“Land Without a People For a People Without a Land”
';One of early Zionism’s slogans that took hold of the imagination of the proponents of a Jewish state was “A land without a people for a people without a land.” Coined by Israel Zangwill, it evoked a desolate, empty desert where the industrious Jews could build a modern state.
Israel-bashers are fond of using this quote as proof of early Zionist mendacity, ignoring the 400,000 Arabs that lived in Palestine at the beginning of modern Zionism. To an extent they are right - certainly there were people there - but the slogan was more accurate than they claim.
Firstly, while there were people there, they weren’t “a people” - Arabs at the time identified with the Arab people as a whole, or often as a part of southern Syria, but Palestinian Arab nationalism did not appear until after the phrase was coined, in no small part as a direct reaction to Zionism itself.
Secondly, it is hard to claim that the land was anything but sparsely populated, considering that today some ten million people manage to fit in that same space. In other words, the claim that pre-state Zionism was displacing the existing Arab population is simply a lie, as the aim of Zionism was to build and grow in places where no one was living.
And thirdly, it is patently obvious that the Jews were a people without a land, except for those bigots who deny Jewish peoplehood to begin with.
For all the outrage that the slogan causes in Arab circles for being immoral and inflammatory, though, it was used by the Arab League delegate to the UN yesterday trying to give it a PalArab twist:
YAHYA A. MAHMASSANI, Permanent Observer for the League of Arab States, reading out a message from the Secretary-General of the League, Amre Moussa, stressed the Committee’s vital role. The International Day of Solidarity coincided with the ninetieth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which had paved the way for the expansionist Zionist policy, thereby creating a land without people and people without a land -– the source of the conflict that lasted to the current day.
The bigotry and hypocrisy of the Arab states is neatly on display here:
* He dismisses millions of Jews living in Israel nowadays as being effectively nonexistent, invisibly living in a “land without people.” Similarly, he denies the fact of Jewish peoplehood.
* He dates the beginnings of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem as 1917, not 1948, showing that in the Arab League’s opinion it is the very existence of Jewish national aspiration that is the problem, not the establishment of the State nor the flight of the original refugees.
* He defines the “source” of the conflict to 1917, ignoring that the Arab violence against Jews predated Balfour and that practically all of the attacks would be one-way for decades after that. In other words, in his mind the existence of Jews in Palestine was inherently provocative to the extent that the poor Arabs, who seem to exist without free will, had no choice but to start massacring them.
And, without intending to,
* He subconsciously admits that there were no Palestinian Arab people existing before 1917.
In this case of Arabs attempting to turn the tables on Zionists by using their language, it only proves their own hypocrisy and bigotry.
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Elder of Ziyon may or may not be a real person. He (or she, or it) blogs at http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/
They are not that well made anyhow.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
o.k., I know I’m going to get some grief for this, but here goes…. Why do you spend so much time and effort trying to argue that Palestinians as a people are illegitimate? Palestinians are a reality that Israel and the rest of the world will have to deal with. Olmert is right when he says that without an independent Palestinian state existing alongside Israel as part of a two-state solution, Israel as a country is doomed.
Does the world’s acceptance of a Palestinian state in effect reward terrorism? Perhaps. But really, what is the alternative? More of the same that we’ve had for the past 30 years? I know the devil is in the details, and it won’t be easy, but a two-state solution is the only one that makes any sense to me. And you can’t have a two-state solution when neither side recognizes the other’s legitimacy.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
It is an excellent question, and I thank you for giving me the chance to explain.
I agree that, today, there are a people called “Palestinian” (although for various reasons I prefer to refer to them as Palestinian Arabs, but that is a minor point.) However, their claims are almost wholly based on a history which is faulty, to say the least.
Lies cannot be the basis for a solution. Nothing concrete will be accomplished unless both parties can find a common framework, and it has to be based on real facts.
Looking at the past hundred years, there are two basic common denominators that explain essentially all the actions of the Arab and Zionist sides. The Zionists have consistently tried to live in security; the Arabs have consistently tried to destroy Israel. These two basic themes explain the facts of the past century far better than any other (like “occupation” or “refugees” or “Palestinian statehood.”) It explains the peace treaty with Egypt, it explains Oslo, it explains every word said by PalArabs in Annapolis. The “strategy of stages” that Arafat explained in the 1970s is still very alive and well in the forms of “Palestinian statehood” and “right of return” together with “resistance.” The entire Palestinian issue is part of a larger (not centralized, but endemic) Arab policy to weaken and destroy Israel. It is no coincidence that it came into the forefront at about the same time that Arabs realized that they wil lnot destroy Israel militarily.
This is not to say that the Palestinian Arabs who are living in misery should be treated badly or unfairly. But Israel should not be expected to sacrifice any more of its own security in the name of “peace” that is absolutely going to be anything but.
A realistic look at the “refugee” problem points to culpability of the Arab states - yet no one takes them to account. PalArabs remain pawns even today.
If, one day, a true Palestinian leader emerges - one that can truly compromise for peace, one who takes his people’s welfare seriously, one who can stand up to other Arab leaders, one who can replace the culture of death with an enlightened perspective - then Israel will have a peace partner. Until then, all we will keep seeing is a repeat of what happened in Gaza. The current state of war is preferable to an illusory peace, where Israeli concessions are by definition irreversible and Palestinian “concessions” are pieces of paper.
Americans especially like to be problem-solvers, but if the problem cannot be defined, it cannot be solved. And the gulf between reality and the common Arab-influenced framing of the problem is way too wide.
This is a bit rambling, but I hope it explains my perspective a bit more clearly.
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 am
You’re looking for a Palestinian leader who would march his people into exile and you call it basically “an enlightened perspective.” If Israel wants peace and acceptance then it should offer the same. Instead it offers only an ideology of separation and domination. Whether it’s the wall and occupation today, the lobbying for partition before 1948, or the boycotts against Arab labor of the earlier Yishuv, it’s all the same: Dislodge, dispossess, disenfranchise. Jim from Iowa is correct, “Why do you spend so much time and effort trying to argue that Palestinians as a people are illegitimate?” It must be because it’s the only way to validate the ideology Israel has chosen to put around its neck.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 am
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