Nuanced Face of Zionism it

¶ … Nuanced Face of Zionism

It is hard to think of the words "Middle East" and "nuance" as having anything to do with each other -- much less to conceive of a nuanced position between Zionism and Arab nationalism. But there have been times in the decades since the founding of the state of Israel that political leaders have tried to craft positions that acknowledged the complexity of the competing claims of Jews and Palestinians. David Ben-Gurion was one of these leaders whose views on Arab nationalism reflect a sophisticated understanding of the ways in which different narratives about geography must each be heard, if not given perfectly equal weight.

Ben-Gurion's ideas about Arab nationalism and the appropriate relationship between Jews and Arabs developed over the decades in which he was a major player in the political life of Israel. His dedication to Zionism (which is often itself interpreted to be a far less nuanced position than it is for many) has its roots decades before the founding of Israel. The complete story of his understanding of the role of Israel in the Middle East is beyond the scope of this paper, but some measure of it must be included to provide the necessary background to understand how as a mature politician he continued to develop his position on Arab nationalism.

Early Dedication to Labor Movement

Ben-Gurion emigrated from his native Poland to Palestine in 1906, although he was deported by Ottoman officials during World War I. He went to the United States during the war years. He returned to Palestine in 1918 and in 1921 became the secretary of the Histadrut, the General Organization of Jewish Workers in the Land of Israel. Ben-Gurion's early work in Palestine was focused on the labor movement, which was central to early efforts to create a Jewish state. Although we may see the founding of Israel in primarily political terms from our position in the twenty-first century -- for the formalization of Israel's existence as a state is certainly the single discrete action that marks the locus of conflict in the region -- there are other ways of conceiving of the beginnings of the Jewish state.

Ben-Gurion and other early Zionist leaders understood that economic claims and organization were important -- and even vital -- ways of creating the basis for a Jewish state. While the idea of Israel as a recognized nation had tremendous idealistic appeal, Ben-Gurion and his contemporaries understood that there had to be a substantial amount of pragmatic organization as well as the idealism of the movement, as summarized below:

Ben-Gurion and his party struggled to have the Jewish working class in Palestine, organized in the highly centralized Histadrut, assume the role of state-building vanguard in the Zionist project by taking charge of immigration and settlement and creating its own network of economic enterprises in agriculture, industry, construction, and distribution, and its own social, educational, and cultural institutions.

Lockman argues that Ben-Gurion's push to organize Jewish workers and employers paralleled his push to disenfranchise Arab workers as he fought to require Jewish employers to hire only Jewish workers -- even though the wages paid to Jewish workers were higher than those paid to Arab workers.

It should be noted that Ben-Gurion, although driven at this period in his life by idealism, was not naive. He understood, for example, that the policy of Jews hiring only Jewish workers and paying them more than Arab workers could work toward creating a sense of Palestinian nationalism. Teveth quotes Ben-Gurion as saying in 1914:

"...this hatred originates with the [Palestinian] Arab workers in Jewish settlements. Like any worker, the [Palestinian] Arab worker detests his taskmaster and exploiter. But because this class conflict overlaps a national difference between farmers and workers, this hatred takes a national form. Indeed, the national overwhelms the class aspect of the conflict in the minds of the [Palestinian] Arab working masses, and inflames an intense hatred toward the Jews."

What Lockman argues is certainly a legitimate perspective (that Ben-Gurion ignored the reality of Palestinian identity), but Pearl (2008) argues that this is an overly stark view of Ben-Gurion's view (as well as the perspectives of some of his contemporaries). Pearl argues that the position that Lockman outlines (and he is not alone in this) is in many ways taking a teleological approach -- arguing back from the present to the past. Pearl (as I will explore below) will argue that it is essential to examine contemporary documents and commentaries from throughout the course of Ben-Gurion's life to understand his developing position.

Ben-Gurion's beliefs about Arab nationalism were relatively constant from the time he emigrated as a young man to Palestine (before he was deported and then returned) through the early 1930s when the Nazis gained power in Germany. His work with the Histadrut helped create the shape of what would become Israel -- an entity that was connected on economic, cultural, and political levels. Ben-Gurion's beliefs during this period can be seen in retrospect to be idealistic almost to the point of irrationalism given everything that has followed.

And yet it is also important to underscore the fact that Ben-Gurion was even in his early days aware of Palestinians as possessing basic human rights. In 1918 he wrote: "Palestine is not an empty country . . . On no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants."? It may seem very hard for us from our current historical perspective to understand how Ben-Gurion could hold both of these beliefs, but to argue this is to overlook the complexity and ambiguity inherent in the process of the founding of Israel. Ben-Gurion and other early Zionists had no template upon which to build and their understanding of the situation on the ground would necessarily have been in flux and mutable as the situation itself changed.

Different Assessments of Nationalism

During this phase Ben-Gurion believed that Zionism was a just philosophy -- and not simply just for Jews. He believed that Zionism would benefit the entire region and have essentially trickle-down effects for Arabs in the area in addition to the direct benefits to Jews. In particular he believed that Arabs would welcome Jewish immigrants to the area. Ben-Gurion argued that Jews would be drawn to immigrate because of a sense of nationalism (or something close to this) and that -- parallel to this -- Palestinians did not have a sense of nationalism or belonging to the land. (In effect, during this period Ben-Gurion was making an argument that precisely refuted the arguments of Arab nationalists, positing that even on a local level Arabs did not have a sense of connection to each other and that it was Jews who would cleave together because of connections that overrode familial links.) As the Jewish population increased in the Middle East through immigration, Jews would feel these pan-religious bonds more and more strongly. Thus immigration and Jewish nationalism would work in an iterative fashion, with increased population leading to increased levels of dedication to the idea of a Jewish state.

While in general Ben-Gurion believed that Palestinians did not have a strong sense (or even) any sense of nationalism, he did consider the possibility that Palestinians did have a sense of nationalism that they could still bribed to leave the land. While Ben-Gurion believed that force could be necessary, he also (up through 1933 when the Nazis took power) that there might be the possibility of a "transfer" of the Palestinian people from their land. In such a "transfer" Palestinians would be willing to accept some form of payment in exchange for the land, which they would then willingly cede to Jewish immigrants.

Naivete? Or the Desire for Ethnic Cleansing

A harsh description of this dynamic follows. It is important to consider this perspective even though it is in fact the kind of teleological argument that I referred to above. While Ben-Gurion's assessment of the state (or non-state) of Palestinian nationalism may have been fundamentally inaccurate, this does not mean that this was not his authentic position at the time. Neff argues that Ben-Gurion was acting out of essentially genocidal impulses since at the time of a Zionist conference in Basel in 1897, "Arabs represented 95% of the population of Palestine and owned 99% of the land. This pair of facts ensured that from the very roots of Zionism "dispossession of the Palestinian majority, either politically or physically, would be an inevitable requirement for achieving a Jewish state."

Since Palestinian Arabs were by far the majority throughout the period up to Israel's establishment as a Jewish state in 1948, the Zionist state could emerge only by denying the majority its rights or by becoming the majority either through immigration or in reducing the number of Palestinians by ethnic cleansing?

Neff writes that "It was not only land that was needed to reach Zionism's goal, but land without another people in the majority."? This is true, but Ben-Gurion's vision of the replacement of Palestinians with Jews was not inherently bloodthirsty, as Neff suggests. Rather, it was more a question of magical thinking: Ben-Gurion wanted a place for Jews and his desire was sufficiently strong that it blinded him to the nature of Palestinian self-definition and identity.

Another point that I will examine in greater detail later that would change Ben-Gurion's views towards Arab nationalism was that he could not, in the 1930s predict the extent of the Holocaust. The death of so many Jews so quickly would rewrite the equation -- for Ben-Gurion as well as others -- of the relationship between Jews and Arabs.

At the same time that Ben-Gurion was pushing to create an increasingly powerful economic base of Jewish workers and employers, Lockman writes, he was at the same time denying the legitimacy of Palestinians claims to Arab nationalistic authority and strongly arguing that Jews had a far stronger claim to the land. This is perhaps the best-known understanding of Ben-Gurion's position -- although one (as noted above) that is not sufficiently attentive to Ben-Gurion's own words as his position developed.

While publicly calling for peace and reconciliation with Palestine's Arab majority, and favoring acceptance of a 1937 British proposal to establish a Jewish state in only a small part of Palestine, he insisted in private that ultimately all of Palestine must be Jewish, a position whose formal endorsement by the Zionist movement he secured in 1942. After World War II Ben-Gurion directed the Zionist political and military struggle, first to compel the British to open Palestine to Jewish immigration and then to secure the establishment of a Jewish state.

Arab Nationalism and Pan-Arabism

Before I continue discussing Ben-Gurion's relationship with Arab nationalism, I would like to define the term. The term means a range of different things to different individuals and different groups, but the core tenets (developed from the beginning of the twentieth-century on) of the belief is that all of the people's of the Arab World -- from the Arabian Sea across to the Atlantic Ocean -- are fundamentally connected by language, culture, history, and religion.

Moreover, Arab nationalists argue that these connections should be realized -- should be reified -- into a single nation. (Although this idea is sometimes referred to separately as Pan-Arabism.) Concomitant with this is the belief of Arab nationalists that the Arab world has been deeply harmed (and continues to be harmed) by the influence of the West. Arab nationalists are especially concerned that the governments of Arab nations eliminate their dependence on Western nations. Thus Arab nationalism is not directly opposed to the existence of the state of Israel -- or at least not explicitly so. (This does not mean that those who call themselves Arab nationalists may not also be opposed to the existence of Israel.) However, many Arab nationalists do object (to put it in very mild terms) to the fact that the presence of Israel has substantially increased the influence and power of the West in the Middle East.

Ben-Gurion's assessment of the relative relationship between Palestinians and the land and Jews and the land -- and what seem to be the internal contradictions in his position -- was influenced by his assessment of how well the Jews could govern their own state as opposed to how well he believed that the Palestinians could. In 1924 Ben-Gurion wrote:

We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." In 1928 he pronounced that "the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?"; and in 1930, "The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by a Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes."

In other words, Ben-Gurion argued that Jews had a right to the land not solely for historical reasons -- although he believed that these were perfectly valid as well -- but for reasons having to do with the future use of the land. Jews would be better stewards, he argued, and this trumped Palestinian claims.

A Hardening Heart

During the 1930s and early 1940s Ben-Gurion began a shift that he saw as one from idealism to realism. (This is in some ways a simplification of both his early position and the one that he took up during the years of World War II since he was never entirely a realist or entirely an idealist.) His position changed during these years both because of his own changing understanding and philosophy but also because of changes in the situation around him.

As Nazism and other fascist movements grew in strength in Europe, Ben-Gurion began to feel that time was quickly running out for European Jewry. In 1935 he wrote to Judah Leon Magnes (the chancellor of the Hebrew University and a supporter of a binational state:

"The difference between me and you is that you are ready to sacrifice immigration for peace, while I am not, though peace is dear to me. And even if I was prepared to make concession, the Jews of Poland and Germany would not be, because they have no other option. For them immigration comes before peace."?

The need that Zionists saw for a Jewish state arose before the Holocaust, although it arose in fundamental ways out of the same depth (if not efficiency) of anti-Semitism. But the shape of Israel would, by 1948, be determined by the Holocaust. The incineration of European Jews not only gave far more impetus to those who believed that Jews needed a place in the world where they could be safe but it also gave them more latitude. There could be no denying -- at least by rational people -- that terrible things could happen to Jews in an historical blink of an eye.

Violence Begets Violence, Nationalism Begets Nationalism

Even as Ben-Gurion and others became more steadfastly convinced that there must be a Jewish state, he also came to the realization that there could not be a state in which Jews could be a majority in which the rights of Palestinians would not be compromised. He also understood that the push of Zionists toward a Jewish state was creating a pushback by Palestinians who were formulating their own nationalist identity and strategies.

"The Arabs fear of our power is intensifying, [Palestinians] see exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesn't matter whether or not their view is correct.... They see [Jewish] immigration on a giant scale .... they see the Jews fortify themselves economically .. They see the best lands passing into our hands. They see England identify with Zionism.[Arabs are] fighting dispossession ... The fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn it into the homeland of the Jewish people. There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine .By our very presence and progress here, [we] have matured the [Arab] movement."

Ben-Gurion came to realize that Palestinian nationalism could neither be denied nor derailed. He still believed that it could be limited in its efficacy. But more important that this, he also believed that there were fewer and fewer choices available to Jews.

In 1936, Ben-Gurion wrote: "There is only one thing that everyone accepts, Arabs and non-Arabs alike: facts." The "facts" that Ben-Gurion was talking about was the need for a Jewish state to be willing to act with force -- since force would be the only "language" that the Arabs understood. (This is now a claim made by both sides.) The idealism -- or naivete -- that Ben-Gurion had felt during the first decades of the twentieth century was diminished by the first Palestinian uprising in 1936-1939.

It would be simplistic -- and therefore not entirely accurate -- to characterize Ben-Gurion's shifting perspective on Arab nationalism and the rights of Palestinians as a movement from "dove" to "hawk." But there is this thread (among others) in his changing views over the decades that he spent in Israeli politics. In his earliest positions he did not occupy a standard dove position in that he did not overtly oppose the use (or threat of use) of military force. The trajectory that he initially saw for a Jewish state was limned along an entirely different spectrum. In is more accurate, on the other hand, to characterize his position in the thirties and forties as a movement towards hawkishness. And it is even more accurate to characterize his position in the last decades of his life as typically hawkish.

This shift towards hawkishness was a shift not only toward being less resistant to the need for Israel to use force but to an overall simplification of his understanding of the way in which Israel would define itself. From the time of the first Palestinian uprising, Israelis began to see themselves (in some measure) as defined by their ability to perform as warriors. This is a relative flat definition of self.

The complexity of Ben-Gurion's position -- his attempt to balance idealism against the growing violence in the region -- can be seen in his refutation of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" doctrine. In 1923 Jabotinsky outlined what he saw as the only possible way forward for Zionism:

Zionists arrived in Palestine in the 1880s, and within several decades the movement's leadership realized it faced a terrible predicament. To create a permanent Jewish political presence in the Middle East, Zionism needed peace. But day-to-day experience and their own nationalist ideology gave Zionist leaders no reason to expect Muslim Middle Easterners, and especially the inhabitants of Palestine, to greet the building of the Jewish National Home with anything but intransigent and violent opposition. The solution to this predicament was the Iron Wall -- the systematic but calibrated use of force to teach Arabs that Israel, the Jewish "state-on-the-way," was ineradicable.

Ben-Gurion argued that this policy was both racist and ineffective and set himself up as an opponent of Jabotinsky. And yet, even as he distanced himself from Jabotinsky he was shifting in this direction himself.

Moreover, it should be noted that Jabotinsky himself was not immune to the claims of Palestinians to land and self-determination. He did not see the claims of Palestinians as illegitimate. Rather, he saw the claims of Jews to be just as legitimate. And he saw his position as fighting for the rights of Jews. Others could forward the claims of Palestinians.

Our planet is no longer blessed with uninhabited islands. Take any oasis in any desert, it is already taken by the native who inhabits that place from time immemorial and rejects the coming of new settlers that will become a majority, or just come in great numbers. In short-if there is a homeless nation in the world, its very yearning for a homeland is immoral. The homeless must forever remain homeless; all the land in the universe has already been divided-that's it. & #8230;.This sort of morality has a place among cannibals, not in the civilized world. The land belongs not to those who have too much land but to those who have none. If we appropriate one parcel of land from the owners of mega-estates and give it to an exiled nation-it is a just deed.

The fact that Ben-Gurion was shifting towards a doctrine of force-as-necessary but had not transformed himself into a full hawk can be seen by his actions during the Palestinian uprising of 1936 to 1939. He restrained the Haganah, the populist defense forces that rose up in response to Palestinian attacks during the first Intifada. Ben-Gurion would be criticized for his attempts to limit the use of force by the Haganah.

Pearl emphasizes the fact that Ben-Gurion had at least some empathy for Palestinians before the first Palestinian uprising. In 1930 Ben-Gurion spoke of the need to acknowledge the rights of all people to self-determination -- even if this had a negative effect on Jews and a Jewish state:

There is in the world a principle called "the right for self-determination." We have always and everywhere been its worshipers and champions. We have defended that right for every nation, every part of a nation, and every collective of people. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Arab people in Eretz Israel have this right. And this right is not limited by or conditional upon the result of its influence on us and our interests. We ought not to diminish the Arabs' freedom for self-determination for fear that it would present difficulties to our own mission. The entire moral core encapsulated in the Zionist idea is the notion that a nation-every nation-is its own purpose and not a tool for the purposes of other nations. And in the same way that we want the Jewish people to be master of its own affairs, capable of determining its historical destiny without being dependent on the will-even good will-of other nations, so, too, we must seek for the Arabs.

Critics of Ben-Gurion tend to interpret such comments as being simply propaganda -- a good line for Ben-Gurion to take even as he plotted ethnic cleansing. I think that a better explanation would be that Ben-Gurion was able -- as so many people are -- to split himself into logic-tight compartments. Like the Framers of the Constitution who bravely created a new nation dedicated to liberty while they kept their own personal slaves, Ben-Gurion was able to understand the importance of self-determination to the Palestinians even as he was working to limit Palestinian rights to increase the probability of the existence of a Jewish state.

The Post-War Years

The war and the Holocaust transformed Ben-Gurion. Not only did it convince him even more deeply of the need that Jews had for a homeland of their own, but it filled him with both anger and guilt. Like other Jews who found themselves alive after 1945, Ben-Gurion felt the guilt of other Jewish survivors. But he also felt a high degree of anger at the way in which European Jews had gone to their deaths with what Ben-Gurion (along with others) had felt to be too great a degree of passivity. Why hadn't the Jews fought back? Why had they allowed themselves to be shepherded onto the trains and into the ovens? These questions pushed Ben-Gurion toward the position that he would take for the rest of his life -- the idea that Israel and Jews must defend themselves.