Maxime Rodinson - Israel - A Colonial-Settler State - Pathfinder Press (1973) PDF

·ISRAEL
A Colonial
S ettler State?
HK 2008-3
344
with an Introduction by
PeterBuch
MONAD PRESS, NEW YORK
DISTRIBUTED BY
PATHFINDER PRESS, INC., NEWYORK
V {{../f
Translated from the French by D avid Thor stad
Cop yright © 1973 by the Anchor Found ation, Inc.

All Rights Reserved
·· Library of Congress C atalog C ard Number 73-78187
Manufactured in the United States of Americ a
First Edition, 1973
Published by Monad Press

for the Anchor Foundation, Inc.
Distributed by
Pathfinder Press, Inc.
410 West Street
New York, N. Y. 10014
COVER NOTE: Palestinian refugees from the West Bank

of the Jordan River line up for a United Nations ration
distribution at the Damia Refugee Camp in the East Jor
dan Valley.
Contents
Introduction 9 ·
What are the Arguments? 27
In Wh at Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomenon? 35
Obj ections and Limitations 79
Conclu�on 91
Notes to the Introduction 97
Notes 99
Index 1 17
Maps 12 1
Introduction
The aftermath of victory in war is usually rich in his

torical ironies, the unforeseen results that are quite the
opposite of what the victors intended. One of the ironies
of the third Arab-Israeli war is that this authoritative
study of Israel's colonial-settler origins, by the French
Jewish scholar, Maxime Rodinson, was just being set
into type when Israel launched its blitz attack on the
Arab forces in June 1 9 67. For the results of that war
were to give increased weight and credibility to Profes
sor Rodinson's thesis which has long been heatedly denied
by Z ionist and Israeli leaders.
Maxime Rodinson, a director of studies at the Ecole
Pratique des H autes Etudes at the Sorbonne, is widely
recognized as one of Europe' s leading scholars in the
field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. His essay
first app eared in a special number of Jean-Paul Sartre's
Les Temps Modernes, just as the w ar was ending. En
titled "Le conjlit israelo-arabe," this special edition of nearly
a thousand p ages assembled contributions from leading
Arab and Israeli intellectuals, mostly on the left, in an
attempt at a "dialogue, " dividing the articles into two sec
tions, pro-Arab and pro- Israeli. Although Professor Rodin
son' s article is clearly symp athetic to the Palestinians,
he preferred to have his article appear alone, ap art from
both ensembles, as a supplemental piece.
In a brief review in the Middle East Journal, Spring
1 9 68, Prof. Irene Gendzier of Boston University called
the special issue of Sartre' s m agazine a "unique docu
ment of extraordinary value" received in Paris with "the
kind of welcome reserved for serious p olitical-literary
10 Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?
events. " However, in this country, she notes, it was sub

sequently "rejected for translation by several well-estab
lished American publishers on the unbelievable assumption
that the situation 'will soon be resolved. ' " Professor Gend
zier characterizes Rodinson's contribution as "by far the
most profound, if not the most controversial, summary
of the position th at Israel is a colonial fact . . . the most
thorough and historically documented statement of [this]
position. . . ." She goes on to say that "its ch allenge h as
already been felt, and the responses it is evoking among
Zionists and socialists alike can only serve to clarify
a historically complex and politically loaded subject. "
The entire collection w as forcefully brought to the at
tention of American left and liberal circles by the noted
j ournalist I. F. Stone, in a review article entitled, " Holy
War, " in the August 3, 1 967, New York Review of Books.
Stone considered Rodinson' s contribution to be "by far
th,e most brilliant in the whole volume. "
In that review, which aroused a storm of controversy,
Stone dismissed many of the standard Zionist arguments
as "simplistic sophistry. " He decried the "moral myopia"
of Zionism which had alw ays been blind to the national
existence of the Palestinian Arabs and the "moral schizo
phrenia" involved in setting up an exclusionary and semi
theocratic Jewish society when everywhere else Jewish sur
vival counted on the m aintenance of secular, pluralistic
societies.
For this and for h1s w arm response to Professor Rodin
son' s analysis, Stone w as denounced as a "defector" by
Zionists who formerly had praised him for his favorable
on-the-spot reports during the 1 948 war to establish Israel.
They admitted the heavy blow dealt to their cause on
the plane of argument by a man with such credentials
for honesty and demonstrated symp athy for the Jewish
people.
Rodinson, too, has come in for his share of epithets,
which he wryly dismisses in one or two asides.A mem
ber of the French Communist Party for some twenty years
before he broke with it in 1 958, Rodinson has a world
wide reputation as an independent Marxist scholar. Al
though it was not popular to do so, and even though
Introduction 11
he disagreed sharply on m any points, he lent his per

sonal prestige to the work of a Belgian Trotskyist by
writing the preface to the 1 9 68 French edition of Abram
Leon's The Jewish Question, A Marxist Interpretation, I*
because he considered it an imp ortant intellectual and sci
entific contribution. While Rodinson belongs to no politi
cal p arty today, he has not withdrawn into an academic
neutralism, but is involved and p artisan in the contem
porary social struggles.
On the other hand, he has nothing in common with
the Communist Party academicians whose learned "find
ings" alw ays serve to justify - and align their careers
with- the latest turn in p arty p olicy, the Stalinist quota
tion j ugglers who h ave done so much to discredit
Marxism.
As readers will see, Rodinson takes great p ains to de
velop a well-documented and thoughtful approach to the
very specific, and central, question to which he limits
himself in this study: Can Israel be classified as a
colonial-settler state, and the Palestinians, concomitantly,
as a people colonially· oppressed by Israel? This is a
major contention of the Arab side. But supporters of
Israel, especially on the left, are outraged by such a
ch aracterization. They denounce it as pernicious prop a
ganda, a slander and ep ithet directed by anti-Semitic re
actionaries against a progressive and even socialist state
established by a heroic people seeking to end thousands
of years of exile and bondage.
Why is the s ame Middle Eastern reality viewed so dif
ferently by the two contenders? How is it possible to
equate Isr ael with such odious colonial empires and white
racist states as South Africa, Rhodesia, French Algeria?
The answer lies in rejecting any single model of colonial
takeover, disc arding rigidly conceived social formulas,
and getting p ast the abstractions to the essential and
concrete features of the complex, contradictory, and unique
process which resulted in the creation of Israel.
Rodinson traces the origins and mentality of Zionism
to the conditions of nineteenth and early twentieth century
*Notes begin on p ag e 97.

Europe, when capitalism went through a p eriod of great

exp ansion and empire building which finally led to the
first imperialist world w ar. Unfurling the banner of a
universal (white ) "civilizing mission," the European p owers
surged into the underdeveloped world, annexing colonial
territories and mercilessly exploiting the subj ugated p eo
ples who were put to work on plantations and in mines
to help in the looting of their own countries. But the
Zionist nationalists, unlike other European colonialists,
had to create a social b ase as well as take over a national
territory.
The Jewish bourgeois and petty bourgeois strata which
embraced Zionism were incomp arably weaker than the
European ruling cl asses and felt threatened by anti
Semitism, but they were just as fearful of socialist rev
olution. They were incapable of - and unwilling to - take
up a national struggle claiming a section of Europe where
the Jews lived, a struggle directed against their real op
pressors that would have had revolutionary implications.
Instead, a much more likely prospect was to find an
empty, underdeveloped area-"a l and without a p eople for
a people without a land," as a leading Zionist publicist,
Israel Z angwill, put it - upon which to settle those with
nationalist aspirations. At the s ame time, this would drain
off the excess of p oor Jewish immigrants from Eastern
Europe who were viewed by the well-to-do Jews as a
causal factor in provoking anti-Semitism.
In common with the dominant outlook of European
chauvinism, Zionism considered any territory as "empty"
and available if its indigenous p opulation had not yet
achieved national independence and recognized statehood.
Rodinson b alances this harsh description of the early
Zionists by pointing out that their racist prejudices and
a ssumptions w ere no worse than those prevailing among
their contempor aries, and might even be excused on that
account as products of their time. This judgment can be
questioned as overly ch aritable, in view of the existence
also among their contemp oraries -of alternative move
ments for socialist and anti-imperialist liber ation which
were attracting far more of the Jewish youth than w as
Zionism. It certainly cannot excuse those who espoused
Introduction 13
this p rogram in the name of socialism, either then or

now. However, such considerations do not alter the basic
facts.
Professor Rodinson demonstrates from the historical
record and from numerous Zionist sources that Israel
was established as the result of a colonial conquest, jus
tified by an ethnocentric and racially exclusive ideology
marked by the same chauvinist attitudes toward the peo
ples of underdeveloped lands as other European bour
geois nationalist doctrines. Comph�menting rather than
challenging the delirious myths of anti- Semitism, the
Zionist ideology basically accep ted the fundamental tenet
of the Jew as forever alien to "gentile" society, only af
fixing to this "eternal" characteristic a positive instead of
a negative value.
Rodinson shows that plans for setting up an exclusively
Jewish state in Arab Palestine got nowhere and found little
favor even among Jews until British imperialism w as
persu aded to sponsor it in order to justify its own con
tinued intervention in the Middle East. He proves that,
despite its avowed humanitarian and liberationist aims,
the Z ionist project required the reciprocal collaboration
of the Zionist agencies in upholding British rule against
Arab strivings for independence, that it demanded the
continued exp ansion of the bounds of Jewish settlement,
the implantatio n of a modern economy and technology
from which Arabs were excluded, and the ultimate dis
placement of the m ajority of the native Arab population
from their own homeland.
Rodinson writes that among the Jews in Palestine during
the mandate period, only a "few rare individuals" under
the influence of " Stalinist ideology" opposed Zionism. It
would appear that the opposition to Zionism by Jewish
Stalinists rested on what remained of their grasp of
Marxist internationalism, not on their Stalinist "ideology, "
which indeed permitted them to swing rapidly over to
support the creation of Israel when th at suited Stalin's
foreign policy. The opposition to Z ionism in Palestine
should be extended, moreover, to include the small nucleus
of Palestinian Trotskyists, Jewish and Arab, who func-
tioned there since the 1930s. Their anti-Zionist p ositions,

never comp romised, have found vigorous new standard
bearers today among the young r anks of the Israeli
Socialist Organization (Marxist), known as Matzpen (after
their newsp aper ), who are under heavy attack today in
Israel.
It is true that several hundred thousand Jews, fleeing
Hitler before the war and escaping the wretched displaced
persons camps after the w ar, found refuge in Palestine
because they were not accepted by the western democracies
who are today so friendly to Israel. These refugees, per
secuted victims themselves, were absorbed into the settler
community and only intensified the colonialist imp act
upon the Arabs. The s ame w as true with the huge number
of "Oriental" Jews who arrived afterwards - some under
Zionist pressure and others expelled from their Arab coun
tries of origin in stupid and reactionary "retaliation" for
the expulsion of the Palestinians. In both cases, the
Palestinians were m ade to suffer the consequences of the
deeds of others.
Th at the Zionist state, once formed and well-established,
could assume some of the more "normal" colonial rela
tionships with the conquered p eople is becoming a source
of deep concern and even embarrassment to some members
of the Zionist establishment like Itzhak Ben-Aharon, the
powerful secretary-general of the Histadrut labor feder
ation. Terence Smith, Tel Aviv correspondent of the New
York Times, rep orted on February 14, 197 3, that Ben
Aharon raised the alarm "that six years of occup ation
had eroded Israel's image of 'moral capacity and re
liability' in the Western world ... he charged that Israel
w as 'building Zionism' on the backs of hired Arab labor
from the occupied territory - a reference to the 55,000
Arab workers who have become the core of the manual
labor force in Israel since the 1 967 war. " Ben-Aharon,
who describes himself as a "radical Socialist, " naturally
does not ask that the 55, 000 Arab laborers be given
· membership in the Histadrut and the protection it pre
sumably affords Jewish workers. Instead, he demands
that some of the occupied areas from which these workers
come be returned to Jordan, much to the consternation
Intr oduction 15
of official Israeli opinion, which h as become accustomed

to holding these areas and to the presence of a cheap
labor pool for the jobs that Jewish workers will no longer
accept. Concern over these trends was well represented
by a prominent Israeli dissident, Yehoshua Arieli, writing
in the August 3 1 , 1 972, New York Review of B o oks,
where he pointed to the effects of occup ation in producing
political conformity, spurring new vested interests, deep
ening social and m aterial inequality, and leaving "Zionist
values jettisoned" by hiring Arabs to do the dirty work.
This brings us back to the point made at the beginning,
that the Israeli victory of 1 9 67 produced a new situation
which lent confirm ation to Professor Rodinson's basic
analysis. The new political dilemma was perceptively sum
marized by New York Times Jerusalem correspondent
James Feron:
The picture of an embattled state threatened by hos

tile neighbors has been blurred . . . with a picture
of a victorious nation astride conquered lands and
threatening disorganized neighbors. A new hero in
the Middle East, the Arab guerrilla, has emerged since
the war. The plight of the Arab refugees, largely for
gotten by m any after their first flight two decades
ago, has become a live issue again. 2
The dism aying new social dilemma confronting Israel

was bluntly described by a leading Zionist functionary
writing in the Israeli Labor Party daily, Davar, September
29, 1 967. Joseph Weitz, former head of the Jewish Agen
cy's Colonization Dep artment, writes:
. . . when the UN p assed a resolution to p artition

Palestine into two states, the War of Independence
broke out to our great good fortune; and in this war
a twofold miracle happened: a territorial victory and
the flight of the Arabs. In the Six Days' War one
great miracle happened: a tremendous territorial vic
tory; but most of the inhabitants of the liberated ter
ritories remained " stuck" to their places - which m ay
destroy the very foundation of our state.
Weitz may define "liberation" differently than the Arab

people who live in the "liberated territories," but nonethe
less he put his finger on the great dilemm a which the
Zionist leadership thought it h ad evaded in 1 94 8. Why
was this "miracle" of the Arab flight, which Weitz elsewhere
describes as equal to the miracle of Moses' crossing of
the Red Sea, so necessary to Israel's survival? Weitz had
long advocated a "transfer solution," miraculous or other
wise, to this dilemm a. He explained why in an entry in
his 1 94 0 diary, which he quotes in his 1 9 67 article:
Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no

room for both p eoples together in this country . . .
We shall not achieve our go al of being an independent
people with the Arabs in this small country. The only
solution is Palestine, at least Western Palestine [ west
of the Jordan River ) without Arabs . .. And there
is no other way but to transfer the Ar abs from here
to the neighboring countries; to transfer all of them;
not one village, not one tribe should be left.
The support of other top Zionist figures like B.

Katznelson and M. Ussishkin was secured at the time for
this "solution, " s ays Weitz, and "some preliminary prep ara
tions were m ade in order to put this theory into practice."
No dep arture from Zionist attitudes was involved either,
since the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl himself,
had proposed in his diary to "spirit'' the Arabs across
the border after denying them work in the Jewish state.
In 1 9 4 8, the "transfer theory" was put into "practice,"
and largely failed to generate an outcry in the West. But
in 1 9 67, Israel clearly emerged from the war in the :role
of an annexationist, expansionist, and occupying power,
ruling over vast new Arab territories and population
m asses who remained "stuck" to them. On the other hand,
this outcome badly discredited all the Arab governments
to whom the Palestinian refugees had looked for rescue.
Israel thus promoted the very conditions for the growth
of disillusionment at home and a shift in p ublic opinion
abroad, an increasing los s of faith in its democratic image
and in the honor of its w ar aims, especially among the.
Introduction 17
young. Simultaneously, it spurred the development of an

independent and popular resistance movement among the
Palestinians.
These resistance fighters put the entire struggle in a
completely new light by raising the demand for Palestinian
self-determination. They challenged the right of Israel to
seize their homeland for exclusively Jewish use; they op
posed the power of U. S. -b acked Arab reactionaries like
King Hussein; they rejected the "jih ad" or holy-war
demagogy designed to divert them' from actual struggle
and real liberation; and they proposed the establishment
of a democratic secular Palestine for both Hebrew-speaking
and Arabic-speaking peoples in the region. 3
In addition to gaining the wide support of the Arab
masses, the Palestinian struggle for self-determination has
won the symp athy of many other people around the
world, including American and Israeli Jewish youth in
fluenced by the current radicalization affecting their gen
eration and by the liberation struggles of other colonially
oppressed nations like . the Vietnamese. This has become
a matter of deep concern for the Z ionist co alition which
runs Israel and has prompted renewed efforts by its "leff'
wing to win over radical-minded Jewish youth. This has,
to be sure, always been the Zionist left's main political
assignment.
However, their task is difficult because, from the be

ginning of the Zionist movement, there were always only
two ways - either one equally hard to justify from a so
cialist standpoint - to achieve and m aintain a Jewish state
in Palestine, where the Arabs were a great m ajority. One
was to expel the native Arabs, most of whom were not
willing to give up their homeland and move away. The
second w as to institute a regime of occup ation, with sec
ond-class citizenship rights, if any, for them. The 1 947
UN p artition resolution, under whose sanction Israel was
established, scarcely altered this dual necessity, first
because, in fact, there were still nearly as many Arabs
as Jews in the portion assigned to Israel, and second,
because the Zionist leadership alw ays regarded that
portion as merely the initial installment of the "redemption
of the historic homeland." Zionists will of course deny

their exp ansionist aims. But it is enough to ask almost
any Israeli leader if she or he would favor returning
all the territory seized in 1 96 7 -in a war fought for "de
fensive purposes only" as Israel s aid then. The answer,
already given many times and in many forms, is no.
This is not only out of sentiment for the restoration of
the full extent of the ancient Hebrew kingdon. If land
seized in 1 967 must be given b ack, then why not land
seized the same way in 1 948? If the exclusive Jewish claim
to any p art of Palestine can be challenged, then is the
claim to any other p art secure?
That is why it is hard to see any possibility that the
"colonial situation" might have been "left behind" in 1 948,
as Professor Rodinson suggests, if two states, Arab
Palestine and Israel, had emerged and been recognized
by the UN. The Israeli half of Palestine would certainly
still have remained the fruit of colonialism, and the whole
logic of the Zionist claim as well as the Arab resistance
to it would certainly not have been diverted by "com
pensatory" UN recognition of a second arbitrarily created
Arab state. The only solution would h ave been for the
Palestinian Arabs to remove themselves voluntarily from
Israel in large numbers; and for those remaining to accept
a juridical double standard of immigration, settlement,
and civil laws - one for Jews, another for Arabs; in short
to voluntarily accept what no other people in history ever
freely accep ted before! Strangely, until 1 967, Israel and
its supporters seemed convinced that the Palestinians had
done just that!
It seems incredible that official Zionist and Israeli pro
paganda should still deny the historical reality, when
some of the Zionist chiefs themselves have occasionally
had to acknowledge it over the years, usually when b aring
the facts of "practical" politics to troubled young people
in their ranks. It is even more incredible that the colonial
settler character of Israel has not been widely recognized
by world public opinion, even among those who normally
symp athize with the colonially oppressed. This is not
due only to effective Zionist prop aganda about the succour
of Jewish refugees, redemption of the sacred soil, or the
Intr oduction 19
menace of Arab anti-Semitism. Nor was it due only to the

universal guilt feelings after Hitler's abominations were
revealed, which permitted the big powers to hand Palestine
over to the Zionists in the name of atonement and com
p assion - and private relief that the Jewish survivors
wouldn't be knocking at their doors.
No, it rests primarily on the fact that until 1967 the
national existence of the Palestinian Arab people was
simply denied. They were seen as unfortunate refugees,
homeless largely by their own action, and at most in need
of resettlement- when they were seen at all.
How did the Palestinians become so invisible? They
outnumbered the Jews in Palestine eight to one in 1 9 1 7 ,
when the Balfour Declaration spoke of them as the "non
Jewish community" whose rights were not to be "prejudiced"
by England's disp osition of their territory. The Pal
estinians were still twice the Jewish population in 1 948
when their territory was p artitioned. To this day, if their
scattered components living in the refugee camp s, the
occupied territories, and other Arab states were combined,
they would still just about equal the Jewish population
in Israel. How were they forgotten and made to dis appear?
Many forces p layed a role in this great crime, beginning
with the British imperialists and their Zionist proteges,
who first stunted the economic and social development
of the Arab community and then collaborated to crush
its uprising in 1 936-39, leaving it disorganized, dis armed,
and helpless to resist in 1 948. The pivotal ch aracter of
this defeat w as acknowledged by the military correspon
dent of the liberal Hebrew d aily Haaretz, April 1 5, 1 966:
. with respect to the events of 1 93 6, it seems to

us that had they not happened in the m anner and
at the time in which they did in fact occur, it is
doubtful th at the Jewish community could h ave waged
a w ar for independence eight years later. The Jewish
community emerged from these dangerous 1 93 6 events
in a stronger position as a result of the strong support
it received from the British government and army
in Palestine.
The 1936 events actually involved a confrontation
between two national movements, but the Arabs made

the mistake of concentrating their attacks on the
British government and army . . . This confrontation
with the British ( and not with the Jews ) caused the
destruction of Arab military strength in Palestine, and
was responsible for the p artial elimination of Arab
leadership in the country. After about three years of
unequal warfare, Arab military power was destroyed;
during this s ame period, however, the Jews, protected
by the British, succeeded in building up their own
strength . . . British reprisals against the Arab armed
groups and against the Arab p opulation were much
more severe than those against Jewish clandestine
organizations a few years later. 4
The traditional Arab leadership, jealous of its own privi

leges, kept the resistance movement under its thumb,
disoriented it p olitically, ab andoned and b etrayed it regu
larly. The imperialist p owers ignored them as they ignored
other peoples when carving up the world to suit their own
interests. The UN lent its sanction to their dispersal. But
the Palestinian people would not have become invisible, t
even after their defeat in 1 948, had it not been for one I
crucial factor: betrayal by Stalin and the world's Com- I
munist p arties. They enthusiastically championed the p ar-
tition of Palestine after World War I I. Stalin readily t
��·;··.
s acrificed the Palestinians' right to self-determination to
the short-sighted diplom atic aim of easing British military
p ower out of the Middle East where it had b een entrenched
since World War I. And when this plan, like so many
others of Stalin's, b ackfired as Israel aligned itself with
the more potent and threatening U. S. imperialism, the
Kremlin courted not the disinherited Palestinians but the
established Arab regimes, preferring maneuvers at the top
to mobilization of a mass struggle.
The Kremlin placed the moral and political prestige
of the Soviet Union, who se revolutionary origins and
heroic victory over Nazism insp ired the hopes of millions
around the world for a socialist future, at the service of
this unprincipled transaction, one of several such deals
Intr oduction 2 1
worked out with its imperialist wartime allies in Vietnam,

Korea, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Designed to ensure
"peaceful coexistence," those big power agreements pro
ceeded without consideration for the interests and aspi
rations of the masses whose fate they were arbitrarily
deciding. Only when these peoples rose up in revolutionary
struggle to determine their own fate was their existence
acknowledged. It can be safely concluded that, since the
emergence of their resistance movement, the Palestinian
Arab p eople will never again be invisible, whatever their
temporary setbacks m ay be.
An important obstacle to the growth of a Jewish anti
Zionist movement among the young Israelis who already
symp athize with the rights of the Palestinians, is the role
of the "leff' Zionist apologists for Israel. That is why one
of the most valuable sections of Professor Rodinson' s
article, and one of the most effective, is his examination
of the m ain Zionist r ationalizations, from the religious
to the "revolutionary," but especially the latter, in the
light of the facts.
Kibbutz collectivism was far more important for set
tling new territory and guarding borders against dispos
sessed Arabs than for opening up a road to Jewish
socialism. Moreover it involved only a small percentage
of Jews - and of course no Arabs. The fight against the
British w as for exclusive control of the territory, not for
the common liber ation from imperialism for all those
who lived there; nor did it give impetus or inspiration,
as some contend, to the Arab independence struggle else
where. The argument that the region was originally b arren
and neglected is revealed to be a myth as well as a stock
justification for colonial conquest, along with the argument
that the Arabs remaining in Israel should be grateful
for living better than their kin outside. The argument
which attempts to find a scapego at for Zionist outrages 5
in such op enly ch auvinist, right-wing extremists as J a
botinsky, Begin, and the Irgun terrorists, for whom the
Zionist movement is held not to blame, is invalidated by
the fact that all Zionists shared the fundamental go al of
wresting Palestine from Arab hands and collab orated in
22 Israel: A Colonial-Settl er State?
this aim regardless of other differences. In this connection,

Rodinson quotes the distinguished liberal Rabbi J. L. Mag
nes, who ob served that the differences w ere diminishing
and that "almost the entire movement has adopted Ja
botinsky' s point of view."
In the course of showing how the assertedly socialist
outlook of the left Zionists, p articularly of the early
kibbutz settlers, failed to preserve them in the long run
from the self-serving rationalizations of colonialism,
Rodinson m akes two generalizations in p assing, and in
a lengthy footnote, with which I would take issue.
First is that the attempted j ustification of Zionist po
sitions against the Arabs largely stems from "the tradi
tional line of thinking in European socialism that the only
kind of relations a socialist society can possibly have
with other societies are those motivated by the most deep
rooted altruism"; and that even the most socialist society
internally could have relations with the outside world that
denied the rights of other societies.
Second, that there is "a body of very general and very
lasting psychological traits characterizing historic m an"
resulting from biological-social conditioning "since the be
ginning of human h istory (or at least since the neolithic
revolution)" which has successfully resisted "the experiment
of h alf a century of Soviet society with no private property
in the means of pro duction."
I shall not here go into the methodological correctness
of putting the "collectivization" of the kibbutzim (which
are in the historical line of utopian socialist colonies, such
as New Harmony, or religious colonies, such as th at
of the Mormons in Utah) with the collectivization resulting
from a social revolution. Nonetheless, I would agree with
Rodinson that the argument that collectivization autom at
ically makes for altruistic foreign relations on the p art
of a group or a state is a gross oversimplification of
Marxism.
Collectivization can simply furnish the economic b ase
for the production of such plenty that classes disappear
and the individual need no longer scramble for material
security and well-being; th at consequently race and group
Introduction 23
antagonisms no longer have an internal base in the society

and that, with the spread of similar systems internation
ally, the coercive functions of the state are no longer
needed and atrophy.
But collectivization does not ipso facto automatically
produce such fraternal relations internally or externally.
The nationalized and planned economy in the Soviet
Union proved strong enough to enable that society to
industrialize and to withstand the second imperialist war
but it failed to improve the conditions of life sufficiently
for the transformation of the individual's psychology
looked for by Rodinson. To cite the conditions of life
in that period shows why: collectivization forced on the
peasantry by massacres and mass deportations; poverty
which made the peasant's private garden plot usually
of greater value to him than his "share" of the collective
farm's profit; instead of a period of security and plenty,
an era of harsh deprivation and an undreamed of increase
in coercion and fear. But the defects of the Soviet Union
under Stalinism are not a proof of inherent defects of
socialism; they merely underline the degree to which so
cialist norms have still to be attained in the Soviet Union.
Finally, on Rodinson's second point, it seems to me
that if it is false to equate "collectivization" with "altruistic"
attitudes in matters of foreign relations, it is equally er
roneous to draw pessimistic conclusions about "human
nature" because fifty years of Soviet collectivization failed
to produce a society of altruistic individuals.
But what is the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

In a special section concluding his essay, Professor
Rodinson ventures some opinions on this question. He
doesn't believe there is a "revolutionary" solution and cau
tions against those who, safely distant from the scene
of battle, "preach vengeance and murder from ivory
towers." On the other hand, he appeals to readers on both
sides to recognize the actual historical framework which,
if it left the Zionists "no choice," as they claim, then it
also left the Palestinians no choice but to resist and fight
back. Rodinson himself calls for a "bloodless" solution
24 Israel: A Col onial-Settler State?
and urges the Palestinians to avoid military methods,

even though this may mean resigning themselves to their
dispossession. But he rises above others who hold this
position by insisting that it is up to the wronged p arty,
namely the Arabs, to determine their goals and metho ds
of struggle and that it is certainly impermissible for their
oppressors to morally condemn the victims for the violence
of their rebellion.
Professor Rodinson hopes that the p assage of time m ay
be able to assuage the deep and justified Arab resentment
and permit the establishment of a modus vivendi based
o n the historical accomplished fact. To illustrate tl:).is v ari
ant, he cites the division of Ireland-tnster which at the
time of writing ( 1967) seemed to many observers to be
working out. Today, of course, the turmoil in Ireland
speaks p owerfully against such expectations. The twenty
years of p atient, largely silent w aiting by the Palestinian
refugees, before they finally engaged in organized resist
ance, did not relieve their suffering nor prevent their bloo d
from being spilled o r their flesh from being seared by
nap alm. Their exile, unchallenged by active struggle on
their p art for so long, w as thereby m ade more absblute,
more difficult and costly to reverse.
Revolutionary supporters of the Palestinians do not,
of course, "incite" them to violence. By far the greater
violence involved in a struggle for national liberation
comes from those upholding the status quo. A cap able
political leadership, unlike the desperate and misguided
practioners of terrorist violence by a few martyrs, will
know how to expose the real source of violence among
the oppressors. It will know how to mobilize the Arab
m asses and world public opinion to hold b ack the un
limited violence that Israel, with its nuclear c ap acity and
American military h ardware, is prepared to unleash. A
key factor in halting this violence will also be the devel
opment of a sizable revolutionary movement among
Israeli Jews who reject Zionism and who see Jewish sur
vival linked to a new socialist Palestine.
The Palestinian national liberation struggle is directed
against the whole structure of privilege and exploitation,
against both the Zio nist and Arab ruling classes, as well
Introduction 25
as against imperialism. The Palestinian people have al

ready demonstrated their capacity to play a vanguard
role among the entire Arab p eople, but need time to de
velop an adequate revolutionary p olitical leadership. Their
immediate and pressing demand is for the dismantling
of the Zionist state app ar atus and the establishment of
a democratic Palestine to restore their rights and their
homeland. A revolutionary solution to the conflict en
visions this accomplishment through the transformation
of the whole region into a socialist s9ciety, the only kind
of society that c an redress the Palestinian grievances.
At the s ame time, a socialist Palestine, as p art of a social
ist Middle E ast, would have p lenty of room in it for a
progressive Jewish community enjoying full democratic
rights in langu age, culture, religion, emp loyment, etc. ;
at p eace with the Arabs; and playing its role in developing
and advancing the area for the benefit of all who live
there.
March 1 973 PETER BUCH

What are the Arguments?
The theme of Judea-Israeli colonialism plays a central role

in the ideological controversy that usually accompanies,
accelerates, amplifies and orchestrates the war -cold, hot,
or lukewarm, depending on the period- between the
Arabs and the Jewish-Palestinian Y ishuv* that has be
come the State of Israel. Confronting one another are
strident assertions, sometimes worked out through ag
gressive theorizing. Can one attempt to make any sense
out of it?
The accusation that Israel is a colonialist phenomenon
is advanced by an almorst unanimous Arab intelligentsia,
whether on the right or the left. It is one case where
Marxist theorizing has come forward with the clearest re
sponse to the requirements of the "implicit ideology" of the
Third World, and has been most widely adopted.
On the other side, only the Israeli-Zionist left considers
this charge slanderous. On the right it provokes only
an uneasiness, more or less pronounced depending on
how sensitive individuals and groups are to the spread
of anticolonialist ideology on a world scale. It should
be added that the theme has acquired an appreciable
importance in the sphere of international political rela
tions, in the diplomatic sphere. In the international forum
provided by the United Nations, whether Israel is in
cluded in the camp of European imperialism or escapes
this stigma makes a great deal of difference in relations
with the Mro-Asian countries.
* Yishuv: Hebrew w ord for the J ewish community in Pales

tine at the time of the British Mandate- Ed.
28 Israel: A Colonial-Settler State ?
It must be recalled that ( as o n many points) the present

controversy at the state level was foreshadowed by theo
retical, strategic, and tactical discussions within the Com
m unist International. On yet another level, the first traces
of it can also be found in the no less passionate con
troversies th at have been going on for thous ands of years
between universalist Jews and nationalist Jews in the
broadest sense of the terms.
Among the Arabs, there is certainly no dearth of asser
tions to cho ose from. Thus Nasser, in his Philosophy
of the Rev olution, relates his reflections as a 30-year-old
officer returning from the Palestine war ( 1 948-4 9 ) :
Al l this w a s i n natural harmony with the view that

experience had drawn in my mind. [The Arab East]
comprised a single zone [in which were operating]
the s ame circumstances and the same factors, and
even all the same forces arrayed against it. It was
obvious that imperialism was the most conspicuous
of these forces. And Israel itself was nothing more
than one of the consequences of imperialism . 1
And here is the diagnosis of a Leb anese Communist

just prior to the Palestine w ar:
The Zionist movement is nothing but the exploita

tion, for the profit of Jewish capitalists linked to the
aims of impe:rialism in the Arab East, of the feelings
of a people that has gone through a great deal. . . .
The Zionists h ave traded the unhappiness of their
p eople for a commercial undertaking and a colonial
ist p latform. 2
Subsequent years have only impelled the Arab revo

lutionary forces to exp and upon this analysis by linking
Zionism to the worldwide system of imperialism. The
draft national ch arter presented by President Gamal Abdel
Nasser to the Nation al Congress of Popular Forces in
Egypt on May 2 1 , 1 962, states:
The determination of our people to put an end to

the hostile conduct of Israel on a portion of the Pal
estinian fatherland is equivalent to a decision to liqui
date one of the most dangerous p ockets of the battle
being waged by imperialism against the p e oples' strug
gle. And our consistent policy of going after Israeli
infiltration in Mrica is nothing but an attempt to
limit the sp read of a deadly imperialist cancer. 3
This concep t of Israel as a multi-tentacled imperialist

agent was especially developed with ·regard to its infil
tration into Africa, for example, by Mehdi ben Barka
at the World Conference on Palestine held in Cairo
March 30-April 6, 1 965. 4
Thus, for the Arabs, Israel is an imperialist b ase set
up in the Middle E ast by British imperialism in collu
·
sion with others; it is p art of a worldwide imperialist

system; and therefore the activity it carries on through
out the world, whether on its own b eh alf or on b ehalf of
American and European imperialism, is of an imperialist
nature. This at least is the most common view; and while
it comes out of left-wing circles, it is accepted on a much
broader scale. Naturally, this view is accepted or as
similated with many nuances. 5 At the very least, there
is the feeling of having undergone a humiliation in
flicted by a foreign element supported by p owerful forces
in the European-American world.
Naturally, Zionist and p ro-Israeli writers h ave applied
themselves to refuting these accusations.
Thus, these writers stress the socialist character of-the
Zionist movement. Sweeping Herzl and the official Zion
ist Organization under the rug as much as p o ssible, they
emph asize everything in the present Israeli situation that
derives from socialist ideologies. They stress the impor
tance of the influence of the Marxist Zionist B er Borochov
(1881-19 17), who stood up to the Zionist Organization,
interpreting Jewish history in terms of class struggles
and glorifying the Jewish proletariat, who se victory could
only become a reality in Palestine. Along with this cur
rent, the thought of Aaron David Gordon ( 1 856-1 922 ),
30 Israel: A Col onial-Settler State?
a socialist of Tolstoyan inspiration who praised the value

of work and who spent the last p art of his life in the
Degania kibbutz, is brought forward. The ideas of these
socialist thinkers, whether Marxists or not, are presented
as havirig become embodied in powerful movements th at
contributed greatly to orienting the w aves of Jewish emi
grants in Palestine and their constructive work. Naturally,
Israel's more or less collectivist colonies, and the insti
tutions that h ave developed around the network they form,
are considered, correctly, to be the concrete products of
this ideological movement, and are presented as models
of socialist accomplishment. The implicit conclusion is
that a society so deeply permeated with the leaven o f
socialism cannot be termed co lonialist or imperialist.
In order even further to emphasize this characteriza
tion of Israel as socialist, the Arab world is portrayed
as being feudal at the outset, and today p artly fascist.
Contrary to the Ar ab conception, therefore, the struggle
between the two societies is seen as that of a progressive,
socialist, revolutionary force against the bulwarks of so
cial backwardness or reaction. One of the most extreme
representatives of this view has been Abdel-Razak Abdel
Kader ( a descendant of the great Algerian emir ), an
Arab who converted to Zionism and whose work, pub
lished by Francois Maspero, has been enthusiastically
greeted by the French left. 6
According to some, the State of Israel, far from being
the result of any imperialist wave, was established in the
course of a struggle against British imperialism. It is
this struggle, and not the struggle of the Arabs for in
dependence, that is p art of the great liberation movement
of our epoch. It is even said to be responsible for giving
the initial impetus to the Arab movement.
"Through the withdraw al of British troops from Pal
estine and the proclam ation of an independent Jewish
state, " wrote Robert Misrahi on this very point, the new
Israelis ". . . ushered in a genuine liberation movement
that was to become as much their own history as that
of the Mediterranean Arabs. If the English had remained
in Palestine, they would never have left Egypt, and if
Glubb Pasha had conquered the Israelis in 1948, he would

never have been chased out of Jordan."7 Besides, many
add, this independence was obtained with the help of the
socialist countries. Czech weapons played a role in it,
a speech by Gromyko to the UN (often quoted) was
the prelude to the transformation of a part of Palestine
into a Jewish state, and the USSR was the flrst to recog
nize this state.
The difference with the usual criteria used to deflne
colonialism is also stressed. In reply to my remarks af
the Mutualite on March 5, 1 964, the Union of Jewish
Students in France (UEJF) wrote:
Not one of the traits that characterize colonialism

the military lending a strong hand to missionaries
in order to open up a path for merchants and to make
it possible to exploit the labor of the colonized -can
be found in the Jewish immigration movement in
Palestine. In place of a mother country-Jews chased
from one country to . another in Europe; in place of
soldiers- proletarians and intellectuals armed with
pickaxes; merchants (JewS=merchants?) -there were
none; as for missionaries, it would be well to recall
that Zionism was a lay movement inspired by social
ism (for example, Borochov). 8
Finally, added to these arguments dealing mainly with

the inspiration and origin of the Zionist movement and
the State of Israel are reflections concerning the internal
relations of the Jewish immigrants with the country's
Arabs. The purchase of Arab land that provided a foun
dation for the Jewish state was not at all an act of plun
der, according to Robert Misrahi, who develops this theme
at length. 9 On the level of ethics in general, it could be
said "with Rousseau and Marx that the land belongs
to those who cultivate it. " (p. 218 6 ) But, more concretely,
and in contrast to the case of Algeria, where "when the
French arrived, all the good land was cultivated by the
Algerians, in Palestine the Jewish immigrants found only
uncultivated land and deserts." (p. 2190) The Arabs,
moreover, could be forgiven for not having cultivated

their land. They had been "feudalized" for four centuries
by the Turks and exp loited by them in colonial sty le.
(p. 2 194 ) "Most of the land that was sold belonged to
big absentee landlords," whether "Turkish landlords re
siding in Turkey or in Syria" or "feudal Ar ab magnates,
for the most p art Syrian" (p. 2203 ) , and therefore ab
sent from the country. "To be sure, there were also
sm all Arab landholders who sold their land to the Jews."
But, "weighed down by taxes, tenures, or rents," with
no "prospect of gain" on collective land divided into lots
that were redistributed every two years, lO only the money
they received from selling could make it p ossible for them
to develop their methods a little (p. 2 2 04 ). The purch ased
land, which was p aid for at a very high price, was only
a fraction of the arable land ( so there was some, after
all!) and thus by no means involved a general dispo s
session of the Arabs.
The UEJF states: "The essential and original char ac
teristic of Palestinian Jewish society before 1 948 was to
not depend in any way up on the exp loitation of the labor
of the Ar ab fellow countrymen. On the contrary, the im
provement of the country was accomplished through the
m anual labor of Jewish cooperative laborers and
kibbutznikim [members of a kibbutz, or collective farm
Editor]. Where, then, is the colonialism?" And R. Misr ahi
stresses the conditions under which the Keren Kayemet
Le-Yisrael (Jewish National Fund or JNF) cedes b ack
its lands. "The temporary tenant will, under any and
all circumstances, have to work his land himself and
not have it worked by others, whether Jews or Arabs.
By a detour through Biblical mythology, one thus arrives
at the revolutionary result of banning exploitation oJ
the labor of others" (p. 2201 ), at least on the lands oJ
the JNF ( 300,000 hectares out of 800, 0 00 present!)
arable) [hectare = 2 .4 7 acres- Editor ]. 11
Thus the Arab Palestinian fellahin [peasants] are no·
exploited. And by the very fact that the Jews have settle(
there, their standard of living, their buying power, anc
their cultural, technical and health standards have beer
raised to a consider ably higher level, so that they are

now much better off in Israel in every respect than they
would be in the indep endent Ar ab countrie s . The image
they present seems to have little in common with that
of miser able victims of colonialism.
Po e . thl U 1W ! UU bll<lJ!
t1:H t..\.: t �f �Yf. !;!' r-.: a
C<:tl't�I;;[k �,�f11 �
In What Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomenon?
The entire angry p olemic of the Zionists and the p ro

Israelis against the image that the Arab s as well as a
certain number of Marxists have of Israel is, indeed,
inspired by very p owerful p sychological stereotypes. The
victim of colonization is the starving wretch in rags, his
eyes fJJ.l ed with fear, trapped and miserable, searching
anxiously for a scrap of foo d. The colonizer is the mili
tary or civilian brute, either arrogantly toying with his
cane, flaunting himself in a rickshaw pulled by worn
out coolies, or else, half-drunk and insensate, raping lit
tle black girls. How is it p ossible to fit into this p icture
either these noble Israeli Arabs whom government pub
lications show solemnly placing their votes in a demo
cratic b allot box or seriously taking p art in the delibera
tions of some municip al council, or the kib butznik with
his pure face, aglow with idealism, working with his hands
on the very land Solomon, Isaiah and Jesus trod, having
overcome and left behind the scars of forebears degraded
by ghetto life?l2 All the rest is only the rationalization
of an indignant rejection of the possibility that these
sharply contrasting images - all of which, moreover, con
tain their element of truth - can be reconciled.
This refusal is understandable. But an attemp t must
be made to investigate the problem a little more seriously.
The UEJF text mentioned above retains traces of an
effort to be more rigorous. But, so often, attempts in
· this vein slide almo st fatally into the kind of concern
for "realism" in the scholastic sense of the term that feeds
so m any "metaphysical" vi� ions of concrete reality. Some
!
I
I
l
36 Israel: A Colonial- Settler State?
argue as though colonialism were a creation of the mind,

an immediately recognizable entity, clearly dem arcated
from right to left and top to bottom, and identifiable
by some unambiguous definition as a plant or anim al
is. This is a common p ractice th at seems imp ossible to
\
I
uproot and that continues to wreak havoc in the social
sciences and the ideologies in which they bask.
There is no such thing as colonialism and imp erial
ism as such. What there is is a series of social phenom
ena in which numerous analogies with one another can
be found, but also infinite nuances, and which h ave come
to be referred to with labels. There is a central core, so
to speak, on which everyo ne agrees, but which imper
ceptibly tapers off at the outer edges into a region where
terminology varies according to groups, schools of
thought, and even individuals. Hence the differing diction
ary definitions.
On the other hand, Zionism is an ideological movement
of vast scope which has acquired a history th at is al
ready old and for which percursors can still be found.
It has always taken many forms and has encomp assed
numerous divergent tendencies, as can be seen from even
the slightest glance at its tormented and tumultuous his
tory, at the schisms and sp lits it has produced, and at
the fierce internal struggles that h ave marked it. In ad
dition, as with any ideological movement, one must dif
ferentiate between ideal principles and variants that crop
up in internal tendencies and with the p as s age of time,
the implicit or exp licit motivations of the m asses of fol
lowers, the strategic and tactical plans of the leaders,
the fulfillment of these pl ans (which is always only p ar
tial and which always comes about in somewh at unfor
seeable circumstances ), the consequences of these plans,
etc. All this would involve numerous nuances that I am
afraid could be dealt with here only very inadequately.
Yet overall ch aracterizations are possible. It cannot
be denied that the motivations of the masses who gave
the Zionist movement its strength had little in common
with those of the British capitalists, who se imperialist
ambitions were given theoretical shape by Joseph Cham
berlain. These ma sses were essentially moved by deep
In Wh a t Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomenon? 37
disgust with the . oppressive conditions they had been sub

jected to in Czarist Russia and in Eastern Europe in
general. Their revolt ( as justifiable as any other revolt)
against these conditions was channeled into various p aths
depending on the groups and individuals involved, and
in line with their p articular situation and history. The
influence of already existing ideologies ( though it varied
from c ase to case ) played a key role.
In the face of the humiliating situation confronting them,
certain assimilated Jews chose political and, occasionally,
revolutionary struggle in the countries they felt themselves
to be citizens of, side by side with non-Jews of the same
persuasion, in the midst of a people they wanted to be
a p art of. Others, like the Bundists, * engaged in similar
struggles, but in group s made up entirely of Jews. Still
others rej ected any link with the people, country and
state into which they h ad been integrated and placed their
hope in another homeland, a p urely Jewish homeland.
Many were quite indifferent as to the actual location of
this homeland. In 1 904, a French Jew who was making
inquiries at Berdichev noted that the local Jews were not
concerned about whether or not he and his comp anions
were Zionists. More than anything else, they wanted to
know if they were not delegates from the Jewish Coloni
zation Asso ciation which was setting up Jewish agricul
tural colonies almost everywhere, esp ecially in America.
" Indeed, Palestine is less attractive to them than emigra
tion. " 13 Yet s everal factors were to give Palestine special
preference in the dreams of the future.
The location of the Jewish homeland was not the least
bit in doub t for tho se who rem ained tied to the ancestral
religion providing they had rejected religious obj ections
against c arrying out divine p lans with purely temporal
means. The entire Jewish tradition, kept alive from gen
eratio n to generation through reading and studying the
s acred texts and th eir commentaries, through prayers
* Mem b ers of the Bund: the "General J ewish Workers Union

of Lithuania, Poland, and Rus sia;" an important Jewish s o
cialist, anti- Zionist organization founded in 1 897 and de
stroyed during World W ar II - Ed.
and in all of the literature, n amed Palestine, in the cir

cumlo cutio n of Deuteronomy, " the land which the Lord
your Go d giveth you to inherif' ; this co untry th at till
the end o f time was to be the s ite of the Messianic reign
of happiness and j oy, in the sha dow of the city o f
Jerus alem, "the city o f the Great King," where, a t the end
of e ach Passover meal, one exp resses the hop e of finding
oneself the following year. M any of tho s e who were
moving aw ay in v arying degrees from the ancestr al
religion (with the usual inconsistency of waning ideolo gies )
retained intact the attachment fo r this country th at had
been p assed down by such a p ersistent cultural tradition.
The nationalist orientation o f the movement GOuld not
help but favor an ideolo gic al development in which the
one historically certified homeland of the Jews as Jews
would play a centr al r ole. Even socialists, whether M arxist
or Tolstoy an, quite natur ally adopted this choice of
loc ation once they cho s e to orient tow ar d a regroup ment
of Jews in a new h o meland. A purely Jewish so cialist
society would have to be located somewhere and what
b etter region to shelter it in th an the one indicated by all
of Jewish history?
There was not nece s s arily any colonialist or imperialist
orientation per se in the m o tiv ations underlying this choice.
The element th at m a de it p o ssible to connect these as
pirations of Jewish shopkeepers, p eddlers, cr aftsmen, and
intellectu als in Ru ssia and els ewhere to the concep tu al
orbit of imperialism w as one small detail th at seemed
to be of no imp ortance : Palestine was inhabited by another
people. It would be v ery interesting to go through news
p ap ers and bo oks to see what kind of ideas the Jewish
m asses of Eastern Eur ope had about the indigenous p op
ul ations in Palestine. They must have been very vague,
bearing only a remote resembl ance to re ality. Besides,
in terms of the ideals who se realiz atio n w as seen occurring
in some far off future, the "Pales tinophilia" of the Russian
Jew, as it was c alled, lacked any clearly defined politic al
g o al, and consequently did not even deal with the ques
tion.
This "Palestinophilia" or Jewish counterreaction to the
w ave of anti- Semitism unleashed in 1 88 1 , which Simon
Dubnow c alls the "second reactio n," 1 4 w as b ased o n simple
In What Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomenon? 39
ideas. " Lilienblum, Pinsker, Lewanda," writes this learned

historian ( an anti- Z ionist Jewish n ation alist), " out of dis
app o intment in their hope of civil em ancip atio n,
proclaimed the slogan: ' We are str angers everywhere,
we must return home! ' This simple, elementary resp onse
to the complex n atio nal questio n b ecame an alluring
theory fo r m any, but in p ractice b ore o nly limited results.
The great masses of emigrants could not find room
enough for themselves o n the n arrow p ath o f Palestinian
colonization foreseen by the pioneers and enthusiasts of
the idea. The annu al emigr ation o f s ever al hundred men
to Palestine, at a time when tens of thous ands were leaving
for Americ a, m a de hopes of transpl anting the core o f the
Jewish people from the Diasp o r a to the historical homeland
app e ar groundless." 15
In the perio d of hoping, one either held onto one' s
religious belief and placed confidence in Go d to mysteri
ously co nvert the presence of a few scattered pioneers
into a Messianic kingdom, o r one put off the p roblem
into an indefinite future. Any thought about the coun
try' s current inh abita nts scarcely disturbed what were
vague ideas b ased o nly on p roblems relating to Judaism
or Jewishness. Only a few lucid minds ( among them the
theoretician of "spiritual Z ionism," Ah ad Ha' am, as early
as 1 89 1 ) drew attentiop to the fact th at Palestine was
not an emp ty territory and th at this posed problems. 1 6
They hardly met with any response at all. A quite ex
cus able and understandable indifference, but o ne th at bore
within it the seed o f future conflicts. Moreover, it was an
indifference linked to Europ ean sup rem acy, which b ene
fited even Europe' s proletarians and oppressed minori
ties. In fact, there can be no doubt that if the ancestr al
homeland h a d been o ccup ied by o ne of the well-established
industrialized nations th at ruled the wo rld at the time,
one th at h a d thoroughly s ettled down in a territory it
had infused with a p owerful nation al consciousness, then
the problem of displacing Germ an, French, or English
inh abitants and intro ducing a new, n ationally coherent
element into the middle o f their homeland woul d have
been in the forefr o nt of the consciou sness of even the m o st
ignor ant and destitute Zionists.
But European sup rem acy had planted in the minds
of even the m o st dep rived of tho s e who shared in it the

idea that any territory outside Europe was open to Euro
p e an o ccup atio n. From this p o int of view the Zionist
br and of utopia was essentially no different from social
ist utopias like C abet' s Icaria. It w as a m atter of finding
an emp ty territory - empty not neces s arily in the sense
of actu al absence of inh abitants, but r ather of a kind
of cultur al b arrenness . Outside the bound aries of civiliza
tion, as Metternich s aid, Eur o p ean "colonies" coul d be
freely placed not in oppo s itio n to but in the midst of
more or less b a ckw ard p eoples; these "colo nies" could
not help but become p oles of development, to use a re
cent term anachronistic ally. The Ottoman Empire to which
Palestine b elonged s eemed at the very least to be covered
with cultur ally b arren sp ots.
This stands out most clearly in the developmental stage
of the theo ry, in the works of the theoretical founders
of p olitical Z ionism. Leo Pinsker ( 1 83 1 - 1 89 1 ), an as
similationist who was converted to Jewish n ation alism
by the pogroms of 1 8 8 1 , noted the turning of Russian
and Rum anian Jews tow ar d Palestine in the w ake of this
m artyrdom. " H owever much in err o r this turn might h ave
been . . . it is no less a testimo ny to their just instincts
as a p eople: they realize they must h ave their own home
land." 1 7 The b asic aspiration w a s just, but the focus
of the Jewish hopes was a little gratuitous, he thought .
"We cannot dream abo ut restoring ancient Judea. It would
no lo nger be p o ssible for us to begin anew there where
once our politic al life was brutally interrup ted and de
stroyed. . . . The go al of our efforts must not be the
Holy L and, but a L and Of Our Own. All we need is a
large territory for our ill-fated brother s, a territory that re
m ains our own prop erty and from which no for eign m a ster
c an ch a se u s . . . . It is even p o s sible th at the Holy L and
will again become our country. So much the better. But
the m o st imp ortant thing is to determine quite simply
which country is o p en to us . . . . " 1 8
The country had to be selected above all on the b asis
of the obj ective advantages it offered. " The territory th at
we are to acquire must be fertile, favor ably located, and
large enough to accomm o date sever al million men . . . .
In What Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomenon? 4 1
The cho ice could b e made b etween a sm all territory in

North America or a soverign p ashalik * whose neutr ality
w o uld be gu ar anteed as much by the Porte * * as by other
p owers. " 19 A committee of exp erts would decide. It will
p erh aps o p t for Palestine or Syria if it is p ossible "to
m ake the country very pro ductive within a certain length
of time." If it opts fo r America, it will h av e to hurry be
c ause "today the acquisition of vast dom ains in Americ a
is not to o risky an undertaking," but the p opul ation of the
United States is growing very quickly. However, all this
is of second ary imp ortance comp ared to the "self-em an
cip ation of the Jewish p eople as a nation, through th e
cre ation of a Jewish colonial community destined o ne
day to b ec o me
our inalienable, inviolable homeland
our own homeland [emph asis added]." 2 o The obj ection
to all this w as certainly foreseen, but not in terms of the
rights of the people in whose m idst they were to settle,
but rather in terms of a collision b etween p olitical p ower s :
"What country will permit us t o s e t ourselves u p as a
nation within the confines of its territory?' Well, the govern
ments th a t h ave perse'cuted us will help us, for they "will
no doubt take as much pleasure in seeing us leave as
we will in leaving." And "it is obvious th at the creation
of a Jewish home coul d never h appen without the sup
p o rt of governments ." 2 1
Things were seen no differently fourteen years after
Pinsker' s m anifesto in the o th er great m anifesto - the one
th at got the Z io nist movement proper going - The Jewish
State by H erzl ( another assimilated Jew who converted).
And the convergence in the ideas of these tw o authors
who did not know each other is significant. " Two ter
ritories are under consideratio n: Palestine and Argentina.
Exp eriments in Jewish colonization worth noting have
taken place o n these two p o ints. . . . Sho uld preference
be given to Palestine or Argentina? The Society [the " So
ciety of Jews" which Herzl proposed be founded to repre-
* Pashalik: Ottom an administrative district g overned by a

p a sha - Ed.
* * Porte: the Ottom an g overnment - Ed.

sent all Jews who suppo rted the idea of a Jewish state
M R] will take what it is offered, taking into account in
dicatio ns of Jewish public o p inion regar ding it. It will
look into both. Argentina is o ne of the richest countries
of the world in natural resources, colo s s al in size and
with a sm all populatio n and a temper ate clim ate. It would
be of great interest to the Argentine republic to grant us
a p iece of its territory . . . P alestine is our unforgettable
historic al homeland. Its name alone would be a p o wer
fully stirring r allying cry for our p eople." 22
Thus, due to the very fact that they specified the ul
tim ate go al in terms of a Jewish st ate, the theoreticians
n atur ally had to be much more concerned than the
m asses, in their confused aspirations, were with the loca
tion of the country to be occupied and the attitude of
the governments and p eoples concerned tow ard their de
m ands. Pinsker, who was less realistic, w as s atisfied to
hop e th at the shores they reached would be less inhos
pitable than the countries they left, and that the govern
ments of these countries ( especially Rus sia ) would help
with the m igr ation. Herzl had a better gr asp of the con
crete p roblems. But if, beginning with his m anifesto, he
was exceedingly. p reoccupied with governments and their
attitude, he viewed the p ublic o p inio n of the p eoples af
fected as nothing more than a collection of p rej udices
that w ould h ave to b e defused and combatted.
Both his app r o ach and th at of the organization he
created were app roaches that unquestionably fit into the
great movement of Europ ean exp ansion in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, the great Europ ean imp erialist
groundswell. There is no reason whatsoever to be sur
p rised or even indign ant at this . Excep t for a sectio n ( o nly
a section ) of the European socialist p arties and a few
r are revolutionary and liber al elements, colonization at
the time was essentially taken to mean the spreading
of p r o gress, civiliz atio n and well-being.
The wo rld at that time was domin ated by the great

European imp erialist p ower s. Any undertaking aiming
to bring about a p olitical transform ation would have
to obtain at least their cons ent, and better yet, their sup-
p o rt. For this, i t would have t o offer advantages for

these p owers and fit into their plans. And th at w a s a
consideration that any realistic mind would have to take
into account. Around the s ame p eriod, the father of M o s
lem nationalism, Jamal ad-din al-Afgh ani, was spend
ing his life, like Herzl, sounding out which p owers might
b ack his plans, attempting to play off one against the
other.
Pinsker, as we have seen, had alre ady been aware of
the need for this policy. Herzl was very clear about it.
·
It is in fact on this p oint th at he p olemicized against
Z io nists wh o preceded him, against what was sometimes
called hov ev ei-zionism, 23 and implicitly also against the
"spiritual Z io nism" of Ahad H a ' am, 2 4 wh o wanted o nly
to fo rm a "spiritual center" in Palestine around which
the ideal unity of the scattered Jewish nation could crys
tallize. Sc attered agricultur al colonies struck Herzl as in
effectu al. They are b ased on "the false principle of suc
ces s ive infiltr ation." But, "infiltr ation must alw ays end
b a dly because, without fail, the moment comes when the
government, on the urging of the populations who feel
they are threatened, stop s the influx of Jews from the
outside. As a result, immigratio n is only truly viable
if it is b ased on assurances o f our sovereignty. The So
ciety of Jews will negotiate with the sovereign authori
ties of the territories in questio n, and it will do so under
the protector ate of the European p owers, if they find the
arr angement to their liking." 25
And Herzl attempted to p ortray the advantages the new
state could hold in store for tho se who ceded territo ry
for it and fo r those p owers who helped bring about this
tr ansfer of land. Here is wh at he fores aw, should Pal
estine be the territory selected:
If His M aj esty the Sultan were to give us Palestine,

we could undertake to regul ate Turkey' s finances.
F o r Europe, we would constitute a bulw ark against
Asia down there, we would be the advance p o st of
civiliz atio n against b arb arism. As a neutr al state,
we would remain in constant touch with all of Europe,
which would guarantee our existence. 2 6
It woul d have b een difficult to pl ace Zionism any m ore

clearly within the framework of European imperialist poli
cies. This was indeed the p ath followed by the Zionist
Organization, founded by Herzl at the Congress of Basel
in August 1 8 9 7 . The program adopted at B asel defined
the goal of Zionism as "the creation in Palestine of a
homeland for the Jewish people guaranteed by p ublic
l aw ( die Schaffung einer oeffentlich-rechtlich gesicherten
Heimstaette in Palaestina) ." The term " guaranteed by pub
lic law" had b een hotly deb ated. " Guaranteed by public
l aw" (from the text of the initial plan) appeared too vague,
and " gu ar anteed by international public l aw ( v o elk errecht
lich gesicherte)" 27 too restrictive. In the thinking of the
founders, the text that was adopted meant: to seek au
tonomy for a Jewish Palestine under the sovereignty of
the sultan and with the guarantee of the great pow ers.
Christian L eb anon provided a precedent.A pact or charter
guaranteed by the great powers was to set down the re
spective rights and duties of the Ottoman sovereign and
the Jewish colonists. The underlying desire for a com
pletely independent Jewish state was not expressed, though
it w a s certainly there in the b ackground. B esides, this
was a time when territories within the Ottoman Empire
that were inhabited by other peoples were being gr anted
independence one after the other. Why should the future
Jewish territory be any exception?
The four points of the Basel pro gr am flowed in the
most logical fashion from such an ultimate goal: the
development of craft and agricultural colonization in Pal
estine; an effort to organize the scattered Jewish people, an
effort to increase their "national consciousness, " and last
but not least, the undertaking of preliminary steps to
obtain the necessary governmental agreements.
Everyone could see that once the go al was a Jewish
state, and not scattered colonies or a purely spiritual
center, the support of the great powers would b e neces-
. sary. First of all directly, so that the pact with the Ot
toman sultan, who for the time b eing had sovereignty
over Palestine, w ould enj oy international guar antees
against the dangers of any attempt to renege on it (the
m a s s acres of Armenians gave s o m e idea of t h e c atastroph

ic c o nsequences such an attempt could lead to ) . And then
also indirectly, to pressure the sultan, if he proved stub
bor n, into all owing free immigration, or more funda
mentally, into granting auto nomy. In all these eventuali
ties, the p er sp ective was inevitably placed within the
fra m ework of the Europ ean as s ault on the Ottoman Em
pire, this " sick man" who s e complete dismemb erment w a s
p o stp oned b y the rivalries of the great p owers but who ,
in the m eantime, was subj ected to all kinds of interference,
p r e s sures, and threats. An imp erialist setting if there ever
w a s one.
This search for the indispen sable b acking of the great
p ower s inescap ably dictated Z ionist policy tow ard them
to p l ay up on their rivalries; to pressure them to the extent
that this w a s made p o s sible by the electo r al or financial
power of their J ewish p opulations, even when the l atter
had b een only theoretically won to Zio nism; or, on the
other hand, to p l ay on their anti- Semitism and their de
sire to get rid of the J ew s . It w a s in this spirit that in
1 9 0 3 Herzl r eached a ' general a greement on fundamen
tal s with the sinister Plehve, Czari st minister of the in
terior and or ganizer of p o groms, 2s inaugur ating a politi
cal tradition of converging the Zionist p r ogram with that
of the anti-Semites ( something Herzl proudly admitted), 29
and which w a s to b e alm o st fatal. ao
Every r evisionist p olitical plan had to follow this kind
of p olicy, and as we h ave already seen, this was al so
the p olicy of v arious n ationalist tendencie s in the Mo slem
world, in the early stages of Egyptian and Arab nation al
ism in p articul ar. But Zionist Jewish nationalism had the
advantage of b eing able to count on more or less p ower
ful supp ort among citizen s of the imp erialist states them
selves and to draw up on a mass b a se in Eastern Europe.
The Europ eanism of the Z ionists made it p o s sible for
them to present their plan as p art of the same movement
of European exp ansion that each p ow er w a s developing
on its own b eh alf. H ence, the m any statements p o inting
out th at it w a s in the general interest of Europe or civ
ilization ( which amounted to the same thing) , or even
in the p articular interest of this or that p ower, to sup

p o rt the Z ionist movement. This w a s p erfectly natur al
given the atmo sphere of the p eriod. There is no need
for us to moralize by applying to the Zionist leader s
o r ma sses of that time criteria that have b ecome common
tod ay . But neither do we have the right to deny that
their attitude was what it w a s, nor to disregard its ob
j ective consequences.
It w a s within this p ersp ective that the Zionist plan was
p resented. It is within this p er sp ective that it b ecame a
reality. This w a s m a de p o s sible by a B ritish p olitical
charter, the B alfour Decl aration of Novemb er 2, 1 9 1 7,
which informed Lord Rothschild that " His M aj esty' s gov
ernment view with favour the establishment in P alestine
of a national home for the Jewish p eople. . . . " What
were the motives of the British government, and what
w a s the resp ective weight of each? This is a difficult his
torical problem to resolve in detail with great accuracy,
but the general outline of such a solution is r ather easy
to p erceive. 3 1 L et us, along with the Ar ab historian
George Antonius, mor eover, discard the stale anti- Semitic
theories that would have the decl ar ation be p ayment in
return for the alleged efforts of American Jew s to draw
the United States into World War I, or even the l ar ge
scale purchase of war b o nds by B ritish Jew s ( actu ally,
tho se Jew s who bought the mo st were anti- Z io nist) . We
must al so discard the romantic theory that claimed it
w a s a rew ard to the Z ionist leader Chaim Weizmann
for inventing a p owerful explo sive! On the other h and,
one cannot accep t this same Weizmann' s thesis that the
declar ation w a s ab ove all a "unique act of the world
conscience" 32 help ed more than anything el se by the allur
ing app eal the great Z ionist Return held out for B ritish
soul s brought up on the Bible. 33 Certainly this feeling
played some role in the b ack ground. But the c ab inet
of a n ation involved in a hazardous and difficult world
war does not decide to tak e actions of such scop e on
the b a sis o f such feelings. Actually, Weizm ann knew this
very well, for h aving b een w arned that the anti- Zionist
Jewish minister Edwin Montagu 34 w a s going to violently
opp o se the declar ation at a discu ssion of the problem

by the War C abinet, he made sure the c abinet received
a note containing these words: " . . . in submitting our
resolution we entru sted
our national and Zionist destiny
to the Foreign Office and the Imperi al War Cabinet in
the hope that the problem would be considered in the
light of imp erial interests and the principles for which
the Entente stands." 35 [ Emph a sis in the original
Edito r ] .
T h e great motives b ehind the declar ation lie i n the
·
desired prop agandistic imp act on the J ews of the C entral

Empires and Russia, and the hop e of develop ing a claim
in the future liquidation of the Ottoman Empire. The
Jew s of Germany ( where the offices of the Zionist Or
ganiz atio n were located until 1 9 1 4 ) and of Austria-Hun
gary had b een won to the w ar effort largely b ec ause
it involved fighting Czarist Rus sia, p ersecutor o f the J ew s.
In conquered Russian territory, the Germ ans had given
the appear ance of b eing protectors of the oppr essed J ew s
and their lib er ator s "from the Mu scovite yoke." 3 6 The
Ru ssian Revolution r einforced d efeatist tendencies inside
Russia. An imp ortant role in the Russian revolution ary
movem ent w a s attributed to Jews. It w a s crucial to give
them reasons to sup p ort the allied c ause. It is by no
means coincidental that the B alfour D ecl ar ation pre
ceded by five days the fateful d ate of November 7 ( Oc
tob er 25 on the Julian c al endar) when the B olsheviks
took p ower. One of the aim s of the declaration w a s to
supp ort K erensky. Thought was also given to the weight
of the Jews in the United States, a country that had j u st
j o ined forces with the Allies. A maximum effort on its
p art w a s needed at a time when it w a s more inclined
tow ard p acifism. 37 The German and Au strian Zionists,
who w ere c arrying on negotiations with their governments
to ob tain a kind of " B alfour Declaration'' from the Turk
ish government, 38 had to be b rought along. As far a s
Palestine w a s concerned, i t w a s n o t a b ad p r o sp ect for
Engl and to have at its disp o s al in the · Near E a st a p opu
lation tied to it both by reco gnition and need at a time
when the agreement of the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein, to
mount a revolt against the Turk s had b een obtained

by promisin g him a large Arab kingdom; when the
secret Syk es-Picot a greement ( at the b eginning of 19 1 6)
had divided up this s ame region into zones of influence
b etween England and Fr ance; and when the l atter w a s
u sing its L eb anese contacts especially t o lay plans for
a greater Syria ( includin g Palestine) under F r ench in
fluence. 39 To m ak e a special question out of P alestine,
and to grant Great B ritain a p articular resp o nsibility
for it, w a s to provide itself with a solid b asis for m ak
ing demands during the p artition that would follow the
war. Weizmann insists that it was he and his staff who
first a sked the reticent English to a s sume a protector ate
role over the future J ewish state. 40 Perhap s. But, the
suggestion ended up b eing very favorably received. And
the big ob stacle w as Fr ance, which, through Geor ges
Picot, , was l ay ing claim to this p rotector ate over Pales
tine if a Jewish state w ere created. 4 1
The B alfour Declar ation, which w a s a British p olitical
act, could only be applied in the w ak e of a successful mili
tary undertaking attributable essentially to Great B ritain,
b acked up by F r ance and the United States: victory over
the Ottoman Emp ire in Palestine and Syria 42 at the end
o f 1 9 1 7 and in 1 9 1 8 . At that p o int, the most concrete
p olitical p r oblems were r aised. Until then, as Weizm ann
s ay s, the Ar ab question had not b een in the foreground
and the Zionists had in fact ignored it. 4 3 Now it b ecame
crucial . All of a sudden, the Ar ab s b ecame an imp ortant
element in the p olitic al game.
Sev er al dec ades earlier it might have b een p o s sible to
c arry through the Zionist plan o n the level the p olitic al
Z ionists envisaged thr ough deal s b etween a Z ionist Or
ganiz ation, endowed with great resources, and govern
ments, essentially tho se of the European imp erialist p ow
ers. Unfortunately for them, the sta ge for putting this
pl an into effect arrived at a time when n ationalism was
taking shape in the Mo slem countries too . In Sultan Abdul
H amid, the Zionist leaders had run into the reticence of
a l andlord who s aw that his Empire might once again
be carved up . 44 They had run into religious resist ance
among h i s entour age, a n d they had met with the very

j u stified fear of the Ottoman government that the intro
duction of a new "national" element into the heart of the
Emp ire would end, as it had in Greece, Bul garia, Ru
m ania, and Serbia, with demands for indep endence sup
p o rted from outside, and in new and fatal wars for the
Emp ire. This v ery perceptive analy sis finally led the sul
t an to decide to turn down offer s from Herzl that seem
to have strongly app ealed to him from a fin ancial point
of view, 45 but which he u sed p rim arily as a w ay of get
ting other no less disinterested p arties to increase their
offer s to help restore the Ottoman finances. 46
The quite recent rem ark able study by Neville M andel, 47
which is b a sed on the b est sources, demonstrates that,
contrary to the prev ailing opinion up to now, Ar ab re
sistance to Z ionist colonization in Palestine b egan as soon
a s thi s colonization got under w ay, well b efore the war
of 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 8 . But at fir st it was not p olitical . The peas
ants opp o sed the Z ioni st colonies to the degree that they
collided with their interests; then they resigned them
selves and set up a m o dus vivendi with them that w a s
sometimes to their o w n advantage. I f the b i g l andholder s
rej oiced at the j ump in the p rice of l and, and if the m asses
remained indifferent, in the cities the merchants and all
tho se b elonging to what we would c all the service in
dustry ( a l ay er made up mo stly of Christians) protested,
fearing eventual economic comp etition. The stir made by
Herzl' s b ook in 1 89 6, the first Z ionist p olitic al congress
in 1 89 7 , and the step s H erzl had t aken with the sultan
b egan to give a b o o st to the o p p o sition, but the Otto
man government' s ho stility to Zionism seemed assur ance
that the d anger remained very remote. Ar ab n ationalism,
which w a s develop ing w'ith difficulty in o p po sition to the
Turk s, and which, in the b eginning, attr acted Chri stians
esp ecially, b egan to show through in protests against
Z ionist colonization only after 1 9 0 5 . The Young Turk
Revolution of 1 9 0 8 , which gr anted freedom of p olitical
expression and p ermitted the form ation of p arties, m ade
it p o s sibl e for group s to articulate diffuse feelings of dis
content, to d r aw app ropriate conclusions in programs
and to try to mobilize the m a s ses around them. From

another angle, the p olicy of Turkization that quickly be
came the policy of the group in p ow er, the Union and
Pro gr e s s C ommittee, co ntributed heavily tow ard harden
ing the po sitions of the Arab s and pushing the Mo slems
tow ard Arab natio nalism. Ar ab memb er s of the Ottoman
p a rliament brought up the question of Z ionism there.
The sh ape of things on the p olitical level still greatly
complic ated the p icture. On the one hand the Union and
Pro gress Committee m aintained restrictions imp osed on
Jewish immigration into Palestine, but o n the other hand
it was driven by its financial difficulties to open up dis
cu ssions with the Zionists - as had its p olitic al rival, the
liberal Entente - a s a way of b argaining over any lib
eralization of thes e measures. It had enough confidence
in its p olitical p ower to not share Abdul Hamid' s fears
about the p o s sible consequences of Z ionism. Ar ab p oli
ticians remained in large p art anti-Z ionist and denounced
what they saw as full-blown collu sion between the Z ion
ists and the Unionist s, often sup p orting their argument
by p ointing to the imp ortant p articip ation in the Com
mittee of the donmes from Salonica, who w ere descen
dants of a crypto-Jewish sect. Yet tho se who had the
bro adest view of things, and who al so had the least con
tact with local reactions, had in mind a union of sep a
r atist n ationalist movements against the Ottom an cen
tr alism of the Young Turk s. In this p er spective, the
Zionist movement, which had at its disp o sal powerful
financial means and numerous p ersonalities who were
b oth on a high intellectual level and had a great deal
of p olitic al exp erience, could be of great help to the young,
inexp erienced, weak, and poor Ar ab n ationalist movement.
Discussions were c arried on and continued with deceptive
vicissitudes until 1 9 1 4 . Following one resounding set
b ack, Nassif B ey al-Khalidi, the Ar ab engineer from
Jeru s alem who w a s an advocate of Ar ab - Z ionist agr ee
ment, m ade a di sillusioned and p erceptive w arning that
h a s b een found in the Zionist archives. In French, he
told Dr. Thon of the Z ionist Bureau in J affa:
" B e very careful, Messieurs Zionists, government s dis
app ear, but p eoples rem ain." 48
The Zionists were hardly concerned at all about the

reactions of the Ar ab s - and it is here that the uncon
sciously imp erialist element in their thinking stands out.
" The Jewish immigrant s c ame to Palestine believing it
to b e a desolate, spar sely inhabited country. They were
too busy with their own business and too ignor ant of
Ar abic to notice what was going on around them. Since
it w a s the Turk s who ruled P alestine, they turned all
their attention tow ard the Turk s. This appr o ach did not
help m ak e the Jew s p opular with the Arab s." 49
The end of World W ar I, comin g at a time when the
Arab nation al movement was b ecoming a factor of prime
imp ortance, made a few Zionist Jew s t ake c o gnizance of
the signific ance of this problem. This factor, hardly even
noticed b efore, strengthened the convictions of many non
Z ionist Jew s, who made some very p erceptive w arnings. 5 0
This w a s not enou gh to r adically alter the attitude of the
Z ionist leader s, who were urged on by the very logic
of the p o sitio n they had started out with. They essentially
view ed the Arab national movement as something de
p endent on Great Britain, 51 disregarding the real - and
especially the potential - ma s s b ase of the Arab leaders
at that time; and while the l atter were, in fact, sometimes
simp ly B riti sh agents, more often they were men who were
playing their British c ard with the same ulterior motives
as the Zionists themselves. Yet it must certainly be reco g
nized that their freedom of action and m aneuver was
limited by the need to not look like traitor s in the eyes
of the m a sses. Thu s the deep feeling of the m asses, even
if it remained unexpressed, weighed heavily in the situa
tion. By disregarding this element, which only b ecame
stronger as time went on, the Z ionist leaders were re
vealing a frame of mind that the colonialist world view
dominant in Europe at the time both expl ained and ex
cu sed. This did not m ak e it any less the same fr ame
of mind, nor did it lead any less irrevocably to future
cat a strophes.
Settling the w ar was difficult, a s we know . It w a s a
series of sordid deal s ("the whole disgusting scr amble,"
said Wil son) against a b ack ground of more or less brutal
reactions ( dep ending on what w a s p o s sible) on the p art
of the p opul ations who se fate w a s b eing decided. Only

the Turk s were able to mobilize enough forces on favor
able terrain to be in a p o sition to h ave any real weight
in deciding the outcome. The British had made p r omi se
after promise - all contr adictory . This was due to change s
in thinking and circum stances in the cour se of the w ar,
and al so to diverging p o ints of view in the v arious in
st ances. B ecause of competition b etween the French, the
English, and the Czarist Russians, the Syk es-Picot Agree
ment had foreseen an international a dministr ation fo r
Palestine. But up to a p oint the Ru ssian Revolution ren
dered the agreement out-of-date and in need of revision.
The tendency of the B ritish to m ak e sure they received
territorial gu ar antees h ad only increased during the w ar
b ecause of several factors: the desire to m ake sur e they
had a r amp art from which the Suez C anal could be p ro
tected, plans for "insuring a territorial continuity b etween
Egypt and India," 5 2 and a determination to hold b ack
and counterb al ance the French protecto r ate over Syria
p roper and L eb anon to which they had been forced to
agree. The B alfour D eclar ation remained the m ain ar
gument up on which the British could b a se their cl aims
during the p o st-w ar b ar gaining. And the t a sk of the Eng
lish w a s m a de easier by the clear po sition of the Zionist
executive committee favo ring plans for a British protec
torate over a French protectorate. 5 3
Thus Britons a n d Z ionists b ack ed each other on the
question of P alestine. This is not to s ay that the English
p aid no attention to the Arab clients they were counting
on despite the di sillu sionments caused by British repu
diation of promises made to the Arab s. The Arab m a sses
w ere indignant, and occasionally this spilled over into
brutal actions. The Ar ab chiefs thought it wiser to maneu
ver and try to get as much as p o ssible, without refusing
( despite a few fruitless attempts to look in another direc
tion) to play their British card. All the more so since there
wer·e great p er sonal advantages for them in this appro ach.
The forem o st efforts by the Z ionists to reach an a gree
ment with the Ar ab s occurred during this p erio d. N at
urally, these were summit agreements. They fitted into
In Wha t Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomen o n ? 5 3
B ritish policy in that they aimed, o n the one hand, t o

r econcile contradictory promises that h a d p iled up dur
ing the war, and on the other hand to s et up a series
of b uffer states under B ritish influence that w ould pro
tect Suez on the Asian side, keep an eye on a worrisome
Kem alist Turkey allied with an even more w orrisome
Soviet Russia, and offset the p o ssible influenc e of that
troublesome ally - France. It was on the advic e of Allenby,
comm ander-in-chief of the British troop s, that Weizmann
e st ablished contact with Emir F a�sal, the son of Sharif
Hu s sein and commander of the Arab tro o ps, as early
as June 1 9 1 8, when the Turk s still occupied alm o st all
of Palestine. Weizm ann and F aisal found common ground,
and the following year, when the Peace Conference opened
in Paris, they concluded a noteworthy a greement. F aisal,
head of the delegation to the Peace Conference from
H ej az, and the only sp okesman for the Ar ab s at the con
ference, was in a difficult situ ation. He w a s chiefly ex
p o sed to the ho stility of Fr ance, which insisted th at the
Syk e s-Picot Agreement be put into effect, and which looked
with suspicion o n a future Ar ab st ate influenced by Eng
l and since it could serve as a c ataly st to a n ationalist
aw akening in French North Africa. Clemenceau had j u st
agr eed in principle to give Mo sul and Palestine to Lloyd
Geor ge in return for comp ensation. B efore this priv ate
agreement c ould be r atified by the conference, agreement
on the fate of Palestine had to be obtained from all p ar
ties c oncerned. F aisal' s English friends, and e specially
L awrence, were the only support he had in this str ange
world of European diplomacy into which he had all of
a sudden b een c at apulted, and they were pushing him
to reach an agreement with the Z ionists. Weizmann had
struck him a s b eing likeable, and had b een c areful to
"present the entire affair in a s inoffensive a way as p o s
sible," 54 which had al so b een the unch anging p olicy fol
lowed by Herzl and his successors. F aisal, who for the
time b eing had nothing, w a s certainly tempted, much
more than Arab historians will admit, by the idea of
giving P alestine to the J ew s in return for a large, inde
pendent Arab st ate that this small Jewish Palestine would
furnish with the most v aluable technic al aid. He pl ayed

a somewhat hyp ocritic al game, since he could not hop e
to get this p olicy easily accepted by the Arab m a s ses
who provided his b ase, especially by tho se in Palestine. 55
In short, it was a matter of allowing sever al thousand
Jewish colpnists who had a higher level of technical skill
to settle next to a vast Arab state that was already rich
in ethnic and religiou s minorities, and to bring with them
the numerous adv antages promised by the Z ionist Or
ganiz ation. The delib er ately v a gue slo gan of a " National
Jewish Horne'' did not raise the questions of sovereignty
in a provocative way for the time b eing. 56 Weizm ann
indic ated his di spleasure at hearing Tardieu, the French
representative to the Council of Ten, officially state in
Feb ru ary 1 9 1 9 that Fr ance would not be oppo sed to
a B ritish mandate over Palestine, nor to the creation
of a Jewish state. "We our selves had b een very c areful
not to use this term," he writes. 57
B oth p arties to the F aisal-Weizrna nn a greement s aw it
as a way of helping to get the Peace Conference to of
ficially reco gnize their resp ective go al s . F aisal w anted
a great, independent Ar ab kingdom, and Weizrn ann
w anted to get as far as p o s sible along the road tow ard
Jewish coloniz ation of P alestine and an autonomous J ew
ish territory under an English protector ate. The former
yielded to English pr otection as a way of attaining his
go al, esp eci ally in o p p o sition to Fr ance, and the l atter
sought this pr otection as a defense against p o s sible ene
mies of hi s plan. F aisal accepted J ewish colonization in
P alestine in advance as b eing potentially advantageou s.
H e felt his acceptance could serve to win the agreement
fir st of Great B ritain, and then the allies, for his own
pl an. But he w a s not blind to the p o s sible danger s of the
p act they had made; when w arned ab out ho stile reactions
by local Ar ab s, he was careful to add a p o st script to the
a greement that was "p erfectly under standable in light of
the extent to which he was involved," a s Weizmann ob
j ectively reco gnized. s a This po stscript m ade everything
dep en d on the gr anting of Arab indep endence. The least
mo dification or the slightest deviation from the demand s
made in his memorandum of J anu ary 4, 1 9 1 9 , would

a gain place a question mark over the entire agreement. 5 9
But for the moment the agreement existed . " I think it is
p r op er to s ay," admitted Weizmann, "that the existence
of that agreement had much to do with the p o sitive at
titude of the Big Four tow ard Zionist asp ir ations." 60
Without going into the complex details of the negotia
tions that followed, the thing to rememb er is that it all
led to the mandate over Palestine that the League of Na
tions gr anted to Great B ritain on July 24, 1 9 2 2 . This
m andate explicitly ratified the B alfour Declar ation in the
name of the world community and gave the mandatory
p ower "the resp o nsibility of setting up a p olitical, admini
strative, and economic state of affair s in the country such
as to insure the establishment of the national home for
the Jewish p eople." 6 1 It designated the Zionist Or ganiza
tion as h aving certain resp onsibilities in terms of Pales
tinian administr ation as far as Jewish questions were
concerned.
From these facts, the following conclusions seem to
me indisputable. Efforts to c arry out the Zionist plan
only got under way b ecause of a p olitical decision made
by Great Britain under pressure from the Zionist Or
ganiz ation. In order to get supp ort for its general policy
from what it s aw as an effective pressur e group consisting
of Jew s in the Russian Emp ire and the United States,
Great Britain went along without a sk ing many questions
about the real link s these Jew s had with p olitical Zionism.
It also went along b ec ause the decision in question ap
p eared to serve its interests in a Near East that had j u st
emerged from the w ar, and that is the way the Z ionist
leaders p r esented the matter. Great B ritain felt that this
course could b e reconciled, at least in the long run, with
its supp ort for the Ar ab p rinces of the H a shemite dy
na sty and with their supp ort for B ritain in return.
The Zionist leaders help ed bring ab out this reconcilia
tion by playing d own, for the time b eing, their pl an for
a J ewish state, and by b eing content to c all for settle
ment facilities in P alestine and for the right of free im
migr ation. In short, the Ar ab s were m o st justified in
regarding the transplanting of a new and foreign element

on Palestinian soil ( an element who se vast m aj ority were
Europ eans at that time) as something imp o sed on them
by a European power thank s to the military victory of
one group of European p ow ers over another group with
whom the Ottoman Empire had been allied.
These conclusions must be considered b a sic. Actually,
the Z ionists tend to trace the b eginning of the Jewish
state to either the first Jewish colonization in Palestine
during the first w ave of immigration ( the First Aliy a)
from 1 88 2 to 1903, which places the emphasis on the au
tonomous movement of the Jewish masses; or to the so
called W ar of Indep endence in 1948, which puts the stress
on the refusal of the Arab s to accept the UN p artition
decision and on the b ad faith, if not avowed ho stility,
of Engl and against which the terrorist struggle of the
preceding years had b een unleashed. Naturally, the role
of Jewish colonization p rior to 19 14 was imp ortant. But
the existence of 85, 000 Jew s in P alestine in 1 9 14 ( which
fell to around 5 6 , 000 in the course of the war) played
only a very secondary role in the adoption of the B al
four Declaration. L ater, the demand for independence
for the Yishuv ( the Jewish colony in Palestine) was only
conceivable on the b asis of the fact that there were 539, 000
Jew s in Palestine, or 3 1 . 5 p ercent of the total p opulation
( in 1 9 4 3 ) , whereas the proportion had b een only 1 1
p ercent in 1 9 22 . 62 This m assive immigration had only
b een made p o ssible b ecause of British protection, obtained
in the m anner already described. It would h ave b een
inconceivable on such a large scale, and with the alarming
claims it w a s making, under an independent Arab state
free from external pressures. The Zionist leaders in the
mandate period were well aware of this when they c alled
for strengthening the regiment of British p olice and op
po sed the creation of any representative body that might
reduce, however slightly, the authority of the high com
missioner. 6 3
Sub sequent events show that F aisal would not have
b een able to enforce the agreement he had more or less
b een forced to accept unless there were a drastic reduc-
tion in Z ionist aspir ations. In any event, his b argaining

w a s b a sed up on an inner imp erialist logic th at destroyed
not merely his hope s but the very conditions in which
he would have had some chance of getting his people
to go along with his appro ach. He had to b eat a retreat,
and the facts show that it was Great Britain that l aid
the b a sis for m aking a reality out of Herzl' s dream, that
l aid the b asis for the Jewish state - even if l ater on it
regretted having done so .
The Ar ab s too had managed to acquire a b a si s for their
future indep endence only b ec ause of B ritish supp ort. The
very event s th at had l aid the b asis for the Jewish state
had freed them from the Turkish yoke. But they were
bitterly disapp ointed. Instead of the great, united inde
p endent state they had b een promised, Arab territory
in Asia w a s divided, subj ected to the protector ate of two
great European p ower s under the hyp ocrit: ·· al cloak of
the mandate, and s addled with numerou s restrictions
limiting their fr eedom to decide their own affair s in favor
of the "rights" of a third p arty. Within the Arab king
doms or republics placed under m andate, political or
ganizations were able to d evelop with greater or fewer
restriction s dep ending on the p eriod and the area. Their
national ch ar acter, and their c all for independence in
a more or less distant future, were acknowledged. This
also provided a b a sis on which a struggle around the
demand of total indep endence coul d b e built.
There was a mortgage on b oth sides. B ut the condi
tions for lifting it were very different. The demands r C�,ised
by the Ar ab nationalist organizations were b acked up
by indigenous m a sses who w ere pr actically unanimous
in what they w anted ( except, to a degree, in L eb anon ) .
The Z ionist or ganizations, i n contr a st, h a d against them
the m aj ority of the country in which they w anted to set
up a sovereign state. In o rder to ch ange this situation,
they would h ave to increase the proportion of Jews in
the country, a proportion that was only growing slowly
( 1 1 . 1 p ercent in 1 9 2 2 , 1 7 . 7 p ercent in 1 9 3 1 , 28 p ercent
by the end of 1 9 3 6 ) ; and to accomplish this, they would
have to seek out the good offices of the m andatory p ower.
The other p o s sible solution, military conquest, which w a s

advocated by the Revisionist Party, seemed unfeasible.
The situ ation did not change until after 1 9 3 9 . During
the preceding twenty years, Great B ritain had shown itself
increa singly sensitive to Arab ho stility tow ard the Zionist
scheme. While it had once seen a solution lying in p ar
tition, and thus in the creation of a J ewish state in a p art
of P alestine, it now finally decided, in a White Paper dated
M ay 1 7 , 1 9 39 , to clearly state its ho stility to any such
solution, and especially to a Jewish state encomp a s sing
all of m andatory Palestine. It had in mind the creation
of an indep endent Palestinian state within ten years in
which the J ews would not constitute more than o ne-third
of the p opul ation, and hence it placed limitations on im
migr ation and the s ale of land. On the other hand, event s
in Europe were making the limitations on immigr ation
intoler able, and the J ewish b ase in Palestine was now
strong enough to make p o ssible the kind of indep endent
action on the p art of the Yishuv that the Revisionists
had b een r ecommending for such a long time. By the
end of 1943, the Jewish Agency estimated the number
of Jew s in P alestine at 539, 000 out of a total population
of 1 , 67 6, 57 1 - 3 1 . 5 p ercent. The Jewish state could now
only be set up in opp o sition to Great B ritain, and the
forces of the Yishuv app eared adequate to the task .
I n general, Zionist p olicy presented two faces, b oth
growing out of a situ ation in which the Z ionists found
themselves established a s a minority of colonists sur
rounded by a ho stile p opulation and under the authority
of an outside p ower. Vis-a-vi s England ( which at the very
least had to p ay attention to the feelings of the Ar ab s,
on whom p art of its foreign policy w a s built) , and al so
vis-a-vis world opinion, this minority had to continue the
firm Herzlian and p o st-Herzlian p olicy and "present the
entire affair in a s inoffensive a w ay a s p o s sible." L ater,
it w a s p o s sible to write: " The go al ( of Zionism) has re
mained unchanged since Herzl - the transformation of
Palestine into a Jewish homeland, the creation of a Jewish
state. For t actic al p olitical reasons, this go al has not al
ways b een clearly stated. But the evolution of Palestine
In Wha t Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomenon? 59
and of the Jewish p roblem in gener al has reached such

a p oint that clarity has b ecome necessary." 64 This w a s
i n 1946, on the eve of the w a r that w a s the logical out
growth of the situation that preceded it. But twelve years
earlier, one of the m o st eminent and informed Zionist
leaders, Arthur Rupp in, who supp orted a p olicy of reach
ing an understanding with the Arab s, though he was in a
minority on this question in the Zio ni st Executive, wrote:
At the time of the B alfour Declaration, some Z ionists

and some non-Jewish promoter s of Zionism saw
Palestine b ecoming a Jewish state, although this con
ception could not b e found in the Zionist program,
and this go al is still officially put forward today by
the Revi sionist wing of the Z ionist Organization. The
term J ewish state i s ambiguous, but it can be inter
p r eted as meaning that Jew s w ant to rule the country.
The fears of the Ar ab s about this, however, ought
to have b een all ayed by the White Paper published
by the B ritish government in 1 9 2 2 , shortly b efore
it was invested with it s M andate, in which it defines
its P alestine p olicy as w ell as its concept of a National
Jewish Home. This White Paper w a s accepted by the
Zionist Or ganiz ation . . . This st atement by the British
government ou ght to give satisfaction to the Ar ab s,
even if the J ew s refused to accept it. But the J ew s
themselve s tried to all ay the fears of t h e Ar ab s. The
Z io nist Congresses of 1 9 2 1 , 1 9 2 5 , and 1929 expressed
a desire to coop er ate with the Ar ab s and r eco gnized
the principle that neither n ationality in P alestine must
dominate the other or be dominated by it; it must
be a state in which Jew s and Ar ab s can live side by
side as two nationalities with equal rights . . . . 65
This history of the White Paper is indeed inform ative,

but esp ecially as an illu str ation in a Jewish context of
what is c alled katman or taqiyya in Arabic, meaning
the sy stem atic subterfuge the unortho dox mystics pr acticed
regarding their ideas and go als.
This fir st White Paper, or Churchill Memor andum, pub-
lished on June 3, 1922, was in fact an official p r o gram

th at explained how His Maj esty' s government intended
to apply the m andate it was going to be given. Violent
reactions by the Ar ab s, in P alestine and elsewhere, had
m ade clear that it would b e necessary to seriously t ake
this oppo sitio n into account and to interpret the B alfour
Declaration accordingly. In p articular, it w a s noted that:
"Phra ses have b een used such as that Palestine is to
b ecome ' as Jewish as Engl and is English. ' His Maj esty' s
Government regard any such exp ectation as impr acticable
and have no such aim in view . . . the terms of the
( B alfour) D eclar ation [ . . ] do not contempl ate that
.
Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish

National Home, but that such a Home should b e founded
in Palestine." ( Original emphasis) The British government
had never intended "the disapp ear ance or the sub ordi
n ation of the Ar abic popul ation, language, or culture
in ·Palestine." Finally, "when it is asked what is meant
by the development of the Jewish National Home in
Palestine, it m ay be answered that it is not the imp o sition
of a Jewish nationality up on the inhab itant s of P alestine
as a whole, but the further development of the existing
Jewish community, with the assistance of J ew s in other
p arts of the world, in order that it may b ecome a center
in which the Jewish p eople as a whole m ay tak e, o n
grounds o f religion and r ace, an interest and a p riqe."
Transj ordan w a s sep arated from Palestine, and there
fore from the zone where Zionist settlement could b e
carried out. Immigr ation would b e limited i n terms of
"the economic cap acity of the country at the time to ab sorb
new arriv al s." On the other h and, the intangible n ature
of the B alfour Declar ation was asserted at the very outset,
as w ell as the idea that the Jew s would be in P alestine by
virtue of a right and not of some sp ecial favor. 66
The B ritish government ur ged the Zionist Or ganization
to give its official approval to this document b efore the
B ritish m andate over Palestine w a s fo rmalized . .,It even
made it conditional up on such app roval. The Or ganization
w anted, more than anything else, to h ave the League of
Nations adopt the text of this mandate, which officially,
in terms of international l aw, reco gnized the validity of
the B alfour Declar ation and s anctioned the English pro

tection that was so necessary. It decided - unanimou sly
to p r actice "katmari' out of the conviction that "if c arried
out honestly and con scientiou sly, [ the White Paper] would
still affor d u s a framew o rk for building up a Jewish
m aj ority in P alestine and for the eventu al emergence of
a Jewish state." This was the thinking of even the mo st
extremist of Z ionists, the future founder of the Revisioni st
Party, whose reaction w a s welcomed with j oy by Weiz
m ann, who had feared he would rem ain intransigent. 67
Thu s this Zionist a gr eement to interp ret the B alfour
D eclar ation as ruling out the creation of a J ewish state
was p resented, along with the draft text gr anting Great
B ritain a m andate over P alestine, to the League of N ations
and w a s r atified by it on July 24, 1922 . But the Zioni st
leadership only accepted it with the intention of getting
around it, of u sing it to set up a situ ation that would
some d ay mak e inevitable the emergence of this J ewish
state that w a s alw ay s in their thoughts but never ( of
ficially) on their lip s. Only a minority of Z ionist p olitical
leader s sincerely and resolutely set as their go al the
b i-nation al state, equally b al anced b etween the two ethnic
gr oup s, that Arthur Ruppin describ ed as the official, ac
knowledged aim of the Zionist Or ganization.
Howev er, this subterfuge was denounced by extremist
Z ionists as disastrous and as obj ectively o rienting the
l eader s tow ard accepting the idea that a transition to the
ultim ate go al could be made gr adually, p ainlessly, p eace
fully, and without any problems. This w a s the argument
put forw ard by the imp atient Vl adimir J ab otinsky ( who
had nonetheless signed his n ame to the l etter accepting
the Churchill M emorandum) and the Revisionist P arty
he founded. The Revisionists demanded a r adical revision
of the m andate, the creation of a J ewish state on b o th
sides of the J ordan as soon as p o s sible ( ev en if this r e
quired autho ritarian and military metho ds), and the for
m ation of a J ewish L egio n that would m ak e the attainment
of these go al s p o ssible and that would p rovide protection
for m a s sive immigr ation without having to worry ab out
Ar ab interference.
"Assur ances from other Zionist gr oup s to the effect that
they are striving tow ard the same go al but for diplomatic
reasons do not mention it," writes an Austrian Jewish
p r ofessor, "are not held worthy of credence by the Re
visionists." 68 Actually, it w a s J abotinsky' s thirst for p ower
and his desire ab ove all to take Weizmann' s pl ace a s head
of the Z ionist Organiz ation - an ambition denounced by
Weizmann 69 - that drove him in this w ay to sow un
j ustified doubts about the thinking of the existing leader
ship .
But while the Zionist leadership protested to the outside
world that it wanted to avoid the ultimate creation of
a J ewish national state, internally it b ehaved a s if such
a state were the natur al fulfillment of its plan. This w a s
nearly fatal since the Z ionist proj ect had a s its progr am
precisely the remedying of a situ ation in which Jews were
a scattered and unorganized minority, or one or ganized
only as a sub ordinate community in a non-Jewish state,
ri sking the loss of it s memb ers through a ssimilation if the
society w a s op en, subj ect to collective oppression if it w a s
clo s ed. The proj ect attr acted mainly J ew s to whom this
p r o gram app ealed, esp ecially in the very beginning when
conditions for tho se who settled in P alestine were very
difficult. And then too from the very start the Jew s in
Palestine constituted a Yishuv, i . e . , an or ganized b o dy
of p eople, a colony that w a s as cohesive as p o s sible and
that remained turned in on itself. As early as 1 9 1 0 , the
kaymakam ( let' s call him the sub-prefect) , an Ar ab p atriot
hanged five y ear s l ater by J amal Pasha, wrote:
The Jew s do not mix at all with the Ottomans; they

purchase nothing from them. They h ave their own
sp ecial b ank . . . In each vill age and colony they
hav e founded a cen(ral committee and a school . . .
The Jew s al so h av e a blue flag with a St ar of D avid
in the center . . . They fly this flag instead of the
Ottoman flag . . . When the Jew s come to the admin-
. istr ative authorities, they state that they are entered
in the Ottoman register s ( that is, that they are Ottoman
subj ects), but this is a lie and a fr aud . . . 70
The mandate gr anted to Great B ritain p rovided, more

over, in Article 4, that " an appropriate Jewish agency shall
be rec o gnized as a public b o dy for the purp o se of advising
and coop er ating with the Administr ation of Palestine in
such economic, social, and other m atter s as may affect
the establishment of the national Jewish home and the in
terests of the Jewish p opulatiop. in Palestine." This b o dy
w a s to b e the Z ionist Organization for "so long as its
o rganization and constitution are in the op inion of the
M andatory appropriate." 7 1 .
In the Palestine of th e m andate p eriod, Jew s w ere forced
by the nature of things to mix more o r less with the Arab s
and the English, e specially in the a dministration. In ac
cordance with Ottoman pr actice and theory, which con
tinued in force, the v arious ethnic and religious group s
enj oyed a certain degree of internal autonomy. This is
what i s c alled the sy stem of millets, which even today has
b een p artially retained in Israel and L eb ano n, p articularly
in the area of p ersonal status under the law . But with
the entry of the English into J erusalem in D ecemb er 19 17,
the Jewish community acquired what w a s p roperly sp eak
ing a p olitic al organiz ation with a Provisional C ommittee
that gav e w ay in October 1920 to a k ind of Constituent
Assembly with an Executive C ommittee. The o r ganization
w a s r atified by a British regulation ( Decemb er 30, 1927),
which w a s amended on M arch 1 , 1 9 30, after arduous
negotiations with the representative assembly ( asefat ha
nivcharim, "Assembly of D eputies" ) . This in turn each
y ear elected a general council ( Va 'ad Leumi, National
C ommittee) responsible to the Assembly, which cho se an
executive from its midst. Thus there w a s actu ally a kind
of government for the Yishuv with almo st the p ower s
o f a state over tho se who reco gnized its authority ( which
did not include, for instance, anti-Z ionist religious ex
tremists) . The Assembly could levy taxes on tho se under
its control. It or ganized the social activities of the Yishuv
and w a s resp onsible for its p ublic education and indirect
ly for its religious or ganization. On the eve of the Palestine
W ar, the government of the Yishuv could thus organize
a system of military service among "tho se under its j u

risdiction."
Thu s the Yishuv formed a bloc, divided by often seriou s
internal quarrels, but united a s a whole i n the face of
the outside world, and p o ssessing b o dies that exp ressed
this quasi-unity. On the other side, the Arab s were divided
into sever al religious communities, Mo slem and Christian,
link ed to gether only by constantly ch anging and oppo sing
p olitical p arties. The Jew s were also united by semi-auton
omous network s in the economic sphere - coop eratives,
a centr al distribution or ganization, and union s b rought
to gether in the p owerful Histadrut, which also served
as capitalist entrepr eneur, b anker, insur ance agency, and
l andowner, and which op er ated a kind of social security.
And so in 1946 a Leb anese was able to defend a doc
toral thesis at the French School of L aw in B eirut on
" The F ormative Elements of a Jewish State in Palestine''
by t hldng up the Yishuv 's state-like characteristics. 7 2
Therefore, as indicated ab ove, the struggle for the ul
timate go al s could be begun once the or ganiz ational foun
d ation of the Jewish state w a s well in pl ace, and once
the immigr ation c arried out as a result of and under the
pr otection of the British mandate had increa sed its demo
gr aphic b ase to the p oint where it comprised one-third
of the total population of the country. This struggle took
place in two stages. Although very few Z ionist s h ad come
from Great Britain, this country, in regard to Palestine,
played the role of mother country for a colony that w a s
b eing settled, b ecau se, lik e it or not, i t h a d protected the
formation and growth of the Yishuv as it had, for ex�
ample, once protected British colonization in North
America, and as F r ance had protected French colonization
in Algeria. The clas sical p attern in such situations is
that tensions often arise b etween mother country and
colony over regulations impo sed by the mother country
that the colonists frequently find annoying, and over leg
i�lation that they do not control, at least not entirely,
and that often strikes them as b eing "out of touch" with
local conditions. This is esp ecially true when the mother
country think s in term s of foreign p olicy on a world scale
b u t h a s to take into account the interests and a spir ations

o f the n ative p opulation. The fact that the Jewish Pal
estinian colonists had not come from the British p op
ul ation at all, and the fact that their means for applying
p ressure on the B ritish government, while real, were far
fewer than tho se the Pieds Noirs were able to use on the
French government, for example, only made L ondon more
inclined to s acrifice them. The historic al conj uncture had
m ade Ar ab interests much more v aluabl e to the English
than those of the Yishuv . The shap e . of events on the eve
of World W ar II pushed the B ritish to turn their b ack s
on the h alf-measures of the p ast few years, and to publish
a White P ap er th at did not completely satisfy the Ar ab s,
but that took a p o sition squarely opp o sed to the hop es
of the Z ionists.
The first revolt was therefore directed against Great
Britain. The limitation of immigration under the atrociou s
conditions of the great massacre of J ew s in Europe lent
the c all to b attle a humane quality without equal b oth
within and even outside the Yishuv. As is well known,
this b attle w a s fought ' with terrorist metho ds, the only
methods av ail able to the Jewish colonist s at that time.
It greatly strengthened their cohesiveness and their more
o r less clandestine military o rganization. It was definitely
a w ar for indep endence, but by the Yishuv against Great
B ritain. The n ative inhabitants ( who amounted to two
third s of the entire p opul ation) remained onlook ers, their
own hop es for indep endence preventing them from t aking
the side of either of the "belligerents."
The r adicalization of the anti-B ritish struggle b egan
with extremist Jewish group s ( the Irgun or Etzel, and
especially the Lehi or Stern group ) who truly looked on
the B ritish as opp ressors and harb o red tow ard them the
cl assic reactions of col9nial subj ects tow ard colonizer s who
forcibly maintain a p eople under their yoke. 73 The
founder of the Lehi, Abr aham Stern, pushed this logic
to the point of advoc ating an alliance with all of Great
Britain' s enemies, including the U S S R and, it seems, even
Hitler. 74 This state of mind could only have arisen in
a very different situ ation from the one that prevailed
twenty years earlier when the English were on the whole

the protector s of a scattered p opulation surrounded by
a ho stile world. They were protector s who could be ret
icent and even spiteful, and who se protection did not
negate the need to or ganize one' s own indep endent local
defense force, but protectors nonetheless without whom
one could not get along. It is not surprising that these
movements made inro ads especially among young p eople.
L ittle by little their app ro ach won over the J ewish ma sses
of the Yishuv as a whole, who were mobilized in the semi
official army, the Haganah, an outgrowth of the self
defense group s, which were u su ally limited to c arrying
out defensive activities. The struggle for freedom of im
migr ation for the unfortunate refu gees from the Nazi
controlled areas of Europe won over everyone, and the
British restrictions, as well as the rep ression of terrorist
activity with its u sual internal lo gic, made the English
"imp edalist yoke" loathsome to everyb o dy. In the fir st
stages of thi s period, the Zioni st leader s had decided that
it w a s time to openly state their go als. On M ay 1 1 , 1 942,
a meeting of the American Zionist Or ganization a t the
Hotel B iltmore in New York adopted a progr am presented
by D avid Ben Gurian, p resident of the Executive Commit
tee of the Jewish Agency . This "Biltmore p r o gr am" c alled
for the establishment of a Jewish state throughout all of
Palestine, the creation of a Jewish army, the rej ection
of the 1 9 39 White P ap er, and unlimited immigration under
the control of the Jewish Agency alone. On Novemb er
1 0 , 1 942, it w a s r atified by a sp ecial committee of the
Zionist Or ganization in Jeru salem and thu s b ecame the
official p r o gr am of Z ionism. From now on, the official
Z ionist leaders differed from the extremists only over which
t actic to use as a w ay of getting Great B ritain to accept
the common go al up on which everyone agreed: b rutal
pressure through terrorist activity or a mixture of dip lo
m acy, b a sed on services rendered, and bl ackmail .
From n o w o n , the program calling for a b al anced b i
n atio n al state, which a decade earlier had app e aled to a
rather l arge minority of the Yishuv, b ecame outdated
and o nly a few sm all group s of idealists and group s on
the far left still supported it. The glorification of the

stru ggle against " B ritish tyr anny" and the arousal of pub
lic conscience to new heights b y the sacred t a sk o f saving
the survivo r s of the Jewish tragedy in Europe had pu shed
the Ar ab problem into the b ackground, where it w a s
almo st fo rgotten. In reading memoirs o f the anti-British
terrorist struggle, one is struck by the degree to which
the young enthu siasts who w anted to deliver "their country"
from tyr anny w ere unaw are 9f the "native p opul ation"
mere stage extr a s who melted into. the b ack ground of
the country side - at least as p otentially active subj ects
with their own cl aims to this s ame country. The increasing
English supp ort at this time for the Ar ab national de
m ands b eing articul ated ab ove all by kings and big l and
owner s ( who were nonetheless voicing the deep a sp irations
o f their entire p eople) cau sed these demands to b e gener
ally regarded as emanating from pup p ets who se strings
w ere pulled in Engl and. Even the idea of dividing the
country - which the Ar ab s al so rej ected for oppo site rea
sons - w a s indignantly rej ected. It w a s implicitly assumed
that in the future P alestinian state, which unlimited immi
gration would mak e J ewish, the Arab s would be faced
with a choice b etween submitting to authority and leaving.
A w ar with the Arab s, which only an outside force could
h ave prevented, was no more than the lo gical consequence
of the p r o gram for a Jewish state. This had indeed b een
seen by tho se r are p er sons who retained their ability to
think clearly while m o st Z io nists were avoiding the prob
lem. In 1946, the great J ewish philo sopher M artin Bub er
repro ached official Z io nism for its p olicy of primarily
seeking international agreements instead of trying to reach
a local agreement, in Palestine, with the Arab s concerned;
he wrote that the Biltmore progr am, "interpreted a s reco g
nizing the go al as b eing one of ' conquering' the country
through international maneuver s, not only stirred up Ar ab
wr ath against official Zionism, but it also m ade all efforts
leading in the direction of an under standing b etween Jew s
and Ar ab s app ear susp iciou s to the Arab s, who b elieved
that these efforts were covering up the real, officially ad
mitted intention." 7 5
Likewise, Judah L. Magnes, president of the Hebrew

University of Jeru salem, wrote:
A Jewish state can only b e obtained, if it ever is,

through war . . . You c an talk to an Ar ab ab out
anything, but you c annot talk to him ab out a J ewish
st ate. And that is b ec ause, by definition, a Jewish
st ate means th at the Jew s will govern other p eople,
other p eople who live in this Jewish state . . .
J ab otinsky knew that long ago . He w a s the prophet
of the Jewish st ate. J ab o tinsky w a s o str acized, con
demned, excommunic ated. But we see now th at almo st
the entire Z io nist movement h a s adopted his point
of view . . . In his early writings he said: " H as a
p eople ever b een known to give up its territory of
its own volition? Lik ewise, the Ar ab s in Palestine will
not renounce their sovereignty without violence." . . .
All these things have now b een adopted by tho se who
excommunicated him. 76
The terrorist activity, and the pressure exerted by the

Z ionist Or ganization on the United States in p articul ar,
had convinced the British that the b est thing would b e
t o go aw ay and leave the Jew s and the Ar ab s face t o
face. The p ower revealed by the Yishuv, the strength o f
its loc al b ase and o f its determination t o win autonomy,
and the effectiveness of its "war" against the English had
convinced the world p ower s as a whole that p eaceful
coexistence b etween it and the Ar ab s w a s utopian. Even
Stalin at one point h a d to assess the v alue of counting
on it a s an anti-British force, perhap s of having the U S S R
succeed Great Britain as p rotector. The UN adopted a
plan for dividing Pale stine b etween the two ethnic group s
on November 29, 1 947 . It proved p ow erless to control
application of the plan from the outside. The stated deter
mination of the British to withdr aw their troop s - the only
element cap able of imp o sing p eace - from Palestine on
M ay 1 5, 1948, made the bloody confrontation inevitable.
In this three-tiered struggle, once the b attle a gainst the
mother-country oppressor was ended, the b attle against
the opp ressed-in-the-m aking could b egin. To b e sure, the

colonial situ ation could h ave b een left b ehind at this p oint
and two states, reco gnized by the UN, could have entered
into the realm of intern ational p olitics . The Zionist s re
pro ach the Ar ab s for not having cho sen this solution by
accepting the UN decision, which even came with the
p r o gressive gu ar antee of the U S SR.
I will not try here to determine wh at could or should
have b een done according to various moral criteria, but
to expl ain the Ar ab reactions, which are so often not
under stoo d in Europ e, and how they could be rooted
in the very nature of the event s. For the Ar ab m a sses,
acceptance of the UN decisions would have meant un
conditional capitulation to a Europ ean diktat, no different
from the c ap itulation of the bl ack or yellow kings of the
nineteenth century b efore the c annons trained on their
p al aces. Europ e had collectively sent the colonists , who se
go al was to seize a p ortion of the national territory.
Throughout the p eriod when an indigenou s reaction
could have ea sily kick ed . these colonists out, this reaction
had b een h alted by the B ritish p olice and armed forces
m andated by the Europ ean-American nations a s a whole.
This reaction had b een disarmed mor ally by the mis-
. leading a s surance that it was only a question of peace
fully settling a few unfortunate and h armless group s who
would r em ain a minority. And then, when the real inten
tion of these gr oup s w a s b eing publicly unveiled, when
the collective strength they had slowly built up under the
protection of the m andate w a s b ecoming clear, the Euro
pean-Americ an w o rld from the socialist U S SR to the ultr a
capit alist United States - united in sp ite of their internal
differences - w anted to force the Ar ab s to p a ssively ac
cept the fait accompli. For the Ar ab s, the settling of the
Second World W ar w a s a b itter rep eat of the deceitful
ness of the First. As at that time, promises m ade in re
turn for their agreement or neutr ality were b etrayed once
they had achieved their intended go al by a malicious
co alition of European s, united by their complicity in hav
ing m ade pl edges to a people who had demonstr ated a
certain amount of faith in them. Did not the 1 922 m an-
d ate itself stipulate th at there would be no infringement of

"the rights and p o sition of other sections of the p opul a
tion" ( the non-Jews) ( Art. 6)? And had not the American
presidents Roosevelt and Truman promised, in letter s
to Ibn Saud on Ap ril 5, 1 945, and Octob er 28, 1 94 6,
th at no decision concerning Palestine would be taken with
out full consultation b etween the Arab s and the Jew s, and
that nothing would be decided that was contrary to Ar ab
interests? 77 All these promises had now b een violated.
Thus, no Ar ab could op enly disavow the resp onse of the
Arab Higher Committee of Palestine:
Any attempt by the Jew s or any other p ower or group

of p owers to set up a Jewish state on Ar ab territory
is an act of oppression that will be resisted by force
on the grounds of legitimate defense. 78
Thus the Palestine W ar was not seen by anyone in the

Arab lands as a w ar of liber ation led by anti-B ritish,
and hence anti-colonialist, Jewish revolutionaries against
pleasure-seeking feudal lords who pushed stup efied and
mule-like p e a s ants in fr ont of them to s afegu ard their own
cl ass interest s - as the version widely accepted by the
Eur op ean left would h ave it ( a ver sion I challenged thir
teen years ago, ther eby winning insults in Les Temps
Modernes) . This is al so the version A. R. Abdel-K ader
attempt s to p aint within the framework of a gener al view
th at i s, quite frankly, delirious. The w ar could not even
b e seen as a struggle b etween two formerly colonial states,
as could, for example, the struggle b etween Pakistan and
India over K a shmir. In the latter case, each of the two
p arties is more or less supported, with greater or fewer
ulterior motives, by one or another group of p ower s
who se supp ort fluctu ates i n keeping with changes i n the
intern ational and local situ ation. Each of these group s,
or . each of these powers, seek s to use the conflict to
strengthen its own influence - an influence that obviously
makes use of the technical and economic sup eriority of
the indu stri al world. But no one seek s to entrust the sov
ereignty of a p ortion of the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent
to a popul ation foreign t o this sub continent and coming

from the Europ ean-American world itself. Seen with Ar ab
eyes - and I b elieve I have shown this is not without ob
j ective j ustification - the P alestine War was a struggle
against a new imp erialist encro achment on the territory
of a colonial people.
That is, at least, how it appeared in the eyes of the
Arab ma sses. No one c an honestly deny the real indig
n ation felt by the Ar ab p eople, e&p ecially in Arab Asia,
which was mo st directly concerned. The fact that the
Egyptian p easants who w ere mobilized displ ayed little
interest or under standing of the struggle did not mean
th at they had any symp athy for the J ews. For every ele
ment of the p opulation however slightly p oliticized, whether
through circumstances or education, felt th at they were face
to face with an inv ader. It is true that the Arab armies
enj oyed some British sup p ort on v ariou s levels. But thi s
sup p o rt, which w a s clandestine and non-official, w a s also
limited. During the tragic p eriod b etween the UN p ar
tition decision and the B ritish · withdr awal, it amounted
princip ally to the presence of English soldiers who were
left without clear instructions, or received contradictory
ones, and who had b ecome accustomed during the pre
ceding long ph a se of Jewish terrorism to regard the Jews
as enemies. 7 9 As the ( B en-Gurionist) Z ionist historians
Jon and D avid Kimche write: " The Jews could not under
stand that they were reaping the reward of the unremit
ting terrorist activities of the two dissident organizations:
the Irgun and the Stern group ." 8 0 Hence, many decisions
on a local level favored the Arab s. In a series of ca ses,
the English soldier s w arned the Ar ab s of imminent Eng
lish ev acu ation of a garrison, thereby ( often) permitting
the Ar ab s to seize it. Numerous B ritish weapons seem
to have found their w ay into the hands of the Ar ab s in
such c a ses. How ev er, the instructions received by local
British troop s from their comm and were simply to con
centr ate their forces to avoid any new l o s ses, to take
b ack a s much military m ateriel as p o s sible, to withdr aw
with a m inimum of friction by leaving each district in the
control of whichever community w a s b est situated on a
local lev el. 8 1 The few really military engagements by

the British b efore their dep arture stemmed from an at
tempt ( which failed) to prevent a J ewish take-over of
p o ints inside the zone allotted by the UN to the Ar ab s,
for example at J affa. s2
Great Britain' s p olicy w a s inspired by consideration s
that went far beyond aid t o the Ar ab s, i n p articul ar by
the cold war situation at the time and British relation s
with the United States, a s well a s b y the serious economic
crisis that w a s shaking B ritain. During the same p eriod,
the English withdrew from Greece, Burma, and India. 83
As usu al, the various B ritish ministries held diver gent
p oints of view on the m atter, but they w ent along with
the p olitical orientation of the c ab inet - to get out of the
Palestinian quagmire. It seems that it w a s only l ater, with
the unforeseen evolution of events on a loc al level, that
certai11 Briti sh circles got the idea that things would end
up with Great Britain b eing a sked to play the role of
arbiter in conditions it would find much easier than
tho se prevailing near the end of the mandate. The very
day after the p artition plan was announced, on Novem
b er 30, 1947 , at dawn, Ar ab attack s announced the Arab
refusal to accept the Jewish state. The guerrill a struggl e
b e gan right aw ay, i n the presence o f the B ritish soldier s,
who observed a neutr ality that w a s somewhat p artial
to the Ar ab s. It b egan on a rel atively small scale at fir st,
with individual murders by snip er s, dynamiting of build
ings, reciprocal b omb ings, attack s and rep risal s, with
the l atter carried out esp ecially in the beginning by the
Irgun and the Lehi. As the Z ionists Jon and D avid
Kimche say, "in the sequence of events, it quickly b ecame
difficult to s ay which were the attack s and which the
reprisal s; but all grew out of the Ar ab decision to rej ect
the UN vote." 84 The Arab Lib eration Army volunteer s,
who, several thou s and strong and led by F awzi al K aukj i,
-
had b een in Palestine since J anu ary 1948, l aunched sev

er al fruitless attack s against the Jewish colonies. The at
tack s, gamb it s, skirmishes, and riots to which this army
resorted were used to j u stify Jewish reprisals on a wider
scale. At fir st these reprisal s were carried out m ainly b y
extremist right-wing dissident form ations such as the Ir

gun and the Lehi or Stern group, which accu sed the Jew
i sh Agency' s semi-clandestine official army, the Haganah,
of p a ssivity and even of complicity with the British. The
o fficial Zionist leaders did, in fact, hesitate to ab andon
completely all r ecourse to international b acking, from
the United States and even at times fro m Great Britain,
hoping that in one way o r another the UN would in
sure a p ainless transitio n to a Jewish state - or, if ab
solutely necessary, a bi-national state with a large J ewish
'
maj ority; they were also p r ep ared again, if necessary,
to settle for the territory alloted by the UN p artition pl an,
at least for a while. In the b eginning, they w anted ab ove
all to demonstr ate that they were c ap able of defending the
Jewish zones and consequently that a J ewish state w a s
viable. a s T h e intensity of n ationalist extremism among
the Jewish ma sses - orchestr ated by the Irgun and the
Lehi, and r aised to a new pitch fir st by the damage done
by the Arab irregul ars and then by their more systematic
attack s in an effort to block ade Jewish J eru s alem in p ar
ticular - swept the official Zionist leaders too into the
onslaught, fir st through less and less selective reprisal s
designed to serve a s spectacular "w arnings" to discourage
p o s sible Ar ab attack s, and finally to mak e sure the Jew s
p o s se ssed a s much l and a s p o s sible b y the time the Brit
i sh left. The m ain attack s w ere directed against J affa
which the UN plan left as an Arab encl ave inside Jew
ish territory, but which w a s al so like a pistol p o inted
at T el Aviv - a s well as toward lib er ating the Jewish
sections of Jeru salem ( international territory according
to the same plan) and the road linking it with the Jew
i sh regions.
Throughout this entire period the Ar ab states held con

ference after conference. They were very little inclined
at the outset to get deeply involved in the affair for the
m o st p art, hoping that a mere show of force would c ause
the J ew s to c ap itul ate and that an agreement would follow
th at would leave them less territory than the UN had giv
en them. This was al so one of the r are coherent ideas to
emerge among certain governmental authorities in L o n

don. The decisions by the Ar ab states to intervene were
b rought on by a collision of interests among them selves,
by the ambition of Transj ordan' s King Ab d allah to ex
tend his dom ains to the areas on the west b ank of the J o r
dan River, and by the desire of the others to stop him o r
at least reduce the extent of his acquisitions. Ab dall ah
tried twice, in secret m eetings with Gold a Myer son [ l ater
ch anged to Meir - Editor] , to persuade the Jews to reach
an under standing with him, and his suggestions, though
officially rebuffed, were not without effect. Cont acts b e
tween the Politic al Dep artment of the Jewish Agency and
eminent Ar ab p oliticians who were among the least b el
licose contributed to convincing the leaders of the Yishuv
that they had no reason to fear outside intervention. They
underestimated the effect of fear at seeing a Greater Jordan
created under British p rotection; and ab ove all they un
derestim ated, once again, the m ain factor m aking inter
vention inevitable - the pressure of a burning Ar ab na
tionalism up on the rulers and the p oliticians. 86
The regul ar Arab armies that entered P alestine b egin
ning on M ay 15, 1 948, had long-r ange attack plans,
but, with r are exceptions, they were only able, in the
l a st analy sis, to occupy a p o rtion of the zones left to
the Arab s by the UN pl an. 8 7 Mo st c ame from countries
th at had long b een occup ied by the British and had b een
furnished with British arms from the time they were
formed. The Transj o rdanian army, known as the Arab
Legion ( with 6,000 m en, of whom 4, 500 were av ail able
for use in Palestine, acco rding to Glubb, 9 , 2 0 0 according
to I. Beer ) , had b een comm anded since 1 9 39 by the
English m aj o r Glubb Pash a serving in a Transj ordanian
c ap acity . All the Ar ab armies involved had at their com
m and a total of ab out 2 5 , 000 soldier s, facing, at the
outset, roughly the same number of Israeli soldiers, who s e
lines of communic ation w e r e much sho rter . 88 But in July
there were 60, 000 J ewish soldier s against 40,000 Ar ab
soldier s. 8 9
The Arab s wer e defe ated as a result of a series of fac
tors, not the least of which were the divisions b etween
the states p articip ating in the "co alition," the l ack of mili
tary exp erience, and over-confidence. 9o In the b eginning,
their official armies had quite a rich supply of weapons,
certainly much richer than the H aganah' s. But the em
b argo decreed by the UN ( after M ay 2 9 ) w a s ob served
by Great Britain, which alone w a s in a p o sition to sup
ply munitions and sp are p arts for the B ritish-made weap
ons that m o st of the Ar ab armies were u sing. 9 1
The Ar ab s h a d n o weap o n s o r munitions factories, while
the J ew s were pr oducing certain weap o n s lik e mortar s
and mortar b o mb s. Above all, desp ite the emb argo the
Jew s p o s sessed sub st antial supplies of Czecho slov ak and
other weap ons. The H aganah' s network s in Am erica and
Europ e b enefited from widespread collusion and were
able to or ganize the purchase and delivery of weapons
and the recruitment and transp ortation of volunteer s and
mercenaries with incomp arable ingenuity, great gusto, and
the secret help of official authorities, as in France and
Yu go slavia fo r example, despite the oppo sition of the
United States and Great Britain. A ship carrying Czech
arms to the Syrian army w a s sunk by a H aganah com
mando in the Adriatic near the Italian c o a st it had j u st
left. While the Egyptians were able to buy arms from
Italy and no doubt b enefited from British collu sion, the
two truces imp o sed by the UN seem to hav e esp ecially
aided the arming of the J ew s . 9 2
On the whole, and without trying to unr avel all the
detail s of the ob scure accu sations hurled b ack and forth,
it is clear that the unfolding of the war did nothing to
dispel the Arab s' feeling that they were confro nted by a
p owerful colony b acked by the European-American na
tions a s a whole. These nations, indeed, constituted the
true mother country of the Yishuv, and, regardless of
their ideol o gical differences, they pl ayed their role by
completely favoring the Yishuv, despite efforts b y the
British and Americ an governments to b e neutral, despite
the UN administr ation, and desp ite the few active sym
p athizers of the Ar ab cause in Euro p e and America, who
were among the m o st questionable and j ustifiably detested
elements in their countries. The suppo rters of the Arab
c ause were of pr actically no use whatsoever to Arab mili

tary activity, while Israeli activity utilized to great ad
vanta ge its innumerable symp athizer s in the collective
· mother country.
The existing situation in the State of Israel has not
refuted this analy sis. The Yishuv has viewed - correctly
the Arab minority within its bo rders a s a p otential fifth
c olumn. The discriminatory measures t aken against it
flowed lo gically from this viewp oint. 93
L et us conclude this quick sketch. The settling of a new
population of European origin in a Palestine inhab ited
by Ar ab s was the pro duct of a European ideolo gical
movement and was carried out under the influence of
the pressure group that it represented . It achieved its
ultimate go al - domination of the territory settled by the
immigr ants - thank s to a British p olitical act, the B al
four D ecl ar ation, which was given the force of interna
tional l aw by the victory of the Allies over the Ottoman
Empire and their decision to go along with the British
commitment; thank s al so to the protection provided by
the British m andate, which made the development of an
adequate b a se p o s sible; and finally, thank s to a war
directed first a gainst a Great Britain b ecome reticent, and
then against the Palestinian Ar ab s supported by their fel
low Arab s. This two-fold struggle w a s won thank s to
the p ow er of the Yishuv 's sense of nationhood, its p re
dictable sup eriority in Eur opean techniques of weap onry
and or ganization, its ability to apply pressure in Europe
and America, the guilt that Europeans and Americans
felt at the crimes committed by the Germ ans - their Euro
pean b rother s - and their desire to exonerate them selves
without great inconvenience and at the sol e exp ense of
other, non- European, p arties. Throughout this entire
p rocess, the a spir atio ns and interests of the native Ar ab
popul ation w ere tak en into account by the Z ionist leaders
in only the mo st secondary fa shion. The international
p o int of view gained sup remacy over the intr anational
point of view ( inside Palestine) , as M artin Bub er put it.
Even the fleeting agreement b etween F aisal and Weizm ann
occurred in relation to the broad p olicies of the great
p owers. Ob sessed by h i s desire to obtain a great H a sh

emite kingdom at any p rice, F aisal w a s ready to m ak e
a deal giving virtually all o f Palestine to the Zionists
in return for Jewish diplomatic, financial, and technic al
supp ort for the future great Ar ab state he would head,
thu s sacrificing the p art to the whole, in line with tra
ditional dyna stic p olicy. His "mo deration" could not suc
ceed b ecau se, unlike p a st rulers, he needed the support
of the Ar ab ma sses in the Near East for his demands.
But nothing could win the Syriat;�. nationalists, and still
less the Ar ab s inside Palestine, to his view s on surren
dering P alestine. The comm ander w a s obliged to follow
his troo p s . The rel ative " good will" of his b rother Ab
d allah a quarter century l ater, which w a s the product
of similar considerations, s aw its result s canceled out
largely by the s ame factors.
The adv ancement and then success of the Z ionist move

m ent thu s definitely occurred within the fr amework of
Europ ean exp ansion into the countries b elonging to what
l ater came to be call e d the Third World. Given the ini
tial aims of the m ovement, it could not hav e b een other
wise. Once the premises w ere l aid down, the inexorable
logic of history determined the consequences. W anting
to create a purely Jewish, or predominantly Jewish,
st ate in an Ar ab P alestine in the twentieth century could
not help but lead to a colonial-type situation and to the
development ( completely normal, sociol o gically speaking)
of a r aci st st ate of mind, 94 and in the final analy sis
to a milit ary confrontation b etween the two ethnic group s.
One can understand why the Z ionist leader s rep eatedly
spurned p eaceful compromises with the Arab s, fearing
that these compromises would not gu ar antee that they
would b e the rul er s of the future Palestine. 95 One al so
understands very well the resp onse of Golda Myer son
( Gold a Meir), long I srael' s minister of foreign affair s,
who, at the p innacl e of honor, h a s remained faithful to
the determined and narrow outlook of the militant Ameri
c an Zionist she b ecame at the age of seventeen. An
American memb er of the l a st Anglo-American commis-
sion to carry out investigations in Palestine in 1946

a sked her:
" If the Jew s as a minority had the same privileges a s
tho se y o u a r e promising the Ar ab s a s a minority, would
you be satisfied?'
" No, sir," replied Golda Myer son. "For there must be one
place in the world where Jews are not a minority." 96
One cannot deny that there is an internal consistency
to this kind of thinking, which focu ses on one p articular
solution and look s with disdain on the right s of the other
p arty. But neither can one conclude that it w a s the moral
duty of the other p arty to give in, nor be surprised that
this solution provoked violent reactions.
Dep ending on one' s scale of v alues, one can find the
go al commendable. One can deem the harm inflicted up on
the Arab s imaginary, minimal, or comp en s ated for by
imp ortant advantages. One can find the means excu s able
or even commendable al so. But one c annot honestly deny
the fr amework into which this plan was set.
In the same way, it is p o s sible to p a ss j udgment o n
European exp ansion i n different ways. The historian might
not p a ss j udgment at all, and might limit him self to
merely t aking note of it. But if one p a sses j udgment, if
one condemns, if one b ecomes indignant, and if one
p r aises the reactions of the colonized p eoples, then even
the slightest consistency in reasoning would have to rule
o ut tw o different standards of j udging and ev aluating.
Even if I am included in the r ank s of the schizophrenic
by Mme. Elaine Amado Levy-Valensi, I p er sist in think
ing that b eing Jewish does not autom atically oblige one
to use two different sets of weights and measures. Other
wise one must be fr ank and state that wh atever the cir
cumst ances, a given group of p eople, namely the group
to which one b elongs, is alw ay s right - in this c a se, u sing
both anti- Semitic and Zionist criteria - the J ews. This kind
of b elief in the infallibility of one' s own " ethnic" group is
a frequent phenomenon in the history of hum an group s.
It is c alled r acism.
Objections and Limitations
H aving put the subj ect into this' gener al persp ective, it
rem ains for us to examine the obj ections it stirs up . All,
n atur ally, are b a sed on real facts, and some of them
lead to conclu sions that limit or at least qualify our
general definition of the process.
It i s only in order to refresh memories that I will men
tion the historical rights to the l and of P alestine that are
said to h ave b een b equeathed to all Jew s, since I would
not insult my readers by believing they could b e im
pressed by this argument.
The l a st truly indep endent J ewish State in Palestine ended
in 63 B . C. when Pomp ey b ec ame m a ster of J eru salem; the
l a st gasp s of the Jewish nation in P alestine date from the
revolt of B a r Kochb a in 1 3 5 A. D . The Jewish p opula
tio n of Roman Palestine thinned out as a result of the
dep ortations and en slavement that followed the two big
revolts, but especially through emigration (which was con
siderable even centuries b efore independence w a s de
stroyed) and through conver sion to p aganism, then Chris
tianity, then I sl am. It i s very prob able - and phy sical
anthrop olo gy tends to show that it is true - that the so
c alled Ar ab inhabitants of P alestine ( a maj ority of whom,
moreover, are p eople who have "b ecome Arab") have
much more of the ancient H ebrews' "blo o d" than most
of the J ew s of the Diasp o r a, who se religious exclusive
ness in no w ay prevented them from ab sorbing con
verts of v ario u s origins.
F o r centuries Jewish pro selytism w a s imp ortant even
in Western Europe, and w a s continued el sewhere over long
perio ds of time. Historically , sufficient evidence of this can
b e found in the Jewish state of Southern Ar abia in the

sixth century, b ased on southern Ar ab s who had b ecome
Jew s; the Turkish Jewish state of the Khazars in South
eastern Russia in the ei ghth to the tenth centuries, who se
b a se w a s Turkish or Finno- U gric and no doubt p artly
Slavic; the Jews of China who h ave become thoroughly
Chinese; the Bl ack Jew s of Cochin; the F alashas of Ethi
opia, etc. And, from an anthropologic al p oint of view,
a gl ance at any meeting of Jew s from different b ack
grounds will suffice to give an idea of the impo rtance
o f foreign contributions. Even if the hetero geneou s b o dy
of Jew s throughout the world who until recently have
preserved ties to religiou s Judaism were considered a
p erm anent collective personality, despite the p rofound in
ternal changes it has under gone, and if by virtue of this
it were considered the heir to the old Hebraic nation,
it would still be imp o ssible from any reasonable p o int
of view to grant it the rights to a territory who se p opu
lation - app lying the same criteria of a stable p er sonality
defined by an existing community - has totally changed,
even though its comp onent p arts have remained l ar gely
the same. As F aisal and m any other s b efore and after
him h ave ob served, from this p oint of view the Ar ab s
could j u st a s well lay claim s to Sp ain. The argument
often p ut forward by the Zionists, of insisting on the
undying hop e of Judaism to return to Z ion, is no more
p ersu a sive. It turns the priv ate p r eo ccup ations of o ne
individu al into a l aw for another. However impressive
these historical ar guments m ay have app eared to cer
t ain p ersons of a religious b ent or under the influence
of n ationalist ideology,9 7 they contain nothing that can
tr ansform the intro duction of a foreign element, to the
detriment of an indigenous p opul ation ( in the u sual
meaning of these term s), into a simple m atter of a re
turn to one' s native country.
On the other hand, the socialist outlook that inspired
a large p art o f the Yishuv - at least in its earliest waves,
which were the ones that had the greatest influence o n
its collective ideol o gy - c annot be denied. However, this
so cialist outlook c an neither logically nor sociologically
Objections and Limitations 81
b e u sed a s an argument to deny the colonial character

of the Yishuv. Tho se who do use it this w ay are, whether
they are aw are of it or not, following the traditional line
of thinking in European socialism that the only kind
of relations a socialist society c an p o s sibly have with
other societies are tho se m otiv ated by the m o st deeply
rooted altruism. This is ideolo gical juggling of the worst
kind. It has more or less b een j ustified by referring to
the metaphy sical doctrine of alien ation as developed by
the young M arx, attributing serious devi ations in the
human p er sonality to p roperty relations alone, and no
less gr atuitously assuming that collectivizing the means
of production was all that it would tak e to insure a re
turn to a b a sically altruistic personality. This app ro ach,
quite hazy at first, acquired more or less theoretical shap e
from Stalinism. The m o st lucid think er s in the socialist
movement sometimes recognized its worthlessness and
rarely, it is true - exp ressed skepticism with regard to
it: Engel s and L enin, for instance.98 Recent events - and
o ther s less recent that it took de- Stalinization to refresh
memories ab out or o p en the eyes of tho se affected by
Stalinism to - ought to h ave disp elled any doubts about
this. A society that internally r a nk s among the m o st demo
cratic or the m o st socialist can quite ea sily h ave rel ations
with the outside world that deny the rights of other so
cieties. If one think s about it a while, one can see that
this is even a phenomenon that has occurred very fre
quently throughout history, and that, sociolo gically sp eak
ing, it i s quite normal, however depressing this m ay be
for tho se who exp ect much from humanity.
The theoreticians of Jewish nationalist socialism p aid
very little attention to the societies their proj ect threatened
to hurt or destroy. F ollowing the line of thinking we have
j u st describ ed, they naively thought that a renewal of the
Jewish community could have only a b eneficial effect on
these societies and that a s a result it was p o intless to deal
concretely with the question of wh at relations should b e
est ablished with them. The analo gy with the mental at
titude of the French colonizer s, imbued with the democr atic
ideol o gy of the French Revolution, is obviou s. It w a s
for their own goo d that the Algerians and the Tonkinese
w ere subj ugated. In this way they would be prep ared
little by little for the d ay when l ater - much l ater - they
. would under stand the Decl aration of the Rights of Man
and when, still later, it could ·b e applied to them too.
It i s certainly true that through the humanitarian v alues
it brought to the fore, socialist ideology disp o sed a cer
tain numb er of tho se whom it m o st influenced to be con
cerned ab out the fate of the p eople they were in contact
with. Thu s, the m o st deeply committed socialist elements
of the Yishuv were concerned ab out the Arab s. But the
conflict in the recesses of their p syche b etween their hu
manitarian ideal and their plan for a Jewish rebirth on
Palestinian soil led in m o st cases to illusory conclu sions,
thanks to a mech anism expl ained by p sycho analysis.
Consolation was ea sily found in the inviting thesis that
the Arab m a sses, subj ected to "feudalism" and exploited by
their fellow countrymen, stood only to b enefit from the
Jewish conquest, at least in the long run. They w ould
be made, or prep ared to be m ade, h appy in spite of them
selves. The fact th at these were the same traditional co
lonialist arguments that were so r ationally denounced
when other s u sed them went unnoticed. It is well and
goo d th at socialist consciousness during the m andate
p eriod succeeded in b ringing an occ a sionally sizable
minority of the Yishuv to a p o sition of sincerely sup
porting a b al anced bi-national state. But, n atur ally, the
settlement of the Yishuv in Palestine could not be c alled
into question by the very p eople who w ere doing it. Only
the influence of Stalinist ideology w a s such that it prompt
ed a few r are individu al s to tak e extreme p o sitions and
actions along this line. The circum stances in which the
armed struggle took place b etween 1 940 and 1 948 mo
bilized nearly everyone b ehind efforts to protect and in
sure the autonomy of the Yishuv, sweep ing aside all
scruples in the process. As usually hap p en s in this kind
of . conflict, the n ationalist extremist s ended up winning
over alm o st the entire community.
In the conditions th at have p r evailed since 1 948, the
thesis that there is socialism in Isr ael has served to give
Objections and Lim itations 83
the great m aj ority of I sraelis and their friends on the

left the same kind of goo d conscience that, for example,
the internal political democracy existing inside France
gave to the French colonist s in the colonies. Every con
flict they b ecome involved in readily becomes a conflict
between goo d and evil.99 It is thus amusing to see the
m o st obviou sly "bour geois" Zionists answer any criticism
of Israel by w aving the b anner of M arxism and social
ism. Thu s the official organ of French Zionism, La Terre
retrouvee [ The Recovered L and] which generally is not
at all oriented to the left, show s no restraint in praising
A. R. Ab del-K ader as a "true Arab communisf' for op
p o sing evil soul s who might cl aim to be communist or ·
socialist while criticizing the Hebrew state.

I do not intend to analyze the resp ective prop ortions
of the state, coop erative, and p rivate sectors of the I s
raeli economy. I quite willingly admit that the I sraeli
collectivist colonies h ave often provided an example
p erh ap s the m o st advanced example ever seen - of the
virtues that can be developed by a communitarian life
style inspired by humanist ideolo gy - even if it forms
an integral p art of a nationalist whole. I am leaving
a side the p r oblem s of the relative weight of this economic
sector and this ideolo gy, and their influence in Israel.
These problems are in fact not at all p ertinent to this
study. That k ind of ideolo gy m ay produce an inclina
tion among memb er s of an elite who sub scrib e to it to
b etter understand the problem s of the other side. But
unfortunately, historical exp erience show s that Satan' s
b a g is full of trick s; I am referring to the human pro
p en sity for seeing to it that the asp ir ation s and interests
of o ne' s own group gain the upp er h and over tho se of
another, and to sub sequently j u stify this outcome with
the m o st idealistic arguments. This is one of the great
lessons t aught by M arx, although he him self at times
ignored it. In 19 1 6, L enin, who w a s more realistic, spoke
of this tendency to "ride on the b ack s of other s," which
w a s to be expected even after the social r evolution. 1 00
It is true that up to a certain p oint this leads to an ac
cep tance of the notion of human n ature 1 0 1 that B akunin
counterp o sed t o Marx, a questionable notion for the mo st

p art, and the u se of which has b een very harmful. It
c an, however, be neither totally accepted nor rej ected.
Thu s, even if one were to grant that the State of Israel
is p erfectly sociali st from all points of view, one could
by no means conclude as a result that its foreign p olicy
was ab ove criticism or th at the attitude of the m aj o rity
of its inh abit ant s w a s motivated by the purest interna
tionalism with regard to other p eoples.
From both a sociolo gical and a hum an point of view
o ne can under stand the indignation of Israeli socialist s
when they a r e bl amed for the imp erialist, colonialist, or
capitalist p o sitions of Herzl or of one or another of his
p redecessors or successors. It is, indeed, certainly true
that the ma sses who p r ovided the strength and vitality
of the Z ionist movement, and without whom the Z ionist
or ganizations would never have had a real b a se, were
very , deeply influenced by socialist ideals and were very
opp o sed to these Herzlian concepts. But, on the one hand,
only a numerically tiny and politically very weak elite
w a s imp elled by these socialist ideals to p erceive, with
out either conscious or unconsciou s ev asion, the reac
tions of the p eople whom the movem ent as a whole w a s
hurting. O n the other hand, a n d m o r e imp ortantly, this
movement con stituted a whole. The Zionist leaders
achieved their aim s in p art through the pressures brought
to b ear by their more or less socialist m a s s b a se, but
also through the foreign p olicy game they played. In the
face of an Ottoman Empire that had remained relatively
strong, or of an ind ependent Great-Arab, Great- Syrian,
or Palestinian st ate that had freedom of action, the p res
sure of the Z ionist gr oup s of eastern Europ e would have
b een fruitless. At mo st, it would have led to the settle- ·
ment of minority Jewish communities in Palestine that

w ould h ave b een forced to reach a modus vivendi ac
ceptable to the Ar ab maj ority.
These conditions would have turned the m aj ority of
these Jew s, who w anted more than anything to emigr ate,
aw ay from their exclu sive orientation tow ard Palestine.
The pressure would h ave changed, while remaining j u st
a s p owerful, and would have doubtless led other coun

tries to seek w ay s of solving the problem of the Jew s
oppressed by anti- Semitic states b y allowing m a ssive im
migr ation, p erhap s even by p r oviding some free terri
to ry for tho se who demanded an autonomous community
where they could be among them selves, as the U S SR
attempted to do with Birobidj an in its early stages. 102 It
should not be for gotten that today as in the p a st - as
already in the Roman p eriod and even earlier, in Per
sian times - the maj ority of the Jews. freely cho se the Dias
pora. F o r a long time now there have b een more Jew s
i n New York alone than i n the State of Israel, and the
m aj ority of the Algerian Jew s who left their country cho se
Fr ance and not Isr ael . B e that as it m ay, whether they
like it or not, Israeli socialists have b een dep endent on
the policy of the Z ionist Organization. To a l arge extent,
it is their p olicy too .
W e h ave seen how the revolt of the Yishuv against
British imp erialism must be viewed historically. It must
be seen as a revolt by .a community of colonists against
a mother country who se go als differed fro m its own,
a revolt facilitated by the fact that the colonists did not
b elong to the same p eople as the mother country. That
this revolt played its p art in help ing to weak en the British
empire is certain. But to draw all the conclu sions from
this that A. R. Ab del-K ader, R. Misrahi, Jon and D avid
Kimche and other s reach is to pur sue an illu sory method
of ar gumentation. In no w ay c an this revolt take credit
for j olting the Arab indep endence movement into motion.
This movement, which took sh ap e during the first years
of the twentieth century, had already at the end of the
Fir st World W ar b acked the moves of the Ar ab ruler s
and of the Ar ab big bourgeoisie tow ard autonomy. It
found expression in the great Egyptian revolt of 19 18-
19 1 9, the tremendous movement o f the Iraqi p eople in
1 920, the anti-Zionist riot s in Palestine as early as 1920
( repeated often thereafter ) , a n d the numerou s Syrian-Leb a
nese movements against the French m andate, of which
what is u sually c alled the Dru se revolt of 1 9 2 5 - 1 9 2 6
was only the m o st spectacular example. Under the p res-
sure of this mass movement the dynastic rulers and the

n ationalist p arties that led it were able to obtain a series
of concessions from Great Britain and Fr ance which,
though more or less deceptive, were designed to give
the app earance of satisfying the dem ands it r aised. 1 03
Among these concession s, moreover, w a s the 1 9 39 B ritish
White Paper that w a s to p it the Yishuv against Engl and.
It was thi s movement that actu ally led to the indep endence
of Leb anon and Syria in 1943 and 1945. All this, which
w a s to continue and later lead to much more imp ortant
results, dates from b efore 1948 and the indep endence
of Israel .
T o b e sure, the struggle of the Jewish terrorists against
England showed even their enemies the rel ative weakness
of arro gant Albion and thereby gave them encour agement.
But they had not w aited for thi s sign b efore b eginning
their struggle, or even seeing it produce the first promis
ing results. In all of this there is nothing that would les
sen the colonial ch ar acter of the Jewish settling of Palestine.
A whole series of arguments aim to show how far re
m oved the example of the Yishuv and of Israel is fro m
wh at a r e thought of a s typ ic al colonial situ ations, stereo
typ es of colonization that are currently p opular.
" In place of a mother country, Jews chased from o ne
country to another in Europ e," obj ect the Jewish students
in Fr ance. We have seen wh at the facts are regarding
this. The historical role of mother country for the Yishuv
w a s played by Europ e a s a whole, which unlo aded into
Palestine elements it considered undesir able, j u st as it
sent convicts to colonize Australia or Guy ana. Great B rit
ain w a s the motor force in that by force of arm s it con
quered the territory to be occupied, set up an administr a
tion there, and imp o sed what it i s accustomed to c all
law and order. In return, it met with the anger of its
"colonists" when it thought it could limit their progress
tow ard completely controlling the said territory.
We are assured th at the purchase of l and from the local
.
own ers took place without plunder, that it w a s c arried
out in the mo st correct fashion, and that it often even
resulted in the seller b eing p aid overly favorable p rices.
Objections and Lim itations 87
What w a s often involved w a s not the b est land, but the

worst. The purchase worked to the b enefit of b o th the
seller and the agricultural development of the country
in general. There is an element of truth in these argu
ment s . No one in fact denies that these l ands were legally
acquired, at least b efore the 1 9 48 w ar. For obvious p oliti
c al reasons, neither the Ottoman government nor the Brit
i sh m andatory administr ation could p ermit any other
cour se. But b rutal confiscation of l and is by no means
a fundamental char acteristic of. colonization. In fact,
throughout the entire world, lands that were colonized
were acquired much less often through the use of direct
force than through seemingly legal deal s, with the priv
ileged po sition of the colonizer allowing him to use ru ses
and legal detours to his own adv antage. 1 04 Much more
frequently, the mere fact o f a Europ ean p resence, with
its economic and technical superiority, with its enforce
ment of l aw s that, however j u st in the ab str act, were
mo deled on European condition s and not adapted to the
colonial situ ation, w a s alone enough to guar antee the
b are minimum of d e als in l and that would m ak e it p o s
sible to develop a core of colonized lands under very
fav o r able or preferential conditions. But everything was
done prop erly through buying and selling. In British
Africa, for example, confiscation of l and w a s a quite ex
ception al phenomenon. Great Britain did not settle English
colonists on Hindu p ea s ant l ands. Many other examples
coul d b e mentioned.
Yet in all these c a ses, no one hesitates to sp eak of co
lonialism. The legal correctness of the l and purchases
m ade by the Z io nist s can in no w ay, therefore, b e con
sidered an ar gument against the colonial ch aracter of
the Yishuv. And since 1 948 confiscations have tak en pl ace
on a v a st scale. 1 0 5 The surface area cultiv ated by the
Jew s h a s gone fro m 9 28 square kilometer s in the man
datory P alestine of 1 9 4 1 - 1 942 to 3 , 2 4 0 square kilometer s
in 1 9 6 1 - 1 9 6 2 in the State of Isr aeP 0 6 ( which is sm aller
than mandatory P alestine - 2 0 , 7 0 0 squ are km as opp o sed
to 2 7 , 00 0 ) . I sr ael' s Ar ab s have lo st 40-50 p ercent of
their l and since the w ar . 1 0 7
It is al so certainly true that the Arab fell ahin are in

general not directly exploited by J ewish l andholder s a s
were, for example, the Al gerian fellahin i n the service
of the French colonists. There are few Ar ab agricultural
laborer s on Jewish l ands. 1oa There are more indu strial
work ers in Jewish enterprises. What exists ( in the coun
try side) i s surely not an ethnic stratification in which
the Arab p opul ation work s in the direct employ of mem
b er s of the Jewish p opul ation, to whom they hand over
the surplu s product of their l abor.
But if direct exploitation of the n ative popul ation oc
cur s frequently in the colonial world, it is not necessarily
alw ay s a char acteristic of it. It w a s an exception to the
rule for the English colonist s settling the territory that w a s
to become the United States to h ave native Indians work
ing for them. The English in the East Indies were not land
owners who exploited p ea sants, any more than they were,
for example, in Austr alia or New Z e al and. Moreover,
in · a certain numb er of ca ses, there either was for all
practical purposes no native population or it was extermi
n ated, as in Tasmania. Are there tho se who would, a s
a result, entertain the idea that B ritish exp ansion into
. all these territories w a s not colonial in nature?
The relations b etween the Israelis and the Ar ab s have
in fact b een less relations of exploitation than of domi
nation. L et us tak e an over all view of the matter, stick
ing to the b are minimum of what cannot be disputed.
Whatever the p articular motives in the flight of the Ar ab s
from Israeli territory, which reduced their numb er from
two-third s to one-tenth of the p opulation, 109 the gener al
cause w a s undeniably the determination of the new set
tlers who infiltrated into Palestine little by little over a
perio d of some sixty years, to become the ruling element
in a Jewish n ation al st ate. I quite agree that this w a s
less a determination t o rule over the Ar ab ethnic group
than it w a s to rule over a territory. But since no one
can d aim that they were freely given said t erritory by
the Ar ab s, it was clearly a question of a successful ef
fort to imp o se their will up on the other side. I do not
w ant to dwell here on the situation of the Ar ab s in I s-
r ael; for that, I refer the reader to the fine, sensible, and
b al anced, but al so lucid b ook already mentioned, by
Walter Schwarz. 1 1 0 In spite of the recent relaxation of
the m o st bl atantly di scriminatory measures, it is obvio u s
that the Jewish maj ority i s imp osing its rule on the Ar ab
minority . " The m ain imp ression," writes a perceptive
Jewish-American sociolo gist, "is th at the symp athies of
the Israeli Arab s lie in the highest degree with their Arab
kindred and that Arab allegiance is not to the Jewish
maj ority that now governs, but r�ther to their kindred
in Egypt o r Jordan who p romise to free them. There
m ay be m any exceptions, but this is certainly the atti
tude among the m aj ority of the Ar ab s." 1 1 1 This i s a quite
no rmal consequence of the situation, and it is difficult
to see how it could have b een otherwise. The Ar ab s in
Israel, like the Palestinian Arab s who fled I sr ael, are in
a situation that they hav e not accepted and that the Yishuv
has imp o sed upon them by force. 1 1 2 Whatever j ustifica
tions one might be able to find for this act, no one should
be able to deny that it is a fact. .
I will conclude by b riefly mentioning the Arab argu

ment that, in addition to its domineering role at home
and, historic ally speak ing, the colonial n ature of the crea
tion of its state, I sr ael p articip ates in the economic ex'"
ploit ation of the Third World alongside the industrialized
European-American p owers and J ap an as p art of the
world sy stem that is referred to as imp erialist. A study
of the problem would require a great deal of sp ace and
attention to nuances. If one stick s to generalities, it seem s
obvious th at Israel' s technical sup eriority gives it p o s
sibilities for exerting economic pressure on underdevelop ed
economies. But on the other hand, these po ssibilities are
greatly diminished by the smallness of its territory, its
difficulties with it s nearest neighb o r s, and perhap s es
p ecially it s own economic dep endence on the European
American p owers. It is rather by p olitical choice that
Israel h a s generally turned up as an ally of the imp erial
ist p ower s, and it can be s aid that this p olitical choice
was in l arge p art imp o sed by the circumstances surround-
ing the form ation and birth of the state. This w a s another
almo st inevitable consequence of the initial cho ice made
by the Zionists. At least it m ade any other attitude dif
ficult. Roughly sp eaking, it is certainly tru e th at, as Herzl
w anted, Israel constitutes a b eachhead of the indu strialized,
c ap italist world in an underdeveloped world.
As for the right of the Isr aelis to continue to exist as
a national community on the l and they acquired in this
w ay, it lies outside the fr amework of the p r oblem we have
raised here. The only rights they can v alidly l ay cl aim
to are tho se b ased on their imp r ovement of the occupied
territory, the work they put into this effo rt, and the p er
sonal s acrifices they agreed to undergo in order to reach
this go al. But that has nothing to do with defining a s
colonial the p rocess whereby they settled there. The co
lonial origins of the Al gerian Pieds Noirs did not p re
vent the F L N from reco gnizing their rights, and their
dep arture w a s not the result of expul sion but of their
inability to adapt to the new situ ation or of their re
fu sal to accept this situ ation. Simil arly, no one sp e ak s
of ch a sing the whites out o f South Africa b ec ause o f their
coloni al origin s. They are a sked simply to coexist with
the Black s as equal s. To set o neself up as an autonomous
ethnic group is more difficult. Sometimes the native ethnic
group can be b rought by force to the p o int of reco gnizing
this autonomy, which then b ecomes legal with the p as sa ge
of time. But one c an only cl aim to have left the colonial
pr ocess b ehind when the n ative group , as a result of
negotiated concessions, comes to accept this autonomy.
Conclusion
I b elieve the preceding p ages have shown that the crea

tion of the State of Israel on Palestinian soil is the cul
mination of a p rocess that fits p erfectly into the great
Europ ean-American movement of exp ansion in the nine
teenth and twentieth centuries who se aim w a s to settle
new inhab it ant s among other p eo p les or to dominate them
econo mic ally and p olitically. This is, moreover, an ob
viou s diagno sis, and if I have t ak en so m any words
to state it, it is only because of the desperate efforts that
have b een made to conceal it. What is involved here are
facts. As for terminol o gy, it seems to me th at the term
colonial process is very suitable, considering the obvious
p ar allel with phenomena everyone agrees to designate
in this w ay. But this is a linguistic question.
It i s quite obvwus that this i s a colonial process with
its own special char acteristics - as with many others,
moreover . There w a s settlement of colonists - unlike the
ca ses of India and Greenl and, for example. The colonist s
did n o t c o m e fro m the mother country, which is al so the
ca se, for example, with the island of M auritius. A maj or
part of the native population was displ aced, as w as true
over a long period of time with the Indians in New En
gland. Not all were left in a state of direct economic de
pendence on the colonists, but in a state of political depen
dence for those who remained inside Israel, while the
settling of the colonists and the setting up of the state
brought to the rest a fate over which they had no control.
The purp ose of definitions is to j ustify l ab el s by b eing
more or less comprehen sive, depending on the facts and
subj ects one wants to cover. It i s nn doubt po ssible to
find definitions of colo nialism that do not cover the p ar

ticul ar case of Isr ael. One of the definitions of the term
"colony" in the Grand Larousse encyclopedique ("territory
occupied and administered by a nation outside of its
boundaries and remaining linked to the mother country
by very clo se ties") is hardly suitable. Another ( " a col
lection of persons who leave their country to go p opulate
another" ) is, on the other hand, very adequ ate. The He
b rew term Yishuv, commonly used by p ersons with an
interest in the subj ect, is defined by the Elm aleh Hebrew
French dictionary as: "inhabited country, colony, in
h abited province; p opulation; . . . coloniz ation." It is true
th at this referred esp ecially to colonies in the Greek sense.
But a definition like the one in Quillet-Flammarion that
has the contemp orary p eriod in mind ( colony = "exotic
country, generally subj ugated by right of conquest and
placed in a state of p olitic al and economic dependence
on the conqueror" ) work s very well . And, more profound
ly, a sociologi st, reviewing all known c a ses, concluded:
" One c an sp eak of coloniz ation when there is, and by the
very fact that there is, occupation with domination; when
there is, and by the very fact that there is, emigr ation
with legi slation." 1 1 3 The Jew s attr acted by Z ionism em
igrated to Palestine, and then they dominated it. They
occupied it in deed and then adopted legislation to j u stify
this occup ation by l aw. Everything is there.
What are the consequences to be drawn from thi s diag
no sis? Preach holy war against the intruder s and demand
that they b e forcibly evicted and cast into the sea in the
n ame of a univer sal con science that was very slow to con
demn colonialism? B r and them as criminal s in the eyes
of the whole world? Demand that, b arefoot and with a
rope already around their neck, they come pleading for
forgivenes s for their original sin ?
My argumentation, which has b een limited to the area
of facts, does not necess arily imply these kinds of con
clu sions. It leaves a side questions of p a s sing judgment,
of future p olitical p er sp ectives, and of p o s sible courses
of action. Nevertheless, I would like, only now, to express
my own op inio n. It is up to the Ar ab s, who are the ones
Conclusion 93
who have b een wronged, to determine wh at their policy

tow ar d I sr ael will b e. The role of other s does not seem
to me to be to ur ge them to seek military solutions. The
milit ant revolutionary app ro ach h a s given rise to strange
reactions. It is one thing to under stand, and to m ake
other s under stand, the feelings o f reb ellion that stir a
p eople or a cl ass in struggle, and to stand up to the
hyp ocritic al app ro ach that condemns acts of reb ellion by
the opp ressed in the n ame of some universal morality,
while fo r getting about the weight . of the oppression and
crimes of the oppressor. It is another thing to incite tho se
who are more or less oppressed to choo se a blo o dy solu
tion b efore all else, and gener ally to do so from a safe
and tranquil v antage p o int. At the risk of once again
b eing br anded with the p ej o r ative mark of a hum anist,
I will s ay that I prefer blo o dless solutions to the extent
that they are p o ssible, and that I do not recognize for
my self the right to preach vengeance and murder from
my ivo ry tower.
Colonist s and colonizer s are not monster s with human
faces who se b eh avior· defies r ational explanation, as one
might think from reading left-wing intellectual s. I am
anti-colonialist and anti-r acist, but I c annot on that ac
count give up attempting to explain colonialism and
r acism in term s of the mo st widespread and common
place social and p sy cholo gical factor s, which no one
should cl aim lie b eyond reach. B elonging to a colonizing
gr oup is not the unspeak able and unp ardonable crime
it is thou ght to be in c afes along Saint-Germain and Saint
Michel b oulev ar ds. Who is innocent of this charge? The
only v ariable lies in the time that h a s el ap sed since the
u surping w a s done. The hum an conscience sooner or l ater
accep t s the idea that long-time use establishes a v alid
claim. History i s full of faits accomplis. Since Cromw ell,
Briti sh colonizer s have occupied C atholic Irel and and
colonized Ulster, which rem ained Protestant and where
the C atholic minority is discriminated against. The Irish
had sworn never to reco gnize this amputation of their
homeland. No one doubts that the amputation w a s unj u st,
that it was obtained through force and consolidated
through force. And then one fine d ay in F ebru ary 1 9 65,

they reco gnized the existence of Ul ster and the Irish p res
ident p aid a solemn visit to B elfast. 1 1 4
The Jew s of Israel too are p eople like other p eople.
Some of them have hammered out an illusory ideolo gy
to which they have sacrificed themselve s as well a s a great
deal of effort and many human lives. They are not alone.
Many are tho se who h ave suffered much but h ave looked
with indifference up on the sufferings and rights of other s.
Many went there b ecause it was the life preserver thrown
to them. They m o st a s suredly did not first engage in
scholarly research to find out if they had a right to it
according to K antian mor ality or existentialist ethic s.
It is accordingly useless to repro ach them for it. The
future dep ends lar gely on the relationship of forces, also
in p art . on the awareness of how deep the p r oblems are.
It is that alone which justifies this study.
To be aware of the colonial character of the St ate of
I srael is to begin to m ak e clear why the pressure of the
events does so much to thrust Israel into the c amp of
the Western p owers, and why any o ther orientation w ould
require heroic efforts on the p art of progressive elements
in Israel. Above all, it is to understand the reactions of
the Arab s and p eoples of the Third World who are in
the same situ ation. Tho se who autom atically classify all
the Ar ab movement s and regimes as fascist simply b ec au se
they are oppo sed to Israel are spreading an erro neous
and deeply h armful conception of the problem . Similarly,
all tho se who hold to legends about a gratuitous h atred
of Ar ab s for Jews, or the thesis of a consciously work ed
out Machiavellian myth, are misleading themselves and
others. If there is indeed hatred that often exceeds all
b o unds, and if rul er s and ideolo gists build myths around
the question of Palestine a s a w ay of mobilizing support,
it is all b ased on an obj ective reality for which the Z ionist
leader s are responsible: the colonization of a foreign
land. 1 1 5 A follower of nonviolence m ay be allowed to
regard the revolt of the Arab s against a colonial situ ation
as something to be condemned from a moral point of
view, but the slightest intellectual consistency p rohibits
Conclusion 95
an anti-colonialist from m aking such a mor al condem

n ation. At mo st, he can find this revolt prem ature for
the time b eing.
It follow s that it would be a d angerous illusion to count
on a new social regime among the Ar ab s to accept Israel.
L et it b e said forthrightly, even if it hurts or arouses
indignation among left-wing conformists who b elieve that
the so cial revolution solves all problems. There is no
"rev olutionary solution" to the I sr aeli-Arab problem. The
creation of the State of Israel w as an outra ge committed
against the Arab s as a p eople. No regime can accept
it of its own free will. International or internal p olitical
circum stances could perhap s one day force recognition of
Isr ael. B ut this c annot be simply the product of an ide
olo gy that might concede that there were grounds for the
Isr aeli colonization. On the contrary, it is tho se regimes
that are m o st socialistic ally inclined that have al so shown
them selves to be the m o st adam ant. To b elieve the op
p o site would be to reveal profound ignor ance of local
conditions or to b e utterly misled by ideolo gic al p a ssion.
The riots in Jordan following the I sr aeli reprisal r aid in
the Hebron region ( events that are unfolding as I am
finishing thi s study ) clearly show the d anger s in the usu al
interpret ation of Ar ab ho stility tow ard I sr ael. How c an
tho se who expl ain it as an artificial creation of "fascisf'
government s and movements explain the depth of the
Palestinian indignation revealed by these disturb ances?
How c an they not notice that their interpretation ties in
with the one that all colonialist st ates have u sed to j u stify
their rep r ession of indigenou s lib er ation movements? And
the L evi Eshkol government itself h a s obviously excluded
the po ssibility that such a movement could develop . A
victim of its own Zionist myths, it has b een led by them
to fal sify the very realities of the problem it is confronted
with. A cla ssical, but dangerous phenomenon.
It is po ssible th at war is the only way out of the situa
tion created by Zionism. I leave it to others to find cause
for rej oicing in this. But if there is any chance of some day
seeing a p eaceful solution, it will not be achieved by telling
the Ar ab s that it is their duty to appl aud their conquerors
96 Israel: A Colonial-Settler State ?
b ec ause they are Europeans or are in the p rocess of b e

coming Europ eanized, because they are " adv anced," b e
cause they are revolutionary or ( almo st) socialist, and,
even less, simply because they are Jews! The m o st that
can be asked of the Ar ab s is that they resign them selves
to a disagreeable situ ation, and that in resigning them
selves they make the b est of their resignation. It is not
easy to get a conquered p erson to resign himself to defeat,
and it is not made any easier by loudly procl aiming
how right it was that he w a s soundly beaten. It is gen
erally wiser to offer him comp ensation. And tho se who
have not suffered from the fight c an ( and, I believe, even
mu st) recommend forgiveness for the inj uries inflicted.
They are hardly entitled to demand it.
Notes to the Introduction
1 . French edition published by Etudes et Documentation In

ternationales, Paris, 1 968. American edition, with an intro
duction b y Nathan Weinstock, publish ed by Pathfinder Press,
New York, 1 970.
2. New York Times, July 14, 1 969.
3. Cf. Documents of the Palestinian Resistance Struggle, Path

finder Press, New York, 1 97 1 .
4.Quoted in "Palestine and the Jew s" by Eli Lobel, essay in

The Arab World and Israel, Monthly Review Press, New York,
1 970.
5 . Cf. " L F . Stone Reconsiders Z ionism," by Marie Syrkin,

Gold a Meir ' s b iographer, in Midstream, October 1 967.
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Notes
1 . Falsafat ath-thawra, Cairo, Dar al-Ma ' arif, no d ate (" Ikhtarna
laka" Collection, 3 ) p. 69; cf. French tr anslation of Gamal
Abdel Nasser ' s La Philosophie de la rev olution, C air o, p.
5 3 f.
2 . Ra ' if Khouri, "Al-q adiyya al-falastiniyya" in a t- Tariq, Beirut,

M arch 3 1 , 1 94 6, p. 2 .
I
� 3 . Mashro u al-m ithaq, 2 1 M ayou 1 9 62 , ( Cair o) , maslahat
t al-isti 'lamat, p. 1 1 9.
i
i 4. Al-Ahram, April 2 , 1 9 65.
�
t
5. I tried t o at least outline these nuances in m y article " Les
Arabes et Israel" in Revue francaise de science politique, vol.
XV I, No. 4, August 1 9 66, pp. 7 8 5-7 98.
I
1
I
6. Le co nflit judeo-arab e, Juifs et Ara b es face a l 'avenir, Paris,
Maspero , 1 9 6 1 (" C ah iers Libres" Collection, 2 0-2 1 ). I made
a lengthy and det ailed critique of this in Verite-Liberte, No.
I 1 6- 1 7 , Februa ry-M arch 1 9 62 .
I �
!
7. R. Misr ah i, "Les Israeliens, les Arabes et l a terre" in Les
Temp s Modernes, No. 1 4 7- 1 4 8 , May-June 1 95 8 , pp. 2 1 83-
2209.
I 8. France- Observateur, April 2 , 1 9 6 6 , p. Sf.
I 9. In the article quo ted above.
I 1 0. There is a great deal of confusion and m any inaccurate

generalizations in all this. Let us call attention, in passing,
only to th e fact that prior to World War I Palestine was con-
I·
1 00 Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?
sidered geographically to be a part of Syria. Z ionist leader

Arthur Rupp in ' s rem arkable report on the economic p otential
of the region takes as its title Syrien als Wirtschaftsg eb iet [Syria
as an Economic Region] (2 nd edition, Berlin-Wein, B. Harz,
1 92 0 ; th e 1 st edition was in 1 9 1 7 ), although his obj ectiv e
is obviously to lay the groundwork for Palestinian coloniz a
tio n. The rur al comm unity with a periodic redistribution of lots
is not the "Ottoman property sys tem," but one of the forms
of c omm on tenu re. Statistics are not av ailable on how widec
spread it was. According to Rup p in ( in the w ork already men
tioned ), the sy stem w as in the p r ocess of disin tegr ating and
private property had b een established in "many villages" of
"Syria." The idea, repeated a thousand times over by Zionist
prop agand a, that Palestine was a desert at the beginning of
the twentieth century, is absolutely false.
1 1 . In his apologetic fervor, Misrahi blithely confuses the b an

on ab senteeism by the landlord with a b an on employing w age
earners. I direct him to Zionist Andre Chouraqui, who writes:
" The contracts [of the J. N. F. ] are generally m ade with the
follow ing c onditions: The farmer is obligated to w ork the land
himself, . . . to recruit the agricultur al or industrial labor force
that will be needed to improve the land from among the
p ioneers of Israel." ( L 'Etat d 'Israel, Paris, P. U. F. , 1 9 5 5 ,
p. 9 8 ). In 1 9 5 7 , agricultur al w orkers m a d e u p two-fifths o f the
work force in agriculture, and the r ate w a s increasing due to
th e fact that they were a higher proportion of the new
immigrants ( S. Sitton, Israel, imm igration et croissance, Paris,
Cuj as, 1 9 63 , p. 2 1 4 ). France, without any recourse to Biblical
mythology, reached a position that was tw ice as revolutionary
( using Misrahi' s criterion ) since only one-fifth of its agricultural
work force consisted of wage earners.
1 2 . Let' s add to this the frequent stereotype, graphically cap

tured by the caricaturist Dosh, which collectiv ely p ortrays Israel
as an underd og, an unfortunate, naiv e, and tiny people that
does its best in th e face of fierce and gr oundless hostility from
all sides. It is an im age that resembles ( among others ) the one
of France, in the eyes of Michelet and Hugo, as the disinterested
supp orter of j ust ca uses that is crucified by preying p owers
as th e sad result of a too generous idealism. All this am ounts
to nothing but nation alist ideological myths.
1 3 . G. Delah ache, " Un v oyage d ' etudes" ( in Cahiers de la

Notes 101
q uinzaine, 5 th series, 6th c ahier, Dec. 1 904 , pp. 69- 1 1 6 ), p . 9 6.
1 4 . S. M. Dubnow, Die neueste Geschichte des judischen Vo lkes

( 1 78 9 - 1 9 1 4 ), Berlin, Judischer Verlag, 1 92 0- 1 92 3 , 3 vol. , vol.
I I I; French translation Simon Doubnov, His toire m oderne du
p euple juij, Paris, Payot, 1 9 3 3 , vol. II. The usual ideas ab out
the history of anti- Semitism and the reactions of the Jews to it
are often marked by the most deplorable ignorance, even
among people wh o are intensely involv ed in the "Jewish prob
lem" and wh o get their m aterial on this subj ect published. Pre
cise conditions that existed during the . decades of Hitlerism
tend. to be transposed into the p a st. For inform ation on the
r eb irth of anti- Semitism after 1 88 1 and the ex act political con
ditions that characterized it, see, for ex ample, J ames Park ' s
good populariz ation, An Enemy of the People, An tisem itism,
Harmondswor th, Penguin Books, 1 94 5 (Penguin Books, No.
52 1 ).
1 5. S. M. Dubnow, in the w ork already mentioned ( Germ an

text), v ol. I I I, p. 32 7 f.
1 6. Cf. the texts by Ahad H a ' am and Isaac Epstein ( 1 907 )

quo ted by M. Perlmann, " Chapters of Arab-Jewish Diplomacy,
1 9 1 8 - 1 922 " ( in Jewish Social Studies, New York, v ol. V I, no.
2, April 1 94 4 , pp. 1 2 3-1 54 ), pp. 1 2 3- 1 2 4 .
1 7 . Leon Pinsker, Au to-Emancipa tion, French tr anslation by

J. Schulsinger, Cairo-Alex andria, 1 944 ( Collection " Les ecrits
j uifs"), p. 69f.
1 8. Ib id. , p . 7 9f.
1 9. Ib id. , p. 92.
2 0. Ib id. , pp. 94 -9 6.
2 1 . Ibid. , p . 96.
2 2 . Th. Herzl, L 'Etat Juif, French tr anslation, Paris, Lipschutz,

1 92 6, pp. 92-95 .
2 3. That is, the doctrine of Hovevei Zion, "the Lovers of

Zion," a Palestinophile movement of Russian Jew s b eginning
in the 1 88 0 s. Without involving any clear politic al outlook,
it sought to regenerate the Jewish people by establishing Jewish

agricultural colonies in the Promised Land. The legal names
taken in 1 8 90 by the groups inspired by this ideal is signifi
cant: Society for the encouragement of Jewish agricultur al and
·
manual w orkers in Syria and Palestine.
2 4 . "One of the people" ( in Hebrew ), the pseud onym of Asher

Ginzberg ( 1 8 5 6- 1 92 7 ) , a Rus sian Jewish writer and one of
the most impressive thinkers of the nationalist tendency. Political
Zionism p aid no attention to many of his w arnings, and con
gratulates itself for not having done s o. But the b alance-sheet
has not yet been drawn.
2 5 . Herzl, ibid. , p. 2 3 .
2 6. Ib id. , p. 9 5 .
2 7 . A discussion o f this c an be found, for ex ample, in Marcel

Bernfeld, Le sionisme, etude de dro it international public, Paris,
J ouve, 1 92 0 , p. 399 ff.
2 8 . Tex t in Bernfeld, for ex ample, ib id. , p. 42 7 , n. 1 . Plehve

promises Z ionism "moral and m aterial supp ort on the d ay
certain of the practical measures it takes serve to reduce the
Jewish population in Russia." An account of the congenial meet
ing b etween Herzl and Plehve is in Andre Chouraqui, A Man
Alone, The Life of Theodore Herzl, J erusalem, Keter B o oks,
1 97 0 , p. 2 3 0ff. Plehve was b rought d own the follow ing year
by the Social- Revolutionary terrorist Yegor Sazonov .
2 9. ''My warmest adherent so far is the Pressburg anti- Semite

Iv an von Simonyi . . . " wrote Herzl on M arch 4, 1 89 6 ( A.
Chour aqui, A Man Alone, p. 1 0 6 ); Witte, the Czar ' s finance
minister, explained to Herzl: "I used to say to Alex ander I I I:
' If it w ere p o ssible, Your M aj esty, to drown the six or seven
million Jews in the Black Sea, I should be p erfectly s atisfied.
But that is not possible, so we must let them live. ' " And, when
Herzl told him th at he was counting on certain signs of en
couragement from the Russian governm ent, he replied: "But
we g iv e the Jews encouragement to emigr ate - a good k ick
ing, for ex ample . " ( ib id. , p. 2 35 f. ) Herzl recognized: " They
. .
w ill h old it against me, with all the reason in the w o rld, that
I am serving the anti- Semites' purpose by declaring tha t we
Notes 103
are a people, one people. " ( ib id. , p. 1 99 ). I n his vision o f th e

birth o f the State o f Israel, h e saw the "liberated" Jews ac
know ledging: " The anti- Semites w ere right But let us not be
j ealous , for we, tpo, will be happy. " ( ib id., p. 1 67 ; cf. also
p. 2 1 5 ). I beg the reader to observe that all I am doing re
garding Herzl ' s attitude is using his own Jewish State and
his biography, written by the Z ionist Andre Chouraqui. There
is much m ore that could be s aid, for ex ample, as the w ork
of Mme. Leonhard ( Arab-Dutch Institute), which is based on
prim ary sources, shows. She gave a well-documented survey
of it at the Mutualite on December 9, 1 9 �6.
30. Cf. the observations on this - still valid, in my opmwn,

in my "Stalinist" article, "Sionisme et socialisme" ( in La Nouv elle
Critique, No. 4 3 , February 1 95 5 , pp. 1 8-4 8 ) p. 32 f. Details
ough t to be added in particular dealing with the Haavara
("transfer") agreement between Hitler' s Reich and the Jewish
Agency to facilitate the emigration of Germ an Jew s to Palestine,
cf. L. Hirszowicz, "Nazi Germany and the Palestine Partition
Plan" ( in Middle Eastern Studies, vol. I, No. 1 , October 1 964 ,
pp. 4 0-65 ), p. 4 5 f. and Les Archiv es secretes de la Wilhelm
strasse, V, book I I, Paris, Plon, 1 954 , pp. 5 , 2 5-2 8 , 14 7 , etc.
" This Germ an measure, dictated by internal policy consider a
tions, virtually favors the c onsolidation of Jud aism in Pal
estine and speeds up the form ation of a Palestinian Jewish
state," acknowledged a circular-telegram from the German Min
ister of Foreign Affairs dated June 22 , 1 93 7 ( ib id. , p. 3 ).
After discussion of this subj ect in various levels of the Germ an
administr ation, the staff adviser Clodius noted on J anuary 2 7 ,
1 93 8 : " The question of emigr ation tow ard Palestine b y the
Jews of Germ any . . . has once m ore, by decision of the Fueh
rer, b een settled in the d irection of h aving it continue" ( p. 2 8 ).
3 1 . General outline in G. Lenczow ski, The Middle East in

World Affairs, 3 rd ed. , Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1 9 62 ,
p. 67 ff. ; m ore details in George Antonius, Th e Arab Awaken
ing, the Story of th e Arab Na tional Mov ement, New York,
1 9 6 5 , p. 24 3 ff. and especially in the massive work by
Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration, Lond on, Vallentine
and Mitchell, 1 9 6 1 .
32 . Ch aim Weizmann, Trial and Error, New York, H arper &

Bros. , 1 9 4 9 , p. 2 0 0 .
33 . Ib id. , p. 1 78 .
34. This w a s not, a s Weizmann believed, the only opposition

to lead to a modification of the draft declaration in the direc
tion of taking the rights of non-Jews a little more into con
sideration. But it did contribute to this.
35. Weizma nn, ib id. , p. 2 0 5 .
3 6. "Too long have y o u been tormented under the iron Mus

covite yok e ( unter dem eisernen m osk ow itischen Joch)," elo
quently states the proclam ation to the Jews of Poland from
the High Command of the Germ an and Austro- Hungarian ar
mies in August- September 1 9 1 4 . The full flavor of this violent
denunciation of the Czarist pogrom s and anti- Semitism can
be appreciated in light of subsequent developm ents ( tran
scription of the Yiddish tex t in Latin scrip t in H. L. Strack,
Judischdeutsch e Texte, Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1 9 1 7 , p. 9f. ) The
Ge.rm an and Austro-Hungarian Social Dem ocratic p a rties are
. known to have also used the alib i of a struggle against reac
tionary and anti- Semitic Czarism as a way of j ustifying their
supp ort to their governments during the w ar.
3 7 . Cf. Lloyd George' s d eclaration to the Palestinian Royal

Commission in 1 93 6 : " The Zionist leaders gave us a definite
promise that, if the Allies committed themselves to giving fa
cilities for the establishment of a national home for the J ew s
in Palestine, they w ould do their b e s t t o rally Jewish senti
ment and support throughout the w orld to the Allied cause.
They kept their word." Ex panding on proof of this before
the House of Commons in 1 93 7 , he stated that the Z ionists
"w ere helpful in America and in Russia, which at that m o
m ent w as j ust walking out and leaving us alone" ( quoted by
Lenczow ski in the w ork already cited, p. 8 1 f. ).
3 8 . Details in L. Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 5 3 3 ff.

Cf. als o K. J. Herrm ann, "Politic al Response to the B alfour
Declaration in Imperial Germany," in Middle East Journal,
X IX, 3 , Summer 1 9 6 5 , pp. 303-32 0 .
3 9 . Cf. George- Samne, La Syrie, Paris, Bossard, 1 92 0, a pro

French work , oriented along this line. After p ages th a t re
veal a great deal of p erception, chapter XV, "Judaism e et Sion
isme" ( p . 3 96 ff. ), concludes by proposing to the Zionists Jew-
Notes 10 5
ish autonomy within a Syrian confederation "under the tem

p orary shield" of Syria' s great, "loyal and disinterested" friend
France ( p . 4 2 6 ).
4 0 . Trial and Error, edition mentioned ab ove, p. 1 92 , for

ex ample.
4 1 . Ib id. , p. 1 9 0.
4 2 . The ex tent of the Ara b c ontribution ( F ais al' s troops, hos

tility of Arab public opinion tow ard the .Porte) has b een much
d eb ated. It is reasonable to b elieve that although it was not
unimportant, it was not decisiv e either.
4 3 . Cf. the article by P. A. Alsberg, " The Arab question in the

diplomacy of the Zionis t Ex ecutive prior to the F irst World
W ar" ( in Hebrew ), in Shiva t Tzion, 4 , 1 95 6- 1 95 7 , pp. 1 6 1 -
2 09 .
4 4 . In a v ery remarkable w ay, h e let Herzl know i n June 1 8 96

that "the Turkish Emp ir e d oes not belong to me, but rather
to the Turkish people. I cannot distribute one piece of it. Let
the J ew s save their billio ns! When my Empire is divided up,
they will be able to h ave Palestine for nothing. But what is
divided up will be only our cadaver. I will not allow a vivi
section. " ( R. Patai, ed. ) , The Complete Diaries of Theodor
Herzl, New York, 1 9 60, I, p. 37 8 , quoted from Neville Man
del, article mentioned b elow (p. 2 3, n. 4 5 ), p. 8 7 .
4 5. Cf. A Chour aqui, A Man Alone, p. 1 83 ff. ; J o a n H aslip,

Le sultan, la tragedie d 'Abdul Hamid, French tr anslation,
Paris, H achette, 1 9 60 , p. 2 2 6.
4 6. N. Mandel article referred to in the following note, p. 87.
4 7 . Neville M andel, " Turks, Arabs and Jew ish Immigration

into Palestine, 1 882-1 9 1 4 ," in St. Antony 's Papers, No. 1 7
(Middle Eas tern Affa irs, No. 4 ), London, Oxford Univ ersity
Press, 1 9 6 5 , pp. 77-1 08.
48. N. Mandel, ib id. , p. 1 04 f. ; M. Perlm ann, "Chapters of

Arab-Jewish Diplomacy 1 9 1 8- 1 92 2 " ( in Jewish Social Studies,
New York, vol. V I, No. 2 , April 1 944 , pp. 1 2 3- 1 54 ), p. 1 2 7.
49. N. Mandel, ib id., p . 1 0 6.
5 0 . For example, already the J ewish American j ustice M ayer

Sulzberger, who around 1 9 1 7 showed the contradiction be
tween elementary principles of democracy and a Z ionist proj
ect that made th e fate o f the Palestinians depend o n people
from the outside ( referred to by Lenczow ski in the w ork al
ready mentioned , p. 3 7 5 ). Even more remark able, and m ore
concrete in its p ercep tiveness, is the letter from J acques Bigard,
secretary of the Universal Israelite Alliance, to Joseph Neham a,
director of the Alliance in Salonic a, d ated May 3, 1 9 1 8 ( text
in A Chouraqui, L 'Alliance israelite univ erselle et la Rena is
sance juiv e contemporaine, Paris, P. U. F . , 1 9 6 5 , p p . 4 7 0-4 72 ).
5 1 . Cf. the eloquent appraisal from someone who at that time

was only a young Americ an Zionist s ocialist activist in a let
ter from Palestine, where she had j us t arrived, to her brother
in-law, on August 24, 1 92 1 : "If we dig in here, England will
come to our aid . . . It is not the Arabs whom the English
w ill pick to have colonize Palestine, it is we." ( in Marie Syrkin,
Go lda Meir, French translation, Paris , Gallimard, 1 96 6 , p. 63 ).
5 2 . Elizabeth Monroe, Britain 's Moment in the Middle East,

1 9 14-1 9 5 6 , London, Ch atto and Windus, 1 9 63 , p. 3 9 ; cf. G.
Antonius, Arab Awakening, p. 2 4 6 f.
5 3 . Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 1 88 .
54. Andre Chouraqui, Theodore Herzl, p. 2 5 6 .
5 5 . I w a s convinced b y M . Perlmann ' s article, Chap ters of

Arab-Jewish Diplomacy, referred to ab ove. It is quite true that
G. Antonius has sought to minimize F aisal' s concessions and
to excuse them ( Arab Awakening, p. 2 85 f. ). But he publishes
the text of the Weizm ann- Fais al agreement with its dang erous
v agueness on the status of Palestine, whose b oundaries had to
be fixed with the Arab state (pp. 4 3 7-4 3 9 ) . I believe Sylvia G.
H a im is overly h arsh tow ard him in " The Arab Awakening:
a Source for the Historian?'' (in Die Welt des !slams, u. s . ,
vol. I I, Leid en-Koln, 1 95 3 , pp. 2 3 7-2 5 0 ). Antonius is a his
torian who is p olitically involved . Would to heaven all p o
litically involved historians had kept things as w ell in pro
p ortion and b een as obj ective as he!
Notes 107
5 6. This i s certainly w h a t j u stified Faisal ' s attitude in his own

eyes. Cf. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 2 3 6ff; Antonius, Ara b
Awakening, p. 2 8 0 ff; Perlmann, Chapters, p. 1 3 0ff; A Gian
nini, L 'ultima fase della q uestio ne orientale, 1 91 3-1 932, Roma,
Istituto per !' Oriente, 1 933, p. 2 7 8ff; E. Rossi, Docum enti
sull 'orig ine e g li sv ilupp i della questione ara b a, 1 8 75-1 944,
Roma, Istituto p er ! ' Oriente, 1 944 , p. 72 ff.
5 7 . Weizmann, ib id. , p. 2 4 5 .
5 8 . Ib id. , p. 24 7.
59. Antonius, Arab Awakening, p. 4 3 7 ff; Ros s i, Documenti .

p. 72 ff; Weizm ann, ib id. , p. 24 7 lessens the bite a little.
60. Ibid. , p . 247.
61 . Rossi, Docum enti . . . , p. 1 1 3 ff; A Giannini, Documenti

p er la storia della pace orientale, 1 91 5-1 932, Roma, Istituto
per l' Oriente, 1 93 3 , p. 98ff. The B alfour D eclaration w as
alre ady ratified by the Treaty of Sevres with Turkey ( Au
gust 1 0, 1 92 0 ) in article .95 ( Giannini, Documenti . . . , p. 44f).
62 . Alex andre Bein, Introduction au Sionisme, Jerusalem,

Rub in Mass, 1 94 6 ( Sionisme, les faits et les idees: Publications
of the Youth D epartment of the World Z ionist Organization),
p. 1 05 .
6 3 . Brought out very well in Nathan Weinstock' s interesting

article Israel, le sionisme et la lutte des classes, in Partisans,
No. 1 8, D ec. 1 9 64 , Jan. 1 9 65 , pp. 5 7 -63 and No. 2 0, April
M ay 1 9 65, pp. 2 0-32 .
64 . B ein, Introduction au Sio nisme, p . 1 3 9 .
65. Arthur Rup pin, Les Juifs dans le monde m oderne, French
translation, Paris, Payot, 1 934 , pp. 380-3 82 .
66. Cf. A Ruppin, ib id. , p. 380 f. ; T. R. Feiwel, L 'Ang lais,

le Juif et l 'Arabe en Palestine, French translation, Paris, Ed.
de France, 1 93 9 , p. 1 2 2 ff. English translation in The Israel
Arab Reader, ed. by W alter Laqueur, New York, B antam,
1 9 69, p. 4 5 .
67. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 2 9 1 .
68.W . Stein, in Vallentine's Jewish Encyclopaedia, ed. by A M .

Hyamson a n d A M. Silberm an, London, Sh apiro, Vallentine
and Co. , 1 93 8 , p. 552 b.
69. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 34 0. The present glorifi

cation of this individual in Israel is disturbing. In 1 95 3 I
quoted (from L. Dennens, Where the Ghetto Ends, New York,
A. H. King, 1 934, p. 2 3 3 ) the hymn sung by fashionable Jew
ish-Polish youth p arading in brown uniforms and throwing
rocks through the office wind ows of left-wing newspapers :
"Germ any for Hitler! - Italy for Mussolini! - Palestine for us!
Long L ive Jabotinsky! " Jud ah L. M agnes b itterly wrote the
following in 1 94 6 regarding J ab otinsky' s ( prem a ture) plans:
"He found a big audience among the Poles, the Poles who
are now carrying out pogroms. They wanted to get rid of the
Jews in Poland and consequently accepted his evacuation plan"
( in Towards Un ion in Palestine, J erus alem, Thud Association,
1 94 7, p. 1 7 ). The Revisionist m ovem ent in fact received active
supp ort from the Polish right until around 1 9 38.
7 0 . N . Mandel, Turks, Ara bs and Jewish Imm igration . . . ,

p. 95 f.
71. E. Ros si, Docum enti . . . , p. 1 1 4 .
7 2 . Robert Abdo Ghanem, Les elements deformation d 'un Etat

juif en Palestine, Beirut, Printing and Publishing Association,
1 94 6 ( Law department of the University of Lyon, French
School of L aw in B eirut). The d ate the thesis w a s defended
is April 1 6, 1 94 6.
7 3 . A p articularly revealing document is the work by the

spok eswoman for the Stern group, Gueoula C ohen, Souvenirs
d 'une jeune fille v iolente, French text adapted by M. Politi,
Paris, Gallim ard, 1 9 64 ( " L ' Air du temps," 1 97 ), a monument
of semi-demented nationalist hysteria. Not for one instant does
the idea ev en faintly occur to her that the Arabs in whose
midst she operates and whose language, b eing a Yemenite,
she speaks might have something to say about the fate of
''her country. "
74 . According to Mich a el Bar Zohar, Ben Gurian, the Armed

Notes 1 09
Prophet, Englewood Cliffs, N. J. , 1 9 68, p. 6 8 . Cf. · the Stern

ist Gueoula Cohen: [Great Britain formerly] "w as all smiles
and pointed out the enemy for us to comb at: Nazi Germ any.
Already in 1 94 0, the visionary Stern had b een able to detect
clearly the d ouble-dealing b ehind the smile, and had announced
who the real enemy to b e defeated w as: Great Britain" ( Sou
v enirs d 'une jeune jille v io lente, p. 1 2 7 f. ) ; "every power in
terested in s eeing British imperialism liquidated [must be con
sidered] a natur al ally" (p. 2 8 9 ).
7 5 . Martin Buber, " The Bi-National Approach to Zionism"

( in Towards Union in Palestine, Essays on Zionism and Jew
ish-Arab Co op eration, ed. by M. Buber, J. L. Magnes, E. Simon,
Jerus alem, Thud Association, 1 94 7 , pp. 7-1 3 ), p. 1 1 .
7 6. Judah L. Magnes, "A Solution through Force?" ( in the s ame

collection, pp. 1 4-2 1 ) . Magnes, a man of admirable conscience,
was disheartened to see his ideas defeated and fled the young
State of Israel to die in the United States.
7 7 . In G. Lenczowski, The Middle East . . . , p. 5 5 3 , n. 9.

But on the other h and, an American congressman coming
out of a meeting with Roosevelt stated: "I feel that the Presi
dent will be the new Moses who will lead the children of Israel
out of the desert'' (Palestine Post, March 6, 1 944 ).
7 8 . G. Lenczow ski, ib id. , p. 396.
79. See, for ex ample, the disclosures made by Pvt. Clifford A ,

a soldier in the service of His M aj esty, to J . F . Rolland in Ce
Soir, Apr il 1 0, 1 94 7 . On the confusion of English responsib ili
ties at all levels and what it was that c ame to impel the English
sold iers on the spot to determine that a pro-Arab policy held
sw ay in L ondon, cf. the probing account by J. and D. Kimche,
Both Sides of the Hill, Britain and the Palestine War, London,
Seeker and W arburg, 1 9 60, p. 35 ff.
8 0. J. and D. Kimche, ib id. , p. 94 .
8 1 . E. Monroe, Britain 's Moment . . . , p. 1 69. Cf. J. and D.

Kimche, Bo th Sides . . . , p. 86.
82 . Related by the head of th e Irgun, Menachem Begin, The

Rev o lt, Sto ry of the Irgun, Tel Aviv, 1 95 1 , p. 34 8 ff. Com-
pare J. and D. Kimche, Both Sides . pp. 82 , 1 1 3. Case

of interv ention in favor of the J ews, ib id. , pp. 8 5 , 94 .
8 3 . Cf. E. Monroe, Britain 's Mom ent, p. 1 63ff; J. and D. Kim

che, Both Sides of the Hill, p. 2 1 ff.
84. Ib id. , p. 78 f.
8 5 . On the "great plan" of D. Ben Gurion to reach a tacit agree

ment with King Abd allah on a partition of Palestine under
the aegis of Great Britain (which had b ecome more under
standing), a plan that the actors in the drama did not know
about and which explains many of the puzzling twists and
turns in th e struggle, cf. the posthum ous b ook written in pris on
by Israel Beer, Bitachon Yisrael ( The Security of Israel), Tel
Aviv, ed. Amikam, 1 966, p articularly chapter II (pp. 1 1 5-
2 1 5 ). It is to be hoped that this important b ook by a m an
with access to first-h and inform ation w ill be translated into
a European language.
86. J. and D. Kimche, Bo th Sides . . . , pp. 4 5 , 64 .
8 7 . Meticulous account by A -M. Goichon, " Les resp onsabilites

de la guerre de Palestine" ( in Correspondance d ' Orient, Etudes,
Brus s els, vol. V I I, 1 965, pp. 3-2 8 ). Cf. Glubb Pasha, Soldat
av ec les Arab es, French tr anslation, Paris, Plon, 1 9 5 8 , p. 4 3
and especially J. and D . Kimche, Both Sides , and I . Beer,
. . .
Bitach on . . , chap. I I.
.
8 8 . Cf. Glubb Pasha, ib id. , p. 7 3 f. But he ex aggerates the Is

r a eli figures ( 65 , 00 0 men). It w ould seem that m ore confi
dence can b e placed in the figures given by J. and D. Kimche,
Bo th Sides , p. 1 60 f.
. . .
8 9 . Ib id. , p . 2 2 3 ; compare pp. 2 33, 2 4 3 .
9 0 . Cf. Lenczowski, The Middle East . . . , p . 3 9 8 ff. and for

ex ample J. and D. Kimche, Bo th Sides . . . , p. 2 1 8 ff.
9 1 . Lenczow ski, ib id. , p. 398 , n. 39; J. and D. Kimche, p. 2 2 3 .

The Egyp tian s g o t around the difficulty by pillaging British
stor clwuses in the Suez canal zone. The volunteers of the Lib
eration Army w ere supplied particularly b adly (J. and D.
Kimche, p. 8 1 f. ) .
Notes 111
92 . One can read about all this in the informative recollec

tions of C olonel B. K agan, Com bat secret p o ur Israel, Paris,
H achette, 1 9 63, w ith a preface by J. Larteguy which could
have b een dispensed with and which simply contradicts the
auth or ( on Czech aid). Compare J. and D. Kimche, Both
Sides. ., p. 2 04 ff.
.
9 3 . Cf. Walter Schw arz, Th e Arabs in Israel, Lond on, Faber

and F aber, 1 95 9 , a b o ok whose tone is remark ably fair; writ
ten by a British j ournalist who spent eighteen months in Is
rael, traveling with his wife by donkey in the Arab s ectors.
94 . Only a racist or mystical concept of "Jewishness" (with

the latter being common among left-wing Europeans ) can
explain shock that conditions that everywhere else bring about
a state w ith a racist mentality ( an ethnic cleav age coinciding
w ith a s oc ial cleavage) are also at work in the case of Jews.
95 . The h is tory of these efforts has b een especially traced by

th e militant Orientalist Aharon Cohen of Map am. Cf. finally
his huge book Israel and the Arab World, New York, Funk &
W agnalls, 1 97 0, 5 7 6 pp. On one of these efforts, in 1 93 6 ,
'
where the Arabs w ere ready to accept a high annual quota
of Jewish immigrants in terms of prevailing criteria, cf. the
documents edited by Ner, vol. 1 2 , No. 9- 1 0, July-August
1 9 6 1 , p. 24 ff. In 1 94 3, yet another Arab offer of a binational
state with equality for b o th peoples was spurned by the Jew
ish Agency; cf. Nathan Chofshi, in Towards Union in Pal
estine, p. 39.
96. Marie Syrkin, Go lda Meir, French tr anslation, Paris, Galli

m ard, 1 9 66, p. 1 33 .
9 7 . Including certain Arabs before the spread of nationalist

ideology and anti- Z ionist theoretical arguments among the
m asses d id aw ay with these kinds of attitudes. Cf. N. Mandel,
Turks, Arabs and Jewish Immigration, p. 8 9 .
98. Cf. the texts I collected i n Voies Nouv elles, N o . 9 (June

1 95 9 ) , p p . 2 6-3 1 .
99. I read th e follow ing in a very left-w ing Zionist publication:

" It is the attitude tow ard Israel, the historical homeland of the
J ew ish people, that acts as a kind of b arometer for m any re-
gim es, for all governm ents . . . One is not pr ogressive, but
[and, it might b e added, also] anti- Israeli . . . This anti- Is
raelism is not a blemish in this or that blue sky: it is an ab
s olute evil w orthy only of a reactionary m ind" ( Cahiers Ber
nard Lazare, No. 2 1 -2 2 , Nov.-Dec. 1 9 63, p. 2 5 ). A senseless
attempt to c onfer a sacred character on a state on the basis
of nothing more than the J ew ishness of the m aj ority of its
citizens! If this is not racism, what is?
1 00 . Letter from Engels to K autsky, Septemb er 1 2 , 1 88 2 ,

quoted and exp a nd ed upon b y Lenin, The Right of Nations
to Self-Determination, New York , International Publishers,
p. 1 1 4 .
1 0 1 . I c a n foresee the outcry against such a statement, going

as it does against the v arious neo-Marxist philosophies and
ideologies built up over the p ast hundred years out of dis
parate materials, drawn from the ideas, arguments, feelings,
etc. ,. of Marx and Engels, and made into a system in con
texts that w ere quite different. Therefore I will make myself
very clear. It s eems to me undeniable th at, first, man' s b io
logic al condition which has scarcely changed since the Paleo
lithic age, and second, the most general ch aracteristics of
every possible society, and finally third, the v ery general char
acteristics th at, while d oubtless not eternal, nonetheless tran
scend the various particular social formations existing since
the b eginnings of hum an history ( or at least since the neo
lithic rev olution) h av e together conditioned a b o dy of very
general and very lasting p sychological traits that characterize
historic al m a n. He w ill no doubt change even so far as these
points are concerned. But the experiment of h alf a century
of Soviet society with no priv ate property in the means of
production shows that he resists the effort to abolish these
psychological tr aits. This goes against the ideology of Marx
himself. It conform s to his sociol ogy, or rather to a sociol
ogy b as ed on the principles he defined. Furtherm ore, occa
sionally M arx himself spoke of huma n nature; cf. references
cited by S. F. Bloom, The World of Na tions, New York, Colum
b ia Univ ers ity Press, 1 94 1 , p. 2 , and in Journal of the His
tory of Ideas, 7 , 1 94 6 , p. 1 1 9 .
1 0 2 . In its early stages, the Soviet Union offered the Jews

three possib ilities to choose from: assimilation, cultur al au
tonomy for the Yiddish-speaking J ewish "nationality" in areas
Notes 113
it already occupied, or an autonom ous Jewish region. The w ay

the p olicy tow ard nationalities in the Stalin er a resulted in
practice in thwarting assimilation; the w ay the war resulted
in the auth orities cap itulating to the persistent anti- Semitism
of the mas ses that suddenly surfaced openly in full force; and
the w ay the persistence of Jewish national feelings th at was
caused by this whole p olicy and d iscovered with the arrival
of the first Israeli amb assador prompted Stalin to unleash
his clearly anti- Semitic m easures - all this is p art of a long
history th at cannot b e gone into here and that has nothing
to do with any anti- Semitic "es sence" .of Marx ism, as R. Mis
rahi b elieves. But the Birobidj an failure, which Zionists feed
up on, is not fraught with signific ance. It proves th at in the
first period , the other solutions offered to the Sov iet Jews did
not meet w ith too many obj ections from them, and that the
idea of B irobidj an h ad been conceived without investing it
with v ery attractive qualities. This only g o t w orse as time
went on.
1 03 . A dynamic th at is described w ell by Michael Ionides,

Div ide and Lose, the Ara b Rev o lt of 1 955-1 958, London,
Geoffrey Bliss, 1 9 60 , with regard to a later period, but a good
p art of which is valid for the period 1 92 0- 1 94 8 .
1 04 . Cf. for ex ample th e g o o d account b y Paul Seb ag, La

Tunisie, essai de m onograph ie, Paris, Ed. Sociales, 1 95 1 ,
p . 3 6 f.
1 05 . About these confiscations, cf. the honest and w ell docu

mented account by W. Schw arz, The Ara bs in Israel, p. 96 ff. ;
more detail s in Don Peretz, Israel and the Palestine Arabs,
W a shington, The Middle East Institute, 1 95 8 ; the l aw s refer
red to can be found conv eniently translated in Fundamental
Laws of the State of Israel, J o seph B adi editor, New York,
Tw ayne Publishers, 1 96 1 . The collection of the review Ner,
edited in Israel by the cour ageous little group Thud, contains
many documents and protests on this theme. From Schw arz
let us quote the letter from its Central Committee ( among whom
w ere Martin Buber, E. Simon, S. Shereshevsky and the presi
dent of the Legal Committee of the Knesset) protesting "the
land s consolidation law, which really m eans theft of lands
for some people, for people who are inhab itants of the state.
They are farmers j ust like you. They are citizens of Israel
j u s t like you. There is only one d ifference b etween them and
you: they are Arab s and you are Jew s" ( Ner, April 1 9 5 3 ;
Schw arz, p. 1 02 ) See also the article b y S . Shereshevsky,
.
"Against the Agricultur al Land s C onsolid ation L aw" in Ner,

vol. X I I, No. 5-6, March-April 1 9 6 1 , pp. I-V. Regarding this
new law th at "the Ar abs with reason will regard as racist leg
islation d esigned to 'J ud aize Galilee' by ex pelling the Ar ab
population," the author rec alls the March 1 0 , 1 9 5 3 , land con
solidation law mentioned ab ove. Under the pretex t of "vital
needs of development, settlement and security . . . , innum er
able acts of inj ustice were perpetrated against those whose
lands w ere ' consolid ated' in this w ay, including fixed low
pric es, compens ation that in m any cases has not b een p aid
to this d ay, the m ean and insulting attitude tow ard the Arab
owners whose land s, and whose ancestors ' lands, w ere con
fiscated, ' merely b ecause the J ewish kibbutzim and m oshav im
want to add to their possessions, ' as [the socialist newspaper]
Haaretz puts it. " It c an be seen tha t a communal life style
by no m e ans renders the desire to appropriate ( c ollectively,
of course) the wealth of others impossible.
1 0 6. Statis tical Handbook of Middle Eastern Coun tries, Je

rus alem, J ewish Agency for Palestine, Economic Research In
stitute, 1 944, p. 1 0 ; J. Klatzmann, Les enseignements de { 'ex
perience israelienne, Paris, P. U. F. , 1 963 ( C ollection "Tiers
Mond e" ) , p. 2 8 5 .
1 07 . A guarded estimate that W . Schw arz ( p . 9 9 ) a rrives a t

after discussing the facts a t hand.
1 08. Let us note, moreover, tha t there are two sides to this
fact. The small Arab tenants on lands sold by b ig landholders,
who w ere ch ased off these lands by virtue of the sacros anct
rule providing for exclusiv ely Jewish labor, found no con
solation in the thought that strictly egalitarian relations were
going to ( sometimes) prev ail on this property.
1 09. This is a very complicated question. See A -M. Goichon ' s

articles i n the July and August-Sep temb er 1 9 64 issues o f Esprit.
The most common motive for the flight of the Ar abs appears
to have b een quite simply panic at the prospect of w ar, as in
Sp ain in 1 93 9 or France in 1 94 0 . In any case, there can be
no doubt th at the Israeli Or adour, the d elib erate massacre
the night of April 9-1 0 , 1 94 8 , by the Irgun of 2 54 men,
women, and children in the Arab village of D ir Yassin, had
Notes 115
a dramatic effect on this flight. Th e only p erson to deny that

it was a m a s s acre w as the head of the lrgun, Menachem Begin,
w h o nonetheless bragged about the effect of the "lies" about
D ir Yassin: "All the J ewish forces proceeded to advance throu gh
H aifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs b egan fleeing
in p anic, shouting Dir Yassin! " ( The Rev olt, Story of the Ir
gun, p. 1 6 5 , corroborated by J. and D. Kimche, Both
Sides . . , p . 1 24 ; cf. M. Bar Zoh ar, Ben Gurian, the Armed
.
Prophe� pp. 1 0 7-1 08 ). M any J ews like the supreme leader

D. Ben Gurian hop ed, very logically, that the greatest possible
numb er of Arabs would leave. H.is hagiographer, Michael
B a r- Z oh ar, candidly writes: " The fewer [Arabs] there were liv
ing within the frontiers of the new Jewish state, the b etter he
w ould like it. . . . (While this might be c alled racialism, the
whole Z ionist m ov ement actually was based on the principle
of a purely J ewish c ommunity in Palestine. When various Zion
ist institutions app ealed to the Arabs not to leave the Jewish
State but to b ecome an integral p art of it, they w ere being
hyp ocritic al to some extent) . " ( Ben Gurian, p. 1 03f. ) It could
not have been said any b etter!
1 1 0. Walter Schw arz, The Arabs in Israel, London, F aber

and F aber, 1 95 9.
1 1 1 . Alex W eingrod, Israel, Group Relations in a New So

ciety, Lond on, Pall M all Press, 1 965 ( Institute of Race Re
lations), p. 7 0f.
1 1 2 . The annex ation of the non- Israeli West Bank by the

H ashemite Kingdom of Transj ordan, placing the Palestine
Arabs under a sov ereignty they did not w ant, was a conse
quence ( one Israel hop ed for ) of proclaiming the J ewish state
and of the 1 94 8 war.
1 1 3 . Rene M aunier, Sociologie co loniale, (I) , Introduc tion a

l 'etude du contact des races, Paris, Domat-M ontchrestien, 1 9 32,
p. 3 7 ; cf. p. 2 1 . Let us note, moreover, that for a long time,
as we could see in the texts m entioned above, the Zionists
readily and without b eing s elf-conscious used the terms "co
lonial" and "colonies" in the names of their institutions and in
their documents, whether official or not, etc . , to describ e their
plans.
1 1 4 . Cf. the article in which I developed this line of argument,

" Israel, une lutte de lib eration nationale?" ( in Partisans, No. 2 1 ,

June-August 1 9 65 , pp. 34-4 0 ).
1 1 5 . A key difference in comp arison to European anti- Semi

tism, where the anti- Semitic myth is based either on accusations
lacking even a shadow of a found ation or on the results of
a situation that was imposed on the J ews. The myth, by alone
giving them meaning, helped org anize im ag inary griev ances,
or when there w a s some truth to them, griev ances that w ere
not the product of th e free will of the Jewish groups but of
the s ocial s ituation in which they had b een forcibly placed
( the practice of usury, for example). Arab anti- Zionism, in
contrast, essentially develops out of a very real griev ance ( even
if some may wish to excuse or j ustify it), out of a situation
created by the free will of powerful Jewish groups proclaim
ing that they represent Jews as a whole. Only this real g riev
ance g ives some meaning to the anti- Semitic myths occasionally
put forward to "explain" it, and without it these myths lose
any p ow er they might have.
lnclex
Ab d allah, K ing, 7 4 , 7 7 , 1 1 0 B o rochov, D. B er, 29 , 3 1

Ab d el-K ader, A-R. , 3 0 , 7 0 , 8 3, Buber, M., 6 7 , 7 6
85 Bulgaria, 4 9
Ab dul H amid, Sultan, 4 8 , 5 0 , Bund ( Gener al Jewish Work ers
105 Union of Lithuania, Poland,
al-Afghani, J am al ad-din, 4 3 and Ru ssia) , 37
Afric a, 2 9 , 87 Burma, 72
Ah ad H a' am ( real name Asher
Ginzb erg), 39, 4 3 , 1 0 1 , 1 0 2 C ab et, E., 4 0
Alexander I I I, Czar, 1 0 2 Ch amberlain, J . , 3 6
Algeria, 1 1 , 3 1 , 64 , 9 0 Chour aqui, A. , 1 0 0
Aliy a, F ir st, 5 6 Churchill Memorandum, see
Allenby, E . , 5 3 White Paper ( 1 9 2 2 )
Amer ic an Z ionist Organiza Clemenceau, G . , 5 3
tion, 66 C ohen, A . , 1 1 1
Anti- Semitism, 12, 13, 19, 38, C ohen, G., 1 0 8 , 1 0 9
101, 104, 1 1 6; in Rus sia, Communist p arties, 2 0
38, 45 Congress of B a sel ( 1 8 9 7 ) , 44
Antoniu s, G., 46 Council of Ten, 54
Ar ab Higher Comm a nd� 70 Cromw ell, 0., 93
Arab Legion, 7 4 Czechoslovak i a, 75
Ar ab L iberation Army, 72,
1 10 Davar, 15
Argentina, 4 1 -2 Diaspora, 3 9 , 7 9 , 8 5
Armenians, 45 Dir Yassin, 1 14 -5
Arieli,Y. , 15 Donm es, 5 0
Austr alia, 8 6 88 , Druse revolt ( 1 9 2 5 -2 6 ) , 8 5
Dubnow, S., 3 8 -9
B aku nin, M., 8 3 -4
B alfour Decl aration, 19, 46- Egypt, 3 0 , 5 2 , 85
48, 52, 55, 56, 5 9 -6 1 , 7 6 Engels, F., 8 1 , 1 1 2
B ar K ochb a, 7 9 Ep stein, I., 10 1
B a sel program, 44 E shk ol, L . , 9 5
B eer, I., 74 Ethiopia, 8 0
Begin, M., 2 1 , 1 1 5 Etzel, see Irgun
B en-Aharon, I., 1 4
ben B ark a, M., 2 9 F aisal I, 5 3 , 54 , 5 6 , 7 6 -7 , 80,
B en Gurion, D . , 66, 1 1 0 , 1 1 5 1 0 5 , 1 0 6 , 1 07
Biltmore program, 66, 67 F alashas, 8 0
B irob idj ian, 8 5 , 1 1 3 FLN ( National Lib eration
\ B ol shevik s ( Russian), 4 7 Front, Algeria), 9 0
1
France, 48, 5 2 , 54 , 64, 7 5 , 86 , Irgun, 2 1 , 6 5 , 7 1 , 7 2 , 7 3 , 1 1 4 -

105 5
French Revolution, 8 1 I sraeli L abor Party, 1 5
Israeli Socialist Orga niz atio n
( M arxist), 14
Gendzier, I. , 9
General J ewish Worker s Union J ab o tinsky, V . , 2 1 , 22, 6 1 , 62,
of Lithu ania, Poland, and 68, 108
Russia, see Bund J amal Pa sha, 62
Germ any, 2 1 , 1 0 8 , 1 0 9 J a p an, 8 9
Ginzberg, A. , see Ahad Ha' a m J ew i sh Agency, 1 5 , 5 8 , 7 3 , 7 4 ,
Glubb, J . , 3 1 , 74, 1 1 0 1 03
Gordon, A. , 2 9 -30 J ewish Col onization Associa
Great Britain, 19, 47, 48, 5 1 , tion, 37
5 2 , 5 4 -5, 5 6 -8, 64, 6 5 , 66, J ew i sh Legion, 6 1
68, 7 1 , 7 2 , 7 5 , 86 J ew i sh N ational Fund ( J N F ) ,
Greece, 49, 7 2 3 2 , 100
Gromyko, A . , 3 1 Jewish Question, A Marxist In
Guy ana, 8 6 terpretation, The ( Leon), 1 1
Jewish State, Th e ( Herzl), 41
H a ' am, Ahad, see Ahad Jew s, Algeria, 85; Austria
H a ' am Hungary, 47, 104; China,
Haaretz, 19, 1 14 8 0 ; Cochin, 80; Ethiopia, 8 0 ;
H a avara ( Tr ansfer) Agree- Germ any, 47, 103, 104;
ment, 1 0 3 Great B ritain, 4 6 , 5 5 ; Kha
H aganah, 6 6 , 7 3 , 7 5 zar, 80; Poland, 104, 108;
H ashemite dynasty, 5 5 , 7 7 Rum ania, 40; Russia, 40 ,
Herzl, T . , 1 6 , 2 9 , 4 1 , 4 3 , 44, 4 7 , 5 5 , 1 0 1 -2 ; Southern Ar a
4 5 , 4 9 , 5 3 , 5 7 , 5 8 , 84 , 9 0 , b ia, 80; United States, 4 7 ,
102, 103, 105 55, 85
Histadrut, 1 4 , 64 J ordan, 1 4 - 1 5 , 3 1 , 9 5 . See also
Hitler, A. , 6 5 , 1 0 3 Transj ordan
Hovevei- Zionism, 4 3 , 1 0 1 -2
Hus sein, King, 1 7 K a shmir, 70
Hussein ( Sh arif of Mecc a ) , 4 7 , K atzn el son, B., 16
53 al-K aukj i, F awzi, 72
K eren Kay emet Le-Yisrael, see
Ib n Saud, King, 7 0 Jewish National Fund
Ihud, 1 1 3 Kerensky, A. , 4 7
Imperialism, British, 2 9 , 30, al-Khalidi, Nassif B ey, 50
109 ; Europ ean, 2 9 , 4 2 , 44, Kibbutz, 2 1 , 2 2 , 3 2 , 3 5 , 83,
45; u. s. , 29 1 14
India, 52 , 7 0 , 7 2 , 9 1 Kimche, D. and J . , 7 1 , 7 2 , 85
Ir.eland, 24, 9 3 -4 K orea, 2 1
Index 1 19
L awrence, T. E. , 5 3 Rumanian J ews look to, 4 0 ;

League of Nations, 55, 60, attitude o f Z ionists tow ard s,
61 3 7 , 4 1 -4, 5 1
L eb anon, 44, 5 2 , 57, 63, 8 5 , Palestinian r e sist ance m ov e
86 ment, 1 7 , 2 4 -5
L ehi, see Stern gr oup Palestinian Royal C ommis
L enin, V . , 8 1 , 8 3 sion, 1 04
Leon, A. , 1 0 Palestinians, 1 1 , 1 8 , 2 3 -4 , 54,
L ewanda, 3 9 67, 69, 7 6, 7 9 , 8 9 ; existence
Lilienblum, 3 9 ignored, 10, 19, 5 1, 108;
Lloyd George, D . , 5 3 , 1 0 4 and J ew ish settlement, 5 6 ,
60 ; peasants i n Israel, 3 2 ;
Magnes, J . L . , 22 , 6 8 , 1 08 , 1 0 9 refu gees, 1 6 -7 , 1 9 ; a n d "left"
M arx, K . , 3 1 , 8 1 , 8 3 , 84 , 1 1 2 Zionists, 2 1
Matzpen, 14 Philosophy of the Revolution
Mauritiu s, 9 1 ( N asser), 2 8
Meir, G., 74, 77 -8 , 1 0 6 Picot, G., 4 8
Metternich, K . , 4 0 Pieds Noirs, 9 0
Misrahi, R. , 3 0 , 3 1 , 3 2 , 8 5 , Pinsk er, L., 39, 40, 4 1, 42
100 , 1 1 3 Plehve, V., 4 5 , 1 0 2
Mont a gu, E . , 4 6 -7 Pompey, 7 9
My erson, G. , see Meir, G.
Revisionist Party, 5 8 , 5 9 , 6 1 ,
Nasser, G. , 2 8 62
N ational Congress o f Popular Rh od esia, 1 1
F orces ( Egypt ) , 28 Roosevelt, F . , 7 0 , 1 09
Ner, 1 1 3 Rothschild, L o rd, 4 6
New Z e al and, 88 Rumania, 49
Rupp in, A., 5 9 , 6 1 , 1 00
Ottoman Emp ire, 4 1 , 44 , 45 , Russia ( Cz arist ) , 3 7 , 3 8 , 4 7 ,
47, 4 8 -5 0 , 55 , 5 7 , 7 6 , 84, 5 2 ; "Palestinophilia o f Jews
87, 105. See also Turkey in," 3 8 -9 . See also U S S R
Ru ssian Rev olution ( 19 17 ),
Pakistan, 70
47, 5 2
Palestine, 1 3 , 1 8 , 3 0 - 1 , 3 8 , 59,
77 -8 , 79, 8 2 , 84, 9 1 , 94, 9 9 -
1 00 ; anti- Z ionist riots in, 8 5 ; Serb ia, 4 9
Arab armies enter, 7 4 ; Brit Smith, T. , 1 4
ish interest in, 48, 5 2 -3 ; Brit South Africa, 1 1
ish Man date over, 5 4 , 55 , Sartr e, J -P. , 9
60 - 1 , 63, 64, 7 0 -2 , 7 6 , 87 ; Schw arz, W . , 89
J ew ish immigr atio n to, 3 9 , Sim o ny i, I. von, 1 0 2
58, 76, 88 ; partition of, 2 0 , Society for the encour agement
67, 6 8 -9 , 7 3 ; Russian and of J ewish agricultural and
manual worker s in Syria Z ionist Organization on, 68

and Palestine, 1 0 2 Univer sal Israelite Alliance,
Society o f Jews, 4 1 -2 106
South Africa, 1 1 , 9 0 U ssishkin, M . , 1 6
Soviet Union, see U S S R U S S R, 2 0 , 5 3 , 6 5 , 68, 69,
Spain, 8 0 85, 1 1 2 -3 . See also B irobi
Stalin, J ., 2 0 dj ian, Russia, and Russian
Stern, A , 6 5 , 1 0 8 Revolution
Stern group, 6 5 , 7 1 , 7 2 , 7 3 Versailles and Sevres Peace
Stone, I. F . , 1 0 Conferences, 53
Suez c anal, 5 2 , 1 1 0 Vietnam, 2 1
Sulzberger, M. , 1 0 6
Syk es-Picot agreement, 4 8 , 5 2 , War ( 1 9 48 ) , 1 0 , 1 6 , 2 8 , 5 6 ,
53 63, 7 0 , 7 1 -5 ; ( 1 9 67 ) , 9 . 1 5
Syria, 32 , 4 1 , 4 8 , 5 2 , 7 5 , 8 5 , Weitz, J . , 1 5 -6
86, 1 0 0 , 1 0 5 Weizmann, C. , 4 6 , 4 8 , 5 3 , 54 -
5, 6 1 , 6 2 , 7 6 , 1 04 , 1 0 6
Tar dieu, A , 5 4
White Paper ( 1 9 2 2 ) , 5 9 -6 0 , 6 1 ;
Terre retrouv ee, L a ( France),
( 1 9 3 9 ) , 59 -60, 6 1
83
W ilson, W . , 5 1
Thon, Dr., 50
W itte, S., 1 0 2
Transj ordan, 74, 1 1 5 . See also
W orld Conference on Palestine,
J or d an
29
Truman, H. , 7 0
W orld W ar I , 4 6 , 5 1 , 6 9 , 8 5
Turkey, 3 2 , 4 3 , 5 3 . See also
World W ar I I, 2 0 , 6 5 , 69
Ottoman Emp ire
Yishuv, 2 7 , 5 6, 58, 62-6, 68,
Ulster, see Ireland
74 , 75, 76, 8 0 -2 , 8 5 , 86, 87,
Union of J ew ish Students in
89, 9 2
Fr ance ( U EJ F ) , 3 1 , 3 2 , 3 5 , Y oung Turk Rev olution
86
( 1 9 0 8 ) , 49
Union and Progress Commit
Young Turk s, 5 0
tee ( Turkey ), 50
Yugoslavia, 7 5
Union of Soviet Socialist Re
publics, see U S S R
Z angwill, I., 1 2
United Nations, 1 8 , 2 0 , 2 7 ,
Z ionist Bureau, 5 0
3 1 ; arm s emb argo of, 7 4 ,
Z ionist Congresses, 5 9
7 5 ; Partition Plan of, 1 7 , 5 6 ,
Z ionist Organization, 2 9 , 44 ,
68, 69, 7 1 -4
47, 4 8 , 54, 5 5 , 60 , 6 1 , 62 ,
U nited States, 1 7 , 4 1 , 46, 48,
63, 6 8 , 8 5 ; rej ects 1 9 3 9
. 69, 7 2 , 73, 75, 8 8 ; impe White Paper, 66 ; Revisionist
rialism of, 2 0 ; Jewish immi wing of, 5 9
gration to, 3 9 ; pressure of
Egypt
Egypt Saudi
Arabia
Palestine Under the British Mandate

Egypt
Egypt Saudi
Arabia
1 947 United Nations Partition Plan

Egypt
Jordan
"
,
Egypt Saudi
Arabia
Results of the 1 948 War

Jordan
Egypt Saudi
Arabia
Results of the J 967 War

Maxime Rodinson - Israel - A Colonial-Settler State - Pathfinder Press (1973) PDF

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·ISRAEL

MONAD PRESS, NEW YORK

Translated from the French by D avid Thor stad

Cop yright © 1973 by the Anchor Found ation, Inc.

First Edition, 1973

Published by Monad Press

COVER NOTE: Palestinian refugees from the West Bank

What are the Arguments? 27

In Wh at Way is Israel a Colonial Phenomenon? 35

Obj ections and Limitations 79

Notes to the Introduction 97

The aftermath of victory in war is usually rich in his­

events. " However, in this country, she notes, it was sub­

he disagreed sharply on m any points, he lent his per­

*Notes begin on p ag e 97.

Europe, when capitalism went through a p eriod of great

this p rogram in the name of socialism, either then or

tioned there since the 1930s. Their anti-Zionist p ositions,

of official Israeli opinion, which h as become accustomed

The picture of an embattled state threatened by hos­

The dism aying new social dilemma confronting Israel

. . . when the UN p assed a resolution to p artition

Weitz may define "liberation" differently than the Arab

Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no

The support of other top Zionist figures like B.

young. Simultaneously, it spurred the development of an

However, their task is difficult because, from the be­

of the historic homeland." Zionists will of course deny

menace of Arab anti-Semitism. Nor was it due only to the

. with respect to the events of 1 93 6, it seems to

between two national movements, but the Arabs made

The traditional Arab leadership, jealous of its own privi­

worked out with its imperialist wartime allies in Vietnam,

this aim regardless of other differences. In this connection,

antagonisms no longer have an internal base in the society

But what is the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

and urges the Palestinians to avoid military methods,

as against imperialism. The Palestinian people have al­

March 1 973 PETER BUCH

The theme of Judea-Israeli colonialism plays a central role

* Yishuv: Hebrew w ord for the J ewish community in Pales­

It must be recalled that ( as o n many points) the present

Al l this w a s i n natural harmony with the view that

And here is the diagnosis of a Leb anese Communist

The Zionist movement is nothing but the exploita­

Subsequent years have only impelled the Arab revo­

The determination of our people to put an end to

This concep t of Israel as a multi-tentacled imperialist

sion with others; it is p art of a worldwide imperialist

a socialist of Tolstoyan inspiration who praised the value

Glubb Pasha had conquered the Israelis in 1948, he would

Not one of the traits that characterize colonialism­

Finally, added to these arguments dealing mainly with

moreover, could be forgiven for not having cultivated

raised to a consider ably higher level, so that they are

The entire angry p olemic of the Zionists and the p ro­

argue as though colonialism were a creation of the mind,

disgust with the . oppressive conditions they had been sub­

* Mem b ers of the Bund: the "General J ewish Workers Union

and in all of the literature, n amed Palestine, in the cir­

ideas. " Lilienblum, Pinsker, Lewanda," writes this learned

of even the m o st dep rived of tho s e who shared in it the

The cho ice could b e made b etween a sm all territory in

The aftermath of victory in war is usually rich in his

events. " However, in this country, she notes, it was sub

he disagreed sharply on m any points, he lent his per

The picture of an embattled state threatened by hos

However, their task is difficult because, from the be

The traditional Arab leadership, jealous of its own privi

as against imperialism. The Palestinian people have al

* Yishuv: Hebrew w ord for the J ewish community in Pales

The Zionist movement is nothing but the exploita

Subsequent years have only impelled the Arab revo

Not one of the traits that characterize colonialism

The entire angry p olemic of the Zionists and the p ro

disgust with the . oppressive conditions they had been sub

and in all of the literature, n amed Palestine, in the cir

m a s s acres of Armenians gave s o m e idea of t h e c atastroph

in the p articular interest of this or that p ower, to sup

the B alfour Declar ation and s anctioned the English pro

The mandate gr anted to Great B ritain p rovided, more

a system of military service among "tho se under its j u

had b een in Palestine since J anu ary 1948, l aunched sev

extremist right-wing dissident form ations such as the Ir

Throughout this entire period the Ar ab states held con

emerge among certain governmental authorities in L o n

c ause were of pr actically no use whatsoever to Arab mili

p owers. Ob sessed by h i s desire to obtain a great H a sh

The adv ancement and then success of the Z ionist move

a s p owerful, and would have doubtless led other coun

I will conclude by b riefly mentioning the Arab argu

I b elieve the preceding p ages have shown that the crea

find definitions of colo nialism that do not cover the p ar

an anti-colonialist from m aking such a mor al condem

b ec ause they are Europeans or are in the p rocess of b e

1 . French edition published by Etudes et Documentation In

3. Cf. Documents of the Palestinian Resistance Struggle, Path