FICHA DE PROCESOS

66 Idem., ‘Zion’s Cities; Projections o f Urbanism and German-Jewish Self-Consciousness, 1909-1933,’ Leo BaeckInstitute Yearbook, Vol. XLII (1997) p. 115.

represent itself as an agent of European civilization in the backward Orient, justifying its settlement of the land and de-legitimising Palestinian Arab society through the intertwining discourses of Orientalism and Colonialism

As a whole, this pre-existing visual discourse was used by the Jewish Section of the Ministry of Information to exhibit the achievements o f the Zionist movement for its Jewish audience but also for the non-Jewish public. By visibly and textually depicting Zionism as an agent of European civilization it could be seen as a national movement that represented the values o f the imperial enterprise, whilst at the same time being shown as an oppressed

national group that required the tutelage of Great Britain to safeguard its transformation from degenerative Diaspora to a rooted and developed nation.

Significantly, Hyamson himself, as the director o f Jewish propaganda for the Ministry o f Information, perceived Palestine through the lens o f Zionist visual discourse and culture which had emerged before the First World War. In his work, Palestine- The Rebirth o f an Ancient People, which was published in 1917, and distributed to statesmen and others whom the London Zionist Bureau wished to influence, he constmcted and exhibited Palestine, through text and photographs, as the site o f the regeneration and redemption of the nation and the land, the latter having been “laid waste . . . for centuries.”^* Reflecting the dominant

Berkowitz, Zionist Culture an d West European Jewry before the First World War, p. 147, Silberstein, op. cit., pp. 85-87, 182-3, 191. It would be both a simplification and distortion to discuss Zionist discourse and settlement solely through the prism o f Colonialism. See Derek J. Penslar, ‘Zionism, Colonialism and

Postcolonialism,’ The Joumcd o f Israeli History, vol. 20, nos.2/3 (Summer/Autumn 2001) pp. 84-98 and Avi Bareli, ‘Forgetting Europe: Perspectives on the Debate about Zionism and Colonialism,’ Ibid. pp. 99-121. Nevertheless, the intertwined discourses o f European Colonialism and Orientalism shaped, in part, the ways in which mainstream Zionist discourse imagined both the space, society and culture o f the indigenous population o f Palestine and how Zionist settlement, as an agent o f Western civilization, would redeem the land and society. Silberstein, op. cit., pp. 85-87, 182-3, 191. To be sure, there existed an ongoing tension within Zionism as it sought to portray itself as an authentic part o f the East, rooted in the Orient, whilst also bringing all the benefits o f Western civilization. See below, pp. 233-234. However, this was often confined in practice to the superficial use o f what were seen to be the aesthetics o f the East, which were themselves a product o f the Western imagination. See below, p. 234, n. 89.

Hyamson, Palestine- The Rebirth o f an Ancient People, pp. 257-259. Copies o f this book were distributed by the propaganda committee o f the London Zionist Bureau, “to Statesmen, administrators, publicists, military men

Zionist imagining of the land, Hyamson mapped Palestine as the blossoming site o f the revival of authentic national life, its national language and culture, agriculture, embryonic cities and the educational institutions that were shaping the new national type.^^

At the suggestion o f Hyamson, Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was about to leave for Egypt with the 38^ Royal Fusiliers, was made the official British journalist for Zionist affairs in Palestine. As intended, Jabotinsky’s portrayals o f Palestine, which were published

anonymously,^^ were in large part defined by the system o f Zionist discourse.^i But, the particular ideological perspective of this writer also shaped his representations of Zionist settlement, reflecting the tension between an individual author and a discursive s y s t e m . X q

a degree, the influence of Futurism, the Italian artistic movement that emerged in the 1910s, on Jabotinsky’s vision of Zionist culture and colonization, which has not previously been acknowledged, distinguished his work from mainstream Zionist discourse during this period. The Futurists, as embodied in the ‘Manifesto of Futurism’ penned by its leading advocate, F T. Marinetti, posited a rejection of the antiquarian fascination with the past that was

and others whose views it has been considered desirable to influence.” ‘Report o f Meeting o f Propaganda Committee, 14th December-30 June 1918 Zionist Organisation, (London Bureau)’, Z4/243, Papers o f the London Zionist Bureau, CZA.

Ibid. Ch. XII ‘The Colonies in Detail-1. Judaea,’ pp. 122-139, Ch. XIII ‘The Colonies in Detail-

n.

‘Education in Palestine- The N ew Jew,’ pp. 234-248, 85-89.

These articles were published anonymously and were distributed by the Foreign Office and the Ministry o f Information. See, for example, S. Gaselee, FO to C P Scott, Editor o f The Manchester Guardian, 19 September 1918.

Jabotinsky's writings were complemented by other Zionists working in Palestine, such as Leon Simon, whose reports were disseminated for propaganda purposes by the London Zionist Bureau and whose work was equally shaped by the established system o f Zionist discourse. See, for example, Leon Simon's series o f articles on life in the Jewish colonies and the Yishuv during his time working with the Zionist Commission, The Zionist Review,

Vol. II, no. 3, July - no. 6 October 1918. Also see Walter E. Myers, ‘Assistant to the Chairman o f the Commission, The Colonies o f Liberated Judaea- N otes on a Trip Made by the Zionist Commission Through Some o f the Judaean Colonies,’ TheM accabean (October 1918).

On the multiplicity o f influences that shaped Zionist discourse, and its resulting internal conflicts, see

Silberstein, op. cit., p. 18. The role o f the individual author in the shaping o f ideas, meaning and discourse is also part o f a much wider debate in which scholars such as Foucault and Roland Barthes have dismissed the author as a mere reflection or vessel o f existing discursive forms. Thomas Flynn, 'Foucault's Mapping o f History' in Gary Cutting (ed ). The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (Cambridge: Cambridge U P 1994) p. 39. For an

perceived to dominate European public, intellectual and artistic thought at the fin de siècle

With regard to their vision of society, architecture, and culture. Futurists hailed the aesthetics of modem urbanisation and industry, which they saw as embodying the forces of progress7^

The influence o f this ideology on Jabotinsky during his time in writing for the Ministry of Information is quite apparent. He explicitly distinguished the Zionist vision of Palestine, which he defined in Futurist terms, from the historical-religious discourse that was prevalent in America and Europe during this period. Jabotinsky framed Palestine as a Futurist utopia. Yet, he did not present this as his personal vision, but as being at the root o f the inner consciousness of the modem Zionist. He equated Zionism with Futurism. Writing in his article, ‘With the Jewish Regiment: The Jewish Colonies,’ he stated.

Crossing the borders o f Palestine is for a Zionist an inward experience quite unlike that of any other traveller, whether Jew or Gentile. Both may be deeply loved, but the character of their emotion is different. The ordinary traveller is troubled by visions of the past; the scenery seems to him to be haunted by Miriam, Samson, Gideon. Strangely and naturally enough the modem Zionist is essentially a futurist; great as his pride in past glories may be his keenness for the future is uppermost . . . the Zionist dreams of a new town with white marble palaces and asphalted avenues, gardens, schools, ploughed fields all around, perhaps factory smoke in the

background, and certainly the smoke of hundreds of funnels in the harbour, and crowds of bright healthy men and women with hammers in their hands, giving the Holy Land once again the tme holiness of youth, life and work.

Lovers of antiquity who are anxious to keep the Holy Land for ever a

museum of dead things must not feel shocked. The modem Zionist is as keen as they in conserving the alas! not very abundant memorials o f old glory, provided that the dirt and squalor are not perpetualised under historic pretences . . . When the time comes for creative work some fair compromise will be found reconciling the Holy Land and the national home . . . But for the present we are at war for the rights of

alternative view, see Janet Wolff, The Social Production o f A rt (London: Macmillan 2^^ ed. 1993) Ch. 6. Gunther Berghaus, Futurism and Politics (Oxford: Berghahn 1996) p. 8, F.T. Marinetti, ‘The Founding and Manifesto o f Futurism 1909’ in Umbro Apollonio (ed.) Futurist Manifestos (London: Thames and Hudson,

1973) p. 22.

Berghaus, op. cit., p. 22. Despite his attempt to claim that Jabotinsky’s Zionism was the product o ffin de siècle nineteenth century European culture, particularly Russian positivism, he, like other scholars, has failed to appreciate the influence o f Futurism on Jabotinsky’s world-view. See Stanislawski, op. cit., Chs. 6-9. On the influence o f Futurism on West European nationalism, see George Mosse, Confronting the Nation: Jewish and

life and the renaissance, and the Zionist crossing the border of Palestine in a military train may be forgiven if what resounds in his ears is not so much biblical quotations as some prophetic words about the future7^

Despite this fervour for a Futurist vision that divorced history from the essence of Zionism, a landscape that was free from the past and embraced a will to a pristine modernity, the poetics o f a land that physically embodied the memories of Jewish national sovereignty of Antiquity were an essential element o f mainstream Zionist discourse. They served to authentically tie the Zionist movement to the land o f Palestine, casting it as the site of the Golden Age o f national life which would return through the agency o f the Zionist project. Indeed, as Jabotinsky attempted in his representations of the Jewish Regiments, reflecting the ambiguities o f his conception of Zionist identity,^^ the myths, metaphors and symbols of Ancient Israel were a fundamental means of signifying the discourse o f national rebirth. Hence, in a description of the space of Palestine written by Leon Simon, we find the poetics of collective memory that served to link the Golden Age o f Antiquity with modem Zionist settlement. This signifying practice was a cmcial aspect of the attempt by Zionist propaganda agencies to encode the landscape of Palestine as the site of an era of national rebirth, as inaugurated by the Balfour Declaration.

You enter Palestine by railway . . . As the train goes on you see the welcome green displace the sand . . you come in sight of some of the Jewish colonies, with their red-tiled roofs and smiling fields and eucalyptus trees and orange groves . . . And side by side with these physical impressions, memories of events and figures in Jewish history- o f the exodus, of the revelations on Mount Sinai, o f Samson and David, and Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai- crowd upon the mind, and eye and memory together create a vision of a new chapter of Jewish history which is yet to be written in this fertile land. You feel that you have not simply entered a territory called Palestine: you have entered Erez Israel, the land where the Jewish spirit lived once

Vladimir Jabotinsky, ‘With the Jewish Regiment- The Jewish Colonies,’ c. March 1918, PRO FO 395/237/60273.

Zerubavel, op. cit., p. 28. See below, pp. 238, 241.

and will live again7*

Although Jabotinsky’s representation of Zionism as being essentially Futurist was not in line with the dominant Zionist discourse and therefore the vision that tended to be

imparted by the Jewish Section o f the Ministry of Information, his description of a

regenerated national type, “crowds of bright healthy men and women with hammers in their hands, giving the Holy Land once again the true holiness o f youth, life and work”, reflected a basic tenet o f Zionist ideology. Indeed, the construct o f the New Jew was a fundamental element of the Zionist project. It symbolised the transformative and liberal essence of Zionist thought, re-forming the degenerative Jew of Exile into a normative national type, as defined by late nineteenth and early twentieth century European nationalist discourse.

The agency and manifestation of this physical, spiritual and cultural change, the Jewish Colony, was therefore a salient element of Zionist culture.*^ As such, the Jewish Section of the Ministry o f Information made it a prominent part o f its portrayals o f Jewish life in Palestine. In an article, Jabotinsky hailed the Jewish Colony as a civilizing force in the otherwise “surrounding desolation” of Palestine.

Due to the colony’s importance in Zionist discourse, it meant that, in contrast with the

Leon Simon, ‘With the Zionist Commission. (1) First Impressions,’ 8 April 1918, The Zionist Review, Vol. II, No. 3 (July 1918) p. 39.

George M osse, ‘Max Nordau: Liberalism and the N ew Jew’ in idem. Confronting the Nation, pp. 161-175, Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War, pp. 2-3, Ch. 4. This aspect o f Zionist culture was a product o f nationalist discourse but was also a response, and appropriation of, anti-Semitic stereotypes o f Jews as being weak, feminine, unhealthy, alienated from nature and honest labour. In short, the Jew functioned as the binary opposite o f normative European bourgeois culture, categorized as Other. George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, (New York: Howard Fertig 1985) Ch. 7, Sander Gilman, The J e w ’s Body

(London and N ew York: Routledge 1991) pp. 63-64, p. 134, 137. Tamar Garb, ‘Modernity, Identity, Textuality,’ in Nochlin and Garb, op. cit., p.26. On the gendered aspects o f the Zionist discourse o f the N ew Jew, see below, pp. 221-223. For an alternative interpretation o f Nordau’s Zionism and the concept o f the N ew Jew, which seeks to dismiss the previous historiography on the subject by claiming that it was a product o f social Darwinism rather than hberalism, see Stanislawski, op. cit., Chs. 2-4.

Berkowitz, Zionist Culture an d West European Jewry, Ch. 6.

historical-religious nature of propaganda produced for Christian audiences, there was a marked spatial difference in the visions of Palestine produced by Zionists for the Jewish audience. Representations of Jerusalem, religious monuments, and sweeping barren

landscapes mediated a vision of a pre-modem land frozen in time, embodying the narratives of the Bible and a romanticized Orient for the Western Christian reader. Conversely, the Zionist image of Palestine as the stage of the rebirth of a bustling, vibrant national life and society constituted the visual constmct of the land that was produced and disseminated by the Jewish Section o f the Ministry of Information. As such, the main focus of these

representations were the colonies and Tel Aviv as they embodied the values and desired self- image o f Zionist discourse, and were believed by Sykes to be the focus of the Jewish gaze towards Palestine. This was despite the fact that the majority of the Jewish population, which tended to be religious and non-Zionist, lived in Jerusalem. However, as we shall see in the following chapter, Jerusalem was also to be constmcted for the Jewish reader as a site, if not the seat, of the national renaissance that was said to have followed British liberation.

In Jabotinsky’s work, the colonies were depicted as vehicles o f his widely shared perceptions of Western progress and society, as reflected by the aesthetics of order, planning and utilitarianism. He wrote that the Jewish Colony was “certainly no dream, but a real bit of Europe^^- beautiful straight rows of orange trees, regular canals running along even squares, plantations, lovely neat little houses on a hill in the b a c k g r o u n d . H e proudly stated that

395/237/60273.

Alexander Scholch, ‘Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century (1831-1917 A .D .),’ in Kamil J. Asali (ed.)

Jerusalem in History: 3000 B C to the Present Day, (London and N ew York; Kegan Paul International 2”*^ ed., 1997) pp. 231-232.

According to Shlomo Avineri, Jabotinsky saw Zionism as “an expression o f European culture,” superior to non-European culture, and condemned “any sort o f idealization o f the Orient, which sometimes became very popular in Zionism and modem Hebrew literature.” Shlomo Avineri, The M aking o f M odem Zionism: The Intellectual Origins o f the Jewish State (New York: Basic Books 1981) p. 179.

this model of society provided “thousands of British soldiers . . . [with] the only chance of civilised intercourse, and redeeming what would otherwise be practically no change from the desert o f Sinai . In these representations of Palestine Jabotinsky did not make explicit reference to Palestinian Arab society, but through its omission it was constructed as the binary opposite of the Jewish colony “the only chance o f civilised intercourse." With the metaphor o f "the desert of the Sinai" the sum of Palestinian Arab society was portrayed as backward, inert and barren, to be redeemed by the Jewish colony, a microcosm o f European civilization.

Furthermore, the Jewish Colony was described as being the arbiter of Zionist national culture and an embryonic state that demonstrated the Zionist ability for self-government. Jabotinsky wrote.

in following letters I shall have an opportunity o f describing these settlements, their fields, vineyards, their grandiose wine cellars, libraries, the schools which boast the revival o f a dead language as the mother tongue- an achievement unique in history- their complicated organisations, their problems, strifes, orthodoxy, iconoclasm, socialism- all this miniature but astonishingly complete state within a state. But to­ day it will suffice to say that these colonies speak to the foreign deliverer in clear language, showing what the Jewish colonist would be capable o f had he only been given a full chance.

The argument that the Jewish colonies served as a sign o f the Zionist ability to

395/237/60273.

Jabotinsky had been asked by Hyamson discuss in his reports “the general relationship between the Jewish population and army activities.” Hyamson to Jabotinsky, Egypt, 22 May 1918, PRO FO 395/237/91941. In his articles, Jabotinsky portrayed the British soldier as being overtly impressed by Zionist achievements, lifestyle and culture. This image was in direct contrast to Jabotinsky’s private frustrations with the attitudes and