The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel

by Gabriel Piterberg

In this original and wide-ranging study, Gabriel Piterberg examines theideology and literature behind the colonization of Palestine, from the latenineteenth century to the present. Exploring Zionism’s origins in Central-EasternEuropean nationalism and settler movements, he shows how its texts can beplaced within a wider discourse of western colonization. Revisiting the work ofTheodor Herzl and Gershom Scholem, Anita Shapira and David Ben-Gurion, andbringing to light the writings of lesser-known scholars and thinkersinfluential in the formation of the Zionist myth, Piterberg breaks openprevailing views of Zionism, demonstrating that it was in fact unexceptional,expressing a consciousness and imagination typical of colonial settlermovements. Shaped by European ideological currents and the realities ofcolonial life, Zionism constructed its own story as a unique and impregnableone, in the process excluding the voices of an indigenous people—thePalestinian Arabs.

Genres: Middle East, Nonfiction, Politics, History

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2008

Reviews

[Steve Cran]

1947 marked the rebirth of the state of Israel. For Jews it was something joyous that words could not begin to describe. For the Palestinian Arabs living their it was one of the worst disasters comparable to the Babylonian Exile of the Israelite. It was called the Nakhba. This scholarly epistle examine the mythology of Zionism with a critical eye. The professor who teaches at UCLA is definitely one of those Israelis who has sympathies for the Palestinian tragedy.

Zionism was both a reaction to and a child of European Nationalism. Europe even after the Emancipation never fully accepted Jews. While they may have been allowed to leave their confines of the Ghettos they were still in a social ghetto as people did not wish to interact with them. Jews were not considered manly warrior types they were viewed sort of as the third sex. There were two reactions to this one of the most famous is that of Theodor Herzl who proposed that the Jews have a state of their own. The other was Bernard Lazares who thought that Jews as the ultimate Pariah could bring a about a general emancipation of Europe from Mental bondage. To be sure both were assimilationist.

Herzl felt that by having their own land the Jews could rebuild themselves into the manly image of a European male. This would enable them assimilate more readily if they had a state of their own. Even his works show Jews interacting as equal with gentiles in the Jewish State.

The Zionist ideology is based on three suppositions which are analyzed in full. The negation of exile, the return to the land and the return to History. For Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders the Exile is something off an anomaly a blip in history that they choose to gloss over. The Diaspora must disappear and Jews must come live in Israel. What ever happened out there in exile must bee discarded or places on the backburner. Focus on Jewish history in the land. Of course not all Jews moved to Israel. There was a movement called Canaanism which called on adopting a Hebrew identity and discarding Judaism totally.Some of it still remains.

The Next is the return to the land. Making a Jewish state in the land. This attitude refused to take into account the inhabitants already living their. Not much mention is made of the Arabs in the literature. In fact they called it a land without a people and a people without a land. Piterberg gives full analysis of Zionist documentation and shows that the original Zionist ideology was in fact to get the Arabs to move out of the Jewish state. Their only inclusion was to be used as a workforce and then driven out by economic means. Eventually the Zionist enterprise would strive to dominate the labor sector. An example of Zionist attitude towards Arabs is the labor strike of Arab and Jewish workers in the British Railway. Ben Gurion thought of using them and then discarding them or giving them a section in the Histrdut as partial members until they became more sophisticated. Chaim Arlsoff said no way they could never join forces. They wanted to exclude thee Arabs

Kibbutzim and Moshavs were not products of Israel or socialism as a matter of fact they were copied from the the Nationalist Germans who were trying to reclaim land that had many Polish people living on it. The projects failed as the Polish People organized and refuse to be driven off their land.

THe final cornerstone is the return to history. They believed that the Jews or any other nation without a land of their own could in no way shape or form take and active part in history. The history and accomplishments in exile are over looked and focus is on Jewish history in the land. The Talmud and Mishna are overlooked and the bible is focused upon especially the book of Joshua which details the armed conquest of Canaan over the sinful Canaanites.

While Ben Gurion may use the Bible as justification there are many flaws with his approach. First off there are no external indicator that the Jews were in fact slave in Egypt. No proof has been found of the Patriarchs existence and there is no evidence of the Exodus. There was no lightning quick conquest as mentioned in Joshua the assumption of the Israelite was slow and gradual. In fact the Israelites were not pure monotheists until Josiah's time.

THe book of Joshua is modeled after Assyrian literature which detail conquests and treaties. The model of Joshua was used by Josiah to prepare the nation to reclaim land taken by the receding Assyrian empire.

In the end Israeli literature speaks mournfully about how the establishment of the state obliterated the biblical landscape. Several authors also document abuses against Palestinians and how they drove out the villagers at gun point. there is a level of guilt written on the lines of Israeli literature.

[Kev Nickells · Rating 5 out of 5]

My reasons for reading this in late 2023 are probably obvious - in the wake of October 7th, and the tragic aftermath, I was keen to read up on 'Zionism'. Scare quotes because Zionism is something of a contested term - a political term to describe the Aliyah, a pejorative term for the nation-state of Israel's actions in that territory, a Theological term describing various approaches to the exilic narrative of Jews... I'm typically loath to use the term 'Zionism' because it is (in my circles at least) loaded with a sense of antipathy towards the nation-state Israel and I'm conscious that, while that pejorative application may be accurate, it elides the plurality of the concept of Zionism within Jewish and Israeli cultures.

This book was recommended to me on the basis that it's comprehensive and wide-ranging. And it is - the sources are outside of the ken of English (or European languages) and the range is enormous. While Piterberg perhaps shies away from directly theological sources, the sources are most frequently Hebrew and from Israeli culture and absolutely the product of assiduous labour.

The absence of theological sources is pertinent - much of this book details the ideological construction of the nation-state of Israel; that is, the kind of ideological labour which was deemed necessary to constitute the state of Israel. While this book is partly critical of theological justification (especially with regards the apparent justification of 'the autochthonous Israeli') it's not per se critical of religious modes of understanding - rather he's keen to illustrate the ways in which 'Zionism' is a dynamic and emergent ideology of c19th/20th.

To explain further - rather than a state of Israel historically (or theologically) justified by (eg) Exodus or the Deuterocanonical stories imperative to Jewish identity, rather than construction of Israel, of Zionism, is borne from a negation of exilic dialogues.

There's a lot of politics which hovers over the top of this, unmentioned - it's already a hefty book but it's worth remembering a lot of the context. It's not that anti-semitism began in 1939, Jews were vilified Europe-wide; the early Aliyahs, and the uniform, autocthnonous identification of Israel, that state's political construction, are as much a product of an unbearable Europe as they are Piterberg's intricate detailing of dangerous state-building.

So time is given also to detail the complexity of the situation - the way that Zionism may have meant a bi-national area, or the way that socialist Zionist movements were largely squashed by a more monolithic, unitary conceptualisation of the state. In broader political terms, the construction of the state very much mirrors that of its previous custodians the British (who, for reference, were and remain bastards).

I don't have criticisms of this book - it's very much what I wanted and it's a very exacting hermeneutics of the construction of latter-day Israel. There is a lot of floating context that could be brought to bear but principally this is not the book to do it. So while there's a lot of time talking about David Ben-Gurion's misleading, perhaps mendacious, ideological work, there's little time given over to the history of the geographical area - the Arab communities whose claim to its history ought to be considered as valid as those whose claim is near-mythical. As I say, this is not the book to do that - but suffice it to say that Piterberg alludes several times to the notion that a lot of the state of Israel's constitutional ideology has a strong counter-claim in those inhabitants of Palestine. This is also not the book to eke out the problems of literalist Christian fundamentalists and millenarians - whose power in the US does bear on the state to some degree.

There is, however, an interesting dialogue around what's very carefully labelled a kind of 'protestantism' - while Christian interpretations of the Bible tend towards narratives of return to the Holy Land in more metaphorical term, Piterberg is keen to illustrate that applying that literalism to the state of Israel is a distinct ideological turn - perhaps not so much 'protestant' as an analogue to that movement's literalism.

It's a magnificent book. It's not short of criticisms of the state of Israel but it very much comes from a place of affection. It's clearly Piterberg's insinuation that part of the formation of Israel is dangerously fallacious (if not outright ahistorical) but that by no means is to do the work of wishing Israel to disappear - rather that it could reconstitute itself as a pluralist state which reflects its own multi-ethnic, storied history.

To speak on the breadth of this book again - he picks up from politics, archaeology, literature, newspapers, academic works, philosophy and numerous other places besides. Even if I were to reject the book (I do not wish to do so) it's an indispensable source of other sources on Israeli culture, or works that informed early (modern) Israeli culture - the likes of Kabbalist / historian Gershom Scholem, writer Amos Oz, state-builder David Ben-Gurion (etc).

It's perhaps not given me much of an insight into the current situation in the area - though I can say that it definitely points to the ways in which state-building necessarily involves an elision of plurality and has fomented a situation which, in 2023, could best be described as fucked up. But it is a magnificent, generous and fascinating book and one that would doubtless teach most people stuff about how modern Israel came to understand itself as a nation-state.

[Tynan Brooks]

An interesting study of the ways Zionism's foundation in myths of return relative to other forms of settler colonialism, but the deep focus on cultural objects I have no frame of reference for made it a bit of a slog.