The father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, first considered Argentina, believing that it would be in that “sparsely populated” country’s “highest interest…to cede us a portion of its territory.” When Herzl turned to Palestine, he viewed Palestinians, as historian Benny Morris puts it, as little more than “part of the scenery.” The scenery was savage: “We should form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia,” Herzl wrote in his 1896 manifesto, The Jewish State. “An outpost of civilization against barbarism.”
