"Sephardim in Israel: Zionism From the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims," Social Text, 19/20 (Fall 1988) (Opening essay, special issue on Colonial Discourse), pp. 1-35.

Race & Class, 2009

Discussions around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tend to rely upon a binary distinction of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine and the Zionist movement to establish a “national home of the Jewish people” there. This oversimplifies and erases the position of those whose identities are both Jewish and Arab, and the existence of Jewish communities in Palestine long before the ‘national home’ was proposed. The Zionist movement created new tensions between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewry who had previously co-existed in relative harmony under Ottoman rule, as the Ashkenazi population began to dominate the Palestinian Jewish community and Zionism defined itself in terms starkly incompatible with Arab identity. From the Old Yishuv of the Ottoman Era to the establishment of the Israeli state (and beyond) Zionist rhetoric has been characterised by a deeply contradictory relationship to non-European Jewry, treating them as a burden whilst relying on them to make the Zionist project workable. Additionally, contrary to the promise of safety associated with the 'Jewish National Home,' the Zionist movement has profited from the persecution of Jews in the Arab world, relying on displacement of Jewry from populations such as Egypt and Iraq due to anti-Semitism to legitimise and strengthen the National Home.

You tell me, 2023

In recent years, the term 'settler-colonialism' has gained significant traction among scholars of Zionism, the Palestinians, and the conflict between them. Most of this scholarship employs the term to explain Zionism as a hybrid movement of colonialism and ethno-nationalism, determined to create and preserve a 'Jewish state' in the 'Holy Land.' In contrast, the following will argue that a more nuanced application of the settler-colonial framework to Zionist history can, perhaps counterintuitively, explain why a drive for Jewish-Arab parity, integration, and reconciliation, is as ingrained into Zionism as the aggressive ethno-nationalism it is primarily known for nowadays.

2018

This article explores the similarities and differences between Zionism and archetypical European modes of settler colonialism to demonstrate the incongruence between the two phenomena. This analysis is contextualized around the recent discourse surrounding the competing claims of indigeneity to historic Israel/Palestine. The claims of both the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities are explored to demonstrate that both communities can rightfully claim degrees of Indigenous connection to the territory, but that Palestinian Arab claims of being the sole Indigenous inheritors of the land are dubious. The analysis utilizes Burton's unmet human needs theory, and Kriesberg's theories on identity and conflict intractability to demonstrate how perpetuating such claims serves to exacerbate inter-group conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, the relationship between Ottoman and British imperialism in the development of both nationalisms is expounded to illustrate the...

Telos, 2011

In this chapter I consider the debate over the nature of Zionism as a colonial settlement movement through an analysis of its actual record, rather than its declared intentions. From this perspective I make the following main points:  Until the First World War, the term “colonial” and its derivatives were used freely by Zionists to describe Jewish settlement activity in Palestine. Thus the Jewish settlements were referred to as “colonies” (moshavot) and the Zionist movement’s bank (currently Bank Leumi) was initially called the “Jewish Colonial Trust.” The efforts to distinguish Zionism from European colonial movements began only once colonialism acquired a negative reputation.  Contrary to the claim of Zionist scholars, Zionism did have a “mother country” – Great Britain. While GB did not provide the Zionist settlement project with the same unequivocal support it gave colonization efforts of its own nationals, British political and military power was essential for the success of the Zionist project.  In the manner of colonial settlement projects elsewhere, Zionism had a devastating effect on the indigenous Palestinian population, culminating in the Nakba of 1947-49.

Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2017

Throughout the past century, the Zionist movement constructed the most sophisticated settler-colonial project of our age: the State of Israel. The violent birth of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent colonization of the entirety of the land of Palestine after the 1967 war are indeed reflections of Zionism's successes in fulfilling its settler-colonial ambitions in Palestine. Yet, while this settlercolonial project continues unabated, it is an entangled one, unable to reach the ultimate point of Jewish exclusivity in the land. Zionist settler colonialism, as its historical precedents suggest, is fundamentally based on the operative logic of "eliminating the native" and failing to utterly marginalize and "minoritize" him. The vibrant Palestinian presence in the land, the everyday resistance to the colonial order, and the robust Palestinian adherence to their rights all stand as structural obstacles to the ultimate realization of the "Zionist dream." 1 Despite Israel's relentless colonial power and domination, Palestinian steadfastness means that this project will remain impeded and incomplete, a matter that may lead to its future demise.

This article is divided into two parts. In the first, it addresses the central principles of Zionism as an intellectual elaboration that responds negatively to the Jewish question in Europe. It argues that the negative character of this set of ideas resides precisely in the communion of foundations with the very problem it intends to respond to, anti-Semitism; further, it aligns with an imperialist, colonial and two-way racist perspective, particularly European. For this, it is based on the conceptions of founding authors of the Zionist ideology, and political Zionism, Moses Hess and Theodor Herzl, and of authors who critically examine both the theoretical conception and the political realization of Zionism, that is, the colonization of Palestine and the foundation of the State of Israel. In the second part, I present the novel Returning to Haifa, by Ghassan Kanafani, which contributes to concretize the colonial and intrinsically racist sense of the Zionist project and its practical realization. The text assumes the broad point of view of taking a position on a social problem.

American Journal of International Law, 1993

In 1897 Zionism emerged as a European-wide political move ment with the first World Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzer land, where Theodor Herzl, an editor of the influential Viennese paper, Neue Freie Presse, had emerged as a leader. Herzl's 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) had called for a Jewish state in Palestine, and its publication in Vienna made a great impact. Not surprisingly, Zionism had its strongest following in Russia, but even there it was only one of several nationalist currents in Jewry.2 Despite the difficult circumstances of life, most Jews remained in Eastern Europe and of those leaving most still preferred the United States. 3 In Palestine, an Arab-populated country under the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, Zionist immigrants set up agricultural settlements on pur chased land. "From the very beginning," wrote Ariel Hecht, an Israeli analyst of land tenure in Palestine, "it was clear to the leaders of the Zionist movement that the acquisition of land was a sine qua non towards the realisation of their dream."4 Land was not acquired in a random fashion. The effort, wrote Israeli General Yigal Allon, was "to establish a chain of villages on one continuous area of Jewish land.'0 The Arabs, soon realizing that the immigrant's aim was to establish a Jewish state, began to oppose Zionism.6 As early as 1891 Zionist leader, Ahad Ha'am, wrote that the Arabs "understand very well what we are doing and what we are aiming at."7 In 1 90 1 the World Zionist Organization formed a company, the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), to buy land for Jewish settlers.8 According to its charter, the Fund would buy land in "Pal estine, Syria, and other parts of Turkey in Asia and the Peninsula of Sinai."9 The aim of the Fund was "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people."10 Fund director, Abra ham Granovsky, called "land redemption" the "most vital operation in establishing Jewish Palestine."11 The Fund's land could not be sold to anyone and could be leased only to a Jew, an "unincorporated body of Jews," or a Jewish company that promoted Jewish settlement. A lessee was forbidden to sublease.12 Herzl considered land acquisition under a tenure system that kept it in Jewish hands as the key to establishing Zionism in Palestine. "Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us," he wrote, "selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are The British Connection 5 not going to sell them anything back."13 The Fund thus kept land as a kind of trustee for a future state.14 The Fund purchased large tracts owned by absentee landowners. Most of this land was tilled by farmers whose families had held it for generations with possessory rights recognized by customary law. Re grettably for many of these families, in the late nineteenth century Turkey had instituted a land registration system that led to wealthy absentees gaining legal title to land, often by questionable means. After this occurred, the family farmers continued in possessionas tenantsand considered themselves to retain their customary right to the land, although that was no longer legally the case.15 At the turn of the century the better farmland in Palestine was being cultivated. In 1882 a British traveler, Laurence Oliphant, reported that the Plain of Esdraelon in northern Palestine, an area in which the Fund purchased land, was "a huge green lake of waving wheat."16 This meant that the Fund could not acquire land without displacing Arab farmers. A delegate to a 1905 Zionist congress, Yitzhak Epstein, warned: "Can it be that the dispossessed will keep silent and calmly accept what is being done to them? Will they not ultimately arise to regain, with physical force, that which they were deprived of through the power of gold? Will they not seek justice from the strangers that placed themselves over their land?"17 An element of the Zionist concept of "land redemption" was that the land should be worked by Jews. This meant that Arabs should not be hired as farm laborers. While this policy was not uniformly implemented, it gained adherence. In 191 3 Ha'am objected to it. "I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to men of another people ... if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve power?"18 But Herzl viewed the taking of land and expulsion of Arabs as complementary aspects of Zionism. It would be necessary, he thought, to get the Arabs out of Palestine. "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.. .. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."19 Some Zion ist leaders advocated moving Palestine Arabs to neighboring coun Israel as a Fact 89 draw its support for Israel's membership in the United Nations and warned against any further idf offensives.20 Under that pressure Ben-Gurion withdrew the idf from Egyptian territory and canceled plans to take Gaza and the Sinai.21 At the same time Ben-Gurion withdrew the idf from southern Lebanon, where it had penetrated. The Litani River, an important water source, flowed through southern Lebanon. General Yigal Allon criticized Ben-Gurion's decision to withdraw, complaining that the Index Aaland Islands, Abdiilhamid II (sultan of the Ottoman Empire), 7 Abdullah (emir of Transjordan, King of

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