#history#reference / Peretz, Dekel. 2022. Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine. De Gruyter.
Introducion: Zionism for the Diaspora: Bridging the Gap between German
and Zionist Historical Narratives [p. 6]
An important step towards interlinking these narratives is to contextualize Oppenheimer and like-minded Zionists in a period when Germany’s colonial and imperial aspirations were peaking. It seems to go without saying that historical research needs to consider contemporaneous geographical, political and intellectual conditions. Yet this basic staple of the historian has been often neglected by researchers of German colonialism and of German Zionism in respect to the correlation between these two coetaneous affairs. It is not the purpose of this book to examine the causes of this neglect. Nevertheless, I would like to make some hypothetical suggestions.
First, Germany did not have a long-established colonial apparatus of the size and quality of France and England. There were certainly fewer Jews active within the German colonial service and, apart from a few prominent protagonists mentioned in this book, research into this matter is sparse. However, the lack of active service within the colonial bureaucracy alone is not indicative of the level of enthusiasm and advocacy of German colonial ambitions among German Jewry. There were other spheres in which support for colonial undertakings could manifest themselves
Second, due to the racialist and outright racist aspects of colonialism as well as the ultimate devastation that German colonial and imperial ambitions brought on the Jews during the Second World War and the Holocaust, it retroactively seems unfathomable that Jews could have ever been involved in any way with
German colonialism.
Third, the Zionist narrative is shaped by a teleological perspective. The focus of Zionist historiography on the contributions made to building the state of Israel, together with the ideology of diaspora negation¹⁷ – preaching total separation and distancing from Europe – blurred out conceptions of Zionism in which the establishment of Jewish sovereignty did not contradict a continued Jewish life in Europe or even envisioned realizing this sovereignty in places other than Palestine. During the First World War, Oppenheimer and his Zionist contemporaries proposed the establishment of Jewish cultural sovereignty or autonomy within (Eastern) Europe, in remarkable affinity with the anti-Zionist Bundism prevalent in Eastern Europe, revealing the diversity of opinions within early German Zionism. Furthermore, the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent British endorsement of Zionism overshadowed earlier attempts by German Zionists to integrate
Zionism into a broader German colonial scheme.
Fourth, further clouding the vision is the tension in Zionist historiography between the depiction of the intellectual origins of the Zionist movement within the context of European nationalism on the one hand, and the conceptualizing of Zionism as an anomaly of nationalism with independent roots in the ethnic, messianic character of Judaism on the other. The international nature of the movement makes it from the start a difficult object for comprehensive study.¹⁸ Finally, and probably most importantly, the negative association of colonialism with violent subjugation, foreign transgression, and unjustifiable occupation made it an unlikely candidate for integration by a Zionist historiography charged with constructing the national narrative of a Jewish state in a long-running conflict with indigenous and neighboring populations.
#hisotry#reference / Between Prague and Jerusalem : the idea of a binational state in Palestine. Dimitry Shumsky (2010). [Hebrew; German edition 2013]
Prof. Dimitri Shumsky, a Russian-born historian at Hebrew University, argues that the Zionist vision prior to 1948 was for a bi-national political entity in Israel/Palestine, not an ethnic Jewish nation-state as exists today.
Most early Zionist thinkers and leaders, across ideological camps, advocated some form of bi-national framework that would provide collective rights for both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. This view changed drastically after 1948.
Shumsky says the bi-national vision broke down due to the Holocaust, World War II, and the 1948 war, which led to Jewish sovereignty and control rather than a power-sharing agreement.
He sees reviving the civic currents in Zionist thought as a way to "re-Zionize" and make more inclusive the Israeli state today, though he recognizes the challenges given dominant Zionist nationalism that resists such change.
Shumsky situates himself as trying to uncover suppressed Zionist intellectual streams that were responsive to the reality of a land shared by two peoples, not just idealistic notions. Bringing these to light can impact views today.
#hisotry#reference / Between Prague and Jerusalem : the idea of a binational state in Palestine. Dimitry Shumsky (2010). [Hebrew; German edition 2013]
Prof. Dimitri Shumsky, a Russian-born historian at Hebrew University, argues that the Zionist vision prior to 1948 was for a bi-national political entity in Israel/Palestine, not an ethnic Jewish nation-state as exists today.
Most early Zionist thinkers and leaders, across ideological camps, advocated some form of bi-national framework that would provide collective rights for both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. This view changed drastically after 1948.
Shumsky says the bi-national vision broke down due to the Holocaust, World War II, and the 1948 war, which led to Jewish sovereignty and control rather than a power-sharing agreement.
He sees reviving the civic currents in Zionist thought as a way to "re-Zionize" and make more inclusive the Israeli state today, though he recognizes the challenges given dominant Zionist nationalism that resists such change.
Shumsky situates himself as trying to uncover suppressed Zionist intellectual streams that were responsive to the reality of a land shared by two peoples, not just idealistic notions. Bringing these to light can impact views today.
#reference#intifada The Palestinian Intifada -- December 9, 1987-December 8, 1988: A Record of Israeli Repression. 1989.
" ... how can a people whose statehood was claimed by reason of history's worst human calamity, the #Holocaust, engage in policies and practices which are reminiscent of what they suffered at the hands of others?" (p.ix)
Note on the word intifada (انتفاضة): “a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement” in contemporary Arabic.
[…] There are many who self-censor because they got advice from senior colleagues or from administrators not to say anything that might be interpreted offensively by people, and it wouldn't be good for their careers, particularly assistant professors and graduate students.
[…] We had a lot of colleagues who said they were not invited when the university held events on their very issue of expertise because they were worried that their views may not conform to what is needed on campus.
I've checked the intertubes, but as far as I can tell there has never been a punishment again Jewish organisations on US campuses for calling for a one-state solution, blindly supporting Zionism, more settlements on the West Bank, or refugee concentration camps.
Even though right-wing Jewish groups have done just that.
"..our universities in Australia must be places where we have the courage to take up our responsibilities as ethical researchers and teachers: our classrooms must be spaces of historical truth-telling that seek to explain why and how this is happening and support students to express their truths, including through student activism."
"As educators and researchers, we pay our deep respect to Palestinian scholars, writers, artists, and activists, including Palestinians based in Australia. We commit to continuing to learn from long histories of Palestinian description, critique, and analysis. Our colleagues in Palestine have called on us again and again to take action, and so we must. Telling the truth in history – as we know from our experiences in this settler-colony of Australia – is an important act of resistance, and we commit to undertaking this task."
“As historians who study – amongst other things – settler-colonialism, genocide, apartheid, gendered and sexed violence, Jewish history, Palestinian history, Israeli history, and more, we say that this breathtaking and heartbreaking violence is unacceptable and must be opposed entirely. We know that the violence did not begin on October 7th, and is a result of long transnational histories of imperialism, colonialism, state violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism. The story does not begin on October 7th, and longer histories – involving European colonisation of Palestine, the mandate system and British rule, the 75 years since the establishment of the State of Israel, the 56 year occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and the 16 year blockade on Gaza – must be held at the forefront of our minds. “
Palestinians collect books from the rubble of a cultural centre following an Israeli strike in Rafah in southern Gaza on November 18, 2023 [Mohammed Abed/AFP]
#history / "King Abdullah I and Glubb Pasha (Lieutenant-General John Bagot Glubb) adopted a policy meant to erase the word 'Palestine' from the Arabic dictionary..."
A comment from Abdullah Tal's memoirs "كارثة فلسطين" (The catastrophe of #Palestine) published in 1958[9] (translated to Hebrew 1964), referring to the King fury with the initiative to establish an independent Palestinian government (September-October 1948). Tal was the Military Governor of the Old City of Jerusalem.
The All-Palestine Government of September/October 1948 was a messy affair: a last ditch effort by the Arab League and then de facto Palestinian national leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini (AHE), to form a government, that will give some semblance of sovereignty and insert the Palestinian voice into the discussions about the future of Palestine at the UN General Assembly, which was about to discuss Bernadotte's recommendations (annex the Palestinian territories to Trans-Jordan).
United States Department of State
501.BB Palestine/10–248: Circular telegram
@DocCarms I tend to agree. But may those of us be forgiven who lack words at the sight we force us to watch every day, knowing each word would just fall on closed ears.
(Written after the next death news) @bookstodon@palestine
“[…] Among those practicing self-censorship since the Israel-Hamas war began, 81 percent said they were withholding criticism of Israel, compared with 11 percent withholding criticism of the Palestinians. Concerns about offending students and pressure from external advocacy groups were cited as the top reasons.
@appassionato
Antony Lerman's 'Whatever Happend to Antisemitism' also analyses the antisemitism redefinition to shield the State of Israel from criticism. @bookstodon@palestine
Palestine Speaks Narratives of Life Under Occupation
The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been one of the world's most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises for over four decades. In this oral history collection, men and women from Palestine—including a fisherman, a settlement administrator, and a marathon runner—describe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the historic crisis.
The Impossibility of Palestine
History, Geography, and the Road Ahead
A controversial and exhaustively researched work on the much-touted “two-state solution”
The “two-state solution” is the official policy of Israel, the United States, the United Nations, and the Palestinian Authority alike.
#antisemitism vs #apartheid "The academic world is rising up against us": Hidden boycott threatens Israeli scientific research
Last week, a Zoom meeting was held with senior members of Israel's academia and young researchers. The senior academics expressed concern about what is happening and conveyed a sense of emergency. The President of the University of Haifa, Prof. Ron Rubin, recounted in a conversation that he visited the US during the war and felt manifestations of antisemitism "seeping into places where they have never been before. There is a hostile attitude towards Israelis even in places like medical schools. It is terrifying to the nth degree. In the past, the problem was focused on faculties for the humanities and social sciences, but the phenomenon is spreading to additional fields."
The missing word in this article must be #aprtheid... I do see #BDS and antisemitism mentioned, many times, but not a word about the fact the USA and European boycott of Israeli academia is a refusal to cooperate with a perceived apartheid regime.