My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“And yet the Bentwich delegation seeks to acquire another part of the planet not for the glory of Britain, but to save persecuted masses. They don’t really represent an empire but a deprived people seeking the help of empires. They do not intend to oppress but to liberate. They do not want to exploit the land, but to invest in it. Apart from Israel Zangwill, no member of the delegation considers their mission as a form of conquest, dispossession, or expulsion.” 

Zionist migration to Palestine had all the defining characteristics of a colonialist enterprise, except that Zionists did not seek to conquer. The character of Zionist migration differs from that of refugees only in that Zionist Jews could not live safely among other peoples: They could not migrate to Palestine and join Palestinian society—Jewish history makes that clear—so they needed to carve a place of their own. Their intention was not to displace or conquer, though—only to survive. 

“Kibbutz socialism is now essential for several reasons. Without group effort, Zionist colonizers will not be able to endure the hardships involved in the colonizing process. Without the idealism of kibbutz socialism, Zionism will not have the sense of moral superiority that is essential for the colonization process to succeed. Without the communal aspect of kibbutz, socialist Zionism will lack legitimacy and will be perceived as an unjust colonialist movement. Only kibbutz socialism can give Zionism the social cohesion, the mental determination, and the moral imperative needed at this revolutionary stage. And only the Labor Brigade ethos of kibbutz socialism will enable Zionism to take the valley and to take the Land.” 

Israel was founded on socialist ideals that have eroded with time. The first settlers were utopian communists, but their society morphed into Bolshevik-style socialism, state socialism, state capitalism, and then free-market capitalism as dictated by the perceived needs of the country. Shavit argues that Zionism’s most productive eras were socialist.

“The brutal events that took place between April and August 1936 pushed Zionism from a state of utopian bliss to a state of dystopian conflict. As Palestinian nationalism was asserting itself and demanding that Jewish immigration stop immediately, it was now impossible to ignore the Arabs living in the land, impossible to ignore the fact that the Arabs reviled the Zionist enterprise. The Jewish national liberation movement had to acknowledge that it was facing an Arab liberation movement that wished to disgorge the Jews from the shores they had settled on.” 

Zionism began peacefully, but as the Jewish population rose, its accomplishment and power grew with it. The Arab backlash was inevitable. By the late 1930s Arab Palestinians no longer tolerated Zionists. Both groups’ actions during this time defined their relationship for the next century.