But “the native population” was savage, and Jabotinsky saw a clear difference between the Jewish colonizer and the Arabs to be colonized. “Culturally they are five hundred years behind us,” wrote Jabotinsky. “They have neither our endurance nor our determination.” The early Zionists might have considered the land of Palestine as their rightful homeland, but they never imagined themselves as “natives.” Natives, in colonial discourse, were savages with no capacity to improve the land and thus no right to it. In 1943, as Zionist terrorist groups led an insurgency against British rule, their
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