Attwell, Katie - Jewish-Israeli National Identity and Dissidence The Contradictions of Zionism and Resistance - Palgrave Macmillan (2015)

J
ewis
h-I
sr
ael
iNational
I
dent
it
yandDis
sidence
Kat
ieAt
twel
l
TheContr
adi
cti
onsofZi
oni
sm and
Res
ist
ance
Jewish-Israeli National Identity and Dissidence
This page intentionally left blank
Jewish-Israeli National
Identity and Dissidence
The Contradictions of Zionism and
Resistance
Katie Attwell
Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and
International Affairs, Murdoch University, Australia
© Katie Attwell 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndsmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire, RG21 6XS
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has
companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN: 978–1–137–42901–8
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Attwell, Katie, 1979–
Jewish-Israeli national identity and dissidence : the contradictions of
Zionism and resistance / Katie Attwell.
pages cm.
ISBN 978–1–137–42901–8 (hardback)
1. National characteristics, Israeli. 2. Jews – Israel – Identity. 3. Group
identity – Israel. 4. Zionism – Israel. 5. Arab-Israeli conflict. 6. Palestinian
Arabs – Israel – Ethnic identity. I. Title.
DS113.3.A88 2015
320.54095694—dc23 2014038025
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
A tale of two Zionists 1
The dilemma 2
The problematic situation (the ‘Thing Without a Name’) 3
The ‘dissidents’ 8
Narrative analysis 10
Othering the Other 12
Book outline 12
Part I Context
1 Ressentiment and the State 17

Introduction 17
Ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourses 18
Ressentiment and ethnocratisation 25
Conclusion 29
2 Ressentiment Zionism 30
Introduction 30
In the beginning, there was Zionism 30
Getting outside of Zionism 32
Ressentiment and Zionism 36
Structural factors: European life, transformations and
the rise of ressentiment 36
Ressentiment vignettes 39
The historical narrative as cultural factor 42
Ressentiment Zionism goes to Palestine; finds an
Evil Other there ... 44
The Evil Other: from European to Arab 44
The tragic trajectory of Cultural Zionism 48
Conclusion 51
3 The Dissidents’ Context 52
Introduction 52
v
vi Contents
The Charter is laid: the Declaration of Independence and

Law of Return 53
From Charter to commonsense 55
Education and ressentiment 56
The Holocaust and ressentiment 57
Five legal categories of Other ... and one symbolic one 60
The ‘Israeli Arab’ Other 61
The refugee Other 62
‘Generic’ Arabs and collapsible Others 63
The occupied Other 64
The Other and the Us in the media 66
Ressentiment to the present day 68
Conclusion 70
Part II Dissent
4 Meet the Dissidents 73

Introduction 73
Academics 74
Oren Yiftachel 74
Neve Gordon 77
Uri Davis 80
Activists 84
Jeff Halper 84
Eitan Bronstein 87
Jeremy Milgrom 92
Yonatan Pollack 97
Writers/commentators 101
Gideon Levy 101
Gilad Atzmon 105
Dorit Rabinyan 111
Meron Benvenisti 113
Conclusion 115
5 Themes of Dissident Dissonance: Historicisation and
Identification 117
Introduction 117
Attraction to Zionism 117
The past: ‘national’ history 120
The beginning 135
Conclusion 143
Contents vii
6 Themes of Dissident Dissonance: Zionism and the Self 144

Introduction 144
Fear for the Us 144
Self-interest 152
Reconciling with personal pasts 154
What does it mean to be clean? 160
7 Dissident Discourses 169
Introduction: limitations and discontinuities 169
The discourses 171
Hegemonic ressentiment Zionist discourse 171
The civic discourse 171
The binational discourse 172
The Kinder Zionist discourse 174
The post-Zionist discourse 175
The inverted ressentiment discourse 177
Dissidents using discourses 178
Civic discourse 178
Binational discourse 179
Kinder Zionist discourse 184
Post-Zionist discourse 187
Inverted ressentiment 189
Ressentiment discourse 190
Conclusion 191
8 Conclusion 192
Introduction 192
Ressentiment to the ‘hostile outsider’ 194
Ressentiment and new Others 196
Three stories of promise 198
Conclusion: the contributions of this book 202
Appendix: The Dissidents at a glance 206
Notes 208
Bibliography 212
Index 225
Preface
Another book on Israel/Palestine. What could possibly be left to say

about a situation that has been analysed from just about every perspec-
tive? Moreover, why would a woman from the most isolated capital city
in the world, far from the Middle East, who does not identify as Jewish,
Muslim or Arab, want to say it? In these few pages, I will answer these
questions. I hope that my academic readers will indulge me writing from
the heart to explain my engagement with this subject matter, and what
I hope to offer.
When this book was conceived, I wasn’t an academic. I wasn’t even
a graduate student. I was a failed Australian rock musician escaping
my future with bad hospitality work and a British passport, living out
my quarter-life crisis far from home. My vague hopes of one day being
an academic seemed as distant as my dashed hopes of making a living
from music. I was lost in my own life. Then my entire world opened up,
because I read a book while on holiday in Prague. The Palestine–Israeli
Conflict: A Beginner’s Guide was perfectly pitched to me: I was a beginner
in this field despite having an undergraduate degree in Politics. This
book started me on a course of questioning that has sustained my life
and work ever since.
As I read the book, I found myself asking an important question.
Given the seemingly intractable nature of this conflict, why couldn’t
I see more Israelis who were reflective; aware of their history and the
impetus it placed on them to work towards justice and peace for the
victims of Zionism? My hazy and rather obvious hypothesis at the time
was that their nationalism was responsible, and the State of Israel was
inextricably linked with this. I wondered how I could understand Israeli
Jews better, so that I might grasp what those who had visions of justice
and co-existence were doing. I was painfully aware then, as I am now,
that despite the massive leaps forward from dysfunction that Palestinian
society and politics must make, problems that began with agents of
Zionism in Palestine must be resolved by those same agents – today’s
Israeli Jews. I wanted to know who was taking up this challenge and
to understand their constraints and limitations; not just the external
constraints, but also the ones inside their very beings, products as we
all are of our environments. I wanted to discover this by speaking to
them, by analysing and unpacking their words. So began my fascination
viii
Preface ix
with and research into this field, a return to formal study and, finally,
an academic career.
I started by considering my subjects as moral agents. Their identi-
ties – both prescribed and self-ascribed – were less important to me than
their ultimate humanity and convictions. Over time, my aversion to
analysing or compartmentalising people based on ascriptive categories
evolved into a more sophisticated approach that I now recognise as
fundamental to my way of understanding the world.
I consider my engagement with ‘identity’ to be my paramount
consideration as I seek to understand the people in this book and
the context that shapes and constrains them. Engaging with ‘iden-
tity’ has transformed the way my own life has unfolded, giving me a
particular way of seeing this political situation. There are many books
about nationalism, Jewish nationalism, resistance and even dissent.
Yet I never found a book quite like the one I had set out to write, that
puzzled over ‘good’ people in a bad situation and considered how their
resistance might only ever be partial because of these things we like to
call identities.
Such a book could only be written from a perspective that
regards such people as both products of, and yet distinct from, the
categories/‘identities’ which so many freely ascribe to themselves and
others, or develop elaborate institutions to do so for them. Nobody had
written such a book, perhaps because it would be very difficult to do
so from within such identification. Moreover, people like me gener-
ally avoid, and are sometimes expressly forbidden from engaging with,
this subject matter. People I’ve met in the course of writing this book –
inside and outside academia – have questioned the legitimacy of me
writing on this subject. One of them tried to mobilise others to get me
removed from my university. The individuals she targeted on the basis
of their Jewish self-identification demonstrated integrity and support for
academic freedom in resisting her efforts.
Gilad Atzmon, featured in this book, suggests that looking, sounding
and acting like an Israeli may be ‘necessary qualities needed to grasp
the Israeli mind, politics, identity and culture’ (2011, p. 187); in other
words, dissection can only be an inside job. Here, I suggest that being
an outsider might be equally or more useful, even if, according to more
than one Israeli, I do share the ‘national quality’ of directness. As an
outsider, I lack that emotional investment in ‘identity’, an investment
I will demonstrate that Atzmon retains. You, my readers, will judge
whether this outsider has indeed brought something of value to the
conversation.
x Preface
I hope that in reading this book you might experience some semblance
of my enjoyment and privilege in researching and writing it for the last
decade.
I also hope that you will remember, as I repeatedly demand of myself,
that the musings of this book and its subjects pertain to the suffering
and deaths of many people who would give anything for the rights and
privileges to ask, and try to answer, such questions.
Acknowledgements
Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Dawoud Sudqi El Alami wrote the book that
started it all, and Vicky Wilkinson lent me her copy.
David Brown guided my thoughts and words with patience. Jane
Hutchison provided support and made valuable alterations and Julia
Hobson suggested structural changes. Candice Trevor, Joanne Dolphin
and Christine Attwell assisted with an earlier version. Eleanor Davey-
Corrigan and Harriet Barker at Palgrave patiently answered every ques-
tion from an eager and nervous first-time author. Anthony K.J. Smith’s
careful reading and astute feedback ensured that I communicated
effectively.
The Australian Federation of University Women (WA Branch) awarded
me the Joyce Riley scholarship in 2008, enabling me to travel to Israel,
London and Berlin in 2010 and conduct my interviews. Joe and Amelia
Wilkinson hosted and chauffeured me in London, John and Vicky
Wilkinson hosted me in Kent, while Mike Wilkinson drove me to the
airport. Zoe Keogh and Chris Jonot hosted me in snowy Berlin.
My interviewees all deserve heartfelt thanks. Chief amongst these must
be Oren Yiftachel: mentor, friend, unofficial supervisor, security liaison
officer, taxi driver, tour guide and – with his lovely wife Amanda – (free)
hotel operator. I am also grateful to Dorit Rabinyan, Uri Davis, Meron
Benvenisti, Gilad Atzmon, Jeremy Milgrom, Jeff Halper, Eitan Bronstein,
Neve Gordon, Gideon Levy and Yonatan Pollack.
Oren and Orit Nahmias cared for me and kept my mind limber with
good conversations and good times. Their company inspired my reflec-
tions on New Tel Aviv – to me they represented not only the best of
Israel but also the best of humanity. I was also grateful for 24 hours in
the company of Uri and Miyasar and the inspiration of their love.
I would not have met Oren and Orit without my friend Shahar
Hameiri, who has consistently been a great support.
The Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University provided me with
a research home and funds to present my research at the inspirational
Nations and Nationalism Conference in London 2012. My experiences
there assisted me to develop the arguments in this book.
The Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs
at Murdoch University has provided me with exciting opportunities.
xi
xii Acknowledgements
Thank you to Benjamin Reilly for believing in me, enabling me to

commence my academic career and write this book.
Friends of Palestine (WA) kept the issue alive for me, providing oppor-
tunities to learn as well as share my knowledge and experiences. I am
very grateful to the two special women who offered comments on my
drafts – Sarah Haynes and Victoria Martin. Annemarie Whisson helped
me to stay abreast of events.
Steven Mock shed light on the ‘rabbi-who-doesn’t-believe-in-God’
thing. Moran Mandelbaum, David Landon Cole and Richard Nile
provided constructive comments on my work. Lee Jones and Kelly
Gerard helped me to say what I needed to say. William Starbuck taught
me a valuable writing technique that has changed my thoughts as well as
my words. Yaacov Yadgar, Joel Kovel and Jon Fox enabled me to improve
this monograph and inspired me to continue with my academic career.
Yaacov also provided a fine example of how to make people’s words and
lives leap from the page.
My friends and family have always inspired me. Thank you, Joanne
Dolphin and Andrew Adamson, for consistently affirming my ability to
write. Thanks to Charmaine Brooke for having my back. And thank you
to my partner Ian Dolphin for many years of listening and conversa-
tion, especially in the early days. We read that book together (with our
bedbugs) in our Grim Soviet Era Apartment in Prague – you’ve been part
of this process from the very beginning, even if you did stop following
my every word by the end!
Finally, my heartfelt thanks must go to Ian Dolphin, Jean and Peter
Dolphin, Christine and Peter Attwell, and Joanne Dolphin and Frank
Mofflin. It takes a village to raise a child, and it took a village to support
me in writing this book.
I dedicate this book to my children, Albion and Chas, who did not
exist when it began but without whom it would now seem meaning-
less. Parenthood has heightened my awareness of the suffering of others
and my drive for positive change. Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom expressed my
sentiments beautifully when he said he could never look through a gun
sight at another parent. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried then, in the
middle of our interview in Berlin. I knew exactly how he felt.
Introduction
A tale of two Zionists
Frequently we see debates about Zionism, the Jewish state and the
Palestinian question. A brief look at such debates draws our attention
to the dilemma at the heart of this work. In each of the two tales below,
the interesting figure emerges of the Israeli Jew, self-identified as Zionist,
concerned with the plight of his Palestinian Other.
The first of our two Zionists is Dan Cohn-Sherbok, co-author of The
Palestine–Israeli Conflict: A Beginner’s Guide (2003), which details the
historical narrative of each ‘side’. Cohn-Sherbok, an Israeli Jew, writes
half the book, and Dawoud Sudqi El Alami, an Israeli Palestinian, writes
the other half. At the end, the two writers debate the justice and conse-
quences of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.
‘No respectable analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict can deny
that there is an inherent conflict between Zionism and Palestinian
rights’ (Slater, 2000, p. 19). Observing this between the co-authors, the
justifications of the Zionist position are the most complex. El Alami’s
anti-Zionist position is straightforward: while he accepts that all the
land’s residents have a shared future, for him the plight of Jewish refu-
gees from Europe should not have become the problem of people living
in Palestine. Cohn-Sherbok’s position is more complicated. He would
like to see a Palestinian state, and acknowledges suffering of displaced
non-Jews, yet argues that the Jewish state was rightly established. Cohn-
Sherbok’s sympathy towards Palestinians appears tempered by what he
is unwilling to give up.
The tale of our second Zionist emerges with Benny Morris, an Israeli
historian who dramatically engages with the plight of the Palestinian
Other in an interview with journalist Ari Shavit (2004). In the 1980s and
1
2 Jewish-Israeli National Identity and Dissidence
1990s, Morris was heralded as one of Israel’s ‘new historians’ – a critical

voice who called it like he saw it. What he saw – thanks to the opening
of Israel’s archives – was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine to create the
Jewish state. Morris’s critics saw his work as de-legitimising, whilst
his supporters presumed his reports were based on moral outrage. His
interview with Shavit therefore contains a shocking revelation: Morris
believes that the ethnic cleansing did not go far enough. Despite his
concerns, Morris retrospectively supports the removal of non-Jews from
Palestine to create the Jewish state.
Shavit accuses Morris of being ‘chilling’, ‘hard-hearted’ and right
wing, declaring his use of terms like ‘cleansing’ to be ‘terrible’. Yet Shavit
does not challenge Morris’s logic: that a viable Jewish state was only
possible with the displacement of non-Jews, something Zionist activists
had recognised decades earlier. Shavit suggests in frustration that Morris
offers only two alternatives – ‘a cruel, tragic Zionism, or the foregoing of
Zionism’ (p. 50). Yet Morris’s implicit denial of a more humane Zionism
stymies Shavit’s attempt to stand up for it. Confronted by Morris’s bald
acceptance of breaking eggs, Shavit cannot offer an alternative way of
making the omelette – the Jewish state, which, like Morris, he supports.
Thus, the Zionist at the centre of this second tale is not Morris, but
Shavit. For all his visceral response to Morris – his need to claim himself
as somehow different – Shavit does not offer any alternatives. How can
we make sense of his distaste for what happened alongside his embrace
of the fruits that the actual Zionist project has yielded? How can we
understand people like him as experiencing a dilemma?
The dilemma
The tales of Shavit and Cohn-Sherbok are tales of people who are
worried about their Other in a context in which they cannot resolve
these worries. If every ethnic nationalist discourse prioritises an Other
below the Us, then any concerned individual is challenged to articulate
this concern and drive it towards a political outcome. However, this
challenge is acute for Shavit and Cohn-Sherbok. The state privileges
their Jewish identification – this is purported to be its purpose – and
support for such a state is at the heart of Jewish nationalism. ‘[I]t may
be too much to ask the privileged, even those on the left of the political
spectrum, to challenge a system that supports their own privileges and
dominance’ (Rouhana, 2006, p. 71).
If this is so, then what do such people ask of themselves? How might
they identify and assert different ways of existing communally? And
Introduction 3
how might scholars evaluate their efforts? These questions focus us on

the dilemma at the heart of this book.
The first component of the dilemma is what I call the problematic
situation. Cohn-Sherbok, Shavit and the subjects of this book live in a
state built on the dispossession of the Other, which privileges them over
the Other, and which cannot continue in its current form if the interests
of the Other are met. The dominant nationalist discourse legitimises this
by demonising the Other.
The second component of the dilemma is concern for the Other.
Privileged citizens of a state set up for that purpose ostensibly need not
worry about those marginalised by this project, as Benny Morris demon-
strates. However, the decision to engage with such concerns generates
contradictions.
Together, then, the problematic situation and concern for the Other
comprise the dilemma. We can observe the dilemma in individuals like
Cohn-Sherbok and Shavit who affiliate with the Zionist project whilst
also worrying about their Others. However, the dilemma also affects
individuals that are more radical. Hence, in order to map it, we need to
start with left-wing Zionists and trek out towards the margins of Israeli
society where a vocal minority of anti-Zionist Jews spurn the national
project. In the space between these two positions, the dilemma takes
particular forms based on how individuals analyse their situations.
Accordingly, although ‘A tale of two Zionists’ was our entry point into
this book, the work itself is more aptly ‘A tale of 11 left-, non- and anti-
Zionists’ (which does not include Cohn-Sherbok and Shavit, though we
will meet Shavit again later on).
The problematic situation (the ‘Thing Without a Name’)
The early parts of this book critically engage with the problematic situa-
tion, explaining the trap from which concerned Israeli Jews are trying to
escape. Israeli academic Lev Luis Grinberg (2009) uses the ‘Thing Without
a Name’ to describe the ongoing project of Palestinian dispossession and
its simultaneous justification within Israeli society, which constitutes a
trap for those seeking to change their state or society. Grinberg borrows
a metaphor used by members of the Israeli government after the acquisi-
tion of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 to explain the historical desire of
Zionist activists to have the dowry (land) but not the bride (non-Jewish
residents). The phenomenon Grinberg seeks to name ‘includes both the
act of robbing the bride and the portrayal of the abusive husband as
the victim of her resistance’ (p. 115). Academics’ inability to come up
with suitable terminology for this ‘Thing’ contributes to the problem.

The ‘Thing’ blurs the names and nature of the parties involved and
re-attributes specific Israeli-only meanings to terms like Right and Left
(p. 111). It depicts a decades-long occupation as temporary (p. 106) and,
by insisting upon a border between Israel and the West Bank, obscures
the singular nature of the regime (p. 109). It puts Jewish ‘settlers’ in the
hot seat whilst letting other Israelis off the hook (p. 109). Most signifi-
cantly, every act of resistance reaffirms the ‘Thing’. The bride can never
be the victim; this role belongs to the husband even as he continues to
appropriate her dowry and work out how to do away with her.
The ‘Thing’ does not only place Palestinians in a bind. It also traps
Israeli Jews seeking to adopt a moral standpoint vis à vis the Other by
ensuring that they, too, become part of the problem. This occurs in
simultaneous, contradictory directions.
First, resistance becomes part of the threat, affirming the overall
victimhood of the Us. ‘Deviant’ individuals may be reviled; their patri-
otic convictions may be questioned and they may face retribution in
their professional, personal and public lives. They may also be ignored,
written off as freaks whose opinions are irrelevant. The responses of
these individuals to such treatment may affect how they engage with
their beliefs.
Second, such individuals are also vulnerable to co-optation, becoming
part of the problem by acting (even against their will) as legitimating
agents. This occurs at a meta-level and at the level of personal engage-
ment. Collectively, the moral stands of dissidents are important to a
society wishing to depict itself as a flourishing democracy. Commentators
have applied the concept of ‘shoot and cry’ to the so-called moral Israeli
having no alternatives to violence (Segev, 2002). The extent to which
personal retribution thwarts a state’s democratic credentials remains an
open question. However, when a society reviles those who suggest that
their state is not democratic, yet simultaneously uses them as evidence
for democracy’s existence, these people are damned either way.
At a personal level, the engagement of such individuals also becomes
questionable. Lentin (2010) asks whether those ‘who attempt to bear
witness and take responsibility ... in not drawing political solutions or
defining themselves as anti-Zionist ... aim to and ultimately become
encompassed by the Israeli Zionist consensus’ (pp. 17–18, my emphasis).
Kirstein Keshet’s (2006) study of the organisation MachsomWatch,
which places female Israeli Jewish observers at checkpoints in Occupied
Palestine, suggests many activists ‘want to protest and yet to reassure –
and be reassured – that they are still part of the Israeli collective’ (p. 110).
Introduction 5
Lentin questions whether engagement with the Other ultimately becomes

an ‘appropriation of memory’ and a ‘signifier of narcissism stemming
from an unassuageable melancholia and guilt’ (pp. 49–50), which func-
tions to ‘racialise’ the Other as ‘victims of “our” state’ (p. 169).
Within these competing traps, the harder that individuals try to resolve
the contradictions of their ‘moral Zionism’ the more dangerous they
become. They become a danger to their own self-perceptions (which
can explain Shavit’s revulsion for Morris). They also become dangerous
to the problem they seek to address, but may ultimately perpetuate.
Finally, they become dangerous to their society, should they attempt to
dismantle the system of privilege that is the Jewish state. Accordingly,
such individuals find themselves in what George Clooney’s character
in the iconic film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Coen et al., 2001) calls
‘a tight spot’. Their situation limits their ability to utilise alternative
discourses of identification. Individuals may find that that they are more
comfortable with contradictions than alternatives, and impose limits on
themselves. If Benny Morris represents one extreme – the person who
has given up on the Other – we will explore the other extreme of anti-
Zionists who walk away from their society. For those in between, their
dilemma involves negotiating contradictions in pursuit of connection
with the Other across the lines of legally entrenched privilege.
Elaborating the problematic situation of these individuals in this
book, I explain systematically how Israeli nationalism operates, utilising
the concepts of ethnocratisation and ressentiment ethnic nationalist
discourses. In what I call ethnocratiser states, activists purporting to
represent an ethnic nation shore up their hegemony via the institu-
tionalisation of ethnic categories and the manipulation of demography
to achieve ‘majority rules’ domination. Ressentiment ethnic nationalist
discourses inspire them to do this – discourses of national identification
hostile to those depicted as ethnic Others. Institutionalised, ressentiment
ethnic nationalist discourses trap future generations in an apparently
inescapable cycle of enmity between two self-evident ‘ethnic nations’ in
a state privileging only one of them. The situation compels the ‘privi-
leged nation’ to fight continually those who see its privilege as funda-
mentally illegitimate, sustaining the depiction of a Virtuous Us under
attack from an Evil Other. I present the development of Zionism and
Israel according to such a framework, arguing that indigenous resistance
in Palestine and the Holocaust in Europe affirmed the original impetus
of Zionist activists to control a geographical space separated from ‘evil’
Others. I thus demonstrate the discursive construction of ethnocratisa-
tion as a basis for considering potential resistance to it. I explore this
resistance in the second part of the book, using qualitative analysis of

my subjects’ written work and interview responses.
It is worth noting that ethnocratisation and ressentiment are not
the only ways of understanding the problematic situation of Israel’s
internal critics. Other scholars have considered frames of race and
racism (Goldberg, 2009), colonialism and settler-colonialism (Shafir,
1999; Veracini, 2006; Piterberg, 2008), apartheid (Davis, 2003; Glaser,
2003) and occupation. Ethnocratisation as a frame could be critiqued for
representing the state in static terms; for glossing over what, in Israel,
are significant internal divisions within what is generally depicted as
the Jewish nation (such as between Ashkenazim of European origin and
Mizrahim of Middle Eastern origin); or indeed for shying away from the
bolder claim of apartheid. However, this book does not ignore these
other frames and indeed engages with them in telling the story of
Zionism and Israel. I give primary attention to ethnocratisation only
after I reconceptualise it in non-reifying, dynamic terms, drawing atten-
tion to the discursive ‘doing’ of ethnicising/racialising that is so funda-
mental to the State of Israel and contemporary Israeli society. The role
of the state in this process is so crucial that I have made conceptualising
its relationship with ressentiment nationalist discourse my core focus.
Whilst apartheid is a suitable term for the practices and policies of Israel,
particularly as they pertain to the West Bank, ethnocratisation provides
a way of understanding not only the ‘doing’ of division and domination
but also the ‘doing’ of identification itself.
A common saying declares: ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’
This is true of the problematic situation generated by ressentiment and
the structure and operation of the Israeli state. Since the dilemma
was endemic in the Zionist project from the very beginning, we can
trace variations of the moral ruminations explored in this book back
through history. Some contemporary individuals I analyse here invoke
an imagined connection to their forebears, seeking to join a tradition of
attempts to build a more enlightened society in Palestine than the one
that ultimately emerged. (I distinguish this tradition of internal Zionist
opposition from broader absolute opposition to Zionism.) I present the
tradition of internal opposition to Zionism, and my subjects’ attempts
to join it, as a poisoned chalice. As long as there has been a problem-
atic situation of a colonial project establishing a society based on ethnic
categories, individuals have grappled with how – or whether – this could
be achieved without harming Others already on the land. Some (like
Morris) have declared, to the dismay of others: ‘It cannot be done, but
don’t let that stop us.’ Such troubling conversations now span over a
Introduction 7
century, and yet in each era the answers to such questions have ulti-
mately cleaved back to colonisation, categorisation, privilege and
violence. Because the first generation of internal opponents were unable
to formulate an alternative method of creating a Jewish homeland in
Palestine without generating conflict with their non-Jewish Other,
they were ultimately not just neutralised but co-opted into the broader
Zionist project. Thus, whilst the problematic situation and the dilemma
are as old as the Zionist project, each successive generation must grapple
with them anew. Ruminations that the contemporary malaise might
have been averted – if only previous generations had made ‘better’ deci-
sions – occlude the lack of conceptual clarity to internal dissent I map
in this book. This lack of clarity has seen such dissent incorporated into
the ongoing project of ethnocratisation.
Arguably, even Grinberg himself falls into the trap of wistfully grasping
alternatives when he argues: ‘the Jewish settlers’ desire to establish a
national community in Eretz Israel (Palestine) did not have to lead tele-
ologically to the monstrous form it presently takes, the Thing Without
a Name’ (p. 110). Whilst unfolding events are indeed unique, specific
and contingent, the path of ressentiment offers little in the way of plau-
sible alternative historical trajectories. We can ask the same questions
for days, weeks, months and years, but if there has only ever been one
answer, what does it mean to join the tradition of questioning? The
tradition of ‘enlightened’ internal opposition to elements of the Zionist
project is a fossil in which we can trace the issues facing dissidents today
as well as foretelling what may come of their efforts. Though the tradi-
tion may offer inspiration, it also places an onus on dissidents to be
as precise as possible in articulating the tensions between a European
colonialist project and the Others on the land – lest they, too, take their
place in affirming the morality of that which they purport to critique.
A candid moment, in which one of my subjects loudly denounces
another, captures this challenge.
Jeff Halper ... is a fucking American Zionist who came to live in

Israel ... and now he says, ‘Oh, but we don’t want to demolish
[houses]’. So how do you want to live on other people’s land if you
don’t demolish? How do you want to do it? (Atzmon, 2010)
In asking whether the road to the present malaise could indeed have led
anywhere different, I deny my subjects the refuge of what one of them
calls ‘wrong turns’ (Benvenisti, 2010a). I challenge them with a space
for dissent in which there might only be Shavit’s ‘cruel, tragic Zionism,
or the foregoing of Zionism’. I face with them the enormity of what this
might mean and explore their efforts to bring about change from within
this paradigm.
The ‘dissidents’
The dilemma constitutes the lived experience of certain individuals;

in their words and actions, institutionalised ressentiment nationalism
collides with concern for the Other. I call such people ‘dissidents’.
Whilst the label might seem overstated for individuals who, in some
cases, participate in mainstream institutions within their society, the
subjects of this book all dissent against the characterisation of ‘Jews’
and ‘Arabs’ as existential enemies. Instead, they seek to re-imagine new
forms of identification enabling co-existence.
The dissidents in this work are not necessarily the most famous dissi-
dents in Israel and perhaps do not even identify in such terms. Nor do
they represent a broad cross-section of Israeli society. However, they all
fit somewhere on the spectrum between left-wing Zionism and radical
anti-Zionism, having been drawn to re-examine their ‘national identities’
by their concern for the Other. I started by focusing on ten individuals;
this grew to 11 when the opportunity arose to interview an interesting
character whilst undertaking fieldwork in Israel. Other potential subjects
were unavailable, such as Susan Nathan (2005), a disillusioned former
Israeli immigrant, and the academic Ilan Pappe (2010). Still more indi-
viduals would emerge too late, such as Miko Peled (2012), peace activist
and son of a famous Israeli general, and anti-Zionist psychotherapist
Avigail Abarbanel (2012).
I chose my dissidents based on a range of factors. Who had already
produced academic or activist work? Who had written, said or done
something interesting or controversial? Who was available for inter-
view? Who wanted to participate? One of the most important things
about my dissidents was that they could speak English well enough to
converse frankly with me. Whilst my subjects conversing in their second
(or third) language might place certain limitations on our dialogue, this
was preferable to including a third party in our conversation.
I sought to include individuals whose views and experiences ranged
across a spectrum, in order to demonstrate the variability of responses to
the dilemma. The point was not to artificially create a set of dissidents
whose experiences could prove that a dilemma exists. Indeed, whether
an individual personally experienced or struggled with contradictions,
generally or specifically within the interview setting, was not a key
Introduction 9
concern, since I worked from the premise that objective contradictions

arising from the state and its dominant nationalist discourse necessarily
curtail attempts to connect with the Other; as I contend in the first
part of the book. My purpose was thus to dramatise and explore how
the dilemma manifested through the dissident narratives, rather than to
prove its existence or strength.
My inclusion of one particular dissident merits closer examination,
because more than one reader queried her appropriateness. I analyse
popular novelist Dorit Rabinyan, whose fiction eschews political engage-
ment, based on a single article she wrote about a friendship and love affair
with a Palestinian artist whilst living in New York (2004). I regard that
piece to be a profoundly political work displaying the tensions between
personal and national affiliations. However, one reader suggested that
the piece merely muses on the predicament of being Israeli, and is
authored by an otherwise a-political mainstream individual. Another
reader asked, more bluntly, ‘Isn’t she just some girl who fell in love with
a Palestinian guy?’
These critiques urge us to consider the points at which the personal
becomes political, and political engagement becomes dissent. Rabinyan’s
article critically examined her own identification and that of the
Other, explored political solutions and depicted a tantalising erasure
of boundaries, even as she insisted on maintaining and strengthening
them. Her article did everything that the other dissidents do in terms
of public political engagement on the issue of the Other. The fact that
its author turned out to remain stridently Zionist demonstrates where
such moments of dissent may end up – firmly embedded within the
national consensus. Rabinyan is thus the extreme on one end of the
continuum of my dissidents; individuals that are more radical occupy
the other extreme. Whilst we may never firmly establish where dissent
begins, drawing that line with Rabinyan on the dissenting side is both
methodologically defensible and borne out by the comparative richness
her narrative lends to that of Meron Benvenisti, who can be seen to
employ a similar discourse of national identification (see Chapter 7).
Analysing the narratives of a small selection of individuals does not
enable me to offer a conclusive account of political dissent in Israel. I
cannot make sweeping conclusions about what Israelis think, nor offer
comprehensive predictions about the future, nor argue which model for
resolution is superior. Rather, I can consider how a selection of indi-
viduals utilise alternative discourses of national identity. I can explore
the contradictions of a small selection of people, whilst recognising that
other individuals might formulate completely different responses. As
far as the overall exercise is concerned, then, a different selection of

dissidents would have served the same purpose, but the resultant book
might have looked very different, as I shall consider at the end.
Narrative analysis
In the second half of the book, I explore the dissidents’ dilemma through
the realm of discourse, exploring how they enact inconsistencies.
Narrative analysis, which points to narratives as a study of focus and
attention, provides a way of engaging with this enactment. Riessman
(2008) refers to
texts at several levels that overlap: stories told by research participants

(which are themselves interpretive), interpretive accounts developed
by an investigator based on interviews and fieldwork observation (a
story about stories) and even the narrative a reader constructs after
engaging with the participant’s and investigator’s narratives. (p. 6)
I use a thematic analysis, which prioritises the content of the narrative,

but Riessman suggests that ‘category-centered models of research ... can
be combined with close analysis of individual cases’ (2008, p. 12).
Accordingly, I also employ elements of structural analysis; exploring
omissions, paying attention to word choices, and making room for the
insertion of remarkable stories like Eitan Bronstein’s circumcision (see
Chapter 4).
I see my role as epitomised by Riessman’s statement: ‘[A]ll investiga-
tors ... lack access to another’s unmediated experience; we have instead
materials that were constructed by socially situated individuals from a
perspective and for an audience, issues made vivid in interview situa-
tions’ (p. 23). I am also explicit about my own participatory role:
By our interviewing and transcription practices, we play a major part

in constituting the narrative data that we then analyse. Through our
presence, and by listening and questioning in particular ways, we
critically shape the stories participants choose to tell. The process of
infiltration continues with transcription ... (p. 50)
In assembling my dissident narratives, I engaged with material my

subjects had written or stated in previous interviews. I then compiled
a list of questions; some open-ended, others specific. I conducted most
interviews in 2010, in London, Berlin and Israel. At the beginning of
Introduction 11
each interview, I explained the premise of my research to the dissidents,

including how I saw them as embodying a dilemma vis à vis the Other.
The dissidents sometimes employed this terminology in the interviews;
perhaps adopting it from me or reflecting an earlier predisposition on
their part.
Within social science, there is a convention in which the researcher
adopts a neutral stance with regard to her subjects. Whilst scholars have
refuted the ‘imagined social scientific dilemma of ethical neutrality
versus social relevance’ (Gray, 1989, p. 308), there remains an onus
on the researcher who overtly eschews neutrality to explain herself. In
this particular project, the nature of the research problem precluded an
ethically neutral interviewing approach. The fascinating aspect of my
subjects was their (at least partial) suppression of the contradictions
inherent in their position. Whilst some dissidents went on to speak
extremely eloquently about this, several spoke of muting such contra-
dictions in daily life. As such, the things I wished to explore further
were ‘red flags’ I had picked up in their previous works or words; the
dissidents had not elaborated upon them prior to the interviews. My
aim was to pin down potential inconsistencies and see how the dissi-
dents responded to the suggestion that there might only be Shavit’s
‘cruel, tragic Zionism, or the foregoing of Zionism’. This necessitated me
adopting a more confrontational approach with my subjects. I had to
ask difficult questions, expose contradictions, consider how dissidents
could hold opposing opinions and challenge their most personal affili-
ations. I did this as an academic outsider, whilst also coming from a
political tradition that generally lauds ‘moral’ dissidents as heroes. To
produce this work, I therefore had to explain clearly that I was depicting
the ‘tight spot’ and not the personal failings of individuals. I aimed
to accompany my dissidents into a complex web of national affinity,
personal and political privilege, and genuine concern for the suffering
of Others. For the most part, it proved a successful strategy, generating
reflection and candour from both interviewer and interviewee. The
approach also gave rise to debate and disagreement, which I was able
to keep congenial on all but one occasion. As I shall explain later, the
exception occurred with Meron Benvenisti, who objected to both the
approach and its implications. However, despite the ensuing discomfort
for both of us, the interview with Benvenisti yielded rich material, ulti-
mately validating my unorthodox approach.
My dissidents brought a wealth of deep thought and personal struggle
to this project and I have taken seriously the privilege of engaging with
them. Part of this has involved challenging myself to engage with the
dissidents’ Zionisms, which may not resolve the dilemma but may
nevertheless move both the political situation and analysis of it into
fruitful spaces. Whilst my depiction of the problematic situation is an
honest rendering of the dissidents’ political context, I try to prevent it
from becoming a further trap for either my subjects or my scholarship.
Thus, the dilemma is the starting point for all of us – the place at which
my analysis interrogates the dissidents’ lived experience. The finishing
point of this questioning – my own and the subjects’ – is the visions
they can inspire, the limitations they cannot transgress and the conclu-
sions I can draw. I acknowledge the limitations and perhaps futility of
the dissidents’ efforts whilst also celebrating what they are able to think,
say and imagine.
Othering the Other
This book covers a broader topic that has become the flashpoint of our
times. Critics could suggest that in focusing on Israeli Jews, my book
continues the marginalisation of Palestinian voices. Many of my refer-
ences and all of my subjects are Israeli Jews; the questions I consider
relate to their experiences, and I engage with Palestinians only through
this prism. This, however, is the point. Whilst the book may replicate
the silencing of non-Jewish voices within Israeli society, I maintain that
entering this conversation, about how Israeli Jews might renegotiate
national identification, can help us to understand the dynamics of the
Israeli Jewish conflict with – and hence oppression of – the Palestinian
Other.
Book outline
This book has two parts. The first part sets up the theoretical premise
of the work, elaborating the context of my research subjects in terms
of nationalism and the state. In the second part, I use narrative anal-
ysis to explore the dissidents’ written work and responses to interview
questions. While the first part of the book informs the analysis in the
second part, I encourage non-academic readers to consider starting at
Part II (Chapter 4) and reading through to the end. The vibrancy of the
qualitative analysis is immediately accessible, in a way that the earlier
nationalism theory may not be. Eager readers can always return to the
first part later!
Part I commences with Chapter 1, explaining the ethnocratiser state
and ressentiment nationalism. This chapter explores how a particular
Introduction 13
type of nationalist discourse develops and how activists can institution-

alise it. The chapter overtly uses a non-groupist framing to conceptualise
nationalist movements and states that reify ‘identities’.
Chapter 2 applies the generalist propositions of the first chapter to the
development of Zionism. It details how Zionism has formed a ressenti-
ment pair with the Palestinian nationalist discourse, leading to the crea-
tion of the Jewish state in 1948.
Chapter 3 explains the establishment of Israel as a manifestation of
ressentiment discourse, explores the continuation of the ressentiment pair
with the Palestinian nationalist discourse and elaborates the conse-
quences of Israel’s construction of ‘actual’ Others through laws and
policies.
Part II commences with Chapter 4, which introduces the dissidents,
taking in biographical details, reasons for inclusion in this work and
some of their ideas expressed in interview or published work.
Chapters 5 and 6 explore areas of dissonance in the dissidents’ narra-
tives. I organise them thematically, presenting contradictory or prob-
lematic elements of several dissident narratives in conjunction. I also
examine the most radical dissidents, who escape some of the tensions
inherent in identifying with the Jewish nation, but whose position
nevertheless raises some interesting questions.
Chapter 7 outlines five alternative discourses to hegemonic ressen-
timent Zionism and illustrates them with examples. In the context of
a hegemonic ressentiment discourse, and given Israel’s specific history
of colonialism and ethnic cleansing, it argues that single alternative
discourses may not offer the dissidents a way of talking about the
Other as an equal whilst maintaining thick national identification. This
may compel individuals to use other discourses, including ressentiment
Zionism, contributing to inconsistencies in their narratives.
The Conclusion considers the implications of this analysis. It engages
in some limited surmising about ressentiment, its institutionalisation
into state structures and the meaning of dissent therein.
Part I
Context
1
Ressentiment and the State
Introduction
Since the dissidents’ political context needs careful elucidation, this is

the first of three chapters developing the problematic situation depicted
in the Introduction. In this chapter, my focus is theoretical, and I begin
by identifying my approach to nationalism, which Calhoun (1997)
suggests can be understood as discourse, project and evaluation or
‘ethical imperative’. I primarily engage with nationalism as discourse:
the production of a cultural understanding and rhetoric which leads

people throughout the world to think and frame their aspirations in
terms of the idea of nation and national identity, and the production
of particular versions of national thought and language in particular
settings and traditions. (p. 6)
Nationalist discourses necessarily underlie the projects that they may

give rise to; projects of nation-and state-building captured by Gellner’s
(1983) famous definition of nationalism as the ‘political principle that
holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (p. 1).
We can understand ‘nations’ – which nationalist projects construct and
reify – to exist within the discourses that create them. However, states
may also be involved in constructing and circulating these discourses;
states reify the nations invoked by nationalist discourses and turn ‘imag-
ined communities’ (Anderson, 1991) into legal entities. Yet discourses
imagining the nation may also precede the establishment of the state.
We need a coherent way of thinking about the relationships between
these factors inasmuch as they are relevant to our study of the dissi-
dents’ problematic situation. Here, I consider how a type of discourse
17
can lead political activists and actors to see themselves and Others in
a certain way. Such perceptions then inform state-seeking or state-
building aspirations and the kind of state implemented if the oppor-
tunity arises. The first section of this chapter explains and charts the
development of what I call a ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse.
The second section explains the incorporation of such a discourse into
the state. I argue that we should conceive of the resultant ‘ethnoc-
ratiser state’ as the institutionalisation of ressentiment ethnic nation-
alist discourse, rather than as the property or product of an ‘ethnic
group’.
Ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourses
This section elaborates the concept of a ressentiment ethnic nation-

alist discourse. Ressentiment, a term originally employed by Nietzsche,
describes a process in which individuals, in order to cope with the
frustration and confusion arising from dissonance and subordination,
undertake ‘imaginary revenge’ (1996, p. 22) by means of a ‘radical trans-
valuation of values’ (p. 19). They turn the qualities that appear to explain
their repression into markers of virtue, denigrating those perceived as
dominators by depicting various aspects of those people’s culture in a
negative light.1
Though Nietzsche’s original subjects were the Jewish priestly class
under Roman subordination, ressentiment has broader applicability. A
ressentiment discourse generates a sense of being superior to, and wronged
by, an Evil Other. The discourse appears to resolve, for those using it,
unpleasant feelings of envy, inadequacy and victimhood. However,
since the ressentiment discourse actually amplifies these unpleasant feel-
ings, it offers an illusory remedy.
We could talk about numerous ressentiment discourses in contempo-
rary society. Consider someone identifying as homosexual who says
‘straight people discriminate against me’. Consider a wronged woman
who says ‘all men are bastards’. These examples demonstrate that there
can be an apparent truth to the sense of slight invoked by the discourse.
Some heterosexual people do discriminate against those who don’t
follow their norms. Some men do harm women in our patriarchal socie-
ties. However, what is not true is the universalised depiction of the Evil
Other; stereotyped to depict an entire category of person as all the same.
In truth, not all heterosexuals are homophobes, and not every man is a
bastard, but this collective demonisation of Others is intrinsic to ressenti-
ment discourses.
Ressentiment and the State 19
The sociologist Liah Greenfeld has most convincingly elaborated the

linkage between ressentiment discourse and nationalism. Greenfeld uses
ressentiment as a partial explanation for the development of nationalism.
She depicts what I call culture-makers – intellectuals and elites seeking to
make sense of their places in a changing world – formulating nationalist
discourses and, in the process, inadvertently shaping whole societies.
According to Greenfeld, the interplay of structural, cultural and
psychological factors upon these culture-makers results in them crafting
either a ‘civic’ nationalism not grounded in the conception of a unique
cultural community, or an ‘ethnic’ nationalism that is collectivist, illib-
eral and defined according to mythical histories, symbols and legends.2
This second type – ethnic nationalism – is formed through the psycho-
logical factor of ressentiment. Culture-makers compare themselves to
nearby civic nations, generating feelings of inferiority. Their ‘suppressed
feelings of envy and hatred (existential envy) and the impossibility to act
them out’ generate a ressentiment ‘transvaluation of values’ (Greenfeld
and Chirot, 1994, p. 84).
Notably, according to this model, ressentiment only occurs in the
development of ethnic nationalisms. Yet civic nationalisms are equally
significant, since they provide the original source of inspiration and
envy for ressentiment-afflicted culture-makers. Greenfeld argues that
ressentiment-afflicted culture-makers adopt an ethnic paradigm to define
themselves as the moral and intellectual opposite of civic nationalisms.
Writing with Chirot, she presents the ‘reactive’ nature of ethnic nation-
alisms as a response to the civic self-understanding of the first national-
isms: England and France. In these encounters, as I shall demonstrate,
Greenfeld depicts the ressentiment transvaluation of values as a conscious
shift from civic national identification to its opposite in ethnic nation-
alist identification.
In the Russian case, she argues that Peter the Great’s experimentations
with Westernisation dislocated nobles. When these individuals subse-
quently sought a new, dignified identity in nationalism, their country’s
objective backwardness imperilled their attempts at pride and self-worth.
Thus, says Greenfeld,
Russian national consciousness was defined almost wholly on the basis

of the transvaluation of the Western ideals. The axis of the transvalu-
ation was the rejection of the individual – indeed the central Western
value. Community took the place of the individual, the mystical
Slavic soul was substituted for reason, and liberty was redefined as
inner freedom. (Greenfeld and Chirot, 1994, p. 94)
According to this account, the nobles, through their transvaluation of

values, adopted an ethnic paradigm specifically to differentiate them-
selves from the civic West, which they envied but failed to equalise.
Greenfeld and Chirot make the same argument as they tell the German
story, sourcing the rise of nationalism in the eighteenth century to
‘middle-class intellectuals’ (p. 98) who did not enjoy the social mobility
that they expected their university educations to deliver. Initially forming
part of the Enlightenment tradition and seeing themselves as equal to
their peers in the West, when the intellectuals were unable to enjoy
the same fruits, they turned on the values they had formerly embraced.
Ressentiment drove them from individualism and universalism to the
unique German nation. Again, Greenfeld and Chirot depict the trans-
valuation of values as pertaining to the content of the nationalism.
This argument recurs in Greenfeld and Chirot’s analysis of contem-
porary post-colonial ethnic nationalisms as well. In that context, they
posit ressentiment deriving from encounters between colonised elites
and Western educators who teach them that they are inferior (p. 103).
The colonial subject experiences civic nationalism offering illusory
opportunity alongside seemingly permanent subjugation. He responds
by rejecting the promises of universalism for the unique properties of
ethnocultural identification.
Greenfeld and Chirot thus portray ethnic nationalism in a variety of
contexts as the ressentiment backlash to unfulfilled, disappointing or
hypocritical civic nationalism. However, their focus on the civic ideal
overstates and universalises a set of contingent experiences, limiting the
applicability of ressentiment to situations in which we can locate the civic
source of disappointment. It also tells us that ressentiment must be about
ideas, when ressentiment is also about identification. Rather than a civic-
to-ethnic shift being at the heart of the transvaluation of values, then,
we should think more about what ressentiment enables individuals to do.
Understanding ressentiment as a boundary-making exercise allows us to
engage with nationalisms like Zionism, which arise in highly ethnicised
contexts. Far from being engaged in thinking premised on the civic–
ethnic distinction, actors experiencing ressentiment are engaged with
a far more fundamental problem: trying to understand themselves as
Good, and their Envied Other as not-Good, when the observable state
of affairs appears to indicate the opposite. Discourses constructing and
reifying ethnic categories help ressentiment-afflicted culture-makers to
carry out this moral reversal. It is precisely the utility of ethnic cate-
gories to boundary-making and the associated demarcation of virtue
that explains ethnic identification as the basis of nationhood. In short,
ethnic nationalism is adopted because it is useful, not because it is civic

nationalism’s opposite.
Thus, the values redesignated in the transvaluation of values are
not the actual values about self and society, relating to themes of the
Enlightenment and the visions of Man therein. Rather, they are far more
basic values of Good and Evil, applied to ourselves and those whom we
envy. We augment moral demarcation by drawing ethnic boundaries,
since these appear to tell us where we end and our Others begin. This
is important, lest in denigrating our Others, we inadvertently diminish
ourselves. Ethnic boundaries appear to delineate – for those invoking
them – fixed and immutable categories. Good and Evil can be attached
to these categories and appear as unshifting and long-lasting, enabling
the ressentiment formula of Good Us, Evil Other to be applied with
the illusion of permanence. Physical or cultural properties observable
in multiple individuals enable us to group those individuals together
and stereotype them. From here, it is easy to forget that they possess
any other qualities – we see only their exaggerated differences from Us.
Ironically, the promise of clarity and permanency in ethnonational cate-
gories is illusory. In practice, there is always a degree of permeability to
the boundary, since ‘as a discourse, identification is a construction, a
process never completed, always in process, always conditional’ (Lentin,
2010, p. 157, paraphrasing Hall). But these vagaries do not matter to
those articulating ethnic nationalist ressentiment discourses. (They do,
however, demand a more trenchant commitment to the ‘truth’ of the
discourse in the face of contrary evidence.)
So, if we consider that ressentiment might not involve a transvalua-
tion of values like Enlightenment liberalism, but rather values like Good
and Evil, we can see why ethnic boundaries would be useful for the first
ethnic nationalists Greenfeld and Chirot describe. These culture-makers
sought to understand themselves as unambiguously Good compared
with the objects of their envy. Crucially, in order to make this happen,
they needed to draw a boundary around themselves, because other-
wise no such boundary existed. The hazy universal values out of which
English and French nationalisms were crafted might theoretically apply
to the German or Russian man – in fact, this was the source of envy
in the first place. Thus, these early culture-makers differentiated them-
selves in order to label the objects of their envy as Others. However, they
had to begin by drawing the boundary; they had to craft an Ethnic Us
before they could understand their Other.
The role of boundary-making in the ressentiment transvaluation of
values in nationalism is also applicable to situations in which ethnic
(rather than civic) nationalist discourses inspire the production of

new ethnic nationalist discourses – the scenario this book explores. In
these cases, since the envied nationalism already employs ethnicised
terminologies, culture-makers experiencing ressentiment have less crea-
tive work to do. The boundary – so craved by those seeking to depict
their own absolute virtue against an Other – already exists. Culture-
makers simply have to invert the moral content of categories already
in place.
The formula is so simple and effective that it spreads easily, like
common sense. A ressentiment discourse inculcates many individuals
with values informed by the experiences of its creators, changing over
time as new circumstances are woven into the interpretative framework.
In depicting the virtuous Us as being harmed by the Other, a ressenti-
ment discourse constructs a lens through which the world is viewed, and
encourages individuals to act in ways that bring about the cataclysmic
events foretold. This affirms the discourse’s apparent truth, turning the
reified Us and the envied or hated Other into actual ‘conflict protago-
nists’ (Drexler, 2008). Identification with the ethnic nation depicted
by the ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse provides the basis for
perceiving slights enacted by Others. The apparent existence of ‘conflict
protagonists’ obscures the process of their construction; people experi-
ence them as pre-existing and enduring.
Subsequent participants in ressentiment discourses therefore need not
have experienced the pain, anomie, envy or humiliation of the orig-
inal purveyors, nor even met the Other[s] denigrated by the discourse.
Instead, the discourse schools individuals in historical examples of
slights and encourages the search for new examples. Perhaps there will
be a truth to the belief in past or imminent harm, but the status of the
oppressor is extrapolated onto an entire category of person rather than
the actual actors, agents or systemic features involved. The discourse
constructs this ‘reality’; its common sense becomes the only one avail-
able, and thus, as Drexler (2008) declares with regard to what she calls
‘conflict narratives,’ it becomes
impossible to separate the discourse from the materiality of the conflict.

Conflict situations are produced and perpetuated by various narra-
tions of successive events that stand, not as object and description,
but as spirals of interpretation and action. That some narratives come
true is not evidence that those particular narratives are correct repre-
sentations of the conflict, but rather signs of their discursive power
to reproduce it. Historical events attain their importance through
policies and successive acts that are shaped by discursive construc-

tions of the conflict. (p. 27, her emphasis)
Ressentiment discourses offer cogent, self-evident explanations for

why things are the way they are. What they obscure, however, is that
the explanation generates the circumstances it seeks to describe. This
malaise affects not only the actors in the conflict but also those who
comment upon it. ‘[E]thnic and national frames are readily accessible,
powerfully resonant, and widely understood as legitimate. This encour-
ages actors and analysts alike to interpret conflict and violence in ethnic
terms rather than other terms’ (Brubaker, 2004, p. 17). Hence, regardless
of how objectively correct they are in their claims to victimhood at the
hands of an ethnic Other, individuals using a ressentiment discourse can
find supporting evidence. They may then adopt a pre-emptive approach,
which looks more like aggression to those depicted as their Others, who
meet it accordingly.
On this basis, ressentiment discourses encourage the formation of ressen-
timent pairs; two ressentiment discourses playing a game of hateful tennis
in which actions and reactions repeatedly affirm their respective ‘truths’.
Targeted Others may go through their own ressentiment experiences;
hence new pairs might emerge, or one ressentiment ethnic nationalist
discourse might, like a cheating lover, conduct ressentiment relationships
with more than one Other. However, each ressentiment discourse is likely
to have a ‘significant Other’ (Triandafyllidou, 1998) with which it forms
a ressentiment pair – in targeting this significant Other with aggression,
it invites the return of similar ‘affections’. Thus, the conflict metastasises
from discourse to actual violence.
A final thing to consider is that the causal relationship between ethnic
nationalist discourses and ressentiment might (also) run the other way.
Ressentiment can take an ethnic nationalist direction because ethnic
boundaries appear to offer an easy demarcation of the Good Us and
the Evil Other. However, since it is theoretically possible that an ethnic
nationalist discourse could lack the ressentiment qualities of demonisa-
tion and self-elevation, such a discourse invites closer examination.
This is especially important, since this book considers the possibility
and consequences of ‘benign’ ethnic nationalisms. Unfortunately,
any ethnic nationalism has the tendency to backslide to ressentiment
because they are ‘necessarily forms of particularism’ (Greenfeld, 2006,
p. 142). Ethnic nationalisms do not even claim to attach any moral
attributes to all of humanity, beyond noting that everyone belongs
to a nation (Gans, 2003). This makes it easy for those identifying as a
nation to measure moral virtue only with reference the treatment of

members.
[T]he borderline between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is in principle impermeable.

Nationality is defined as an inherent trait, and nations are seen, in
effect, as separate species. Foreigners are no longer fellow men in the
same sense, and there is no moral imperative to treat them as one
would treat one’s fellow nationals, just the same way as there is no
imperative to treat our fellow mammals, or even fellow great apes as
fellow men ... (Greenfeld, 2006, pp. 142–43)
In these circumstances, those identifying as a nation could easily ignore,

marginalise or somehow harm those within their ambit designated as
Others, even without obvious malicious intent. As I have suggested,
ressentiment is a likely outcome for those who feel victimised, regard-
less of the intentions involved. If ‘victims’ then channel such ressenti-
ment back to those responsible, a ressentiment pair is likely to develop,
precisely because those who did the ‘inadvertent Othering’ would digest
this perceived attack through their identification as an ethnic nation.
Ethnic nationalist discourses construct nations as ‘individuals capable of
suffering and inflicting insults’ and ‘harbouring malicious intentions’,
leading to increased capacity for mobilisation against perceived enemies
(Greenfeld, 2006, p. 142). Thus, simply being an ‘ethnic Us’ (and hence
having ethnic Others) can render a nationalism vulnerable to becoming
a conflict protagonist, even without initial intent. Ethnic nationalisms
do not necessarily turn out this way – ‘international circumstances and
opportunities’ also play a role (Greenfeld and Chirot, 1994, p. 88) – but
the propensity exists because responses to perceived insults centre upon
ethnic categories.
Significantly, when those identifying as an ethnic nation inadvert-
ently harm Others, they are ill-prepared for that Other’s response. Unable
to comprehend its causes, they read the reaction as unsolicited aggres-
sion. Individuals who claim for their nations noble qualities such as
tolerance, peace, love and respect could not possibly be guilty of harm;
accordingly, any negativity must derive from Others. Hence, notions of
ethnic nations as peace-loving and beneficent may actually augment
ressentiment discourses. Purported benevolent qualities, projected onto
an arbitrarily designated category of person, reveal themselves as illu-
sory in the face of perceived threats. The ‘peace-loving nation’ becomes
petulant when confronted with the unintended consequences of its
self-worship; it immediately re-characterises as Virtuous Victim and fills
with ressentiment.3 That the ethnic construction of the Us might sow

the seeds of a hostile ressentiment relationship, even without belligerent
intent, is a point that will re-emerge when we consider the phenom-
enon of Cultural Zionism in the next chapter. For now, we will move
on to considering how the institutionalisation of ressentiment discourses
may occur.
Ressentiment and ethnocratisation
If we now understand how ressentiment discourses originate and spread,

how do they come to form the basis of states? In this section, I examine
this question by using the term charter to refer to the official discourse
embodied in states’ founding documents, legislation, policies and court
decisions. Certain states have charters that recognisably categorise, reify
and discriminate between types of person. I use the term ethnocratisa-
tion to describe the processes by which nationalist activists, in thrall to
ressentiment discourses, shape state charters to favour the category to
which they see themselves as belonging. I label the result an ethnoc-
ratiser state. Ethnocratiser states reflect – in laws, policies and court
decisions – the ethnocratising activists’ beliefs in the unique virtue of
‘their nation’ and its vulnerability to Others. ‘First ethnocratisers’ – and
those who follow in their footsteps – perceive the state as a tool for
redressing perceived (ressentiment-informed) injustices at the hands of
Others. They construct the state to be a buttress for, and defender of,
their perceived nation by demarcating the population into ethnic cate-
gories and hierarchically ordering them to privilege their own cohort.
Since the privileged cohort outnumbers the non-privileged – a situation
that the activists manipulate – elections can occur without disrupting
the system of classification and discrimination, which is thus normal-
ised and legitimised.
This does not mean that every ethnic nationalist discourse inspires
this process of ethnocratisation. However, as noted above, even ‘benign’
ethnic nationalist discourses are vulnerable to ressentiment depictions of
Us and Other, which may generate the conditions and political will to
ethnocratise. When a ressentiment pairing occurs, activists on each side
seek to put in place a system that takes power away from the Other. The
relative sizes of the cohorts the activists deem to belong to each cate-
gory may determine the relative brutality of such a system. However,
the most attractive option enables these activists to depict the state as a
formal democracy in which the ruling majority just happens also to be
an ‘ethnic’ majority.
Obviously, not all nationalist activists acquire the possibility to put

in place such a system. Numerous historical, cultural, political, social
and economic factors determine whether the opportunity to set up such
a state arises and whether the relative sizes of the perceived ‘groups’
favours such an arrangement. Then, several factors determine the activ-
ists’ effectiveness in seizing the moment to implement laws and poli-
cies, thereby establishing and perpetuating such a state. It is beyond
this book’s scope to consider all these factors. The important point is
that the activists, in the event that they are successful, are embroiled
in their project. Though canny in propaganda and mobilisation, the
ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse perpetuates in them a sense of
wound inflicted by Others, simultaneously nurturing this wound with
the depiction of the noble Us. Participation in the ‘national project’
eases the pain of the wound; delivering them from the humiliation –
real or exaggerated – that they have experienced at the hands of Others.
The strength of the state becomes both their revenge and their perceived
protection.
Numerous other scholars have analysed the kind of state I have just
described, though often with a different emphasis and terminology.
They commonly depict the phenomenon under study as resulting from
the capture of the state by a particular ‘ethnic group’ and that group’s
subsequent employment of the state to advance its interests at the
expense of resident non-members (see Conversi, 2009, p. 57; see also
O’Leary, 2001, p. 285 on ‘staatsvolk’ and Kaufmann, 2009 on ‘dominant
ethnicity’). Some scholars explicitly use the term ethnocracy, which my
own terminology develops (see, for example, Wimmer, 2004); see also
Mazrui (1975) on Uganda; Toshchenko on post-Soviet Central Asian
republics (Arutyunyan 2004); and Brown (1994) and Fong (2008) on
Burma.
Yiftachel (2006) has utilised ethnocracy extensively to describe
regime systems that ‘enhance a rule by, and for, a specific ethnos’
(p. 32). However, in a terminological turf war over how to conceptu-
alise Israel, sociologist Smooha (1997) has employed a counter label of
ethnic democracy. Classifying ethnic democracy alongside other recog-
nised types (consociational and liberal) and placing it on a continuum
between consociational democracy and authoritarianism with the
potential to move in either direction (2002a, p. 480; 2005, p. 34),
Smooha argues that while both the model and its Israeli archetype are
not ideal (2002a), ethnic democracy is nevertheless defensible (2002b,
pp. 481–82). He argues that although the state awards special privileges
to the ‘dominant nation’, all citizens enjoy individual rights, satisfying
a minimalist definition of democracy (Dowty, 1999, pp. 3–4; Smooha,

2002b, p. 497 and 2005, p. 22). His opponents counter that the theoret-
ical state in question – and Israel in practice – contravenes equality and
hence does not qualify as democratic (Ghanem, 1998, p. 443; Ghanem
et al., 1998; Yiftachel, 1999, pp. 367–367; Jamal, 2002, pp. 424–28). Like
Smooha (1997) with his ‘Israeli archetype’, some scholars have formu-
lated ethnocracy as a model applicable to other cases including Estonia,
Sri Lanka and Australia prior to 1967 (Yiftachel, 2006, pp. 20–32); and
Malaysia, Russia, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia
(Ghanem, 2009, p. 464).
Whilst this debate is interesting and important, both ethnocracy and
ethnic democracy are problematic from a constructivist perspective.
In representing the state as ‘captured’ by the ‘dominant ethnic group’
(Ghanem, 2009, p. 463), both ethnic democracy and ethnocracy assert
the prior objective existence of ethnic groups, as do representations
of ‘dominant ethnicity’ (Kaufman, 2009) or similar. Brubaker (2004)
cautions against this casual invocation of ethnic groups, violence and
conflict, arguing that it distorts our perception. Actors on the ground
frame events in such language, sometimes lulling even those of us
who purport to be constructivists into a conceptual stupor, wherein
we find ourselves employing these ‘categories of ethnopolitical practice’
as ‘categories of social analysis’ (p. 10, his emphasis). This tendency in
academics is pejoratively termed ‘groupism’ (p. 8). The alternative is to
conceptualise
ethnicity, race and nation ... not as substances or things or entities or

organisms or collective individuals ... but rather in relational, proces-
sual, dynamic, eventful, and disaggregated terms. ... It means taking
as a basic analytical category not the ‘group’ as an entity but group-
ness as a contextually fluctuating conceptual variable. (p. 11)
Employing such an approach enables a scholar to ‘avoid unintention-

ally doubling or reinforcing the reification of ethnic groups in ethnopo-
litical practice with a reification of such groups in social analysis’ (p. 10,
his emphasis).
Since both ethnocracy and ethnic democracy depict rule by self-
evident ethnic group, I have developed an alternative non-groupist
term, ethnocratiser state. Ethnocratiser state emphasises the state’s
role in the construction of categories. Rather than understanding the
state as the agent of an ethnic group, which existing formulations of
‘ethnocracy’/‘ethnic democracy’ invite, we can interpret it as agent
of the ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse employed by the first

ethnocratisers. As we shall see, such an approach radically alters how we
perceive historical events, the role of the state, the process of identifica-
tion and the potential for dissent and transformation. Once we reject
the idea that an ‘ethnic group’ captures the state, we can identify how
a particular way of seeing becomes hegemonic; a particular approach
to identification becomes taken for granted. Individuals who subscribe
to this way of seeing build institutions and operate policies through
which the ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘nations’ they perceive as innate become
the basis for organising society. As political activists in thrall to ressenti-
ment discourses create institutional practices that determine how the
state relates to its citizenry, the state becomes the agent of this discourse,
reproducing and disseminating it.
The discourse remains salient because the institutional practices
brought about by the first ethnocratisers generate political conflict. This
conflict then requires explanation; the discourse offers a cogent explana-
tion as to why differential treatment remains necessary. Thus, the ressen-
timent discourse justifies continuing ethnocratisation. The state’s job is
to disseminate this discourse in perpetuity, legitimising the differential
treatment of citizens or subjects. State policies, practices and proce-
dures are ‘instruments’ (Brubaker, 2011) which individuals encounter
in numerous ways from cradle to grave, internalising the categorisation
depicted therein as taken for granted.
When ordinary people encounter institutions displaying national

menus of options, nationhood can become an experientially salient
frame for the choices they make. When these same people are already
embedded in nationally circumscribed institutions, nationhood
silently structures the logic of subsequent choices they make. (Fox
and Miller-Idriss, 2008, p. 545)
Perhaps the most crucial impact of this ressentiment charter is on the

Other internal to the state. This Other experiences identification as
the inverse of the privileged ‘national’ – he is taught that he does not
belong and accordingly takes the view of the state as awarder of ethnic
privilege, seeing institutions as corrupted and subverting the true mean-
ings of the rule of law and democracy. Thus while ressentiment ethnic
nationalist discourses can develop in the absence of an ethnocratiser
state – merely from encounters between those using such discourses
and those depicted as their Others – within an ethnocratiser state, the
sense of slight experienced by the Other can never be assuaged, since the
state objectively de-privileges him on the basis of his allocated category.

Nothing stokes a ressentiment discourse quite like engagement with an
Other who is hateful, resentful, and seems genuinely to wish to do one
harm. This scenario objectively arises for both ‘nations’ in the ethnoc-
ratiser state, whose charter incites ressentiment in a de-privileged Other.
This ressentiment then serves as a catcher’s mitt for the hatred and iden-
tification of the privileged ‘nation’, affirming the truth of ressentiment
discourses for all participants.
Conclusion
This chapter has elucidated the general concepts behind the problematic
situation of the dissidents. I have located this book’s approach within
a non-groupist framework that considers nationalism as discourse and
explains ethnocratiser states as institutionalised ressentiment. In the next
two chapters, I will apply these arguments to Zionism and the state of
Israel in readiness to explore the dissidents. We could understand some
of the dissidents as seeking to de-ethnocratise the state. However, since
they must negotiate their critiques of the status quo alongside ‘identi-
ties’ informed by the ressentiment charter of the state, interest then arises
from how they deal with this quandary.
2
Ressentiment Zionism
Introduction
In this chapter, I explain Zionism, the nationalism underpinning the

state of Israel, as a ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse. After a brief
overview of Zionism and my strategy to evade its hegemonic portrayal
of history, I explore the development of the Zionist discourse, outlining
how it formed a ressentiment pair with ‘Palestinian’ nationalism up to
the creation of Israel in 1948. This chapter does not substantiate Israel’s
status as an ethnocratiser state, which is the task of the next chapter.
This chapter instead demonstrates how Zionism’s inception and early
development fits with the previous chapter’s account of ressentiment
ethnic nationalism. It also considers the how ‘virtue’ built into the
Zionist ‘national character’ informs the dissidents’ place within a prob-
lematic tradition of internal dissent.
In the beginning, there was Zionism
Zionism is a ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse. Its content has

been refined over time: arguments have ensued as to the meaning of
Jewishness, the necessity of a Jewish state or homeland, and its loca-
tion. Local and global events have shaped these arguments and led to
new ones. As a socially constructed discourse, Zionism, like all other
discourses, has been and will continue to be fluid and shifting. However,
to the extent that naming and analysing any discourse can be a fruitful
exercise, we need to freeze-frame it, to turn it over in our hands and
examine its constituents and traces. This creates a dilemma for analysis,
since we are now looking at a static image rather than an unfolding
scenario, but the static image is the best approximation we have. Viewing
30
Ressentiment Zionism 31
this static image of the discourse in the present day, alongside historical
static images recorded in dialogues and texts, enables us to observe that
Zionism – old and new – is based on some core premises, providing the
parameters within which debate occurs. Most fundamentally, Zionism
is a discourse speaking of, and to, individuals politically identified and
identifying as ‘Jews’. It invites these individuals to see themselves as an
entitled and virtuous ancient nation taking refuge in Palestine from Evil
and threatening Others.
Zionism begins by arguing for the contemporary existence of an
ancient Jewish nation. As I will subsequently explain, it has made this
argument so effectively that observers can miss its ideological content
and significance. According to the Zionist narrative, the ancient Jewish
nation was forcibly exiled from Palestine in biblical times, and wandered
the earth being mistreated for millennia. Zionism thus provides a polit-
ical programme for this ‘Jewish nation’, which is urged to ‘return’ home
to Palestine. Interestingly, while the discourse depicts the narrative of
exile as objective fact, it simultaneously negates it as a two-thousand-
year aberration, rather than the time in which Jewish religious and
cultural traditions developed in a multiplicity of communities across the
globe (Balibur, 2009, p. 132). This perspective presents any continuation
of a Jewish life outside of Palestine as ‘bent on ultimate disintegration
and secular assimilation’ (Schnall, 1979, p. 20).
While Palestine was not the only potential site for ‘Jewish national
self-determination’, the relationship between the content of Jewish reli-
gious practice and the territory of Palestine enabled the framing of nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century colonisation as a ‘return’ (Sand, 2009).
Zionist activists depicted such a ‘return’ as freeing Jews from an incom-
plete and parasitic existence in Europe. Those influenced by Marxist
theory argued that Jews, upon ‘returning’, should perform every role in
the economy, so as to truly lay claim to the land and achieve full human
potential (Schnall, 1979, pp. 19–20; Ram, 1999). The Zionist discourse
also depicted the Jewish state as a ‘return to history’ more generally;
‘the natural and irreducible form of human collectivity is the nation’
and ‘only nations that occupy the soil of their homeland, and establish
political sovereignty over it, are capable of shaping their own destiny
and so entering history’ (Piterberg, 2008, p. 95).
The Zionist discourse had depicted Palestine as empty, yet the land
contained many people who did not support the project. As I shall
demonstrate, the Zionist discourse depicted the hostility of these
people as an echo of mistreatment of Jews in Europe, strengthening the
perceived requirement for a state in which Jews controlled their own
fate. Ensuing events would subsequently legitimise, in the eyes of some

Zionists, the use of violence in attaining this goal.
Today, with the Jewish state firmly established, Zionism can simply
mean supporting the existence of Israel. (As my dissidents will demon-
strate, this meaning is stretchable, manoeuvrable and challengeable.)
Yet all the preceding assumptions permeate through this contempo-
rary meaning. In particular, the continuity of an ancient Jewish nation
extends well beyond the boundaries of Zionist discourse and into main-
stream scholarship on nationalism.
Getting outside of Zionism
‘Nations’ are discursive products of the modern era, rather than the
ancient entities their proponents often claim. But with the exception of
a few writers such as Rabkin (2006), most scholars – not just those identi-
fying as Zionist – take for granted a singular, long-standing, ‘pre-national’
Jewish nation underpinning the contemporary Israeli state. Many adopt
the approach of Smith (1981, p. 15, 2010, pp. 195–99) or Walzer (2001),
depicting an ancient Jewish ethnie (or ethnic group) ideologically mobi-
lised by European upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries. Even if this approach emphasises specific events and the activists
who mobilised people with mythologised narratives and symbols, it still
depicts a single, ancient Jewish cultural community. Klier (1997), for
example, declares that ‘The Jews are ... the prime exhibit of an ethnie, to
use Anthony Smith’s term, which has survived through millennia despite
being bereft of a national territory, a common language or even a common
secular culture’ (p. 170). Overtly Zionist scholars take this ‘perennialist’
tendency endemic in nationalism studies (see critiques by Ozkirimli,
2003, 2007) to an even greater degree by not only depicting an enduring
Jewish nation, but also portraying its path to Zionism as inevitable. Given
the institutional support of an entire state apparatus, such writers are the
most profligate on Jewish history and politics, constructing an apparent
consensus on the ineluctable path of the ancient Jewish nation to state-
hood. For example, Schnall suggests that while the claim to an ancient and
enduring nation from Palestine was ‘often used as a polemic instrument’,
it reflected ‘communal will long before the modern era’ (Schnall, 1979,
p. 11). Shimoni’s (1995) literature review of modernist and constructivist
approaches to nationalism concludes that these contributions are limited
in ‘the Jewish case’. The latter
is so patently one in which a pre-existing ethnic identity was of para-

mount importance that only an account of the genesis of nationalism
that recognises the great significance of pre-existing ethnic ties holds

promise for the explanation of Zionism’s emergence. (p. 9)
In keeping with this deterministic tendency, Avineri (1981) invokes a

paradox at the root of Zionism:
on the one hand a deep feeling of attachment to the Land of Israel,

becoming perhaps the most distinctive feature of Jewish self-identity;
on the other hand, a quietistic attitude toward any practical or opera-
tional consequences of this commitment. (p. 4)
For Avineri, then, the marvel is not the Zionist settlement of Palestine,
but rather that Jews resisted it for so many centuries!
These ‘teleological explanations’
give meaning to historical events in terms of the implications they

might have for other events and grant them significance in terms
of some ‘destiny’ towards which history is supposedly moving ... . A
commodified version of the entire span of Jewish history, including
the Holocaust, is recruited in order to lead the consumer of histori-
ography to this one inevitable conclusion to the exclusion of any
alternatives. (Kimmerling, 2008, p. 110)1
However, in The Invention of the Jewish People, historian Shlomo Sand

(2009) debunks some key myths that Zionist historiography and political
advocacy have advanced as facts. The importance of this debunking is
not creating a false dichotomy in which the tenets of Jewish nationalism
might somehow be true without Sand’s debunking and are only revealed
as false by his efforts. Rather, the point is that for constructivist scholars,
all nationalist discourses convey partial truths, or even untruths, which
resonate to the participants but need not be accepted by analysts. The
importance of Sand’s work, therefore, is simply that he provides the
tools for such a constructivist analysis of Zionism and ‘Jewish nation-
hood’, countering the almost universal adoption by Western academic
literature of the Zionist depiction of Jewish identification and history.
We could regard Sand in the same light as some of the dissidents in
this study. His ideas contribute to rethinking Israeli identification, and
indeed one of the dissidents in this book, Gilad Atzmon, notes that Sand
poses pertinent questions (see Chapter 4). Sand’s work certainly has
political implications, evident in the response it has received. However,
the purported motivations behind the work should not detract from its
content. Whilst scholarly work is of course political, it is not reducible
to politics, despite what some Israeli theorists argue (see Gavison, 1998).
Sand’s establishment of a constructivist account of Zionism’s develop-
ment is a seriously important contribution; his non-groupist account of
the development of Jewish identification is timely, even if not entirely
original (see Evron, 1995). Sand provides such a great resource, not
because he is ‘correct’, but because, for a constructivist seeking to use
non-groupist language to outline the development of Jewish nation-
alism, there is a dearth of other academic sources.
Sand (2009) offers an astute explanation for this lack, and for the
widespread acceptance of the perennialist interpretation of Jewish
nationalism, from which this book seeks to escape. It is hard to
escape the apparent existence of an ancient Jewish nation, Sand says,
because there were always ‘Jews’. Our logic takes the fact that these
‘Jews’ existed, and there are people called ‘Jews’ now, and fills in the
middle bit: all these Jews must be the same! The idea of nationhood as
an understanding of how people in history lived and saw themselves,
and particularly the names used for actual contemporary ‘nations’, can
trick us into translating these signifiers back into the past and assuming
a continual meaning (p. 24). Ozkirimli (with Grosby, 2007) points out,
‘What matters is not the existence of the names throughout history, but
what they referred to’, suggesting that while there might be a ‘peren-
nial existence of a self-designating name’, the referent is continually
evolving (p. 526). Hence there were ‘Jews’ in the distant past, and a
discourse proclaims the existence of a ‘Jewish nation’ today. This
discourse depicts the latter as the direct descendant of the former; a
linkage made in the present.
In countering the hegemonic perennialist depiction of the ’Jewish
nation’ that I have outlined above, Sand offers two key arguments. First,
he claims that (contrary to the Zionist myth) there was no mass exodus
of Jews from what became Palestine in the second century CE. Second,
he argues that for a few centuries prior to this and several afterwards,
Judaism was a proselytising religion, competing with Christianity for
converts (whilst also retaining an aversion to this practice discernible
in its theology). Sand argues that although proselytising was halted in
the Christian world, Jews continued to seek converts until the advent of
Islam in the seventh century CE (Chapter 3, esp pp. 178–82).
In making these cases, Sand counters Zionism’s hegemonic claim
that a single ‘Jewish nation’ was expelled from Palestine and wandered
the earth until Zionism facilitated its ‘return’. Instead, he argues that a
proselytised Jewish kingdom became the basis of the Yiddish-speaking
Jewish populations in Eastern Europe. Descendants of these populations
produced the active quarters of the Zionist movement and the bulk of
those individuals who today identify as Jewish in the United States and
Israel (pp. 238–49). By Sand’s estimation, few of these individuals could
actually claim a connection ‘back’ to Palestine, being instead the prod-
ucts of early conversions (Chapters 3–4). He argues that complex inter-
actions between Christian and Jewish religious mythologies, and the
lower status of converts in the religion, provided an impetus to obscure
these conversions (pp. 210–29, 236).2 Meanwhile, for those of the Jewish
faith who remained in Palestine, ‘it is reasonable to assume that a slow,
moderate process of conversion’ from Judaism occurred. Sand concludes
that this – rather than the mythical exile – ‘accounted for the disappear-
ance of the Jewish majority in the country’ (p. 182).
In disconnecting Jewish history from exile, Sand challenges the notion
that Jewish national identification generates a legitimate rights claim
to Palestine. Not surprisingly, this has prompted enormous criticism of
everything from the accuracy of his history (Shavit, 2010) to its prior
advancement elsewhere (Segev, 2002; Cohen, 2009; Schama, 2009; Judt,
2010; Shavit, 2010; Wistrich, 2011). Sand’s critics note that he relies on
the work of modern historians whilst also debunking them (Cohen 2009;
Shavit 2010); accuse him of utilising arguments shared by anti-Semites
(Wistrich, 2011); and argue that he provides a platform for Israel-haters
(Wittenberg, 2010). They also complain that his obsession with origins
has unpleasant racialist overtones (Wittenberg, 2010; Wistrich, 2011),
though this prompts the question of how else one might counter the
origin myths of Zionism. One justified criticism is that Sand’s reliance
on his alternative ‘origin story’ creates a logical argument wherein if one
could prove that all Jews came from Palestine, the Jewish rights claim to
the land would be valid (Mandelbaum, 2012a). However, it is hard to
escape the requirement to tell a different story in order to disrupt the
hegemonic taken-for-granted version that links historical and contem-
porary possession.
Potentially, the most damning criticism is that Sand might simply
be ‘wrong’. However, Sand does not have to prove that his narrative
of Jewish history is truer than the Zionist version, whose proponents
would struggle to verify their version of events. As a sympathetic critic
notes, Sand’s work ‘does not purport to be anything more than synthetic,
speculative and suggestive’ (Sutcliffe, 2010). Hence, the claim that
Sand, in constructing an alternative narrative, does the same thing he
accuses Zionists of doing (Cohen, 2009), misses the point. It is enough
that Sand’s narrative is plausible; if we are not bound to the hegemonic
perennialist depiction of Jewish history, then he has done his job.
Thus, the most important thing is not the argument over which claims
are factually true – those of Sand or those of Zionism – but rather Sand’s
account of myth-making and mythologising. In highlighting the role and
experiences of the intellectuals who wove together the Jewish nationalist
narrative, Sand provides a viable constructivist account of Zionism. This
account allows us to stand outside the Zionist historical narrative, not
necessarily to criticise it, but rather to recognise it as historical narrative.
Constructivist scholars have done this with other nationalist discourses
(see, for example, Trevor-Roper, 1983, on Scottish identification), often
to the dismay of those whose sense of self is undermined. The job of
constructivist scholars, however, is not to protect identification but
rather to rigorously chart its construction and dissemination. Whilst
this may require the debunking of keenly held ideas, the purpose is not
to rate the authenticity or otherwise of claims for their own sake, but
rather to highlight the inherent myth-making. In the case of Zionism,
however, some debunking is required, since we cannot account for the
construction and dissemination of Jewish national identification from
within the hegemonic depiction of an ancient Jewish nation destined to
‘return’ to Palestine.
Ressentiment and Zionism
Having stepped outside the Zionist depiction of Jewish history and iden-
tification, we can now explain the development of Zionist discourse
through the ressentiment of its early propagators. This explanation
begins by outlining the kinds of societies proto-Zionists and Zionists
lived in and the events they experienced – ‘structural factors’ (according
to Greenfeld and Chirot’s framework) that affected those identifying as
Jews. I then explore, through a series of vignettes, how the ‘psycho-
logical factor’ of ressentiment manifested to form a cumulative discourse.
Finally, I consider how the ‘cultural factor’ of Jewish religious mythology
contributed to the Zionist discourse. These explanations should equip
readers with an understanding of the discourse that Zionist settlers took
to Palestine – the subject of the remainder of the chapter.
Structural factors: European life, transformations and the rise of

ressentiment
Before the rise of nationalism, Europe was home to many people iden-
tifying culturally or religiously as Jews. Zionism would subsequently
invite us to see those Jews as the same Jews existing throughout history
and today – to attribute the same national meaning to their identities.
However, Sand (2009) reminds us that there was no ‘Sleeping Beauty’

Jewish nation, waiting to be woken by a kiss from the handsome prince
of nineteenth-century nationalism (metaphor borrowed from Brown,
2000, p. 8). Instead, there was a multiplicity of Jewish communities in
Europe and across the world, speaking different languages and following
different customs, integrating to varying degrees with non-Jewish
neighbours, friends, communities and business associates. Whilst these
Jewish communities shared commonalities in faith and cultural prac-
tice, the people living in them did not identify as part of a Jewish nation
in the way that we would understand today. The ‘national’ meaning of
Jewishness affixed by Zionism was thus not inevitable, but rather the
product of concrete historical developments, particularly the responses
of some key intellectuals to being depicted as Others within a new
Europe of nations.3
The rise of nationalism in Central and Eastern European was central
to this shift in Jewish identification, with the ressentiment discourse of
hatred towards Others contributing to the discrimination against Jews
already operational in Europe. Jews had been long-targeted by indi-
viduals and institutions of the Christian faith with structural barriers
to participation in wider society, ghettoisation, limited employment
opportunities and mass expulsions. However, ressentiment ethnic
nationalist discourses now newly targeted Jews as ethnic or national
minorities. ‘Unlike Christian anti-Judaism, which aimed at salvation
through conversion, modern anti-Semitism considers Jews to be a race
or a people intrinsically alien, even hostile, to Europe, its population
and its civilization’ (Rabkin, 2010, p. 17). Late nineteenth-century ‘Jew
hatred’ became ‘multi-faceted’, taking in ‘religious, economic, racial
and political prejudice’. Narratives of hatred were ‘ignited’ by ‘dete-
rioration in a nation’s economic well-being, the impact of increased
immigration of Eastern European Jews, the growth of popular support
for the political left, and the extent to which leadership of the political
left [was] ... identified with Jews’ (Brustein and King, 2004, pp. 38–9).
Jewish emancipation instigated significant transformations across
Europe. The secularisation of post-Enlightenment societies saw rulers
permitting Jews to leave ghettos and enjoy ‘legal equality of civil rights’
(Davis, 2003, p. 9). Depending on how deeply ressentiment had inspired
the nationalist discourse and thus the permeability of the ‘nation’ in
question, Jews were able to integrate to a greater or lesser extent. These
differences in permeability explain why some Jews’ journeys from
victims of hatred to first enunciators of ressentiment Zionist discourse
took different forms.
In Central and Eastern Europe, the release of Jews from the religious
ghetto did not provide entry into the ethnic nations depicted by the
hegemonic discourses.4 This rendered Jewish intellectuals particularly
vulnerable to adopting their own ressentiment discourses, since they were
now Others in a sea of ethnic national identification. While ressentiment
was not the only available response to discrimination and hostility – this
was also the era of mass Jewish migration, especially to America – ressen-
timent would have satisfied the drive of intellectuals to understand their
problems and explain them to others. It is through such a process that
intellectuals affirm their qualifications to shape opinion, thus a ressenti-
ment discourse would have delivered vulnerable Jewish intellectuals a
double whammy of affirmation.
The Western European experience was different. Despite Western
European states defining themselves in civic terms, their populations
were not immune from responding to economic and social transforma-
tions by re-interpreting old religious divides as racial. Counter-intuitively,
state attempts to facilitate greater integration via Jewish emancipation
may have contributed to anti-Semitism; with populations responding
reactively to the strong state and taking their anger out on Jews (see
Birnbaum’s theory in Brustein and King, 2004). However, perhaps the
most notable factor contributing to the ressentiment of some Jews in
Western Europe was failure of the state’s promise to offer them genuine
inclusion. Scholars have linked unfulfilled developmental optimism
in the civic state to ressentiment in various contexts (Greenfeld, 2006;
Brown, 2008); this phenomenon is explicitly mythologised in the trajec-
tory of Theodor Herzl (see below).
If we zoom in closer to the experiences of key individuals in these
contexts, we can tell the ressentiment story effectively as a means of
explaining the development of Jewish national identification. This is a
story that Sand has started for us, though Sand’s account does not explic-
itly chart the development of Jewish nationalism using ressentiment.
Sand instead employs two partial explanations. His zeitgeist explanation
argues that the ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourses of Central and
Eastern Europe positively inspired Jewish intellectuals to follow suit.
He interweaves with this an anti-Semitism explanation, which depicts
Jewish ethnic nationalist identification as a response to rejection by
these xenophobic nationalist discourses. Sand’s critics accuse him of
paying insufficient attention to this second factor, which is not entirely
fair; however, he does place more emphasis on the zeitgeist. Yet since
he neither explicitly distinguishes between nor develops these explana-
tions, I mobilise ressentiment for this task. In the vignettes below, some
of which build upon Sand’s accounts, I demonstrate how experiences of

anti-Semitism, reinforced by disappointing or absent civic nationalism,
inspired some Jewish intellectuals to produce ressentiment ethnic nation-
alist discourse. Given that such discourses were part of the zeitgeist, they
were easy to craft and welcomely embraced.
Ressentiment vignettes
According to Greenfeld and Chirot, there are two necessary ingredi-
ents for ressentiment. First, an individual must possess a sense of entitle-
ment to equality with the object of his attention. Second, inequality
must preclude attainment of this ‘entitlement’, giving rise to envy.
These ingredients were present in what Sand calls the ‘pre-nationalist’
Jewish historians. These were the first historians identifying as Jews to
depict Jews as a unique ‘nation’ connected by descent from Palestine.
They were pre-nationalist because they did not aspire to ‘return’ there.
However, as they began to conceive of a single ‘Jewish nation’ frag-
mented throughout the world, they depicted one Jewish history rather
than many. Sand represents this new historiography as a direct response
to the scholars’ encounters with the ethnic nationalisms of their home
states. Fleshing out his accounts of their experiences, we can see ressenti-
ment at work.
Isaak Markus Jost, a German Jewish historian who began publishing
in 1820, was a ‘typical Enlightenment liberal’, who sought to harmo-
nise his Jewish cultural identification with his German citizenship. Jost
was part of a science circle of Jews who were ‘quite conflicted about
their identity and experienced some distress over this issue’. ‘[A]s intel-
lectuals whose symbolic capital lay principally in their Jewish heritage,
they were unwilling to forgo their cultural distinction ... at the same
time they longed to be integrated into the emerging Germany’ (Sand,
2009, p. 68). Jost’s earlier work employed a non-consecutive narrative of
various Jewish communities. However, his later work concentrated more
closely on the biblical story (see below); a ‘reconstruction of the Jewish
past’ that Sand links to shifts in ‘German identity politics’ (p. 71). As Jost
grew less comfortable within an ethicising ‘German nation’, he sought
an alternative means of belonging via the ‘Jewish nation’. Jost and his
friends had pursued integration into German society based on a nascent
republican thread in German nationalism which offered them equality
and inclusion (Sand, 2009, p. 68, 2011, p. 39), but the ascendant ethnic
nationalist discourse denied them equality. In seeking a remedy for his
disappointing exclusion from German nationhood, Jost’s own ‘nation’
provided comfort and, as I shall elaborate, virtue.
Another German Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz, sought to render

the Bible in a scientific manner, omitting miracles and emphasising the
centrality of the land to the birth of the Jewish people (Sand, 2009,
pp. 72–88). In considering Graetz’s motivations, Sand suggests that
‘the hardening of German nationalist definitions based on origin and
race ... stirred new sensitivities among a small group of intellectuals of
Jewish descent. Graetz ... was one of them’ (p. 75). We can see the ressen-
timent explanation clearly fitting with Sand’s writings on Graetz. ‘The
oppressed took on the reverse image of the oppressor’s judgment: where
Treitschke [an anti-Semitic intellectual with whom Graetz debated] held
Jews in contempt, Graetz made them into example of moral superi-
ority rising above all others’ (Sand, 2011, p. 39). Such use of superiority
to distinguish oneself from one’s ‘enemies’ is also evident in the case
of Graetz’s good friend, Moses Hess, a Zionist activist. Hess employed
Graetz’s ideas as part of his political claim that the Jews were a nation.
Sand writes that Graetz’s ‘revelation [of Jewish history] was the answer
to the mental struggles of the weary revolutionary [Hess], whose daily
encounters with anti-Jewish expressions, political and philosophical, in
Germany drove him to discover his “national being”’ (p. 78).
We can also trace ressentiment experiences in avowedly Zionist histo-
rians like Yitzhak Baer, who helped to establish the Hebrew University
in Palestine in 1929. Baer argued that Zionist historians had a distinctly
partisan role to play in constructing the nation’s history; Sand uses
Baer’s experiences to explain why he argued this:
[H]arshly rejected by his native Germany ... [Baer] develop[ed] a

painful counter consciousness. Ironically this self-consciousness
drew on the same imaginary idea of nationhood that had nurtured
his mentors for several generations: That the source determines the
substance, and the goal is a return to the roots, the primeval habitat.
(p. 102)
In terming this state of affairs as ironic, Sand taps into the wider conun-
drum of how Zionists could have ended up imitating their oppressors.
Vexed observers of Israel/Palestine often raise this issue, seeming to
regard it as more natural – and certainly more desirable – that victims of
ethnic hatred would eschew ethnic hatred. Robert Weltsch, a member of
the Brit Shalom (‘Peace Alliance’) movement, observed in 1929 that ‘it
would be an interesting irony of history’ if ‘our liberation’ were to result
in ‘condescension, arrogance and intolerance of others’; ‘the same arche-
type that we previously opposed tooth and nail’ (Weiss, 2004, p. 96).
Balibur (2009) terms this phenomenon a ‘paradox’ (p. 129). The ressenti-
ment explanation strips away what appears to be a paradox and helps
us to understand that Zionists were no more perverse than anybody
around them was; in demonising Others who could then be demarcated
from the virtuous Us, they were following the inherent logic of ressenti-
ment ethnic nationalism.
Arthur Ruppin, a German lawyer and social scientist active in the
settlement of Palestine following his emigration in 1907, demon-
strates more ressentiment at work. Like Hess, Ruppin was inspired by ‘a
budding interdisciplinary paradigm that became known as Eugenics
or Racial Hygiene’ (Blum, cited in Piterberg, 2008, p. 82). Ruppin
‘adhered to a rigid biological determinism of race’ and concluded that
the Ubermensch – the superhuman – ‘should only develop amongst his
physical type’ (Piterberg 2008, p. 82). Whilst this was a dominant idea
of the age, Israeli historian Piterberg argues that what made Ruppin so
dedicated to ‘the correction and betterment of “the Jewish race” – the
very kind of ideology at the heart of proto-Nazism – was the anti-Semitic
rejection by his beloved German nation and homeland’ (p. 82). Thus
ressentiment was a key contributor to Ruppin’s racial Zionism. Piterberg
adds,
It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that Ruppin’s path was so typical

of many Central European nominal Jews ... . Their rejection by an
increasingly anti-Semitic society made them convert to Zionism,
which was an adequate substitution to the Romantic nationalism
that had not wanted them. (p. 83)
Finally, the experiences of Theodor Herzl, widely regarded as the father

of Zionism, are mythologised in such a way that the ressentiment expla-
nation is crystallised, conveniently spanning experiences of both the
ethno-nationalist east and the purportedly civic west. Herzl, initially an
Austro-Hungarian patriot, subscribed to a republican citizenship incor-
porating Jewish cultural identification – a story now familiar to us from
the experiences of other Jewish intellectuals. At 23, Herzl resigned from
a student duelling fraternity to which he had dedicated four hours a day
of the previous two years. This resignation was due to fraternity members
members participating ‘in an anti-Semitic commemoration of the death
of Richard Wagner. Herzl’s decision ... caused deep feelings of isolation
and rejection ... This was a decisive encounter with social anti-Semitism
which was to leave a lasting impression on him’ (Loewenberg, 1971,
p. 107). Herzl had expected, and indeed enjoyed, equality within the
fraternity and, by extension, his broader society. The anti-Semitic display

cast doubt on this, then Herzl’s experience as a journalist covering the
Dreyfus Affair in France confirmed to him that a republican vision was
unattainable. The Dreyfus Affair involved a French military officer of
Jewish background being found guilty of treason amidst unjust accusa-
tions and a fevered anti-Semitic atmosphere (Falk 2008, p. 55). It took two
subsequent trials for Dreyfus to be finally exonerated (Schoeps 1997; Falk
2008, p. 173), but Herzl would later argue that the process caused him to
give up on a future for Jews in Europe (Sand 2011). Some scholars suggest
Herzl’s analysis and subsequent political exploitation of the Affair came
well after the event, leading them to question the extent to which it really
provided a basis for his political conversion (Shimoni 1995, p. 89; Falk
2008, p. 57; Piterberg 2008, pp. 7–8). Meanwhile, Avineri (1981) argues
that the Affair confirmed for Herzl what he already knew and felt about
the status of Jews in Europe; something he had already pondered in prior
works, and which the Dreyfus Affair now manifested as the ‘dramatic
expression of a much more fundamental malaise’ (p. 93). However, what
ultimately matters is not when but how Herzl ultimately digested these
experiences, and specifically how his explanations of them in the public
arena contributed to the ressentiment Zionist discourse.
Herzl’s Zionist narrative utilised the Dreyfus Affair to symbolise the
problems facing all Jews. This makes sense when we reflect that the
Affair was not an isolated incident, and that French nationalism there-
fore did not live up to its civic promise. It makes even more sense when
we know how events ultimately played out in Europe. However, since
nobody could have known this bleak future at the time, the complete
demise of the civic option was a political claim rather than mere resigna-
tion to inevitable events (Piterberg, 2008, p. 16). It was a claim made by
those who had something else to offer instead. Earlier Russian pogroms
of 1881 had similarly prompted a ‘phenomenal turnabout of those
who had believed in a program of emancipation and integration ... ’; a
pattern underscoring the rise of Zionism across Europe (Shimoni, 1995,
p. 32). Jews in these contexts understandably lost hope in alternatives
to ethnic nationalism. As their options appeared to evaporate, the
ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse moved into the void, offering
a way of understanding the situation, and, through the Zionist political
programme, concrete steps to remedy it.
The historical narrative as cultural factor

Having explored the beginnings of the distillation of key individuals’
ressentiment experiences into a shared discourse, I will now explore
the role and content of the historical narrative assembled by the pre-
nationalist historians and adopted by the Zionist discourse. This narra-
tive is a ‘cultural factor’ according to Greenfeld’s tripartite explanation
for the development of nationalisms. Cultural factors are the songs,
stories, clothes and traditions that nationalist activists depict as the prop-
erty and practices of ancient, enduring ethnies (Greenfeld and Chirot,
1994; see also Ozkirimli and Grosby, 2007, p. 528). The cultural factors
contributing to the (hi)story adopted by Zionist activists are distinct
from the psychological factor of ressentiment, but inform the ressenti-
ment discourse seamlessly. The Jewish Bible story provides a ready-made
myth explaining the history and destiny of the contemporary Jewish
nation that coalesces with a ressentiment description of virtue and enti-
tlement. Pre-nationalist historians used this ‘holy scripture ... not really
accessible to the mind’ (Sand, 2009, p. 75) to narrate a secular history of
the ‘Jewish nation’, as seasoned Israeli cultural critic Moshe Machover
(2011) concisely explains in his review of Sand’s book:
Jews already ‘knew’ that they were all direct descendants of the
Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who was renamed ‘Israel’ by
God. Thus they were all ‘literally’ Bnei Yisrael (Sons of Israel). Their
God-promised and God-given homeland was Eretz Yisrael (Land of
Israel) ... Eventually – to cut a long story short – the Jews were punished
‘for their sins’ and were exiled from their homeland by the Romans.
But at the End of Days God will send his Mashiah ben-David (anointed
scion of David), who will ingather the exiled Jews and return them to
their homeland, the Land of Zion. All that remained for Zionist ideology
to do was to secularise this sacred narrative. The eschatological bit, the
‘return’ to Zion, was converted into a political colonising project –
hence its very name: ‘Zionism’ – with the impressively bearded
Theodor Herzl as secular messiah or his herald. (Machover, 2011,
p. 102, my emphasis)
The content of the Old Testament narrative reinforced the ressentiment

depiction of Good Us; Evil Other by not only offering a plausible iden-
tification option but also linking victimhood to national virtue. Kovel
(2002) argues that the religious category of ‘Jew’ was pre-imbued with
(religious) goodness and that Zionism imported this representation,
enabling Zionists to depict the Jewish nation as both real and chosen.
Whilst grandiose claims are by no means limited to Zionism, few other
nationalist discourses can ‘prove’ chosenness and virtue using a docu-
ment revered within many nationalist discourses. Zionism’s purported
virtue impaired the ability of its participants to perceive its potential

harm to Others, since, as Kovel suggests, ‘God’s chosen people, with
their hard-earned identity of high-mindedness, by definition cannot
sink into racist violence’ (p. 24). The perception of virtue, derived from
ressentiment and strengthened by the biblical narrative, contributed to
the Zionist discourse’s inability to digest adequately the project’s victims.
The outcome of this, as I shall demonstrate in the next section, was the
accentuation of ressentiment through the interpretation of any opposi-
tion as irrational hatred.
Ressentiment Zionism goes to Palestine; finds

an evil Other there ...
In 1897, Zionists began holding annual congresses with the aim of

building a movement to settle in Palestine. Zionists were publishing
work, to which Herzl contributed a utopian novel, Altneuland (1902),
depicting an idyllic Palestine after Jewish settlement. They were also
forming youth groups, lobbying world leaders for political support and
actually migrating to Palestine. Migration brought about refinements to
the Zionist discourse, and in this section I discuss these up to the creation
of Israel in 1948. My purpose is not to offer a detailed history, but rather
to outline how Zionism formed a ressentiment pair with the ‘Palestinian’
nationalist discourse, which developed in response. Ressentiment pairs
mutually depict a virtuous ethnic Us under attack from the Evil Other;
becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. There are two components to the
development of ressentiment Zionism in this context. The first is the
transference of Zionism’s depiction of the hostile European Other onto
the local Palestinian or Arab Other. The second involves the trajectory
of the more ‘benign’ version of the Zionist discourse, which, over time,
coalesced with a demonised depiction of the Other, whilst contributing
to the depiction of Zionism’s virtue. I explore these components in the
next two sections.
The Evil Other: from European to Arab

As we have seen, Zionism’s initial ressentiment relationships were with
‘significant Others’ (Triandafyllidou, 1998) in Europe. However, as
ressentiment discourses evolve they seek and construct new targets of
blame. Jews had been targets of blame in Europe; now it was the turn
of Zionists to construct new targets of blame in Palestine. Ressentiment
made it difficult for Zionists to discern that the people living in Palestine
might have good reasons to resist their settlement project, and hence
their very presence in Palestine. Instead, they could only interpret action
and reaction through the frame of ‘Good Us; Evil Other’.
For the dominant strand of ‘political Zionists’, the only way to achieve
a functional cultural homeland, along with sorely needed security for
the ‘Jewish nation’, was to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Although
the official line was ‘a land without people for a people without land’,
Zionists knew that Palestine was not empty; rather, they considered it
empty of people with a legitimate claim to the land. Thus, as I shall
subsequently elaborate, an implied but often unacknowledged corollary
of Political Zionism was that that Others living in the ‘Promised Land’
would have to be limited in number in order for the ‘Jewish state’ to also
be ‘democratic’.
Settlement in Palestine led to encounters between those who saw
themselves as ‘the Jewish nation’ and those depicted as their Others.
While some early Zionist settlers entertained the idea that the fellahin
(natives of Palestine who worked the land) were a remnant of converted
Jews who could therefore be absorbed into the nationalist project, this
idea was swiftly discarded when the fellahin were not amenable (Piterberg
2008, pp. 7–8; Sand, 2009, pp. 184–87). Ultimately, the fellahin, like most
people living in Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, had no good reason to accept the rights claims of European
Jews to the land. Through the experiences of these people, we can trace
the development of a ressentiment Palestinian discourse. People living in
Palestine did not have a well-articulated nationalism prior to the arrival
of Zionist settlers; a heterogeneous population throughout the region
had only ‘sought a more cohering identity’ in the face of British and
French colonisation after the First World War (Goldberg, 2009, p. 106).
Thus, it was ethnic Othering by Zionist immigrants to Palestine that
inspired Palestinian nationalism; those who felt threatened by the
Zionist project and its proponents experienced ressentiment. The ressenti-
ment Palestinian discourse, like the Zionist discourse that inspired it, was
informed by both an evidentiary basis for its claims, and a blanket stere-
otyping of all those depicted as Other as bringing ill-will.
Peteet (2005) suggests that this emerging Palestinian discourse tended
to refer to ‘Zionists’ rather than ‘Jews’, indicating a focus on the political
project rather than the identification of the Other. However, Shohat
(1999) counters that nationalists in the Arab world resisted coloni-
alism by inventing ‘third world nations ... according to the definitions
supplied by the often Eurocentric ideologies’ (pp. 8–9) leading anti-
Zionists to unhelpfully articulate ‘the idea of a homogenous “Jewish
Nation”’ (p. 13). This unwitting reproduction of Zionist terminologies
demonstrates how ressentiment discourses proliferate through identifi-

cation labels already in the nomenclature. The ressentiment discourse
employed by Palestinian nationalist activists imported identification
concepts from – and in response to – those designating them as Others,
just as Zionists themselves had done in Europe. However, Palestinian
experiences of ressentiment, like the experiences of Zionists before them,
were crucial to the developing ressentiment pair.
As the Palestinian nationalist discourse came to conflate Zionists and
Jews and demonise all of them, the Zionist discourse simultaneously
demonised ‘Arabs’. Some Palestinian natives affirmed this perception
by resisting the Zionist project with violence. In 1929, some non-Jews
committed a massacre of Jews in Hebron, where Ashkenazi (Eastern
European) immigrants dwelled alongside a Sephardic Jewish community,
which had been there for eight hundred years (Segev, 2000, Chapter 14).
The targeting of long-standing community members demonstrates how
the ressentiment pairing was thickening perceptions that participants
were engaged in a zero-sum conflict between two nations. When non-
Jews in Palestine used violence against the settlers, Zionists applied
European frameworks, labelling such clashes ‘pogroms’ and failing to
differentiate between the anti-Semitic targeting of Jews in Europe, and
the specific targeting of Zionist Jews in Palestine by those opposed to
their political programme. They filtered both as morally equivalent
attacks on the ‘Jewish nation’.
Mutual demonisation escalated the conflict, as hostile actions made
each Other more likely to engage in ‘pre-emptive’ violence. Over
decades, multiple clashes between adherents to the developing Jewish
and Palestinian nationalist discourses were heightened by the influence
of the British colonial powers, which held a Mandate over Palestine
in the period of Zionist colonisation following 1917. In the early half
of the twentieth century, British officials duplicitously promised the
leaders of each nationalist movement that they would receive their aims
of an independent state; notably promising a loosely defined Jewish
Homeland in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 but then subsequently
limiting Jewish immigration from Europe.
During this time, the fact that the mainstream ressentiment
Zionist discourse did not regard the Palestinian Other as a nation
compounded the ressentiment pair. Zionists argued that there was no
Palestinian nation before the Jewish ‘return’ to reinforce their claim to
the land. Since Zionism was a collectivist enterprise, it was equally inca-
pable of interfacing with the Others of Palestine from an individualistic
perspective.5 The Zionist discourse thus had to engage with apparently
paradoxical violent resistance and filter its contradictory messages.

Zionism ‘imputed’ a ‘lack of attachment to place’ on behalf of its Others
because Jews were the true natives; on the other hand, these Others
displayed an ‘apparent willingness to fight for it’. To explain this, Zionists
classified ‘Palestinian violence as irrational, without just cause’; at one
stage describing those engaged in it as ‘a gang of robbers, murderers and
bandits’ (Peteet, 2005 p. 167). Irrational violence fits within a ressen-
timent depiction of Others who simply wish Us ill will with no good
reason.
Yet while mainstream Political Zionism was interpreting resistance as
irrational evil, the right-wing articulation of the discourse cogently recog-
nised what was happening in Palestine. This extreme form of Political
Zionism emerged with the rise of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s World Union
of Zionist Revisionists in 1925. Reacting to what its proponents saw as
the slow progress and misguided left-wing idealism of the mainstream,
Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism sought an unapologetically militant
course of action to establish a Jewish state. Jabotinsky, the movement’s
key intellectual, argued that once Zionists had established the Jewish
state and defended it over a period of years, they could pursue rapproche-
ment with its enemies and integrate their state into its surroundings.
Until that time, however, in the face of opposition from natives who
would reject Zionist colonialism, those who nevertheless believed in the
justice of their project would have to achieve it through force, behind an
‘Iron Wall’ (Shlaim, 2000, pp. 11–16).
Despite blatantly prioritising the Us over the Other, Revisionist Zionism
nevertheless recognised that another ‘nation’ claimed the land. This is
noteworthy, because Revisionist Zionism did not depict Jews as virtuous
victims, but rather as active agents competing for the land. Whilst ethnic
identification remained central to this depiction, Revisionist Zionism
offered its adherents a unique opportunity to recognise the conse-
quences of their project for Others – albeit whilst still repressing them.
However, because Revisionist Zionism remained politically marginal, the
mainstream Zionist discourse incorporated only its blueprint for settle-
ment and development, and not its honest reckoning. The mainstream
Zionist discourse continued to proclaim its inherent virtuousness whilst
ultimately permanently exiling and repressing its Others. In order to
make sense of this, we must draw our attention away from the right-
wing strand of Zionism and towards the far left. Here lies a bitter irony:
the only other notable recognition of Others on the land, aside from
Revisionist Zionism, paradoxically contributed to a delusion of benefi-
cence in the mainstream and thereby strengthened ressentiment.
The tragic trajectory of Cultural Zionism

‘Cultural Zionism,’ or ‘binationalism’ as it was sometimes known, sought
to regenerate Jewish culture in Palestine. Notably, Cultural Zionism did
not aspire to a Jewish state; some of its proponents explicitly saw them-
selves sharing the land with its contemporary occupants (Weiss, 2004;
Raz-Krakotzkin, 2011). Cultural Zionism’s proponents perceived their
project as a ‘benign’ alternative to political Zionism; however, it was
precisely this perception that became problematic.
Cultural and Political Zionism aspired to many of the same things –
Jewish migration to Palestine, the establishment of a vibrant cultural
community and a re-invention of what it meant to be Jewish (see
Avineri, 1981, chapter on Ha’am; see also Shimoni, 1995, pp. 104–13).
It is only in the final goals of the project that the two strands diverged,
with Political Zionists willing to exact a high price from their Others
to achieve a Jewish state, and Cultural Zionists scrambling for alterna-
tives. Some notable supporters of Cultural Zionism appear to have come
to their position only after rejecting the implications of the Political
programme, namely the need to subjugate or expel the native popula-
tion (see Piterberg, 2008, on Hannah Arendt and Bernard Lazare; see
Weiss, 2004, on Hans Kohn).
We can observe the connection between Political and Cultural
Zionism in the willingness of many cultural Zionists to work under the
auspices of Political Zionism. Hannah Arendt participated in initiatives
in Europe to send young Jews to Palestine (Kohn, 2007); presumably
without clarifying to every individual with whom she engaged that
they should refrain from building a Jewish state. The spiritual father
of Cultural Zionism, Ahad Ha’am, himself had declared, ‘Palestine will
become our spiritual center only when the Jews are a majority of the
population and own most of the land’ (Shimoni 1995, p. 111). ‘Even
the most progressive Zionists were not able to articulate binationalism
effectively’, concludes historian Weiss (2004, p. 113).
Cultural Zionism thus lacked both the theoretical rigour and inde-
pendent political impetus to mount a significant alternative model to
Political Zionism. It relied heavily on the two core precepts it shared
with its ressentiment cousin: belief in the ‘Jewish nation’ and its right
to ‘return’ to Palestine. These precepts would ultimately undermine
the positive relations with Others that were supposed to be part of a
binational vision for Israel/Palestine. Ultimately, the ressentiment pairing
between Zionism and the Palestinian nationalist discourse broke down
the already blurry distinction between Political and Cultural Zionism.
Since both Zionisms relied upon the existence of a ‘Jewish nation’,
subscribers to either were likely to read any attack as an echo of European

persecution. Moreover, since Others could not necessarily distinguish
between the aims of the Political and Cultural projects (or indeed were
equally offended by both), Zionists adhering to Political and Cultural
platforms were equally vulnerable to hostility.
From the Arab point of view, understandably, the bi-national vision

[of Cultural Zionism] ... was not significantly different from the hege-
monic Zionist one, which insisted on a (projected) Jewish majority.
One of the reasons to advance the bi-national agenda during the 1940s
was in fact to allow Jewish immigration to continue. (Raz-Krakotzkin,
2011, p. 59)
Zionists who had once employed the Cultural discourse began, in the face
of violence, to employ the Political one. The perception of a zero-sum
‘national conflict’ replaced any hope that the people of Palestine might
recognise the mutual benefit in Zionist settlement (see Weiss, 2004,
p. 107). Arthur Ruppin had supported a binational state, but after what
was known as the Arab Uprising of 1929, he left the Brit Shalom peace
movement he had helped establish and put his support behind the
Jewish state (Avineri, 1981; Weiss, 2004; Kovel, 2007, p. 178, endnote
18).6 Martin Buber, another Cultural Zionist, retrospectively endorsed
the establishment of Israel (Kovel, 2007, pp. 219–20).
From here, we can observe the co-optation of Cultural Zionism to the
project as a whole. Just as Cultural Zionism had effectively relied on
the impetus and inspiration of Political Zionism, now Cultural Zionism
offered a cloak of virtue to Political Zionism.
The framers of the national Zionist narrative, in all its versions,

perceived the Jewish-Israeli collectivity as representing universal
truth and justice. They sought to apply these qualities in the context
of the peaceful revival of collective Jewish existence in the Land of
Israel. This self-image continued to dominate the Zionist narrative
when it had to deal with the violent reality of a continuous, bloody
dispute between Jews and Arabs. (Yadgar, 2003b, p. 177)
Some luminaries of Zionism recognised, privately, that their project

would create victims. Theodor Herzl wrote that the penniless popula-
tion of Palestine must somehow be spirited over the border of the future
Jewish state (Piterberg, 2008, p. 39). Chaim Arlosoroff, one-time leader
of the Mapai party in the pre-state yishuv, wrote in 1932 of the need for
a Jewish ‘minority government’ to ‘seize the state apparatus, adminis-

tration and military power’ (p. 78). However, public claims of benevo-
lence hid these rational calculations. Ressentiment Zionism cleaved to
the ‘benign’ ideals of Cultural Zionism even as the actual project became
reliant on force and repression of the Other. Victimhood and chosen-
ness as national traits, instilled by the ressentiment beginnings of ‘Jewish
nationhood’ and cemented by the content of the historical narrative
it advanced, obscured the ability of the Zionist discourse to recognise
its victims. Only the Revisionist strand, which was brutally honest but
also just plain brutal, was able to recognise, with a shrug, the fate of
Zionism’s victims. The rest of Zionism sought shelter under the Cultural
Zionist cloak of virtue: there was room here for everyone, no harm was
intended, and all could prosper.
Though some Cultural Zionists may have genuinely made these
claims, they were undermined by the premise of the project as a whole –
perhaps from the very beginning, given its ‘pure settlement’ nature
(Piterberg, 2008).7 According to colonialism theory, in ‘pure settlement’
colonies
European settlers exterminated or pushed aside the indigenous people,

developed an economy based on white labor, and were thus able in
the long run to regain the sense of cultural or ethnic homogeneity
identified with a European conception of nationality. (Fredrickson,
cited in Piterberg, 2008, p. 55)
Settler colonies were ... premised on displacing indigenes from (or
replacing them on) the land ... . Settler colonies were (are) premised
on the elimination of the native societies. ... The colonizers came to
stay – invasion is a structure, not an event. (Wolf, cited in Piterberg,
2008, p. 61)
From this perspective, Zionism’s establishment of a ressentiment pair with

the ‘Palestinian nation’ appears inevitable. The population defined as
non-Jewish in Palestine would necessarily oppose the establishment of
an economy, society and – ultimately – state premised upon its exclusion.
Yet ressentiment Zionism continued to adhere to a faulty ‘dual society’
paradigm (Piterberg, 2008, pp. 62–4), maintaining that settling Zionists
and their Others somehow pursued independent development trajec-
tories and met only in a ‘struggle between two impregnable national
collectives’ (Piterberg, 2008, p. 64). This faulty perspective depicted the
ideals of the settlers rather than the material reality. Though Zionists
attempted to build an independent society that would not exploit the

labour of non-participants, in reality they could not keep two economies
separate any more than they could cleanly divide the land between Jew
and non-Jew. By depicting two fully formed nations encountering each
other only in conflict, the dual society paradigm obscured the mutual
development of Zionist and Palestinian nationalist discourses. Far
from being an irrelevant external feature, the ‘presence and resistance’
of Palestine’s non-Jewish population was ‘the single most significant
factor that determined the shape taken by the [Jewish] settlers’ nation’
(Piterberg, 2008, p. 64, 62). The existence of the Other in Palestine, and
Zionism’s inevitable formation of a ressentiment pair with it, had every-
thing to do with the ultimate establishment of an ethnocratiser Jewish
state, which is the subject of the next chapter.
Conclusion
This chapter has explained how the developing Zionist discourse

conformed to the model of ressentiment ethnic nationalism. The indi-
viduals who developed this discourse responded to marginalisation by
the ressentiment ethnic nationalisms of Central and Eastern Europe and
disappointment with the civic vision. Intellectuals, seeking to demon-
strate their credentials as interpreters of reality, developed a formula of
the Good Us under attack from Evil Other, strengthened by adopting
the biblical story as historical narrative. When Zionist settlers took this
discourse to Palestine, it informed their inability to digest why Others
there would reject their project. The resistance of Others to the Zionist
project was eventually reduced to a conflict between ‘Jews’ and ‘Arabs’,
demonstrating the power of ethnic categories and the collapse of
other mechanisms for understanding identification. Cultural Zionism
could offer no correction to ressentiment in the context of a colonial
project based on rights claims; at best, it was an early attempt to solve
the dilemma still faced by internal critics today. The cautionary lesson
regarding subsumption of ‘virtue’ into national character remains
equally salient, as we shall see.
3
The Dissidents’ Context
Introduction
This chapter concludes my explication of the ‘problematic situation’

facing the dissidents, outlining the development of the ressentiment
Zionist discourse from the establishment of Israel in 1948 to the present
day. My core argument is that the dominant nationalist discourse incul-
cates Israeli Jews into a ressentiment schema wherein they belong to a
virtuous Us under threat from an Evil Other. This schema simultane-
ously explains the structures of the ethnocratiser state, which make
the threat from the Other real, since discriminatory practices exacer-
bate ressentiment. Accordingly, Israeli Jews generally view the state as
their protector to defend at all costs, and not as a contributing factor to
ongoing conflict.
I advance this argument by exploring a number of arenas. I begin by
examining Israel’s founding Charter, showing how the Declaration of
Independence and the Law of Return lay the foundational myth of an
ancient and entitled nation in its rightful (empty) homeland. From here,
I explore how educational policies and the mobilisation of the Holocaust
contribute to ressentiment depictions of the Us and Other. I then detail how
the Israeli state’s legal sub-division of Others strengthens the ressentiment
pair, whilst simultaneously facilitating discursive portrayals that collapse
the various sub-categories back into an amorphous Evil Other. I explore
how an Israeli media with close links to the state depicts Israeli Jews as
virtuous victims under attack. I conclude by describing the current state
of the ressentiment pair and the ressentiment discourse, which, coupled
with concern for the Other, constitute the dissidents’ dilemma.
Since the chapter’s main purpose is to portray a consistent hegemonic
discourse of ressentiment Zionism at various levels of society, reinforced
52
The Dissidents’ Context 53
by legally and socially reified ethnic categories, I risk eliding nuance. It

is, therefore, important for me to note that the dissidents do not live in
a totalitarian state; they participate in vibrant debates, which are often
more radical than those outside Israel. They function quite freely in what
even the most radical amongst them depict as a democracy for Jews; the
most extreme dissident in this book claims to be ‘constantly’ courted
to participate in debates by the Israeli media (Atzmon, 2011 p. 187).
Ruptures between the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jewish categories, as well
as between religious, secular and sandwiched ‘traditionists’ (Yadgar,
2011), disrupt the image of a unified Israeli Jewish identity. Meanwhile,
‘Who is a Jew’ arguments challenge the Orthodox rabbinate-mandated
affixation or denial of Jewish categorisation to individuals, further prob-
lematising the meaning of Israeli Jewishness.
Yet despite this, I argue that dissent in Israeli society on the question
of the Other is muted, internally censored and riven with contradiction.
The hegemonic ressentiment discourse, reinforced by the state, provides
the tools for thinking about one’s identification and relationship to the
Other, effectively ruling out many options. In order to make this argu-
ment, which can be borne out by both the research of other scholars
and the dissident narratives, I must emphasise the repetitious nature of
the ressentiment Zionist discourse. Later in the book, as I examine the
dissident narratives, I will foreground more of the subtleties in order to
demonstrate both the cacophony of potential influences and the sense
that these somehow, paradoxically, amount to less than they might. It
is this paradox that makes the dissidents so compelling, since despite
the freedom enjoyed by Israeli Jews to express all manner of views, their
dissent is either a street performance largely ignored by passers-by, or,
more forebodingly, a performance which itself lacks the consistency and
rigour to be anything more than a vibrant artifice of ‘national virtue’.
The Charter is laid: the Declaration of Independence

and Law of Return
The previous chapter outlined how events in Palestine coalesced into

what appeared to participants as a zero-sum fight between two ‘nations’
over one land. The only shared perspective was a desire for the British
colonialists to depart; by the end of the Second World War, this was
imminent. At Britain’s behest, the newly created United Nations would
offer the Zionists part of what they wanted (they aspired to more terri-
tory), whilst delivering Palestinian nationalists a crushing blow; more
than half of historic Palestine would now become a Jewish state.
Following Britain’s withdrawal, the leaders of the yishuv, Palestine’s

Jewish settlement community, declared the state of Israel in existence
in 1948. Immediately, its neighbours and some residents declared war.
Israel won this war, in the process acquiring more territory than origi-
nally offered in the partition plan. The armistice lines of this larger terri-
tory eventually became the internationally recognised borders of the
state of Israel.
Thus, Israel was formally brought into existence in 1948 by a
Declaration of Independence ratified by decisive military victory. Whilst
the ongoing resistance of Palestine’s non-Jews to the Zionist project had
been a barrier to statehood, this resistance became the basis upon which
statehood was considered necessary by almost all stripes of Zionist and
external powers with influence. Accordingly, they established the Jewish
state against the wishes of Palestine’s non-Jewish population; in such a
context, it is easy to see why the activists who shaped the state’s struc-
tures saw it as a means of protecting Jews against Others.
Two key documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Law
of Return, established Israel’s ‘national’ protection charter, institu-
tionalising a narrative of legitimation deriving from ressentiment. The
Declaration of Independence depicts the history of the ‘Jewish people’
developed by the nationalist historians discussed in Chapter 2. The
Declaration narrates ‘forcibl[e] ... exile’ and locates ‘the people’ today in
its ‘historic’ homeland. The document proclaims Israel as the state of the
Jewish people, again asserting the existence of a taken-for-granted nation
as well as the legitimacy of it possessing its own state. The document
makes much of ‘national’ rights, but recognises that not all citizens of
the Jewish state are Jews; and purports to offer ‘full and equal citizenship
and due representation’ to non-Jews (Ben-Gurion et al., 1948). However,
the exclusion of explicit ‘minority’ national rights here is noteworthy,
since the state sanctifies a single reified ‘nation’ without making equiv-
alent space for those deemed not to belong. The Declaration is thus
responsible for bringing the Jewish nation into being as a legal entity
and simultaneously awarding it hegemony at the expense of those non-
Jews living within the territory. The Declaration is the cornerstone of
Israel’s charter.
The other key document is the Law of Return of 1950. Once the
Declaration of Independence discursively established Israel as the
rightful home for the Jews of the world, the Law of Return formed
part of a massive campaign for Jewish immigration. Such immigration
would not only bolster Jewish numbers in the fledgling state and hence
secure ‘democratic domination’, but would also continue reifying the
‘Jewish nation’ and cementing its claim to Palestine. This project had
begun even before the state’s foundation with the campaign to have
Israel established as the logical relocation point for refugees from the
Holocaust in Europe (Zertal, 1998). After the state’s establishment,
however, the government focused on importing Jews from the Middle
East as ‘the reality of the mass extermination of Jews in Europe sank in’
(Shenhav, 2002, p. 29; see also Behar, 2007, p. 587).1
The Law of Return, along with the Nationality Law (1952) and the
Entry into Israel Law (1952), enables any person defined as Jewish
on the basis of having a Jewish mother or having converted to the
(Orthodox) religion, to migrate to Israel with full citizenship enti-
tlements and financial support from the state (Law of Return, 1950;
Saban, 2004, p. 961). A 1970 amendment has effectively extended
the definition of Jewishness, welcoming as citizens individuals with
a single Jewish grandparent, along with their families (Law of Return,
Amendment No. 2, 1970). Such citizenship, based on Jewish categori-
sation, differs markedly from ancestry-based citizenship. The invoked
‘national’ membership relies not upon immediate parentage, but upon
purported events of three thousand years ago, linking ‘descendants’ to
a territory inhabited very recently by other people. These immigration
laws facilitate individuals with no personal, economic or historical
connections moving to Israel because they already own it. Accordingly,
the laws establish and reinforce ‘Jewish national’ ownership of
Palestine whilst simultaneously erasing Others from the land and from
history. Additional laws, as I shall explain below, have allowed certain
portions of the non-Jewish Other to remain in Israel only as discur-
sively constructed remnants of a broader Arab (not Palestinian) nation,
or as Orwellian ‘present absentees’. Others who are present as indi-
viduals but not ‘nationals’, or who are ‘absent’ even while present, or
who have actually been physically removed, do not exist, and cannot
therefore be victims of the Zionist project. The only way that these
Others have been able to ‘return’ to the Zionist consciousness is as
hostile, irrational and sometimes violent beasts claiming what right-
fully belongs to ‘the Jews’. Zionists have met such claims with bemuse-
ment, fear and a rejoinder of violence.
From charter to common sense
Founding charter documents inform and operate through policy deci-

sions, reinforcing ressentiment depictions of Us and Other. This section
explores educational policies, particularly the teaching of Jewish
history, and examines the state’s official adoption of a certain narra-

tive regarding the Holocaust. These practices construct and depict a
Virtuous Us contrasted with Evil Others. Even without actively invoking
the Palestinian/Arab Other, policies advancing Jewish entitlement
have augmented the ressentiment pair with the Palestinian nationalist
discourse by preventing Israeli Jews from making sense of their relation-
ship with those forced to yield to the juggernaut of Zionism in Palestine.
Ressentiment heightens when there is no way of understanding resist-
ance to colonialist or racialist policies except as anti-Semitic hatred of
Jews by Evil Others.
Education and ressentiment

Israel’s education system has been a key means of instilling ‘rightful’
ownership of Palestine, thereby denying Others’ presence and basis for
resistance. Educational syllabi are powerful tools in all nationalisms:
Schooling teaches the ‘invented’ histories, ersatz continuities,

legends and traditions of a ‘people’ that inscribe a distinct, national
identity linked to a common history, a shared culture, common fate
and destiny that valorizes uniqueness ... The well-studied student
will not only know his/her nation’s history and geography, but
how his/her nation is a little different, and perhaps a lot better than
Others ... (Langman, 2006, p. 12)
Israel’s ‘national’ syllabus pre-dates the state itself. The founders of

Hebrew University in 1929 set up
not one but two history departments: one named Department of

Jewish History and Sociology; the other, Department of History. All
the history departments of all the other universities in Israel followed
suit – Jewish history was to be studied in isolation from the history
of the gentiles because the principles, tools, concepts and time frame
of these studies were completely different. (Sand, 2009, p. 102, my
emphasis)
Hebrew University founders wholeheartedly accepted that ‘the Jews’

constituted an eternal nation whose homeland was Palestine; academics
at all Israeli universities would go on to educate generations of students
in this precept, meaning that the critical skills applied in the generalist
study of history would not be available to thinking about ‘the Jews’
(p. 102). The biblical narrative of Jewish history adopted through
individuals’ experiences of ressentiment was widely taught as fact at all

levels of education, first in the school syllabus of the yishuv, and later in
the state of Israel.
The Bible became the national textbook, taught in separate lessons

rather than as an integral part of the language and literature
studies ... Teachers ... understood the dual function of the Scriptures
in shaping the national identity – the creation of a common ‘ethnic’
origin for the religious communities scattered throughout the world,
and self-persuasion in the claiming of proprietary rights over the
country. (Sand, 2009, p. 111)
The syllabus taught
an ethnocentric and ideologically committed version of history that

emphasised the Jewish people’s moral and intellectual contributions
to humanity and insisted repetitively on Jewish martyrology through
the ages and, as a logical corollary, on the inevitable necessity of the
Zionist solution to the perennial Jewish problem. (Goldberg, 2006,
pp. 105–106)
After Israel’s establishment, the centrality of the Bible continued as

state officials deliberately involved academics in the nation-building
programme (Sand, 2011, p. 63).
The employment of the Bible as a textbook for history and identi-
fication has thus inculcated in Israeli youth, from primary school to
university, their membership of the eternal Jewish nation, rightfully
reclaiming its home in Palestine. This depiction of a virtuous mission,
reinforced by the notion of ‘chosenness’, means that resistance can only
be digested as irrational Evil. The very omission of the Other renders its
‘return’ inexplicable and terrifying.
The Holocaust and ressentiment

The formal claiming of the Holocaust by the Israeli state invoked a
similar narrative of chosenness and virtue reflected on a backdrop of
inhumanity and horror. Whilst the Evil Other figured prominently in
this narrative, proving very transferrable to non-Jews in Palestine, in this
section I focus on how the Zionist discourse both claimed and rejected
the terrible events in Europe to establish Israel as a garrison state for the
‘virtuous Jewish nation’. Later, I will look at how the Holocaust narrative
depicted Others in Palestine.
There might seem no better fit for the ressentiment formula of a virtuous
Jewish nation under attack from evil Others than the horrors of the
Holocaust, but Israel’s founders and leaders did not initially interpret it
this way. The Zionist settler population did not ‘adopt’ the Holocaust until
well after Israel’s establishment, when her early statesmen recognised the
political potential of these heinous events to legitimise the Jewish state
internationally and instruct its new citizenry at home (Arendt, 1976,
pp. 9–10, 19; Zertal, 2005). Given the Holocaust’s centrality to ressenti-
ment Zionism today, it is hard to imagine that Israelis would ever have
treated the Holocaust and its victims unsympathetically. Recounting the
transition from disdain to embrace enables us to consider how Israel’s
leaders both maintained a distance from Jewish victimhood (‘The New
Jew’) and simultaneously relied upon it (‘the Virtuous Victim’).
Before Israel’s creation, Zionist discourse had intersected with European
ethnic nationalist discourses in depicting Jews as an alien nation fulfilling
a parasitic role in the economy. Accordingly, Zionists were complicit in
the project of removing Jews from Europe, enjoying the protection of
Nazi officials whilst attempting to secure the most physically promising
specimens for Palestine (Arendt, 1976, pp. 58–61; Zertal, 1998). David
Ben-Gurion famously declared: ‘If I knew that it was possible to save all
the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half
by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter ... ’
(Gilbert, 1987, para. 7; Zertal, 1998, p. 160). Such attitudes, understandable
from the pragmatic viewpoint of those building a nationalist movement,
hardly qualified Zionists as spokespeople for the Holocaust’s victims.
Yet once the Jewish state had claimed Europe’s traumatised survivors
as human capital and legitimatory buttressing – albeit contemptuously
housing them in yet more camps and depicting them as acquiescent to
their own destruction (Zertal, 1998, Chapter 7, pp. 264–249) – it could
also claim survivors’ and victims’ experiences too, irrefutably ‘proving’
the Evil of Others as laid out in the ressentiment discourse.
Israeli historian Idith Zertal explains how Israel’s first generation of
statesmen
not only played a leading part in historical events but also inter-
preted, labelled and classified them in terms of importance in such
a way as to influence all subsequent thought about them. ... . Their
generalizations ... became accepted truths. (Zertal, 1998, p. 3)
The statesmen used institutions like the Knesset and Supreme Court
to affix moral categories, with the ruling Mapai party prosecuting Jews
implicated in the deaths of others. Zertal explains that during the awful
processes of internment and genocide, some individual Jews had collab-
orated with the Nazis in order to attain favours or merely survive. The
decision to try these alleged ‘Jewish collaborators’ in Israel legitimised
the idea of a single ‘Jewish nation’ whose members were entitled to inter-
vene in the Holocaust’s aftermath. The trials forged a Europe–Palestine
connection, with a single ‘Jewish nation’ under attack from Evil Others
as the common denominator. Linkage of Europe and Palestine via the
Holocaust generated the ‘implication ... that Jews carried the Holocaust
or a potential holocaust within them wherever they went’ (Zertal, 2005,
p. 63). The so-called ‘collaborator trials’ instilled this into the state’s
charter.
However, the trials forced Zionists to deal with deviations from the
virtue that Jewish identification was supposed to represent; accordingly,
the discourse could not absorb the events recounted by the accused.
This Holocaust literature, this record of the complexity of human

existence and its negation in the cataclysmic situation in the camps
was not handed down because it embodied – and still does – a vast
threat, emanating from the very triviality of the ‘crimes’ exposed
and the banality of the people who committed them; ordinary
Jews, every day people, who might well have been us ... And because
these accounts deal with ordinary, normal people, and expose the
fragility and imperceptibility of the line between good and evil,
right and wrong, and their leakage – invisible at the time – from one
side of the line to the other – their troubling message could not be
compulsory material for a nation establishing and defining itself as
absolute good against the Holocaust’s absolute evil. (Zertal, 2005,
pp. 88–89)
Israel’s founding statesmen thus had to modify the results of these trials,
even as the trials themselves cemented ‘possession’ of the Holocaust.
Accordingly, the leadership introduced, in 1953, a law which officially
remembered ‘the Holocaust and Heroism’, placing emphasis on those
who resisted the Nazis. The law thus embedded a sanitised version of the
Holocaust into Israel’s charter, ensuring that future Israelis would relate
in a particular way to the Jews who perished, and connect their deaths
to the State of Israel (Zertal, 2005, p. 85). Evil would remain the province
of the Other; those of the Us who had participated were ‘purge[d]’ as
criminals (Zertal, 2005, p. 66) and hence extricated from the Virtuous
nation.2 Meanwhile, the 1953 law connected Zionist settlers of Palestine
to the minority of armed Jewish resistors in Europe – alike in their failure

to acquiesce to Evil Others.
Hannah Arendt’s account of the Jerusalem trial of Nazi bureaucrat Adolf
Eichmann in 1961 demonstrates again how criminal trials embedded
the state’s Charter. Arendt (1976) suggests that prosecutor Hausner, the
mouthpiece of Ben-Gurion, introduced a wide array of evidence into
the court to ‘paint a picture’ of the Holocaust (p. 225). The judges were
unwilling to limit the testimonies of large numbers of witnesses who
had responded to advertisements, recounting horrors that could not be
linked to Eichmann and were thus of limited relevance. Arendt notes
the exclusion of stories about non-Jews who saved lives, and argues that
Israel’s leadership pursued a particular vision of Israeli and Jewish life
well beyond the delivery of justice for criminal acts.
Today, concludes Grinberg (2009), ‘We, the victims of the Holocaust,
are the ultimate a-historical victim of human history through the gener-
ations’ (p. 113). The ressentiment charter has become common sense
and Jewish citizens understand the State of Israel, with its institution-
alised reified ethnic categories, to be the single bastion of protection.
In the next section, I will revisit the implication of this digestion of the
Holocaust for the demonisation of ‘Arabs’.
Five legal categories of Other ... and one symbolic one
Central to the construction of ‘Jewish national identity’ in Israel, and the

continued predominance of the ressentiment Zionist discourse, has been
the discursive and legal construction of the Other. With virtue affixed
to both their identification and their national project, when Zionists
experienced violence at the hands of non-Jews in Palestine, they read
it through the lens of ressentiment, depicting Palestinians as Evil Others.
This pattern continued well into Israel’s first decades, when Zionism’s
Others were not just responding to settler colonialists, but to a state
premised upon their own negation and exclusion. Political, legal and
military decisions by the Israeli state demarcated formal sub-categories
of this Other, yet while these sub-categories produced different experi-
ences and identifications for individuals, the overarching depiction of
the Evil Other reduced all such individuals back to an amorphous mass.
Such complexity has ultimately reinforced ressentiment by rendering
Otherness almost incomprehensible.
This incomprehensibility can be illustrated by a disagreement I had
with one of the dissidents, Meron Benvenisti, over Palestinian nation-
hood. Benvenisti took a primordialist view, regarding ‘the Jews’ as an
ancient tribe (not even to be sullied by modern terms like ‘nation’), and
depicting the ‘Palestinian nation’ as having been divided and ruled by
Israel, splintered into Israeli citizens, non-citizens and internationals. I
took a constructivist view, arguing that individuals in each legal category
identified based on their contexts, and that this was entirely legitimate.
Our disagreement highlighted the complexity of bringing together the
multiple legal categories of ‘Palestinian’ or ‘Arab’ and the single discur-
sive depiction the Other as a monolithic – and usually Evil – collec-
tive (though Benvenisti’s depiction was more nuanced). The complexity
derives in part from the difficulty in talking about the actual catego-
ries of non-Jews in Israel/Palestine without going into significant detail.
Excessive, mind-numbing detail invites the simplification offered by the
groupist squashing-down to a single nation. However, the minute we
try to talk about a single Palestinian discourse or identification, we find
ourselves dealing with different sub-categories that do, indeed, generate
different experiences. Thus, attempts to analyse the Other from within
ressentiment Zionism focus on a moving target, which cannot really be
understood. This crisis of understanding contributes to a more strident
ressentiment depiction, as that Other becomes harder to comprehend.
Having just complained about the excessive detail necessary to under-
stand how Zionism legally and discursively constructs its Palestinian
Other(s), I must now go into some of this detail in order to explain the
evolution of ressentiment. This is necessary, given that the only alternative
is a cursory groupist account of ‘Palestinianness/Arabness’, which repro-
duces the ressentiment discourse. My analysis differentiates between how
ressentiment Zionism has referred to metaphorical Others (within the
discourse), and how laws and policies have created actual Others. Whilst
ressentiment Zionism has targeted a generalised ‘Arab’ as its Evil Other
from Zionist settlement onwards, the Israeli state has over time created
five distinct legal sub-categories of ‘Arab’ or ‘Palestinian’. Individuals
belonging to these sub-categories have had their own unique experi-
ences interfacing with Israel; at times, their causes and conversations
have overlapped and at others they have been counterpoised. Common
to all has been their depiction by Zionism as the Evil Other, and their
counter-depiction of the Zionist Jew in the same terms.
The ‘Israeli Arab’ Other

The first sub-category of Other created with the establishment of Israel
was the so-called ‘Israeli Arab’ who lives within the borders of the Jewish
state but is not a Jew.3 The ‘Israeli’ part refers to the citizenship of this
cohort, which only became meaningful after the abolition of martial law
in 1966; the ‘Arab’ part ‘subsume[s] [them] under the broader Arab cate-
gory’ whilst denying any specific belonging to Palestine (Peteet, 2005,
p. 161).4 Whilst analysis often represents ‘Israeli Arabs’ as an ignored,
de-legitimised ‘national minority’ (Ghanem, 1998; Rabinowitz, 2001),
‘minority-ness’ is itself a product of the ethnocratiser state, which
must first create ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ before it can privilege or
de-privilege them. The ratio of ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘nations’ reified by the
state is manipulable, and indeed Israel’s initial majority of ‘Jews’ was very
small. Accordingly, the years on either side of her creation saw Zionist
activists deliberately altering these proportions so that the state could be,
in their eyes, both ‘Jewish’ and ‘democratic’. The Law of Return and the
state’s refusal to permit the return of non-Jewish refugees after the 1948
War created a manageable ‘national minority’ of ‘Israeli Arabs’. Whilst
the privations experienced by these individuals are beyond this book’s
scope, the significant restrictions upon non-Jewish engagement in public
and private life have been well documented elsewhere (Rabinowitz, 1997;
Ghanem, 1998; Saban, 2004; Yiftachel, 2006; Peled, 2008).
The refugee Other

The second formal sub-category of ‘Arab’ created with Israel’s establish-
ment was the refugees of 1948, a distinct set of legal persons according
to United Nations’ Resolution 194 (1948), which proclaims their right
to return home. 700,000 non-Jewish refugees left what would become
the Jewish state (Morris 2001; Kovel 2007); many of them ended up
in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and a significant number in the West
Bank and Gaza.5 The latter were supposed to form the ‘Arab’ state; after
Israel’s decisive expansion in 1948, Jordan and Egypt took control of
their respective adjoining territories.
Contemporary scholars disagree over whether Plan Dalet, the Zionist
leadership’s wartime policy to ethnically cleanse areas of the soon-
to-be Jewish state of their non-Jewish inhabitants, was a formal blue-
print for forced deportation endorsed by the highest leadership (see
Kimmerling, 1983, 2004; Pappe, 2001, p. 98; Morris, 2004a; Lentin,
2010, pp. 109–110). However, ‘[t]he really important decision, which
was conscious and explicit, was to make sure that the collapse of the
Palestinian community that unfolded under the pressures of all-out
war between Israel and the Arab states would be irreversible’ (Piterberg,
2001, p. 56, my emphasis).
The Israeli state’s permanent exclusion of refugees and confiscation
or destruction of their property demonstrates the strength of the mean-
ings the ressentiment discourse applied to ‘Jewish’ and ‘non-Jewish’
categories. Externally imposed categorisation by the new state awarded

either national membership or non-personhood and banishment. There
was an instrumental component in that Zionists were establishing a
state requiring more ‘Jews’ than ‘non-Jews’ in order to be recognised as a
democracy (at least by its founders). Many Zionists had already consid-
ered this pressing problem in the years leading up to Israel’s establish-
ment, hence the War facilitated the exclusion of Others; it provided a
means of ‘spirit[ing] them across the border’ (Herzl in Piterberg, 2008,
p. 39). However, there was also a significant ressentiment basis behind
the exclusion of the refugees: Zionism stereotyped and blamed them
for what it depicted as violent opposition to the peaceful establish-
ment of the Jewish state. The discourse could not digest that the para-
digm behind the state’s founding was inherently hostile to Others, who
would necessarily need to be transferred out of the territory or awarded
reduced citizenship in order for the plan to proceed. The ethnic catego-
risation of the refugees provided sufficient grounds for their exclusion as
unwelcome enemies.6 This rhetoric continues today, with Zionists repre-
senting potential refugee return as an unacceptable incursion destroying
the Jewish state (Dershowitz, 2003, p. 85; Grinberg, 2009, p. 114).
‘Generic’ Arabs and collapsible Others

The third sub-category of ‘generic’ Arab was really a catchall for what
remained outside the first two categories. ‘Generic Arabs’ were non-Jews
who fell outside of Israel’s ambit in surrounding ‘Arab’ states, an amor-
phous horde hell-bent on Israel’s destruction.
Idith Zertal (2005) illustrates how the Zionist ressentiment discourse
collapsed all three categories of ‘Arab’ (internal, refugee and generic)
into the broader category of Evil Other during the show trial of Adolf
Eichmann, a ‘landmark in the process of the organized, explicit mobili-
zation of the Holocaust in the service of Israeli politics and state policy,
especially in the context of the Israeli–Arab conflict’ (p. 99). References
to Nazism were liberally applied to ‘Arabs’; Prime Minister Ben-Gurion
spoke publicly of Nazis hiding in Egypt and compared the speeches of
the Egyptian president to Hitler (p. 99). The ‘transference’, as Zertal calls
it, ‘of the Holocaust situation on to the Middle East reality’, occurred
in two distinctive ways: first by massive references to the presence of

Nazi scientists and advisers in Egypt and other Arab countries, to the
ongoing connections between Arab and Nazi leaders, and to the Nazi-
like intentions and plans of the Arabs to annihilate Israel. The second
means was systematic references – in the press, on the radio, and
in political speeches – to the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin

El-Husseini, his connection with the Nazi regime in general and with
Eichmann and his office in particular. In those references he was
depicted as a prominent designer of the Final Solution and a major
Nazi criminal. The deeds of Eichmann – and other Nazi criminals –
were rarely mentioned without addition of the Arab–Nazi dimension.
(p. 100)
Eichmann’s ‘Israeli prosecutor insisted on inflating the Mufti’s role in

the planning and implementation of Nazi crimes’ (p. 102). Many years
later, the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, completed in the 1980s, depicted
the Mufti as
one of the great designers and perpetrators of the Final Solution: his
entry is twice as long as each of the entries devoted to Goebbels and
Goering, longer than the two combined entries for Heydrich and
Himmler and longer than the entry on Eichmann ... [I]n the Hebrew
edition ... the entry on El-Husseini is almost as long as that on Hitler.
(p. 103)
This astounding detail illustrates just how effectively Israel’s political

class embedded into the state’s charter the idea that ‘Arabs’ in the Middle
East orchestrated the European Holocaust.
Ben-Gurion’s legacy to his people by means of the Eichmann trial was

two-fold: eternal hatred of the Jews still endured despite the existence
of the State of Israel, and the Nazi-like enemy was still rallied at the
gates of the nation-in-siege. (p. 114)
The occupied Other

Six years after the Eichmann trial, Israel dramatically conquered territo-
ries including the West Bank and the Gaza strip during the Six Day War.
This created a fourth sub-category of ‘Arab’ in these remaining areas of
what was once destined to be the ‘Arab’ state. The lives of ‘Arabs’ living
here would dramatically change; whether they were refugees from 1948
or centuries-long residents, all would become occupied Palestinians –
incorporated into the state of Israel without citizenship. While in Israel’s
early years, the Zionist discourse had minimally differentiated between
‘generic’ Arabs and ‘Israeli’ and ‘refugee’ ‘Arabs’, with certainly no
‘Palestinians’, after the occupation the discourse slowly began to grudg-
ingly recognise the existence of a ‘Palestinian nation’ (Peteet, 2005).
Crucially, however, at moments of conflict, Zionism would still conflate

occupied Palestinians with Israeli Arabs and generic Arabs to form an
amorphous Evil Other.
The sub-category of occupied Palestinians arose out of the desire of
Israel’s leaders and population to retain the spoils of the Six Day War.
In the Zionist historical narrative, the West Bank and Gaza formed part
of the ancient and deeply significant ‘Land of Israel’. Jews had been
able to access these areas prior to 1948, but the armistice lines of 1948
banished them from the Old City of Jerusalem, ancient gravesites and
geological features as well as the Hebrew University. Israel’s 1967 victory
thus inspired a settler movement to integrate the acquired lands into the
state. Though there were indeed some clear strategic reasons to hold on
to portions, these did not endorse the wholesale settlement and occupa-
tion which followed, which would prove provocative and difficult to
defend militarily (Gorenberg, 2006, pp. 116, 279). Thus, to the extent
that there was a conflict between military strategy and settler-colonialist
ideology – and indeed there was a significant crossover – the ressentiment
discourse’s claim to the entire ‘Land of Israel’ trumped any concerns
about how to manage the large numbers of Other therein.
Settlement of the occupied territories could not utilise the same prac-
tices that had facilitated the establishment of Israel; practices which had
continued with the settlement of ‘Arab’ areas after 1948 (see Yiftachel,
1993). The occupied territories could not officially become part of Israel
because this would award citizenship to the non-Jewish Other therein,
resulting in a state with a significant population of non-Jews. Colonial
outpost settlement was the only way of acquiring the land seemingly
without its problematic population of Others, or the dowry without the
bride. Jews who settled in the occupied territories would thus be full
citizens of Israel and, over the years, the state would grant them special
benefits such as housing subsidies and tax breaks. The state would
build infrastructure, provide them with military protection, facilitate
their acquisition of additional lands and integrate them into life within
Israel’s ‘official borders’. All the while, settlers would be living alongside
non-citizens – non-Jews – denied these benefits and paying for them
in terms of land, resources and rights, which would only strengthen
the ressentiment discourse of this population. The privations occupied
Palestinians would endure over the coming years would see their partic-
ular discourse – built upon the original response to the Zionist project –
forming the most significant ressentiment pair with Zionism.
Given the large number of refugee Palestinians living in the occupied
territories, it is not surprising that the population here was already well
versed in ressentiment; after 1967, there was more fuel for the fire. Title
deeds became meaningless as Jewish settlers claimed privately owned
land, and the state nationalised vast tracts for development; destroying
villages, planting forests over them, and subsequently building a giant
wall through them. Israeli settlers destroyed the livelihood of Palestinian
agriculturalists with minimal interference by the military, and took over
the heart of Hebron, victimising non-Jewish neighbours. There has been
no recourse for occupied Palestinians; only more Jewish settlements serv-
iced by new roads; requiring more water and amenities and electricity
and rubbish dumps. Jewish soldiers with machine guns restrict non-Jews
with roadblocks and require permits for movement, work and educa-
tion; there are house searches and demolitions, personal searches and
curfews, and military use of civilians as hostages. The need to protect
Jew from non-Jew in the territories is self-evident within the Zionist
discourse, and Israeli courts uphold the punitive measures of occupa-
tion, lending a veneer of respectability to the dispossessions therein.
The Zionist justification for the privations of the occupation lies in
the explanation for the sometimes violent response to it, incognisant
of the fact that the occupation itself generates resistance. The tactics
of occupied Palestinians shifted from a top-down terror campaign
against Israel orchestrated by political elites to a more popular resist-
ance movement with uprisings (intifadas) in 1987 and 2000. The second
intifada was symbolised by suicide bombings carried out by occupied
Palestinians within Israel’s ‘official’ borders. These multiple murders
cemented the ressentiment Zionist line that the ‘Palestinians’ – by now
there was growing consensus on their existence – must be evil monsters.
Their ongoing deprivations were not relevant.
When one has to deal with a serial killer, it’s not so important to
discover why he became a serial killer. What’s important is to imprison
the murderer or to execute him ... [I]n some way the Palestinian
society itself ... is in the state of being a serial killer. (Benny Morris, in
Shavit, 2004, p.47–48)
The Other and the Us in the media

Depictions of the Other in Israel’s mainstream media have strength-
ened the ressentiment depiction of a virtuous Us under inexplicable
attack. The media is often ‘described as one of the main realms in which
the national community is “imagined”’ (Yadgar, 2002, p. 58), and in
numerous instances around the world, ‘impure, dangerous Others with
evil intents’ have been constructed though highly charged negative
images ... ’, which ‘evoke fear, hatred, loathing and /or anger [and] mobi-
lize nationalist sentiments ... ’ (Langman, 2006, p. 72).
Dor’s (2005) detailed study of local media reporting on Israel’s military
reoccupation of the West Bank in 2002 aptly illustrates this.7 Dor argues
that the imaginary Israeli spoken for by the media adamantly refused
responsibility for government actions, yet simultaneously supported
them. During this period, the media depicted a ‘Jewish’ nation that had
endured great horrors, from pogroms to the Holocaust to the murderous
wars waged by ‘Arabs’, and now terrorism from ‘Palestinians’. This narra-
tive rejected responsibility, instead encouraging readers to see themselves
as virtuous victims perversely blamed by Evil Others (the outside world)
for defending themselves against More Evil Others (Palestinians).
Yadgar’s (2003b) analyses of media reports of the same period echo
such sentiments, suggesting that ‘the second intifada was perceived and
interpreted primarily as violent, unjustified and ungrateful behaviour
on the part of the Palestinians, accompanied by insensitivity and lack
of understanding for Israel’s distress on the part of the world’s nations’
(p. 189). Even the treatment of international reporters by Israeli news
organisations reflects the ressentiment discourse. Dor (2005) argues that
Israeli media were antipathetic to international reporters and coverage.
He details examples in which Israeli journalists depicted international
reporters as hostile witnesses, and noted with approval the failures of
foreign correspondents to gain access to military areas (pp. 57–58). He
depicts Israeli journalists as preoccupied by the relationship between
international reporters and ‘Palestinians’, concerned that the former
are susceptible to propaganda from the latter. By virtue of their own
Otherness, then, international reporters are conflated with ‘Palestinians’;
thus the daily newspaper Ma’ariv ‘on behalf of all Israelis – is offended
by the discriminatory attitude of the world media. This sense of injury
conveys a deep message: it portrays the foreign media as engaging in a
discourse of blame against Israel. (p. 24).
Liebes (1997) goes some way in explaining why – in the main – the
Israeli media has so wholeheartedly depicted the Us and Other in ressen-
timent terms. The state established an Editors’ Committee in its early
days, which met regularly with military and government officials to
ensure that politically contentious stories would not run in any of Israel’s
privately owned newspapers. Thus, a section of what might otherwise
have been independent civil society voluntarily co-opted itself to state
control in the name of ‘national’ preservation. Liebes points out that
the people who founded the newspapers before Israel’s establishment
were essentially the same people who went on to be her first statesmen,
sharing a lived experience in Palestine and an ideology of national

entitlement that had brought them there. On this basis, the divide
between the Israeli state and civil society was far less marked than we
might expect (see also Sand, 2011, pp. 53–54, 71). Although that divide
should arguably have grown with the state’s maturity, ongoing conflict
and compulsory military service have kept the state, military and civil
society inextricably intertwined, ensuring continued mobilisation of the
ressentiment discourse (see Cohen, 2001, pp. 157–158).
Ressentiment to the present day

Whilst a heightened ressentiment pair has developed between occupied
Palestinians and the Zionist discourse since 1967, the sub-category
of ‘Israeli Arabs’ have not been immune from ongoing ressentiment
targeting. In keeping with the ‘amorphous Evil Other’ conflation of
all ‘Arabs’, commentators depict ‘Israeli Arabs’ as a remnant of a much
larger hostile mass, and accordingly portray them as seeking to destroy
the Jewish state from within:
The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete
Palestinianization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is
among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic
and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. (Benny
Morris, in Shavit, 2004, p. 45)
Objectively, however, possession of Israeli citizenship has placed ‘Israeli

Arabs’ in a different situation from occupied Palestinians; one cogent
(if groupist) framing is of a ‘trapped minority’ fitting uncomfortably
between a Jewish state and Palestinian hinterland (Rabinowitz, 2001). The
discourse of ‘Israeli Arabs’ is distinct from that of occupied Palestinians;
at times, it represents them as part of the ‘Palestinian nation’, at other
moments, the discourse emphasises their ‘Israeliness’ and employs
claims for either civic equality or national minority status (Ghanem,
1998, pp. 438–443; Sa’di, 2000, p. 28; Peled, 2007a, pp. 355–357; Jamal,
2008, pp. 287–288; Rouhana, 1998, pp. 286, 293). Since the three claims
are incompatible – ‘Israeli Arabs’ cannot simultaneously join the puta-
tive Palestinian state, live as equal citizens in a ‘civic Israel’ and live
as a protected ‘national minority’ in a ‘binational’ Israel – ressenti-
ment Zionism depicts ‘Israeli Arabs’ as having only one goal: to destroy
Israel. Contemporary political rhetoric demonises ‘Israeli Arabs’ and
threatens them with border relocations or transfer (Kimmerling, 2004;
Peled, 2007a, pp. 347–350), a push to swear allegiance to the Jewish
state (Stewart, 2010,) and biopolitical demonisation of their fecundity

(Sand, 2011, p. 97). Demographic concerns are so central to the project
of ethnocratisation, with its need for Jewish numerical dominance, that
‘those Jewish Israelis who regard themselves as in the ‘peace camp’ speak
in terms of a demographic threat as well’ (Grinberg, 2009, p. 105).
The population living in Gaza today constitutes a fifth objective sub-
category of ‘Arab’ since they live under different political and legal
conditions than individuals in the West Bank. Prior to 2005, the Gaza
strip had been subject to the same processes of settlement and disposses-
sion as the West Bank, differing only in being geographically separated
and containing less in the way of historically significant Jewish arte-
facts. Perhaps for this reason, and also because it was a small area whose
overcrowded ‘Arab’ residents greatly outnumbered Jewish settlers, the
Israeli government under Ariel Sharon ‘disengaged’ from it in 2005.
This meant a withdrawal of all Jewish settlements and ostensibly a with-
drawal of the military.
The problem was that Gaza, a highly populated urban coastal strip,
had no means of providing its population with the necessities of life,
from food to employment to basic infrastructure. In 2006, elections
replaced the Fatah party with the more extreme Hamas. After a short
period of national unity leadership, Hamas seized control in 2007 and
the strip was promptly placed under Israeli and international sanctions.
Militants continued to fire into Israel, as they had prior to the ‘disen-
gagement’, which Israel had enacted without any rapprochement and
had now escalated with economic deprivation. Israel countered the
bombs with a large-scale military operation in 2009, Operation Cast
Lead, during which Gaza’s housing and infrastructure was destroyed
and 1417 people were killed (Damage to Palestinian People and Property
During Operation Cast Lead, 2009). Israel placed Gaza under a sea and
land blockade, which stalled the economy and produced deprivation,
illness and malnutrition (Batniji et al., 2009) as well as provoking more
violence. However, the ressentiment Zionist discourse attributes this
entire dismal situation to the deficiencies of ‘Palestinians’. The Gaza
experience demonstrates that ‘they’ did not embrace the ‘independence’
Israel so benevolently granted to them (see, for example, Shavit, 2009),
and as such demonstrates their Evil. Gaza provides ‘evidence’ why no
such policies should be pursued in the West Bank; arguably the original
impulse behind Sharon’s disengagement policy (Waiting for a Miracle,
The Economist, 2005).
Consequently, the occupation and ongoing conflict between Israel
and the ‘Palestinians’ results in ongoing enmity. Every encounter
simply affirms the ‘truth’ of the ressentiment discourses of each ‘side’:

‘Their use of violence is regarded as evidence that they want to kill us’
(Grinberg, 2009, p. 108). The actions of the Us appear a moral response
to the hostility of the Other, mirrored back ad nauseum. On this basis,
legal sub-categorisation of the Other has functioned to distract, confuse
and divide opposition to the Zionist project. I do not mean that the
‘Palestinians’ had previously formed a single nation, which Israel then
categorically broke down in order to ‘divide and rule’, as Benvenisti
argues. Rather, I mean that the categories, and the regime determining
them, are so complex that the Other has become a moving target. It can
never be pinned down, precisely because the legal categories of Other can
collapse at any minute into the amorphous symbolic one. Conversely,
any attempts to probe this amorphous symbolic Other become compli-
cated by different laws, categories and personal identifications, which
reflect the competing aims and objectives of people in different political
contexts. This inability to attain focus on the Other paralyses analysis,
inviting one to cleave to the ressentiment depiction of a single, amor-
phous Other even though this depiction fails to describe material reality.
However, since the ressentiment depiction continues to offer the moral
certainty of Our virtue, its simple mantra can be grasped in the absence
of any other easy explanations.
Conclusion
We are now at the end of the contextual component of this book. This
chapter has explored how the Israeli state has reified the Jewish nation
as ‘virtuous victim’ of Evil Others, whose resistance can only ever be
understood in such terms. Laws and proclamations have delivered this
message; education and a public discourse surrounding the Holocaust
have instilled it, and five legal sub-categories of Other and a single
symbolic one have invoked it. As a moving target, the Other cannot
be understood; its complexity legitimates the reduction to stereotypes.
Concern for this Other constitutes the dilemma for the dissidents,
which I will discuss in the remaining chapters. They must negotiate
this concern alongside personal identification arising from the context
I have described here. They must determine whether they can, indeed,
relate to their Other as a human being of equal worth.
Part II
Dissent
4
Meet the Dissidents
Introduction
Israeli laws and policies privilege Jews and render their hegemony as
natural; accordingly, the dominant nationalist discourse interprets
Others’ resistance as irrational. Israeli Jews seeking to interpret their
Other differently must therefore negotiate the dominant discourse to
reconceptualise this relationship; we are about to meet 11 individuals
who attempt to do this. All are Israeli Jews, either by birth or by immi-
gration, though not all of them still live in Israel or identify as Israeli. All
take the view that Israel is somehow oppressive or unjust to ‘Palestinians’
or ‘Arabs’. The variations in their responses to their dilemma demon-
strate that there is no single path for dissent. Instead, individuals have
a range of options available to them and the remainder of this book
examines what these options look like and what their implications are.
By looking deeply at a small number of individuals, I am able to inter-
rogate, in some detail, the inconsistencies within their narratives, which
are emblematic of their contradictory context.
In this chapter, I introduce the dissidents and explain why I chose to
examine each of them. I group them into broad categories of academic,
activist and commentator, though several individuals could fit into more
than one category. I examine their published works, political actions
and interview responses, outlining the things they say and the projects
to which they devote their time. My dissidents reference, discuss and
critique each other, sometimes completely unbidden, demonstrating
the constant renegotiation of discourse. Their interactions with me also
form a significant focus of the next three chapters. I include my own
comments and questions as conversational excerpts, and at times discuss
my role in the exchanges. Ozkirimli (2003) argues that a constructivist
73
approach to nationalism seeks to challenge and transform (p. 343); I

cannot appear to my interview subjects as a detached observer. Some
welcome me as a fellow traveller; others see me as a challenging outsider.
Some interviews are heated but, with one exception, all are warm and
mutually respectful.
Academics
Oren Yiftachel
Oren Yiftachel was the very first dissident I sought to analyse after
encountering his scholarly work as an undergraduate. He is a tall, lanky
man in his early fifties who seems to live in black jeans and desert boots.
He resembles a more attractive version of the film director Quentin
Tarantino, and his jiggling legs and sharp eyes buzz with energy. He is a
committed critical academic and an activist for social justice whose wife
informs me that regular ‘power naps’ recharge him for his passionate
pursuits. A political geographer, Yiftachel conceptualises Israel/Palestine
as an ethnocracy, and his critique of ‘creeping apartheid’ (Yiftachel and
Ghanem, 2004, pp. 86–7) extends beyond academia to civil society
interventions.
Yiftachel’s role in my research project is complex. I discovered his
academic writings in 2004 and first interviewed him in 2007. While
conducting my fieldwork in 2010, I briefly stayed with Yiftachel and his
family in Beersheva and interviewed him again. My analysis draws from
both interviews as well as Yiftachel’s published work. Yiftachel unoffi-
cially consulted on my research project, and in Israel he doubled as host
and tour guide. As both scholar and private individual, he is an inte-
gral subject of this book, which builds upon and critiques his ‘ethnoc-
racy’ concept. I cannot easily reconcile the roles he plays, but I can only
be explicit about these different facets. In the remaining chapters, I
predominantly engage with his scholarship and interview responses as a
performance of identity, through which he enacts his relationship with
the Us and the Other.
These relationships are complex, and as we will see with other dissi-
dents, they have been personally costly. Yiftachel has paid a price for his
efforts to transform his society. ‘I’ve been, since the eighties, constantly
attacked, and quite often lost jobs, academic jobs and planning jobs,
one after the other’, he tells me. ‘You don’t have to feel so sorry for me’,
he adds, ‘because I’ve got other jobs, you know. As compared to the deep
racism, say, against Arabs, that they end up not getting any jobs at all’
Meet the Dissidents 75
(2007). Yiftachel also describes losing friends and being vilified in the
media.
[E]ven my PhD Supervisor has sort of stopped talking to me, and that
hurts. But they don’t deal with that at all; they just ... spit the dummy
and go. ... I say to them, well let’s talk about – but the minute you
mention apartheid, they just go.
This hostile reception is telling, given that Yiftachel maintains a solid

affinity to what he refers to as the Hebrew people. He consistently
frames his interventions as in the interest not just of Palestinians but
also Hebrews. His way of understanding ethnic identification is crucial
to this. He argues for ‘work[ing] up some social frameworks that can
actually transform within, without actually destroying the society ...
[I]n that respect you have to adopt some existing categories, knowing of
course they are not what they purport to be’, he explains.
They’re not sort of timeless, non-changing identities from time imme-

morial. ... When there isn’t the colonial factor, when there isn’t the
domination in the name of this category, the category can transform
itself into something benign ... While the Us is overtaking Others,
people will always be oppressive, we’re always segregative ... But while
the Us is interested in co-existence, it can transform itself from within
to be a benign category, right? ... [I]t’s the oppression that has to be first
dealt with. And it’s possible to maintain Jewish self-determination
without oppressing Others.
Yiftachel condemns Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since
1967 as having ‘no moral standing at all’ because at that stage the Jews
‘did have a homeland’. Yet he also critiques the historical dynamics of
the Zionist project. He argues for a ‘mutual apology, although Israel has
much more responsibility so Israel has to take responsibility’. Ultimately,
he would like to see Israel/Palestine formally reconfigured as a single
state with consociational power sharing. This is in keeping with his idea
that nobody should strip ethnic identification from those to whom such
identification is precious. He speaks of a
sort of gradual acceptance of the Jewish collectivity, perhaps not a

Jewish state but a Jewish collectivity, perhaps like the Maronites and
other sort of non-Arab collectivities – or the Kurds – in the Middle
East. And then maybe our grandchildren will be able to go to school

together first, right? And then, intermarriage.
So he does not worry about the watering down of Hebrew identifica-

tion? ‘We want to hope that love will prevail at some stage’, he responds,
laughing.
Yet Yiftachel’s own identification is powerful. He argues that ethnic
affinity
gives people such a framework for existence. Such a purpose in life.

This is the project! The project is not to have a Mercedes Benz. [That]
is a by-product ... The project is to have this collectivity, with its own
history, troubled history, surviving and safe ... The project is not indi-
vidual, right? What gives people meaning, joy, ecstasy, is collective.
He argues for fluidity, suggesting that ‘possibly the strongest ethnicity in

the world has changed dramatically in the last thirty or forty years’ with
the influx of Arab Jews and Russians. He argues for ‘cultural rights’ and
entry and exit freedoms. If I want to become a Ultra-Orthodox, if I

want to become an Arab, I should have the right to do so, right? You
will have to, I suppose, adopt [a] certain culture to be an ethnic, you
know? But it wouldn’t depend upon your colour or on your mother.
This is why I maintain to call it Hebrew. Because a language-based
culture allows you more easier entry rather than a religion or history.
But I do agree, of course, with the critique ... the minute it becomes
oppressive, and I do agree with the critique that is has the potential to
become oppressive, right?
‘But not the critique that it has the inevitability to become oppressive’,
I suggest.
‘No, it’s not inevitable at all’, he responds.
[E]thnicity ... shouldn’t be defined by bloodlines, and that’s why the

word culture is more to my liking ... I don’t think you can, and I don’t
think you should, do away with the idea of identities that give people
meaning to their life.
Yiftachel combines his efforts to reinvent ‘Hebrew’ identification with

activism around Bedouin unrecognised villages, which Israeli authori-
ties deprive of basic utilities and regularly demolish. Yiftachel also
helped to draft the academic boycott of Israeli institutions put forward

by Palestinian scholars, though he does not go so far as his colleague
Neve Gordon in publicly endorsing a general boycott of Israel. The
following chapters will engage more with Yiftachel’s identification and
narrative, but now it is time to explore his colleague Gordon, whose
different experiences and decisions have landed him in hot water with
his employer and his country as a whole.
Neve Gordon
Like Yiftachel, Neve Gordon works at Ben-Gurion University, but as
a political scientist. Gordon has become the Israeli poster-boy for the
international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. This
mild-mannered academic and activist urges the world to boycott Israeli
products, businesses and institutions as a means of forcing the end of
the occupation. This has generated a firestorm of opposition both in
Israel and amongst the Zionist diaspora (Ravid, 2009a, 2009b; Russo,
2009), since Gordon is employed by an Israeli state institution. His
critics, including the University’s president and a number of American
donors, argue that Gordon cannot effectively lobby internationally for
university funding whilst advocating a boycott of his institution (Carmi,
2009; Russo, 2009). Gordon has become a controversial figure in Israel
despite (or perhaps because of) his pedigree; he served as a paratrooper
and sustained permanent disability in combat. Prior to meeting Gordon,
I had read some of his opinion pieces and several articles surrounding
the BDS controversy; in the interview, we discussed several topics arising
out of his work.
Gordon explains his political trajectory, starting with an early
anecdote:
My first political memory is from the age of ten, when I grew up

here in Beersheva, and I came home and said something like, ‘This is
Arabs’ work’, and the phrase ‘Arabs’ work’ in Hebrew means ... work
that’s not done well. And my mother chastised me and basically said
that it’s a racist phrase, and that I should never use it again.
Gordon joined the left-Zionist organisation Peace Now, and ‘started

going to protests around 14 in the West Bank against the settlement
project, standing with signs, saying that the settlements are not good
for us, blah blah blah’.
After his military service and a year abroad, Gordon ‘returned to Israel
and joined a group called Gaza’s Team for Human Rights ... and later
Physicians for Human Rights, and was the director of that group when it
basically just began’. Though he would ultimately become disenchanted
with working for non-government organisations, concluding that ‘resist-
ance becomes professionalised, a nine-to-five kind of activist’, Gordon’s
experiences helped him to ‘know ... what was going on first hand’.
‘[L]ater’, he continues,
I went and studied in the US, came back here and this was during the
Oslo years, ... was active again, and then the second intifada erupted,
and then understood that the whole ... Peace Now as a political move-
ment, and NGO, were not the answers for change, and then was
among the founders of Ta’yush in Jerusalem. The whole idea of a
much more democratic Jewish–Arab partnership for change and the
move from protest to resistance, from standing with a sign to direct
action forms of resistance.
Ta’yush, Gordon explains, is an ‘Arabic word for partnership’. He likes

it because it cannot be co-opted like the word ‘peace’. ‘Cos everyone’s
for peace! Bush is for peace, Sharon is for peace, Netanyahu is for peace,
Sharon is for peace, the settlers are for peace ... ’
After being involved with Ta’yush for ‘several years’, Gordon had chil-
dren and ‘became a nice bourgeoisie’. He is being self-deprecating here,
since one of the important projects he pursued as a parent was setting
up a Jewish–Palestinian kindergarten.
I ... see that as ... a very political project. It is the future, the only
possible future in my opinion in this region, with Israelis and
Palestinians in this kind of model. It’s a bilingual school, half the
children are Jews, half Palestinians, each class has two teachers, one
Jewish, one Arab, no translation, Arabs talk Arabic, the Jewish teacher
talks Hebrew ... They study in both languages and it’s amazing how
fast they learn both languages at that age.
The other component of Gordon’s supposedly nice bourgeois life is his

public support for BDS. He is cagey when I ask for an update, but admits
that things are ‘very bad’.
[W]hat has become clear is that the occupation has penetrated the
University. The tactics used by Israel in the occupied territories as
forms of punishment and forms of harassment are being used inside
this institution. I can’t get into the details of it, but let me say that
if they can’t punish me, they’ll punish my friends. For what I said.
Which is a tactic used in the occupied territories, and an anti-liberal
tactic, cos the view of the liberal is that I have to be responsible for my
actions, and not my friends ... We have neighbours that have stopped
talking to us; they don’t talk to our children. I mean, it’s much worse
than I anticipated. But no regrets ...
Like Yiftachel, Gordon remains philosophical. ‘I’m very privileged’,

he shrugs. ‘Much more than the people that you saw this morning.’
(He refers to the occupants of an unrecognised village I visited with
Yiftachel.)
Despite the controversy surrounding him, Gordon adamantly presents
himself as a patriot whose activism as benefits not only ‘Palestinians’
but also ‘Jews’. For him, patriotism is ‘a deep concern about a place and
the people that live there’.
When I ask which people, he replies:
[F]or me, the people are Jews and Palestinians. So I try to be as inclu-
sive as possible, and even the refugees ... there are several hundred
refugees ... from Darfur, okay ... So, I am connected to the place, the
culture and the people, and I’m deeply concerned about them. In
that sense, I’m a patriot.
Gordon also orients himself morally using Jewish culture. ‘I do go back

to the Bible’, he explains.
I do go back to certain traditions ... They inform the way I think about
this conflict and the world in general ... What is the major theme of
the Bible? It’s freedom. If you read the text with that major theme,
it can inform your work. What is the story of Passover? What is the
story of Yom Kippur, the most religious holiday, if not doubt, doubt
in God? But they teach it differently here. You can take those themes
from the Bible. I eat pork. I drive. I’m not a good Jew in their sense,
but I think I’m a good Jew in the more – that there’s a social justice
tradition in the Bible, and that’s clearly there.
Gordon emphasises that social justice should apply to the broader

community, not just Jews. He refers to a book review he wrote about a
Leon Roth work. Once a committed Zionist, Roth left the state of Israel
shortly after its establishment, already disappointed. Gordon writes that
Roth
spent many years studying Jewish texts and uncovering their universal
significance for human life. He constantly accentuates the basic
features of equality and freedom within Judaism ... A Judaism true
to its origins is thus universalistic; one that emphasises the past but
has meaning for the future, one that makes room for the other and
enables him/her to live in his/her otherness ... Roth’s reading of the
Jewish texts led him to advocate the establishment of a bi-national
political entity with complete equality of rights between Jews and
Palestinians. He believed that this worldview not only correlates with
Judaism and classic philosophy, but that both, when read correctly,
enhance it. (2001, para 11)
Despite his affinity with Roth, Gordon presents his own political vision
for Israel/Palestine as more pragmatic. Although he would like to see ‘a
world without nationalism’ and ‘a Middle East with open borders’, he
finds ‘leav[ing] aside the facts on the ground, the ideology and so forth’
‘not helpful’. He prefers to consider the ‘political strategic question’
of ‘which is the most possible’. Many of his friends, Gordon explains,
believe that the settlement of Palestine is entrenched and hence they
seek to alter the ideology of a Jewish state to accommodate this,
resulting in a binational state. ‘I think it’s easier to remove settlements
and to find the solution for the rights of ... Palestinian refugees, than to
change that ideology’, Gordon counters. This pragmatism underlines
his support for a two-state solution, even as he reluctantly acknowledges
that Palestinians in Israel ‘will continue to be second-class citizens’.
Uri Davis
The final academic in this study is Uri Davis, lecturer in Critical Israel
Studies at Birzeit University in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Davis
is well known internationally for his history of involvement with the
organised Palestinian political movement, and for his long-standing
arguments against ‘Israeli apartheid’ (1987). Davis has combined his
career and activism through academic employment and involvement
with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s political wing, Fatah.
When we met in Jerusalem in January 2010, Fatah members had recently
elected him to its Revolutionary Council, a large decision-making body
informing the work of the inner core. He was married to a former Fatah
bureaucrat, and moved in a Palestinian milieu. Well preserved into his
seventh decade, Davis has snowy white hair, a ruddy complexion and
the crisp accent of yesteryear’s BBC broadcasts and colonial propaganda
movies.
Davis has come to my attention via his books, particularly Crossing

the Border: An Autobiography of an Anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew (1995). The
latter is written in the style of a classic bildungsroman – the journey of the
young man from ignorance to enlightenment. It outlines Davis’s birth in
Palestine to a Slovakian mother and a much older British father. Neither
was a great Zionist, but since both were Jews who happened to be living
in Jerusalem prior to the establishment of Israel, they and their children
became Israelis. Davis began his political journey when he decided to
resist using a weapon during his schooling. He rejected the notion of
serving in the Army, too, so the state offered him alternative duty on a
kibbutz. After a time, he rejected this too. He became involved in radical
politics at university and moved to a Palestinian village within Israel.
Davis’s ‘Sabra’ identification (the term for an indigenous prickly fruit,
which locally born Israeli Jews self-apply) remained strong as his politics
became more radical. An affair with a black Maoist woman prompted
Davis to reflect on his ‘colonialist’ behaviours, and he ‘went native’.
No white person born into European society can be or can become a

native of somewhere else. But he or she can go native. It is possible to
break through the barrier and operate cross culturally in a common
struggle against repression, against discrimination, against racism,
and against double standards. (p. 109)
Davis’s political journey came good on his promise of ‘crossing the

border’. He connected with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation
during its years of exile, relocating to the United Kingdom due to the
illegality of his actions under Israel’s laws. He developed a respectful rela-
tionship with Abu Jihad (Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir), the founder of Fatah,
and with Abu Ammar (Yasser Arafat). The latter gave Davis symbolic and
financial support in his attempts to become involved with the PLO as
a ‘Palestinian Jew’ and to open up its premise as an alternative govern-
ment for a unified Israel–Palestine. Davis, an anthropology PhD, worked
within academic institutions in Britain to start up institutes that study
Palestine and are critical of Zionism. Finally, following the signing of the
Oslo Accords in 1992, he moved back to Israel.
Along the way, Davis married twice, each marriage producing a son.
A third marriage, intact at the time of the autobiography and having
produced twins, had disintegrated by the time we met 15 years later. He
has recently entered his fourth marriage, this time with a Palestinian
woman who is beyond childbearing age, so ‘there will be no children!’
On the record, Davis will only confirm that his legal address is inside
Israel. He is not permitted to live with his wife in Ramallah, nor is she
allowed to live in Israel with him, courtesy of the 2003 Citizenship and
Entry into Israel Law, which prohibits Palestinians from the territories
gaining Israeli citizenship by marriage.
In Davis’s final ‘crossing of the border’, he has registered as a Muslim
in order to marry Miyasar. I wonder whether he has deserted his
former identification. No, he explains in characteristically long-winded
fashion.
Over the years of reflection and practice, I changed my label from

Palestinian Jew to Palestinian Hebrew. But that change was effected
within a stable moral and political and ideological context of
opposition to Zionism ... I have been for decades now anti-Zionist,
namely resistance to a political system that I regard as indecent in
that it distinguishes in law and in practice, discriminates in law
and in practice, between Jew and non-Jew in the state of Israel. So,
in that context of anti-Zionist moral and political commitments, I
changed the first segment of my identity from Palestinian Jew to
Palestinian Hebrew, attempting a distinction between my tribal
origin, which is Jewish, and my national origin, which I identify
as Palestinian Hebrew; Hebrew designated primarily by national
language. So, I classify myself as a Palestinian Hebrew of Jewish
origin, definitely anti-Zionist, with dual citizenship. I’m a citizen
of an apartheid state, the state of Israel, and a citizen of an alleged
constitutional monarchy, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland.
Davis’s new Muslim faith does not get a mention, although he refuses
to confirm that it is merely an official act for the legitimacy of his
fourth marriage. ‘I registered myself as a Muslim well before establishing
our relationship as a family, and beyond that I will not answer’, he
declares.
Davis’s decision to ‘cross the border’ and work with the political insti-
tutions of the Other has been politically rationalised, he explains.
The Fatah, being an open political organisation, where membership

is anchored in commitment to Palestinian fundamental rights and to
the political programme of the Fatah and the PLO, but regardless of
ethnic background, citizenship, language, whatever, it has a general
international membership, was the best option available to me in the
political arena both inside Israel and outside Israel.
‘My affiliation to the Fatah, my affiliation to the PLO, my acceptance of

my election to Fatah leadership position is anchored in a political assess-
ment of likelihood or otherwise’, he continues.
The likelihood that intervention of people like myself at a leadership

position may help shift of the mainstream from diluting Palestinian
claims based on international law to reasserting Palestinian claims
based on international law; I judged that likelihood sufficiently strong
to justify my affiliation. Definitely better likelihood than affiliating
to a political party [in Israel] and ending up as a Member of Knesset.
Davis’s vision of dismantling the apartheid Israeli regime, as he sees it,

results in a state of its citizens. He explains that even adhering to the
current PLO position of two states (though he has historically supported
a single state solution); these states are to be formulated based on all UN
resolutions. Implemented to the letter, these would result in a unitary
state made up of a two entities with Jewish and Palestinian ‘decorations’
(Freedman, 2009).
Davis recounts a particular intervention into Fatah’s framing of
national identity in Crossing the Border. He details his response to
receiving a facsimile of a planned Palestinian national identity card
from the PLO whose logo included ‘a church and a mosque and the
words “State of Palestine PLO” in Arabic and in English’.
Three Palestinian Jews, Elisha Davidsson of Reykjavik, Nissan Rilov

of Paris and myself, wrote a joint letter to our respective PLO offices
in Stockholm, Paris and London: ... ‘We consider ourselves bona
fide Palestinians. We, therefore, feel awkward, as Palestinian Jews,
carrying national ID cards, which symbolize a church and a mosque
(no synagogue) and ignore the fact that the mother tongue of an
unspecified number of the citizens of the future integrated Palestine
is Hebrew. Furthermore, it is a mistake in our view to identify the
Palestinian people and the country by religious symbols. We propose
that, subject to discussion and resolution by the PNC, the newly
established Department for Marital and Civil Registry reissue the
Palestinian national ID cards without any religious symbols and with
a three language logo: Arabic, Hebrew and English ... ’ (pp. 330–31)
Davis’s intervention sought to prevent Palestinian nationalism from

limiting itself to Muslim and Christian identification in the same
way that Israeli nationalism has limited itself to Jewish identification.
Unfortunately, he tells me later by email, the intervention elicited no

response.
Activists
Jeff Halper
American-born anthropology PhD Jeff Halper provides an appropriate
segue into the full-time activists. Halper runs the Israeli Committee
Against Housing Demolitions (ICAHD), a Jerusalem-based NGO that
tries to prevent the Israeli state from demolishing Palestinians’ dwell-
ings in the occupied territories. As well as a paid staff, ICAHD attracts
a steady flow of international activists who act as human shields and
work to rebuild houses, which the state often subsequently demolishes
again. Halper, their leader, is an affable character with the demeanour of
a well-fed, matured hippie. His American accent has a Hebrew flavour.
Halper’s book An Israeli in Palestine (2008) details his journey migrating
to Israel and his confrontation with Zionism. My questions arising out
of it inform our interview.
Halper is of particular interest as an adult immigrant. Many of my
other dissidents have not actively chosen the moral quandary of living
in a country built on the dispossession of the Others about whom they
purport to care. Halper, inspired by the deepening of his ‘Hebrew’ iden-
tity, has been motivated to become part of this project, yet is adamant
that Israel can become a ‘normal place’.
I come from this small town in Northern Minnesota, so we barely

knew we were Jewish, let alone Zionist ... But ... when I came out of the
sixties, what was called identity politics was very important ... There
was a whole returning back to roots ... and I got caught up in that.
Because I always saw my Judaism as more of a people thing rather
than a religious thing ... There was also alienation from the United
States for reasons that I don’t have to explain to you.
Swept up in Jewish identification, Halper’s sense of himself began to

shift.
I became an Israeli before I came to Israel. Before I even knew, in

other words. It was an identity shift from ethnic to national ... to being
Jewish in a national sense where your ethnic identity ... is primary.
And then you become a Jew. But Jew didn’t fit, because Jews live
in the Diaspora, they don’t live in Israel, unless you’re religious ... So
here, I got very involved with Hebrew culture, the whole Hebrew
thing, and I wrote a book about the Jewish community in Jerusalem
in the nineteenth century, and then from there I go onto Israel. So
it’s true, I kind of made that shift of identity, and I made the physical
move here completely bypassing Zionism ... I didn’t know Zionism,
I didn’t know Herzl, I wasn’t with the Zionist movement, I didn’t
come through the Jewish Agency, I just came. I mean the vehicle was,
I was doing my PhD in anthropology, so I had ... a little bit of money
from a fellowship ... So in a way I never needed Zionism. Zionism was
irrelevant.
Halper claims he has been ‘able to take on ‘Israeliness’ as [his] primary

identity while, on a political level, retaining [his] loathing of Israeli poli-
cies, deriving as they are from a racist and insular national narrative ... ’
(p. 26).
‘I don’t think I romanticised Israel’, he explains.
I liked the idea ... of this national expression, you know, my Jewish or
my Hebrew Israeli identity, and I guess I invested a lot of hopes in it.
I had certain expectations that I hoped Israel would fulfil, but I don’t
think – I mean, I knew there was an occupation. I didn’t know Israelis
that well. So that’s maybe part of the weird thing as well; you come
to a country that you really – you’re coming to a construct. I came
more to a construct than an actual country. I came to an Israel that I
wanted to find.
‘Did you find it?’ I ask.
No. ... A lot of immigrants do that ... and then when Israel doesn’t
conform to those expectations – cos Israel promises a whole rose
garden for everybody – they get disillusioned and leave. The difference
with me was that I wasn’t coming with expectations in the Zionist
sense. ... I came as an anthropologist, I had an agenda. I had a fellow-
ship, I had some money. I had a circle of friends in the peace move-
ment ... so I was able to let Israel speak to me. Not promise me, not the
official Jewish Agency Zionist, you know. People in the neighbour-
hoods. People I knew ... I didn’t go through an absorption centre ... I
made that identity shift before I came, to being Israeli. And I became
an Israeli because I integrated. I studied in a neighbourhood, they
didn’t speak English. I had to learn Hebrew, and I learned the kind of
street Hebrew. I also met my wife in a peace meeting, so, you know,
I was brought into that circle in a more natural kind of way. ... Not
an ideological process, in which there’s some constructed Israel and
then, boom, can’t possibly match the reality. For me, the reality, good
bad and everything else, I just took as if I grew up here ... It was more
organic.
Halper identifies himself – and his NGO – as being Israeli without being
oppressive. Just as Halper sees his ‘conversion’ as uncomplicated, he
yearns for Israel to transcend its Zionist origins and become a normal
country. In his book, he declares, ‘I don’t have a solution to sell. I could
live with most of the solutions that have arisen over the years’ (p. 216).
But he explains to me his personal preference for a mixture of the one-
state and two-state solutions. As he sees it, the national expression of
the two peoples is best dealt with by two states, but the problems of
intermingling and the return of Palestinian refugees as best solved by
one state. The solution is a European Union-style confederation. With
the creation of a rudimentary Palestinian state – and it would be small,
‘a Bantustan’, he admits – Palestinians and Jews could live anywhere in
the confederation. However, they would only retain citizenship of their
own state. ‘The idea of the confederation is that you keep your citi-
zenship, in other words, you disconnect citizenship from where you’re
living’, he explains.
He says the Law of Return is no longer necessary, ‘Cos whatever
Jews wanted to come here have come here, so you don’t really need it
anymore. So I would make it a normal immigration system.’ Palestinians
in the Diaspora would receive special consideration for a limited time.
‘Basically, anybody can come, but you know, there could be privileges’,
he suggests.
They could say, we’re gonna privilege Palestinians coming home. ... So
you could say, look, for a period ... ‘Okay, whoever wants, you’re a
Palestinian living in Jordan, you have a certain amount of time to
decide whether you want to retain your Jordanian citizenship, or
you want to become a Palestinian citizen.’ It doesn’t say you have to
move. ... Let’s say there’s a number of years in which all Palestinians
all over the world have the right to come back and get Palestinian
citizenship, you know, and then after that time, then you make it a
more normal immigration policy. You know, like that. Get everybody
here who wants to be here, and everybody out who doesn’t want to
be there, and everybody out who are inside where they don’t want to
live. Take a couple of years, let everybody kind of move around, and
then say, ‘Okay, from now on we’re a normal place’.
Eitan Bronstein
Like Halper, another immigrant to Israel, Eitan Bronstein, has gone on
to found an NGO. After a career in co-existence including the School for
Peace in a joint Jewish–Palestinian village, Bronstein runs Zochrot, which
has nine paid employees. Zochrot, which, in Hebrew, means ‘remem-
bering’ using the subversive feminine voice, educates Israelis about the
Nakba. One of its key tasks is running tours highlighting erased villages
buried beneath the Israeli landscape; Zochrot also campaigns and liti-
gates to have such villages memorialised. Bronstein is a gentle man in
his late forties who lives in the heart of Tel Aviv, and is passionate about
his urban life in this bustling metropolis. He has come to my attention
in a book, The Other Side of Israel, by former Zionist Susan Nathan (2005).
Most of my material on Bronstein derives from our interview.
We start by talking about Bronstein’s background. He was born in
Argentina to a Jewish father and a communist mother, who underwent
official religious conversion in Marseilles on the way to Israel. ‘We, her
sons, kind of automatically become Jews.’ Bronstein’s father was not a
Zionist. ‘His grandfather was a rabbi, important rabbi in his community’,
Bronstein explains, but this identification weakened down the genera-
tions. ‘He was circumcised, my father ... . I guess he did Bar Mitzvah, but
I didn’t, for example.’
The Zionist in the family was Bronstein’s uncle, who left home at 17
and moved to Israel. There, he lived on a kibbutz and married a local
woman. ‘He wrote letters to my parents’, Bronstein recalls: ‘“It’s an
amazing paradise, you need to come here.” My parents were in very very
terrible ... economic situation there, so they were convinced to come
here because of economic conditions and not very much political.’
But the trip to Israel was not straightforward; first, there were the boys’
foreskins to be taken care of.
Me and my brother, he was three and a half, I was five. Only then
[were we circumcised]. ... For me, this violent act on my body is totally
suppressed from my memory. I don’t remember anything about it,
and it was not only one day of cutting and three days of healing. It
was a long process of healing because there was [a] problem with my
own circumcision ... I knew that I was circumcised only when I was
twenty-something, I don’t know, twenty-three or twenty-four ... We
never talked about it. ... When I grew up, before leaving abroad to
a long journey, my father ... talked to me about it ... It was the first
time in my life that I knew about it. I mean, I knew back then, but
it’s totally suppressed, this memory of this circumcision and also
all my past in Argentina. I think it’s very interesting ... the parallel
here between my own biography, suppressed memory, and violent,
and the organisation that I initiated [which] deals with suppressed
memory and violence of the very being, the very beginning, of the
state of Israel.
Bronstein goes on to explain that it was not only his foreskin that was
jettisoned when the family moved from Argentina to Israel. They also
changed his name. ‘I was born Claudio.’ Bronstein explains the name
change as a ‘kind of formal ceremonial act, something you have to go
through ... Back then it was something very common that people who
were born somewhere else, they change their names when they come
here ... ’
Arriving in Israel, the family settled on the kibbutz where Bronstein’s
uncle lived. Bronstein recounts his mother’s eye-opening visit to a neigh-
bouring Palestinian village.
... She saw a big nice football court, football, basketball, something
big like this, and children playing, and she said to my uncle, ... ‘Well
it’s wonderful, I guess the kids from the kibbutz come here and play
together.’ ... . He said to her, ‘Look, it’s okay for you to think these
things, [but] please don’t even say or suggest something like this in
the kibbutz ... Don’t even open your mouth with this idea, because
this is very dangerous. Even thinking about it.’ ... Since then, she
began to understand the reality. She understood quite fast that it’s
terrible, but ... her main concern was us as a family, us kids, to have
a better future ... For example, I [was] never questioning the fact
of serving in the Army, because my parents ... were totally assimi-
lated to the whole society ... Okay, so my Mum always voted, some-
times Communist party, other leftists’ parties ... but not more than
that. She never, like, expressed things, not anti-Zionist, never anti-
Zionist.
As a child, Bronstein was, like his parents, a ‘good Israeli’. He envied

the neighbouring kibbutz because it produced a number of dead war
heroes. ‘I knew that they were better Israeli than I.’ So, when it was time
for Bronstein to serve in the Army, he did it unquestioningly. However,
during his service, the occupation deeply troubled him. Interestingly,
his prior inculcation into the values of the kibbutz provoked this
dissonance.
[D]espite of all criticism, ... there is one thing that is [a] very
strong ... sense that I have from the kibbutz, which is much more
than ideology. Something in between people, that even if you are
my commander or you are a great professor at university, perhaps I
might admire you, but I never think that you are more [of a] person
than I am.
Bronstein’s unit set up a temporary checkpoint in the occupied territo-

ries and searched Palestinians and their vehicles.
I felt like I’m in a theatre. Because it was something so kind of

natural ... everyone knew his role in this situation. And so these
people, you know, some of them were old people, young people. I
looked at them. I didn’t hate them, but I’m with my gun, I’m part
of this Army. I didn’t do anything that harmed them, but I heard
stories from some of the soldiers, when they checked the cars, they
take from them some things like some fruit, or something that they
sell ... They were laughing about it, making jokes about how funny
it was to grab something ... so this was disgusting for me. The whole
situation ... in such a natural way, we are occupying, we are supe-
rior. I told you this background of the kibbutz because this is what
enabled me to see this situation, how terrible it is ... I remember, I
went back home and I talked to my parents about it. I had [a] very
strong argument with them. I shouted, I was very confused, I was
very angry ... I think this was the first time I really faced what was
going on.
Nevertheless, Bronstein hastily points out, ‘I was [an] excellent soldier in

the Army. I never refused anything. I was in the very kind of elite unit.’
Not long after the end of Bronstein’s full-time Army service, however,
the Lebanon War began. This time, things would be different.
I was called to my first reserve and it was to go to Lebanon. And there

was really my first confusion whether to go or not, because this was
the first time that there was a really [a] refuseniks movement in Israel,
Yesh Gvul, There is a Limit. And this Lebanon war was the first time
there was a movement in the sense that there is a debate, a moral
political debate ...
Bronstein refused to serve, and was jailed.
This was for me, until today, the most crucial point of beginning, of
really questioning what’s here. You know, all this ... It was the first
time I said, ‘There’s a limit to what I’m willing to do.’ But even then,
I didn’t question the drafting to the Army. I didn’t say this Army’s
totally wrong, no. Only this war is totally wrong.
During the first intifada, Bronstein refused again, and served two jail
sentences. ‘Cos I was for two states, for a Palestinian state and with-
drawal from the West Bank. So it was when they began their intifada
struggling to have an independent state I said, “How can I participate
in oppressing it?”’ But Bronstein’s most radical transformation came a
decade later, when he gave up his support for two states.
[M]y final crisis with Zionism, or with the Jewish state as it is, was in
October 2000. Thirteen demonstrators [Palestinian citizens of Israel]
were killed ... The second intifada began, and it began in the West
Bank, but immediately there were huge demonstrations among Arabs
here in Israel. When this began, I immediately identified with these
demonstrations ... There were thousands of police and Army, you
know, tons of equipment. It was really scary. I went up and joined the
demonstrators and I saw it. At one point I left, I went back home ... I
heard on the way on the news that two people were killed there.
... I think for many people like me ... this was really ... the final break
of Zionism. And it happened ... only because, as I see it, it happened
here. I mean, people were killed in the West Bank, this happened all
the time ... but somewhere out there. And also, it’s obvious that Israel
is oppressing them. But when this happened here and the demon-
strators were citizens of Israel, I understood. I felt that there is some-
thing much, much, deeper in the fundaments of this place, in how
it’s been created and it’s not only ... something between Israel and the
Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza ... But it’s also something with all
the Palestinians, also the citizens of Israel.
... [Prime Minister Ehud] Barak said, ‘We are going to open the roads
by all means’. Now, blocking roads, this is something that happened
hundreds and thousands of times in Israel, but by many groups. You
know, they do demonstration, they block roads, in many other cases,
and you don’t go and shoot them. But, in this case, not only go and
shoot them, you also recruit thousands of soldiers to attack them.
All the language and all the state, you know, the feeling by Israel.
They are our enemy. So what does it mean that citizens, supposed by
the constitution to be equal citizens, what does it means that we see
them as enemy, that the state in certain points, not always, but in
violent crisis, we see them immediately as enemies?1
This is something that made me realise that Zionism is ... about
having a place only for one people ... [I]f we have others here, they
can be here, but as long as they don’t challenge anything, and also
they don’t ask for too many equal right, cos this is impossible. They’ll
never have equal rights ... the Law of Return says explicitly, and now
many other laws, and also the practices. It’s not hidden, it’s out there.
So then, I understood ... Zionism and peace, or peace with the people
living here on this land, the two things cannot work together. So
either you can be Zionist and – eh – or, if you want to think about
it really, you have to quit Zionism as it is today, or as it’s been estab-
lished since the Nakba.
Having built a career in co-existence education, Bronstein had already

accepted his embeddedness in Israel’s malaise. ‘I am very much part
of this shit going on here. So in other words, me, an Israeli Jew, even
though I’m non-Zionist, even anti-Zionist, whatever ... I’m still I’m
a part. I’m this side ... ’ But after some time, mere recognition became
inadequate. ‘Like, okay, now what [do] we do about it? I’m stuck with
this terrible coloniser identity, what am I doing with it? Just telling it?
It’s not enough!’ So Bronstein founded Zochrot, which he represents as
part of his connection to Israeli Jews.
I see myself, in a way, [as] a converted Zionist that wants to take ... moral
responsibility on our life here and try to do something about it. I
don’t detach myself from all of this. And I could, theoretically. I could
either be here and do totally different things, I don’t know, work with
money or something, or I could leave. ... Many others who share this
same ideology choose other ways.
But Bronstein is committed to staying, and is prepared to see the things he

loves the most – like Tel Aviv – change, in order to achieve his dream of the
return of Palestinian refugees from 1948. ‘If I try [to] visual[ise] it, think of
living here in one state, Tel Aviv basically, and of course every other place
in Israel, will change dramatically, but gradually’, he explains.
It’s not the next day after the return of the refugees there will be
mosques on every corner ... Tel Aviv will not be so dramatic in the
everyday life. ... It will be surrounded by different– on the TV, it will be

different. Listen to the radio, the language around us, I hope there will
be much more Arabic around us ... [T]here will be challenges, I’m sure.
And some things, also, I’m sure we’ll find compromises, but in other
things, I hope it will be enriched. For example, the rather monolithic
environment of Tel Aviv in a way, quite, you know, white city, no Arabs
around here. I think if this changes, it’s for better, not for worse.
In terms of the state, Bronstein declares ‘I’d like to see a democratic

binational space; I think that both the Jews and the Palestinians can see
this place as their home.’
Jews who wish to join this democratic state are welcome, and
Palestinians of course, a bit more welcome than others. It’s not that
I want to exclude all others, but it’s a place that Jews nationally and
culturally have some links, more than Vietnamese or Chinese.
I suggest to Bronstein that this reification of identities may prolong their

use, embedding conflict. Bronstein responds with ‘cultural processes’
that can evolve over time into something more shared.
For example, Europe now ... Perhaps in fifty, seventy, one hundred,
two hundred years, there will be a much stronger European iden-
tity ... But nationality is still important. For me, personally, I hope
we can understand also this nationalism. Seeing the reality around
I know that it’s really strong ... A more citizenship sense of nation-
alism ... is something that is a bit beyond my vision.
Bronstein explains that his political options are different from those of
outsiders. ‘I think it’s very important to boycott Israel,’ he tells me.
I hope you and other people in the world can join the boycott move-
ment against Israel, to boycott Israeli goods or Israeli people who
speak somewhere, in order to change the policy, our policy. Now me,
as Israeli, I cannot boycott myself. I consume everything here ... and
not only that I consume. I’m part of it ...
Jeremy Milgrom
My third activist is also, like Halper and Bronstein, foreign born. I
discover Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom through comments published online
under the auspices of Rabbis for Human Rights. Milgrom is my only
interviewee who is religious, and I am keen to know how this informs

his politics. I interview Milgrom in Berlin, where he is living at the time
following a failed love affair. I am struck by his almost tangible sadness.
His deep eyes are misty, his mouth downturned. The pictures I have seen
on the internet depict a quintessential hippie with long curly greying
hair, but Milgrom displays little bonhomie. He is a man with a heavy
weight on his shoulders, which I ascribe to exile rather than heartbreak.
‘I am still in Israel, even when I’m here’, he tells me.
We begin our conversation by exploring Milgrom’s emigration to
Israel, which arose out of winning a Bible study contest. Hailing from
Berkeley, California, Milgrom was the son of a Conservative rabbi ‘raised
with an Israeli orientation’. The prize was therefore an apt one: a year’s
schooling in Israel. This year turned into several, and then decades.
Milgrom’s parents moved back and forth a few times, but he stayed put.
‘It’s a very intense thing, becoming Israeli, particularly those years in
the late sixties, early seventies. So I guess it kind of got under my skin.’
Milgrom describes himself as part of a ‘minority’ of immigrants to Israel
who ‘come for idealistic reasons, from comfortable backgrounds ... I was
attracted’, he declares. ‘It had a grip on me.’
When I ask him to explain further, he immediately asks me if I have
been to Israel. ‘It’s intoxicating’, he exclaims. ‘It’s part of, everyone is
brought into, sucked into, it’s a love of the land.’ Milgrom admits he still
has these responses sometimes, but explains that gradually he ‘began
to realise, to return to who [he] was’ and ‘began to realise that there
were failings in Israel’. Part of this political awakening arose from his
youthful grounding in America.
Berkeley in California in the sixties ... was a place of ideals. I came to

Israel and I began to realise that some of those ideals should be bought
into play in Israel also, because the military industrial complex, and
Vietnam War, which I ran away from, and then they came running
after me! In the war in Lebanon it became very clear ... Also the situa-
tion with the lack of harmonious internal relations between groups,
oppression, marginalisation of the minority, which was the story in
the United States but ... in Israel it is more pervasive ...
After finishing school, Milgrom performed his compulsory military

service.
I was 18 and all my classmates who were Israeli were going. I was
very drawn to Israel. My main problem about being in the Army
was knowing that it was dangerous and whether I thought it was

right to sacrifice your life for the nation, for the country. That was a
moral question. At that point I wasn’t really aware of the injustice to
Palestinians; I just thought it was tragic that there was a war, a lack
of peace. I thought it was okay for me to defend my society with a
weapon.
Things would change a decade later, after Milgrom had studied in a New
York seminary.
After my first daughter was born, I realised that I was not going to look
at a human being through a gun sight. The experience of bringing life
into the world and feeling a commonality with other parents ... When
I was finally called up [to serve in the Lebanon War] ... it was a ques-
tion of, ‘How can I take part in a war which I already knew was ille-
gitimate?’ ... [M]ost of that month of reserve duty ... I was able to do
on the Israeli side of the border, to my great relief. I had ten days to
go and they needed someone, some replacement up the other side of
the border in Lebanon, and suddenly I found myself there. I kind of
lost my resolve not to go. As soon as I got there I said, ‘I’m not going
to stay’. I started a hunger strike ...
The next day Milgrom’s commanders sent him out of the unit; to his
‘great relief’ he avoided jail. His commanders invited him to explain his
perspective to the other soldiers; in particular his framing of the hunger
strike on the basis that the food was not kosher.
[W]hat eating means to me is an opportunity to feel blessing and

respond to that opportunity by saying a blessing over the food. So
you incorporate all of your values – the grace after meals is ... not
like a few words, it’s full two pages of ideology, Jewish ideology, a
beautiful statement at the end of a meal. And includes the blessing or
the gratitude for the land that God gave us. I said, ‘Well, this is not
the land that God gave us. This is someone else’s land, with someone
else’s house.’ And it was fascinating, cos after I said this, one of the
officers said to me, ‘So you live in Jerusalem, right? So you live in an
Arab house!’ I said, ‘Actually it’s not an Arab house, I checked it out
before I moved in; this was very important to me.’
Milgrom explains that for a further seven years the military required
him to continue reserve duty, while he ‘progressively remov[ed] [him]
self from ... things [he] had a problem with, to the point that [he] was
not holding a gun anymore’.
There were funny scenes; I was on a guard post. They said, ‘Well,
your job here is to guard.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to carry a gun.’ They
said, ‘Okay, we’ll put a gun next to you, is that okay?’ I said, ‘Okay.’
I was compromising; they were compromising. One day, they left
the gun up there, and it was my gun, I signed for it. The guy who
was supposed to take the gun down didn’t take the gun down. So, I
looked out and found a broom, and ... people were screaming, ‘What
are you doing? You can’t carry a gun with a broom!’ I said, ‘We made
a deal. I can’t carry the gun. I’m not going to touch the gun.’
Finally, this farce was over, and I went to the very top, wrote letters
to the ministers of defence and the generals. I said, this is the situa-
tion, this is not good. And they called me up and said, ‘Okay, what
do you want?’ ... I offered to do something in the Army that was non-
violent, and there was no response. So, this major I was talking to
says to me, ‘Well, how would you feel if we didn’t call you anymore
to the Army do reserve duty?’ Inside of me, I was jumping up for joy,
right, but I didn’t want to admit that, that I was so happy, so I said,
‘Well, up until a year ago I think I would have been crushed, but
now I can deal with it.’ [Laughs.] ‘In that case’ [said the major], ‘we’re
going to sign you out and that’ll be the end of this. Go to your unit
and sign your papers.’ So, I went back to the unit, and they had this
young man there, I was 37 and he was 23. And he said to me, ‘This
is the end of your reserve duty. You’re not going to be called into the
Army anymore, and I want to wish you success in the rest of your life.
And maybe some day we’ll all be like you.’
Milgrom was blown away by this comment. He thanked the young man,
but he had just one more question. ‘How is it that all the years I was
in this unit, you guys never, you know, it didn’t work out, all these
options?’ Why hadn’t they been able to find a way of releasing him
from service?
The young man explained. ‘The problem was that we couldn’t find
the right form to fill out for you.’
‘Now there is a form like that’, Milgrom continues.
Then, if you had back trouble, if you had domestic problems, if your
business was failing, they knew how to deal [with it], they had forms
for that. They didn’t have a form for someone who didn’t want
to carry a gun. Whose daughter opened his eyes, the birth of his
daughter, so they didn’t have a form. Now they have.
Milgrom’s disillusionment continued. He raised his children in Israel

but became ‘horrified’ by the idea that there would be no peace for them
in the future.
Israel is becoming more extreme. There are certain things that we

could not able to imagine would ever be called into question, which
are now ... Israel defined itself as a Jewish democratic state which is
a very interesting, impossible definition, but it was a balancing act
that a lot of people still swear by. But, nowadays, I think people are
recognising that it’s not very democratic, and they’re willing to say
that we’re not going to be democratic. We have these survival issues,
but these survival issues have been going on for decades, no longer
emergencies; rather, it’s a way of life. I think that many Israelis don’t
expect to reach peace; they just want to manage the conflict; to keep
the price from being too high.
Milgrom’s activism works towards a one-state solution, which he

supports because ‘the two state solution would ... cut off any chance of
Palestinians returning’, something ‘essential for the peace and also from
a moral point of view’.
He recognises ‘the attachments that people have to their nation, and
their desire to be protected by it, their feeling of insecurity, the national
movements and all that’, and so he doesn’t expect nationalism to disap-
pear. ‘The idea of one country of its citizens has to exist at the same time.’
He suggests that ‘to become inclusive would mean to develop attitudes
towards the Other, an awareness, acceptance of the culture, a feeling of
commonality’. Milgrom rejects the idea that identities can be prescribed
and argues that ‘belonging to one of these people is not a death sentence’.
He maintains that nobody has to live in Israel/Palestine, ‘but to the extent
that you feel motivated and connected, then ... I see our future as living
together’. He predicts that ultimately ‘Zionism will fade’.
[I]t’s no longer necessary ... People talk about Israel being post-Zionist
from ’48; [it] was already. ‘Zionism set up the state, now it’s time for
us to move over it and to let other things take over.’ I think that this
is going to be happening more and more. The issues won’t even be so
much why do we have a state, or even who the ‘we’ is, but, what do I
know, the people I work with, live with, the future.
Yonatan Pollack
The final activist in my study is Yonatan Pollack. He is my youngest
interviewee, 28 years old when we meet, and the only subject close to
my own age. He is by far the most radical. While I am in Israel, Pollack
emerges as something of a minor celebrity, struggling against various
aspects of the occupation, the Wall in particular. I use my contacts to
get his phone number and we arrange an interview in an anarchist
bookshop and café in his hometown of Jaffa. Pollack is an attractive
and gently spoken young man; vibrant tattoos on his forearms peek
out from the sleeves of his black hoodie. The radical activists I know in
Australia are extremely anti-nationalist; I am interested to find out what
the Israeli variant looks like.
‘I grew up in a fairly leftist family’, Pollack tells me. ‘You could say
I’m a second generation red diaper baby ... My parents were not activists
but they were always politically aware and left leaning. My grandfather,
however, was very activist ... he went to jail for it ... ’
So, the first demonstration my mother took me to, I was about three
months old. It was after Sabra and Shatila.2 The first demonstration I
can remember ... was around the beginning of the first intifada. I was
around six or seven years old. ... The only thing I remember is the
police horses being marched at the demonstrators to disperse them ... I
remember being very afraid of the horses. ... I became a vegetarian
at the age of seven ... Around the age of 12, I got acquainted with
the animal rights movement in Israel, which at the time was very
anarchist-centred ... . Obviously, I connected with the people around
me, got into anarchism, counter-culture, and I think that’s really the
forming stage of my politicisation, the insurrectionary views, polit-
ical perception, generally, political action.
I presume that Pollack must have refused Army service.
I had already dropped out of high school and had a few police records
for political activity. I ... came to the ... base and said, ‘I won’t do it’. I
refused to do the medical tests and the psychiatric tests. They looked
at my folder and said, ‘Okay’. I’m actually the only male I know who
was released for reason of manpower surpluses!
Pollack explains his take on Zionism, depicting it as ‘a pretty classic

colonial enterprise’.
I mean ... the original Zionist ethos was the best way ... to interface
with that. You know, ‘Country without a people for a people without
country’ crap. It’s not that they didn’t know there were people here,
they knew there were people very well, but they were not Europeans
and they were not white. Obviously Zionism had its, you know, its
special circumstances ... the Holocaust, but that doesn’t change the
fact that it’s largely a movement of white Europeans who were inter-
ested in relocating from Europe, from the First World, to the New
World, to the Middle East, completely ignoring the rights and the
presence of the indigenous population. Zionism isn’t the first example
of where ... the agents of colonialism are not necessarily the elites; for
example in Australia it was mostly prisoners.
Pollack explains that the basis for his involvement in Palestinian resist-
ance is the ‘South African model’ in which ‘dissident whites joined the
ANC, joined the black resistance to apartheid. I think both that solution
and the model of resistance are compatible to the situation here.’
I presume that Pollack must support a one-state solution, but he
explains that ‘it’s largely a Palestinian decision. I think that my obliga-
tion as a descendant of colonialism is to say that I support a one state
solution ... but it’s not up to me’.
He is clear, however, that the right of return for Palestinian refugees
exists.
It’s not something I do out of generosity, it’s their right. And that I
would be more than happy to live in one state and obviously lower
my privileges ... But I do think if the Palestinians say, ‘Look, we’ve had
enough, we don’t want to live with you’, I’m not in the position to
say, ‘We have to live together’. That’s what I would like to see. But ... I
think the refugees have a right to return here ... even in a two-state
solution, to Jaffa, to Haifa.
We discuss some of the alternatives to full return, like recognition

without implementation, or compensation. Pollack is scathing.
Under international law – which I don’t think is such a great thing,

it’s obviously the law of the conqueror, of the strong – even under
international law they have the right to compensation and for
returning; they’re not mutually exclusive. ... [T]hey’ve already been
in exile in the diaspora for 60 years now; obviously, there should be
compensation for that. But that does not affect their right to return.
And personally I would like to see return, not just the right of return.
I mean, a lot of time the right of return is deconstructed as a theo-
retic right that should be recognised but not implemented, or people
count on the fact that it won’t be implemented because of research
that the refugees don’t want to return. Of course in the current state
of affairs they don’t want to return – who wants to return to racism
and colonialism? But if reality changes and ... there is a possibility for
a normal life here, I believe that the refugees would like to return and
it’s a positive thing.
With the right of return fully implemented, Israel would cease to be a

‘Jewish state’. Pollack has no problem with this.
‘I mean, first of all, we have to ask the question of what is a Jewish
state. What is Judaism as a national identity?’
I ask what it is to him.
‘I don’t have any connection to Judaism’, he says, dismissively.
‘Obviously I recognise the right of everyone to ... self-determination’, he
continues.
People want to see themselves as Jews and that’s their national iden-
tity, so be it. But it’s very different than saying there should be a state
for Jews. Because what is Judaism, what is being a Jew? Is it someone
whose mother is Jewish? Someone whose culture is Jewish? What is
Jewish culture? American Jewish culture and Yemenite Jewish culture
is very different. I’m not the same ethnicity as him; I’m probably much
closer in ethnicity to you. So what is Judaism, what is the common
denominator? For me, the only common ground that I can find is reli-
gion. And since I’m an atheist, I feel no connection to Judaism.
‘I think the idea of the Jewish state is a racist one’, Pollack continues.
It’s not something you can compare with the British state; it’s not a
nationality in the modern ... concept of it ... In most, in all I think,
Western democracies, once you’re a citizen, you’re part of that
nationality. However, you can be a citizen of Israel but you will never
be part of the Jewish nationality. This is a racist foundation for a
state; therefore it has to be dismantled in order to have any prospects
of a future. If Jews want, if people who recognise themselves as Jews
want autonomy over everything, any issue of culture and education
that concerns them, I see absolutely no reason why that shouldn’t be
possible. But under a state that is not racially discriminatory ...
I ask Pollack about the kind of state he would like to see emerging
in Israel/Palestine. ‘[Y]ou know, ... for me to answer these questions is a
little bit ridiculous, because I’m an anarchist’, he reminds me.
I don’t believe in the justness of states or its capacity to be an agent

of justice, or an agent of equality, or whatever terms you like to
use. But, obviously, we do live in reality and the anarchist revolu-
tion is not, ah, just around the corner. And as an anarchist I do
believe, even in the short term, [in] equal structure, the power of
the state, as much as possible. So, obviously, small groups, allowing
as much autonomy to any group, is a good thing. The question is,
how is this implemented? If it is implemented in the form of ‘no
go’ areas for Palestinians then this is wrong. If it is implemented
in the form of more autonomy over education or culture or reli-
gion or whatnot, then I think it’s a positive thing. Everything,
especially with a history of colonialism, is a question of form of
implementation.
Pollack explains his involvement with the Palestinian resistance move-

ment in the following terms.
I just don’t think that Israeli society [is] your potential agent of
change. I think the agent of change is the Palestinians, and their
resistance, and the support that they will get, that they can draw from
the international community ... [A]s an anarchist, I believe in joining
their struggle. I believe that people should run their own liberation
struggles. I’m not so interested in the nationalist part of it, but for me
it’s obviously a liberation struggle ...
When I suggest that the state’s grip appears to be tightening on people

like him, Pollack plays it down; neither of us knows that he will be incar-
cerated before the year’s end (Haaretz, 2011).
It’s getting worse slowly. These arrests – pretty much released the
next day. I’ve been arrested over 40 times. It’s not so horrible ... It
is deteriorating, but you know, Palestinians are arrested. First of
all, when Israelis are arrested it still gets a lot of coverage; it gets
a lot of attention, mainstream attention. It’s disputable. Sixteen
arrests made in Ni’ilin. Fifteen of these people are still in jail and
they’re going to remain in jail for a very long time, because they’re
Palestinians ...
At the conclusion of our interview, I ask Pollack what will happen

in the next few years. ‘Nothing’, he replies. ‘Things are slowly deterio-
rating. I’m a born pessimist. I have no way to predict.’
‘If you’re so pessimistic,’ I ask him, ‘then why do you still struggle?’
‘You have to. I mean, what’s the – the fact that we’re not successful,
it’s worse having done nothing. If you’re not 100 per cent successful it
doesn’t mean that what you do is insignificant.’ He shrugs and takes a
swig of his orange juice. ‘What else would I do?’
Writers/commentators
I interview four writers and commentators who contribute to deep

debate and dialogue, yet all insist they are not activists.
Gideon Levy
I meet Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy at his workplace. We chat for
an hour in his poky office, decorated bizarrely with a pinboard of cat
pictures. (The room has a makeshift feel; the cat pinboard may in fact
be the work of some previous inhabitant.) Levy has written substantially
about Israel and Palestine, particularly the occupied territories, which
he has visited almost weekly for the three decades since he began his
journalism career in the Israeli military (Hari, 2010). His senior position
at Israel’s liberal broadsheet newspaper gives him freedom to pursue his
interests, but Israeli laws have denied him the opportunity of reporting
from the frontline in Gaza since 2006 (Hari, 2010). Instead, he combines
documenting the ongoing struggles of life for West Bank Palestinians
with opinion pieces castigating his society. These target the occupation,
which he sees as the single greatest problem. However, he is critical of
other elements of Israeli life, including social mistrust of orthodox Jews,
attacks on homosexuals, a culture of meaningless military heroics and
the demise of the political left (see Bibliography).
Coming from a fairly apolitical background, Levy grew up with a
default attachment to Zionism and the Jewish collective. These things
have not evaporated with his radicalisation, but instead co-exist with
it. This means that Levy remains something of a left-wing Zionist,
the kind he says does not exist anymore. He puts himself ‘in the
margins’ amongst ‘some groups, individuals who are very radical,
very devoted, very courageous’, but too small to be a real movement.
Levy’s particular brand of Zionism sees him engaging with Israel’s
past in an interesting way. ‘I carry the past as a ... moral burden’, he
explains. ‘I think that would Israel recognise the past, it would also
be easier with the Palestinians and more courageous and ... generous
in the present.’
This informs his opposition to the occupation. ‘I think we don’t have
the moral right to hold this Occupation for 42 years – any case, we don’t
have the right for this – but it’s more true because of the past.’ Levy’s
desire for symbolic recognition and restoration echoes the sentiment
of Eitan Bronstein’s Zochrot, but for Levy the gesture has to end with
symbolism and financial support.
Moral recognition, rehabilitating the refugees, many of them in

places where they are, with international and Israeli economic help.
I’ve been to refugee camps in Jordan, I’ve no doubt that those people
if they can just live better, they would stay there ...
Levy supports a two-state solution, but would like to see Israel as a state
of its citizens, rather than a Jewish state. ‘I wish it would become, like
Australia is ... ’ he declares passionately.
I don’t know what it means, Jewish state. I mean, we have one million
Russians, half of them at least are not Jewish ... It doesn’t talk to me at
all, this whole concept of – why a non-Jewish Russian is more Jewish
than a Palestinian who lived here for generations.
Levy would also support a binational state if it appeared more likely to

arise.
Three years after our interview, Levy comes out publicly in favour of
BDS, describing his action as ‘the last refuge of a patriot’ (2013). He
frames this intervention, like the words and actions that have preceded
it, as driven by his connection to his society.
‘I never thought about leaving’, he tells me.
I never thought about going into exile. I’m part of it, for the good and
for the bad. I carry moral responsibilities for everything that Israel is
doing: settlements, Cast Lead, anything. I’m part of it. This was my
choice, this is my choice, this is my place, this is my culture, this is
my language – they are my fellow Israelis.
However, unlike Bronstein, who purports to care even for those he

opposes, Levy is vitriolic about some of his fellow citizens. He tells me
that once he was driving with a former colleague, and commented that
if he saw an injured settler on the side of the road, he wouldn’t stop to

help.
Let’s say the truth, I hate them. Because of what they do, not what
they are. Because of the fact of where they live ... I don’t recognise
that there are moderate settlers and bad settlers. To me they are all
the same.
When I tell Levy about a friend who says he supported Palestinians until
they started blowing up Israeli buses, Levy responds:
I’m really disgusted by this kind of Israelis ... who, when they started
not to behave themselves –the Palestinians – I never was motivated
by this, whether the Palestinians are nice or not nice, if they treat
their women nice or not nice. This is not my judgement. I’m judging
ourselves. My main focus is what we are doing. And this does not
change, this just becomes worse and worse. So I never – on the
contrary. All those terrible days, and they were terrible days – 2002,
2003, exploding buses – just showed me how much I’m right and
how much it calls for a solution, and how much it will not be solved
by itself.
‘I think about what I’m driven by’, Levy muses. ‘A deep feeling of
guilt. I think this is my main motivation. I really feel guilty about the
Palestinians ... Because I think we’ve done them terrible things, ’48,
’67, ever since that, and I feel personal guilt.’ The guilt is personal, he
explains,
Because I’m part of this collective. Because I always define myself as

an Israeli patriot. Because I am so much attached to this collective,
this place, this society, or whatever. I feel guilty on behalf of things
that I was against!
Levy feels guilt ‘after every story’.
[A]lmost every day when I read the newspaper, I feel at least ashamed,
if not guilty. And guilt, I feel, really, because of atrocities ... [W]hen I
came to see those people – and so many times I come to the remains
of victims, victims by themselves – for so many years I’ve done it, and
so many years I sit, and I hear the story. I feel as if I have done it.
Levy suggests that this guilt underpins his society, masked as it is by

aggression. ‘[T]hey found, once, a speech of one of the Zionist leaders ... in
the Knesset’, he tells me.
There was a small remark saying, ‘A weak argument, please raise your
voice’. So this aggression shows, I think. I truly believe that part of the
Israelis, not all of them, part of them, in the back of their minds, feel
that something went wrong. They won’t admit it, they are living in
denial, they are brainwashed, and everything – and still, this aggres-
sion shows [a] lack of confidence ...
‘You can see it in titles in the newspaper’, he adds.
‘Israelis are leading.’ We are always – we are the best. In the world. No
one, even the Americans, would be so occupied with being the best,
the number one. ... I think [it’s] because nothing has, here, any real
deep roots ... You see it, even if you come to Tel Aviv. Every two years,
if you come here, you see different shops. Everything changes all the
time. No roots. It’s part of the lack of confidence, sure. It’s exactly like
being aggressive to our criticisers.
Like Bronstein, Levy embeds himself in Tel Aviv life, albeit in its more
salubrious quarters. My hosts have told me that he has a reputation
for enjoying the good life. ‘I have full bourgeois life in Tel Aviv’, Levy
confirms. He is at pains to draw a line between his private and profes-
sional existence. ‘It’s my work’, he says of his writing about the suffer-
ings of Palestinians. ‘It’s not my hobby. It’s not that I’m an activist.’ He
tells me that, on limited occasions, he has tried to help Palestinians, but
seems to shy away from this. ‘I also, well’, he shrugs, ‘I also have my
life, which is nothing to lose.’ He speaks of ‘tough times’ when his two
lives – the one in Tel Aviv and the one engaged with Palestine – have
met. ‘There were times, like in Cast Lead ... I go every Saturday to the
beach, after my tennis game, and see the helicopters in the sky. People
don’t even look at them. And life continues like nothing.’ He also speaks
of ‘bad days in which I would come from terrible stories in the West
Bank or in Gaza and immediately go to a restaurant in Tel Aviv.’
Levy sets himself up in opposition to ‘weirdos’ who are active
around Palestine. ‘I am writing in a leading newspaper ... I don’t live in
a Palestinian village, not in the territories, I don’t organise, I am not
an activist.’ He compares himself to Amira Hass, another well-known
Haaretz writer who reports on the occupied territories. ‘She was brought
up in a communist home. She is living in Ramallah. She is doing admi-

rable work, but she excludes herself in many ways from the Israeli
society.’ When Hass comes to Tel Aviv, ‘she has to leave after two hours,
because she gets a headache’. Levy, who ‘love[s] Tel Aviv’, tries ‘to remain
somehow connected to the mainstream by way of living, by the place
that [he] work[s] for; it’s all about the mainstream’. In separating himself
from the ‘weirdos’ (whom he nevertheless ‘highly appreciates’), Levy
claims legitimacy.
I appear on TV a lot, debates and programmes and things like this,

so I’m trying at least not to become a weirdo. Because part of these
people are perceived as weirdos. They are not weirdos, but they are
perceived as weirdos. I try not to be perceived as a weirdo. Maybe I
succeed, maybe not, but this gives me also more power.
Gilad Atzmon
Another writer I explore is Gilad Atzmon. Like Levy, Atzmon rejects the
activist label, though the ‘weirdo’ one is probably unavoidable. Atzmon,
an Israeli-born jazz musician, has made a successful life for himself in
London, travelling the world playing music and moonlighting as one
of Israel’s most vitriolic critics. Over the last decade, he has published a
number of lengthy articles on his website, www.gilad.co.uk; he has since
incorporated several of these into a book (2011).
I am interested in Atzmon both as an ex-Israeli and as a commen-
tator on identification. I fly to London to meet him and he generously
gives me several hours of his time following a jazz gig, which I attend.
After our interview, Atzmon loads me up with CDs and tells me he will
post what I write on his website. He has marked me as a fellow trav-
eller, which I find somewhat alarming. However, as I shall subsequently
demonstrate, Atzmon’s extreme reflections tell us something about the
options available for dissidents.
Atzmon elaborates his background in his book. He describes a child-
hood blindness to Palestinians; falling in love with jazz made by black
musicians opens him up to the possibility that it is not ‘only Jews who
were associated with anything good’ (p. 2). His passion for music erodes
any military or nationalistic sentiments and connects him to a global
milieu, yet does not invoke overt opposition. That develops later, while
he is serving in the Israeli Air Force Orchestra with other musicians who
are preoccupied only with their own ‘personal musical development’.
The performers convene to practise playing badly so they can dodge
future invitations to perform; here, Atzmon learns ‘subversion’ (p. 5). A
concert at a ‘concentration camp’ in Lebanon leads Atzmon to identify

as a Nazi vis à vis defiant Palestinian prisoners. He complains about small
concrete boxes in which he presumes the military locks guard dogs. He
is shocked to discover that the boxes instead hold human prisoners. He
plots to exit Israel permanently; a decade later, he succeeds. In London,
he realises he misses Palestine, not Israel, and soothes his homesick-
ness at a Lebanese restaurant. He studies post-graduate philosophy but
becomes an international music star instead.
In our interview, he explains to me that his attitude to life is ‘prob-
ably something to do with [his] Israeliness’. ‘I just do what I want’, he
declares. ‘I don’t give a toss about anything.’ ‘My father, who was a right-
wing Zionist, taught me, “I don’t agree with anything that you say, but
as long as ... it’s well-argued”.’ Later, he says, ‘I took a lot from Zionism
and I’m proud of myself. I even give Zionism the credit for ... attempting
to re-establish a new Jew.’
Atzmon is also happy to praise some Israelis. During the wars in
Lebanon and Gaza, ‘it was the Israelis’ who provided the outside world
with ‘names, all the information that we need’ in order to bring legal
cases against ‘Israeli soldiers [and] Generals. ... [T]he Israeli dissidents
is far more interesting than any other forms of Jewish dissidents’, he
continues. ‘ ... Because they’re inside, because they’re courageous,
because part of the Israeli culture is to speak out proudly.’
Atzmon also expresses sympathy with those on the ‘so-called’ Israeli
left who seek to end the occupation.
[T]hey try to resolve their own problem, which is a legitimate

manoeuvre. Let’s say that you buy a house, took mortgage ... And then
a week later you go down to the shelter and you see seven Aborigines
strapped to the wall. ‘Oh my God, what are you doing here?’ ... Now
you are fucked. You are committed to the mortgage, you are living
on someone else’s house. It’s not entirely your fault. The Israelis are
trapped as much as you would be in this situation ...
To understand the significance of Atzmon’s sentiments, one has to

contextualise them with his avowed hatred of the Israeli state, his criti-
cisms of Zionist and ‘Jewish’ ideology, and his attitude towards the inter-
national Jewish community. Atzmon’s dislike extends equally to Israel’s
champions and critics. Shielded from his vitriol are only those ‘Torah
Jews’ who find reasons within their faith to oppose Israel.
Atzmon’s take is that there is no such thing as a secular Jewish
identity, unless it is a national identity. There are religious Jews, who
can find legitimate criticisms of Israel in the Torah. Then there are
Zionist Jews, both in Israel and outside, who believe that the Jews
are a national group, and nations are entitled to states, so Israel is
the obvious solution. Atzmon disagrees with the legitimacy of Israel,
built on ‘stolen land’, so he opposes this perspective (2004). The
third position is that of an ethnic or cultural Jewishness that rejects
Zionism, or at least key elements of Israeli policy like the occupation
of Palestinian territory. This is the position of much of the critical
international Jewish community, made up of what Atzmon calls ‘Not
in My Name (NIMN) Jews’ (2004). NIMN Jews are not religious, but
they activate a Jewish identity in their criticism of Israel. In Atzmon’s
eyes, this is a bogus course of action; a non-religious Jewish iden-
tity must be a national identity, thus its invocation gives strength to
Zionism.
Atzmon explains in the interview that he does not oppose secular
Jewish identity, but rather its use as a political argument:
What I’m telling to the secular Jew, he wants to have his fucking
chicken soup – have it! But he’ll have to admit that chicken soup
is not a political argument. So Italian[s] have their pizzas, but they
don’t have pizzas for human rights! They don’t have Bolognaise for
Palestine!
‘ ... [I]f the Jews regard themselves as racially oriented group, and they
want to act out of this racial orientated banner, they are promoting
racism’, Atzmon continues. ‘And if you’re promoting racism, you cannot
at the same time claim to serve the universal cause.’ He backs this up
with signature vitriol: ‘To be a secular Jew is not a crime ... To operate
politically as a Jew makes you into a Piece. Of. Shit. Categorically. Unless
you are religious’, he adds hastily.
Atzmon’s core diagnosis of the problem facing Israel/Palestine is the
cultural factor of Jewish ideology, and in particular the depiction of the
Jewish people as chosen. However, unlike any other account with which
I have engaged until our interview, Atzmon extends this argument to a
sympathetic account of the Nazi ideology.
‘I don’t justify what happened there’, he explains.
I don’t justify the ethnic cleansing. But I think what the Israelis are
doing [now] explains how they got themselves into this persecution
in the first place, and how they’re going to get themselves into big
trouble in the near future ...
Atzmon further explains that he is not convinced about ‘what happened

there’ in the Holocaust.
... I know what is the narrative; I hardly believe any of it. The issue
is that we cannot really know or talk about it in this country [the
United Kingdom] because we are part of Europe. And there is legisla-
tion in Europe against talking about the factuality of the Holocaust.
But, I know one thing: there is a big paradox in the Holocaust.
On the one hand, we have the story of ethnic cleansing, racially
orientated, nobody argued about it. ... Then something happened
which we are not allowed to really investigate. Gas chambers, not
gas chambers, gas chambers, what was the capacity. Quite a few
people died, we don’t know how many. But one thing is clear: at
the end of the war, the Germans are defeated, and we have a death
march. And in this death march, hundreds of thousands of Jews
are schlepped back to Germany. How do we fit a coherent picture
of the German ideology with ethnic cleansing ... on one side, and
the schlepping back of the Jews into Germany? They either want
them out, or they let them in! One of the answers that I came
across ... is that Jews wanted to join the Germans. They didn’t want
to wait for the Russians, they were very afraid of the Soviets. They
probably knew why! [Laughs.] ... Now, if the Germans were gassing
them in Auschwitz, why would they join the Germans? Another
option, ... presented by the Germanophilic historians, is that there
was an epidemic of typhus, and the German Army took an initiative
to quarantine, so the death march was a humanitarian approach.
So, when I look at the Holocaust I end up with more questions than
answers.
‘ ... We have to be very very suspicious with everything we say or

learn about the Nazis’, he tells me at another point, suggesting that
I ‘start to read revisionist[s], because they are well-documented, at
least’.
‘David Irving is definitely the best English-speaking historian’, he
declares. ‘ ... [H]e is the biggest expert. Finkelstein, who is a histo-
rian, says there is no doubt that Irving is the biggest historian. But
there are plenty. ... [Irving] made one big mistake’, he adds. ‘He took
this intellectually-kind-of-nothing [man] to court for calling him an
Holocaust-denier. For sure, he’s a Holocaust denier ... He should be
proud of it!’
‘So, are you a Holocaust denier?’ I ask.
‘I don’t engage in historical narratives, I talk about philosophy of

history’, announces Atzmon airily. ‘ ... I don’t accept this notion at
all ... of a denier’, he continues,
because first we have to define: what is the Holocaust? We cannot do

that, because there is legislation that doesn’t allow us, you know! As
long as we are not entitled to agree what the Holocaust was, how can
I agree that I can deny or otherwise?
When we leave this issue behind to discuss the political situation in

Israel/Palestine, Atzmon tells me, ‘I am happy with the status quo’.
... The facts on the ground are: apartheid state, with a growing majority
of Palestinian people between the river to the sea. The facts on the
ground are leading into one Palestinian state ... I would prefer, you
know, that the Israelis would be slightly more vicious [sic], but anyway,
their viciousness reflect on their ... collective identity, or it reflect on
who they are. It gave us a very good perspective into the issue of their
history, we can at last comprehend their history. So, everything is fine.
This does not lend itself to resolving the conflict, but Atzmon tells me,
‘We are fighting Jewish power. Palestine is just one symptom of Jewish
brutality ... ’ At another moment, he declares,
Israel is just one symptom of Jewishness. Zionism is a global move-

ment. It has nothing to do with Palestine. Zionists operate here [in
the UK], they have some wide interests. What is it that they want?
This is one of those big questions. It’s not clear. Because if they want
security, it doesn’t work, because they really draw fire.
We discuss the possibilities for people facing the dilemma that Atzmon
once faced – disagreeing with the practices carried out in their name. He
suggests that
some Israelis could come now and tell the United Nations, ‘You
fucked us up. Rather than letting us stay in Europe, you sent us all to
there’, which is a legitimate argument. ‘I want my house. I want you
German to look after me, you French, you English.’
So is leaving the only option? What should an anti-Zionist Israeli, with

no citizenship of another country, do?
‘He has a problem’, states Atzmon bluntly.
... I’m a philosopher, I’m not a politician. To start with, he should

confront his misery ... Because in most cases, 99 per cent of the cases,
rather than confronting their misery, they come into political solu-
tion. I’m not looking for political solutions ... My mother is one of
those cases, and she’s a wandering, lost kind of this type ... She was
born as a Palestinian in Palestine. She’s become Israeli ... She doesn’t
want to be there. She doesn’t have any other passport ... They have
to find their way ... They can ask for being asylum seekers. ... By the
way, I didn’t have a British passport. I was here, I was good citizen, I
paid tax. It took me quite a few years to become British subject. I did
it. ... One thing that is unacceptable: they cannot live on stolen land
and saturate us with their lefty bullshit.
Atzmon warms to this theme, despite having earlier declared that Israelis
trying to solve this problem are enacting a ‘legitimate manoeuvre’.
Now, he declares, ‘I despise left Zionist Jews who live there more than
the right wing!’
Returning to the quandary of the ‘wandering, lost’ Jew, Atzmon argues,
‘You have to find a way. It’s a personal issue ... And once we come with
the political resolution you already turn the issue into a – you refuse the
possibility of ethical engagement.’ This underscores Atzmon’s refusal to
engage with political solutions. ‘I’m not trying to lead a movement. My
entire issue is to raise questions.’
What should people do with them?
That’s their business ... I don’t know what to do with

them! ... Sometimes, I suggest the answer, and then I change it ... I
don’t have any answer to the Israelis. Shlomo Sand ... said, ‘We are
not a nation, we invented ourselves one hundred years ago’. An
Israeli ... stood up in one of the press conferences and said, ‘Listen,
I’m Israeli. I was born Israeli. I feel Israeli. What do you want me
to do?’ He obviously didn’t have an answer. I have my answer. I’m
ex-Israeli. I resolved my situation.
At this point, Atzmon’s gentle wife Tali cuts in with a succinct observa-
tion. ‘It can’t be resolved collectively, that’s the thing. It is down to every
individual.’
‘And this is the answer, this is the most important things to say’,
Atzmon agrees emphatically.
Why? Cos one of the problem[s] that we have here is that Jews can
operate as a collective, but the dissidents cannot be a collective,
because it is based on the rejection of the collective. So once you turn
it into the collective, which the ‘good Jew’ [is] trying to do, fucking
bring it down!
Dorit Rabinyan
The sole female subject of this book is a very different kind of writer.
Dorit Rabinyan is a well-loved Israeli novelist whose books determinedly
skirt Middle Eastern politics. Their magical realism evokes the culture
of Jewish communities in Persia, from where Rabinyan’s family hails.
Critics have unearthed subversive layers in her books, but Rabinyan
maintains a distance from such things. ‘[W]riting a story is like singing
in the shower,’ she tells me.
If you remember that someone will say, ‘It was a political thing not
to write about Israel and to write about the Diaspora,’ or to tell about
your grandmother’s story before you tell about your own story, or
to reflect yourself in a Jewish feminine minority, all this, like – fuck!
I want to sing in the shower, you know. I want to enjoy my own
voice!
I meet Rabinyan in a coffee shop beneath her Tel Aviv apartment a few
hours before Shabbat. She is short and curvy with exotic colouring to
my Western eyes. She looks younger than her thirty-seven years, and has
the most amazing black, lustrous hair. She has with her a slightly built
spaniel, which runs to greet me like an old friend.
Whilst Rabinyan’s novels would not qualify her for attention in
this book, she has written one piece that I regard as highly political,
published in the Guardian in 2004. In it, Rabinyan details the life and
death of Palestinian artist Hasan Hourani, and charts her own journey
from well-meaning ignorance to intimate connection with the Other
through their year long friendship. She invokes powerful images of her
similarity and connectedness to Hourani, despite their possession of
‘enemy passports.’ Rabinyan recounts the political arguments between
herself – a supporter of a modest two-state solution in which Zionism
remains intact – and Hourani, who aspires to a single state. Rabinyan
laments that such a ‘solution’ would simply reverse their roles in the
tragedy, placing her as stateless exile. However, after detailing Hourani’s
tragic drowning at the beach in Jaffa – he sneaks into Israel illegally and
chooses an unobserved and unsafe place to swim – Rabinyan evocatively
depicts his ‘binational dream,’ rendering her own political aspirations

uninspiring by contrast.
I imagine Hourani as the voice for things that Rabinyan dare not
admit, but Rabinyan shatters these illusions in our interview, revealing
that she has not changed her mind about anything. ‘I still argue with
Hasan in my head,’ she declares. She has retreated from politics. When
I tell her what is going on at the time of our interview, she expresses a
weary half-interest. ‘Yeah? ... I don’t know nothing. I don’t read news-
papers ... In a way I’m tired with it, I let go. But umm, I’m scared to say
what’s going to happen ... I’m frustrated ... ’
The fact that Rabinyan’s writing fails to advocate for her own ‘luke-
warm’ peace and two-state solution is of little importance. ‘I don’t care
who convinces on it. I can’t do anything to change someone’s political
view ... It’s not my aim.’ Yet Rabinyan admits that Hourani’s binational
state functions as the foil to her ‘realistic’ two-state solution. ‘In a way, I
needed to have his state to be more – I see it as a fantasy, I keep on seeing
it as a fantasy.’
She continues to visit Hourani’s family.
[W]hen I go to Ramallah, I enjoy very much, I enjoy being close to

Hasan in a way. I enjoy the normality. Just so normal. Like, you know,
I visit them. They’re so happy with me. They celebrate me in such
a beautiful way. Cos, you know it’s like, his mother told me, ‘I can
smell him from your hair!’
Rabinyan’s trips are illegal, since Israel prohibits its citizens from entering
this zone of the West Bank. ‘When I go through the checkpoint, I go
through as Palestinian. Nobody doubts that I’m [Palestinian] ... At this
place, it gives me benefits, I’m using it!’
Rabinyan invokes blurred boundaries several times during the inter-
view. ‘The fact that I can see so many contradictions in the checkpoints
is because the ones who are the soldiers and the Palestinian citizens,
they look so much alike.’ In her relationship with Hourani, again simi-
larity draws them together; ‘something ... very familiar with the way I
felt to Arabness; that it wasn’t coloured for me with fearful colours. It
was something that I knew from within.’
I ask her if her Mizrahi identification made Hourani seem less Other.3
‘No, he was the Other,’ she insists.
But I was the Other as well! He has the luggage of my Otherness here.
In a way, I could refer to something in myself ... this Mizrahi element,
on the background of his Arabness ... My Mizrahi identity reflecting

the Israeli background is different reflected within him.
More poignantly, she concludes, ‘He was familiar. He was, in a way,

something lost that I found.’ She alludes several times to their ‘relation-
ship’ and finally I ask, tentatively, if they were lovers. ‘Of course we
were lovers!’ she laughs scornfully. ‘You think I’d go all this way for a
friend?’
Another motif for Rabinyan is equality. When I ask if she supports the
existence of a Palestinian Army, she tells me,
This is something, me and Hasan, we spoke about, and I said, yes, let
you have a state, you have a strong Army, then let us fight, and then
when we’re equal, let us see. When you’re not so miserable, when
not you’re not victimised by this situation, by the colonialists or the
European imperialists who made us to be stronger than you.
Continuing to address Hasan, she claims:
I don’t want you to be stronger than me. I aim for equalness because
in equalness I can be the bad one in the afternoon and the good one
in the morning. I can accept this elusive justice that runs between
ourselves, one day you are the good one, one day I’m the bad one,
and we’re shifting.
‘[E]qualness was a crucial thing’ in their relationship, she tells me.
It was very important for me that on the ground of New York we

were equal. The fact that, the starting point was that him being occu-
pied by my people, makes him inferior to me in this world. [I] was
obsessed with us being equal, with us being free and comfortable.
Meron Benvenisti
The final writer I explore is Meron Benvenisti, who has been an
academic, analyst and politician. Now, in his golden years, he is prima-
rily a commentator; writing for Haaretz until 2009 and continuing to
make irregular contributions. He has also written several books, keeping
his identification contained within small anecdotes that raise more
questions than they answer. This is particularly the case in Son of the
Cypresses (2007), which invites the reader to approach the content as
autobiography, but on closer inspection the book actually consists
largely of previously published opinion pieces, with no grand narrative

tying them together. Benvenisti published his actual autobiography in
Hebrew in 2012, but the text remains out of reach to English-speakers.
To the extent that there is a grand narrative to Benvenisti’s work, it
would be the argument that Israel/Palestine is already a binational entity,
and perhaps was always so. Whilst Benvenisti has largely engaged in
observation and analysis, he has also written articles modelling how this
binational reality could be transformed into a binational state (2003). A
deep criticism of the Israeli right’s desire to control all of Israel/Palestine
underpins Benvenisti’s analysis, but he reserves equal, if not greater, vitriol
for leftists, whom he savages for their arrogance, lack of empathy and use
of terms like ‘the occupation’. To Benvenisti, this term is a smoke-screen;
Israel’s settlement of the West Bank is ‘quasi-permanent’ (2007).
In Son of the Cypresses, Benvenisti recounts his childhood in Palestine,
dwelling in particular upon his father, David Benvenisti, a founder of
‘Knowing the Land’. This discipline, taught in schools and encouraged
as a popular pursuit, encouraged young people to hike, observe and reify
the Land of Israel, with new, Hebrew names. ‘Knowing the Land’ formed
an important part of building a ‘nativist’ narrative amongst Jews before
and after the State of Israel is created; by ‘knowing’ the land, these eager
participants simultaneously ‘Judaized’ (de-Arabised) it whilst ‘nativising’
themselves. In what he calls ‘delayed filial rebellion’, Benvenisti junior
rejects his father’s project, which doesn’t engage with the land as it really
is, but instead fetishises it, deliberately excluding Palestinian Arabs and
their communities from emerging maps. A determination to really know
the land underscores Benvenisti’s work. In Sacred Landscape: A Buried
City of the Holy Land (2000), he meticulously details how Jewish occu-
pants have taken over various Palestinian villages and towns, replacing
references to Palestinian names with Jewish ones; a process facilitated
by the removal of actual people from the land in 1948. He appears to
adopt an empathic tone regarding those who have been uprooted, and
displays moral outrage at the Orwellian replacement of nomenclature.
Benvenisti’s most poignant expression features in a Haaretz article by
our old friend Ari Shavit, in which he lays bare his break from Zionism
and represents the futures of Israeli Jews and Palestinians as intertwined,
like their pasts. Benvenisti describes his recent reframing of the conflict
in Israel/Palestine from a ‘struggle between two national movements
for the same land’ (for which two states is an appropriate solution) to
‘a conflict between a society of immigrants and a society of natives’.
The ‘conquering immigrants’ have been ‘unable to enjoy the fruits of
their victory’, ‘achieve tranquillity’ or ‘entrench peace for themselves’.
Reflecting that neither party in the conflict will ever give up its claims,
Benvenisti rejects the two-state solution.
You can erect all the walls in the world here but you won’t be able to
overcome the fact that there is only one aquifer here and the same
air and that all the streams run into the same sea. You won’t be able
to overcome the fact that this country will not tolerate a border in
its midst.
Benvenisti suggests Israel’s leaders will have to go through a similar

process to South Africa’s in relinquishing apartheid. After describing a
binational state based on federalism, he moves into the emotive sphere
of identification.
I am 70 now, and I have the right to engage in summing up. And I

was part of it all here: the youth movement and the army and the
kibbutz and politics. I am the salt of the earth and I’m not ashamed
of it ... I won’t let anyone tell me I am a traitor. I won’t let anyone
say I’m not from here – including the Palestinians. I am exactly what
my father wanted me to be: a native ... I am a native son. But this is a
country in which there were always Arabs. This is a country in which
the Arabs are the landscape, the natives. So I am not afraid of them. I
don’t see myself living here without them. In my eyes, without Arabs,
this is a barren land.
Benvenisti is ‘drawn to the Arab culture and Arabic language because it

is here. It is the land.’ He is ‘neo-Canaanite’, declaring, ‘I love everything
that springs from this soil’. He describes his attachment to those who
lost their place on the land, declaring, ‘Today, I live their tragedy, even
though I perhaps caused it ... For years I didn’t know how to translate
that attachment into political language. Now, the binational mode of
thought may give it political expression.’
However, as we shall see later in the book, Benvenisti is a complicated
man, and his narrative of his place in Palestine contains interesting
contradictions. We shall revisit him, and the rest of the dissidents, in
the remaining chapters.
Conclusion
The 11 dissidents introduced here reflect unique responses to the

dilemma of concern for the Other in the context of a hegemonic
ressentiment discourse. Their diversity demonstrates that there is no set

method for dealing with the dilemma; instead, individuals employ a
range of responses. The next two chapters extract and examine some
of the discontinuities that emerge in these responses. A single-page
summary of the dissidents is included in the Appendix for the reader’s
convenience during the remainder of the book, if required.
5
Themes of Dissident Dissonance:
Historicisation and Identification
Introduction
The next two chapters examine discontinuity within the dissidents’ narra-
tives, explaining how we might perceive the dissidents as constrained by
the state, ressentiment Zionism and the hostile relations these have gener-
ated with the Other. As the dissidents are well-intentioned individuals
in a difficult situation, I emphasise that dissonance is a manifestation
of their dilemma rather than a personal failing. We can observe disso-
nance across multiple narratives, so I organise the dissidents’ responses
into themed sections, which run through both chapters. Each section
begins with a brief elaboration, then employs illustrative examples, and
not every dissident is included in each section. This chapter specifically
focuses on the dissidents’ identification and engagement with historical
narratives.
Attraction to Zionism
The dilemma experienced by the dissidents is constituted in part by

their categorisation as the privileged Jewish Us in an ethnocratiser
state. For some, this categorisation goes beyond denoting objective
legal status, invoking identification and attraction to either the Zionist
project or its creation of a vibrant Jewish society in Palestine. This
attraction is a site in which we can explore dissonance within the dissi-
dents’ narratives.
American-born Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom demonstrates why the concept
of a Jewish national homeland might be an attractive proposition,
perhaps unwittingly invoking Kymlicka’s (1989) argument that ‘minority
117
cultures’ in pluralist liberal democracies need to expend extra energy on

that which ‘the majority’ takes for granted.
It could be that if you’re an artist, say, living in an American Jewish

community, all your creative energy goes into prayer and things. You
come to Israel, you can be an artist and have more of a discourse with
artists ... interesting things can happen. I have liked living among
Jews in Israel ...
Such an attachment to a Jewish cultural collective leads other dissidents

to identify overtly as Zionists, albeit in ways that challenge the conven-
tional understandings of Zionism explored thus far in this book. Oren
Yiftachel (2007) frames his vision for Israel’s future as ‘the only way
to ensure that we remain there’. By ‘we’ he means what he refers to as
‘Hebrews’; their collective right to the land constitutes a ‘basic idea of
Zionism that [he] support[s]’.
Eitan Bronstein also sees himself ‘as a Zionist in a way, but totally in
a different way’.
I see me as this product of Zionism ... Me becoming Eitan ... is a

very Zionist practice. Hebraising my name, very name. Even to
add to it, the meaning of Eitan ... Eitan in Hebrew is ‘strong’ or
‘virile’. ... The ... Zionist revolution, how they saw it in Europe, they
hoped to have a new person there in Palestine, working the land and
being strong. The new Jew. Not anymore this weak Jew dealing with,
you know, trade or money, but a new Jew, working the land, strong,
virile, like my name ...
Bronstein’s bicycle-fit body and smile-lines etched by the Middle Eastern

sun epitomise this ‘new Jew’. ‘I carry this on my body’, he continues.
My name. The language I speak. The language, Hebrew, is a Zionist

project ... The whole Hebrew language and culture. My whole life
here, you know. I love Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is ... as the slogan goes, or the
myth, the first Hebrew city, and I’m part of it and I love it ...
Bronstein even frames his dissidence as stemming from his self-pro-

claimed native status, which he links to the Zionist project.
Israel is very much an immigrant society. So ... [it has] all kinds of
people and you feel that they’re not exactly from here. They have
Historicisation and Identification 119
strange accent ... When someone very nationalist, Zionist, argues with
me – there was this one case, it was on the radio ... a very popular show,
he invite[d] me again and again to be interviewed there. He is very
nationalist and he has a very strong French accent. It’s so funny ...
[M]y accent, it is much more better than him. And he is [saying] ‘It’s
our country, you are working against us.’ ... In this sense, I think I’m
better than him ... Because he is not exactly from here ... So yeah, in
a way I also feel that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He
never went to the Army here. He’s not part of this place. I know it’s
wrong, what I’m saying. I think I take this thing from Zionism, this
ranking of people, being Israeli, but I hope I use it to help something
good, you know. Like if more ‘better Israelis’ like me, people like us, I
hope this can make this place better. ... Like for example, these Jewish
American settlers. We look at them, and we’re ashamed of them, of
course, and hate them, many things, but we think, in a way, that they
are less Israelis than us ...
For Bronstein, simply living in Israel means, in some sense, being Zionist.
I live through contradictions all the time ... My kids, they listen to one
story at home but they face or they experience ... terrible language
and culture in school, other places. So the contradictions are all the
time, yes. I hope I have enough sense of humour to contain these
contradictions, because I don’t think I can be too rigid in trying to
solve these contradictions. In some places, we try, here in Zochrot and
personally, to do something about it. To show it, to tell it to other
people, to do Zochrot, to do many things. But if I think I can solve all
the contradictions – anyway we cannot solve this anywhere, in any
place in the world. But here, these contradictions are so clear and so
terrible in many ways. Because on the one hand, I love it, and many
things around here I like very much. On the other hand, some things
from our political culture and political life and daily life, I hate. So it’s
a terrible contradiction.
Bronstein retains an overall connection to Israeli Jews and, by exten-

sion, Zionism.
... [T]he fact that I choose the way to live here and to speak the
language and write this language and to address Israelis, I think, I
hope, I have enough compassion to my Israeli fellows, you know. And
this means that I must of course identify with them in a way, with
Israelis, and understand that we Israelis have a big problem. Now, this
I cannot do without some, even, in a way, empathy or sympathy to
them, to Israelis. Now, yes, Israelis are Zionist, most of us, and I have
to love this part too, in a way ...
Jeff Halper shared this attraction when he first travelled to Israel. ‘I

started writing a little on Israeli culture, Hebrew culture, they’re really
interesting and I really like them. So I was Israeli, and I am.’ He trans-
lates this into his modern work. ‘We are the Israeli Committee Against
Housing Demolitions. We emphasise the Israeli part.’
Dorit Rabinyan takes her attachment to the ‘Jewish collective’ even
further, maintaining a preference for a Jewish state.
My state, my homeland, the place I belong to ... is a Jewish

state ... There’s only one Jewish state around, on the globe, on earth,
and this is mine, this is where I feel related to and identify with, and
with its essence and values and definition to be Jewish. I find it the
right thing to be.
Meron Benvenisti also reveals such sentiments when I ask him about his
apparent support for a one-state solution, deduced from his poignant
evocation of a binational state (Shavit, 2003) and his practical guide for
its establishment (Benvenisti, 2003).
‘I don’t say that I want to see it!’ he retorts emphatically. ‘I am the one
who is very upset about it, cos I wanted a Jewish state. The fact that it
doesn’t exist, or it cannot, now it’s quasi-permanent binational regime,
doesn’t mean that I love it.’
While some dissidents frame their identification with the Zionist
project and its consequences as support for the establishment of a
national collective, others offer a reclaimed take on Zionism, or indeed
offer a rather unreconstructed version of it. The next section explores
how such affiliations generate tensions when combined with a critical
view of the injustices experienced by Others.
The past: ‘national’ history
Dissidents’ interpretations of the Zionist project can generate tensions

when paired with regrets about the treatment of Others. Farid Abdel-
Nour (2003) argues that when people imagine themselves to belong
to a nation, they align themselves with deeds done in that nation’s
past, and feel pride in this connection. Such identification is also the
source of responsibility for wrongs done to Others; to the extent that an
individual feels pride and connection, he or she should also bear some
responsibility.
[A]n admission of guilt ... would be disingenuous, since she would do

it again ... Rather, she might be led to reflect on the kind of person she
is, at what it says about her to be proud about this act of founding.
The discourse of shame opens up this possibility. (pp. 710–11)
However, there is a limit to such a discourse of shame, as when Eitan

Bronstein realises that recognising his ‘terrible coloniser identity’ is not
enough. Accordingly, I want to understand how the dissidents evaluate
Zionist settlement of Palestine, how they define their relationships to
those who went before them, and whether their evaluations have the
potential to be transformative.
The dissidents could potentially avoid the entire issue by saying: ‘I
don’t support what happened, but there is a Jewish nation here now that
needs to be accounted for in future arrangements.’ This position would
protect those identifying as the ‘Jewish nation’ without anchoring them
to the past, hence precluding the subject from acquiring responsibility.
interestingly, though, some dissidents instead attempt to use Cultural
Zionism to legitimise a Jewish presence in Israel/Palestine. This reflects
an emotional investment in the ancient Jewish nation anchored to
Palestine, which Cultural Zionism articulates. However, like those who
came before them, the dissidents struggle to invoke Cultural Zionism as
a meaningful alternative to what unfolded.
The trajectory of Cultural Zionism, as discussed in Chapter 2, is
cautionary for contemporary dissidents; the ‘tradition’ of internal
dissent is problematic for its continual susceptibility to co-optation, and
its ultimate cleavage to colonisation and violence. I engage the dissi-
dents with the bald proposition that perhaps there was no other way
of enacting the Zionist project. Presenting my argument to gauge their
response, I anticipate that they will struggle to critique it, but nor will
they want to acquiesce. This is borne out in interesting ways.
Oren Yiftachel (2007) engages with the colonisation of Palestine by
portraying the Jewish nation as a ‘collectivity’ with ‘its own culture, its
own rights, its own projections of the future, its own total life’. It has
‘been pushed to the Middle East by the worst of all circumstances ... [I]f
I’m in search of justice and truth, it will be more unjust to say that this
group of people have no right to exist.’
It actually ... never was evicted from its homeland, like the Zionist
story goes, but it was evicted to the homeland. And yes, I suppose
that gives it a particular right. It’s been denied citizenship; it’s been
exterminated, genocided, evicted from dozens of countries. The only
place it could actually reconstitute itself is there, its historical home-
land. And it has a right to do that.
Whilst lamenting the ‘the way it was done, and the cynical way it was
used’, Yiftachel emphasises the impetus created by ‘the group of refu-
gees, the majority of Jews, between 80 to 90 per cent, are sort of coerced
and forced migrants, nowhere to go’ as a basis for the ‘historical justi-
fication’ of Zionist settlement. However, he takes the invocation of the
historical homeland seriously in its own right. He rejects comparisons
between Zionism and early Nazism (Burg, 2007), partly on the grounds
that it is ‘qualitatively a different project’ to ‘colonise one people that
sits on your historical homeland, [than] to colonise 20 peoples that live
all across Europe’.
I put it to him that the establishment of Israel was not possible
without oppression and domination. ‘Well, that’s an open question’,
he responds.
Probably you’re right ... because you know, it was what I call ... colo-
nialism of refugees, it’s [an] absolutely desperate type of colonialism.
You know, and they, they see their flight from sorrow as the whole,
entire world. To some extent, who can blame them?
Yiftachel suggests, ‘The project is to make it as amicable as possible with

the Palestinians. And you know’, he continues,
as a land expert, I can tell you it is possible. Ah, the Palestinian land
ownership, for example, in Palestine in 1948 was only less than 30
per cent of the land ... There is room. And it didn’t have to create
the refugee problem. You know, from the beginning, it could be a
multicultural or bi-ethnic binational state ... And so, and it could live,
I could even live with an Arab majority, it doesn’t really worry me, as
long as there is institutional, constitutional support for the continu-
ation of the Jewish collectivity.
Yiftachel frames his vision for a binational state as something possible

in the past that remains feasible – he flips easily from land ownership
in 1948 to a contemporary binational state. However, I am particu-
larly interested in what was possible in the context of opposition from
Palestine’s indigenous non-Jewish population. When I suggest that
‘institutional, constitutional support for the continuation of the Jewish

collectivity’ would not have been forthcoming at the time, Yiftachel
responds by seemingly endorsing Israel’s creation.
But ... there was an Israel in 1947, there was an Israel created, let’s not
forget that ... And that Israel had a large Arab minority, but there was
a Jewish majority. It could have constructed its own politics and, of
course, with the Jewish influx, it would have had a large majority of
Jews. But it chose not to do that. It chose to drive the Arabs out. So,
you know, I object to that. But that doesn’t mean that, you know –
the abuse that existed, that doesn’t negate the need to cater for the
collectivity itself. There is nobody else that would cater for it except
itself. So that gives it legitimacy, yes ...
Yiftachel’s criticism is entirely coherent: Israel could have sat with a

marginal Jewish majority and treated non-Jewish citizens equally instead
of expelling them, whilst also using that majority to bring in more
Jews. However, Yiftachel’s analysis commences after the state’s creation;
when I try to take him further back, there appears to be a void. Like
the Cultural Zionists before him, Yiftachel cannot explain how Jewish
settlers could have attained their homeland in Palestine without the
UN decision, which already thwarted the wishes of non-Jews. Yiftachel’s
‘colonialism of refugees’ reads desperation into the actions of Zionist
settlers. He explains the personal logic behind this: ‘[T]here will be very
few people who will say that their own collectivity has to disappear. This
is suicidal in a, you know, psychologically pathological way.’
Activist Jeff Halper takes a more optimistic view of Zionist migration
to Palestine. He tells me, unbidden, that perhaps the greatest contro-
versy about him in leftist circles is that he does not ‘consider Zionism to
be a colonial movement ... because there was a genuine tie between the
Jews and this country’.
Hebrew wasn’t invented a hundred years ago. ... It wasn’t like some
British farmer gets up one morning and decides to go to Kenya to get
a lot of cheap land and cheap labour and become a colonialist ... Jews
were not strangers to this land. That’s what I insist on. The land of
Israel, whatever you want to call it, was central to Jewish culture and
Jewish symbolism and religion, and in a real way, not in some fakey
constructed way ... I think that when the Zionist movement developed,
both in terms of fleeing persecution, but also in terms of a national move-
ment, like other national movements in Europe, it was legitimate.
I offer Halper Yiftachel’s ‘colonialism of refugees’.
I don’t know what that means. No, they weren’t all refugees. I mean,
the impulse for coming here was not as a refugee. It was a positive
national movement. ... The Jews were a nation, or a pre-nation, within
this Europe of tribes and nations, that did have a territorial reference,
and that was the land of Israel. And it was a real thing, it wasn’t some
fakey thing ... and it’s true that there were pressures as well. ... I think
there’s a genuineness here that has to be respected.
Respect involves taking seriously the idea that Zionism did not view
‘Arabs’ malevolently.
In those days, they really believed that this was a land without a
people. Not in a physical sense, I mean, they’re not blind, but on the
point of view that there wasn’t another people here. The Palestinians
hadn’t really coalesced either in terms of their national identity.
You’ve got to cut people slack, cos when people actually live their
lives ... they do bad things, or they’re not consistent, or they didn’t
understand everything ...
Halper compares his perspective to that of Uri Davis, who ‘measures

people according to this rigid ideological, you know, in hindsight kind
of measure. He measures them by 2010 and intellectual anti-Zionist’
standards. ‘Well you can’t do that!’ exclaims Halper. ‘You know, it’s
a different reality, a different context, a different set of thoughts and
everything else ... So, if you cut some of the early Zionists slack, and if
you understand that it made sense, it wasn’t colonialism. But it became
colonial in about ten minutes’, he adds.
I mean, I’m saying the impulse, the nucleus wasn’t colonialism ... I
wouldn’t say it’s illegitimate like a colonial movement should be,
and that the Jews have no place here; they should go back to Russia.
Jews were a thousand years in Russia but were never accepted as
Russian. But what I say is: when they adopted this ethnocratic
kind of eastern European nationalism, and they denied there was a
Palestinian people, and they had this exclusive claim, that’s where
it became colonialism. That’s where they start ethnic cleansing,
this is the Land of Israel and Meron [Benvenisti]’s father’s story
of renaming the country and all that stuff. That’s when it became
colonial.
Eitan Bronstein is also compelled to cut Cultural Zionists some slack; to

locate their actions in a historical context. ‘There’s Jewish who have some
relations to this place, some link. I don’t neglect or underestimate or try
to suggest that there is no connection ... Of course people believe in this
and it’s okay.’ I invite him to explain what could have been different.
[I]f the leader of the Jewish minority here had said, ‘We are willing to
see how we can live together here’, and not stating that we are having
now a Jewish state – If you have a Jewish state, of course, in order
to materialise, you have to have a war. But I think there were other
voices then that could enable something totally different.
Bronstein places faith in the ability of these ‘other voices’ to achieve

something different; I ask if he can explain how exactly a Jewish minority
without a state would have secured entry rights for Jews to Palestine.
Bronstein doesn’t have a direct answer. ‘[G]o back to the beginning’,
he suggests instead.
The whole notion of Zionism coming here, it’s not just a naïve migra-
tion to this empty land. It’s migration with an intention to redeem
the land, to redeem the work. So when the Zionist movement and
migration began and expanded, also those practices of other ways of
expulsion or segregation or ... superiority of Jews ... So it is difficult to
talk about 1948, because before that, there was already this history of
violent behaviour here.
However, ‘it doesn’t mean that this is the whole story’, Bronstein
continues.
[T]here are many other narratives that you can find hidden in
Zionism. ... There were many Jews who tried to tell ... Palestinians not
to run away, and it was earnest. They were not [political], ... neigh-
bours, usually neighbours. ‘We want to live with you, don’t run away.’
Of course, they were not strong enough politically ... But naively, they
thought, ‘Yes, we can live together’. This doesn’t mean they were not
Zionist. They were very Zionist.
‘I don’t think they were a contradiction’, Bronstein adds.
I think they didn’t see the whole picture from their side. Because
this happened in many many cases. Neighbours, Jews and Arabs
living, having good relations. There were shootings around, and

this was one of the practices of the Zionist forces, to go around
and to shoot ... and to raise fear. And also the stories of the massa-
cres, the massacre of Deir Yassin that caused such huge panic among
Palestinians. This panic, the [Jewish] neighbours couldn’t experi-
ence, it because it doesn’t hurt the Jews ... But, I mean, the Jews didn’t
have many other options. They were here to stay ... [I]n many cases
they were upset that the armed forces were forcing [Palestinians]
out. They didn’t really have enough power and didn’t try very hard
to stop it. In Haifa, for example, the Jewish leaders tried to stop
them from going out and also talking about the wish that they will
return, but they didn’t do really much. They didn’t try, as I know,
to convince the Israeli government to let them return. So it sounds
contradictory, but I think for them, it was something that makes
sense.1
Bronstein’s inability to answer my question about entry rights directly –

or rather, his effective indictment of the entire Zionist movement
(‘violent behaviour’) – brings us to an important recognition. ‘There are
no real solutions’, he declares.
You can solve [the problem] politically ... but still it doesn’t really solve
it in the sense that ... there is no scar. It’s there. It’s for ever there. You
cannot really overcome, in the sense that you forget it ... The Nakba is
there for ever ... so in that sense there is no way out. I think it’s very
important to express it ... There’s no way out ...
While Bronstein’s alternative ‘voices’ from the past cannot provide

a direct answer, his own voice can. There is no way out of his own
dilemma; a proclamation that reverberates throughout this book.
The phenomenon of thoughtful dissidents being unable to articulate
the means of achieving ‘binational’ harmony in early Palestine is also
present in Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom’s narrative. When I ask what should
have happened instead of the War in 1948, the ethnic cleansing and the
state’s refusal to permit the return of the refugees, he replies:
Well, I think that the partition plan in 1947 ... was a much better
starting point. Had it been accepted, had Israel stuck to it, had Israel
gone back to it and not conquered more territory in 1948, it would
have been a better thing. It would have been great if the refugees had
been welcomed home ...
This reliance on the creation of Israel as a starting point is almost a

direct match with Yiftachel’s response to a similar proposition. I counter
to Milgom that even the Israel proposed in the 1947 UN Partition Plan
defied the wishes of non-Jews.
‘I think the Palestinians had a combination of attitudes and responses
to Jews being here’, Milgrom responds,
Some of which was, ‘Great, we’ll live together and they’ll be benefits
for us living together’. There was also resentment and a feeling of
being marginalised, and an anti-colonial struggle, so this is something
that Zionism didn’t deal with properly, and didn’t figure out in a nice
way. It sort of went in there, and takes advantage of whatever it could
take advantage of. So in 1947 things were pretty sticky already. So I
guess it would have been better if the state had not been established in
1947, but rather that things had sort of, you know, worked out.
‘A lot of people talk about Cultural Zionism, spiritual Zionism, a Jewish

presence but not a state’, I respond. ‘I wonder whether that would have
been possible. Let’s say the majority of Arabs didn’t want the Jews there,
how would a cultural Zionism ... have taken hold?’
Milgrom doesn’t have an answer; instead, he reframes the question.
Every act, the actors have to think about what they are doing, why
they’re doing it and what it does to someone else ... There was a signif-
icant Jewish minority, still small but significant on the land – people
were living together and it was okay. The early Zionists came in the
late nineteenth century, and they were living together still. The
question is, so what was developing, how would I have felt in those
situations? Hopefully, I would have been a peacemaker, or someone
who was thinking about the impact of this on other people, but not
enough Zionists were doing that. ‘This is what we want, what we
need, this is what we can get.’
Milgrom coherently frames his own identification in this vision of a

moral individual trying to redirect a collective. Yet in the course of
this brief exchange, Milgrom goes from endorsing the partition plan,
to rejecting it, to finally only imagining his role in the most personal
terms. The alternative possibilities for the collective, which inform my
enquiry, evaporate.
Gideon Levy takes a different view of collective moral responsibility,
accepting that an injustice had to occur in Israel’s establishment. He sees
Zionism as ‘inevitable in many ways ... I couldn’t stop the flow of who’s
coming to here. I think this was a solution for the Holocaust.’ However,
Levy argues that one injustice should have been the limit.
I mean, once we did what we did in ’48, okay, we did. This should
have been taken in account before we bombed Gaza! We should
have remembered that in Gaza are living refugees, because of us. Our
victims ... So this should have gone into Israeli mind, but it doesn’t.
For Meron Benvenisti, meanwhile, Israel’s past and his role within
are open wounds I unwittingly scratch. Benvenisti adopts a resentful
posture, even to my very first question about where he fits within the
Zionist schema:
This limits my thinking to something that I think any normal person,

at any other place in the world, wouldn’t begin to bother. About
the constitution of the entity in which he lives. Do you do this in
Australia? Is it part of your identity? It’s not part of my identity here.
So the fact that Zionists decided that the Jewish state is part of, some-
thing that is important to identity, they can think that. I don’t have
to think that way.
Benvenisti is not going to sit happily in the box that Zionism has made
for him, but nor is he going to sit in any other box, such as the ‘leftist’
box constructed as oppositional to the Occupation. ‘I don’t believe in
stereotypes’, he declares. ‘I don’t believe ... you invent leftism by saying
“occupation” or “West Bank” instead of “Judea and Samaria”.’ I ask him
what terms he uses, and he tells me that he doesn’t care. When I tell him
that I do care, he responds, ‘Then you’re wrong!’2
I ask Benvenisti to talk about the contradictions he raises in his book,
and about his own past.
The problem is, when you get to my age, you have to be aware of the
failures in your life. I believe that my contradictions come from the
fact that I’ve lived too long ... People don’t understand that people
will think and feel and adjust themselves to changing conditions. So
I started by being a kibbutznik, a Zionist, a social democrat. By now,
at my tender age, I believe that this is not a Zionist enterprise, but it’s
a settler society ... Yes, there is a contradiction between how do I see
the beginning or the outcome. So it’s a very important question. If I
criticise the beginning of this enterprise, I think about my parents.
Do I criticise my parents? Do I think that they are colonialists? No.

They are not responsible for the fact that in each turning point, this
polity or this society takes the wrong turn.
I ask him who is responsible.
All of us, the society, the tribe, the entity. They made all of the
mistakes. My father came here in 1913, my mother in 1924. They
came not out of persecution; they just wanted to build a just society
in Palestine. They thought that they are entitled, to the land, to their
part of the land, also believing that there’s a place for everybody.
Benvenisti depicts his parents in similar terms to Halper; I am inter-

ested in whether Benvenisti agrees with his parents’ perceptions. ‘What
I think, it’s not to think now ... ’ he replies. ‘Because it depends how I
see them.’
Quite unbidden, Benvenisti then raises his public spat with Edward
Said in the Israeli newspapers. He includes the entire exchange in Son
of the Cypresses (2007), beginning with Said’s experience of fleeing
Jerusalem during the War of 1948/Nakba. Benvenisti’s opinion piece
then disputes Said’s version of events and accuses Said’s parents of being
part of the betrayal of the Palestinian people by the intellectual class.
Benvenisti’s parents are not the villains of the piece, he says. They had
nowhere else to go and they stayed to fight instead. They won. Why
should Benvenisti feel sorry for the Saids? Benvenisti then includes the
response of a ‘tremendously upset’ Said, who accuses Benvenisti of slan-
dering his family. Said claims that people (including Israelis) frequently
flee from violence and it does not follow that they should lose prop-
erty or residence rights. He argues that it is ‘unseemly, even indecent,
for a member of [Benvenisti’s] people to speak so gloatingly about the
misfortunes of others’. Benvenisti sums up simply that Said’s ‘impas-
sioned attack ... reinforced my pride in my parents and their genera-
tion ... We did not flee the country, but stayed and fought and won’
(pp. 63–4).
Benvenisti’s minimalist rebuttal intrigues me. Does he consider in
retrospect that he was out of line, and used Said as a narrative device to
communicate this? Apparently not, as becomes clear in the interview:
I said, look, I don’t want to apologise for my victory. The fact that you
fled, because you had a place in Cairo, so now I have to apologise for
the fact that my father and mother stayed on and you fled? No, I’m
sorry. You have to take responsibility for the fact that you fled. I am
not ready to apologise for the fact that we won and they lost.
I ask why Benvenisti does not have to take any of this responsibility.
‘Because it was a fair fight’, he shrugs. ‘ ... They started –’
I interrupt at this, bewildered. ‘A fair fight?’
‘Yes. Why not fair fight? They decided that the sword would decide
and I accepted that the sword would decide. Now the sword has decided;
now each one has to accept responsibility.’
In his writing, Benvenisti has reported the structural processes that
happened, the removal of people from villages, with a tone of regret. I
try to explain my confusion. ‘You’ve seen everything that was done!’
‘Okay, and then what?’ he barks.
‘And then you say to Edward Said that your parents shouldn’t have,
you – you almost say: “Your parents are cowards” – ’
‘That, maybe because of that, they lost!’
He continues:
The betrayal of intellectuals is not something that you can take easily.
Part of the Nakba is caused by the fact that they looked down upon
the villagers. Had nothing to do with the villagers ... [There were not
only] internal problems, [but] internal problems that were so detri-
mental to the cause that they lost. Now, do I have to be responsible
for that too?
‘I’m not here to say yes or no’, I tell him. ‘But what I find interesting is
that someone who sees things the way that you do doesn’t also feel a
responsibility.’
‘I do’, he insists.
I do feel partial responsibility, but not for the fact that I won and
they lost, because they called for this war to begin. The fact that
they have their own reasons to – good reason to reject us, I under-
stand. Understand from the very beginning. But when there was war
declared, war decided. I disagree with the fact that people take us as
the sole responsible for what happened.
Benvenisti has recognised elsewhere that non-Jews in Palestine had

good reason to reject settling Zionists (2007, p. 220). His restatement
of this, whilst simultaneously declaring Palestinian culpability, throws
me. I can only make sense of two coherent positions. Either a) Zionism
was a virtuous project, in which case it was too bad for the non-Jews on
the land; or b) a settler-colonial project would generate resistance, and
that such resistance would be part of the process rather than a deviant
decision. Benvenisti seems to understand the process and yet apportions
blame to those responding to it. I try to explain my perception of coloni-
alism as a project with obvious consequences by talking about Australia’s
dispossession and mistreatment of its own indigenous population.
‘That’s not parallel’, he declares.
You can go into all these parallels, but this is absolutely the wrong
parallel – there are parallels but not in the way it’s been understood
as, what’s the end in which we – it’s one thing which is the same. The
initial clash between a settler society and indigenous people. The fact
that one came in, faced with total rejection, understandable rejec-
tion, by the indigenous, then war started. Each side continued with
the initial clash that they had. This is the same as here. But not, the
parallel is wrong, as I see it.
‘Why?’
‘I’m telling you why!’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because over there –’ he begins, and then changes tack. ‘You’re
thinking about Australia now. I don’t want to fall into this trap, because
this is not an interview. This is already an argument. I don’t want to start
an argument with you. Sorry.’
‘To me it’s not an argument, it’s a healthy discussion.’
‘This is an argument’, he insists. ‘I don’t want to explain my condition
by using your condition.’
I suggest that the Zionist project had dispossession built into it.
‘Yes. Yes’, he says impatiently. ‘You want what happened? Examples?’
Benvenisti is tied to the empirical; to facts and figures. I am trying
to get to the sentiments behind them. ‘I don’t want to be sitting here
saying, “You should be sorry, you should feel responsible”’, I begin to
flounder. ‘But I still find it hard to understand, the insight you have, to
everything that has happened and your, your refusal. And look, yeah,
but to say half responsibility here, fifty-fifty, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s
seventy-thirty, maybe it’s eighty-twenty.’
‘Maybe it’s futile, the whole thing of assigning responsibility’, he
suggests, sagely. ‘Maybe the way to do it is: I apologise for what I’ve
done wrong, and you. I don’t have to quantify it. When we get there,
maybe.’
I nod.
‘But this is nothing to do with the political situation, or with putting
blame on me’, he continues. ‘Cos I’d be the first to refute any facts of my
own identity, of the way it’s being done. That’s all.’ Benvenisti begins to
grow edgy.
Saying that you are this or that, what you want? What is your aim
in assigning responsibility on me? What is it? Is it to say I’m a bad
person? What is the – or that my entity is wrong? Therefore, it should
be despondent or destroyed? What is the aim? What is the object of
the exercise?
I (stupidly) think that Benvenisti is speaking rhetorically. Moreover,

Benvenisti himself has put forward models for a one-state solution, so
I tentatively point out that some people would say that the entity is
wrong and requires dismantling.
So they have a problem with me and with six million people! Or

maybe with 13 million people! And we’ll see who is going to win and
who is going to lose! But that is not an argument. That’s a challenge,
that’s an attack.
I raise Benvenisti’s previous endorsement of a one-state solution. He

emphatically explains that he is talking about what exists, rather than
what he wants. ‘I want people to face the reality. That’s all,’ he tells me.
‘ ... This is a description, not a prescription.’
The work is something else, that’s how you develop it. For existing
conditions that is imposed on us, and is there, and you cannot, in
no way, ignore reality. But, that is not that I’m for the one state solu-
tion ... And I am especially not for one-state solution, because one
state solution is a way to disguise the – really, the need, the will, to
de-legitimise the Jewish state ... It’s being used only for one thing. To
say, ‘Jewish state is illegitimate, therefore one state solution’. And all
these people, when I meet them, and I meet them quite often, we have
big and bitter arguments and I refuse to accept the legitimacy of their
own analysis, because this is not an analysis. It is wishful thinking,
which is based on the negation and destruction of my own entity.
Without realising that I am walking into my own ‘big and bitter argu-
ment’, I suggest that perhaps Benvenisti’s society has made its own
problems by creating the binational reality. I am trying to convey the

incongruity of a state imposing a one-state scenario, as Benvenisti recog-
nises, and simultaneously crying foul at any suggestion of a real one-
state solution granting rights and citizenship to all.
‘What has this to do with what I’m talking about?’ he snaps.
So criticise my society, but you can’t allow to destroy my society

because of that. Unless you believe that this is based on something
wrong. This initial, original sin ... If this is the case, then we have
to stop discussing, and have to prepare for another war! You can’t
allow ... a subject to commit suicide. If this is how you see it, and
people see it, they have to be prepared for that declaration of war
they are declaring against me, because they know I would not accept
that ...
Benvenisti’s ‘suicide’ comment echoes Yiftachel’s suggestion that it is

‘psychologically pathological’ to want to do away with one’s own entity.
I, however, am confounded yet again, because Benvenisti wrote an
opinion piece (2004) asking that very question of whether the Jewish
state was founded on an ‘original sin’, and answered it in the affirm-
ative! I ask him to explain that piece, in which he observes another
generation of Israelis dispossessing another generation of Palestinians,
and questions whether there was something defective in the founding
fathers’ vision.
‘Right, okay’, he says. ‘So, if after a hundred years, we are still doing
exactly the same thing we have been doing all along, then something
is wrong.’
‘So what is wrong?’
‘The fact that you have in your genes. The thing that would happen
is, there is a settler society that answers or reacts to some basic codes
in their genetic settler society makeup. Yes. So what? What does it
mean?’
I explain that I had thought Benvenisti’s analysis pointed to a deep
criticism of the whole enterprise and a desire to dismantle it.
‘You can’t!’ he exclaims.
Well, therefore, you’re wrong. And also ... it’s wrong to quote back
to a columnist or journalist something that he’s written in one
context ... You’re talking about a person who is writing to express his
conditions and answer the needs of the moment. And this doesn’t
mean that you can throw it back at me six years later in a general
meaning, trying to make this a general assessment ... about myself,

my father, my mother, my tribe.
I ask him if he would prefer his words to be tomorrow’s fish and chip
wrapping. (Later, I’ll wish I asked him why he bothered to collect them
into a book!)
‘No, no’, he says. ‘But, but, I also don’t want to go into these questions,
because I refuse to answer them. I don’t have to defend myself. That’s it.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t want to.’
The interview subsequently unravels further, and at the end of
the book, I explore how I might have provoked Benvenisti’s nega-
tive response. However, a valid interpretation of the exchange is that
Benvenisti struggles to square present-day evaluations with his attach-
ment to the Zionist project. This tension, I suggest, is at the heart of
all the examples included thus far. The dissidents are critical of the
dispossession of the Other; yet when it comes to locating their place
within history, they struggle to find a means of doing so that they can
reconcile with their critical outlook. Unable or unwilling to view the
‘Jewish nation’ as a modern construct, which nevertheless needs to be
accounted for in future political settlements, dissidents instead display
a deeper emotional attachment to the ‘Jewish nation’. This necessitates
explanations of the nation’s place in Palestine; Cultural Zionism appears
to offer such an explanation.
Cultural Zionism proffers a benign alternative path for the European
settlement project in Palestine, but this is illusory. Modifying Abdel-
Nour (2003), dissidents drawing pride from Cultural Zionism’s alter-
native ‘national history’ have an onus to articulate it effectively; their
apparent inability to do so reveals the centrality of Political Zionism
to the successful enactment of the project. Cultural Zionists, unable to
resolve their own dilemmas vis à vis the Other, were, at best, their own
era’s version of ‘good people in a bad situation’. The dissidents reflect
the historical narrative backwards in ways that affirm this. Yiftachel’s
entire ‘Jewish nation’ was in a bad situation in Europe. Halper’s Cultural
Zionists were good people who went astray when their nationalism
turned ‘ethnocratic’; Benvenisti’s sentiments about his parents echo this.
Bronstein, whilst far more critical of the Zionist project, also sees virtue
in the Cultural Zionists, but he and Milgrom display the limitations of
the Cultural Zionist vision under questioning. Both respond in ways
that are ultimately personal – Bronstein’s ‘no way out’ and Milgrom’s
identification with the lone dissident.
The beginning
In my interviews with Milgrom, Atzmon and Halper, we look further

back to the beginnings of Zionism, exploring how the cultural factor of
chosenness has augmented the ressentiment discourse. I am interested
in how they tell this story from the inside and connect it to their own
identifications and struggles.
Milgrom’s invocation of the Us appears to reference a religious
community. However, he thwarts my attempts to construct a dichotomy
in which he, the rabbi, treats Jewishness as religion, and other, more
secular, dissidents portray ‘cultural’ or ‘national’ Jewishness as political
ideology. Milgrom presents Jewish religion, culture and ideology as
inseparable. Jewish culture belongs to what he calls a Jewish ‘milieu’ (a
more ambiguous word than ‘nation’ or ‘ethnicity’) of which the Jewish
religion is an intrinsic part.
I don’t think it’s so easy or even profitable to separate religion from

life, when in fact, Jewish culture is a religious culture, but it’s also a
culture that deals with all these issues of politics and economics and
all that.
For Milgrom, dark forces in Jewish history cannot be limited to ideology,

nor theology; he cannot attribute them wholly to social forces, nor lay
them in the hands of a few individuals. According to Milgrom, Zionism
did not take something that was religious and apply it to secular nation-
alism. Rather,
[t]he situation [in Palestine] brought out in prominence forces that

were there before, but didn’t have the same dominance. It’s not new
stuff, it didn’t have to come from colonialism or nationalism or, God
forbid, Nazism, can’t even think of that ... [N]o, we had it. This is the
difficult thing now for me, recognising, as we go back, we did have a
long, long history of separatism. Of the feeling of superiority, cos God
chose us, because we were the monotheists and they were the idola-
ters and all that. We didn’t really make the adjustments necessary
when Christianity ... [and] Islam came about. We didn’t ... recognise
that we are brothers and sisters ... a covenanted people with Muslims
and Christians, despite the small differences between us. The Middle
Ages were times when those differences were very significant ... and
that’s haunting us right now .. .[W]e didn’t – we don’t – have enough
of an ideology of partnership.
Milgrom’s task becomes one of salvaging; finding redeeming features to

guide the collective.
One has the option, the responsibility, to choose and promote the
direction which is positive, and to beat back and quarantine the
teachings and the attitudes which are difficult. They certainly come
out in the issue of the Other. Whether the Other is a woman, or a
non-Jew, Palestinian in this case, these things come out ... Now I’m in
a situation where I recognise how pervasive and problematic teach-
ings are, the entire culture ...
A key concern for Milgrom is how effectively the ‘problematic’ elements

support the current Israeli position.
It’s so easy to take the Bible and the promise of the land and the
biblical rejection of the natives of the land ... and to apply that
simplistically to the situation we’re in. ... [T]he Bible says [to] have
this harsh attitude to the native population, along with the promise
that the land would be Israel’s. That lends itself very well to an
extreme right-wing position. There is plenty else in Jewish culture
which is somehow not appreciative of the Other, living with the
Other, that kind of thing.
In the face of this, Milgrom explains his continued attachment to

Jewishness. Rejecting the idea that religion ‘comes from God ... that it’s
not a human creation, it’s given’, he speaks of a ‘foggy’ theology and an
inability to ‘use God language’. Distanced from his concept of God as
‘harmony and embrace’, he laments, ‘I don’t experience much harmony;
I feel much more the discord in this tragedy.’ The vision of God to which
he can most relate is that of a recent Talmudic scholar
who spoke about the Bible as a tragedy. The tragic figure in the Bible
is God. God creates the world – humanity – and fails. Almost to the
point of giving up, many times. So maybe I can connect with that
tragedy, that constant feeling of hope, still, to keep going.
If it is not belief in a transcendental power that underscores Milgrom’s

identification, then it can only be his relationship to those with
whom he shares his Jewish ‘milieu.’ The intriguing thing about this
relationship is that he resists defining it in national terms, even as
he uses the language of ‘we.’ When I ask him whether he considers
the ‘Jewish nation’ to be a real entity, he responds, ‘It’s a meaningful

category’.
The category of Jews who are connected through many things,

family, culture, language, geography, past, future, et cetera – these
things exist. What does it mean? What do you do with it? That’s the
question. ... I’m trying to move Jews off the back of the Palestinians.
That’s my job.
I ask Milgrom how he separates culture from the nationalism that asserts
it needs a state. ‘I think that the only significant social category is right
now’, he replies, imbuing our exchange with sudden importance.
Two people, a conversation. That’s a significant social relation-

ship. It extends a little bit beyond this to a family, but that’s it. To
be a Berliner, to belong to a citizen, these grouping are problematic,
they’re shallow, they don’t – what do they mean? So I, what I share
with other Jews, to the extent that we are comfortable with it and
using it, is a culture, and some people say it’s also a destiny.
Yet Milgrom subverts the idea that culture is automatically destiny.
My destiny is not necessarily a Jewish destiny but a human destiny,

and I include in that the Palestinians. That’s a tricky thing, because
what do I and Palestinians share, except for the accident of having
lived in the same place? Do we have the same politics and language
and that? So working together has been a big thing.
Milgrom has tried to negotiate this path by engaging with other

cultures.
I guess the question is: To what extent am I influenced by Jewish

thoughts and texts and textures, or the outside interests I’m aware of,
clearly outside. I think I’m in a milieu where these things are mixed. I
certainly have rabbis and texts that I go to, but I think ... my milieu is
largely non-religious, most of it peace activists, more universalist and
many non-Jews. It’s a wider milieu.
Yet ‘Jewish thoughts and texts and texture’ remain a significant part of
Milgrom’s ‘milieu’. Despite his assertion of a human destiny, and a belief
that a personal exchange is the only real category, Milgrom frequently
speaks in terms of Jewish culture and religion during our interview. After
pausing to make a cup of tea, he gives me an example.
You asked me about political and Jewish, thinking about the conti-
nuity of culture and all that. I rang my daughter this morning; her
boyfriend’s been away for a few months on one of those ‘after the
Army’ trips that people take. They travelled together for a month, and
then she had to go back to school, and he continued. He’s coming
back tonight. I quoted her a verse from the Song of Songs, about the
meeting and the longing and all that. This is how I express myself,
through the sources. Not just for political things but also for personal
things. That’s what it can do with rich cultures; it interacts with your
life. You create in it; it resonates. It’s just an example of how all this
can come together.
This attachment to culture prevails, despite Milgrom’s ambivalence

about how that culture has come about, its core tenets and its opera-
tion, and how to interpret it. More importantly, he also claims a respon-
sibility to lead it towards the good. This feature of his narrative most
clearly distinguishes it from that of Gilad Atzmon.
When Atzmon and I talk about conceptualisations of Jewish identity
in history, he starts out by diagnosing the problem as the secularisa-
tion of chosenness. ‘Within the Judaic context, chosenness is a burden’,
he tells me. ‘God tells his people, “You are chosen by me to stand as a
supreme example of good behaviour”.’ By contrast, ‘secular chosenness
is pretty vicious, it’s supremacy’.
Atzmon insists that he ‘make[s] a clear distinction between Judaism:
the religion, Jews: the people and Jewishness: the ideology’, claiming
he doesn’t ‘deal much with Judaism’ or ‘Jews’, and instead deals with
‘Jewishness, the ideology’. Elsewhere he states, ‘I refrain categorically
from referring to Jews and avoid criticism of Judaism’ (2007; see also
2011, p. 15).
However, Atzmon peppers his conversation with criticisms of ‘Jews’.
Likewise, he sources his problem with ‘Jewishness, the ideology’ directly
back to the religion. He argues that there was something pathological about
‘the Jews’ as a collective through many centuries, deriving from the very
sense of chosenness that he purports to defend in its religious context.
‘Yesterday someone sent me a text that I may publish’, he announces:
‘Without Israel, I don’t think that we will never [sic] be able to under-
stand the Holocaust’ ... I understand very well; I believe in the same
thing ... Without Israel, we wouldn’t be able to understand. .. How is

it that the entire European people stood up against their neighbours
and said, ‘We don’t want you. You’re out of here.’ ... Now, looking at
history, you say, ‘What is it, how can it happen?’ Israel gives us a very
crucial glimpse into this ultimate, ugly collective. People who have
zero respect to the notion of Otherness!
Atzmon warms to this theme; his book the following year asks, ‘Can
Israeli behaviour throw light on the events that led to the Holocaust, or
other instances of persecution of Jews?’ (p. 182).
When I suggest that we might understand the character of contempo-
rary Israel and Zionism as arising from the Holocaust, rather than as an
explanation for it, Atzmon counters:
As you probably know, the Holocaust wasn’t the first event of perse-
cution of Jewish people. It happens to them all the way through
history. ... The Germans did not want the Jews; factually, the European
nations were very happy to deport them, France, Poland, everywhere.
When I suggest that perhaps, then, we might understand the char-

acter of contemporary Israel and Zionism as arising from this earlier
dynamic, rather than as an explanation for it, Atzmon disagrees again.
‘The problem with the Nazis, it’s that in a certain stage they started to
behave like the Jews! This is the problem with the Nazis ... Believing in
the chosenness, the expansionness, the racial orientation, and legiti-
macy.’ I counter that this is reductionist logic. Atzmon accepts my criti-
cism, but insists ‘it’s a legitimate thing to do’.
Why? Because the Nazi movements started in 1926. 1922, 1926, Mein
Kampf ... When you read Jabotinsky, from 1906, and when you read
Ber Borochov,3 it’s exactly the same ideology. You see that they are
30 years ahead. Jabotinsky and Ber Borochov were following a tradi-
tion of thousands of years of supremacy. Now, one of the reasons
that it is harder combat in Judaism – not Judaism, Jewishness – is cos
they practice it for thousands of years. Hitler just invented, out of the
blue? Even if he was a genius, he wouldn’t be able to cope with tradi-
tion of rabbis that are improving and suggesting manners ... to tackle,
you know, this kind of opponents, combat anti-Semitism ...
Atzmon fumbles between ‘Judaism’ and ‘Jewishness’; he uses the terms

interchangeably, but settles on the one that appears to distinguish
between them. He suggests that rabbis are responsible for the evolution
of Jewish ideology over thousands of years, which hardly quarantines
them from responsibility for its alleged toxicity. The conclusion from
Atzmon’s argument, then, must be that despite his protestations to the
contrary Jews, Judaism and Jewishness are interconnected.
Atzmon seems to hate ‘Jews’ without a coherent world-view. This
becomes apparent in his reverence for other nationalisms. ‘[W]hen I read
Heidegger, I love German tribalism’, he raves. ‘When you read Hegel.
When you read, when you see Palestinian dancing, I love it.’ As we debate
the relationship between Marxist theory and nationalism, Atzmon asks:
What about belonging as a nation? Does it incorporate nationalism,

or are we going to be cosmopolitan? ... This is the issue. ... The German
people felt as a nation. The Palestinians are now, because of negation,
feeling as a nation ... Now, I don’t have any right to interfere with
other people’s sense of belonging. ... [Y]ou cannot change people.
And the world is not cosmopolitan. There are some people who are
cosmopolitan, but most people feel some sense of belonging, and
sense of belonging is great ...
This parallels Yiftachel’s argument that ethnic bonds are real to those
who experience them, and accordingly we must take them seriously in
terms of political organisation. However, Atzmon goes on to declare that
the Jewish nation ‘is an invention ... “But we feel like a nation.” Fuck
you!’
I point out that Atzmon seems to accept the legitimacy of every other
nation’s sense of belonging.
‘No’, he disagrees. ‘I just said. The Israelis do feel like they are a nation.
There is nothing we can do about it. ... The problem is that they insist to
do it at the expense of other people. This is the issue.’
‘But that’s always the problem with self-determination.’
‘No. Even Nazis, even Nazis, give respect to other nations.’
We argue about the Nazis yet again, and then Atzmon repeats, ‘The
problem [with Jews] is that they always do it on the expense of someone
else. That’s it. Very simple.’
I ask Atzmon whether his love for nationalism could ever extend back
to Israeli Jews.
‘I don’t think so’, he replies.
Because, unfortunately, I’m led to identify some pathological prob-

lems that made this nation into what it is. Now, if this nation would
transform into something else, I might love it, but it won’t be the
Jewish nation. ... Once a Jew is becoming a universalist. ... they stop
operating as Jews ...
Considering how someone might love one example of ethnic nation-

alism, whilst hating another for the very features they admire in the
first, leads me to two conclusions. Atzmon has a disproportionate hatred
of Jewish identification, given that he does not apply his critique to
other forms of collective identification. It follows that his own identifi-
cation is implicated somehow in his harsh stance.
As I set up my recording devices for our interview, Atzmon tells me
that he has been trying to work out whether he is a good self-hating
Jew or an anti-Semite. I laugh, but soon realise that he isn’t joking. He
explains the logic behind the self-hating Jew with reference to Otto
Weininger, an Austrian German philosopher who had unpleasant things
to say about women and Jews, despite his own Jewish identification. ‘I
saw myself as something who is a product of the collective’, Atzmon
explains.
Weininger said that what we really hate in others is that in yourself,

which you cannot handle. This is why the biggest anti-Semite are
always Jews. ... [W]hen I read Weininger, I realised that yes, I started
to write about myself, about my own hatred. Rather than projecting
it on others, I look in the mirror.
If he sees a self-hater there, this does not bother Atzmon. ‘Don’t be

worried about self-hater’, he tells me, blithely.
Self-hater is a wonderful thing. One of the most interesting things

for me is that when I saw myself as [a self-hater] for the first time,
my first comment was, ‘I don’t hate myself, I hate you’. Then I saw
myself as an anti-Semite, and a Holocaust denier ... I am not afraid of
self-hatred ... I’m entitled to bounce. But I own my inconsistencies ...
At another point, he declares, ‘Self-hating Jew is very Jewish, because

Jewish love their symptoms, so self-hating Jew loves himself hating
himself’. This, like much of what Atzmon has to say, comes across flip-
pantly, but I will suggest in the next chapter that it offers insight into
ressentiment.
Jeff Halper articulates yet another version of the history of Jewish
culture. He suggests in his book that when cultures become xenophobic,
it’s usually because of pressures outside, rather than something contam-

inated within. I posit that there was, instead, something problematic
within Zionism from the beginning.
You’re right, you’re right ... No, there’s a third element here. It’s not
binary. What I’m saying here is, you’ve got Israeli Jews who, you
know, they’re not the problem in the sense ... And then you’ve got
the adverse circumstances. And in between, is the ideology. I say that
Israelis are trapped in this ethnocratic ideology, logic. That’s what’s
missing here ... It’s not intrinsic in terms of, Israelis are, by nature,
colonialist, or Jews are like that, or whatever. But it’s true that they’ve
taken a certain paradigm that has a very compelling logic to it, and
that’s what’s making them do these terrible things.
‘You still see that logic as something that arises here from an external
situation’, I respond. ‘And my question is, was it not inherent in that
logic, even as the idealistic Zionist in Europe said, “Let’s go home”?’
‘But I say it came out of a historical context’, he replies, and we concur
on the nationalisms of Central and Eastern Europe inspiring Zionists.
However, Halper also references the cultural factor in the development
of the ideology – the religious content of Judaism.
What the Jews have done in the West: first of all they didn’t go
to Zionism, because that whole biblical thing was missing for
them ... Jews in the West don’t relate to the Torah ... they cut that out
because they can’t deal with that stuff. It completely contradicts their
Western democratic norms. So ... [they] went ... to the prophets, which
are much more universalistic and based on justice and all that kind
of stuff ... I don’t think Zionism could have emerged in the West, cos
it would have stood too much diametrically opposed to the values of
the West. [Zionism] was able to adopt what we consider these racist
ideas and genocidal elements that [it] has until today, because it came
out of that Eastern–Central European thing that had that in the tribe.
But that also derived out of the Bible ... That logic wouldn’t have
worked in the West ...
Halper argues that for Zionists of Central and Eastern Europe, the more
supremacist parts of their religion resonated with their ethnic nation-
alist context. However, his depiction of different experiences in ‘East’
and ‘West’ actually works against the idea of the single Jewish nation.
Halper’s position as a Western liberal critic of ethnocentrism thus
undermines the claim of a single, authentic Jewish national identity

forming the legitimatory basis of Zionism.
Conclusion
As Milgrom, Atzmon and Halper engage with Jewish identification

and culture and the development of nationalism, their responses vary.
Milgrom cannot narrate Jewish history as I do in this work, distin-
guishing between Judaism as a religio-cultural practice and the nation-
alism that came to use traditions as historical narrative. From inside the
Us, Milgrom sees a continuous experience lending itself to exclusion
and hatred. This is essentially Atzmon’s story too, but unlike Milgrom,
Atzmon is quite at ease with its dark content and its consequences for
how the teller might view Jewish communal identification. If the story
damns Jewish culture, then unlike Milgrom, who vests himself with the
weighty task of turning it around, Atzmon sits back to watch it burn.
Meanwhile, Halper’s version of the story generates an interesting contra-
diction between his Western-influenced critique of Zionism’s xenophobic
tendencies, and his identification with its result. These dissidents’ ways
of telling their ‘national’ story, and diagnosing the problems they see
therein, demonstrate how a contradictory sense of national responsi-
bility might manifest.
6
Themes of Dissident Dissonance:
Zionism and the Self
Introduction
This chapter engages more closely with the individual subjectivity of

the dissidents. It begins by considering how the collective fear generated
through ressentiment might inform self-preservation and self-interest.
It then explores moments in which dissidents have acted against the
values they now hold. The final section analyses the most radical dissi-
dents, asking what their experiences can tell us about the price to pay for
‘extreme’ dissent, and the consequences of its marginality.
Fear for the Us
This section considers how ressentiment Zionism constructs fear of

Others, depicting preferencing the Us as the only effective protection.
Fear, which may draw upon or exaggerate objective dangers, is diffi-
cult to explore in isolation, since it dovetails with identification-based
support for Zionism explored in the previous chapter, and individual
self-interest, elaborated below. There are also genuine reasons for
those identifying as the ‘Jewish nation’ to feel threatened, especially
in Israel, by the political discourse from the Iranian regime and mili-
tant Palestinian organisations nearby. However, there is a difference
between a rational calculation of geo-political realities and the larger,
timeless sense of anti-Semites everywhere waiting to destroy Jews for
being Jews – what Veracini (2006) calls ‘Absolute Anti-Semitism’. This
latter view, propagated by the Zionist discourse, prioritises the Us over
the Other in the name of protection. I am interested in how dissidents
who express such views attempt to reconcile them with empathy for the
Palestinian Other.
144
Zionism and the Self 145
Dorit Rabinyan tells me that despite identifying with Palestinians

‘standing in lines and waiting, being investigated, and their freedom is
being limited’, this occurs ‘for reasons!’ She ‘refuse[s]’ to feel moral guilt
about Israel’s military actions and doesn’t want to be ‘demonised’ for
‘protecting [her]self’.
Yes, this is the neighbourhood I have to protect myself. I don’t live

in the Pacific Ocean, I live here. And this is my place, and this is my
ancestors’ place, and you know what, forget about it, this is the place
I was born into. I have to protect myself.
Rabinyan tells me to enjoy the privilege of being Australian.
It’s an illusion if I convince myself, if I take it upon myself, that I’m

carefree. That I can live anywhere, that I belong anywhere, I belong
to the world, the world belongs to me. Second World War was around
the corner.
She reflects that her nationalism is ‘uncool’ compared with a cosmo-

politan perspective, but the basis behind it is particularly evident when
we discuss the Holocaust.
Carrying this memory makes a correction. It doesn’t ease me. Letting

go of this memory would have given me a better life. In a way, it’s
a burden I choose to carry, cos it was physically around the corner
from my family as well ... The Holocaust is not a European memory;
it’s a Jewish memory. They weren’t attacked for being European Jews;
they were attacked for being Jews. Attacked and demolished. History
turned it out that my family moved around the globe and gave me
the Israeli citizenship, but it could have been that Hitler was a little
bit stronger for longer, and then Iranian Jews would have been on
his agenda. ... I identify with it because I could have been next. It
could have been my brothers and sisters ... I see myself in [those Jews]
and themself in me. The fact that I am Iranian, for this matter, has
nothing to do [with it] ...
The Holocaust looms large for many of my dissidents. I want to consider

whether the psychological processes of repression and repetition
noted by Jacqueline Rose (2005) are at work in Israeli society, and to
explore how the Holocaust makes certain things unsayable. Even anar-
chist Yonatan Pollack, who distances himself from the ‘Jewish nation’,
peppers his interview responses with cautionary reminders that he is not

‘minimis[ing] the importance of the Holocaust’; that he acknowledges
its ‘special circumstances’; and that he is ‘not comparing’ Israel to Nazi
Germany.
The Holocaust generating things that are unsayable arises in my first
interview with Oren Yiftachel when we discuss Avram Burg (2007), a
former Zionist luminary whose controversial book compares contem-
porary Israel to Weimar Germany in the years preceding Nazism. At the
time, the book is only available in Hebrew, so I have not read it. Yiftachel,
who has, admits to ‘mixed feelings’. He appreciates Burg’s ‘ability to
rise and criticise a system that he’s been part of for a long time’, but
suggests that Burg’s new leaf has been turned over too late: ‘It’s like,
“Where were you for 20 or 30 years?”’ Yiftachel also resents Burg as
a ‘rich, globalised cosmopolitan person’ who fought ‘to maintain ... a
ministerial car and a driver, ten years after he finished his position in the
Jewish Agency’. Yiftachel suggests of Burg’s beautiful home in Jerusalem,
‘You and I could, you know, maybe dream of, um, renting a toilet there’.
There is resentment that Burg can flit away whilst others can’t. ‘It’s a bit
hot, it’s dirty, a bit conflictual, racist, let’s move to France, you know. So
he has this French passport.’ However, Yiftachel reserves his strongest
critique for Burg’s comparison to Germany. ‘[It] irked me, though it has
an element of truth’, Yiftachel admits.
[H]e’s careful to say that this is ... pre-World War Two Germany. But
when you ... compare yourself to a beast, right, you don’t say, ‘Well,
but I compare it to the beast when the beast was a baby’, right? When
you say Germany, especially to Jews, you cannot separate from the
image of killing six million Jews. So, that is academically and politi-
cally and ethnically so infuriating!
I suggest that the rhetorical usefulness of Burg’s comments might derive

precisely from their impact.
Yeah, it hurts the most but it’s false. I mean, no other nation did what
the Germans did, and I hope nobody does. Not even the Rwandans
and the Cambodians, nowhere near what they did, right. So when
you compare it to that you take on board what they did later on. You
cannot just sort of stop. It’s not just the baby beast, but the baby beast
who ate your brothers and sisters and cousins, right?
... [A]n incredibly fundamentally different step altogether is the
extermination of the Jews. I mean, not even talking about the fact
that it’s a Jew talking about that, which is emotionally, of course –

but also the whole project of exterminating a whole nation. And
you could say Israel, politicising and colonising and breaking the
Palestinians politically, it’s all true, but there is no programme of
extermination. And in fact, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, if you
want to be very passionate about it, it’s very low-level violence. Very
low-level violence considering, you know, what the stakes are ... So
that comparison to Germany, it’s provocative, but it will alienate
most people and it’s also, I maintain, not credible, not credible to the
point of criminally not credible ...
I revisit some of these points in our interview three years later. Is it legiti-
mate to attack Burg from a class perspective when Burg’s critique is of
nationalism? Are Burg’s comments unhelpful or offensive? And are they
offensive for an individual with personal connections to the Holocaust,
or an Israeli Jew who inherits such connections from the collective?
What you can and can’t say, is with a meta-frame of transformation.

Of affecting some change. It’s not that you can or can’t say – you
can say anything ... but I was trying to say what one ought to say,
or what kind of discourse one needs to construct in order to effect
some change. And I still think that was counter-productive in many
ways ...
‘It takes us to compare yourself with your killer’, Yiftachel continues.
Which I think, psychologically ... is very troubling. ... Half the people
in Israel have lost family in there, so ... you drive the thing to an
emotive ground. It’s so uncomfortable, so inaccurate, so non-trans-
formative that I thought Burg was wrong in that respect.
I suggest that Burg’s statement seems to have got under Yiftachel’s skin
personally.
‘It still does, it still does’, Yiftachel agrees.
And I encounter it a lot, with the Palestinians more than Burg. There
are various ways, the Palestinians, for example, are, ‘Nazis, Nazis, the
Jews are Nazis’. And I tell them a) it’s inaccurate and b) you won’t get
anywhere with that, in terms of, you want to get some kind of coali-
tion, some kind of work together towards a joint goal. You just totally
burn your bridge that way.
I ask whether Yiftachel objects as an individual or as a member of a

collective.
‘I think, both’, he replies. ‘Cos we’re not just ever individuals anywhere,
but especially here. We’re very much part of a collectivity.’
I ask if this arises from Yiftachel’s own personal history.
‘The whole point of the nation ... is that it’s all your flesh and blood.’
‘But that part is a construct ... ’ I counter.
‘Anything until it hits you in a bodily way, immediately in front of your
eyes, is a construct, right, even inside a family’, Yiftachel responds.
Look, my family comes from Germany and Lithuania, and Romania

and other parts. My father’s family, his half of it was wiped out in
the Holocaust, including my cousins, my aunt, uncle, grandparents.
They all disappeared. In various ways. Some of them actually in
concentration camps and some of them were deported because they
were married to Russians so they were deported to Siberia and died
in Siberia. So there’s a whole lot of tragedy there, which, of course, I
think affects me.
Yiftachel’s response resolves my question of the distinction between

nation and person. However, the pain seems no less for someone like
Rabinyan, whose own family was free from such harm.
Concerns about the ‘Jewish nation’ extend beyond the Holocaust, but
the lesson appears to be that one should never underestimate hatred of
Jews. The ressentiment Zionist discourse frames the state of Israel as the
garrison against anti-Semitism, so supporters frequently label criticism
of Israel as anti-Semitic. NGOs are devoted to monitoring the media
(CAMERA, N.D.) and university campuses (Israel Academic Monitor N.D.)
for alleged anti-Israel bias, which they then conflate with anti-Semitism.
Israel’s defenders seek out criticism, speak out against boycotts and
condemn the use of terms such as ‘apartheid’ and ‘racism’. They represent
their interventions as fighting off an irrational and catastrophic hatred.
Interestingly, Neve Gordon, who has long criticised his country
and endorsed the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions campaign, has
participated in such efforts. Gordon (2003) criticised an earlier academic
boycott, refuted claims that Zionism is a global force, rejected the equa-
tion of Zionism with racism and drew attention to the lack of brutality
of the occupation compared with other regimes. He also produced a
glowing article about living in Israel. I am interested to find out why
Gordon put energy into these pursuits as well as his long record of
Palestinian solidarity struggles.
I ask why it is so unhelpful to state that Zionism is racism.

‘Because we have to understand the world in its complexity, too’, he
replies.
It’s not a monolithic movement, like no, I don’t think any national
movement is ever monolithic. So, we want to see it within its
complexity. And ... what I try, in my academic work and my political
work, is not to be a reductionist. So, you try to see the complexity, and
you try to not reduce phenomenon, one to the other. And I think there
is a difference between Zionism and racism ... Now ... has Zionism led
to the oppression and subjugation of the Palestinian people, or ... have
the policies of Israel been informed by Zionism ... led to bad? I think
so, yes. And so that’s what we have to be worried about. ... To come
and say Zionism is racism is, I think, a definitional mistake, a historical
mistake. And how it can help us as a political strategy, and whether it
can ... be detrimental, is a question. I think it can be detrimental.
Gordon references both academic rigour and political strategy; he pays

constant attention to how his arguments come across. He explains that
he wrote his glowing article, ‘Why I live in Israel’, at the request of a
publication that had long given him free rein, and found itself under
siege from Zionist organisations. Yet his commitment to facts and correct
terminology may extend beyond strategy or intellectual integrity.
‘I was asked once to contribute to a chapter on a book, The Genocide of
Palestine’, he tells me.
And I said, ‘There’s no genocide in Palestine’. I don’t think saying that

there’s a genocide or that there was a genocide in the Gaza campaign –
I think to say that is not true ... [I]f you count the numbers of people
killed, it’s very small. That’s one of the amazing things about this
conflict. Not many Palestinians as related to other colonial military
occupations. It’s minimal.
This comment echoes Yiftachel’s depiction of ‘low-level’ violence

compared with other situations. ‘It is an amazing phenomenon’, Gordon
raves, to the extent that his laconic demeanor permits.
That, if we go to your part of the world, to East Timor, where one

third of the population was wiped out, killed, massacred. And then
we look at 40 years of occupation here and see that Israel killed thir-
teen thousand Palestinians out of a population of three and a half
million. And we see two months in Iraq where that amount could
have been killed. And we look at Chechnya and see how, you know –
So ... to come and say, ‘this is the bloodiest –’ It’s not, and we can’t do
that. We have responsibility ... as intellectuals try to speak the truth.
And to speak the truth to power doesn’t mean to bend the facts so it
will fit our ideology ...
I ask Gordon why he objects to Norman Finkelstein’s (2005) claim that

the actions of Israel fuel the fires of anti-Semitism.
It’s like, you wouldn’t want to blame certain actions made by blacks
because of bigots. It’s better to blame the bigotry on certain actions
done by blacks? The person’s a bigot! ... I don’t want to explain away
bigotry by saying we can understand their bigotry cos certain people
got drunk and acted in a certain way on the street.
Gordon also objects to representations of Zionism as a global force (Baker

and Davidson, 2003; Mearsheimer and Walt, 2007) as ‘unpleasant’ and
‘not true in many ways’. I ask what such representations invoke.
‘You have to understand that anti-Semitism is real’, replies Gordon.
It exists in the world and is a real phenomenon. There are ... anti-
Semites, like there are people who are bigots and so forth. And we
have to take that phenomenon seriously. And we know that histori-
cally bigots and anti-Semites have done a lot of evil to a lot of people
around the world. And so we can’t brush it aside and say it’s not
important, historically. ... [T]here were anti-Semites before the exist-
ence of Israel, there was quite a lot. And they had their day.
So anti-Semites and, by implication, the Holocaust, underlie Gordon’s

concerns; he filters criticisms of Israel to see if they reflect such tenden-
cies. However, Gordon doesn’t throw out accusations indiscrimi-
nately, inviting one to accept his explanation of trying to engage with
complexity; of being determined to pursue accurate arguments.
Meron Benvenisti invokes more obvious fears for the Jewish nation
when he rejects terminologies that delegitimise his ‘entity’. ‘What would
you say to academics, theorists of nationalism, who say that nations,
tribes, ethnic identities are social constructs?’ I ask him.
‘Okay, so what’, he replies. ‘The Jewish construct is three thousand
years old. Once you show me another example of a phenomenon like
that, then I will discuss it.’ He then asks whether we are discussing
general or Jewish tribes. ‘General is social construct’, he goes on. ‘The

Jews define their own tribal affinity. Therefore, the Jews are not a racial
group. That’s why I intentionally define us as a tribe. We are pre-history,
like primitive, if you want. Primordial.’
I ask why he avoids the word nation.
‘Because nation is not strong enough to describe that, cos then you
can say social construct’, he replies. ‘This is an ancient phenomena that
preceded the definitions of nations. Jews themselves define themselves
as Zionists because ... they needed to play the game.’
I offer the social constructivist version. ‘I’ve read Jewish writers who
say that to be Jewish was always a religion, and that it only became a
nationalist movement when it became Zionism.’
‘Okay’, he says.
Being Jewish? It’s defined not by us, [but] by the goy, by the gentiles.
They have created that notion, they have alienated us. So it wasn’t a
positive definition, it was negative. Whoever is not a goy, is a Jewish
or is a ‘these people are different from us’ ... 1
Benvenisti endorses a social constructivist view of other nationalisms

(‘General is social construct’) but his invocation of his own ‘tribe’ raises
a dissonance between his presentation of Jewishness as an ‘other-de-
fined’ nationalism and the claims of longevity he has just made.
A threat beyond academia emerges when Benvenisti equates my tenta-
tive question about the theoretical dismantling of the Jewish state to a
‘declaration of war’.
... [T]his would be the entire world. Jews are not afraid of that. If it’s
not that way, they are surprised. So the last thing the Jews are afraid of
is to be Us and Them, cos that is the nature of the way of life on this
planet of the world, so even that is not going to work. I would even
welcome that project. You know why? Cos it would unify my tribe!
Fear of the Jew-hating Other emerges differently for Dorit Rabinyan,

who is concerned about the kind of regime that might replace Israel in
a single-state scenario.
Let’s say this Arab majority won’t be very tolerant ... For many reasons,
not only for its difficulty to let go of values from the old world ... Let’s
skip the Islamic thing, let’s skip how we see our societies around us
are treating women ... For us, living here would be like, and I don’t
mean mentally ... freedom won’t be a sacred concept. There won’t be

two nations living in harmony by co-existence ... It will mean that we
have to leave!
Bronstein alludes to this too, albeit with more optimism:
I hope life will be enriched by these changes [the return of Palestinian

refugees] and not oppressed or suppressed ... [P]eople threaten us that
it will be a radical Islamic society, and, of course, this is something
that I would struggle very strongly against, if this happened ...
Although fear of the Other certainly informs some dissident narratives,

Gordon offers persuasive arguments for its presence, while Bronstein’s
contingency plans to ‘struggle ... against’ adverse consequences of refugee
return do not inhibit his advocacy for it. Benvenisti and Rabinyan, by
contrast, link fear with self-preservation.
Self-interest
Fear and self-preservation dovetail with self-interest. Identification with

a Jewish nation and state delivers many benefits to those who subscribe,
and the price to pay in terms of existential insecurity may appear worth-
while. For dissidents, self-interest is more complex; they may observe the
cycle of violence, yet be reluctant to lower their privileges. Self-interest
may also manifest through efforts to live a ‘moral’ life.
Yonatan Pollack affirms my starting assumption that there might be
some price to pay in rectifying the Other’s oppression by rejecting the
‘leftist axiom that the occupation hurts Israel’.
I believe that Israel profits from the occupation immensely, in all senses.
In the sense of being a master class. Social, at the level of sociology. The
dominator, the master class. Definitely in an economic way.
Meron Benvenisti concurs, telling me, ‘All your leftist friends are
benefitting’ from the wealth disparity between the two societies,
talking about the political aspect of it because they don’t want to admit
that they don’t want to give up their privileges: the water quantity, the
beaches, the good life that will have to be destroyed to be shared by the
Palestinians ... The economic and social inequality, it’s all concentrated
on one thing – political equality – because it’s a way of diverting.
Only Neve Gordon rejects my assumption that there might be a certain

point at which concern for the Other becomes detrimental to the Us. ‘I
would think of it the opposite’, he challenges. ‘That the lack of a struggle
would lead to certain permutations that would lead to myself having to
leave ... ’
However, Yiftachel and Benvenisti affirm my positing of a dilemma
between resolving the Other’s problem and the interests of Israeli Jews.
Both liken the erasure of Jewish Israel/Palestine to an act of suicide. A
limit to concern for the Other is evident even in Pollack’s identification
with the Palestinian resistance: ‘ ... [T]he Palestinian political spectrum
from the very right of Hamas to the very left of the Popular Front all
speak about one state, and no one calls for the exiles of Jews.’
Self-interest for my dissidents, then, reconfigures politics in Israel/
Palestine to benefit the Other but without crossing a (variable) line of
harming Jews. They also satisfy self-interest by enacting this in a way
that enables identification as moral. Only Pollack is outright dismissive
of such a notion:
... I don’t weigh it in the form of, you know, of traditional

moralism ... redeeming myself. Clearly I think that my responsibility
in the thing – who cares how dirty I am? That’s not the issue. The
issue is ... to achieve liberation.
I am interested in how other dissidents’ continued preference of the

Jewish Us might be understood as manifesting personal (rather than
‘national’) self-interest.
Rabinyan is quite explicit on this. ‘I can’t lie and say I think about
[the Palestinians] before I think about myself,’, she declares, telling me
that she identifies with Israeli soldiers first and foremost. ‘They are my
brothers. Hasan was a very dear friend, close to me, I care about him
personally, but I can’t think of a nation of Palestinians to be prior to my
immediate identification with Israelis.’
Journalist Gideon Levy opposes the full return of Palestinian refugees,
because this would ‘create a new injustice ... That my house or my neigh-
bour’s house in Ramat Aviv [an expensive suburb in northern Tel Aviv]
will have to be evacuated.’ When I suggest some alternatives – new cities
built for returning refugees, for example – Levy responds that this is
‘utopic’.
I mean, on utopia, wonderful. Realistically, I’m not sure we can absorb

millions of Palestinians. ... [W]hen there are so many fears and hates
between the two peoples, it will bring to only more violence and blood-
shed ... [W]e have to remember that those two peoples have so much
between them, so much, so many emotions, so much bad blood. You
know, you don’t just bring them and everyone will fall on the shoul-
ders of the other. There is a terrible gap between the two societies.
This argument is worth reflecting upon in light of Levy’s support for

Israel becoming a civic state of its citizens. Zionist orthodoxy rejects the
return of Palestinian refugees, because their return would put an end to
the Jewish state. However, since Levy does not support the maintenance
of a Jewish state, arguably he should be open to return. Nonetheless,
he prefers continued exclusion on the grounds of cultural intolerance
between the two communities, or further injustice to Jews like himself.
Levy’s connection to Israeli life again raises the issue of self-interest.
When we discuss his refusal to be a ‘weirdo’, I suggest that his place in
the mainstream must be easy, compared with a life on the margins.
I’ll go to a shrink, and I start to find out it’s very hard to draw the line.
Sure, there are also many things in my life that are not connected to my
ideological goals. ... Sure. Sure, it’s for my comfort. They invited me two
or three months ago to participate in [the reality TV show] Big Brother
VIP. And there was a whole thing about me going or not going ... I
gained more by not going, but ... I would have gone because of selfish
things, and because of the thought that through Big Brother I can get to
audiences that I can never get. ... Both factors, sure, sure, but I can’t tell
you which one is dominant. It’s very hard to separate. I think it’s true
about anyone, cos I guess that all those ‘weirdos’, this also satisfies some
needs for them. I mean nobody’s an altruist who does everything. It’s
always finding out something that we gain out of it.
While self-interest is difficult to extricate from other reasons dissidents

might support policies harming their Other, we can read the above exam-
ples in this light. My intention is not to be critical of individuals; the
point is that this is part of their dilemma since, as many of them recog-
nise, there is a price to be paid in terms of lowering their privileges.
Reconciling with personal pasts
This section considers how dissidents digest past actions that contradict
their present ideals. I want to know how they interpret these events with
hindsight, and how they have contributed to their politicisation.
An issue that arises for all my dissidents is compulsory military service.

Milgrom and Bronstein refused to serve during Israel’s war with Lebanon,
a common ‘road to Damascus’ moment for Israeli dissidents (Lentin,
2010, pp. 88–9). Other dissidents who served in the Army explain how
they interpret their actions today.
Jeff Halper’s book expresses shame that he served, and pride that his
children have refused to serve. In interview, he offers more detail.
I went through, um, I won’t call it a Zionist phase exactly ... It wasn’t
that I was not for peace, but ... I was more focused on inside Israel ... I
wasn’t as alienated from Israeli society as I am now ... I guess for me,
at that time, the going to the Army was a part of that. ... I refused
to serve in the occupied territories, although I have to say I did do
basic training in the occupied territories, but when we had to do
things there, I didn’t do that. But I was older, I wasn’t in the army
Army. I was 27 when I came. So, I went through a month of basic
training, and then I went into the Reserves ... I was a lecturer. So, I
refused to carry a gun, I refused to serve in the occupied territories,
and they didn’t care. You know, so what. So, I was a lecturer in the
army, and I went out, and I lectured soldiers on social issues, social
problems. I was part of the education division. So, in other words,
it wasn’t being part of the Army, in a way that too much interfered
with my views.
I am curious whether Halper simultaneously regrets and justifies

serving. ‘You know, so what’ is ambiguous enough to refer to the atti-
tude of the Army, or to the response of Halper under questioning from
me. However, Halper may simply be clarifying why the contradiction,
which appears so clear today, was less obvious then. He goes on to
reflect on the male adventure element to Army service, which even
some left-wingers enjoy, and adds that the movement Yesh Gvul (There
Is a Limit)
are not pacifists ... Some of them are officers in the Army and they
love to go to the Army. So they just say, ‘Okay, we’re not going to
the occupied territories’. So, you have to kind of make that separa-
tion between going to the Army, I guess. Or, at least, I did then ... I
wouldn’t do that [now] and I’m glad my kids didn’t do that.
Neve Gordon declares that his own young children ‘are going to have
to decide for themselves ... I hope they decide to refuse’. Gordon himself
contemplated refusal, but was ‘convinced not to by [his] father’ on the

basis of ‘the humanitarian soldier’.
There’s the good soldier at the checkpoint and the bad soldier at
the checkpoint ... [O]ne would give a slap in the face to the person
that wants to pass, and tell them that they can’t pass, and cuss them
out ... [O]ne will say very nicely that he’s not allowed to let them pass,
and he’s very sorry that he can’t let them pass. But both become the
technology of the checkpoint. One is probably a better technology
than the other, but they’re both the technology of the checkpoint.
After Gordon’s compulsory service, he ‘did some reserve duty for about
a year or two in the educational corps’.
Before then, I didn’t do any reserve duty. And then they asked me
to go to Gaza and talk about human rights and human dignity to
soldiers in Gaza, and I said that I’m not willing to enter Gaza. I’m
willing to talk to the soldiers if I’m out of Gaza. And they took the
whole company ... out of Gaza, and I spoke to them about human
dignity and human rights for an hour and a half.
I ask Gordon to explain the distinction between talking to soldiers inside

and outside Gaza.
I was not willing to go to the West Bank or the occupied territories to

lecture. I’m willing to talk to anyone. I’m willing to talk to settlers, and
if I have the audience of settlers or soldiers, it’s a wonderful audience to
present my views. And, so, the military decided to give me that audi-
ence and I wasn’t willing to give up on it. And I would go and talk about
what I thought were the ... violations of the military, to the soldiers. It
was a wonderful experience in many ways, because I learnt a lot about
it, about the military and about the soldiers and what they do. The fact
that I was doing it supposedly as a military – I went like this [indicates
his civilian clothes]. I didn’t have to; it was giving me an opportunity
to talk to soldiers, which I would like to convince. I believe in discourse
and persuasion as a political form of bringing about change.
I asked what he hoped to persuade the soldiers.
I didn’t try to persuade the soldiers ... it’s not my job. [I tried] to be
reflective about what they are doing, and to make them reflective. ... If
I had to talk to them about what they should do, I would probably
tell them to refuse.
Part of the dilemma I explore in this book is how opposition is co-opted

so that ‘[e]very act of political resistance becomes an expression of the
“enlightened Israeli democracy”’ (Grinberg, 2009, p. 106). Interested in
Gordon’s take, I ask whether the Army used him as a fig leaf.
Not there. I think the Army is a bureaucratic institution that didn’t

realise what it was doing, and within three lectures realised it and
kicked me out. But the question still stands: am I a fig leaf? Which
is I think an important question. The answer is, definitely ... Israel
needs me ... Israel needs its dissidents to say: ‘Here we are; a free and
democratic country.’
This book’s most difficult engagement with personal history occurs, not
surprisingly, with Meron Benvenisti. Here, the topic is not Army service
but, rather, actions Benvenisti undertook as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem
in the 1960s. Son of the Cypresses includes an interview Benvenisti gave
to a journalist in the 1980s, looking back to the period following Israel’s
conquest of the West Bank:
In 1968 someone tossed hand grenades onto the road leading to the
Wailing Wall. Moshe Dayan came and said we must evict all the Arabs
living on the Wailing Wall road, despite it’s being clear that it was not
they who were to blame. Three tank units were brought in. I requested
four hours of grace in which to evict them peacefully. I went from
house to house with my aides. I explained the situation to them and
cried along with them. We helped them drag their belongings outside.
Thus the need to employ force did not arise. You ask if this was worth
something. It wasn’t worth anything concrete, but not one child cried.
I did not diminish their hatred. I occasionally see one of the people
who were evicted; he looks at me, and I know what he’s thinking. At
such times I reflect on the job I did. Perhaps I made the occupation
tolerable instead of intolerable. Perhaps I did wrong. (p. 79).
This is indeed an old interview; Benvenisti would never talk about ‘the
occupation’ today. However, I do hope he might talk about this painful
experience, since the writing contains such ambivalence.
‘It happened 40 years ago, that’s what I said, that’s it!’ he snaps. ‘What
is there to talk about? What you want to know? What, what, what?’
‘What was it like?’

‘I wept’, he states simply. ‘What else? Explain to me what you are after.
That I may be able to answer.’
‘Well, I would like to ask you what that weeping did to you’, I respond
carefully. ‘But that’s something that you don’t want to tell me.’
‘No, enough is enough’, he says decisively, before going on anyway.
[T]he alternative would have been worse ... They got thrown out of
their house, cos the Army would have evicted them. So, I thought that
maybe – some people would say, ‘You participated in this’. It depends
what ... The question is what. Shall I concentrate on the evil, and then
don’t [inaudible], or should I help? Philosophical questions.
‘I suppose that’s the question that people would ask now’, I muse,
thinking about Bronstein and Gordon. ‘Do you go and serve as a soldier
in the territories and try and be the good soldier who is kind to the
Palestinians –’
No, I don’t think so. I think that what I’ve done is something else. It
wasn’t a decision to evict them because of – military, ah, a military
directive, because a Palestinian threw hand grenades. So [inaudible]
decided to evict four houses, Palestinians, from their homes. Four
families, four specific homes [knocks on table in time to these words]
in the crossroads leading to the Western Wall.
‘But for those people, it doesn’t matter where they are ... They’re losing
their homes.’
‘How many times you make the same decision, if you are in a position
of power? Every time that you decide a budget for road accidents ... Don’t
be, don’t be so –’
‘Squeamish about it?’
‘Exactly, because you always do these things ... It’s very easy to iden-
tify as part of a process of dispossession and then it’s, “Ah, why, why do
you?” This is a very simplistic approach, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘That’s okay’, I say. The entire weight of our dysfunctional and yet
revealing exchange rests upon this moment. ‘Be honest with me. What’s
the right approach?’
‘The right approach is to see the case and understand it, and some-
times without judgement, because you just listen and you are not –
Don’t think that every time something happens, you have to pick sides,
because you don’t know enough. And what you know is half true.’
‘Well, what I know in that situation, I learnt from you’, I reply with
only a touch of petulance.
‘No, no. What you learnt from me is not the context, and you see, that
is – Who, who suggests the parallel to existing soldiers, me or you?’
‘Okay’, I admit. ‘Well, to me, it seemed similar.’
Well, that’s what I’m saying. So before you pass judgement on

something that happened 40 years ago ... take advice from an old
man. Think about the possibility that you remain peripheral, and
you only understand. Not decide. Not pass judgement. Sometimes,
understanding is enough. By understanding, you can understand
the victim; you can also understand the oppressor. Cos he has also
reasons. He is not a vile person. He is not an evil person.
Benvenisti ends our interview almost immediately after this exchange,

which I regard as a moment of reckoning. Despite his protestations,
there is a legitimate parallel between Benvenisti’s actions and the experi-
ences of Bronstein as an occupying soldier; it is telling how the two men
digest these experiences. Bronstein continues to define himself as part of
Israeli society, but develops a different political outlook. For Benvenisti,
on the other hand, evicting residents is an ugly business of which he is
compelled to be a part. It pains him to revisit it, precisely because it was
a necessarily evil of the Zionist project, which, at least at the time, he
supported.
Israeli literary and social critic Yitzhak Laor writes about S. Yizhar,
a well-loved Israeli author Benvenisti claims as inspiration (2000,
pp. 231–41). Yizhar
was a member of the Knesset representing the ruling party precisely in

the years during which what had been destroyed [i.e. the Arab land-
scape] was being buried. ... The Yizharian sorrow [over this erasure]
does not become a tragic sorrow because Yizhar does not permit
himself real heresy. He remains within the confines of the dominant
ideology ... and it a priori disallows any heresy, any real questioning
of its values and institutions. (Laor, cited in Piterberg, 2008, p. 213)
Lentin (2010), who also examines Yizhar, suggests that
nostalgia is an appropriate emotion to invoke so as to establish one’s

innocence and at the same time talk about one has destroyed ... [I]ts
relatively benign character facilitates imperialist nostalgia’s capacity
to transform the responsible colonial agents into innocent bystanders.

(pp. 56–7, referencing Rosaldo, 1989, p. 121)
These comments shed light on Benvenisti and explain some of his

hostility at my attempts to unearth his nostalgia’s political meaning. I
will revisit our exchange at the end of the book to consider some further
ways we might read it.
What does it mean to be clean?
Thus far, I have examined tensions between dissidents’ pursuit of

justice for the Palestinian Other and their attachment to the Jewish Us.
One category of dissident seems to escape this tension: Gideon Levy’s
‘weirdos’, who step outside mainstream Israeli-Jewish society. These
radical dissidents oppose a Jewish state, seek to end Jewish privilege in
Israel/Palestine and work with the Other rather than the Jewish Us. Uri
Davis, Yonatan Pollack and Gilad Atzmon fit into this category. Given
that my task is to explore whether, and how, Israeli Jews might over-
come the subjectivity instilled by the ethnocratiser state, I could simply
conclude that some do succeed in their efforts. However, I seek a more
nuanced consideration of these people. How do they represent their
relationship to Israeli Jews? Does their ‘weirdo’ status simply render
them irrelevant? And have they paid a price for it?
Let us first consider the relationship of ‘weirdos’ to the collective.
Young anarchist Yonatan Pollack represents himself as distanced from
Israeli Jews. I ask him why he is one of the few people I speak to who
is not particularly concerned for those who would regard him as part
of their nation. I think, here, of Bronstein’s determination to love his
‘fellow Israelis’ and integrate his vision of the past into their collective
lives. Pollack responds: ‘That’s not my politics, that’s not my character.’
‘So what makes you able to disregard them in that way, and not to be
mollycoddling them and worrying about whether they feel okay?’
‘A lot of it would have to do with psychology and that’s very hard for
me to address’, Pollack replies, adding that his political analysis leads
him to see the Palestinians as the agent of change.
Later, I reflect that Pollack’s distance from Israeli Jews does not neces-
sarily free him from contradictions. When we touch briefly on his
personal connection to Palestine, he tells me that his ‘family is here from
before, from a lot before, from the beginning of the twentieth century’.
Arguably, Pollack’s assuredness and perhaps even his disconnection
from mainstream society arise from the same sense of nativeness that
Bronstein invokes in his narrative. Pollack is more native than the state;
his family has been here for generations. His white skin and vivid blue
eyes mark him as part of the Ashkenazi elite; not for him the horrors of
the Holocaust, nor the struggles for assimilation faced by immigrants
from the ‘illegitimate’ Arab world (see Shohat, 1999). Though Pollack
never mentions this kind of privilege, he invokes it casually in his
disregard for the hegemonic Zionist discourse. And although we talk
about his family’s presence in Palestine before Israel’s creation, we don’t
talk about where they came from, or why. At the time, I surmise that
Pollack’s repudiation of Zionism precludes him from the responsibility
to account for their presence in Palestine, as part of legitimating his own
experience. Only later do I reflect that he, too, might have something
more to say about his family being here.
Uri Davis, like Pollack, traces roots back to Palestine, and displays the
confidence of the privileged Ashkenazi background. His memoir empha-
sises his nativeness; again, like Bronstein, he openly wears the stamp
of the Zionist project on his fit, suntanned body (Davis, 1995, p. 108).
Davis conveys his relationship to the Jewish collective in more affec-
tionate terms than Pollack, and retains a Hebrew identification whilst
strictly quarantining its political impact.
‘ ... I have come to make a distinction between my tribal affiliations
and my political [and] national affiliations’, he explains.
I regard my affiliation to Jewish communities to be primarily tribal.

Tribal affiliations encompass a range of elements. They don’t have to
include religious undertakings, they may or may not. They may or
may not encompass sentimental parts of tribal heritage and commu-
nity. I recognise and celebrate parts of the tribal heritage of the
community into which I was born. I celebrate that which I regard to
be decent and I reject and denounce what I regard to be ethnocentric
or outright racist.
He explains his politics in the following terms:
I’m a product of the American and French revolutions, in that I’m

wholly committed to the principle of separating religion from the
state ... The business of the state is to attempt to advance human
welfare and my understanding is that ... it is valid, if it is informed by
the values of the Declaration of Human Rights ... I have no problem
with celebrating such parts of the tribal heritage as I regard to be
decent and recognising the cultural baggage into which I was born,
because I do not enter my politics in this way.
Crossing the Border details Davis’s determination to have his two older
sons circumcised (p. 321). Davis, a professed atheist, also writes of
the significance of the Bar Mitzvah of his eldest son, Gul, explaining
the cultivation of this ‘ritual traditional heritage’ in a speech to the
congregation:
For me this Bar Mitzvah is being held in critical recognition of the

historical, cultural and sentimental point of departure of your/our
family; in recognition of the fact that you were thrown into the world
and into human society at one specific point and not another; in
recognition that your point of departure into life is Jewish context
and Jewish history rather than any other context and history. ... Your
continued critical affiliation to Jewish history is a matter of voluntary
resolution. But your point of departure into life is not. It is given to
you. It does not, as such, determine your future affiliation. But it does
determine the specifics of your person and character in numerous
ways ... (p. 306)
When we meet, Davis explains his recent project: re-writing the Jewish
Passover Seder prayer, the Haggadah.
Since the text has been hijacked by political Zionism, in order to

justify the settler colonial intervention by the WZO [World Zionist
Organization] in the country of Palestine, one cannot, in the context
of the past hundred years, ignore the abuse that is associated with
this text ... I decided to try my hand at subverting and undermining,
attempting to retain the traditional scene and take out of the text
ethnocentric, collective punishment and God ... Now, I devoted
time over the past four years in order to do that job. I regarded that
to be a contribution and recognition of my affiliation to the Jewish
tribe.
I ask Davis why he has not simply walked away.

‘It seems that I do need this’, he replies. ‘ ... I can’t answer why my
tribal affiliations are sentimentally important to me, but they are. So
just take it!’
It seems almost too simple that the Western liberal axiom of separating
religion from the state releases Davis from contradiction, but it seems to
work. Davis’s attachment to his heritage, compared to Pollack’s distance,

appears as a facet of his character, rather than a contradiction.
The relationship between Gilad Atzmon and the ‘Jewish collective’,
on the other hand, is more complicated. While Atzmon links his iden-
tification to Israel and cites his formative years there, he is extremely
hostile to ‘Jewishness’. In the next chapter, I will interpret Atzmon’s
relationship to this identification as a cause of his politics rather than a
consequence.
My second exploration of ‘weirdos’ considers the political implications
of their weirdness. While I have deliberately refrained from analysing
how their society treats my dissidents, their marginal status warrants a
brief examination, in order to explore whether they pay a price for their
radical politics in the form of complete isolation or self-exile.
Given Pollack’s obvious distance from Israeli Jewish life, one might
expect him to tell stories of exclusion, but this is not the case. ‘[I]t’s
definitely not like we’re ostracised’, he tells me. ‘You have to understand
that part of Israeli society is its liberal myth.’
‘You guys are the fig leaf for the enlightened, kind benevolent
nation?’
‘And for Jews, there really is a democracy here’, Pollack adds. The idea
of Jewish democracy ‘allows [him] to do a lot of things that [he] couldn’t
have done otherwise’.
When I consider Uri Davis’s place in his society, I start with a British
journalist’s observation that Davis’s
rejection of political Zionism, coupled with his conversion to Islam

and his recent election to Fatah’s Revolutionary Council means he is
treated with a mixture of scorn and hostility by vast swaths of Israelis
and supporters of Israel in the Jewish diaspora. (Freedman, 2009)
In the interview, I ask Davis how strong the sense is, in the Hebrew
community, that he is no longer one of them.
‘You have to make a survey in order to answer that question’, Davis
tells me. ‘I don’t think I’m qualified to answer it.’
I ask Davis to explain the extent to which he actually engages with the
Hebrew audience. He answers by way of a long-winded parable, in which
a vendor sells a mule to a buyer under false pretences. It seems as though
the mule obediently performs its tasks after its owner whispers a request
in its ear. The buyer finds, however, that the mule remains obstinate,
so he returns to the vendor and complains. The vendor takes a beam
of wood and beats the mule, which goes about its duties at last. The
buyer complains: he did not know he would have to beat the animal in
order to gain compliance. The vendor responds: ‘Sometimes you have to
bring its attention to you.’ After a small pause, Davis continues that his
‘main intervention in Israeli society is through the support for Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions’.
‘To be bashing the mule on its head?’
‘And getting its attention.’
Gilad Atzmon, meanwhile, maintains a significant distance from Israeli-
Jewish society. He does not join the rest of his immediate family when
they return there to visit relatives. His novel A Guide to the Perplexed (2002)
evokes a future in which many Israeli Jews have fled from a dismantled
Israel. Even other dissidents revile Atzmon – Uri Davis declares that he
collectively stereotypes people, which is ‘utterly odious’.
My final consideration of the ‘weirdos’ explores the price they pay
for their actions. Gideon Levy argues that all individuals act according
to their own self-interests, and I get a strong sense that both Pollack
and Davis enjoy the roles that they play, as well as sourcing inspira-
tion from their ideals. Pollack, with his cool tattoos, belongs to a rather
glamorous international community of activists whose appeal derives
at least in part from their marginality and the whiff of danger. Davis
is similarly iconic; famous across Israel and seemingly reveling in his
notoriety. Yet, I surmise that both men must also pay some kind of price
for the lives they have chosen.
Pollack is quick to downplay any personal costs. ‘I don’t think it’s
such a huge thing to do. I mean I’m not paying such a huge price for
it, really.’ Whilst there might be a social price to pay, given the circles
he moves in, this is largely irrelevant. It also does not seem to affect his
ability to earn money – Pollack is a graphic designer who performs as
little work as he needs to in order to survive, and says his clients don’t
care about his politics.
For Davis, the picture is more complex. He depicts himself as having
an extraordinarily high calling to the pursuit of justice: ‘I cannot answer
the question why the voice of my conscience is more compelling than
the voice of conscience of other people. It remains a mystery.’ This
calling has placed significant demands on his time, to the detriment of
his personal life.
‘[M]ost of my time is devoted either to my academic work or to soli-
darity work’, he says.
[U]pon establishing the first family, the second family, the third
family, the women who decided to join their lives to mine were aware
that I’m 95 per cent out of the house. In all three cases, children
came into the equation rather late in the relationship. Eventually,
the biological clock ticks with a female spouse in a family relation-
ship, and in all cases the potential mother said, ‘Look, I have the
potentiality of delivering life. I realise that I cannot really ask you to
share childcare in any significant way, but I still don’t want to have a
child from another man. So I’m resigned to being effectively a single
mother, and I really want to have a child, and it’s with you.’ Now,
I don’t think anyone has the right to deny the fulfilment of that
request from a person, any person, let alone the person that is the
chosen point of one’s family.
Do you have children? When the child comes into the relation-
ship – you can talk and discuss and agree whatever you want to
agree – it’s a completely different kettle of fish. The spouses I was
fortunate enough to join were admirable, admirable, persons, but
also persons with an academic career, and a medical career, and
after the child was born, it appears that the mother needed help.
And she turned for help from the obvious party that is obligated to
help, namely the father. The father says, ‘I can’t and I don’t really
want to, and I don’t really want to and I can’t, because reducing
my commitments from 95 per cent commitment to the call of my
conscience ... to 50 or 60 per cent is a betrayal of my calling’. It can
crack trust. ... And it can crack a rather good marriage. And it did,
three times.
I ask Davis whether his conscience did not also extend to his family
life. There is a long pause, after which Davis states, ‘To a degree I
am a product of patriarchy. I tried to reform, but apparently not
sufficiently.’
This is Davis as he represents himself in his book as well, married to
his political work. Nowhere is this more painful than in Davis’s tales of
his firstborn son, Gul. The reader meets Gul when he is born to Davis
and his first wife, a fellow academic, in 1973. They leave Gul with a
baby-minder, who calls him Grant and leaves him in his pram all day.
Davis recounts an occasion on which the child was sick and he was
writing an important document.
I still inwardly cringe at the memory of my baby son, lying in a bundle

at my feet, unhappy and whimpering, while I worked ... I ignored him
and tried to shut him up rather than interrupting my work to pick
him up in my arms and comfort him. (Davis, 1995, p. 123)
Gul goes on to develop anorexia nervosa, and specialists diagnose him

with a compulsive suicidal disorder at age 16. Davis writes in 1995 that
Gul has been hospitalised ever since; listing, in his meticulous way, the
names of all of the different hospitals (p. 324).
When we meet in 2010, I don’t ask Davis about Gul’s health, but care-
fully suggest that the costs of Davis’s actions appear to have been his
relationships with those close to him.
‘Correct’, he declares. ‘And most significantly, with my firstborn
son.’
I tell him that I would like to talk about Gul, but I am also aware that
it is a sensitive issue. ‘Well, let’s agree, at least for that stage, for you to
be satisfied with that answer’, he suggests.
We do not return to the issue, yet Gul remains the elephant in the
room. Narrative Analysis enables me to analyse Davis’s insertion of
Gul’s narrative into his own larger one. He depicts Gul as paying a
price, but is it for the Palestinian struggle? Is this a political tragedy, or
merely a personal one? At times, Davis employs his political struggle to
outsource responsibility, as in a letter to his mother and sister in Israel,
responding to their accusations that he is in some way responsible for
Gul’s condition:
Ora [Davis’s sister] starts with the statement: Gul pays the price of my
politics. How does she know? Maybe Gul pays the price of having the
kind of mother that he has. Nira and I shared legal custody for Gul,
but care and control for Gul was with Nira. We had decided to have
Gul on the understanding that his care was to be primarily his moth-
er’s responsibility and after our separation and divorce this remained
the case. It is a dangerous business to start blaming me or Nira for
Gul’s situation and I would hesitate to direct judgements against his
parents in this way. (p. 340)
Despite his last sentence, Davis nevertheless depicts Nira as a question-

able mother, whilst representing himself as virtuous. Elsewhere, Davis
writes:
Given my total political mobilization I could have children only

if my woman agreed to assume the responsibility for looking after
them. It is one’s duty to do good and combat evil, and conscience
always comes always [sic]. For me this meant that my commitment
to the cause of Palestine always came first, so my work had priority
over any other claim to my time ... I regarded my position on this
matter as rather standard, in that this was a predicament facing every

committed professional. (pp. 320–21).
Yet despite this ‘standard’, Davis depicts his family breakdowns as the
price paid for his political struggle.
We can also read additional micro-narratives in his autobiography,
perhaps intended to convey his idealistic politics, more critically.
In one such narrative, Davis’s second wife removes her top in the
company of male Palestinians. Davis presents his frustration with his
wife through a framework of cultural imperialism, depicting her as
ignorant and insensitive. However, this situation looks quite different
through the lens of gender analysis, with the woman cast as the Other
amongst men. In another anecdote, the couple have a disagreement in
a vehicle, and she swipes his conciliatory hand away. Davis is angry at
this display in front of his Palestinian friends who are travelling with
them, because a wife is not supposed to reject her husband publicly
(p. 322). In these micro-narratives, Davis seems to put the sensitivi-
ties of the Palestinian Other (and his own pride) above those of his
consort.
Perhaps this is a product of his professed ‘conservative liberal’ approach,
which clearly demarcates public and private spheres. In public, Davis is
principled with regard to minimising distinctions between members of
the human race, while in private he retains a pride in what he calls his
Jewish tribal origins. However, this demarcation does not adequately
resolve the complexities of family relationships. While Davis fighting
apartheid but embracing patriarchy does not amount to a failing of his
political position per se, it is interesting to consider. The bigger ques-
tion is whether we can draw broader conclusions about the toll that
‘crossing the border’ might exact; I suggest we cannot. Many activities
and passions can distract an individual from other responsibilities; what
is most interesting in this case, however, is that Davis himself represents
these life choices as part of his political journey, and hence central to his
‘crossing the border’.
Meanwhile, it is hard to discern the personal price Gilad Atzmon pays
for his political stance and actions. It strikes me, somewhat absurdly,
upon spending time with him, how Israeli he still seems. It is a like-
ness he owns: ‘[L]ike an Israeli, I do not hold back, I do not mince my
words ... [I]t is no secret that I look like an Israeli and sound like one’
(2011, p. 186). The bass player in his band is Israeli. His wife is Israeli.
Atzmon seems very content with his music career and his home in
London. Yet I question whether everything is perfect when I consider
the vitriol he carries; I explore later how we might conceptualise this as

a price to pay for his political stance.
Do dissidents who are more radical escape the ‘trap’ of identifying with
Zionism and hence neglecting the needs and interests of their Other?
It appears, from looking more closely at the radical dissidents in this
study, that they do. However, the price that they pay might make this
option prohibitive. Atzmon hates his origins and – in a sense – himself.
Davis and Pollack emotionally and physically depart from their origins
as they escape the political distinction between the Us and Other. Such
dislocation is likely to remain a significant barrier for most Israeli Jews,
meaning that although radical politics might be a ‘way out’ of the dissi-
dents’ dilemma, it is unlikely to provide a well-trodden path.
7
Dissident Discourses
Introduction: limitations and discontinuities
This chapter explores the dissidents’ strategies for reconciling their

personal identification with concern for the Other. Varying degrees
of embeddedness into their society and its hegemonic identification
lead the dissidents to either retreat from concern for the Other or shift
into different ways of talking. This gives rise to contradictions, omis-
sions and side steps, which I conceptualise as discontinuities. I suggest
that the dissidents make use of six available national identification
discourses: hegemonic ressentiment Zionism and five alternatives,
which attempt to subvert it. However, the alternative discourses have
developed in the context of the ethnocratiser state and the hegemonic
ressentiment discourse. Due to this, and because of some contingencies
of the Israeli case, the alternative discourses are unable to simultane-
ously satisfy identification, overcome ressentiment, and work towards
inclusion and equality. This places dissidents in a potentially unresolv-
able bind.
The content of the discourses I identify in this chapter, and how
they organise dissidents’ perceptions of their situation, informs this
problem. Each discourse has a specific way of organising past, present
and future. It prescribes the identification of the (Israeli Jewish) indi-
vidual employing it and enunciates a particular vision of – or for – the
(Palestinian) Other. However, a given discourse may not provide appro-
priate tools for working towards equality or co-existence, even if it
partly resists the hegemonic ressentiment Zionist discourse. In particular,
the discourses I identify as binational, Kinder Zionist and post-Zionist
remain wedded to an Us. This Us is then projected backwards into the
past, yet cannot account for the Us and the Other found there without
169
the clear and compelling terms of the ressentiment discourse. Meanwhile,

the civic discourse and inverted ressentiment fail to resonate with strong
ethnonational identifications.
This situation presents dissidents with two possible strategies. First,
if the discourse appears to compel a dissident to identify in terms
that do not resonate or appear to be ‘safe’, he or she may embrace
continued preference of the ethnic Us due an apparent lack of alter-
native choices. This obliges the dissident to abandon the connection
to the Other inspiring employment of the discourse in the first place.
Since single discourses may fail to serve the dissidents in this way, they
may embrace the second strategy instead. The second strategy involves
moving between contradictory and competing discourses, underpinned
by different considerations. This fluid and repeated movement between
multiple intellectual spaces generates discontinuity, since dissidents are
only able to defy the limits of each individual discourse by simulta-
neously embracing numerous contradictory positions, thereby defying
logic itself.
Such discontinuities are not the dissidents’ faults, nor are they unique
to individuals in such situations. We all have multiple performances
of identification available and promote different parts of ourselves
at different times to different audiences. Dorit Rabinyan (2010) gives
poignant voice to these multiplicities:
I’m not ready to give up any of these hands, you know? I’m not
ready to give up my patriotism to Israel and to who I am, as much
as I’m not ready to give up my humanistic, universal self. So there’s
no way someone is gonna make me give up my patriotism ... But
I’m a patriot, but I’m never the less a humanistic ... . This duality
is what I consider to be human. What I consider to be alive. It’s
only, it’s only, it’s the only way I know how things are, you know.
There is no other mechanism I can refer except for seeing both all
the time.
However, the dissidents’ employment of multiple discourses tells us

something about the situation they face. Their context gives rise to a
unique problem of trying to connect with the Other across institution-
alised ethnic privilege. I do not judge the dissidents for being unable
to make the discourses do the job; rather I shed light on how dissent
against ressentiment is constrained by the latter’s hegemony within the
ethnocratiser state.
Dissident Discourses 171
The discourses
Hegemonic ressentiment Zionist discourse

As dissidents articulate their concern for the Other, they must negotiate
around the dominant ressentiment Zionist discourse. As I have outlined
already, ressentiment Zionism depicts an ancient, singular Jewish nation,
displaced from biblical Israel, having wandered the earth in exile.
Jewish experience and identification centres upon the territory of Israel/
Palestine, and the discourse – after Jewish ‘return’ – nullifies life outside.
The state of Israel is the only solution for the problems Jews have
experienced at the hands of Others throughout history. Others have
always hated Jews. Others in Palestine similarly hate Jews, defying their
attempts to secure a safe haven in the land to which they are entitled.
Others’ rejectionism has caused the political conflict in Israel/Palestine;
resolution can only occur when Others accept the rights of Jews to form
a majority and self-govern. In the absence of this ideal, Jews will remain
vulnerable, and will defend themselves with conduct befitting a peace-
loving nation.
The ressentiment Zionist discourse presents self-evident facts about
history, identification, and Others who act as violent obstacles to peace
and self-determination. While the alternative discourses challenge these
tenets, they must also traverse the ground laid by them. Accordingly,
every alternative discourse necessarily takes ressentiment Zionism as its
starting point, whether counterpoising or modifying it. Alternative ways
of understanding Us and Other in Israel necessarily come up against the
institutionalisation of ressentiment, from the legal embedding of ethnic
categories to the recruitment of every Israeli Jew into armed forces vested
with occupying the Other. Alternative discourses, then, are not merely
abstract tools with which the dissidents may construct new visions of
their society; rather, they are tools hewn with the same raw materials
as ressentiment Zionism. They may bear the mark of the Zionist project
and its outcomes, in the form of thick ethnic categories and concep-
tualisations of the Jewish nation in history. This context shapes the
discourses, alongside external political influences and challenges from
within Jewish cultural traditions.
The civic discourse

The civic discourse available to the dissidents takes its inspirational
basis from outside the Israel/Palestine context. Invoking the civic–
ethnic distinction in nationalism studies, the civic discourse disregards
the categories of Us and Other within the polity of reference. In the

Israel/Palestine context, the civic discourse privatises ethnic identifica-
tion, depicting those who might otherwise be Others as equal partici-
pants in a shared society. Removing official ethnic identities from the
political sphere, the civic discourse erases the boundaries that facilitate
privileging the Us and legitimise harming Others within the state. This
discourse, therefore, enables users to escape the ‘trap’ constituted by
pursuing the interests of the Other whilst using asymmetrically institu-
tionalised categories of identification.
However, for Israeli Jews, invoking a civic discourse might be more
complicated, since Jewish intellectual debate problematises strict civic-
liberal interpretations of public and private identification. Yitzhak
Laor (2009) argues that there is an internal contradiction at the very
heart of Jewish identity, with Western civilisation demanding that Jews
‘divide themselves between being a Jew (“at home”) and being a human
(outdoors). As far as the Christian is concerned, no such duality exists ... ’
(p. 126). When Napoleon granted French Jews citizenship, Jewish depu-
ties had to decide whether they constituted a nation or a religion,
since if they were the former they could not also be French citizens.
The deputies decided that Judaism was a religion, but ‘among them-
selves ... noted that the question of either/or was essentially a Christian
question’ (Ehrlich, 2003, p. 66). Hannah Arendt and other individuals
active within the early cultural Zionist movement also opposed the
subordination of Jewish identification to universalism (see discussions
in Raz-Krakotzkin, 2011). Meanwhile, when Zionist scholars explored
the issue, they predictably concluded that such dilemmas could only
be resolved in a Jewish state (Avineri, 1981, pp. 8–12). Since Christian
traditions shape the civic discourse within the context of the Western
Enlightenment, such a discourse may not provide a straightforward fit
for those who do identification differently, and outside this tradition.
The binational discourse

The binational discourse available to dissidents also derives from
general precepts in political theory. It builds from the understanding
that ‘ethnic nations’ are authentic entities, in keeping with a primor-
dialist approach to ethnicity, which accepts at face value the claims of
those who identify as such. In the hands of pragmatists, the binational
discourse may also reflect an assumption that, at the very least, the
‘nations’ in question are ‘real’ enough for the state to institutionalise
them on equal terms in pursuit of peace between those who see them-
selves as belonging.
A binational discourse might invoke political solutions proposed by

the scholarly father of consociational democracy, Arend Lijphardt (1977,
Chapter 2), such as power sharing through grand coalitions, minority
vetoes, federalism and proportional representation. It might also invoke
mechanisms of living harmoniously in a context of non-domination,
such as those explored by Iris Marion Young (2005, pp. 153–155), partic-
ularly horizontal federalism. However, these are the logical applications
of a binational discourse; the content of such a discourse in Israeli Jewish
political life requires a different explanation. A binational discourse
employed by an individual in this context not only asserts the exist-
ence of nations as objective fact, but also necessarily invokes subjective
identification with one of them. Therefore, an Israeli Jew invoking a
binational discourse will identify with the ‘Jewish nation’, depicted as a
long-standing entity with a connection to Palestine.
The binational discourse is the modern manifestation of the idea that
two ‘nations’ call Israel/Palestine home, and hence a political arrange-
ment of formal co-existence should ensue. Raz-Krakotzkin (2011)
explains it
as the framework of discussion and responsibility ... Binationalism

leads to the basic understanding that the questions of the rights of
the Jews and the question of the rights of the Palestinians are the
same. It thereby implies a Jewish identity based on the recognition
of Palestinian rights, one that does not exclude the Palestinians but
which begins to imagine these identities together. (pp. 59–60)
However, drawing from the cultural Zionist tradition already discussed

in this work, the binational discourse cannot offer a coherent account
of this process. The problem occurs at both a theoretical and an applied
level. At a theoretical level, any kind of binationalist or multicultur-
alist discourse is groupist, depicting nations as agents and actors. When
an individual identifying as Jewish applies such a groupist perspective
to the colonising events in the history of Israel/Palestine, the resultant
discourse can only depict a Jewish nation fleeing horror for homeland.
There is no space within the discourse for the resident Other to ques-
tion or resist; accordingly, this Other now faces not merely a political
movement, but a self-evident nation with both claim and justification
for the land. The best that the binational discourse can say to the Other
at this moment of colonisation is, ‘Budge up, make room’. Thus, it is
questionable whether the claim for recognition of the Other’s rights is
an inherent part of the discourse.
Moving on from this internal flaw, the binational discourse in Israel/

Palestine has, in its favour, an alluring procreative quality. Although
the discourse depicts an initial formal cooperation between two distinct
nations, it alludes to an amalgam of both identities emerging sometime
in the future; a combined Jew–Palestinian category made up of character-
istics of both. This putative new category differs from civic nationalism
in that it combines two ‘ethnic nations’ rather than relegating ‘ethnona-
tional’ attributes to the private sphere. Within the binational discourse,
then, the coupling of two ethnic nations produces a brand-new baby,
which ties the families together. The new ‘baby’ is unique; its parents
extol its qualities in the same terms they previously applied to them-
selves. Possessing qualities of each parent, the new ‘baby’ is an ‘ethnic
Us’ whose birth joins the Other to Us, and Us to the Other. It is an evoca-
tive vision.
The Kinder Zionist discourse

Another alternative discourse draws from the tradition sometimes
depicted as ‘left Zionism’ by scholars and commentators (see critique in
Grinberg, 2009 p. 111; see also Laor, 2009) and framed as ‘liberal nation-
alism’ by at least one of them (Tamir, 1993). Kinder Zionism has devel-
oped in the Israel/Palestine context, but is analogous to discourses in
other ethnocratising contexts, such as the discourse privileging Malays
as historical owners of Malaysia (see Mauzy, 1983, pp. 2–4, 47).
Kinder Zionism depicts an improvement upon the present scenario as
the optimal solution to the Other’s problem. Improvement of the situa-
tion of the Other is to occur without sacrificing the privilege enjoyed by
the Us, and especially without weakening the boundary between Other
and Us. Kinder Zionism manifests most clearly in a distinct political
solution: ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state
alongside a Jewish Israel. Whilst such a model might appear to offer
equality, its application would result in Others in certain zones either
being compelled to leave their homes, or forced to accept second-class
citizenship in a still-ethnocratising Jewish Israel. However, the two-state
model is not the only possible manifestation of Kinder Zionism, which
is fundamentally an approach to identification rather than a political
programme. Kinder Zionism appears to be a genuine attempt to move
away from the stereotyping and hatred endemic to ressentiment, but the
rules of engagement are laid well in advance to ensure continued priori-
tisation of the Jewish Us.
Mandelbaum (2012b) takes a more cynical view of this discourse,
which he labels as ‘national left’ (p. 450). He argues that it invokes a
disconnect from historical (if still problematic) ‘leftist’ pursuits of

‘peace’ and instead promotes unilateral disengagement for securitised
demographic purposes. In embracing this ‘rightist agenda’ (p. 463) the
‘national left’ (or Kinder Zionist) discourse is potentially more dangerous
than overtly right-wing nationalist discourses, since it mainstreams and
normalises such sentiments as ‘a necessary policy, which stems from a
liberal and democractic traditions [sic] much like other Western states’
(p. 463).
If Mandelbaum is right, then Kinder Zionism may not belong in
the dissenting discourse basket any more than ressentiment Zionism
itself belongs there. However, I maintain that we need to consider this
discourse as a form of dissent – as a stated and claimed opposition
to ressentiment Zionism – for two key reasons. First, as I noted in the
Introduction, whilst discussing whether Dorit Rabinyan was a suitable
candidate for analysis, there is a difference between overt demonisation
of the Other and at least attempting to understand and connect with the
plight of the Other. Even Mandelbaum (2012b) acknowledges that the
‘national left’ maintains ‘a liberal approach regarding the non-Jewish
and non-Zionist minorities in Israel’ (p. 463), and his analysis maintains
the distinction between the ‘national left’ and the ‘right’ it increasingly
emulates. Second, even if Kinder Zionism turns out to be closely tied
to ressentiment Zionism, and I will suggest that it does, then we learn
this precisely by taking it seriously from the outset as a way of framing
dissent. We learn that apparent dissent may be phoney or hamstrung,
and that people who imagine themselves to be challenging hegemonic
discourses and practices might be doing little more than reproducing
them. However, we learn this precisely by examining this precarious
dissent alongside more radical endeavours; by understanding it as inside
the basket of dissent rather than outside it.
The post-Zionist discourse

An additional alternative discourse available to the dissidents is post-
Zionism. Post-Zionism can be linked more generally to post-nationalism
or post-modernism (Ram 2005, p. 35). However, its Israeli applica-
tion draws from a wide range of movements, including ‘new’ or ‘revi-
sionist’ historians like Ilan Pappe (1988, 2001, 2004), Benny Morris
(1994, 2004a) and Avi Shlaim (1988, 2000), and sociologists like Baruch
Kimmerling (1983, 1992, 1999), Gerson Shafir (1999) and Uri Ram (1999,
2005, 2008). Academic literature termed post-Zionist debunks historical
myths about the sanctity of Zionism (Shlaim, 2000; Morris, 2004a), and
critiques the construction and treatment of Mizrahim (Shohat, 1999).
Perhaps the core proposition tying this very broad literature together
is that Israel is ready to shrug off its past and move boldly into the
future. But what future? Materialists like Shafir and Peled (1998) suggest
that globalisation is leading Israel towards a less ethnicised polity; Ram
(2008) suggests that this may be accompanied by a reactionary cleaving
to ethnic identification. Yet how does Israel really ‘grow up’, empty itself
of ethnic content and divorce itself from history, and is this really the
aim? Rather,
[i]s it the case that the heroic men and glorious past that were effec-
tive during earlier nation-building stages must be updated, and the
practice of sceptical rationalism regarding the national past amongst
descendants becomes the current capital through which the Zionist
project may continue into late modernity? (Dalsheim, 2007, p. 527)
Post-Zionism may, therefore, simply be Zionism repackaged for a new,

sceptical age. The suggestion that some works labelled post-Zionist
regard the Zionist project as legitimate but completed reinforces this
notion. Yadgar (2002) suggests an aim to ‘improv[e] the (national)
status quo, neither revolutionising the existing order nor completely
undermining it’ (p. 64). I am most keen to consider this feature of post-
Zionism. Accordingly, I suggest that the post-Zionist discourse depicts
itself as ostensibly disengaged from the past; hence as forward-looking.
It is secular, grown-up and eager to end the conflict and make Israel
a good place to live. A significant reference for this transformation is
Israelis themselves; post-Zionism is about shrugging off the shackles of
ressentiment and ethnocratisation as they mire their subjects in conflict.
The post-Zionist discourse retains a loose attachment to the ethnic Us
whilst being open to the idea that it might change and recede. However,
this loose attachment is not pinned to a fixed continuation of Jewish
privilege, as in Kinder Zionism, nor linked to equal sharing, as in the
binational discourse. Ideological principles might inform the civic,
binational and Kinder Zionist discourses, but the post-Zionist discourse
breaks with ideology (Ram, 2005, pp. 34–5). Post-Zionism imagines no
more Zionism telling people how to live, and perhaps no more heavy
instructions from any other quarters either. Even Dorit Rabinyan, the
least post-Zionist interviewed, expresses a desire to ‘breathe’ and be free
from such pressures.
Released from collective prescriptions for how to live, pragmatism
comes to the fore within the post-Zionist discourse. It sets lower expec-
tations than the civic discourse, from which we can differentiate it by its
significant, albeit more fluid, attachment to the ethnic Us in political life.

Post-Zionism is necessarily woolly about the identification it promotes
and the political solutions it advocates because it is ‘still tentative and
partly confused ... trapped in the defense of some Zionist positions while
rejecting others’ (Nimni, 2003, p. 9). It harvests the historical fruits of
Zionism whilst simultaneously aspiring to a future in which they cease
to have a negative impact. Endorsement seems inherent in the depic-
tion of Zionism’s completeness; if it was necessary for ‘the nation’ to do
what it did – and if ‘the nation’ at that historical moment is accepted
as an organic entity – then mistreatment of the Other may be collateral
damage; a necessary evil. Though the discourse presents mistreatment as
problematic, on closer inspection this might only be because it extracts
a price from Us. A (partial) dissolution of identification thus evades
condemning or celebrating the past, yet leaving this past unexcavated
could be a way of quietly maintaining ethnic privilege into the future.
The inverted ressentiment discourse

The final alternative discourse, inverted ressentiment, epitomises the
ressentiment theory developed in Chapters 1 and 2, but with a twist.
Inverted ressentiment is ressentiment in reverse; it elevates the Other as
virtuous and demonises the Us. The inverted ressentiment discourse
available to the dissidents bestows hatred upon the Jewish collective,
requiring an Israeli Jew to extricate him or herself in order to avoid
being tarnished, or else to see the self as a legitimate target of hatred.
In the case of extrication, the individual can never become the vener-
ated Other, since the inverted ressentiment discourse maintains ethnic
boundaries. Thus, the discourse decisively Others those employing it,
banishing them to a purgatory in which universalistic identities appear
illusory, but ‘desirable’ identities are unattainable.
An inverted ressentiment discourse is essentially somebody else’s ressen-
timent discourse. In the Israeli Jewish context, the inverted ressentiment
discourse mirrors a Judeophobic or anti-Semitic discourse. Whilst it might
at first appear perverse for those identifying as Jews to employ such a
discourse, Falk (2008) suggests that ‘Jewish self-hatred’ might have long
been a feature of Jewish consciousness. He explains (in groupist terms)
that ‘a minority group in a given society that is repeatedly told that it is
bad, that is rejected and persecuted, may also develop a collective group
self that is bad and negative’ (p. 54).
In Europe, the ressentiment Zionist discourse itself employed the nega-
tive vision of Jews offered up by anti-Semitic discourses. Representing
the Diaspora Jew as a homeless parasite who should emigrate from
Europe, Zionism dovetailed with anti-Semitic ideology; albeit with

an instrumental component – Zionism Othered the ‘old Jew’ of
Europe to create the celebrated ‘new Jew’ in Palestine (Yadgar, 2003a,
p. 55). However, since this was more about juxtaposing the unflat-
tering ‘before’ shot with the attractive (Zionist) ‘after’ shot than actual
hatred, we should not overstate Zionism’s conflation with anti-Semitic
representations. That said, in the context in which Zionism flourished,
it is not hard to see how the application of groupist terminologies and
blanket labels of Good and Evil to ethnic categories might give rise
to a discourse like inverted ressentiment. The thick ethnic identities
constructed by ressentiment Zionism might only appear malleable in
the case of complete moral reversal – whatever price this may exact
from the individual.
Dissidents using discourses
In this section, I demonstrate how the dissidents use the available

discourses to identify and explain their place in Israel/Palestine and
their visions of the Other. Each dissident employs a primary discourse,
but shifts into others if they cannot use their primary discourse to
reconcile identification with equality and justice for the Other. I cover
the discourses in the order above, with the exception of the ressenti-
ment discourse, which I explore at the end. No dissident employs this
discourse as their primary discourse; however, some return to it, because
it alone offers a coherent framing of Jewish identification and history in
the context of Zionism. Because each dissident narrative is unique, some
invite deeper analysis; I therefore discuss some dissidents in more detail
than others. As I move through the discourses, I will also revisit some
dissidents, suggesting how their movements traverse the limitations of
single discourses.
Civic discourse
The civic discourse, offering complete engagement with what the
dominant discourse constructs as the Other, is the primary discourse
of young anarchist Yonatan Pollack and veteran maverick Uri Davis.
Tellingly, both men distance themselves to varying degrees from the
Israeli Jewish community, enabling them to adopt an alternative vision
for constructing a polity. Neither, however, delivers the straightforward
version of this discourse, which would be to argue for a civic regime in
Israel/Palestine, in which all ‘Jews’ and ‘Palestinians’ would be equal
citizens of an ethnically blind state.
Pollack reserves an anarchist’s scepticism for the state’s claim to ethnic

neutrality and ‘capacity to be an agent of justice or an agent of equality.’
His vision of himself and the Other, however, conforms to civic univer-
salism, demonstrated by his work with the Palestinian popular resist-
ance. Pollack does not see that ethnic categories have a place in politics:
‘People want to see themselves as Jews and that’s their national iden-
tity, so be it. But it’s very different than saying there should be a state
for Jews.’ Moreover, while ‘allowing as much autonomy to any group
is a good thing’, implementing such autonomy cannot inhibit Others.
Pollack’s personal motivator is the struggle against injustice: ‘I’m not
so interested in the nationalist part of it, but for me it’s obviously a
liberation struggle.’ The civic discourse thus constitutes Pollack as an
individual fighting injustice, rather than a Jew or Israeli.
Uri Davis, whose rewritten Haggadah and support for ritual circumci-
sion demonstrate commitment to his ‘tribal affiliation,’ uses the civic
discourse in a different way. Nevertheless, his identification keeps him
free from contradictions because he privatises and de-nationalises it (‘I
do not enter my politics in this way’). Davis’s civic discourse manifests in
his pursuit of a PLO identity card minus exclusivist religious imagery.
Both Pollack and Davis distance themselves from Israeli Jewish
society – Pollack to the extent of problematising the very ties that bind
it (‘What is Jewish culture?’), and Davis by situating himself within a
Palestinian milieu, politically and personally. There is something telling
in the fact that these are the only two of my dissidents to adopt a primary
civic discourse. It seems to take a rather extraordinary approach to ques-
tions of identification within Israeli Jewish society to reach the posi-
tion of effectively giving up Jewish nationalism. If only ‘weirdos’ like
Pollack and Davis are willing or able to do this, we might question the
extent to which the civic discourse is a feasible option for dissent, given
that it requires letting go of the ‘Jewish nation’. Accordingly, while the
civic discourse is entirely coherent – and, indeed, is the only discourse
that can pursue equality or justice for the Other without generating
internal tensions – it will not measure up for most dissidents, because it
negates their identification. This is summed up aptly by Eitan Bronstein,
who says, ‘Nationality is still important ... . A more citizenship sense of
nationalism ... is a bit beyond my vision’.
Binational discourse
A larger number of the dissidents seem comfortable using the binational
discourse, which enables them to retain existing ethnic categories and
attempt to reshape the power relations between them. The discourse’s
procreative quality evocatively alludes to a new nation; however, dissi-

dents who use the binational discourse as their primary discourse
generate discontinuities as they navigate the history of the Zionist
project and the establishment of Israel. We can see this across several
dissident narratives.
Oren Yiftachel and Eitan Bronstein employ the binational discourse
in a straightforward fashion. Yiftachel utilises it as the basis for his
model of a non-oppressive binational state, displaying its procreative
quality in his hope for ‘intermarriage’ and ‘love ... prevail[ing]’ between
future generations. Bronstein takes seriously the cultural identities
of ‘Jews’ and ‘Palestinians’, claiming that they have a greater right to
Israel/Palestine than (additional) Others. His engagement with Israel/
Palestine’s history invokes the legitimacy of two nations on the land.
Jeff Halper also employs the binational discourse to make this argument,
augmented by a post-Zionist desire for Israel to be a ‘normal country’.
Neve Gordon claims that a ‘Jewish’ way of thinking informs his politics,
particularly his affinity for the work of Leon Roth, the Jewish intellec-
tual who sought to embrace Others.
Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom couples the binational discourse with the
civic discourse in a way that illustrates my observation, above, that
the dichotomy of public/private identification may not apply so
easily to contexts outside the Christian Enlightenment tradition. For
Milgrom, privatisation is not possible because he sees politics and reli-
gion as inseparable from culture. They form part of his ‘Jewish milieu’,
whilst he simultaneously connects with a universalist milieu through
his activism. As a rabbi, Milgrom has a certain audience (‘I know that
there is a Jewish public that is waiting for me and needs me to say these
things’), and Milgrom’s Jewish identification appears central to his poli-
tics. He invokes a Jewish Us (‘ ... [W]e didn’t – we don’t – have enough of
an ideology of partnership’), yet deconstructs national bonds (‘I think
that the only significant social category is right now’). He resists the
construction of the Us as a community of faith with his ‘foggy’ theology
and professed inability to ‘use God language’. If it is not belief in God
that defines Milgrom’s Jewish identification, then it can only be his rela-
tionship to those with whom he shares his Jewish ‘milieu’; a relation-
ship that Milgrom seeks to invoke in a non-national way. Perhaps the
futility of this underpins his melancholia, for it becomes apparent that
Israel is the site of Milgrom’s Jewish identification; the physical locus for
what is now a national Us. Milgrom’s exile from Israel is an exile from
an Us consumed by nationalism. When we meet in Berlin, Milgrom
demonstrates his melancholic exile in poignant ways – his only mobile
phone is an Israeli number; he emphasises the time he spends on the

internet dealing with Israeli issues: ‘I am still in Israel, even when I’m
here.’ Israel has become the only place in which Milgrom’s Jewish iden-
tification can have meaningful content. I understand Milgrom’s primary
discourse as binational because we cannot ultimately differentiate the
‘we’ he invokes from the ethnonational Us of Zionism, despite his inten-
tions. Therefore, Milgrom’s discontinuities parallel those of other dissi-
dents who employ binationalism as their primary discourse, particularly
with regard to how they evaluate the Zionist project.
The binational discourse has a tension within it. On the one hand, it
claims to offer equal consideration to both ‘nations’ and both ‘national
histories’. On the other hand, (‘re’)constituting the Zionist’s ‘nation’
through colonial settlement of Palestine necessarily marginalised Others
and denied them the space for refusal. This tension plays out in the
dissident narratives in interesting ways; dissidents move into other
discourses to work around it.
For example, when I ask how the events of 1948 might have unfolded
differently, Milgrom legitimises the creation of the UN’s Jewish state in
1947 (‘I think that was a much better starting point’). Then, when I
critique the consequences of this, he says, ‘I guess it would have been
better if the state had not been established in 1947 but rather that things
had sort of, you know, worked out’. Finally, when I try to pin down
how things might have ‘worked out’, Milgrom can only explain what
he would have done if he had been there: ‘Hopefully I would have been
a peacemaker or someone who was thinking about the impact of this
on other people ... ’ Milgrom has been using the binational discourse,
but when I talk about the events of 1948, he becomes ‘trapped’ within
the paradigm of warring nations needing their own states – the para-
digm ressentiment Zionism manifested in Palestine. Milgrom slips into
the Kinder Zionist discourse to argue that the starting point of two states
for two nations might have been better than what unfolded; failures of
acceptance (on the part of non-Jews) and Israel not sticking to the plan
are therefore the problem. However, when I ask Milgrom to revisit the
historical dynamics, he confronts a Zionism that ‘didn’t figure out in a
nice way’ the ‘resentment and a feeling of being marginalised, and an
anti-colonial struggle’ of the Other. He then shifts again; this time back
to the binational discourse, but positioning himself as a lone moral dissi-
dent in history. He reframes the conversation: ‘The question is, so what
was developing, how would I have felt in those situations?’ Interestingly,
this is not the question – I have been very eager for any dissident to
provide a coherent plan for Cultural Zionism! Yet all Milgrom can offer is
himself: ‘a peacemaker or someone who was thinking about the impact

of this on other people’. The binational discourse gives Milgrom nowhere
else to go; his deliberate reframing of the question becomes a kind of
omission. He chooses not to segue into another discourse – a civic one,
perhaps, which would write off the whole project as misguided, or a
ressentiment one, which would justify it. Milgrom cannot go to the civic
discourse because he ultimately frames himself as part of the Jewish Us.
He simultaneously resists ressentiment, especially the inverted ressenti-
ment that might follow his conclusion that We are the problem. Instead,
there remains only the lone dissident in space and time, the melan-
choly rabbi self-exiled in Europe. While the ressentiment discourse does
not trap Milgrom, the binational discourse ties him; the nationalism he
eschews binds him through his Jewish identification.
Oren Yiftachel utilises the binational discourse with more ease,
digesting its contradictions by legitimising, when pressed, the creation
of Israel, despite his affinity for co-existence. Yiftachel’s depiction of
Israel’s founding as a ‘colonialism of refugees’ removes negative intent
to Others and explains forces at work beyond the reach of moral rumina-
tions. Jeff Halper, meanwhile, depicts Zionism as a positive nationalist
movement; problematic only when infected with ‘ethnocratic’ ideas
and colonialism. Where Yiftachel finds virtue in the victimhood of refu-
gees, Halper overtly rejects this formulation (‘they weren’t all refugees’)
and instead finds virtue in benign intentions and temporal relativism
(‘You know, it’s a different reality, a different context, a different set of
thoughts’).
Raz-Krakotzkin (2011) suggests that binationalism can provide ‘the
fertile ground from which to generate an alternative approach to the
present’. He argues that ‘a critical reading’ of the literature of Cultural
Zionists ‘indicates the path to a process of decolonization – which in
this context means an urgent rethinking of Israeli Jewish nationalism,
with the understanding that it must include Palestinian nationalism’
(p. 59). Invoking Cultural Zionism in this way enables dissidents to map
the future. For Halper and Bronstein, Cultural Zionism provides contem-
porary blueprints for reconfiguring Israel/Palestine, or ‘decolonising
Zionism’ (Halper, 2010). Given Bronstein’s explicit project (through
Zochrot) of encouraging Israeli Jews to take responsibility for the troubled
history in Palestine, identifying the ‘better Israeli’ of Cultural Zionism
could be part of that ownership. If Bronstein asks his ‘fellow Israelis’
to revisit a past depicting their collective identification as oppressive
coloniser, this might prove too difficult (see Abdel-Nour, 2003, 2004,
pp. 710–11). The ‘better Israeli’ within the Cultural Zionist tradition
offers a prouder heritage for people like Bronstein and – ultimately,

perhaps, under his tutelage – the entire ‘Jewish nation’.
However, despite this potentially fruitful application of Cultural
Zionism, there is also the risk of evading genuine engagement with the
Other. There is a tendency within Zionist social science and discourse to
depict as ‘internal, Israeli [Jewish] only’ affairs, those which have actually
been dialectical with the Palestinian Other (Piterberg, 2008, pp. 62–4).
For liberal Zionist ‘gatekeepers’, rather than actually engaging with the
collision between settler and colonised,
it is always and without exception about ‘us’, ‘our’ dilemmas, doubts,

soul searching, struggles with nature, and so on and so forth ad
nauseum. The centrality of this denial for a proper understanding of
what liberal settler consciousness is all about cannot be over-empha-
sised. (Piterberg, 2001, p. 222)
Lentin (2010) makes a similar criticism, arguing that despite significant

efforts of Israeli Jews to know the Palestinian Other – often as military
enemy to strategise, but also as partner for co-existence – ‘the Palestinians
themselves remain unchartered territory’. Instead, a ‘kitschy but deadly
fascination with the Palestinian other’ (p. 104) manifests as a ‘contradic-
tory attraction enabl[ing] us ... to digest the horrific past’ (p. 96).
The danger is that the contemporary binational discourse merely
recognises the doubt and soul-searching within Zionist history, whilst
skimming over the tension between a colonial project enacted upon
Others, and purported concern for those Others. I have argued that
the historical co-optation of internal dissent ultimately strengthened
the ressentiment Zionist discourse’s depiction of evil Others resisting a
virtuous project. The danger is that contemporary dissidents invoking
this tradition might ultimately contribute to, rather than subvert, this
discourse. Moreover, critics question whether organisations like Zochrot
still ultimately silence and appropriate the narrative of Palestinians
(see Lentin, 2010, pp. 145–49, 159–62). The most potentially damning
critique is that ‘discourses of remaking Jewish identity’, emphasised
by Bronstein as a key aspect of Zochrot’s work, ‘are ultimately a central
part of the ethnoracial logic of stratification. The Palestinian-Philistine
is a pre-modern victim, requiring being “given voice to”, while the
Israeli-Jew is modern, or postmodern ... conferring voice to the voice-
less Palestinians’ (Lentin, 2010, pp. 161–62). Neither the dissidents nor
I can resolve these tensions. The discontinuities arising from the bina-
tional discourse are evident, from the dissidents’ return to the necessity
of political Zionism in the establishment of a Jewish state, to admitting

the failures of the co-existence discourse at the time to offer a viable
alternative (contextualised by Halper and Bronstein as ordinary people
doing the best they could). Even dissidents who attempt to atone for the
‘national’ past and incorporate the privations of the Other into collec-
tive memory face accusations of navel-gazing and continued appropria-
tion – this time not of land and chattels but victimhood and grief (see
Lentin, 2010, Chapters 7–8). Bronstein speaks most incisively about this
bind, boldly concluding that there is ‘no way out’. At least insofar as
history is concerned, then, the binational discourse cleaves those using
it back to the Zionist project, just as their Cultural Zionist forebears ulti-
mately cleaved before them. Therefore, as much as the tradition creates
a discursive space to explore uncomfortable truths – which may lead to
actions – these processes will remain subject to questions about whether,
and how, Israeli Jews can ever really take responsibility for the history
in Palestine.
Kinder Zionist discourse
‘Let’s have a wall. Let’s have a gate in the wall.’ (Dorit Rabinyan, 2010)
Introducing the Kinder Zionist discourse, above, I suggested that Kinder

Zionism represents a genuine attempt to do justice for the Other, albeit
within strict limits, which distinguishes it from ressentiment. We find
Kinder Zionism in sentiments that ‘good fences make good neighbours’,
aptly illustrated by Dorit Rabinyan in the quote above. She poignantly
describes her connection with Hasan Hourani and his friends and family,
illustrating a linkage to the Other, yet peppers her narrative with motifs
of separation, walls and boundaries; depicted as just and in the interests
of both parties.
It is helpful to consider the Kinder Zionist discourse with reference to
Raz-Krakotzkin’s (2011) ‘concept of separation’ (pp. 59–60). Rabinyan
(2004) depicts the separation of Jews and Palestinians as a viable means
of seeking justice and equality, even as the actual Other (Hourani)
disputes this claim with his preference for a binational state. Their polit-
ical disagreement illustrates the limits of the Kinder Zionist discourse;
even as Rabinyan engages with an actual Other who argues against her
vision for his justice, she holds on to an illusory Other for whom her
‘modest, lukewarm peace’ will be enough.
Kinder Zionism often attaches to a particular political programme:
Jewish (ethnocratising) Israel must continue to exist alongside a
Palestinian state, and this is the limit of identification with the needs or
interests of the Other. There is little space, for example, to consider what
it might be like for Others to live as an explicit minority in a Jewish state.
Rabinyan mentions in passing that she thinks Israel’s ‘Arab minority
is an equal citizen’. She then depicts my arguments regarding unequal
access to housing and land as
such a small community of criteria amongst so many levels of

freedom, of abilities that Palestinians in other Arab countries won’t
have ... Such freedom of speech, such freedom of education, so many.
No, [your criticism] is just like taking two per cent out of 98 per cent
and just pointing out to it. And being realistic, I have friends, Arab-
Israeli friends, who say to me ... ‘The most educated, democratic,
knowledged [Arab] society and community in the whole world is the
one in Israel.’ I mean, it’s the tools that we give ... to the Arab Israeli
that turns against Israel by the time it’s convenient ... It’s the knowl-
edge of freedom that allows you to point out what is lacking in these
few bits. I call it a few bits, but someone who has an agenda will call
it an enormous discrimination.
Later in the interview, Rabinyan also finds herself defending elements of

the occupation that she purports to oppose (she has written of ‘shame
and criticism for what Israeliness looks like and for the occupation as
its main feature’, describing it as ‘bad and harmful’). We talk about an
image of an Israeli soldier pointing a gun at a Palestinian child in the
occupied territories, and Rabinyan compares her response to my descrip-
tion of this image to her feelings about the wall snaking through the
West Bank.
‘Let’s say even if I can look at this terrible wall and understand it’, she
begins,
this terrible wall is saving lives, and our lives. In the meantime it’s
killing us in different ways, but it is saving lives. So ... I can see that
this gun is deadly, that it can kill the little child. But this gun is
protecting me. What can I say?
There is nothing that either of us can say. Rabinyan cannot use kinder
Zionism to knock down the wall, nor turn the gun away from the Other-
child. Under questioning, she returns to the ressentiment discourse’s
depiction of the threat of the Evil Other and the greater worth of the
Us. (The wall does not just save lives, but ‘our lives’.) She knows that
the child being threatened by the gun is vulnerable, and at one point
declares that she does not need protection ‘from this child. This child is
harmless.’ Yet the soldier and the gun are there to protect the Virtuous
Us from the Evil Other, and as long as there is the fear of violence, there
is an easy collapsing of individuals into categories which determine
their worth and status.
Meron Benvenisti also utilises a kinder Zionist discourse, despite advo-
cating a single-state solution reifying two ‘nations’ in a power-sharing
arrangement (2003). In interview, he responds indignantly to my sugges-
tion that he aspires to such a model (‘I don’t say that I want to see it! ... I
am the one who is very upset about it cos I wanted a Jewish state!’).
His continued attachment to the Jewish state (he ‘is’ upset, not ‘was’)
suggests that Benvenisti still ultimately supports the goals of the Zionist
project; he just considers them defeated. Thus, while he writes with
compassion about the Other, expressing apparent indignation about
the erasure of Palestine’s Arab markers (2000, Chapter 1), his explicit
primary interest remains the well-being of the ‘Jewish nation’. Whilst the
classic axiom of a Jewish state for a Jewish nation serves this well-being
for Rabinyan, and indeed for mainstream Zionism, for Benvenisti, this
axiom no longer fits the reality. Thus, his kinder Zionist discourse advo-
cates political solutions not out of a genuine desire to celebrate ‘a Jewish
identity based on the recognition of Palestinian rights’ (Raz-Krakotzkin,
2011, p. 60), but rather from a perceived lack of alternatives.
Benvenisti’s pseudo-autobiographical writings about his childhood in
Palestine (2007), and his meticulous cataloguing of the destruction of its
Arab component (2000) invoke the binational discourse and a connec-
tion to the Other. He makes this explicit when he suggests that the ‘bina-
tional mode of thought’ might give expression to the ‘tragedy’ of the
Other, which he now professes to ‘live’, ‘even though [he] perhaps caused
it ... ’ (Shavit, 2003). Yet Benvenisti ultimately identifies with the Zionist
project of building a Jewish state, claiming to welcome the hostilities of
Others as they would ‘unify [his] tribe’, and depicting the Arab Other as
responsible for his own dispossession by starting the 1948 War. Despite
displaying an understanding of the perspective of those who resisted
the Zionist project (‘The fact that they have their own reasons to – good
reason to reject us, I understand. Understand from the very beginning’),
Benvenisti depicts the War as a discrete event rather than a continua-
tion of existing dynamics. This enables him to blame the dispossessed
for their own fate since ‘they decided that the sword would decide’. ‘As
Benvenisti views Jewish and Palestinian/Arab categories in thick, ethnic
terms, he cannot depict them in any other way than as ‘impregnable
national collectives’ (Piterberg, 2008, p. 64). Therefore, in order to tell

the story of the conflict between these collectives and the victory of his
own ‘side’, Benvenisti must employ the ressentiment discourse, which
depicts the Other as deserving his fate, with all members of that Other
responsible for its misfortune. The Saids, in being wealthy and fleeing to
Cairo, are responsible for not sticking around to defend ‘their’ nation.
Thus, the Kinder Zionist discourse provides a basis from which dissi-
dents can entertain the idea of improving the lot of the Other, whilst
also continuing to prioritise the Us. However, confronting the dissidents
with Kinder Zionism’s limitations regarding equality and justice for the
Other prompts segues into ressentiment Zionism. From here, dissidents
minimise the very need for these things by demonising or blaming
the Other. The limitations built into Kinder Zionism – and therefore
requiring those using it to shift into a different discourse – facilitate an
‘entitled’ avoidance of responsibility that ultimately enables continued
prioritisation of the Us.
Post-Zionist discourse
Let us now look at how dissidents employ the post-Zionist discourse.
This is the primary discourse of journalist Gideon Levy. It is also a
discourse that Jeff Halper utilises alongside the binational discourse.
The narratives of both men depict a yearning for normality alongside a
legitimisation of the Zionist project, through either its just basis (Halper)
or its necessity (Levy). These dissidents illustrate how a circumscribed
future underscores the post-Zionist discourse. We can also see in their
narratives how the post-Zionist discourse clandestinely legitimates the
‘ethnic’ past. Dissidents using the post-Zionist discourse slip into other
discourses when asked to pin down the meaning and application of
their ideas.
The post-Zionist discourse, like the binational and Kinder Zionist
discourses, takes the ‘Jewish nation’ as an organic actor in history; in
resolving its European problems in Palestine, mistreatment of the Other
becomes a necessary evil. We see this when Gideon Levy states that
Israel’s establishment was a solution to the Holocaust. As Bronstein
observes, there is ‘no way out’ of Israel’s history, but in the context of
the post-Zionist discourse, certain features put in place by the Zionist
project remain sacrosanct. Continued Jewish privilege operates through
claims to rationality: if Gideon Levy lost his home in Ramat Aviv, this
‘new injustice’ would not adequately resolve injustice done to Others.
Levy also rejects enacting the right to return, because ‘when there are
so many fears and hates between the two peoples, it will bring only
more violence and bloodshed’. Rational self-interest continues Jewish

privilege by ruling out certain options, and at times extends to a ressenti-
ment pitting of the virtuous Us against Them. (Why should I have to give
something up for Them? If we can’t live together, it is They who must remain
excluded.) The post-Zionist discourse lacks the analytical basis for either
abandoning Us and Other (the civic discourse) or celebrating them both
equally (the binational discourse). In the absence of a critical framework,
categories continue unquestioned, normalising and obscuring existing
power structures. Moreover, since ethnic categories acquire the social
meanings generated by ressentiment, the inherent fear of the Other and
demand for self-preservation, endemic to ressentiment, remain.
One of the political solutions often endorsed within the post-Zionist
discourse illustrates this clearly. Moving beyond Zionism ostensibly
means an end to Israel’s status as a Jewish state. The key replacement
countenanced is a state of its citizens, yet the discourse consistently
frames this in the context of a two-state solution. In other words, the
post-Zionist discourse welcomes an Israel that is a state of its citizens, as
long as this Israel does not also include (presently occupied) ‘Palestine’. None
of the dissidents using the post-Zionist discourse endorses establishing
such a state in all of Israel/Palestine as part of a one-state solution. While
a tiny minority of (usually ex-) Israelis favour this option (Lentin, 2010;
Behar, 2011; Abarbanel, 2012; Peled, 2012), the general ‘post-Zionist’
conceptualisation of a state of its citizens excludes the occupied territo-
ries (see, for example, Ram, 2008).
This may be the case for historical reasons. ‘Normalising’ Israel was
a tenet of the Zionist project right from the start (Ram, 2005, p. 34),
thus a small, civic Israel might have been Zionism’s logical conclusion
following the successful building of a Jewish state. However, an addi-
tional reason to reject a single Israel/Palestine is that a civic polity of
undefined parameters threatens those who identify as Jews/Hebrews.
The civic-liberal model invites a kind of ‘veil of ignorance’ (Rawls, 1971,
p. 287): if one supports a state of its citizens, then one ought not to
be able to pre-decide the ethnic make-up of that state, since the value
of ethnic blindness should prevail. Yet individuals identifying as Jews/
Hebrews would know that in a single state in Israel/Palestine, they
would only constitute around 50 per cent of the population; an unap-
pealing prospect (see Young, 2005, p. 153). Thus, individuals employing
a post-Zionist discourse to invoke a civic-liberal state know this state
would contain a high number of Jews. Such a situation is only possible
within a two-state framework, since the bulk of the non-Jewish popula-
tion would be in a separate state. A civic small Israel would no longer
privilege Jews, but would remain dominated by the Hebrew language,

calendar, culture and social norms. It might no longer circumscribe
people’s identities, but its demographic components and borders
(explicitly excluding the occupied territories) would be pre-ordained.
The prescription of identification could end, precisely because it would
no longer be required – Zionism has successfully done its job of building
a Jewish polity through an ethnocratiser state. Culturally and politically,
then, the ‘Jewish majority’ could still enjoy inexplicit dominance (see
arguments in Nimni, 2003, pp. 12–13), only resolving the problems of
the Other in a prescribed form.1 Thus, whilst the post-Zionist discourse
offers an attractive way of reconstituting identification, it leaves several
things unspoken and intact. It enables dissidents to make a partial break
with the past and posit an Israel that is more inviting to Others, but
only by leaving a history of Jewish privilege – and perhaps a more subtle
continuation of it – unexcavated.
Inverted ressentiment
The bizarre inverted ressentiment discourse can explain the apparent
anomaly between Gilad Atzmon’s antagonism to Jewish national iden-
tification and his celebration of other nationalisms, as well as his more
than playful usage of ‘self-hater’ and ‘anti-Semite’. Atzmon’s proclama-
tions of being ‘ex-Israeli’ signify ongoing identification, even in resist-
ance. Atzmon refrains from employing a civic discourse eschewing
ethnic identification; instead, he remains embedded within Jewishness,
celebrating his (self-)hatred. This makes plausible things that other
dissidents regard as categorically impossible, such as wanting one’s own
collective to disappear; the state of affairs Atzmon depicts in his novel A
Guide to the Perplexed (2002).
Atzmon’s engagement with the Other manifests as a by-product
of his interaction with his Jewish identification. (‘Israel is just one
symptom of Jewishness. Zionism is a global movement. It has nothing
to do with Palestine.’) He avoids flags and symbols, whilst professing to
enjoy Palestinian dancing, and reveres German nationalism. His aver-
sion to Palestinian nationalist symbols does not derive from univer-
salistic distaste (in keeping with a civic discourse), but rather because
he considers that Western pro-Palestinian activism is co-opted by Jews
(‘Britain, the Palestinian solidarity discourse, was controlled by very
small circle of ‘righteous’ Jews’). Ultimately, we must consider whether
any kind of ressentiment, even with the Us as its subject, can provide
meaningful engagement with the Other. Indeed, inverted ressentiment
may be yet another manifestation of the tendency noted by Piterberg
(2008) for ostensible concern with the Other to be an exercise in navel-

gazing (pp. 62–4). Perhaps Atzmon’s jibe that the ‘self-hating Jew loves
himself hating himself’ reveals more than it might at first appear.
Ressentiment discourse
I have suggested that some of my dissidents employ elements of the
ressentiment Zionist discourse in their narratives. The ressentiment
discourse offers the only coherent means of telling their story in a
way that legitimately places the Jewish nation in Palestine. While the
versions of this discourse employed by the dissidents often avoid crude
demonisation of the Other, they emphasises the virtue of the Us.
Yiftachel, for example, tells the story of victimhood in Europe and
the Arab world, which legitimises Israel as a ‘colonialism of refugees’.
Yet refugees from the Arab world did not become so until after Israel’s
establishment. However, the ressentiment story of Israel as a haven for
the persecuted Jews of the entire world ensures that virtue remains
on the Jewish side. Gideon Levy tells a similar story when he depicts
Israel’s creation as a ‘solution for the Holocaust’. Depictions of Zionism
as a positive nationalist movement, such as those made by Halper and,
to a lesser extent, Bronstein, also potentially draw on the ressentiment
discourse. Zionist settlers have good intentions towards the ‘Arabs’ upon
whose lands they seek to build their homeland; for Halper, this only
goes wrong when they employ ‘ethnocratic’ logic.
Despite a greater focus on the Virtuous Us, Evil Others do appear as
ressentiment invocations in the dissident narratives. Rabinyan depicts
Evil Others when invoking her need for protection. Palestinians are
kept waiting in lines ‘for reasons’, and Rabinyan fears malevolent forces
which, upon a putative return of Palestinian refugees or a single-state
solution, ‘will mean that we have to leave!’ However, Rabinyan is able to
slip out of ressentiment again, perhaps because other aspects of her iden-
tification embrace contradiction. She employs writing metaphors and
blurs the line between real people and book characters, which enables a
fluidity of movement between self and Other, universal and particular,
‘Arab’ (Persian) and Jew. She has spent her whole life asserting her right to
multiplicity; she can segue into ressentiment without it consuming her:
I don’t have this absolute knowledge about myself, about my exist-

ence, that I would take somebody saying, ‘It’s very absolute, it’s
very clear, one solution’. No, there’s ... always double meanings,
subtext ... There’s always doubt, nothing is absolutely clear, absolutely
one truth.
For Meron Benvenisti, meanwhile, slippage between discourses invites a

wholesale return to ressentiment, projected outwardly at his interlocutor
but also taking in the Said family, the ill-organised ‘Palestinian nation’
and the ‘goyim’ in general. Benvenisti depicts the Arab Other as respon-
sible for its own dispossession by starting the 1948 War, which I shall
discuss more in the final chapter of this book.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have argued that we can understand the dissidents as

predominantly employing one of six discourses – the hegemonic ressen-
timent discourse and five alternatives. Apart from the civic discourse, the
rest retain an ethnic identification component. Within an ethnocratiser
state, people are compelled to think in terms of Us and Other and to see
themselves as belonging to one of these categories. This then sets the
tone for how they evaluate the past, present and future of the collective
to which they see themselves as belonging. The available discourses may
not enable the dissidents to say the things they wish to say, compelling
them to use more than one, which generates discontinuities. In the final
chapter of this book, I will explore the implications of this for Israel’s
future and for how we might understand dissent within an ethnocratiser
state.
8
Conclusion
Introduction
This book has explained and analysed a dilemma faced by Israeli Jews
concerned with their Palestinian Other. I have theorised the context
enmeshing these individuals as an ethnocratiser state with a hegemonic
ressentiment discourse. Ethnocratisation and ressentiment are more than
concepts with which we can make sense of the dissidents’ dilemma;
they actually constitute the material reality that the dissidents seek to
transform.
Individuals within this context may, in extreme cases, simply walk
away from ‘national’ affinity and pursue what they see as the moral cause
of their oppressed Other. Two radical dissidents, Pollack and Davis, do
this by locating their struggles within the ‘Palestinian’ political context.
Whilst Davis repackages nationality as a vestigial, sentimental affinity
that does not infiltrate his politics, Pollack finds nothing personally
meaningful within that identification. The path these dissidents walk
is hardly an inviting trail for a society built upon a collectivist sense of
the virtuous Us under attack from the Other. It is difficult to see how
anything other than a small minority will ever venture down it; accord-
ingly, they will not be able to bring the consensus with them. Indeed,
this is the very point: if one seeks to remain part of that consensus, one
must adopt a very different approach to dissent. Individuals in this latter
space grapple to reconcile national affinity with concern for the Other. I
have explained what their choices look like, the sites and themes around
which tensions emerge, and how we might understand discontinuities
arising in dissidents’ personal narratives.
I have suggested that no single discourse offers the dissidents the
tools for the job at hand. The civic discourse deletes categories of Us
192
Conclusion 193
and Other from political interactions, but takes individuals outside their
society. Individuals unwilling to step outside this consensus, or who
find that their own identifications do not accord with a civic discourse,
must then use other discourses. The binational, Kinder Zionist and post-
Zionist discourses utilise identifications with which the dissidents feel
more comfortable, but these discourses necessarily employ the notion of
a long-existing Jewish nation with a right to Palestine. Dissidents then
struggle to explain this aspect of identification alongside their regret
about the price exacted from the Other. As dissidents attempt to pin
down their past and offer visions for the future, they shift between
discourses; as they do so, their personal narratives grow contradic-
tory, particularly when they are ‘obliged’ to use the ressentiment Zionist
discourse from which they are trying to escape. This discourse, however,
may be the only one to offer a compelling explanation of who the dissi-
dents think they are, and where they think they come from.
If we read the dissidents’ employment of alternative discourses as
attempts to transcend ressentiment, we could conclude that – with the
exception of the radical dissidents employing a civic discourse – they are
unable to do it. Ressentiment seems so pervasive that it even comes out in
other contexts, which I will briefly explore in a moment. On this basis,
we might conclude that dissent is severely curtailed in an ethnocratiser
state. If even individuals who try to get outside the dominant discourse
are trapped – by a garrison state which purports to protect them; by the
ethnic categories that it reifies; by their desire to protect their own indi-
vidual privilege; and, if they traverse all this, by irrelevance and margin-
ality – then ethnocratisation and ressentiment might appear entrenched.
Moreover, as much as the ‘tradition’ of internal dissent within the
Zionist project can inspire future action, its lack of internal coherence
and ultimate (if unwitting) apologism for colonisation and violence is
problematic.
However, the dissidents’ attempts to resolve their dilemma by
employing alternative discourses of national identity can still offer a
fruitful basis from which their society can be re-imagined. In this work,
I’ve sought to prevent my analysis of the dissidents’ dilemma func-
tioning as a trap for either them or me. Obviously, if the dilemma were
completely resolvable, there would have been zero intellectual interest
in investigating it; it was therefore implicit that my subjects would not
be able to reconcile every contradiction. Yet it is important to engage
with what the dissidents can do – the limited but significant trans-
formations they can bring to their society. Therefore, after I examine
some extended effects of ressentiment, I will explore three examples of
dissidents’ creative engagement, which deserve recognition for mean-

ingfully subverting the hegemonic ressentiment discourse, even if they
do not resolve every contradiction. I will suggest what we might draw
from these experiences.
First, however, I will suggest that ressentiment casts a pall over other
facets of Israeli society, and trace these through my engagement with
the dissidents and their narratives. I thus begin the next section by
considering Meron Benvenisti’s response to me, token representative of
a Western liberal academic tradition seen as hostile to his identification.
I then briefly explore how the dissidents construct new Others, and the
implications arising from this.
Ressentiment to the ‘hostile outsider’

I can interpret my interview with Benvenisti, from which I have already
detailed some unpleasantries, with the aid of an extended ressentiment
framework. However, I must first make a few disclaimers. First, given that
I occupy a position of power in terms of how I shape interviews and
organise material, it would be unfair of me simply to label Benvenisti as
responding to me with ressentiment, when I might instead provoke some
of these responses by my conduct. Whilst I do not intend to make my
dissidents feel attacked, my interview technique precludes a detached
approach. Most of my interviewees are happy to have an academic debate;
it is only with Benvenisti that this ‘is already an argument’. Analysis of the
interview becomes even more problematic after Benvenisti subsequently
severs our relationship (without withdrawing his consent to participate
in the research project). Here, then, I outline the aftermath of our inter-
view, to allow the reader to assess my own role in what transpires.
Back in Australia, once the fieldwork is all over, I try to work out where
the interview with Benvenisti went wrong. Perusing the transcript, I trace
the moments where I have misinterpreted his signals, but marvel again
at his ferocity. (At one point, when we debate whether the Palestinians
are a nation in the primordialist sense, he actually tells me to ‘shut up’.)
I email the transcript to Benvenisti with an olive branch.
Revisiting the interview was an uncomfortable process for me because

I was aware that on a personal level it hadn’t gone well, even though
the material was useful ... I can now see the signposts in your words
that made your position clear. At times I continued down a path that
you didn’t want to go down, because I did not fully grasp that the
Meron Benvenisti I was interviewing was not the same one I had
imagined from your writing. This is not a moral judgement, nor an
Conclusion 195
expression of disappointment, nor an apology, since I don’t believe

any of those things are required or justified ... I now understand your
perspective more clearly. If I had known it before the interview, I
would not have asked some of those questions. By the same token,
though, I guess that’s the purpose of an interview – to find out things
we don’t already know ...
Benvenisti’s brief reply includes no niceties by way of introduction.
I read carefully the transcript with a particular interest in the (heavily

edited) questions, not the answers. Let me tell you that if this is an
interview for a doctoral dissertation, then I am (as we say in Hebrew,
the language of the ‘problematic/undemocratic’ entity), a jar. It is
your business how you use my words, and I don’t want to have any
further discussion with you. If you will provide me with the address
of your book supervisor I’ll contract [sic] him and ask his opinion
about methodology and the use of a ‘scholarly’ disguise for value
judgments. (2010b, his emphasis)
Benvenisti’s reference to edited questions refers to my occasional simpli-

fication of the style – though not the meaning – of my questions in the
transcript. His reference to Hebrew being the language of the ‘problem-
atic/undemocratic’ entity alludes to a question based, yet again, on my
reading of his writings on Zionist Israel. Benvenisti confounds me to the
end. I send him a brief email with my supervisor’s contact details, but
his threatened email never materialises.
Even before this exchange, back in Israel, our fraught interview casts
a shadow over my remaining encounters. ‘I’m waiting for the antag-
onism!’ declares a laughing Jeff Halper during our interview, before
assuring me, ‘Meron is a very contrary guy ... don’t worry ... It wasn’t
you.’ However, it is hard to shake the feeling that it was, indeed, me. But
which me – the antagonising interviewer, or representative of the Evil
Other? Benvenisti’s hostile reaction to me is apparent in several places:
I am the ‘goy’ who invented Jewishness; the academic who sceptically
rejects the ‘ultimate tribe’; the attacker declaring war on Benvenisti and
his six (or 13) million Jews. I am a threat, and Benvenisti neutralises me
with his formidable mind, delegitimising my work and making personal
criticisms. I give him the space to do so, in the spirit of accessing his
ideas and learning from my possible mistakes. My conciliatory email
suggests that my misreading of Benvenisti is responsible for our troubled
exchange, but after his response, I consider that in digging up his words
from the past, I have acted as the voice of his contradictions. Having
exposed something uncomfortable for him, I am the obvious repository
for these feelings.
My partner, Ian, a social worker, helps me to make sense of this. Ian
works with disadvantaged mentally ill clients and sees first-hand the
detrimental dependence that welfare creates. However, if someone from
the right criticised welfare dependence, Ian would instinctively disagree
with this person. The critic from the right would not reach this conclu-
sion through lived experience, Ian explains, so his opinion would be
less authentic. In addition, I realise, the right-winger’s goal would be to
delegitimise and then dismantle the welfare system. This critic would
not be engaging in what Habermas calls communicative action, or
action to achieve understanding, but rather in strategic action, ‘commu-
nication oriented to achieving results’ (Harper, 2011, pp. 27–8). This is
how Benvenisti views those who advance a binationalist framework. He
perceives that they come from a place of ideological attack, and that
their analysis form part of this goal, with the desired result being Israel’s
annihilation. Such discussion is, to him, ‘already an argument’, which
partly explains his defensiveness.
None of this is to say that I do not contribute to the ultimately toxic
exchange with Benvenisti. However, the consideration that Benvenisti
employs a ressentiment depiction of the world beyond Israel/Palestine
is worth engaging with, even as I must temper this with recognition of
my own incitement. Benvenisti talks about me and the world I repre-
sent with ressentiment, and this might suggest that ressentiment can be a
default response to someone – anyone – like me, for someone – anyone –
like Benvenisti.
Ressentiment and new Others

In Chapter 1, I suggested that ressentiment can occur within all kinds of
encounters, leading to the formation of opposing discourses depicting
apparently self-evident ‘groups’. The ressentiment I have examined in this
book emerged within nationalist discourses as individuals resolved the
pain of marginalisation by labelling those they perceived to be respon-
sible as Evil oppressors. They employed ethnic categories as the defining
features of ‘nations’ in order to enact a moral splitting into Virtuous Us/
Evil Other. They understood those within the nation as Good and those
outside as Bad; ethnic categories appearing clear and permanent enough
to provide the basis for this division. I have claimed that this is true of
the dominant Zionist discourse, with the dissidents bearing the trace of
this experience.
Conclusion 197
An interesting contemporary version of this process of ressentiment is

evident in the development of internal schisms whereby other Others
become ‘baddies’ to ‘our’ good. A dominant ressentiment discourse pre-
loads categories of Us and Other with moral meaning. If alternative
discourses of national identification rehabilitate the Palestinian/Arab
Other, they may need to target a new guilty party to explain the malaise
in which individuals find their society. Yadgar (2003b) observes such
ideologically derived categorisations of new Others with the ascendance
of the ‘humanist/universalist’ narrative in post-Oslo Israel. This narra-
tive, he says, ‘abandoned the image of “the Arab” as “the Other” and
identified a new group of “others”: those who oppose peace, regardless
of their nationality/ethnicity’ (p. 61). Gideon Levy’s vitriolic depiction
of West Bank Jewish settlers employs this kind of nouveau ressentiment
discourse. From Levy’s perspective, settlers are inherently evil; by exten-
sion, people like Levy who oppose settlements are inherently virtuous.
We can read Bronstein’s distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Israelis
the same way. Bronstein takes these categories from the parlance of his
childhood and subverts them so that ‘good Israelis’ like himself stand
opposed to ‘bad’ ones, such as American settlers and French-born right-
wing radio hosts. Bronstein utilises native privilege to construct himself
as superior: ‘I think I take this thing from Zionism, this ranking of
people, being Israeli’, whilst acknowledging, ‘I know it’s wrong, what
I’m saying’.
Bronstein and Halper also invoke a ressentiment discourse towards
the Likud government elected in 1977. Although a Labour leadership
presided over injustices to the Other in 1948 and 1967, Likud was the
Evil Other against whom dissidents were able to take a stand. This reflects
a wider cultural phenomenon in which left intellectuals saw ‘that the
government represented “another people”’ (Sand, 2011, p. 72). Grinberg
(2009) suggests that opposition to ‘the right’ and ‘settlers’ reflects an
insidious process by which
‘the labour settlement movement’ underwent a metamorphosis: its

biological heirs came to be referred to as ‘the left’ while those contin-
uing its settlement practices came to be referred to as ‘the right’.
This ... has made it easier for those now referred to as ‘the left’ to shake
off responsibility for what the settlers of ‘the right’ are doing ... After
all, ‘we’ are not the ‘occupying settlers’ – ‘they’ are. (p. 111)
What are the implications of dissidents employing a new ressentiment

discourse towards new Others? Perhaps they are finding new ways to
regard themselves as morally superior, whilst attempting to extricate

themselves from something for which they arguably still have ‘national
responsibility’ (Abdel-Nour, 2003; Grinberg, 2009, p. 111). However,
when we consider the demonisation of right-wingers and settlers within
the dissident narratives, something interesting emerges. We find that
they cannot divide the ‘ethnic Us’ into further moral categories that
offer comparable meaning and certainty to ethnic boundaries them-
selves. For all that Bronstein and Levy castigate their Settler and Likud
Others, they are simultaneously aware that these would-be Others are
part of Us. Levy explains, ‘I am so much attached to this collective ... I
feel guilty on behalf of things that I was against’. Bronstein says of his
‘Israeli fellows’, ‘I hope I have enough compassion ... this means that
I must of course identify with them ... Now, this I cannot do without
some, even, in a way, empathy or sympathy to them.’ Bronstein and
Levy do not extricate themselves from the Us; they are not actually
splitting or outsourcing responsibility. This tells us something about the
ultimate power of their identification as Israeli Jews. Their ressentiment
towards Others demarcated on ideological (rather than ethnic) terms is
less powerful than the ethnic categories forged by the ressentiment proc-
esses in the creation of Zionism. (Of course, distinctions between the
ideological Us and Other also lack the social and political reinforcement
of ethnic categories.) Ressentiment works best when boundaries appear
unalterable; generating the sense that something greater than one’s
actions or beliefs determines one’s categorisation. A ‘bad’ settler can
reform and become a ‘good Israeli’, so these categories are not reliable
pegs with which to map a moral universe. Thus, ressentiment towards
new Others fails to flourish, even as dissidents attempt to change the
meaning of ethnic categorical distinctions by finding new Others to
demonise.
Three stories of promise
Having considered the pervasiveness of ressentiment and the enduring

power of ethnic categories, we can now explore areas of promise deriving
from the dissidents. Jeff Halper’s attempt to redefine ‘anti-Semitism’
provides one such example. Halper’s perspective contrasts with Neve
Gordon’s more ressentiment-based formulation that Israel and Jews have
distinct enemies who must be fought off. We can trace Halper’s approach
to his ‘ethnic’ awakening amidst an American ‘return to roots’ move-
ment; he recognises the propensity of humans to orient culturally and
also the necessity of limiting the chauvinism inherent in this process.
Conclusion 199
The way to fight anti-Semitism as a form of racism is to fight racism,

through a rights based approach. So it’s not denying the Holocaust,
it’s not minimising the Holocaust, but it’s simply saying, ‘If you
want to avoid these things in the future, the answer isn’t to have
a movement against anti-Semitism and another movement against
anti-black racism, and another movement against anti-north African
racism.’ ... You can’t fragment it into a hundred things. Overall it’s a
movement against racism.
Halper recognises that ressentiment Zionism cannot work with this

formulation ‘[b]ecause Zionism is xenophobic, and Zionism needs
that’, both in terms of the particularist identification it constructs and
promotes, and the virtue it asserts. However, Halper’s approach chal-
lenges this paradigm. The implication is that if Israelis/Jews/Hebrews
are to fight shadowy forces in the world that wish them harm, then
they must also fight forces in themselves that would do harm to Others.
Anybody, including Us, might adopt bigoted or hateful behaviours; it
would not be possible, within Halper’s framework, to sustain an argu-
ment that Others are inherently bad. Halper therefore offers a way of
responding to genuine threats against one’s perceived collective without
using these threats to construct a ressentiment pair. Notably, he sustains
this non-ressentiment discourse without eradicating the Us and Other.
His challenge to ressentiment whilst retaining ethnic categories is there-
fore directly applicable to the project of resisting and transforming
ethnocratisation.
Another challenge to the ressentiment discourse comes from Gideon
Levy, who does something interesting with Zionism’s pervasive victim-
hood, which ‘habitually uses suffering to engender and calibrate entitle-
ment to rights’ (Rabinowitz, 2001, p. 75). Levy argues that extenuating
circumstances may have justified some of the wrongs done to the Other
in Israel’s establishment, but these should have been limited in scope and
incorporated into the measurement of morality thereafter. According to
Levy’s logic, if Israel had properly accounted for the unfortunate but
necessary events of 1948, then the unnecessary coda of 1967 would
not have happened. This would have required a nuanced moral under-
standing on behalf of Israeli Jews in those intervening years: yes, Israel
took the land to build a state; no, the refugees could not come back; yes,
they could be compensated; no, they would not face further injustices.
Palestinians could be acknowledged as victims without the Jewish state
having to cease to exist. The point is not whether this would have been
an acceptable outcome for those identifying as Palestinians – most likely
it would not – nor whether Levy has gone far enough in his attempts at
justice. The point is to imagine how differently the dominant discourse
in Israel would have had to be constituted in order to sustain it.
Defining the Palestinian tragedy of 1948 as the awful price in blood,

dignity and property that paved the way to the eventual triumph
of Zionism is a revolutionary concept ... It collapses the dichotomy
between the categories ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, and their inherent analogy to
‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’, ‘those who Suffer’ and ‘those
who inflict Suffering’. (Rabinowitz, 2001, p. 75)
Levy helps us to imagine, however illusorily, that a discourse re-assigning

victimhood could have emerged alongside the Zionist project. However,
the real power of his argument derives from its potential. Constructing
a new basis for moral calculations, he offers a way of understanding
the contemporary situation without ressentiment, but also, like Halper,
without needing to eradicate the sense of Us that proves such a barrier
for reformulating identification.
Eitan Bronstein also overcomes ressentiment in his evocation of a new
Tel Aviv, after the return of the Palestinian refugees. Bronstein’s ‘New
Tel Aviv’ demonstrates the creative potential of the Us becoming open
to the Other, using the metaphor of a cityscape. The location of this
in a city that Bronstein shared with me, the researcher, as his beloved
home, makes it powerful. In addition to our interview, some of which
was conducted at Bronstein’s favourite cafe with the ‘best hommous in
Israel/Palestine’, Bronstein and I went drinking in Tel Aviv; during this
time I was able to appreciate both his love of the city and his vision
for its future. His seductive vision mirrors research findings regarding
the potential for ‘boundary blurring’ within local communities through
‘reduc[ing] the importance of ethnicity as a principle of categorization
and social organization’ (Wimmer, 2008a, p. 1041). This local strategy
for breaking down barriers is an organic and authentic experience arising
within Bronstein’s particular habitus. However, reinforcement from the
research explains its attraction and attainability.
For Bronstein, Tel Aviv is the site of everything he loves and yet, like
everywhere else in Israel, it contains a dispossession; one of Zochrot’s
tours exposes the erased Palestinian villages beneath. Tel Aviv represents
a desire for connection, to be part of something exciting. It invokes a
belonging far from Rabinyan’s ‘uncool’ nationalism, yet owes its exist-
ence to this same nationalism. Engagement with Tel Aviv thus provides
a motif for engagement with Israel as a whole, but is also a point of
Conclusion 201
departure. Tel Aviv is the place where Israel meets the world, where
East meets West, where nationalism meet cosmopolitanism. It is the
place Israelis live when they want to live in another country (Kraft and
Bronner, 2009). It is the place where many of my dissidents live, along-
side others who share their views. It is thus an appropriate site for re-im-
agining; for seeing how ressentiment ethnic nationalism may evolve.
Bronstein’s New Tel Aviv – inspired by the work of Zochrot – is a
place that must own its history. It’s a place affixed with signs saying
what happened here, and what used to be here. It’s a place that cannot
be undone, and must not be undone; Bronstein acknowledges that
this is impossible. Learning from Baudrillard, nostalgia cannot lead
us back to the past, and we must engage with the world as we find
it (Borgman, 1992). Meanwhile, obvious Zionism has already seeped
out of Tel Aviv. The Star of David flag has receded, returning only at
bizarre moments, such as around the neck of a cartoon dog on a pet
shop wall (‘Dogs of Israel! Your country needs you!’). Tel Aviv is already
somehow post-Zionist, whatever that means. Yet it is not the grim
post-Zionism of Uri Ram’s (2008) McWorld – a heartless metropolis
in which consumerism has replaced nationalism. The Tel Aviv that
I explore with Bronstein has a distinct counter-culture; debating in
saloons at the back of dress shops and finding your favourite hummus
cafe. Tel Aviv echoes Europe’s coolest cities, yet right now, as Bronstein
notes, it is a monoculture.
Hence, Bronstein’s vision is that this city he loves dearly will become
more Arabic. His hope for the counter-culture of Tel Aviv morphing into
something shared is a motif for the procreative quality of the binational
discourse. The reinvention of Bronstein’s belonging – the opening up to
Others – is an act of subversion. Bronstein is willing to take the thing
he loves the most and share it; exposing it to different influences. The
idea of sharing the land is symbolic, but the idea of sharing Tel Aviv
is concrete. Love of nation and land is metaphysical, particularly as
rendered by Zionism, but one’s place of residence is real, in the lived
experience of streets, cafes, bars, shops and parks. It is not Bronstein’s
generosity that inspires – as Yonatan Pollack notes, it is not generous but
appropriate to make restitution to a wronged Other – but his delight;
and his optimism that what comes next may be even better. Geographic,
cultural, linguistic and social landscapes adjust with the presence of this
Other. Gideon Levy’s rootless, ever-changing city begins to host a new
kind of Us. The visitor to this new city (me) cannot comprehend the
distinction between two ‘nations’ because the landscape does not reify
it. Slowly, organically, they become interwoven.
Thus, creative challenges to ressentiment do not necessarily require the

erasure of the line between Us and Other, or the immediate abolition of
the system of privilege institutionalised by the ethnocratiser state. The
constraints placed on most of the dissidents by their sense of national
belonging limit us to celebrating these small moments of inspiration. I
never imagined that I would find, across my spectrum of dissidents, a
series of individuals who had managed, like Yonatan Pollack, to avoid
discontinuities by negating national belonging. Rather, Pollack would
be the extreme; closer to the centre would be people trying, tripping
over their contradictions, and trying again nevertheless. The forms
their trying has taken, and our ability to see it distilled across multiple
themes, manifesting in further instances of ressentiment, and evocatively
woven in these final three inspiring visions, has been my contribution
to illustrating how the dilemma manifests. If the questions were: how
far can the dissidents get, how far will they go, how great are the limita-
tions placed upon them, then the answers are: this far. This is what the
dilemma has looked like, and felt like, and how the dissidents’ context
has informed it. There is no tidy, one-word answer. The limits to my
dissidents’ abilities to transcend their dilemma have lain in their own
words, and in my analysis that they have to employ multiple discourses
to make sense of their worlds, and in the gaps within and incompat-
ibilities between these discourses, and most poignantly in the sense that
there is ‘no way out’ of their dilemma.
Conclusion: the contributions of this book
In this work, I have engaged with several literatures and contributed

new perspectives to some of them. In examining Israeli-Jewish society,
I have looked at the ‘dominant’ nation in the ethnocratiser state rather
than the suppressed ‘minority’. This has opened up a new angle on
ethnocratiser states, distinct from the ethnic democracy theorists
whose engagement with Israeli-Jewish society uses theory to attempt
to justify continued hegemony. In exploring a ‘dominant nationalism’,
I have challenged the notion that ‘dominant nations’ exist independ-
ently of state structures that reify them. I have suggested that we should
understand the construction of the ‘nation’, as well as its numerical
‘dominance’, as processes. Ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourses
may set in motion the formation of ressentiment pairs, which may ulti-
mately create the conditions for the establishment of ethnocratiser
states. The relative sizes of the category cohorts involved are far from
coincidental.
Conclusion 203
I have also explored the belligerence of so-called ‘ethnic nations’,

arguing that the employment of ethnic categories derives from a need
to demarcate a virtuous Us from a demonised Other. I have illustrated
how ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourses universalise the experi-
ences of particular individuals, generating emotional responses in other
individuals that mimic these experiences. The discourse invokes these
responses in an entire population, simultaneously creating an Other
who perpetually affirms the discourse’s content.
In looking at Israeli-Jewish dissidents who attempt to transcend such
a discourse, I have contributed to the literature on political radicalism
in Israel. I have engaged with the dilemma of individuals in a state
ostensibly constructed around their own privilege, who wish to improve
the situation of the de-privileged Other. Their efforts are necessarily
constrained by ressentiment ethnic nationalism and the ethnocratiser
state; however, their dedicated attempts to work around these obstacles
make their efforts compelling.
Given a choice of many Israeli-Jewish dissidents whose works bring a
range of analyses, the eventual set of dissidents and the issues I raised
with them indelibly shaped the work’s focus. This became apparent
when I read Lentin’s (2010) discussion of Ilan Pappe, who was unavail-
able for this study. Pappe uses a terminology of ‘ethnic cleansing’,
which, according to Lentin, critiques the dominant depiction in the
very language of the Nakba (‘catastrophe’) as a disaster befalling a
pre-modern and ‘primitive’ people (p. 155). This insight might seem
marginal to the work as it stands now, but if Pappe had been one of my
dissidents, framing of the Other’s agency and experience might have
emerged as a much greater theme for examination. The insights that
different dissidents could have brought to this work open up a realm of
possibilities unfulfilled.
Likewise, there are many questions that I could have asked my
existing set of dissidents. My analysis could have benefited from a
greater engagement of the domination of Ashkenazi culture, and
particularly Ashkenazi ‘peace’ culture, over Mizrahi culture (Kirstein
Keshet, 2006, p. 114), whilst still recognising that these are constructed
categories. It may also have been apt to interrogate my subjects more
closely on their depictions of the Other and the possibility that they
appropriate his or her narrative (Lentin, 2010). The absence of these
features can only be put down to the wisdom of hindsight and the
immense process of personal learning that informs the production of
academic knowledge; reflections that are often absent from the work
itself (Steinberg, 2012).
It is also worth considering what, if anything, this book might tell

us about future possibilities for Israel/Palestine. The discourses certainly
advance alternatives to the current state structure, but we cannot follow
them to their logical conclusions. We cannot know which political solu-
tions would prove tenable, nor whether the discourses articulating them
would succeed in undermining ethnocratisation. What we can conclude
is that ethnocratisation generates its own contradictions and, in turn,
responses to these contradictions. This does enable us to consider one
possibility for the future of the ethnocratiser state.
Yiftachel (2006) has argued that the contradictions within such states
render them inherently unstable in terms of how they manifest towards
the Other. The state offers the Other limited tools to advance its status
and lifestyle; yet it simultaneously prohibits the fulfilment of its prom-
ises via its discriminatory treatment. Yiftachel argues that on this basis,
the minority will mobilise around the democratic facade of the state,
chipping away to expose its contradictions (p. 39).
Having engaged with the state’s so-called ‘dominant nation’, it
appears that such chipping away could remain for ever peripheral in the
absence of people like my dissidents prepared to struggle alongside the
Palestinian Other. After all, the Zionist movement that created Us as a
political category also built the state with a view to protecting that Us;
that state simultaneously ensured and continues to ensure the existence
of the Us as a political category. This has all occurred in the context of
resistance from the Other, which has only affirmed the validity of Our
project. I therefore disagree with Yiftachel that the Other will necessarily
bring down the ethnocratiser state. Rather, I consider that continued
mobilisation of the threat of the Other is the crucial factor determining
the regime’s continuation. So, what of this?
The dissidents challenge Us-ness and its social meaning. They help us
to see Israeli society differently. Through them, we can perceive the Us,
not as a stable and contented collective, but rather as a collection of indi-
viduals in thrall to a discourse that militarises and renders them vulner-
able. I have argued – contrary to most academic representations – that
the state in which they live was not crafted instrumentally to advance
the goals of ‘the Jewish nation’. Rather, the ‘Jewish nation’ itself was
constructed by activists in thrall to a ressentiment discourse; they have
put in place a state that continually reifies this ‘nation’, facilitating
significant harm to the Other (and, ultimately the Us) under the guise
of self-protection. I have considered how some individuals constructed
as the ‘privileged Us’ have digested and attempted to limit this harm,
seeing their own ‘nation’ as also harmed through ongoing enmity.
Conclusion 205
From this perspective, it is not a given that the Us will remain for ever
attached to its own privilege. Dissidents may be able to formulate an
internally coherent message that resonates with enough people in their
society to build a significant movement. They may be able to persuade
other Israeli Jews that the status quo does not serve their interests, or their
self-perceptions as members of a virtuous nation. However, such a possi-
bility remains remote, given that the position of the dissidents within
their society incorporates vilification, marginalisation and co-optation.
The dissidents, framed simultaneously as completely evil, completely
irrelevant and completely central to ‘democracy’, become an indefinable
moving target in much the same way as the entire project and myth –
Grinberg’s (2009) ‘Thing Without a Name’ – that they seek to resist.
However, leaving aside the far greater likelihood that the nationalist
discourse will respond to internal dissonance with ever more trenchant
ressentiment, the dissidents’ efforts, especially if combined with non-vi-
olent resistance of the Other and mobilised within a regional approach
such as that offered by Behar (2011), nevertheless have the potential to
be the harbinger of political change.
Maybe.
Eitan Bronstein’s poignant conclusion that there is ‘no way out’ of his
dilemma reminds us of the potency of uncertainty. As long as nationalist
discourses depict history in a way that justifies the needs and interests
of the purported nation – disregarding or demonising the Other – there
is indeed ‘no way out’. Yet the self-awareness of my dissidents – their
recognition that they are unable to be free of contradictions – might lend
itself to greater questioning. When there are no clear answers, questions
cannot be for ever suppressed. For people to support occupation, dispos-
session and violence, the less thought given, the better; the puzzlement,
confusion and ultimate discontinuity of my dissidents keeps these ideas
bubbling to the surface. Hence, while there might be ‘no way out’ of the
dissidents’ dilemma, the fact that they have this dilemma, talk about it
and have permitted me to engage with it suggests that their endeavours
might offer a limited ‘way out’ sometime in the future. Of course, this,
too, has a caveat. It relies on their continued efforts to speak out, to
name the ‘Thing Without a Name’, to resist co-optation even as it is
inevitable, and to take their place within a ‘tradition’ of internal dissent
that is deeply problematic, but which could only be more problematic
in its absence.
Appendix: The Dissidents at a glance
Oren Yiftachel is a political geographer who sees nations as central to

people’s happiness. He advocates a binational state in Israel/Palestine.
Neve Gordon is a political scientist who has come out in support of

the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Gordon, who
supports a two-state solution for pragmatic reasons, orients himself
morally according to Jewish values and admires the work of Leon Roth.
Uri Davis is a veteran maverick who is married to a Fatah bureaucrat

and is a member of its Revolutionary Council. Davis is a strong critic of
what he calls Israeli apartheid.
Jeff Halper, an anthropology PhD, is the founder of the Israeli Committee

Against Housing Demolitions. Halper, an adult immigrant to Israel, is
determined to reconfigure it as a normal country.
Eitan Bronstein is the founder of Zochrot (‘remembering’) which focuses

on Israel’s violent and repressed past. Bronstein’s vibrant urban life in
Tel Aviv orients him towards an Israeli Jewish audience, and he supports
a single state in Israel Palestine with the right of return for Palestinian
refugees.
Jeremy Milgrom is a melancholy rabbi self-exiled in Berlin. Milgrom’s

Jewish identification centres on peoplehood, tradition and culture rather
than belief in a transcendental God. He is a pacifist, supports a single-
state solution and works to support BDS internationally.
Yonatan Pollack is a radical anarchist who works with the Palestinian

popular resistance. Pollack is stridently anti-nationalist and does not see
Israel or Zionism as legitimate.
Gideon Levy is a senior journalist who castigates his society for a range
of ills, chief amongst them the occupation of Palestine. Whilst consid-
ering Israel’s establishment legitimate, Levy argues that its Jewish popu-
lation should have been subsequently aware of their victims instead of
repeatedly worsening the situation for them.
Gilad Atzmon is a London-based jazz musician whose criticism of Israel

also incorporates Jewish ideology and international Jewish critics of the
206
Appendix : The Dissidents at a glance 207
state. Atzmon professes that the actions of Israel today can explain why
the Holocaust happened.
Dorit Rabinyan is a creative and passionate ‘Mizrahi’ novelist, whose

love affair and friendship with a Palestinian artist challenged some – but
not all – of her values regarding Zionism and the Other.
Meron Benvenisti is a former politician, analyst and Zionist pioneer

who has come to critique the outcomes of the project. His writings
portray outrage at the de-Arabisation of Palestine alongside a trenchant
refusal to accept criticism.
Notes
1 Ressentiment and the State

1. I am indebted to David Brown (2012) for this pithy summary of Nietzsche’s
ressentiment.
2. Greenfeld (1992) further divides ‘civic’ nationalism into an ‘individualistic’
manifestation and a ‘collectivist’ manifestation. The ‘ethnic’ form of nation-
alism, however, is inherently collectivist and has no individualistic mani-
festation (p. 11). This distinction between civic and ethnic nationalisms is
widely operationalised within studies of ethnicity and nationalism. Scholars
do not always use the same terminology (see, for example, Kohn 1944;
Plamenatz 1973; Hutchinson 1987; Gans 2003; Spencer and Wollman 2005),
nor do they always draw the same normative conclusions. However, they
commonly contend that we are dealing with two different conceptual crea-
tures. The ‘civic–ethnic distinction’ also has its critics, who argue that both
in theory and practice it breaks down or ceases to be useful for tasks beyond
normative judgement (Smith 1991; Yack 1999; Spencer and Wollman 2005).
Nevertheless, the ‘civic–ethnic distinction’ retains merit when employed with
regard to nationalist discourses – i.e. when we remind ourselves that we are
dealing with abstract concepts on a continuum, while ‘real nationalisms’
contain competing discourses, which shift over time.
3. See Joel Kovel’s (2007) psychological insights in this regard.
2 Ressentiment Zionism
1. Scholars have also depicted the migration of Jews from Arab lands to Palestine/
Israel in similar terms (Shohat, 2002).
2. Sand (2009) argues that Christians propagated the myth of Jewish exile from
Palestine because it suited Christian theology for God to punish Jews. The
religious dogma of Judaism then absorbed this myth (p. 177).
3. Zionist scholars who disproportionately emphasise the similarities between
Jewish lives within diverse communities employ teleological explanations.
They seek to demonstrate how the rise of nationalism enticed Jews away from
the singular ethnie and into other nations, then subsequently spat them back
out again into the unique nation to which they had always belonged; a story
best told from the contemporary vantage point of a fulfilled nationalist move-
ment (see, for example, Shimoni, 1995). Sand (2009) invites us to imagine,
instead, a different set of identification considerations for these Jews, for
whom Zionism, with its specific plan for a Jewish homeland, would not be
conceivable until their identifications shifted from religious and cultural to
secular and political.
4. See Brubaker (1996) on the state-mandated policies of exclusion in Poland.
See also Greenfeld and Chirot (1994) on the the German Romantic
208
Notes 209
movement’s projection of hated ‘Western’ qualities onto racialised Jews

(p. 100).
5. See Greenfeld (1992, Chapter 1) on the collectivist nature of ethnic national-
isms. For the collectivist nature of Zionism see Shimoni (1995, p. 121) and
Birenbaum-Carmely (2001). Revisionist Zionism did represent the existence
of another nation on the land, which would quite understandably oppose the
Zionist project.
6. The British attributed the Arab Uprising, which killed 133 Jews, to ‘Arab’ fears
for their futures, and hostility deriving from the failure of nationalist aspira-
tions (Segev, 2000; Weiss, 2004, p. 10).
7. Golda Meir (1975), Israeli Prime Minister in the 1960s, argued from her old
age that ‘in 1921 my pioneer generation was neither morally obtuse nor
uninformed. We knew there were Arabs in Palestine ... Far from ignoring the
local population, we were sustained by the sincere conviction that our toil
created more and better living space for both Arab and Jew’ (p. 63). Yet
Meir’s famous assertion that there was no such thing as a Palestinian casts
doubt upon the promised ‘better living space’ for ‘Arabs’ in a Jew-privileging
project.
3 The Dissidents’ Context

1. Political turmoil in surrounding Middle Eastern countries drew many Jews
from there to Israel; the Zionist discourse had difficulty digesting this. On the
one hand, the Zionist establishment wanted to depict the migration of Jews
to Israel as an ideological act, assisted by operations with romantic names like
‘Magic Carpet’. On the other hand, advancing the status of Middle Eastern
Jewish immigrants as ‘refugees’ from persecution provided an alibi for the
exclusion of non-Jewish refugees, via a terminology of population swaps
(Shohat, 1999, p. 12; Shenhav, 2002, pp. 38–41; Peteet, 2005, p. 165). In reality,
a range of push and pull factors drove Jews from the Middle East to Israel,
including the actions of organised European Zionists in the Middle East, the
assistance of Arab regimes (indirectly financed by Israel), and ‘radical’ secular
or religious Arab nationalists’ who ‘began to identify non-Zionist indigenous
Jews as a potential Zionist fifth column’ (Behar 2007, p. 597).
2. Israeli society continues to ‘purge’ members of the Us who transgress the image
of virtue. When members of the left-leaning MachsomWatch (Checkpoint
Watch) document the ill treatment of Palestinians by the Army and Border
Police, they often ‘point out the ethnic or class origins’ of these individuals.
‘By defining them as new immigrants from the Former Soviet Union or
Ethiopia or as members of minority groups, it is possible to claim that they do
not represent “us” – Ashkenazi/Jewish Israelis – who are allegedly decent and
humane’ (Kirstein Keshet, 2006, p. 114).
3. This is not the preferred identification of many individuals, who instead
emphasise their ‘Palestinianness’; I employ the Israeli terminology precisely
to emphasise its non-consensual, external imposition.
4. The emphasis on the ‘Israeli’ part of this name also represents a desire by the
state to ‘Israelise’ – to a degree – its ‘Arab’ citizens. The idea behind this is one
of co-optation; the state encourages ‘Arabs’ to enjoy the individual rights their
210 Notes
citizenship bestows on them, with the hope that this will ameliorate their
dissatisfaction as non-Jews in a Jewish state (see Haaretz Editorial, 2007).
5. Many ‘Israeli Arabs’ were refugees as well, but within Israel. The state prohibited
these individuals, paradoxically termed ‘present absentees’, from reclaiming
their properties, and depicted their subsequent attempts as enemy incursions
(Piterberg 2001; Davis 2003).
6. The same logic underpinned the treatment of ‘present absentees’ (see above),
whose exclusion from their homes also derived from their not being Jewish.
7. The reoccupation, Operation Defensive Shield, followed the breakdown of
the Camp David talks in 2000. Prime Minister Ehud Barak circulated a narra-
tive that Israel had made a generous offer to the Palestinian leadership, who
rejected it, proving that they were not a partner for peace, and hence pushing
Israelis to the right (Dor, 2005, p. 107). Ariel Sharon’s subsequent provocative
visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque triggered the second Palestinian intifada. With
the intifada in full swing and a right-wing government in power, Palestinian
militants engaged in a month of regular suicide attacks including one on a
Netanya hotel, which killed 28 people. Immediately, 20,000 Israeli reservists
were called up and, over the coming weeks, the Israeli military engaged in
numerous exercises in the West Bank designed to quell dissent, deter popular
resistance and eliminate the ruling apparatus, infrastructure and personnel of
the organised Palestinian leadership (pp. 3–4).
4 Meet the Dissidents

1. Israel does not actually have a Constitution – Bronstein may refer to the
Declaration of Independence, which promises civil equality for non-Jews.
2. During 1982’s Lebanon War, the Christian Phalangist movement massacred
Palestinian refugees in two Lebanese camps, Sabra and Shatila, whilst their
allies in Israel’s military leadership provided logistical and operational support
(Shahid, 2002).
3. The status and experience of Mizrahi or ‘Middle Eastern’ Jews has been detail
by Shohat (1999); Shenhav (2002); Dahan-Kalev (2003). For many categorised
as such, their native language, cultures and customs are Arabic, which has
resulted in their being regarded with suspicion. Rabinyan is of Persian origin,
but explains, ‘[S]omething about in Israel, everyone who came from an Islamic
country was contained in one sack’.
5 Themes of Dissident Dissonance: Historicisation and

Identification
1. For a less idealistic take on Haifa’s Jewish community in the Nakba, see Lentin
(2010, Chapter 4, esp. pp. 74–9).
2. Grinberg (2009) can illuminate Benvenisti’s critique of how Israelis construct
leftism. Grinberg notes that ‘Israelis imagine the state of Israel as democratic
and sovereign within its pre-1967 borders ... ’ This maintains ‘the illusion that
a border actually exists, and that Jewish Israelis living within Israel’s sovereign
borders are somehow not party to the crime being committed “there”, in “the
Notes 211
territories”’ (p. 109). The racialisation of violent soldiers and border police (see
Chapter 3 note 2, above) and the labelling of certain Israeli Jews as rednecks so
that ‘mainstream Israel ... emerge[s] self righteously as ostensibly humane and
civilised’ (Rabinowitz 1997 p. 71) echo this outsourcing of responsibility.
3. Ber Borachov was a Russian Zionist who attempted to synthesise nationalism
with Marxism (Avineri, 1981, Chapter 13).
6 Themes of Dissident Dissonance: Zionism and the Self

1. Benvenisti’s term ‘goy’ is an abbreviation for goyim, a term used by some Jews
to describe those who are not Jewish.
7 Dissident Discourses
1. For example, a civic Israel would appear to offer little to refugees seeking to
return, unless accompanied by an explicit policy establishing and encouraging
the right of return. That said, Israel’s current cohort of non-Jewish citizens
would enjoy greater equality and have a more feasible path of integration into
a state no longer constituted by their absence.
Bibliography
Abarbanel, Avigail, ed. 2012. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists. Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Abdel-Nour, Farid. 2003. National Responsibility. Political Theory 31 (5): 693–719.
Abdel-Nour, Farid. 2004. Responsibility and National Memory: Israel and the
Palestinian Refugee Problem. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society
17 (3): 339–63.
Al-Haj, Majid. 2002. Ethnic Mobilization in an Ethno-national State: The Case
of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel. Ethnic and Racial Studies
25 (2): 238–57.
Al-Haj, Majid. 2004. The Political Culture of the 1990s Immigrants from the
Former Soviet Union in Israel and their Views toward the Indigenous Arab
Minority: A Case of Ethnocratic Multiculturalism. Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies 30 (4): 681–96.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and
Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 1976. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Arutyunyan, Yu. 2004. Ethnocracy: Past and Present (Sociological Surveys). Social
Sciences 35 (3): 159–162.
Ash, Gabriel. 2004. Diagnosing Benny Morris: The Mind of a European Settler.
The Electronic Intifada, 27 January [accessed 3 November 2014]. Available from
http://electronicintifada.net/content/diagnosing-benny-morris-mind-european-
settler/4967
Association of Forty. Homepage. The Association of Forty N.D. [cited 17 July
2007]. Available from http://www.assoc40.org/index_main.html.
Attwell, Katie. 2010. Email. Perth, 8 February.
Atzmon, Gilad. 2002. Guide to the Perplexed. Translated by P. Simpson. London:
Serpent’s Tail.
Atzmon, Gilad. 2004. NOT IN MY NAME: An Analysis of Jewish Righteousness
[cited 14 July 2005]. Available from www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/notin.html.
Atzmon, Gilad. 2007. From Guilt to Responsibility [cited 21 December 2009]. Available
from www.gilad.co.uk/writings/from-guilt-to-responsibility-gilad-atzmon.html.
Atzmon, Gilad. 2010. Formal Interview. London, 10 January.
Atzmon, Gilad. 2011. The Wandering Who? A Study of Jeiwsh Identity Politics.
Ropley: Zero Books.
Avineri, Shlomo. 1981. The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of
the Jewish State. New York: Basic Books.
Baker, Mona and Lawrence Davidson. 2003. In Defense of the Boycott of Israeli
Academic Institutions. Borderlands (3), www.borderlands.net.au/vol2no3_2003/
davidson&baker_indefense.htm.
Balibur, Etienne. 2009. ‘God Will Not Remain Silent’: Zionism, Messianism and
Nationalism. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge VII
(2): 123–34.
212
Bibliography 213
Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Introduction. In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social
Organization of Culture Difference, edited by F. Barth. Boston: Little, Brown &
Company.
Batniji, Rajaie, Yoke Rabaia, Viet, Nguyen-Gillham, Rita Giacaman and Eyad. Sarraj.
2009. Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory 4: Health as Human Security
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Lancet 373 (9669): 1133–43.
Baudrillard, Jean. 2001. Impossible Exchange. Translated by C. Turner. London:
Verso.
Behar, Moshe. 2007. Palestine, Arabized Jews and the Elusive Consequences
of Jewish and Arab National Formations. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 13:
581–611.
Behar, Moshe. 2011. One-State, Two-States, Bi-National State: Mandated
Imaginations in a Regional Void. Middle East Studies Online Journal 2 (5).
Ben-Gurion, David, Yehuda Leib Fishman, Aharon Zisling and Moshe Shertok.
1948. Proclamation of Independence. Edited by Knesset. Jerusalem: Knesset.
Benvenisti, Meron. 2000. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since
1948. Translated by M. Kaufman-Lacusta. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press.
Benvenisti, Meron. 2003. Which Kind of Binational State? Haaretz, 20 November
[cited 10 June 2004]. Available from www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/363062.
html.
Benvenisti, Meron. 2004. An Old Refrain that Stabs the Heart. Guardian, 22 May
[cited 1 July 2010]. Available from www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/22/
comment.
Benvenisti, Meron. 2007. Son of the Cypresses. Translated by M. Kaufman-Lacusta.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Benvenisti, Meron. 2010a. Formal Interview. Jerusalem, 18 January.
Benvenisti, Meron. 2010b. Email. Jerusalem, 1 March.
Birenbaum-Carmely, Daphna. 2001. Between Individualism and Collectivism:
The Case of a Middle Class Neighbourhood in Israel. International Journal of
Sociology and Social Policy 21 (11/12): 1–25.
Borgmann, Alfred. 1992. The Artificial and the Real: Reflections on Baudrillard’s
America. In Jean Beaudrillard, edited by W. Stearns and W. Chaloupka. London:
Macmillan.
Bronstein, Eitan. 2010. Formal Interview with Eitan Bronstein. Tel Aviv, 14
January.
Brown, David. 1994. The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia, Politics in Asia.
London and New York: Routledge.
Brown, David. 2000. Contemporary Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural and
Multicultural Politics. London: Routledge.
Brown, David. 2008. The Ethnic Majority: Malign or Benign? Nations and
Nationalism 14 (4): 768–88.
Brown, David. 2012. Ressentiment and Nationalism [unpublished manuscript].
Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalizing States in Old ‘New Europe’ – and the New.
Ethnic and Racial Studies 19 (2): 411–37.
Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity Without Groups. Cambridge and London: Harvard
University Press.
Brubaker, Rogers. 2009. Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism. Annual Review of
Sociology 35: 21–42.
214 Bibliography
Brubaker, Rogers. 2011. Nationalizing States Revisited: Projects and Processes of

Nationalization in Post-Soviet States. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (11): 1785–814.
Brustein, William I., and Ryan D. King. 2004. Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the
Holocaust. International Political Science Review 25 (1): 35–53.
Burg, Avraham. 2007. Defeating Hitler. Israel: Yediot Achronot Books.
Calhoun, Craig. 1997. Nationalism. Buckingham: Open University Press.
CAMERA. 2012. About Camera [cited 7 May 2012]. Available from http://www.
camera.org/index.asp?x_context=24.
Carmi, Rivka. 2009. Neve Gordon’s Divisive Op-Ed. Los Angeles Times, 1
September [cited 1 December 2009]. Available from http://articles.latimes.
com/2009/sep/01/opinion/oe-carmi1.
Coen, Joel, Ethan Coen, George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson,
Charles Durning, John Goodman, et al. 2001. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Burbank, CA: Touchstone Home Video.
Cohen, Patricia. 2009. Book Calls Jewish People an Invention. The New York
Times, 24 November.
Cohen, Stanley. 2001. States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cohn-Sherbok, Dan and Dawoud Sudqi El Alami. 2003. The Palestine–Israeli Conflict:
A Beginner’s Guide. 2nd edition. Westminster, MD: Oneworld Publications.
Connor, Walker. 1994. Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Connor, Walker. 1994b. Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond.
In Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Conversi, Daniele. 2009. Dominant Ethnicities, Dominant Cultures and Cultural
Resemblance: State Building, Boundaries, Assimilation and Violence. In
Dominant Nationalism, Dominant Ethnicity: Identity, Federalism and Democracy,
edited by A. Lecours and G. Nootens. Brussels: PIE Peter Lang S.A.
Dahan-Kalev, Henriette. 2003. ‘You’re so Pretty – You Don’t Look Moroccan’. In
The Challenge of Post-Zionism, edited by E. Nimni. London: Zed Books.
Dalsheim, Joyce. 2007. Deconstructing National Myths, Reconstituting Morality:
Modernity, Hegemony and the Israeli National Past. Journal of Historical
Sociology 20 (4): 521–54.
Damage to Palestinian People and Property During Operation Cast Lead. 2009.
Journal for Palestine Studies 38 (3): 210–12.
Davis, Uri. 1987. Israel: An Apartheid State. London: Zed Books.
Davis, Uri. 1995. Crossing the Border: An Autobiography of an Anti-Zionist Palestinian
Jew. London: Books & Books.
Davis, Uri. 2003. Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within. London; New
York: Zed Books.
Davis, Uri. 2010. Formal Interview. Jerusalem, 21 January.
Dershowitz, Alan. 2003. The Case for Israel. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Dor, Daniel. 2005. The Suppression of Guilt: The Israeli Media and the Reoccupation
of the West Bank. London: Pluto Press.
Dowty, Alan. 1999. Is Israel Democratic? Substance and Semantics in the ‘Ethnic
Democracy’ Debate. Israel Studies 4 (2): 1–15.
Drexler, Elizabeth. 2008. Aceh, Indonesia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Bibliography 215
Ehrlich, Avishai. 2003. Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Post-Zionism. In The Challenge of

Post-Zionism, edited by E. Nimni. London and New York: Zed Books.
Evron, Boas. 1995. Jewish State or Israeli Nation? Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press.
Falk, Avner. 2008. Anti-Semitism: A History and Psychoanalysis of Contemporary
Hatred. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Finkelstein, Norman. 2005. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and
the Abuse of History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fong, Jack. 2008. Revising the Ethnodevelopment Model: Addressing Karen Self-
determination within the Context of the Failed Ethnocratic State of Military-
ruled Burma. Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (2): 327–57.
Fox, Jon, and Cynthia Miller-Idriss. 2008. Everyday Nationhood. Ethnicities 8 (4):
536–76.
Freedman, Seth. 2009. The Lonely Struggle of Uri Davis. Guardian: Comment is
Free, 1 September [cited 30 November 2009]. Available from www.guardian.
co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/01.
Freedom in Israel. 2011. Financial Times, 11 December [cited 30 June 2012].
Available from http://search.proquest.com/docview/910200825?accountid=1
2629.
Gans, Chaim. 2003. The Limits of Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Gavison, Ruth. 1999. Jewish and Democratic? A Rejoinder to the ‘Ethnic
Democracy’ Debate. Israel Studies 4 (1): 44–72.
Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ghanem, As’ad. 1998. State and Minority in Israel: The Case of Ethnic State and
the Predicament of Its Minority. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (3): 428–47.
Ghanem, As’ad. 2009. Democratizing ‘Ethnic States’: The Democratization
Process in Divided Societies – With a Special Reference to Israel. Constellations
16 (3): 462–475.
Ghanem, As’ad, Nadim Rouhana and Oren Yiftachel. 1998. Questioning ‘Ethnic
Democracy’: A Response to Sammy Smooha. Israel Studies 3 (2): 253–67
Gilbert, Martin. 1987. Israel was Everything. The New York Times, 21 June [cited
20 January 2012]. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/21/books/
israel-was-everthing.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
Glaser, D.J. 2003. Zionism and Apartheid: A Moral Comparison. Ethnic and Racial
Studies 26 (3): 403–21.
Goldberg, David J. 2006. The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today.
London: I.B. Taurus & Co.
Goldberg, David Theo. 2009. The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism.
Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing.
Gordon, Neve. 2001. Is there a Jewish Philosophy? Leon Roth [Book Review].
Global Dialogue 3 (4): 149–52 [page numbers excluded from electronic copy;
paragraphs cited here].
Gordon, Neve. 2002a. Zionism, Translation and the Politics of Erasure. Political
Studies 50: 811–28.
Gordon, Neve. 2003. Against the Boycott. Borderlands 2 (3), www.borderlands.
net.au/vol2no3_2003/gordon_against.htm.
Gordon, Neve. 2008. Why I Live in Israel. National Catholic Reporter, 30 May [cited
23 November 2009]. Available from http://ncronline.org/print/1094.
216 Bibliography
Gordon, Neve. 2009. Boycott Israel. Los Angeles Times, 20 August [cited 30
December 2009]. Available from http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/20/
opinion/oe-gordon20.
Gordon, Neve. 2010. Formal Interview. Beer Sheva, 17 January.
Gorenberg, Gershom. 2006. The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of Settlements,
1967–1977. New York: Henry Holt & Company.
Govrin, Aner. 2006. When the Underdog Schema Dominates the We-ness Schema:
The Case of Radical Leftist Jewish-Israelis. Psychoanalytic Review 93 (4): 623–54.
Gray, David J. 1989. Social Science and Social Policy: A Comment. American
Journal of Economics and Sociology 48 (3): 405–16.
Greenfeld, Liah. 1992. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Greenfeld, Liah. 2006. Nationalism and the Mind. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
Greenfeld, Liah and Daniel Chirot. 1994. Nationalism and Aggression. Theory and
Society 23 (1): 79–130.
Grinberg, Lev Luis. 2009. Speechlessness: In Search of a Language to Resist the
Israeli ‘Thing Without a Name’. International Journal of Politics, Culture and
Society 22: 105–16.
Groups Petition Israeli High Court to Annul Nakba Law. 2011. Washington Jewish
Week, 12 May [cited 30 June 2012]. Available from http://search.proquest.com/
docview/870393554?accountid=12629.
Haaretz Editorial. 2007. Lepers? Haaretz, 14 November [cited 14 November 2007].
Available from www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/923919.html.
Haaretz. 2011. Father of Arab Murdered by Jewish Teens Joins Weekly Protest.
Haaretz 27 February [cited 31 December 2013]. Available from www.haaretz.
com/print-edition/news/father-of-arab-murdered-by-jewish-teens-joins-
weekly-protest-1.345909.
Halper, Jeff. 2008. An Israeli In Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel.
London: Pluto Press.
Halper, Jeff. 2010. Formal Interview. Jerusalem, 19 January.
Handelman, Don. 1994. Contradictions Between Citizenship and Nationality:
Their Consequences for Ethnicity and Inequality in Israel. International Journal
of Politics, Culture and Society 7 (3): 441–59.
Hardin, R. 1995. Self Interest, Group Identity. In Nationalism and Rationality,
edited by A. E. A. Breton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harel, Israel. 2007. The Last Victim of the Human Shield Practice. Haaretz, 25
October [cited 5 November 2007]. Available from http://www.haaretz.com/
hasen/spages/916786.html.
Hari, Johann. 2010. Is Gideon Levy the Most Hated Man in Israel or Just the Most
Heroic? Independent, 24 September [cited 10 July 2014]. Available from www.
independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/is-gideon-levy-the-most-hated-
man-in-israel-or-just-the-most-heroic-2087909.html.
Harper, Tauel. 2011. Democracy in the Age of New Media: Politics of the Spectacle.
New York Peter Lang Publishing.
Hass, Amira. 2007. Democracy Is More than Going to the Polls Haaretz, 2 October
[cited 2 October 2007]. Available from www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/908880.
html.
Hearn, J. 2006. Rethinking Nationalism. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bibliography 217
Hechter, M. 1986. Rational Choice Theory and the Study of Race and Ethnic
Relations. In Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, edited by John Rex and David
Mason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Herzl, Theodor. 1902. Altneuland, Jewish Virtual Library [retrieved 3 November
2014]. Available from www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/altneu-
landtoc.html
Hirschfield, Robert. 2009. Israel’s Gadfly: Haaretz’s Gideon Levy Bucks Israeli
Media to Report on Palestinian Suffering. In These Times, www.inthesetimes.
com/main/article/4755/.
Horowitz, D.L. 2002. The Primordialists. In Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary
World, edited by Daniele Conversi. London: Routledge.
Hutchinson, John. 1987. The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism. London: Allen &
Unwin.
Ignatieff, Michael. 1994. Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism.
London: Vintage.
Israel Academic Monitor. 2012. Israel Academic Monitor, Homepage, n.d. [cited 7
May 2012]. Available from www.israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php.
Jamal, Amal. 2002. Beyond “Ethnic Democracy”: State Structure, Multicultural
Conflict and Differentiated Citizenship in Israel. New Political Science 24 (3):
411–31.
Jamal, Amal. 2008. The Counter-hegemonic Role of Civil Society: Palestinian–
Arab NGOs in Israel. Citizenship Studies 12 (3): 283–306.
Jamal, Amal. 2009. The Contradictions of State-Minority Relations in Israel: The
Search for Clarifications. Constellations 16 (3): 493–508.
Judt, Tony. 2010. Israel Must Unpick its Ethnic Myth. Financial Times, 8 December.
Kaufmann, Eric P. 2004. Introduction: Dominant Ethnicity: From Background to
Foreground. In Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities,
edited by E. P. Kaufmann. London and New York: Routledge.
Kaufmann, Eric P. 2009. Dominant Ethnicity and Dominant Nationhood:
Empirical and Normative Aspects. In Dominant Nationalism, Dominant Ethnicity:
Identity, Federalism and Democracy, edited by A. Lecours and G. Nootens. Brussels:
PIE Peter Lang S.A.
Keating, M. 1996. Nations Against the State. The New Politics of Nationalism in
Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Kedourie, Elie. 1966. Nationalism. 3rd edition. London: Hutchinson.
Khoury, Jack. 2007. Israeli Arab Couple Petitions High Court after Residency
Denied (English Edition). Haaretz, 15 February [cited 15 February 2007].
Available from www.haaretz.com/news/israeli-arab-couple-petitions-high-
court-after-residency-denied-1.212967.
Khoury, Jack. 2011. No Neighborly Welcome for Israeli Arabs in Rakefet (English
Edition). Haaretz, September 15 [cited 13 January 2012]. Available from www.
haaretz.com/print-edition/news/no-neighborly-welcome-for-israeli-arabs-in-
rakefet-1.384540.
Kimmerling, Baruch. 1983. Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions
of Zionist Politics. Berkeley Institute of International Studies, University of
California.
Kimmerling, Baruch. 1992. Sociology, Ideology and Nation-Building: The
Palestinians and Their Meaning in Israeli Sociology. American Sociological Review
57: 446–60.
218 Bibliography
Kimmerling, Baruch. 1999. Religion, Nationalism and Democracy in Israel.

Constellations 6 (3): 339–63.
Kimmerling, Baruch. 2004. Benny Morris’s Shocking Interview. History News
Network, www.hnn.us.articles/3166.html.
Kimmerling, Baruch. 2008. Academic History Caught in the Cross-Fire: A Case of
Israeli-Jewish Historiography. In Postzionism: A Reader, edited by L. J. Silberstein.
New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press.
Kirstein Keshet, Yehudit. 2006. Checkpoint Watch: Testimonies from Occupied
Palestine. London, New York: Zed Books.
Klier, John D. 1997. The Myth of Zion Among East European Jewry. In Myths
and Nationhood, edited by G. Hosking and G. Schopflin. London: Hurst &
Company.
Kohn, Hans. 1944. The Idea of Nationalism. New York: Macmillan.
Kohn, J. 2007. A Jewish Life: 1906–1975. In The Jewish Writings [Hannah Arendt],
edited by J. Kohn and R.H. Feldman. New York and Toronto: Schocken
Books.
Kovel, Joel. 2002. Zionism’s Bad Conscience. Tikkun 17 (5): 21–4.
Kovel, Joel. 2007. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/
Palestine. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.
Kraft, Dina and Ethan Bronner. 2009. A City Reinvents Itself Beyond Conflict.
The New York Times, 17 September [cited 30 June 2010]. Available from www.
nytimes.com/2009/09/18/world/middleeast/18telaviv.html.
Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, Community and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon.
Langman, Lauren. 2006. The Social Psychology of Nationalism: To Die for the
Sake of Strangers. In The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, edited by G.
Delanty and K. Kumar. London: Sage.
Laor, Yitzhak. 2009. The Myths of Liberal Zionism. London; New York: Verso.
Law of Return. 1950. Jewish Virtual Library. Available from www.jewishvirtual-
library.org/jsource/Immigration/Text_of_Law_of_Return.html.
Law of Return. 1970. Amendment No.2. Jewish Virtual Library. Available from www.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Immigration/Text_of_Law_of_Return.html.
Lentin, Ronit. 2010. Co-memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialising the
Palestinian Nakba. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Levy, Gideon. 2007. The Threat of the ‘Demographic Threat’ (English Edition).
Haaretz, 23 July [cited 23 July 2007]. Available from www.haaretz.com/hasen/
spages/884512.html.
Levy, Gideon. 2009a. Between Hatreds. Haaretz, 6 August [cited 6 August 2009].
Available from www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1105814.html.
Levy, Gideon. 2009b. Tragedy Isn’t Enough to Turn Men into Heroes. Haaretz
28 September [cited 6 October 2009]. Available from http://www.miftah.org/
Display.cfm?DocId=20620&CategoryId=5.
Levy, Gideon. 2009c. Does Zionism Legitimize Every Act of Violence?. Haaretz,
13 February [cited 13 February 2009]. Available from www.haaretz.com.hasen/
spages/1063597.html.
Levy, Gideon. 2010. Formal Interview. Tel Aviv, 20 January.
Levy, Gideon. 2013. The Israeli Patriot’s Final Refuge: Boycott. Haaretz. Retrieved
14 July. Available from www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.535596.
Liebes, Tamar. 1997. Reporting the Arab/Israeli Conflict: How Hegemony Works. New
York: Routledge.
Bibliography 219
Lijphart, A. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparitive Exploration. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Loewenberg, Peter. 1971. Theodor Herzl: A Study in Charismatic Political
Leadership. In The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, edited by B. B.
Wolman. New York, London: Basic Books Inc.
Lustick, Ian. 1999. Israel as a Non-Arab State: The Political Implications of Mass
Immigration of Non-Jews. Middle East Journal 53 (3): 417–33.
Machover, Moshe. 2011. The Invention of the Jewish People [Book Review]. Race
and Class 52 (92): 101–04.
Mandelbaum, Moran. 2012a. The Invention of the Jewish People [Book Review].
National Identities 14 (2): 191–94.
Mandelbaum, Moran. 2012b. The ‘National Left’ in Israeli Public Discourse: A
Critique. Journal of Language and Politics 11 (3): 448–497.
Mauzy, Diane. 1983. Barisan National: Coalition Government in Malaysia. Kuala
Lumpur and Singapore: Marican & Sons.
Mazrui, Ali A. 1975. Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda, the Making of a Military
Ethnocracy. Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications.
Mearsheimer, John and Stephen Walt. 2007. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
New York: Farar, Straus & Giroux.
Meir, Golda. 1975. Israel in Search of Peace. In Zionism: A Basic Reader, edited by
M. S. Chertoff. New York: Herzl Press.
Milgrom, Jeremy. 2010. Formal Interview with Jeremy Milgrom. Berlin, 12
January.
Morris, Benny. 1994. 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Morris, Benny. 2001. Righteous Victims. New York: Vintage Books.
Morris, Benny. 2004a. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morris, Benny. 2004b. On Ethnic Cleansing. New Left Review 26: 35–51.
Nathan, Susan. 2005. The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish–Arab
Divide. London: HarperCollins.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by D. Smith.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nimni, Ephraim. 2003. Introduction. In The Challenge of Post-Zionism, edited by
E. Nimni. London and New York: Zed Books.
O’Leary, Brendan. 2001. An Iron Law of Nationalism and Federation?: A
(Neo-Diceyian) Theory of the Necessity of a Federal Staatsvolk and of
Constitutional Rescue. Nations and Nationalism 7 (3): 273–96.
Ozkirimli, Umut. 2003. The Nation as an Artichoke? A Critique of Ethnosymbolist
Interpretations of Nationalism. Nations and Nationalism 9 (3): 339–55.
Ozkirimli, Umut. 2010. Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. 2nd edition.
Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ozkirimli, Umut and Steven Grosby. 2007. Nationalism Theory Debate: The
Antiquity of Nations? Nations and Nationalism 13 (3): 523–37.
Pappe, Ilan. 1988. Britain and the Arab–Israeli Conflict. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Pappe, Ilan. 2001. The Making of the Arab–Israeli Conflict 1947–1951. London,
New York: I.B. Tauris.
Pappe, Ilan. 2004. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
220 Bibliography
Pappe, Ilan. 2010. Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel.
London and New York: Pluto Press.
Peled, Miko. 2012. The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. Charlottesville,
VA: Just World Books.
Peled, Yoav. 1992. Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship:
Arab Citizens of the Jewish State. The American Political Science Review 86 (2):
432–43.
Peled, Yoav. 2007. Citizenship Betrayed: Israel’s Emerging Immigration and
Citizenship Regime. Theoretical Inquiries in Law 8 (2): 333–58.
Peled, Yoav. 2008. The Evolution of Israeli Citizenship: An Overview. Citizenship
Studies 12 (3): 335–45.
Peteet, Julie. 2005. Words as Interventions: Naming in the Palestine–Israel
conflict. Third World Quarterly 26 (1): 153–72.
Piterberg, Gabriel. 2001. Erasures. New Left Review 10 (July–August): 31–46.
Piterberg, Gabriel. 2008. The Returns Of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in
Israel. London; New York: Verso.
Plamenatz. 1973. Two Types of Nationalism. In Nationalism: The Evolution of
an Idea, edited by E. Kamenka. Canberra: Australian National University
Press.
Polkinghorne, Donald E. 1988. Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Pollack, Yonatan. 2010. Formal Interview. Jaffa, 20 January.
Powers, Janet. 2006. Blossoms on the Olive Tree: Israeli and Palestinian Women
Working For Peace. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Rabinowitz, Dan. 1997. Overlooking Nazareth. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rabinowitz, Dan. 2001. The Palestinian Citizens of Israel, the Concept of Trapped
Minority and the Discourse of Transnationalism in Anthropology. Ethnic and
Racial Studies 24 (1): 64–85.
Rabinyan, Dorit. 2004. The Exile’s Return. Guardian, International Edition, 3
April, Review Liftout 2–4.
Rabinyan, Dorit. 2010. Formal Interview. Tel Aviv, 16 January.
Rabkin, Yakov M. 2006. A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to
Zionism. London and New York: Zed Books.
Rabkin, Yakov M. 2010. Demystifying Zionism. Canadian Dimension, November/
December, 17–19.
Ram, Uri. 1999. The Colonization Perspective in Israeli Society. In The Irael/
Palestine Question, edited by I. Pappe. London; New York: Routledge.
Ram, Uri. 2005. Four Perspectives on Civil Society and Post-Zionism in Israel.
Palestine–Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 12 (1): 33–42.
Ram, Uri. 2008. The Globalization of Israel: McWorld in Tel Aviv, Jihad in Jerusalem,
Globalizing Regions. New York and London: Routledge.
Ravid, Barak. 2009a. L.A. Jews Mull Boycott of Israel University over ‘Apartheid’
Op-ed (English Edition). Haaretz, 23 August [cited 30 September 2009]. Available
from www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109275.html.
Ravid, Barak. 2009b. Education Minister Slams Israeli lecturer’s ‘Apartheid’ Op-ed
(English Edition). Haaretz, 23 August [cited 30 September 2009]. Available from
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109492.htm.
Rawls, John. 1971. The Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bibliography 221
Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon. 2011. Jewish Peoplehood, ‘Jewish Politics’ and Political

Responsibility: Arendt on Zionism and Political Partition. College Literature 38
(1): 57–74.
Riessman, Catherine Kohler. 2008. Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Los
Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore: Sage Publications.
Robertson, Geoffrey. 2005. Foreword. In The Question of Zion. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press.
Ronen, Dov. 1979. The Quest for Self-Determination. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Rose, Jacqueline. 2005. The Question of Zion. Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press.
Rosmer, Tilde. 2010. Studying Academic Activists: The Balancing Act of Critique
and Solidarity. Cultural Dynamics 22 (2): 121–36.
Rouhana, Nadim. 1998. Israel and Its Arab Citizens: Predicaments in the
Between Ethnic States and Ethnonational Minorities. Third World Quarterly 19
(2): 277–96.
Rouhana, Nadim. 2006. ‘Jewish and Democratic’? The Price of a National Self-
Deception. Journal of Palestine Studies 35 (2): 64–74.
Russo, Yocheved Miriam. 2009. The Battle of the Boycotts (Online Edition).
Jerusalem Post, 26 September [cited 30 September 2009]. Available from www.
jpost.com/LocalIsrael/Article.aspx?id=156007.
Sa’di, Ahmad H. 2000. Israel as Ethnic Democracy: What Are the Implications for
the Palestinian Minority? Arab Studies Quarterly 22 (1): 25–37.
Sa’di, Ahmad H. 2004. Construction and Reconstruction of Racialised Boundaries:
Discourse, Institutions and Methods. Social Identities 10 (2): 135–49.
Saban, Ilan. 2004. Minority Rights in Deeply Divided Societies: A Framework
for Analysis and the Case of the Arab-Palestinian Minority in Israel. New York
University Journal of International Law and Politics 36: 885–1003.
Salamon, Gavriel. 2004. A Narrative-Based View of Co-existence Education.
Journal of Social Issues 60 (2): 273–287.
Sand, Shlomo. 2009. The Invention of the Jewish People. Translated by Y. Lotan.
English paperback edn. London: Verso Books.
Sand, Shlomo. 2011. The Words and the Land: Israeli Intellectuals and the Nationalist
Myth, Semiotext(e) Active Agents Series. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Sawyer, R. Keith. 2002. A Discourse on Discourse: An Archaeological History of an
Intellectual Concept. Cultural Studies 16 (3): 433–56.
Schama, Simon. 2009. Twists of History; A Provocative Look at the Origins of
Jewish Identity. Financial Times, 14 November [Retrieved 31 March 2011].
Available from http://0-search.proquest.com.prospero.murdoch.edu.au/docvie
w/250246851?accountid=12629.
Schnall, David J. 1979. Radical Dissent in Contemporary Israeli Politics: Cracks in the
Wall. New York: Prager Publishers.
Schocken, Amos. 2008. So as Not to Be an Apartheid State (English Edition).
Haaretz, 27 June [cited 27 June 2008]. Available from www.haaretz.com/hasen/
spages/996697.html.
Schoeps, Julius H. 1997. Theodor Herzl and the Zionist Dream. London: Thames &
Hudson.
Segev, Tom. 2000. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate.
Translated by H. Watzman. London: Little, Brown & Company.
222 Bibliography
Segev, Tom. 2002. Foreword. In The Other Israel, edited by J. Carey Roane and
Shainin. New York: The New Press.
Shafir, Gershon. 1999. Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach. In
The Israel/Palestine Question, edited by I. Pappe. London; New York: Routledge.
Shafir, Gershon and Yoav Peled. 1998. Citizenship and Stratification in an Ethnic
Democracy. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (3): 408–25.
Shahid, Leila. 2002. The Sabra and Shatila Massacres: Eye-Witness Reports. Journal
for Palestine Studies 32 (1): 36–58.
Sharoni, Simona and Mohammed Abu-Nimer. 2003. The Israeli–Palestinian
Conflict. In Understanding the Contemporary Middle East, edited by J. Schwedler
and D. Gerner. Boulder, CO; London: Lynne Rienner.
Shavit, Ari. 2003. No More Two-state Solution? Haaretz, 23 August [cited 3 March 2005].
Available from www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=4100&secti.
Shavit, Ari. 2004. Benny Morris: On Ethnic Cleansing. New Left Review 26: 35–51.
Shavit, Ari. 2009. Israelis Who Blame Israel Are Not Helping the Palestinians
(English Edition). Haaretz, 1 January [cited 30 June 2010]. Available from www.
haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051661.html.
Shavit, Yaacov. 2010. The Invention of the Jewish People [Book Review]. Nations
and Nationalism 16 (4): 774–76.
Shenhav, Yehouda. 2002. Ethnicity and National Memory: The World Organization
of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) in the Context of the Palestinian National
Struggle. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29 (1): 27–56.
Shimoni, Gideon. 1995. The Zionist Ideology. Hanover and London: University
Press of New England.
Shlaim, Avi. 1988. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement
and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press.
Shlaim, Avi. 2000. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. London: Penguin.
Shohat, Ella. 1999. The Invention of the Mizrahim. Journal of Palestine Studies 29
(1): 5–20.
Shohat, Ella. 2002. A Reluctant Eulogy: Fragments from the Memories of an
Arab-Jew. In Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation, edited by N. Abdo
and R. Lentin. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Shragai, Nadav. 2007. Rights Group: Steep Rise in Violence against Hebron
Palestinians (English Edition). Haaretz, 19 October [cited 9 April 2008]. Available
from www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914867.html.
Silver, Catherine B. 2008. Traumatic Memories and the Need to Punish: The
Boycott of Israeli Academics. Psychoanalytic Review 95 (3): 387–540.
Slater, Jerome. 2000. Can Zionism be Reconciled with Justice for the Palestinians.
Tikkun 15 (4): 25.
Smith, Anthony D. 1981. The Ethnic Revival. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin.
Smith, Anthony D. 1999. ‘Ethno-Symbolism’ and the Study of Nationalism. In
Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Anthony D. 2003. The Poverty of Anti-nationalist Modernism. Nations and
Nationalism 9 (3): 357–70.
Smooha, Sammy. 1997. Ethnic Democracy: Israel as an Archetype. Israel Studies
2 (2): 198–241.
Bibliography 223
Smooha, Sammy. 2002a. The Inferior Quality of Israeli Democracy [English

Translation]. Seder Yom 1:4.
Smooha, Sammy. 2002b. The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and
democratic state. Nations and Nationalism 8 (4): 475–503.
Smooha, Sammy. 2005. The Model of Ethnic Democracy. In The Fate of Ethnic
Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, edited by S. Smooha and P. Jarve. Budapest:
Open Society Foundation.
Spencer, P. and H. Wollman. 2005. Good and Bad Nationalisms. In Nations
and Nationalism: A Reader, edited by P. Spencer and H. Wollman. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Steinberg, Shirley. 2012. In A Conversation with Shirley Steinberg. Research
Workshop, Murdoch University, 21 August.
Stewart, Catrina. 2010. Israel Set to Force all Citizens to Swear Oath to Jewish
State. Independent, 17 July [cited 14 January 2011]. Available from www.inde-
pendent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-set-to-force-all-citizens-to-swear-
oath-to-jewish-state-2028696.html.
Sutcliffe, Adam. 2010. Dominant Narratives: The Invention of the Jewish People.
Journal of Palestine Studies 39 (3): 82–3.
Tamir, Yael. 1993. Liberal Nationalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh. 1983. The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of
Scotland. In The Invention of Tradition, edited by E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Triandafyllidou, Anna. 1998. National Identity and the ‘Other’. Ethnic and Racial
Studies 21 (4): 593–612.
Veracini, Lorenzo. 2006. Israel and Settler Society. London: Pluto Press.
Waiting for a Miracle. 2005. The Economist, 13 August, 21–3.
Walzer, Michael. 2001. History and National Liberation. The Journal of Israeli
History 20 (2/3): 1–8.
Weiner, Myron. 1987. Political Change: Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In
Understanding Political Development, edited by M. Weiner and S. Huntington.
Boston: Little, Brown & Company.
Weiss, Yfaat. 2004. Central European Ethnonationalism and Zionist Binationalism.
Jewish Social Studies 11 (1): 93–117.
Wimmer, Andreas. 2004. Dominant Ethnicity and Dominant Nationhood. In
Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities, edited by E. P.
Kaufmann. London and New York: Routledge.
Wimmer, Andreas. 2008a. Elementary Strategies of Ethnic Boundary Marking.
Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (6): 1025–55.
Wimmer, Andreas. 2008b. The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A
Multilevel Process Theory. American Journal of Sociology 113 (4): 970–1022.
Wistrich, Robert. 2011. A Polemic Written in Sand. The Jerusalem Post, 17
January.
Wittenberg, Jonathan. 2010. Review: NON-FICTION: Home or Away? Is the
Entire History of the Jews Nothing More than a Wilful Fabrication? Jonathan
Wittenberg Remains Unconvinced: The Invention of the Jewish People by
Shlomo Sand. Guardian, 9 January.
Yack, Bernard. 1999. The Myth of the Civic Nation. In Theorizing Nationalism,
edited by R. Beiner. New York: State University of New York.
224 Bibliography
Yadgar, Yaacov. 2002. From the Particularlistic to the Universalistic: National

Narratives in Israel’s Mainstream Press, 1967–97. Nations and Nationalism 8 (1):
55–72.
Yadgar, Yaacov. 2003a. Between ‘the Arab’ and ‘the Religious Rightist’: ‘Significant
Others’ in the Construction of Jewish-Israeli National Identity. Nationalism and
Ethnic Politics 9 (1): 52–74.
Yadgar, Yaacov. 2003b. From ‘True Peace’ to ‘the Vision of the New Middle East’:
Rival Images of Peace in Israel. Journal of Peace Research 40 (2): 177–93.
Yadgar, Yaacov. 2011. Secularism and Religion in Jewish-Israeli Politics: Traditionists
and Modernity. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Yiftachel, Oren. 1993. The Evolution of Ethnic Relations in a Mixed Region: Arabs
and Jews in the Gallilee, Israel. Perth: Indian Ocean Centre for Peace Studies,
University of Western Australia.
Yiftachel, Oren. 1997. Israeli Society and Jewish–Palestinian Reconciliation:
‘Ethnocracy’ and Its Territorial Contradictions. The Middle East Journal 51 (4):
505–19.
Yiftachel, Oren. 1999. ‘Ethnocracy’: The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine.
Constellations 6 (3): 364–90.
Yiftachel, Oren. 2006. Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Yiftachel, Oren. 2007. Formal Interview. Perth, 20 June.
Yiftachel, Oren. 2010. Formal Interview (Supplementary). Beer Sheva, 17
January.
Yiftachel, Oren, and As’ad Ghanem. 2004. Towards a Theory of Ethnocratic
Regimes: Learning from the Judaization of Israel/Palestine. In Rethinking
Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities, edited by E. P. Kaufmann.
New York and London: Routledge.
Young, I. M. 2005. Self-Determination as Non-Domination: Ideals Applied to
Palestine/Israel. Ethnicities 5 (2):139–59.
Zertal, Idith. 1998. From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence
of Israel. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Zertal, Idith. 2005. Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Index
academic neutrality or partisanship, 155, 159, 160, 161, 179, 180,

11, 27, 33 182–184, 187, 190, 197–198,
anarchism, 97, 179 200–201, 205, 206
anti-semitism, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 141, Brubaker, Rogers, 23, 27, 28, 208
144, 148, 150, 189, 198–199 Burg, Avram, 122, 146–147
anti-Zionism, 1, 3, 5, 8, 45, 82, 88, 91,
109, 124 charter, 25–29
apartheid, 6, 74, 75, 80, 82, 83, 98, circumcision, 10, 87–88, 162, 179
109, 115, 148 civic discourse, 170, 171–172, 176,
Arendt, Hannah, 48, 58, 60, 172 178–179, 180, 182, 188, 189, 191,
Arlosoroff, Chaim, 49 192–193
army, see military civic nationalism, 19–22, 38, 39,
Atzmon, Gilad, 7, 33, 53, 105–111, 41–42, 51, 68, 174, 208
138–141, 143, 160, 163, 164, co-existence, 8, 75, 87, 91, 152,
167–168, 189–190, 206 169, 173, 182, 183, 184, see also
Avineri, Shlomo, 33, 42, 48, 49, 172, binational discourse
211 co-optation, 4, 7, 49, 78, 121, 157,
183, 205
Baer, Yitzhak, 40 Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, 2–3
Balfour Declaration, 46 colonialism, 6–7, 13, 20, 43, 45, 46,
Barak, Ehud, 90, 210 47, 50, 53, 56, 60, 65, 75, 81, 91,
BDS, see Boycott, Divestment and 97–98, 99, 100, 113, 121, 122,
Sanctions 123–124, 127, 129, 131, 135,
Ben Gurion, David, 54, 58, 60, 63–64 142, 147, 149, 160, 162, 173,
Ben Gurion University, 77 181, 182, 183, 193
Benvenisti, David, 114, 124 constructivism, see nationalism, as
Benvenisti, Meron, 7, 9, 11, 60–61, social construction
70, 113–115, 120, 124, 128–134, Cultural Zionism, 25, 48–50, 51, 121,
157–160, 186–187, 191, 194–196, 127, 134, 181, 182–183
207
binational discourse, 172–174, 176, Davis, Uri, 6, 37, 80–84, 124, 160,
179–184, 186, 187, 188, 201 161–167, 168, 178–179, 192,
binational state, 49, 68, 80, 92, 102, 206
112, 114–115, 120, 122, 133, Declaration of Independence, 52, 53,
173, 196, 206, see also solution, 54, 210
one-state Deir Yassin, 126
boundary erasure, 9, 112, 172, 200 democracy, 4, 5, 25–27, 45, 48, 49,
boundary-making, 20–21, 174, 177, 50, 53, 54, 62, 63, 78, 92, 96, 99,
184, 198 118, 122, 123, 127, 142, 157, 204,
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions 205, 210
(BDS), 77, 92, 148, 164, 206 discourse, see individual names;
Bronstein, Eitan, 10, 87–92, 102, 104, nationalism, as discourse;
118–120, 121, 125–126, 134, 152, ressentiment, discourse
225
226 Index
discrimination, 18, 25, 37, 38, 52, 62, Hamas, 69, 153
67, 81, 82, 99, 185, 204 Hasan, Hourani, 111–112, 184
Dor, Daniel, 67, 210 Hass, Amira, 104
Drexler, Elizabeth, 221 Hebrew
Dreyfus Affair, 42 identification, 75–76, 82, 84–85,
118, 120, 161, 163, 188–189, 199
education, 55–57, 70 language, 78, 83, 85–86, 114, 118,
Eichmann, Adolf, 60, 63–64 123, 195
El Alami, Dawoud Sudqui, 1 Herzl, Theodor, 38, 41–42, 43, 44, 49,
ethnic cleansing of Palestine, 2, 13, 63, 85
62–63, 68, 114, 124, 126, 197, 203 Hess, Moses, 40, 41
ethnic democracy, 26–27, 202 historicisation, 30–36, 40, 43, 54, 55,
ethnocracy, 26–27, 74, 204 56–57, 60, 134, 135, 138, 139,
ethnocratisation, 5–7, 25–28, 69, 192, 141, 143, 151, 171, 173, 178, 187,
193, 199, 204 205
ethnocratiser states, 5, 25, 29, 202, see Holocaust, 5, 33, 52, 55, 56, 57–60,
also ethnocratisation 63–64, 67, 70, 98, 128, 138, 139,
exile 145–146, 150, 161, 187, 190, 199,
Jewish myth, 31, 35, 43, 54, 171, 207
208 Holocaust denial, 108–109, 141
metaphor, 93, 102, 111, 153, 163, homeland narrative, 31, 43, 45, 46,
180, 182, 206 52, 54, 75, 117, 120, 121–122,
Palestinian, 98 173, 190
faith, see religion ICAHD, see Israeli Committee Against

Fatah, 69, 80, 81, 82–83, 163, 206 Housing Demolitions
fear, basis for Zionism, 55, 67, 144, immigration, 44, 46, 48, 49, 54–55,
150, 151, 152, 186, 188, 190 86, 93, 123, 125, 208, 209, see also
Law of Return
Gaza, 3, 62, 64, 65, 69, 75, 101, 104, intellectuals, see nationalism, culture-
106, 128, 149, 156 makers
Germany, 39, 40, 108, 146–148 intellectuals and Zionism, 36–41, 51
Gordon, Neve, 77–80, 148–150, 152, intifada
153, 155–157, 180, 198, 206 first, 66, 90, 97
Graetz, Hienrich, 40 second, 66, 67, 78, 90, 210
Greenfeld, Liah, 19–24, 36, 38, 39, 43, inverted ressentiment discourse, 170,
208, 209 177–178, 182, 189
Grinberg, Lev Luis, 3–4, 7, 60, 63, 69, Israeli Air Force, see military
70, 157, 174, 197–198, 210 Israeli Arabs, 61–62, 65, 68–69, 210,
groupism, 13, 27, 29, 34, 61, 68, 173, see also Palestinians
177, 178 Israeli Committee Against Housing
Demolitions (ICAHD), 84, 120
Ha’am, Ahad, 48
Haaretz, 101, 104, 113, 114 Jabotinsky, see Revisionist Zionism
Habermas, Jurgen, 196 Jost, Isaak Marcus, 39
Halper, Jeff, 7, 84–87, 92, 120, Judaism, see religion
123–124, 129, 134, 135, 141–143,
155, 180, 182, 184, 187, 190, 195, Kerstein Keshet, Yehudit, 4, 203, 209
197, 198–199, 206 kibbutz, 81, 87, 88–89, 115
Index 227
Kinder Zionist discourse, 154–157, 42–47, 48–51, 52–53, 58–70, 73,

169, 174–175, 176, 181, 193 16–91 , 192–194, 196–198, 202,
Kymlicka, Will, 117 204–205
as social construction, 5, 13,
Labour Party, 49, 58, 197 17, 20, 21, 22–24, 27, 30,
Laor, Yitzhak, 159, 172, 174 32–34, 40, 52–53, 55, 56, 60,
Law of Return, 52, 54–55, 86, 91, see 61, 66, 73, 123, 134, 137, 148,
also immigration 150–151, 198, 200, 202, 203–204,
Lentin, Ronit, 4–5, 21, 62, 155, 178, 180
159–160, 183–184, 188, 203, nationalist discourses, see under
210 individual names, see also
Levy, Gideon, 101–105, 127, 153–154, nationalism, as discourse
164, 187–188, 190, 197–198, Nazism, 41, 58, 63–64, 106, 107–108,
199–200, 201, 206 122, 135, 139–140
liberalism, 21, 39, 53, 79, 142, 162, new historians, 20, 175–176
163, 167, 172, 174, 175, 188, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 18
194 non-government organisations
Liebes, Tamar, 67–68 (NGO), 78, 84, 87
Likud, 197–198
occupation, 75, 128, 148, 149, 152,
Machsomwatch, 4, 209 157, 174, 185, 205, 210
Mapai, see Labour Party occupied territories, 3–4, 6, 62, 64,
media, 52, 53, 66–68, 75, 101, 103, 65–66, 67, 69, 77, 78, 82, 84,
104, 112, 129 89–90, 101, 104, 112, 114, 128,
migration, see immigration 155, 156, 157–158, 185, 188, 197,
Milgrom, Jeremy, 92–96, 117, 210, 211, see also Gaza
126–127, 134, 135–138, 143, 155, Operation Cast Lead, 69, 102, 104
180–182, 206 Other, concept of, 18, 21–23, 24
military, 68, 81, 88, 93–96, 97, 101, Ozkirimli, Umut, 32, 34, 43, 73
105, 113, 115, 119, 155–157, 158,
209, see also refusenik Palestinian Liberation Organisation
Mizrahi Jews, 6, 53, 112–113, 175, 203, (PLO), 81, 83–84, 179
207, 210 Palestinians, 12, 60–70, 73, 79, 80, 86,
Morris, Benny, 1–2, 3, 5, 6, 62, 66, 68, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102, 103,
175 104, 114, 115, 122, 124, 126, 127,
133, 137, 140, 145, 147, 149, 152,
Nakba, 87, 91, 114, 126, 129, 130, 153–154, 158, 160, 173, 178, 180,
197, 199–200, 210, see also ethnic 183–184, 185, 190, 194, 199, 209,
cleansing; War of 1948 see also Israeli Arabs
narrative analysis, 10–11, 12, 166 partition, 63–64, 126–127
national responsibility, 120–121, 134, Piterberg, Gabriel, 6, 31, 41–42, 45,
182, 198 48, 49, 50–51, 62–63, 159, 183,
nationalism, see also civic nationalism; 186–187, 189, 210
cultural factors, 19, 36, 42–44, Plan Dalet, 62, see also ethnic
135–143 cleansing
culture-makers, 19–22, see also PLO, see Palestinian Liberation
intellectuals and Zionism Organisation
as discourse, 5, 6, 9, 10, 17–25, 26, Political Zionism, 45–51, 134, 162,
28, 29, 30–32, 33, 34, 36–39, 163, 184
228 Index
Pollack, Yonatan, 97–101, 145–146, Sand, Shlomo, 31, 33–36, 37, 38–40,
152, 153, 160–161, 163, 164, 168, 42, 43, 45, 68, 110, 197, 208
178–179, 192, 201, 202, 206 self-hating Jews, 141, 177–178, 189,
post-Zionist discourse, 169, 175–177, 190
180, 187–189, 193, 201 self-interest, 144, 152–154, 164, 188
settlements, 65–66, 69, 77, 80, 102,
Rabinyan, Dorit, 9, 111–113, 120, 114, 197, see also occupation;
145, 148, 152, 153, 170, 175, 176, occupied territories
184–186, 190, 200, 207, 210 settlers, 4, 65–66, 69, 78, 103, 119,
racism, 6, 37, 40, 41, 44, 74, 77, 81, 156, 197–198
85, 99, 107, 142, 146, 148–149, Shavit, Ari, 1–3, 5, 7, 35, 66, 68, 69,
161, 199 114, 120, 186
Raz-Krakotzin, Amnon, 48, 49, 172, Shimoni, Gideon, 32, 42, 48, 208,
173, 182, 184, 186 209
refugees, Palestinian, 62–63, 64, 65, solution
80, 86, 91–92, 98–99, 102, 122, one-state, 80, 83, 86, 96, 98, 102,
126, 128, 152, 153–154, 190, 199, 111, 115, 120, 132–133, 173, 186,
206, 209, 210 188
refusenik, 89–90, 94, 97, 155–157, see two-state, 80, 83, 86, 96, 98, 102,
also military 111–112, 114–115, 174, 188,
reification, 6, 13, 17, 20, 22, 25, 27, 206
52–53, 54–55, 60, 62, 70, 92, 114, South Africa, see apartheid
186, 193, 201, 202, 204
religion, 34–35, 37, 55, 76, 80, 82, 84, Tel Aviv, 87, 91–92, 104–105, 111,
99, 100, 123, 135–140, 142, 143, 118, 153, 200–201, 206
151, 161, 162–163, 172, 180, 208 teleological explanations, 7, 33, 208
responsibility, see national terminology, 4, 22, 26–28, 45, 78, 102,
responsibility 150, 178, 203, 208, 209
ressentiment
development, 18–24, 36–42, 47–51 United Nations (UN), 62, 63, 83, 109,
discourse, 5–6, 18–24, 26, 28–29, 123, 127
30, 36–51, 55–70, 144, 148,
169–170, 171, 175, 177–178, 181, violence, 4, 23, 32, 44, 46–47, 49, 55,
182, 187, 189–191, 192–198, 199, 60, 69–70, 88, 121, 129, 147, 149,
202–205 152, 154, 186, 193, 205
pairs, 13, 23–25, 30, 44, 46, 48, virtue, 5, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 30, 31,
50–51, 52, 56, 65, 68, 199, 202 39, 41, 43–44, 47–51, 52, 56–60,
transvaluation of values, 18–21 66, 67, 70, 131, 166, 177, 182,
Revisionist Zionism, 47, 50, 139, 209 183, 186, 190, 192, 196, 197, 199,
right of return, 62, 63, 80, 86, 91, 203, 209
98–99, 102, 126, 152, 153, 154,
190, 199, 200, 206, 209 War of 1948, 54, 62–63, 64, 65, 126,
Roth, Leon, 79–80, 180, 206 129, 130–131, 181, 186, see also
Ruppin, Arthur, 41, 49 Nakba
Russia, 19, 21, 27, 42, 108, 124, 148, Weltsch, Robert, 40
211 West Bank, see occupied territories
Sabra and Shatila, 97, 210 Yadgar, Yaacov, 49, 53, 66, 67, 176,
Said, Edward, 129–130, 187, 191 178, 197
Index 229
Yiftachel, Oren, 26–27, 62, 65, 74–77, ‘benign’ version, 58, 106, 118, 178,
79, 118, 121–123, 124, 127, 133, see also Cultural Zionism
134, 146–148, 149, 153, 180, 182, Eastern Europe, 34, 37–39, 41,
190, 204, 206 142
Yizhar, S., 159–160 and ‘new Jew’ 58, 106, 118, 178
perennialist accounts of, 32–36, 60,
Zertal, Idith, 55, 58–60, 63–64 151, 172
Zionism, see also Cultural Zionism; Western Europe, 37–39, 41
Political Zionism; ressentiment, Zochrot, 87, 91, 102, 119, 182,
discourse 183–184, 200, 201, 206

Attwell, Katie - Jewish-Israeli National Identity and Dissidence The Contradictions of Zionism and Resistance - Palgrave Macmillan (2015)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Attwell, Katie - Jewish-Israeli National Identity and Dissidence The Contradictions of Zionism and Resistance - Palgrave Macmillan (2015)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

J

1 Ressentiment and the State 17

The Charter is laid: the Declaration of Independence and

4 Meet the Dissidents 73

6 Themes of Dissident Dissonance: Zionism and the Self 144

Appendix: The Dissidents at a glance 206

Another book on Israel/Palestine. What could possibly be left to say

Thank you to Benjamin Reilly for believing in me, enabling me to

A tale of two Zionists

1990s, Morris was heralded as one of Israel’s ‘new historians’ – a critical

how might scholars evaluate their efforts? These questions focus us on

The problematic situation (the ‘Thing Without a Name’)

with suitable terminology for this ‘Thing’ contributes to the problem.

Lentin questions whether engagement with the Other ultimately becomes

resistance in the second part of the book, using qualitative analysis of

Jeff Halper ... is a fucking American Zionist who came to live in

The dilemma constitutes the lived experience of certain individuals;

concern, since I worked from the premise that objective contradictions

far as the overall exercise is concerned, then, a different selection of

texts at several levels that overlap: stories told by research participants

I use a thematic analysis, which prioritises the content of the narrative,

By our interviewing and transcription practices, we play a major part

In assembling my dissident narratives, I engaged with material my

each interview, I explained the premise of my research to the dissidents,

Othering the Other

type of nationalist discourse develops and how activists can institution-

Since the dissidents’ political context needs careful elucidation, this is

the production of a cultural understanding and rhetoric which leads

Nationalist discourses necessarily underlie the projects that they may

Ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourses

This section elaborates the concept of a ressentiment ethnic nation-

The sociologist Liah Greenfeld has most convincingly elaborated the

Russian national consciousness was defined almost wholly on the basis

According to this account, the nobles, through their transvaluation of

ethnic nationalism is adopted because it is useful, not because it is civic

(rather than civic) nationalist discourses inspire the production of

impossible to separate the discourse from the materiality of the conflict.

policies and successive acts that are shaped by discursive construc-

Ressentiment discourses offer cogent, self-evident explanations for

nation to measure moral virtue only with reference the treatment of

[T]he borderline between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is in principle impermeable.

In these circumstances, those identifying as a nation could easily ignore,

with ressentiment.3 That the ethnic construction of the Us might sow

Ressentiment and ethnocratisation

If we now understand how ressentiment discourses originate and spread,

Obviously, not all nationalist activists acquire the possibility to put

a minimalist definition of democracy (Dowty, 1999, pp. 3–4; Smooha,

ethnicity, race and nation ... not as substances or things or entities or

Employing such an approach enables a scholar to ‘avoid unintention-

of the ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse employed by the first

When ordinary people encounter institutions displaying national

Perhaps the most crucial impact of this ressentiment charter is on the

state objectively de-privileges him on the basis of his allocated category.

In this chapter, I explain Zionism, the nationalism underpinning the

In the beginning, there was Zionism

Zionism is a ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse. Its content has

fate. Ensuing events would subsequently legitimise, in the eyes of some

Getting outside of Zionism

is so patently one in which a pre-existing ethnic identity was of para-

that recognises the great significance of pre-existing ethnic ties holds

In keeping with this deterministic tendency, Avineri (1981) invokes a

on the one hand a deep feeling of attachment to the Land of Israel,