The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

As for an “anticolonial” Zionism, if such a thing could be spoken of it would come as a shock to the ideology’s founders. “The land of our fathers is waiting for us; let us colonize it,” wrote Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, linguist and godfather of modern Hebrew, in 1880. “And, by becoming its masters, we shall again be a people like all others.” This mastering of the land meant economic control. Zionist Ber Borochov urged Jews to assume “the leading position in the economy of the new land” in 1906, and in this way “Jewish immigration may be diverted to colonization of the undeveloped country.” And mastery also meant violence. While many Zionists spoke of peaceful accord between their aims and the aims of Palestinians, Jabotinsky never allowed himself the liberty of such euphemism: There is no such precedent…. The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage.