“The Bride is Beautiful, but she is
married to another man.”
Zionism, The Jewish Question
and The Question of Palestine
QUESTIONS
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What was the ‘Jewish Question’?
What was ‘Zionism’?
What is the ‘Question of Palestine’?
Can the 2 narratives be reconciled?
The Jewish Question?
The Jewish Question?
…Emerges in the mid to late-18th century among
Jews and non-Jews and focuses on how the Jewish
people were to break the scourge of antiSemitism and achieve emancipation.
Moses Mendelssohn
(1726-89)
Mendelssohn associated
with Jewish Enlightenment
(Haskalah) which imagined
Jewish emancipation
through assimilation with
European Society.
Intolerance and Persecution Continue
Solving The Jewish Question?
• Assimilation
Integration into Bourgeois Society
Integration into (Future) Socialist Society
• Separation
Cultural / Religious
Political / Secular
Leo Pinsker / Auto-Emancipation (1882)
“Wherever Jews reside they
form a distinct group unable to
integrate into the societies
around them. Judaism and antiSemitism are thus inseparable
companions. The Jewish people
can regain their dignity only by
re-establishing themselves as a
living nation forming a country
of their own. The Jewish
question can only be solved by
the formation of a Jewish nation
living on its own soil. Such an
outcome is only possible
through our own efforts – the
auto-emancipation of the Jews.
Leo Pinsker
Auto- Emancipation (1882)
What was Zionism?
• Ideology
Belief in Legitimacy of a separate Jewish Nation
equal with other nations.
• Political Movement
Program for Emancipation of Jewish nation through
State-building.
• Core Idea
Return to Zion.
Zionist Counter-memory
• Unbroken Bond Between People / Land
• Story has three Phases
• Antiquity (Jewish attachment to Zion)
• Exile (Alienation from Zion)
• Return to Zion
The Great Divide
Antiquity and Exile (Galut)
“This periodization of antiquity and exile requires
a highly selective representation of many centuries
of Jewish experience…and ignores historical
developments that do not fit the principles
underlying this mold.”
Yael Zerubavel,
Recovered Roots (1995), p. 17
Herzl, the Jewish Question, and The Jewish State
“I consider the Jewish question neither
social nor religious. It is a national
question….
Let sovereignty be granted to us over a
portion of the globe large enough to
satisfy the rightful requirements of a
nation…
Palestine is our historic home. The very
name of Palestine would attract our
people with a force of marvelous
potency.…The Jews who wish for a
state will have it.”
Theodor Herzl
The Jewish State (1896)
A Land Without a People?
“We abroad are used to believe
the Eretz Yisrael is almost totally
desolate, a desert that is not
sowed..... But in truth that is not
the case. Throughout the country
it is difficult to find fields that are
not sowed. Only sand dunes and
stony mountains are not
cultivated…
…if the time comes when the life
of our people in Eretz Yisrael
develops to the point of
encroaching upon the native
population, they will not easily
yield their place.”
Ahad Ha’am
Truth From Eretz Israel (1891)
Zionist Dilemma
1881 Population
21,000 Jews
470,000 Arab
4.2%
95.8%
“The bride is beautiful but she
is married to another man.”
Yusuf al-Khalidi (Mayor of Jerusalem)
“Who can challenge the
rights of the Jews to
Palestine? Good Lord,
historically it is really your
country… But [Palestine is
inhabited and immigration
will require brute force and
bring revolt]. In the name of
God, let Palestine be left in
peace.”
1899
THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE?
“ The Question of Palestine is therefore the
contest between an affirmation and a denial,
and it is this contest, dating back 100 years,
which animates and makes sense of the current
impasse…Palestine was seen as a place to be
possessed anew and reconstructed.”
Edward Said (1979)
The Iron Wall
“Every indigenous people will
resist alien settlers…This is how
the Arabs will behave so long as
they possess even a gleam of
hope that they can prevent
Palestine from becoming the
Land of Israel. “Zionist
colonization…can proceed and
develop only under the
protection of a power that is
independent of the native
population – behind an iron wall
which the native population can
not breach.”
Ze’ev Jabotinksy (1923)