Nationalism and the Politics of Fear in Israel

Race and Identity on the Border with Lebanon

Cathrine Thorleifsson

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781780767505
• eBook ISBN: 9780857739100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Social Sciences

Kiryat Shmona, located near the Israeli-Lebanese border, often makes the news whenever there is an outbreak of violence between the two countries. In Israel's northernmost city, the residents are mostly Mizrahim, that is, Jews descending from Arab and Muslim lands. Cathrine Thorleifsson uses the dynamics at play along this border to develop wider conclusions about the nature of nationalism, identity, ethnicity and xenophobia in Israel, and the ways in which these shift over time and are manipulated in different ways for various ends. She explores the idea of being on the 'periphery' of nationhood: examining the identity-forming and negotiating processes of these Mizrahim who do not neatly dove-tail with the predominantly Ashkenazi concept of what it means to be 'Israeli'. Through in-depth ethnographic observation and analysis, Thorleifsson highlights the daily negotiation of Moroccan and Persian Jewish families who define themselves in opposition to Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Central and Eastern Europe and the Druze, Christian and Muslim Arab populations which surround them. But this is not just an examination of differences and stereotypes which are continually perpetuated.
Instead, Thorleifsson highlights the instances of inter-marriage between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, and what this means for the high politics of nationalist narratives as well as the everyday aspect of family dynamics. But having done so, she does also acknowledge that many of Israel's laws which deal with ethnic identity do result in discrimination and daily exclusion against a large number of its citizens, something which reflects the ethnocratic character of the state. By including all of these different aspects of the daily negotiation of identity in a northern town in Israel, Thorleifsson offers a frank and balanced account of the nature of state nationalism and the people who are affected by it. Covering an interesting aspect of Israeli society which is often overlooked, this account of relations between both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews and those between Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians is an important contribution to the study of Israeli and Middle Eastern societies.

CHAPTER 1

ZIONIST SETTLER COLONIALISM AND ITS IMPACT ON JEWS FROM ARAB AND MUSLIM LANDS

This chapter examines the ideological roots of the Israeli ethnocracy and its impact on the position and identity of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands.¹ Zionism, as a settler colonial project, claimed its ‘historical’ right to colonise Palestinian land with the goal of constructing a Jewish nation state. Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, classified as Mizrahim, were the victims of exclusionary processes of racialisation and had to adapt to Eurocentric nationhood as defined by the Ashkenazi elite. During the 1950s, colonial practices of securing territorial control consolidated the ethnocracy as Mizrahi immigrants were disproportionally placed in peripheral frontier areas on the geographic and socio-economic margins of Israeli society. They served as a cheap labour force for Ashkenazi-dominated settlements, which were an intrinsic part of creating a Jewish frontier against Palestinian Arabs who were located outside the confines of the Zionist project. Colonial settler practices and policies turned the Mizrahim into an in-between peripheral minority and ethno-class, caught between inclusion and exclusion, submission and defiance.

A national home in Palestine

The Zionist movement arose in central and eastern Europe in the late 1880s as a response to excessive persecution and anti-Semitism in Europe. When Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of political Zionism, wrote The Jewish State: an attempt at a modern solution to the Jewish problem in 1896, he was only one of a long line of Jewish intellectuals advocating a political answer to the problems facing European Jews. The goal of Jewish unity and the desire for a secular Jewish nation state was the founding principle for political Zionism. Herzl argued that: ‘A return to national existence in a nation state like all other nations would help to terminate the long and dark period of Jewish exile in Gentile lands’ (Herzl [1896] 1988:85). Herzl himself was more ambivalent about where the future state should be, but after his death in 1904 most of the leaders of the Zionist movement associated the national revival with the colonisation of Palestine (Pappe 2006:10).

Benedict Anderson argues that in order to properly understand why nationalism commands profound emotional legitimacy, it has to be understood as not just aligned with self-consciously held modern political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it (Anderson 1983:12). He claims that ‘nations combine elements of faith and ethnic communities to produce a new synthesis, which draws much of its strength and inspiration, as well as many of its forms, from older religious beliefs, moral sentiments and sacred rites’ (ibid:23). Sacred belief remained central to the Zionist movement that claimed biblical territory as the cradle for their new nationalist movement. In the urgent need to establish a common origin for the Jewish people, the Zionist movement used the foundation myth from the Old Testament presenting the Jew as the eternal exile (Sand 2009:255). This focus, adopting a biblical conception of time, suggests that the meaning of the Jewish people is intimately bound up with the Jewish history (Handelman 1998:224). The social and political project of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the settlement and colonisation of the land, and the construction of a Jewish community and state, all against Arab opposition and hostility, was depicted culturally in terms of national revival, territorial repatriation and historical redemption (Ram in Olick 2003:228). In Zionist ideology, the return to an historical homeland was a reward of ethnic selection; God giving a specific homeland to his ‘Chosen Peoples’ (Smith 2003:92).

The notion of aliyah as physical and moral ascent to the land of Israel, epitomised by the story of Exodus, inspired the movement.² Jewish immigration to the sacred land was represented as a return to the Jewish birthplace totally disconnected from the movements of European immigration to other countries (Kimmerling 2008:231). Modern, political Zionism strategically distanced itself from the global colonial context of the time, and rather emphasised the uniqueness of the Jewish problem. Anti-Semitism, persecutions and, later, the Holocaust, provided the background that made nation-building in Israel the only realistic and moral solution for the Zionist movement (Kimmerling 2010:231).

Although the Zionist movement distanced itself from the colonial context at the time, it still shared several characteristics with other settler projects in Canada, the United States, Australia, Latin and South America, and later, South Africa and Algeria. However, there were differences between these colonial projects in terms of the nature of the world economic order and whether settlers continued to be connected or not to a political metropolitan power. European colonialism was fostered by a colonising state, a key factor missing in the early Zionist movement as it did not have a formal ‘mother country’ outside the colonised land (Penslar 2007:94). The Jewish National Fund, based in the United States, played a different role than a motherland or imperial power. It mobilised support for the settlers as nation builders but did not seek to rule through them. Still, the Zionist movement clearly attached itself to the dominant imperial powers of the day, Great Britain and the United States, and followed their colonial exploitation and displacement practices.³

European imperial powers colonised land while seeking to remove or subjugate the indigenous inhabitants (Masalha 2007:16). The British imperial powers imported indentured workers to their colonies from countries whose populations were considered to be racially and culturally inferior, such as Malays and Indians who were brought to South Africa to work the lush tropical farms of the Cape as well as areas in KwaZulu-Natal (Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis 1995:5, Susser 2011:5).⁴ The advancement of the ethnically dominant groups was predicated upon forms of subordination imposed on the assumed inferior indigenous minorities (Veracini 2010:5, Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis 1995:16). The Orientalist foundations of the Zionist movement reflected the ideological habits of European colonialism. Herzl envisaged that the Jewish state in Palestine would ‘form a portion of a rampant of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilisation as opposed to barbarism’ (Herzl 1988 [1896]:96).

Jewish settlement in Palestine

There were five major aliyot (plural of aliyah) during Ottoman times and the British Mandate. Beginning in the 1880s, the first aliyah, or wave of pioneering settlers, mostly Jews of Polish and Russian birth, immigrated to Palestine and formed the yishuv, the Jewish settlement in the land of Israel (Hayishuv Hayehudi b'Eretz Yisrael). Since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in the late fifteenth century, Sephardim and Jews from Arab lands were the majority of Jews in Palestine. Sephardic religious practice dominated Jewish life and the Jewish settlements were thus predominantly located in the four towns considered sacred in Judaism: Hebron, Tiberias, Safed and Jerusalem.

The early Zionist settlers were less interested in the ultra-traditional Jerusalem, and directed their resources towards buying up plots of land. A majority of settlers who moved to Palestine shared an Orientalist vision of biblical times and proclaimed indigenous status for the Jews in Palestine as the ‘Land of Israel'where their ancient forefathers had lived (Tal 2002:20). Their ideology is well illustrated in the following passage from their revolutionary programme:

The terrible position of the Jewish nation will not be improved unless we emigrate, alter our way of life, and engage in productive work. Every nation lives on a land of its own; the majority of its members are farmers living by the toil of their hands, the rest being engaged in other branches of work that have visible results and are of real value. The Jewish people have become a people of ‘the spirit’, logicians, merchants and middlemen; and for this reason it has become physically impoverished … Let us therefore summon our strength and start out. Let us return to our ancient Mother, to the country which awaits us full of compassion, to nourish us with the best of her fruit. Let us abandon the scale and measure and take up the plough and sickle (I.L. Pinkser, quoted in D.B. Gurion, Jewish Labour, quoted in Weingrod 1966).

The Zionist programme presented socialism and pioneering as the primary ideals for the movement. They turned their backs on the Jewish Diaspora (galut) as a place of unproductive deformity and weakness resulting from an age-long enforced homelessness. Only immigration to Eretz Israel would solve the ‘terrible position of the Jewish nation’ by placing it in ‘a land of its own’. Early immigrants viewed themselves as vanguards of a future, much larger immigration for which they were to ‘pave the road for the return of the masses of Jews to their land’ (ibid:17).

The second aliyah (1904–14) was sparked by a fresh wave of persecution of Jews in Russia. An estimated 40,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine during this time. Another 40,000 Jews arrived in Palestine during the third aliyah (1919–23) that was triggered by the October Revolution in Russia, the anti-Semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe, the British conquest of Palestine and the Balfour Decleration. British rule in Palestine was confirmed by the Mandate issued by the League of Nations in 1920, whose text incorporated the words of the Balfour Declaration dated 2 November 1917, supporting Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine and the creation of Jewish homeland. In the prevailing ideology, the devastating impact of colonising Palestine as a solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ on the Palestinians remained largely invisible. Until the early 1920s, settlement in Palestine was largely under the control of private European Jewish capitalists (especially Baron Rothschild). After that, control passed to the Jewish agency and Keren Kayemet (The Jewish National Fund of the World Zionist Organisation). Between 1920 and the mid-1930s, the Zionist movement received full support from the British colonial government in Palestine, which played a key part in the culmination of the settler project. The one-way transfer of lands from Palestinian to Zionist settlers was secured through legal and illegal coercive measures like taxation, imprisonment and collective punishment (Stasiulius and Yuval-Davis 1995:292).

During the fourth aliayh (1924–38), about 80,000 immigrants, mainly from coutries of Eastern Europe, settled in Palestine. The fifth aliyah (1929–39) began as a pionnering one, but with the onset of racial persecution in Nazi Germany Jewish immigration to Palestine increased significantly. Between 225,000 and 300,000 Jews arrived during this fifth wave of immigration. British authorities had heavy restrictions on immigration and the majority of Jewish refugees were not permitted to enter Palestine legally. Anti-semitism was at its most extreme in Germany under the rule of the National Socialists during the 1930s and 1940s. As the urgency for Jews to leave Europe intensified, more refugees managed to enter, referred to by the British as illegal immigrants. The German Zionist organisation collaborated with Nazi Germany to ensure German Jewish migration to Palestine. An economic agreement named Haavara, signed in November 1933, allowed for the transfer of German assets to Palestine. Nazi Germany got rid of Jewish citizens they considered racially inferior while the Zionist movement gained new settlers for the colonialisation of Palestine.⁵ By 1936, the Jewish population had reached almost 400,000 (Gartner 2001:196). In 1947, the last year of British rule, the Jewish population was approximately 600,000, accounting for 30.6 per cent of the total population (Bernstein 2000:21).

The ideological programme of the yishuv

In contrast to other settler societies who relied on an indigenous work force, the Histradut⁶ (General Federation of Workers in Eretz Israel) tried to prevent dependence on Palestinian labour. Through the ‘conquest of labour’ and the principle of Jewish labour (avodah Ivrit) in the 1920s, Jewish settlers campaigned for the non-employment of Palestinians (Shimon 2004).⁷ The racist exclusionist policies were articulated in the constitution of the Jewish National Fund: land provided to a settler was to be worked ‘by himself or with the aid of his family … , if and whenever he may be obliged to hire help, he will hire Jewish workmen only’ (Stasiulius and Yuval-Davis 1995:292).

Many Zionists envisaged a new ‘covenant’ not between humanity and God, but between human beings and nature. The commitment to pioneering labour was conceived as integral to the redemption of the Jewish people in its historic homeland (Smith 2000:48). The pioneer was going to be both a worker and military defender. Zionist emissaries toured the Jewish communities abroad to raise money and to ‘gain soul’ for the movement, especially among young people who could be pioneers (halutzim) on the land. These efforts were mostly directed at European Jewry but there was also active immigrant recruitment from Yemenite Jewry, that satisfied the need for Jewish ‘working and fighting hands’ (ibid:122). In 1911, the Israeli Bureau appointed Shemuel Yavnieli for a mission to Yemen to persuade the Jews there to immigrate to Palestine. Initially, his efforts were not met with great enthusiasm. Only after he started using messianic terminology of ‘redemption’ did his recruitment plan succeed.

I announce to you that redemption is close, the redemption of the souls of our people which are awakening to immigrate to Israel to recover it through manual labour … Any part of the land of our country which Hebrew hands cultivate is being redeemed (Yavnieli quoted in Klorman-Eraqi 1981).

A fundamental paradox characterised the Zionist settlement of Palestine. Although presenting itself as a secular movement, Zionist nation-builders utilised Jewish ethno-religous symbolism and mythology to justify its political goals and ‘sacralise the nation’ (Levon 2008:62). Berl Katznelson, one of socialist Zionism's foremost thinkers, stated that: ‘the Jewish year is full of days whose depth of meaning is nowhere surpassed. It is the interest of the Jewish labor movement to squander the forces latent in them’ (quoted in Liebman and Don-Yehiya 1983:48). The sacred promise of the Land of Israel combined with the reward of ethnic selection served as a powerful symbolic bridge to connect Jews with their national identity (Zerubavel 2005:132).

Already, at this early stage of nation building, ethnocracy was in the making. The Zionist movement as a whole was shot through with Orientalist conceptions of Arab degeneracy and primitiveness (Penslar 2007:91). Ashkenazi pioneers shared the mission civilisatrice doctrine of European colonial powers and treated the Yemeni workers brought to Palestine as uncivilised Jews from an inferior culture. They Yemeni workers were referred to as ‘natural’ workers and being non-modern they were naturally suited for hard work, harsh discipline and low salary (Shafir and Peled 2002:22). Many of the reluctant Yemenite pioneers became utterly disillusioned with the hard labour and treatment they had received and decided to return to Yemen in the 1920s.

Central to the emergence of a modern Jewish secular national consciousness was the revival of Hebrew, which served as a ‘central symbol for the awakening and maintenance of national sentiments’ (Spolsky 1991:72). In the 1880s, Hebrew was revitalised and modernised by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and, within a short period (approximately 1890–1916), it became the official spoken language among Jewish settlers in Palestine (ibid). Zionism also redefined gender in relation to the perception of national regeneration. The very language describing the New Hebrew was a male language (Bernstein 1992:16). The figure of the mythic Sabra epitomised the ideal of the New Jew who was physically strong, muscular and masculine, in contrast to the physically soft and weak feminine characterisitc of the Diaspora Jew.⁸ The new Zionist man was molded in the warrior image. He was going to be capable of enduring pain and to protect his land and his people through battle (Ben-Ari 1998). Feminist scholars have examined the effect that the settlement project dynamic had on women's position. Jewish immigrant women in the early 1900s were a minority among the settlers and not equal parterns in the mission of ‘settling and building the Land of Israel’ (yishuv u'bniyat Eretz Israel). Still, they were central in carrying out the necessary domestic tasks, by bearing and rearing the New Jew and by acting as honorary men, working in the productive labour and military aspects of the settlement projects (Stasiulius and Yuval-Davis 1995:312).

The status and equality of women were not at all priorities on the agenda for the Zionist movement. However, both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi women did share some limitations due to their gender. They were normally not able to assume authoritative and directive roles within the socio-political pioneering groups that eventually dominated Israeli leadership. For the Ashkenazi women of the second aliyah the change in their traditional position had already begun in their land of origin highly motivated by nationalistic ideology. As pioneering women from Eastern Europe were pushed to the periphery of the socio-political arena, so more Yemenite women became marginalised. The absence of Yemenite women from public life in Palestine was very much a contradiction of the position of Eastern European pioneering women among their peers with regard to labour. Despite the traditional tasks assigned to them, they were not banned from the realm of communal and public activities. Whereas pioneering women complained publicly about what they considered unjust conditions, the Yemenite women at the turn of the century could not form a protest movement (Druyan in Bernstein 2005:85).

Two national narratives: independence and catastrophe

Referring to the establishment of Israel in 1948 as either the War of Independence by Jewish Israelis or the Nakba (catastrophe) by Palestinians reflects two competing national narratives. Israel's Day of Independence is a bitter reminder to Palestinian Arabs of their political and social devastation. In...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Zionist Settler Colonialism and Its Impact on Jews from Arab and Muslim Lands
• 2. Peripheral Nationhood: Negotiating Israeliness from the Margins of the State
• 3. Flagging the Nation: Fear and Faith in Times of Uncertainty
• 4. Threatening Others: the Dynamics of Prejudice in Everyday Life
• 5. Longings for an Arab Past and an American Future
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back Cover