazionut Vehakoach-Ethos U’metziut” (Zionism and
Force-Ethos and Reality) in idem, Hahalichah ‘Al Kav Ha’ofek (Walking on
the Horizon Line) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1988), p. 37.
69. ___, Hamaavak Hanichzav—Avoda Ivrit, 1929-1939 (The Unrequited Struggle—Hebrew Labor) (Tel Aviv: 1977). For an opposing approach to
the idea of “occupying the labor and its significance,” see Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Economy (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1983),
pp. 47-56.
70. Ron Kuzar, Hebrew and Zionism: A Discourse Analytic Cultural Study
(New York: Hawthorne, 2001).
71. Shapira, “Politica Vezikaron Colectivi,” pp. 367-91, and particularly
pp. 368-69; Zand, “Hapost-Zioni Kesochen Zikaron,” p. 218.
72. See, for example, Ahmad Sa’di and Lila Abu Lughod, eds., Nakba:
Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2007), and Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford:
Oneworld, 2006).
73. On the early historiography of the war, see Mordechai Bar On,
notes 55
Zikaron Besefer: Reshita Shel Hahistoriografia Haisraelit Shel Milchemet Ha’atzmaut 1948-1958 (Memory in a Book: The Beginning of the Israeli Historiography of the War of Independence) (Tel Aviv: MoD Publications, 2001).
74. Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis (New York: Free Press, 1986;
Hebrew edition, 1984).
75. ___, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York:
Hill & Wang, 1993); idem, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs under the
British Mandate (London: Little, Brown, 2000); idem, 1967: Israel, the War,
and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (New York: Metropolitan
Books, 2007).
76. Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist
Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988), idem, The Politics of Partition (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1990); Ilan Pappé, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1951
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Ilan
Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951 (London: Tauris,
1992); Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Penguin, 2000). For a collection of press clippings of the debate in the years
1993-96, see Dan Michman, ed., Post-Zionut Veshoah (Post-Zionism and the
Holocaust) (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1997). See also Derek
Penslar’s review of the new historians in his article, “Themes in Zionist Historiography” in David Myers and David Ruderman, eds., The Jewish Past
Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 111-17.
77. Shabtai Teveth, “The Palestinian Refugee Problem and Its Origin,”
Middle Eastern Studies 26:2 (1990), pp. 214-49; and Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History (London: Frank Cass, 1997).
78. Kimmerling, “Is Being Part of the Nation a Necessary Condition?”
79. Ilan Pappé, “Hahistoria Hachadasha Shel Milchemet 1948” (The New
History of the War of 1948), Teoria U’bikoret 3 (Winter 1993), p. 99.
80. ___, “Seder Yom Chadash Lahistoria Hachadasha,” p. 136.
81. Avi Shlaim, “A Betrayal of History,” Guardian, February 22, 2002;
see item on Morris in Le Monde, May 30, 2002; Ilan Pappé, “Parashot Katz
VeTantura: Historia, Historiografia, Akademia Umishpat” (The Katz and Tantura Affairs: History, Historiography, Academy and Court) Teoria U’bikoret
20 (2002), p. 214; Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
82. Ber, Bitchon Israel. See also Yoav Gelber, Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue,
1948-1953: Cooperation, Conspiracy or Collusion? (Brighton: Sussex Academic
Press, 2004), pp. 1-3, 286-87.
83. Pappé, “Parashot Katz VeTantura,” pp. 204 and 214-15.
84. ___, “Hahistoria Hachadasha Shel Milchemet 1948,” p. 111.
85. ___, “Parashot Katz VeTantura,” pp. 199-202. See also Pappé’s reponses on the Tantura affair at http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~censor/katz-directory.
86. Benny Morris, “Politics by Other Means,” The New Republic, March
21, 2004.
87. Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, pp. 12-13, and his
interview with Yona Hadari in Yediot Aharonot, August 27, 1993 (also in
Dan Michman, Post-Tzionut VeShoah (Post-Zionism and the Holocaust),
(Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1997), pp. 45-46.
88. Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust, pp. 3-4.
89. Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988),
pp. 164-66.
90. Basically, this is also Yehuda Bauer’s view in Rethinking the Holocaust
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 242-60, and particularly pp.
258-60.
91. Adi Ofir, “Al Hidush Hashem” (On Renewing His Name), Politica 8
(June-July 1986), pp. 2-5; see also Ilan Gur-Zeev, “The Morality of
Acknowledging/Not-Acknowledging the Other’s Holocaust/Genocide,”
Journal of Moral Education 27:2 (1998), pp. 161-77; and idem, Filosofia,
Politica Vechinuch Beisrael (Philosophy, Politics and Education in Israel)
(Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 1999), pp. 79-98.
92. Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, pp. 39-67.
93. Yair Oron, Habanaliyut Shel Haadishut (The Banality of Indifference)
(Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1995); Ruvik Rosenthal, “HaShoah Hi Rak Shelanu” (“The
Holocaust Is Exclusively Ours), Ha’aretz, Dec. 23, 1994.
94. Hobsbawm, On History, p. 10; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews (New York: New Viewpoints, 1961).
95. Yoav Gelber, Moledet Chadasha (A New Homeland) (Jerusalem: Yad
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, 1990), pp. 565 and 583-97.
96. See Zimmerman’s interview in Yediot Aharonot and its network of
newspapers, April 28, 1995, and Gideon Alon’s report in Ha’aretz, May 1,
1995.
97. Piterberg, “Domestic Orientalism: The Representation of ‘Oriental’
Jews in Zionist/Israeli Historiography,” pp. 125-45. Piterberg focuses on the
expulsion of the Yemenite Jews from Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) in the begin-
notes 57
ning of the twentieth century. See also Yehuda Shenhav, “Hashod Hamushlam” (The Perfect Robbery), Ha’aretz magazine, April 10, 1998 (and Shlomo
Hillel’s response, “Hasiluf Hamushlam” (The Perfect Distortion), ibid., April
29, 1998); Shenhav, “Yehudim Yotzei Artzot Arav Beisrael: Hazehut Hamefutzelet Shel Mizrachim Bimchozot Hazikaron Haleumi” (Jews from Arab
Countries in Israel: The Split Identity of Mizrachim in the Regions of
National Memory), in Hanan Hever, Yehuda Shenhav, Lea Mutzafi, eds.,
Mizrachim Beisrael (Oriental Jews in Israel) (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute,
2002); Shenhav, “The Jews of Iraq, Zionist Ideology, and the Property of the
Palestinian Refugees of 1948,” in International Journal of Middle East Studies
XXX1 (1999), pp. 605-30.
98. Yehuda Shenhav, Hayehudim Ha’arvim: Leumiut, Dat Veetniyut (The
Arab Jews: Nationality, Religion and Ethnicity) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2003),
pp. 25-72.
99. Ibid., pp. 48-49.
100. Moshe Lissak, “Soziologim ‘Bikortiyim’ Vesoziologim ‘Mimsadiyim’”
(Critical and Established Sociologists), p. 67; Baruch Kimmerling, “Sociology, Ideology, and Nation-Building: The Palestinians and Their Meaning in
Israeli Sociology,” American Sociological Review 57 (August 1992), pp. 1-10.
101. See Dvora Hacohen, Olim Be-se’arah: Ha-aliyah Ha-hamonit U-klitatah Be-yisrael, 1948-1953 (Immigrants in a Storm: The Mass Immigration
and its Absorption in Israel, 1948-1953) (Jerusalem, 1994; Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003); Zvi Zameret, Idan kur Ha-hitukh (The Era of
the Melting Pot) (Sde Boker, 1993) and Al Gesher Tzar: Itzuv Ma’arekhet Hahinukh Bi-yemei Ha-aliyah Ha-hamonit (On a Narrow Bridge: Shaping the
Education System during the Days of the Mass Immigration) (Sde Boker,
1997); Hanna Yablonka, Ahim Zarim: Nitzolei Ha-sho’ah Be-yisrael, 19481952 (Estranged Brothers: The Holocaust Survivors in Israel, 1948-1952)
(Jerusalem, 1994).
102. Gabriel Piterberg, “Haumah U’mesapreiha: Historiografia Leumit Veorientalism” (The Nation and its Narrators: National Historiography and Orientalism), Teoria U’bikoret 6 (1995), pp. 81-103.
103. Henriette Dahan-Kalev, “You’re So Pretty—You Don’t Look Moroccan,” in Nimni, ed., The Challenge of Post-Zionism, pp. 168-81 (especially, p.
179).
104. Yoav Gelber, “Hitgabshut Hayishuv Hayehudi BeEretz Israel, 19361947” (The Consolidation of the Jewish Yishuv in the Land of Israel), in
Moshe Lissak, Anita Shapira, and Gabriel Cohen, eds., Toldot HaYishuv
Hayehudi BeEretz Israel Meaz Haaliyah Harishona, T’kufat Hamandat Habriti
(History of the Jewish Yishuv in the Land of Israel since the First Aliyah, the
Period of the British Mandate), Vol. II, (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1995),
pp. 309, 335-36, 343-47, 354-57, 364-67; Gelber, Toldot Hahitnadvut (History of Volunteering), Vol. III, Nosei Hadegel: Shlichutam Shel Hamitnadvim
La’am Hayehudi (The Standard-Bearers: The Mission of the Volunteers to
the Jewish People) (Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi, 1983), pp. 20-72.
105. Anita Shapira, “Hazionut Vehakoach—Ethos Umetziut” (Zionism and
Power—Ethos and Reality), in Hahalicha Al Kav Haofek (Tel Aviv: Am
Oved, 1988), pp. 28-31.
106. Yoav Gelber, “The Shaping of the ‘New Jew’ in Eretz Israel,” in I.
Gutman, ed., Major Changes within the Jewish People in the Wake of the Holocaust (Proceedings of Yad Vashem’s Ninth International Historical Conference), Jerusalem 1996, pp. 443-62.
107. See Anita Shapira, Berl, Vol. II, (Am Oved, Tel Aviv 1980), p. 536 ff.
108. Moshe Lissak, “Aliyah, Klita U’binyan Chevra Be’Eretz Israel Bishnot
Haesrim” (1918-30) (Immigration, Absorption and the Building of Society
in the 1920s), in Anita Shapira and Gabriel Cohen, Toldot Hayishuv, Mandate, Vol. I, pp. 173-302.
109. Gelber, “Hitgabshut Hayishuv Hayehudi Be’eretz Israel, 1936-1947,” in
ibid., Vol. II, pp. 303-463.
110. Baruch Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline of Israeliness (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001).
111. Zand, “The Post-Zionist as ‘Unauthorized’ Agent of Memory,” p.
222.
Dorothy and Julius Koppelman Institute on American
Jewish-Israeli Relations of the American Jewish Committee
The Dorothy and Julius Koppelman Institute on American
Jewish-Israeli Relations, founded in 1982 as an arm of the American
Jewish Committee, is an interpreter of Israeli and American Jewry
to each other, and seeks to build bridges between the world’s largest
Jewish communities.
Specifically, its goals are achieved programmatically through a
variety of undertakings, including:
— An intensive immersion seminar for American college faculty
in the history, politics, culture, and society of modern Israel,
conducted by Brandeis University. The goal is to enable college professors to teach courses on their home campuses on
modern Israel, in all its complexity, as a Jewish and democratic state.
— Exchange programs over the years bringing Israeli politicians,
academicians, military officers, civil servants, and educators
to the United States to study the diversity of the American
Jewish community and its role in American politics and society. Hundreds of Israelis have participated in these dialogueoriented missions cosponsored by the Institute and its Israeli
partners, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Oranim Teacher
Training Institute, the Jewish Agency, the Israeli Defense
Forces, and the Ministry of Education, Government of Israel.
— Studies of the respective communities, particularly of their
interconnectedness, published in both Hebrew and English.
These have included monographs, among others, on “Who
Is a Jew,” “Post-Zionism,” and Reform and Conservative
Judaism in Israel.
The Koppelman Institute has succeeded in reaching out to
leaders who ultimately will shape the minds of thousands of followers in developing a more positive and productive relationship
between Israel and American Jewry.
Harold T. Shapiro, Ph.D.
Chairman
Steven Bayme, Ph.D.
Director
American Jewish Committee
The Jacob Blaustein Building
165 East 56 Street
New York, NY 10022
The American Jewish Committee publishes in these areas:
• Hatred and Anti-Semitism
• Pluralism • Israel • Human Rights
• American Jewish Life
• International Relations • Law and Public Policy
www.ajc.org
May 2008
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The New Post-Zionist Historians

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