Paper on Palestine/Israel
BNAIMY56
Week9.pptxThe Palestinian Question
Week 9: Ideology & Science - Consolidating Zionism
Professor: Abeer Shaheen
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Main Discussion Topics:
How science has been deployed to consolidate the Zionist myth/narrative/claims?
Biology/Race/Zionism
Archaeology/Zionism
The Debate
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Biology & Social Science:
What is the relationship between biology and social science?
Biology: As a science that provided empirical foundations to the philosophy of human social relations.
Race: Humans with common biological roots can constitute a race – i.e. one of the basic justifications for a national group.
End Results: Biological rationalization of sociocultural discrimination:
European Racism: The physical features of Jews and their sociocultural traits are functions of their biological distinctiveness.
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Biology & Race:
What is the relationship between biology and social science?
Racial science in the 19th & 20th centuries was one of the chief weapons used against European Jews – exemplified by the scientific practices of Nazi Germany.
Unleashed forces of antisemitism and European nationalism in the forms of “racial difference” and racial discrimination against the Jews.
Race Theory’s main assumption: Jews are not white.
Jews were often cast as the embodiment or incarnation of the negative, the dangerous, and the degenerate.
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Biology & Race:
What is the relationship between biology and Zionism?
Zionist intellectual leaders embraced the language and science of race to preserve the “Jewish existence”:
In Europe: As a way to assert their Jewish difference through developing a secular conception of Jewishness.
In the US: As a way to assert their Jewish difference in the face of a large assimilation project into a Christian society.
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Biology & Social Science:
In Europe: Biology as a Nation-Making Project
Zionism: A late event of the European biologically based national project.
Embraced biology as a tool to prove the existence of a Jewish race – through their distinctive biological identity.
Rejected projects of integration & assimilation.
Adopted the concept of Volk (Nation) in terms of a nation-race as molded by the European notion of Blood and Soil.
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Biology & Social Science:
In Israel: Biology as a Nation-Building Project
The State’s Political Apparatus: Motivated by the statement: “I too, like Hitler, believe in the power of blood” (Chaim Nachman Bialik, The Hebrew University,1934).
The State’s Scientific Apparatus: Played a central role in the:
Development of genomics and the applications of biological technological innovations, including DNA sequencing and analyses to prove the Jewish genes/DNA.
Establishment of the first research project: The Genetics of Migrant and Isolate Populations.
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Biology & Race:
Biological/Molecular Genomic Research: A National Political Project
In the first half of the 20th century, the project’s central theme was to emphasize the existence of Jews as a biological identity.
In the second half of the 20th century, the project’s central theme was to transform the image of the “Diaspora Jew” to that of a “New Jew.”
A project of self-criticism, reform, & regeneration, a process necessary for the reconstitution of the Jewish national identity.
An on-going nation building process under which the Israeli Jewish population emerged as a sustained object of research for state institutions – e.g. physicians and biologists.
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Biology & Race:
The Power of Science:
Prominent researchers, prestigious research centers, and medical schools at the UK, US & other European Universities have embarked on a project to reconstruct the phylogenies* of the contemporary Jewish population(s).
Examples of current genetic studies:
Jewish Genome: DNA of Y-chromosome (tracks the paternal line) and mitochondrial DNA (maternal line) – (Jon Entine/UC Davis).
Jewish HapMap Project: Jewish origin and migration /disease susceptibility (Harry Ostrer/Albert Einstein College of Medicine).
Jewish Genetic Map Project: Reconstruction of Jewish origin and migration route.
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Biology Dictionary defines phylogeny as: The evolutionary development or history of a species or of a taxonomic group of organisms. Or as the history of development of a tribe or racial group.
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Biology & Race:
These projects sought to answer vexing historical questions:
“Are the Jews a race? If yes, What are their qualities and traits?”
“Findings” of such research projects:
Jews maintained an ancient distinct racial identity.
This identity could be observed through their genomes.
Biological basis for Jewishness.
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Archaeology & Zionism:
Archaeology: A Technology of Nation-Making
Archaeological practices have assumed a dual mission:
Reproduce religious-mythical narratives as historical facts by the power of scientific practices and discoveries.
Participate in the inscription of the land as Jewish (Judaization/تهويد), thus facilitating the dispossession of Palestinians, and enforcing “facts” on the ground.
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Archaeology & Zionism:
Science of Digging: Archaeology became an academic discipline and a “legitimate scientific pursuit.” (Israeli Archaeology played a significant role in the advancement of this branch of knowledge and its technology).
Science of Naming: A branch of the Israeli archeological project was the historical collection of “correct” names of Palestinian places (as opposed to the ideological practice of naming utilized by Palestinians).
Developing place names took the form of “fact collection.”
In the early 20th century, a Jewish-British committee was established.
IT was, the largest project of generating a list of Hebrew names for settlements and villages in Palestine.
The committee insisted that these Hebrew names must be “scientifically” and “historically” accurate, based on the work of Jewish historians and archaeologists.
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Archaeology & Zionism:
Validating Mythistory: Archaeologists Excavate the Masada Site / جبل مسعدة
According to Josephus Flavius: The site witnessed a heroic act of 960 Jewish men and women who committed suicide in 74 C.E. rather than submit to the invading Roman armies
A national Site: The Masada became a site visited by Zionist youth groups end of the1920s – the number increased every year with more stories circulated about the site.
A Site of Symbolic Importance: After 1948, it was declared as a “historical locale” through which particular historical narratives of Palestine as the “land of Israel” were made visible.
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the Masada Site / جبل مسعدة:
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Material is the property of the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
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Archaeology & Zionism:
Validating Mythistory: Archaeologists Excavate Jerusalem / The “City of David:”
Historically: Reenacting the national mythology of the “golden age” of Jerusalem.
Physically:
Recreating the landscape by “resurrecting the past.”
Erasing Palestinian realities and presence by depopulating the land from Palestinians (the village of Silwan).
Owning history by systematically ignoring evidence of cultural diversity and archaeological layers of non-Jewish history.
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Excavating Jerusalem: The “City of David
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New Place Names: New Facts
The work of “Judaizing” and “Hebraizing” place names is still in full force.
This is not only about giving Hebrew names to new Jewish locales.
But rather about erasing existing Arabic names and replacing them with Hebrew ones with attendant processes of changing their demographic structure.
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| Arabic Name | Jewish Name |
| Jerusalem | Urshalīm//Yerushalayīm |
| Silwan neighborhoods | “Ma’alot Ir David” and “Shir LaMa’alot,” |
| Sheikh Jarrah | “Nahalat Shimon” and “Nahalat Yitzhak.” |
| A street near Damascus Gate | “Amir Drori,” |
Works consulted for this presentation:
Harry Ostrer, Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Mitchel Hart (ed.), Jews & Race: Writing on Identity and Difference 1880-1940. (Waltham: Brandis University Press, 2011).
Nadia Abu El-Haj, “The Genetic Reinscription of Race,” Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 283-300.
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Peige Desjarlais, “Excavating Zion: Archaeology and Nation-making in Palestine/Israel” Totem 21 (2013).
Raphael Falk, Zionism and the Biology of Jews (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2017).
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press,1976).
Rita Rubin, “‘Jews a Race’ Genetic Theory Comes Under Fierce Attack by DNA Expert,” Forward (October, 2017). Available at: http://forward.com/news/israel/175912/jews-a-race-genetic-theory-comes-under-fierce-atta/
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