Decadent pioneers: Land,space and gender in Zionist revisionist thought

Soviet Russia in the 1920s was the scene of intensified Zionist activity, fed by an economic and existential crisis among large segments of the Jewish population and tolerated to a surprising degree by the Soviet authorities. The article explores these factors and the “Soviet context” of Zionism, and documents the powerful influences they exerted on the young membership of the Zionist organizations. The author's interest goes beyond articulated ideological positions to include learned habits of work, political and cultural practices, and perceptions of the social and the personal. She analyzes the transplantation of these elements of political culture into Palestine by the 3,000-odd young Zionist immigrants who arrived between 1924 and 1931, cautioning that ideas and practices were borrowed selectively and modified by the reality of the Jewish settlement in Palestine.     

The Muslim Settlement of Late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine: Comparison with Jewish Settlement Patterns

In the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, Palestine's rural landscape underwent a great transformation. This study examines how the Muslim population expanded beyond its traditional inhabitation in the highlands and settled the fluid inventory of marginal lands in the coastal plains and unpopulated valleys of Palestine. In settling these marginal landscapes their settlement dovetailed with Jewish settlement patterns. While most studies have emphasized the competitive aspect of this process, examining Zionist and Arab national claims, this research points to a different aspect of this new settlement—mainly how much the Jewish and Muslim settlement patterns mirrored one another and how they were part of similar physical processes and complemented one another. Relying on censuses, aerial photographs, and period maps, as well as other archival sources, this is the first systematic research to examine the full extent of new Muslim settlements in Palestine in the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, and to draw parallels between this phenomenon and the settlement endeavors of the Zionists.     

Limits reaffirmed: new wheat frontiers in Australia, 1916–1939

At the opening of the twentieth century, it was apparent that good agricultural land was getting scarce even in the New World. There was still a strong political need, especially in countries that owed their existence to an agricultural frontier, to open new land and increase farming population. During the 1920s, Isaiah Bowman in the United States devised what he called “scientific settlement”, a form of social planning. In the countries that had already embarked on extending their farm land, their initiative was something less than scientific settlement. As an illustration, South Australia and New South Wales legislated the resumption of certain pastoral areas for re-allocation as primarily wheat-based farmlands that would provide the heavier rural population sought by politicians. The need to reward soldiers for service in the First World War became a major stimulus to expansion. Whereas there was ample evidence of the unreliability of conditions in most of the areas chosen, the authorities dispatched settlers to relatively small properties and provided only disjointed and tardy support. When the new wheat frontier proved to be expensive and rife with failures, the authorities blamed the settlers. In the circumstances, however, the performance of the settlers was more praiseworthy than the weight of historical opinion has suggested. Even the soldier settlers, who were put at a disadvantage by the high cost of their land and interest, ultimately achieved a success rate comparable to that of civilian ‘closer’ settlers who generally had better land and easier terms of purchase.     

The challenges facing the First Aliyah Sephardic Ottoman colonists

The case of the tiny Jewish colony of Har-Tuv, which was founded by Ottoman Jews who immigrated to Palestine in 1895 from Bulgaria, sheds light on Ottoman policies vis-à-vis settlement activity by Sephardic Jews in Palestine at a time when there were concerted efforts to limit the Jewish national activity there. The latter was mainly carried out by non-Ottoman Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to Palestine from eastern Europe. As the only colony established during the First Aliyah by Sephardic Jews, and also due to its geographical isolation, Har-Tuv was detached from the processes taking place within the other Jewish colonies and the New Yishuv. At the same time, Har-Tuv’s founders had a long tradition of living under Ottoman rule and were on good terms with the local Ottoman authorities in Palestine. This was often useful when the colony had problems with its Arab neighbors, and on several occasions Har-Tuv even served as an intermediary between the Arab rural population and the government.     

Laurence Oliphant: Financial Sources for his Activities in Palestine in the 1880s

Abstract

Laurence Oliphant's interest in the development of Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine preceded his interest in the plight of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. While his intensive involvement in these matters is well known, especially in modern Israel, the fact that the funds for his largesse were contributed by the Christadelphian Brotherhood has not previously been published. The present article brings to light material from the archives of this sect, and thus, too, the motivation behind these efforts.     

Making the Desert Bloom: Hannah Arendt and Zionist Discourse

This article discusses an aspect of Hannah Arendt’s treatment of the conflict between the Zionists and the Palestinians that has thus far been overlooked in scholarship: her justification of Zionism through the achievements of the Jewish pioneers in cultivating the land, in contrast to the Palestinians’ failure to do so. The inability of natives to cultivate their land was a familiar argument in the history of colonialism, used to legitimize the colonialists’ right to settle a land and often to displace the natives. How should we understand Arendt’s use of this argument? I show that Arendt’s argument should be understood in the context of, first, the recurrence of this argument in Western political thought and practices. Second, the Zionists’—Arendt included—need of legitimizing Jewish settlements in Palestine. And third, the influence of Arendt’s own political philosophy on her understanding of culture in general, and Palestinian culture in particular.     

Zionist Women of the 1920s: The Voice of Nation Building

Candidates for admission to the Agricultural College for Young Women at Nahalal expressed the sensibilities of a generation of young Jewish women who were attracted to the Zionist movement in the late 1920s. Zionism offered them the chance to create a novel identity for women as equals of men by devoting their labor to the settlement project. Hopeful applicants embraced an energetic ideal of self-sufficiency that blurred the traditional gender boundaries both of Palestine and of Europe. Like their male colleagues, they spoke in the public and universal voice of ideology and tied their desire for equality to the nation's bandwagon.     

Maps and the settlement of southern Palestine, 1799–1948: an historical/GIS analysis

Historical maps of the Negev Desert which comprises half of the total land area of Palestine can be viewed from several intersecting perspectives relating to aspects such as their contribution to tracing patterns of settlement and agricultural history, imperialism and mapping, and legal geography of land ownership and indigenous people. Here we focus mainly on the first theme, incorporate new methods and demonstrate their application to studies in historical geography.     

Changing patterns of landownership in nineteenth-century Palestine: The European influence

Long-term changes in landownership patterns and their implications for settlement have been neglected by geographers, both in theoretical and empirical studies. Studies in this field relating to the Middle East are of a very general nature, and are not based on detailed examination of regional trends, their components, and geographic variables. In Israel, most of the published literature on this issue has dealt with the process of land purchase by Jews and has focused mainly on the period of the British Mandate (1918–1948). Misleading statements abound and the roots of the processes which evolved in nineteenth-century Palestine are poorly understood.The middle of the nineteenth century in Palestine marked the end of a quarter of a millenium of neglect and decline. Around 1800 Palestine was a backward province of the Ottoman empire, largely rural and sparsely populated. Both rural and urban economies were traditional and poor. From about 1850, a process of change began which led to a resurgence and development of the country.An important determinant in this process was an increase of European influence within the Ottoman empire in general and Palestine in particular. This paper (part of a broader study on landownership), will discuss the background, characteristics and motivations of Europeans who purchased land in Palestine during the period, their financial sources, their locational preferences and opportunities. The diverse influences of these land transactions on urban and rural development are considered. These processes ar illustrated by two case studies.     

Unfastening Israel's Future from the Occupation: Israeli Plans for Partial Annexation of West Bank Territory

Israeli plans to partially annex West Bank territory have mainly been perceived as frustrating the two-state solution, and as putting Palestine/Israel on a path leading to the one-state alternative. This paper analyses partial annexation plans without assuming that the future of Palestine/Israel would necessarily abide by either statist resolution. It argues that by ostensibly distancing Israel's hold of the West Bank from an identifiable configuration of a belligerent occupation, partial annexation is offered to Jewish Israelis as a path for detaching the futurity of the two nations, and as a trajectory for normalising the Israeli state, without having to make what much of this public would see as painful concessions. It further explores settlers’ objections to such plans, claiming that even a partial incorporation of West Bank territory into formal Israel is expected to erode the exclusivity of Jewish domination which Israel has been upholding in its settler-colonial frontier.     

Zionist identity and the British Mandate: Palestine's internment camps and the making of the Western native

This paper examines the relationship between British police officers, Jewish guards, and German internees in Palestine's internment camps during World War II. Using the reports of the Jewish guards, the paper investigates the role of Western‐identified actors in the Zionist identity‐making project. The reports evince a surprising rapport between the British and their German prisoners and the mistreatment of the Jewish guards by their British superiors. The paper analyses these Jewish accounts in the context of identity‐ and ethnic boundary‐making and argues that they illustrate Zionism's intent to construct itself as a Western but noncolonial movement and Zionists in Palestine as natives but not “Orientals.” The reports also reveal a breach between the formal hierarchy—British officers, Jewish guards, German internees—and the ethnic order, which situated British and Germans at the apex and the Jews at the bottom. The paper highlights the utility of researching group‐making interactions in different contexts to develop a more nuanced understanding of identity‐making processes.     

Dynamics and patterns of the shrinking of Arab lands in Palestine

This paper seeks to sketch a number of geographical patterns pertaining to the ongoing process of confiscation of Palestinian-Arab land in Israel and the 1967 occupied territories. It points out a geographical pattern and process of “enclaving” and “exclaving”, a form of spatial apartheid and exclusionary zoning which was adopted during the pre-state period of Jewish settlement and has continued down to the present day. The centrality of land possession and its transfer to Jewish national and state ownership is shared by almost all political classes in Israel. Even during key points in peace negotiations over the past several years, land confiscation never ceased nor was interrupted. The present paper employs the term “shrinking” to underscore that land confiscation is a continuous process in Palestine/Israel. This of course has both political and social ramifications for the type of state Israel seeks to be, declaring its desire to live in peace and harmony with its own Palestinian citizens and Palestinians elsewhere once a peace deal has been reached. Seen from the perspective of land, its control and use, this paper argues that there is no other alternative in achieving peaceful resolution between Jews in Israel and Palestinians except a return to square one: redefining a new geography for Palestinian villages and towns in Israel and for those many hundreds of villages which were demolished and have since been obliterated.     

Memory,Identity and Aspiration: Early Modern Jewish Maps of the Promised Land

In the sixteenth century Jews began to produce maps showing the Exodus to the Promised Land. My aim in this article is to show that, through unique compositions of written biblical references and pictured symbolism (both Jewish and Christian), maps such as the Mantua map (1560s) and, a century later, the Amsterdam Haggadah [Passover] map (1695) were a means of constructing Jewish cultural memory and identity in the Diaspora and fostering aspiration for a second salvation through a return to Zion. I also explore the Jewish approach towards the biblical land as this was reflected in the maps.     

Class and nation in the Jewish settlement of Palestine: the case of Merhavia, 1910–30

This article examines the relationship between ideology and settlement in early twentieth-century Palestine by tracing the evolution of one co-operative, Merhavia, located at the heart of the «ideological settlement core» in the northern Jezreel valley. The study begins by looking at how socialist Zionist ideology was redefined in order to endorse permanent settlement where earlier it had rejected it. The article then examines two phases of further ideological change. In the first, class-based strategies were replaced by national solutions which favoured an exclusive Jewish economy. In the second, an «ideology from below» in the form of egalitarian and collectivist values was asserted, with the effect of destroying the Merhavia co-operative while sustaining its main rival, the kibbutz. Far from marking a clash between «ideology» and «geographical realities» the new ideologies provided the most effective long-term solution for settlement, one that would hold sway for over half a century.     

Hotel design in British Mandate Palestine: Modernism and the Zionist vision

From the early 1920s through the 1930s, an important yet forgotten avant-garde architectural phenomenon developed in the Zionist community of British Mandate Palestine. In cities and resort regions across the country, several dozen modernist hotels were built for a new type of visitor: the Zionist tourist. Often the most architecturally significant structures in their locales and designed by leading local architects educated in some of Europe's most progressive schools, these hotels were conceived along ideological lines and represented a synthesis of social requirements, cutting-edge aesthetics, and utopian national ideals. They responded to a complex mixture of sentiments, including European standards of modern comfort and the longing to remake Palestine, the historical homeland of the Jewish people, for a newly liberated, progressive nation. This article focuses on Jerusalem's most ambitious modernist hotel, the Eden Hotel, to evaluate how the architecture of tourism became a political and aesthetic tool in the promotion of Zionist Palestine.     

Johannes Nkosi and the Communist Party of South Africa: Images of 'Blood River' and King Dingane in the Late 1920s–1930

In divided societies like South Africa, history, among other things,serves ideological purposes. The colonial encounter between King Dingane, the second Zulu king, who ruled from 1828 to 1840, and white settlers highlights this fact. The core of Afrikaner Nationalist historiography regarded the king as a treacherous, uncivilized barbarian. He was perceived to be an anti‐white demagogue who was beyond redemption. But elsewhere, African nationalists and workers viewed the king as one of the original freedom fighters who resisted thetyranny of the land‐grabbing white settlers and voortrekkers of the nineteenth century. Their interpretations of King Dingane's relationship with white settlers depict the latter as disrespectful imperialists and unscrupulous men, attempting to enrich themselves at the expense of the indigenous population. Accordingly, their interpretation of this encounter revolves around the land question in South Africa. This article discusses a case study regarding these issues. It is about the challenge mounted by African workers in the late 1920s and 1930 against the official celebration of December 16. This celebration honored the victory of the voortrekkers at the so‐called battle of ‘Blood River’ on December 16, 1838—hence the public holiday was once referred to as ‘Dingaan's Day.’ As a counter‐commemoration of this day, African workers regarded the official celebrations as symbolizing the loss of their land and the passing of their freedom. As a result African workers aligned with the Communist Party of South Africa, and through the leadership skills of Johannes Nkosi, mounted vigorous protests and challenges against these celebrations by white South Africans. They staged protest marches and defiant anti‐pass campaigns that emphasized the centrality of the land question in South Africa. They also paid tribute to their past, include King Dingane. Through their actions they imbued conscience in African workers throughout the country, hence the response of the state was brutal and culminated with the death of Johannes Nkosi in 1930.     

Settlement and land alienation in Western Australia: the shire of Denmark

The pattern of initial settlement in the Shire of Denmark in Western Australia is mapped using land registrations of the date of the first lease and first freehold grant. Settlement started near the main rivers before World War I and accelerated with Group Settlements of the 1920s. However, many Group settlers abandoned their land before 1940. Little development occurred until in-migration during the last 30 years. Local persistence of families was estimated from records of land tenure, rate books, electoral rolls, postal directories and interviews. The rate of persistence of families on each block varied considerably. Geographical expansion of holdings among successive generations of founding families reflects more general processes such as clone colonization in which, by mutual support and intra-family co-operation, families undertake short-distance migration to newly acquired—often abandoned—holdings. In this way, settlers have gradually created a continuously settled landscape in this once densely forested area of south-western Australia. Land alienation has occurred since 1900 in the study area of 217 surveyed lots, or ‘blocks’ which are, on average, 150 acres (70 hectares) in size. The geographical pattern of initial settlement comprised isolated sites, occupied in the wake of early lumbering, rather than a linear frontier.     

Promised Land: Settlement Schemes in Kenya, 1962 to 2016

Smallholder settlement schemes have played a prominent role in Kenya's contested history of state-building, land politics, and electoral mobilization. This paper presents the first georeferenced dataset documenting scheme location, boundaries, and attributes of Kenya's 533 official settlement schemes, as well as the first systematic data on scheme creation since 1980. The data show that almost half of all government schemes were created after 1980, as official rural development rationales for state-sponsored settlement gave way to more explicitly welfarist and electoralist objectives. Even so, logics of state territorialization to fix ethnicized, partisan constituencies to state-defined territorial units pervade the history of scheme creation over the entire 1962–2016 period, as theorized in classic political geography works on state territorialization. While these “geopolitics” of regime construction are fueled by patronage politics, they also sustain practices of land allocation that affirm the moral and political legitimacy of grievance-backed claims for land. This fuels on-going contestation around political representation and acute, if socially-fragmented, demands for state-recognition of land rights. Our findings are consistent with recent political geography and interdisciplinary work on rural peoples' demands for state recognition of land rights and access to natural resources. Kenya's history of settlement scheme creation shows that even in the country's core agricultural districts, where the reach of formal state authority is undisputed, the territorial politics of power-consolidation and resource allocation continues to be shaped by social demands and pressures from below.     

Securing Zion? Policing in British Palestine, 1917–39

The British period in Palestine (1917–48) was fundamentally shaped by the commitment to promote the Jewish National Home (JNH) as originally stated in the Balfour Declaration (1917). The extent that that commitment shaped public-security policy in Palestine is examined in this article. While the need to reduce costs and the desire for a civilian (rather than military) force also shaped policy, the government's JNH policy was the key determinant in public-security policy in Palestine. It meant the police was specifically configured to protect the Jewish population and there were always a disproportionate number of British personnel in the force. This became more pronounced as British rule progressed. Following deadly riots in 1929, the number of British police was tripled; with the inception of the Arab Revolt (1936–39) that number more than quadrupled. Moreover, during the Arab Revolt the British increasingly relied on members of the Jewish community to assist with their protection. The majority of these Jewish forces were supposedly for defensive purposes; regardless, they were all members of the semi-secret underground Jewish army, Haganah. The British were well aware of this and tacitly approved. In doing so, the British made a significant contribution to the Zionist project.     

Imagined homeland: landscape painting in Palestine in the 1920s*

Abstract. This essay examines the proposition that landscape representations both reflect and endorse national ideology. By studying in detail selected landscape paintings by Jewish artists in pre‐State Israel some of the assumptions linking landscape and nationalism will be revisited. In particular, I shall challenge received notions in Israeli art historiography that interpret the numerous landscape paintings of the 1920s as directly expressing the identification with Zionism – the Jewish national movement. Analysis of the subject repertoire reveals that artists usually ignored images of the Zionist settlement in Palestine. They preferred instead to depict oriental countryside or ancient cities in an emblematic idealistic manner supported by stylistic borrowings from contemporary French painting. The country in these paintings is more an idea than a reality. Yet they evoke neither the biblical past nor a Zionist futuristic vision, but rather an oriental Arcadia of an unspecified time.