By Raghed Sayed
This November marks the 106th year of the issuance of the Balfour declaration that announced the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” under the famous Zionist slogan “a land without people for a people without land.” Therefore, it seemed only appropriate to revisit intriguing talking points in the question of Palestine that persist to this day, understanding it within one of the established frameworks: Colonialismi, and tackling the following questions:
1)Was Palestine truly a “land without people”?
2)What mechanism played into choosing Palestine as a destination for establishing the Jewish theocratic state despite the father of Zionism and majority of the Zionist congress leaning towards creating the state on another land?
3) Was the support of Zionism by European powers an act of helping the Jewish people, or did it stem from underlying motivations including anti-Semitism?
Palestine in history
The first mention of Palestine as a unique territory of land can be traced back to early literature in the 5th century BC in the famous work Herodotus (book 7), describing the land of Palestine as the area that extends until the border of Egypt.ii Throughout the centuries, if one were to read the work of historians, geographers, philosophers and even poets and novelists, one would find that the mention of the land of Palestine is abundantly documented in English as well as in Arabic literature, mentions that eulogize the fertility of the land and its beauty. One example amongst many is from the English poet George Sandys, who spoke of it as “a land that flowed with milk and honey; in the midst as it were of the habitable world, and under a temperate clime; adorned with beautiful mountains and luxurious valleys; and no part empty of delight or profit.“iii
Such documentation of Palestine, as not just a recognized territory but a thriving one as well, throughout history becomes extremely relevant when looking into Zionist claim to the land, with one of the arguments being that the land was an empty desert with uncivilized inhabitants and that only with Zionist conquest, gardens emerged from the desert. A claim used since the beginning of establishing the Israeli state to add a sense of moral acceptance to the colonization, as described by Professor Israel Shahak: “these villages [in Palestine] were destroyed completely, with their houses, garden-walls, and even cemeteries and tombstones, so that literally a stone does not remain standing, and visitors are passing and being told that ‘it was all desert.’ ” iv
With European discovery trips motivated by colonial aspirations, European explorers traveled to the Middle East – what was then called the Orient. In his discovery voyage to Palestine in 1833, Alphonse de Lamartine described in “Voyage en Orient” many encounters with the inhabitants of the land of Palestine, yet he identified them as “not real citizens”, reflecting a colonial nature and ambition that characterized Europe at that time, and he stated that the land of Palestine would be a marvelous destination for colonial expansion and exploration.v
The birth of Zionism:
With the birth of Zionism as an ideology in the hands of Theodor Herzl, it appealed to a European audience. It identified with Western colonial ideology of classifying overseas territories as available land to be conquered, and its inhabitants as unequal to westerners. The idea of Zionism in its early stages was never advertised as a movement of liberation for the Jewish people, but rather, in the words of Herzl, it was a colonial settlement movement for Jewsvi. This helped identify Zionism with European colonialists.
Contrary to popular belief, Palestine was not the only land that the Zionist project tried to claim and take over as a destination to establish a Zionist state. In early Zionist ideology, other places were being considered to establish this theocratic state such as areas in South America and Africa.vii (Note here that all places suggested were typically the focus and target for colonial conquest at that time).
However, it was viewed at a later stage that Palestine would be a better choice to fulfill that colonial dream; this was because — in addition to the common factor of all the suggested places being perceived by colonizers as less civilized — Palestine had one more favorable factor to the success of the colonialist mission, which is being of religious relevance to the Jewish people. This would facilitate uniting Jewish people to move to Palestine and accept the colonization of a land from its indigenous people through adding a moral aura around a colonial mission, presenting itself as a moral solution to a problem facing a group with a prodigious history of suffering.
Antisemitism in supporting Zionism
Israel Zangwill, who formulated the phrase “a land without people for a people without land”, was the spokesman for Zionism, yet he later abandoned the idea of establishing this Jewish state on the land of Palestine, splitting from the movement and advocating for the settlement of the Jewish people within the British Empireviii.
However, as the waves of immigration from Eastern Europe and Russia to Britain increased, Great Britain formulated the “Alien Act” which aimed to prevent “undesirable immigrants” from entering Britain. Although vaguely worded, it was mainly applied to Jewish immigrants, whereas immigrants from the Indian subcontinent were not subject to such lawsix.
Perhaps this, along with other factors, helps contextualize an understanding of Britain’s adoption and unwavering support to the Zionist colonial project to establish a state and move Jewish people to Palestine, and also helps to put into perspective the quote of Ben Gurion: “If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter”.x
A more “worldly wise race” and power:
Colonial perception of Palestine followed the typical policy of viewing its inhabitants as unworthy of considering; therefore, it was perceived as acceptable that, in the words of Churchill, “a higher grade race, a more worldly wise race…has come in and taken their place“,xi disregarding Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
The intertwining point of interest between Zionism and the British Empire crystallized when, despite the British Empire’s promise to help Palestinians gain full independence from the Ottoman Empire if they revolted against it, Britain simultaneously promised the land of Palestine for the Zionist colonial project. In addressing this contradiction, in a memorandum that Balfour wrote in 1919 he stated “in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country …. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, … [this is of] far profounder import than the desire of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion, that is right”.xii
It is important to note that this was not a declaration of a personal opinion but rather a statement of the policy followed by the governments of the countries involved.
A vital group to be studied to understand the question of Palestine and the Zionist project – and that is often ignored – is Palestinian Jews. Despite the Zionist project advertising itself as creating a Jewish state for all Jews, it utterly neglected the Jewish community of Palestine. Around 1914, there were around 50,000 to 60,000 Palestinian Jews, yet the project was not known to the Jewish community of Palestine and did not take into consideration their dreams, hopes, or aspirations. With the contrast in the living conditions between Jewish Palestinians – pre-Zionism – who coexisted with other religions and identified with their Arab Palestinian heritage, and between what Jewish Europeans endured living in Europe, Jewish Palestinians did not identify with the Zionist project during the waves of European Jewish migration and their aspiration for a theocratic state.
The Zionist project only took into consideration the aspiration of European powers and European Jews, whereas even Jewish Palestinians faced discrimination and were considered inferior by European Jews. Moreover, this group continues to challenge Zionism and the discrimination imposed on it to this day.xiii
Conclusion:
These factors, among others, triggered the debate of whether the Zionist project was established to create a safe haven for Jews or was in nature a colonial aspiration that was supported by other colonial powers with anti-Semitic motives that rejected the mass immigration of Jews into their lands.
This takes us back to the starting point, the Balfour declaration: a European power, promising a foreign land to another foreign power, with complete disregard of the inhabitants of the land of different religions. A promise of Palestine, from the British government to the Zionist movement, from Balfour to Rothschild, while Palestine was not even yet under British mandate.
And so we have the question of Palestine formulating a contrast between two realities: indigenous natives and a higher colonial power.
iCristina Zubizarreta, The Four Frameworks of the Israel-Palestine Conflict Revisited, VOLUME II ISSUE I, Boston college, 2017.
https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/colloquium/article/viewFile/10266/8943
iiLacusCurtius • Herodotus – Book VII: Chapters 57-137 (89)
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/7b*.html
iii Quoted in Richard Bevis, ” Making the Desert Bloom: An Historical Picture of Pre-Zionist Palestine,” The Middle East Newsletter, V, 2 (Feb.Mar.1971 ), 4·
iv 1. Documents From Israel, 1967-1973-· Readings for a Critique of Zionism, ed. Uri Davis and Norton Mezvinsky (London: Ithaca Press, 1975).p. 44· 12. Janet
vEdward W. Said, The Question of Palestine, 1980.
vi Stephen Halbrook, The Class Origins of Zionist Ideology, Feb 2021.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2307/2535975
vii Other promised lands, tenou’a, June 2021
viii Britannica, Israel Zangwill.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Israel-Zangwill
ix The Alien Act The open University.
https://www5.open.ac.uk/research-projects/making-britain/content/aliens
act#:~:text=The%201905%20Aliens%20Act%20declared,Jewish%20and%20Eastern%20European%20immigrants. x Quoting Ben-Gurion’s official biographers, New York Times July 12th, 1987
xi Avi Shalim, , Quoting Churchill’s speech to the Peel Commission inquiry into the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1937, Balfour project.
xii Quoted in Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel, 1917-1948 ( 1965; reprinted Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1973). p. 5·
xiii Perez, Rafael, Palestinian-Jews and Israel’s Dual Identity Crisis, History in the Making: Vol. 9, Article 8. (2016) https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making/vol9/iss1/8
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