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Shtetl Colonialism: First and Last Impressions of Indigeneity by Colonised Colonisers

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/2201473x.2012.10648825

2201-473X

Ilаn Pappé,

Jewish Identity and Society

We passed by an old barefoot Arab, leading a loaded camel. His ancestors for ages must have driven loaded camels and shepherded sheep, erected tents and at nights ignited fire baked pitta bred and set around the fire, smoking and telling fables into the quiet night. And I – I just arrived, hardly slept one night in Eretz Israel, hardly drank a glass of water, hardly walked a mile, and yet I saw this Arab as an alien. I was the inhabitant and he was the nomad. My sense of integrity and justice felt shame, my blood cried: this is my homeland (second Aliya poet Shlomo Blumegarten, 1915) This article argues that although the paradigms of settler colonialism and apartheid are adequate analytical tools for understanding Israel and Zionism in the past and in the present, they leave few of the phenomena in that part of the world unexplained and in need of further elaboration. Through an examination of the steadfastness of the racist perception of what is 'Arab' in Jewish Palestine and Israel since the late 19th century and until today, this article wants to attract attention to two such phenomena. The first is the rapid transformation of the Jews of Europe from the ultimate victims of that continent and that civilisation to the chief victimisers in Palestine. Secondly, this article draws attention to the total immunity the Zionist movement and, later, the Jewish state received as a result of this transformation.