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Settler nationalism, collectivememories of violence and the ‘uncannyother’Joyce Dalsheim aa Kaye College of EducationPublished online: 24 Jan 2007.
To cite this article: Joyce Dalsheim (2004) Settler nationalism, collective memories of violenceand the ‘uncanny other’, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 10:2,151-170, DOI: 10.1080/1350463042000227335
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Social Identities, Volume 10, Number 2, 2004
Settler Nationalism, Collective Memories of Violence andthe ‘Uncanny Other’
JOYCE DALSHEIMKaye College of Education
ABSTRACT: Focusing on representations of violence in the national past among ahegemonic group of self proclaimed left-wing, liberal Israeli Jews, this article illustratesone of the ways in which the settler colonial project is supported by such representa-tions. In particular, the article theorises the ‘uncanny absence’ of the Palestinian/Arab‘other’ in this nationalist imagination, arguing that the liberal sensibilities (politicalcorrectness) of these Israelis combined with the ongoing violent struggles and dispos-session result in a particular articulation that fantasises a removal of the localpopulation, often without force, but somehow magically. The essay makes comparisonsbetween this inscription of nationalism, earlier Zionist expressions and similar circum-stances in Australia, arguing that this expression of ‘uncanny absence’ may beindicative of a settler imagination more generally. The article shows the processes andtechniques involved in presenting the past in a kibbutz-affiliated high school historyclassroom and during a field trip to a museum commemorating the 1948 war,illustrating the character of the nation that is constituted, and the silences and absencesthat are present.
May 1989. It is approaching Israeli Independence Day and the country isimmersed in the Palestinian uprising (Intifada) against Israeli military occu-pation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The members of Kibbutz Shelanu areplanning Independence Day celebrations. Avi, a young man in his mid-twen-ties, who is well respected in the community, will be speaking at the ceremony.His voice carries authority and authenticity in this community since his ownfather died a hero in one of Israel’s wars. Two other planners press upon himto remember the plight of the Palestinians during the commemoration thisyear. Together they discuss the importance of the current Intifada and work ona text that might say something like, ‘our own celebration of independence cannever be complete as long as we continue to deny that freedom to ourneighbours. Our freedom is diminished as long others are not free’. Just a fewwords, reminiscent of those spoken at the Passover seder when the freedJewish slaves recognise the plight of the Egyptians and remove drops of winefrom their cups to diminish their own celebration of freedom. In this case, thepower relations reversed. The issue weighed heavily on Avi’s conscience, andbeing pressed upon by his friends, he agreed to allow the Palestinian strugglefor independence to appear on the stage with the Israeli celebration of their
1350-4630 Print/1363-0296 On-line/04/020151-20 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1350463042000227335
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own. Yet, that evening, as the event was about to begin, Avi told his friendsthat he had changed his mind. He had given it a great deal of thought, andconcluded that this was not the time to remember Palestinians, it was a timefor Israelis. ‘This is our Independence Day’, he said, ‘why can’t we justcelebrate ourselves, our accomplishments? Why can’t we just be happy forwhat we have done?’
Avi and his fellow planners represent a certain segment of the Israeli Jewishpopulation. They see themselves as left-wing liberals, believing in democracy,human and civil rights. They are middle class, well educated and politicallyengaged. In this article I will show that Avi’s decision can be considered typicalof a way of thinking among this population group through the late 1990s andearly 2000s. It is a way of thinking based in years of schooling in which thePalestinians have been missing from the national narrative. It is also a result ofthe particular temporal socio- historical context. Avi and his friends aredescendants of the socialist-Zionist founders of the state raised on Marxist-influenced principals of equality and partnership. Their parents were thepioneering socialists who built kibbutz communes and taught their children torespect all human beings, to value all work equally, to share the products oflabour — from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.They are, however, also part of the second generation of settlers in the on-goingsettler colonial project in Israel/Palestine. It is my contention that Avi’sdecision reflects the dilemma of this group and of the contradictions ofethno-nationalism in a (post) modern, ‘politically correct’ milieu. They are atonce settler nationalists and at the same time proponents of social democraticvalues. Their liberal sensibilities would not allow them to denigrate ordemonise Palestinians/Arabs, but their nationalism is based on removing those‘others’ from the land. The result is a kind of partial imagining away of those‘others’, a longing to be rid of those who were never fully known. This is notthe erasure of earlier periods, but a way of thinking that continues the samelogic while adjusting to newer circumstances. The remainder of this articlelooks at how this way of thinking is passed on to the third generation.
Settler Nationalism
Settler nationalisms, distinguished from other forms of nationalism, require aparticular kind of nationalist imagining (Anderson, 1983), at once imaginingthe national community as a kind of unity, and at the same time imagining thenatives in the national space in ways that support the settler project. Suchnational narratives are best understood by analysing each instance with histori-cal specificity and by making comparisons to nationalisms in other settler-col-onial societies (Moran, 2002).1 This article will focus on representations ofviolence in the national past among a hegemonic group of self proclaimedleft-wing, liberal Israeli Jews, illustrating one of the ways in which this settlercolonial project is supported by such representations.2 In particular, this articletheorises the ‘uncanny absence’ of the Palestinian/Arab other in this nationalistimagination arguing that the liberal sensibilities (political correctness) of theseIsraelis combined with the ongoing violent struggles result in a particular
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imagination that fantasises a removal of the local population, often withoutforce, but somehow magically.
In today’s postmodern world, it has become widely accepted that every setof events can be viewed from among numerous perspectives. Each perspectiveoffers an alternative interpretation of events, but not all interpretations areequal as power functions to construct knowledge of the past. The interpreta-tions that become dominant narratives powerfully influence the ways in whichpeople(s) understand themselves and the decisions they make in the present(Trouillot, 1995). Here we shall see representations of collective memory ofnationalist violence and the violence of those memories. In nationalist tales ofwar and violence we expect to find heroes and villains, but in the datapresented here the ‘villains’ are somehow not quite there.
We will see processes and techniques involved in presenting the past thatwork toward reproducing settler subjects gathered from ethnographic researchcarried out in a kibbutz high school and surrounding community over thecourse of three years, between 1998–2001, as a new and controversial historycurriculum was in the process of being implemented. A large part of the studyinvolved participant observation in 11th and 12th grade history lessons. Inaddition, each year the history teachers took their 12th grade classes on anouting. In the Spring of 2001, I joined the outing to a museum commemoratingthe Palmach, a pre-state military brigade, the elite unit of the Hagana, which wasthe precursor of the Israeli Defence Forces. This article will illustrate a particu-lar aspect of the articulation of nation that takes place during the museum visitas well as in the classroom, illustrating the character of the nation that isconstructed, and the silences and absences that are present. Those absences aretheorised as an ‘uncanny’ (Freud, 1946 [1919]) absence of the enemy suggestingthat such an absence is indicative of a particular settler-colonial imagination.Implementing the settler-colonial paradigm provides added insight both to thecollective-memory-in-the-making, and of ongoing interpretations of events.Comparisons are made between this nationalism and similar circumstances inAustralia. The uncanny absence of the Palestinian/Arab others may be seen asa re-inscribed version of previous images of a ‘land without people for a peoplewithout land’ — an image reminiscent of Australia’s terra nullius, or emptyland. It may also be taken as an expression of the logic of separation, if notelimination, between settlers and natives based in the relations of invasion inthe space of Israel/Palestine.3
Patrick Wolfe (1999) argues that settler colonialism must be understood asa structure rather than an event, its development charted over time and eventsand policies understood with this framework. While each instance of settler-colonialism must be understood within its specific context, certain characteris-tics will be common to all such societies. According to Wolfe, such societieswill display a ‘logic of elimination’ since the central conflict is a struggle overland in which the natives are superfluous to settler society. They are ahindrance and, over time, through state policies are subjected to various formsof ‘elimination’, in Australia the final stage being assimilation. Anthony Moran(2002) shows how the accompanying settler-nationalism in Australia sentimen-talises natives in a post-frontier stage. What he calls ‘indigenising settler
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nationalism’ foregrounds the importance of the indigenous contribution tonational culture; it is characterised by an attitude of mourning and sorrow inrelation to past and contemporary forms of oppression. It involves honouringthe indigenous and a desire to make reparations while viewing the past witha critical eye. Wolfe emphasises the contextually and historically specificideologies that colonial formations promote. In the space of Israel/Palestine,that formation has been most usefully analysed by Gershon Shafir (1989) whodefined the central struggle in Israeli settler colonialism as revolving botharound land and labour.4 That is, the Zionist project required the conqueringof land and the conquest of labour which were accomplished through a varietyof techniques. Following the work of geographer Oren Yiftachel, it is mycontention that these struggles are ongoing. The Israeli/Palestinian nationalconflict is not yet past the frontier stage of settler colonialism as final bordershave not yet been drawn and land seizures continue in the form of Jewishsettlements in Israeli occupied territories and with the current construction ofthe separation wall.5 Within the current state boundaries — the internal frontier— structural racism in the form of ‘ethnocracy’ involves a number of strugglesover land between dominant Ashkenazi Jews and other ethnic and racialgroups including Palestinian citizens.6 As in the case of Australia, the settler-colonial character of the state of Israel cannot be viewed narrowly as itsfoundation or as its past, but rather as the central defining feature, a structure/process that continues into the present. In order to understand how displace-ment, replacement or elimination continues it is not enough to look at statepolicies or court decisions. We must also look at they ways in which hegemonicgroups allow these policies to be implemented while maintaining their sense ofmorality. Legitimising ideologies takes numerous forms in settler societies.7
This article is one piece of the larger portrait illustrating how Israeli Jewsrepresent themselves to themselves today, re-inscribing a settler imagination.
Our School
I should like to begin by clarifying the terms I have chosen to use in this article.The term ‘descendants’ aims to problematise rather than homogenise a hetero-geneous group that includes community members, teachers and students whoare all in some way related to Our School.8 Our School is a high school that wasestablished by a group of kibbutzim(plural) in a peripheral area of Israel. Whenthis study was carried out, the principal and two history teachers, Iris andAlan, who figure centrally in this work, were indeed direct descendants of thesocialist-Zionist kibbutz founders. The population at the school included adultsand children from the kibbutz communities that run the school. They aresecular, middle-class Israeli Jews, mostly but not exclusively of Ashkenazi(European) descent. There were also students and teachers from outside thekibbutz communities of Mizrachi (Middle Eastern, North African) back-grounds, as well as new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who live insurrounding communities. The school is at least partially private. Outsidestudents were required to pass a test and pay tuition to study at Our School.Kibbutz members also pay tuition in that each kibbutz must either supply
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Settler Nationalism, Collective Memories of Violence and the ‘Uncanny Other’ 155
labour or pay fees to the school depending on the number of students it sends.This heterogeneous group becomes ‘descendants’ in the sense that they teach/are taught a version of Israeli hegemonic history that privileges the story of theAshkenazi Socialist Zionist founders of the state of Israel. Despite the recentchanges in the history curriculum, this remains a masculinist tale that erases,silences or marginalises histories of Mizrachi experiences, Palestinian or Islamichistories, or feminist interpretations of the past.9 This is one among many waysin which group members are involved in processes of enculturation thatcontinue to construct ‘descendant’ identity, a culturally elite sector of theimagined national community. It can be seen to happen at particular momentswhen time is collapsed. Those moments when teachers or tour guides tellinghistorical tales slip from the pronoun ‘they’ to the pronoun ‘we’ as the tellerand audience all become descendants of those whose story is being told(Althusser, 1971).
History, Memory and National Narratives
What we tend to think of as national history is more usefully conceived as aparticular kind of hegemonic, public, collective memory. Pierre Nora wrotethat history and memory appear to be in fundamental opposition. In currenteveryday understandings, history is taken to mean the
intellectual, secular telling of the past that involves analysis and criti-cism while memory … only accommodates those facts that suitit … (Nora, 1989, p. 9)
Collective memory and memory more generally are considered partial andselective (Halbwachs and Coser, 1992) taking only what serves its needs, oftenin constructing a particular identity (Gillis, 1994; Lowenthal, 1985). Nationalhistory is an official, state, institutionalised account of the past that serves aparticular purpose, like memory, which is less concerned with analysis andcritique and more concerned with constructing a particular past and a characterfor the nation. Such official accounts of the past are generally told from a singlecommitted perspective reflecting a particular group’s social framework andproviding a useable past for collective identity (Wertsch, 2001). This is ex-tremely important to the case at hand, because this research was based in highschool history teaching. A context in which we tend to expect to find historyand not memory — the teachers most certainly believed they were dealing withan analytical, critical academic pursuit, rather than fashioning national subjects,as Eugen Weber suggests (Weber, 1976), or inscribing a useable past (Lowen-thal, 1985, pp. 35–73) for nationalist purposes. Students and parents also seemto take for granted that ‘history’ is being taught, in which history comes tostand for an accurate portrayal of the past, rather than an imagined historiog-raphy which (consciously) employs certain key terms, chooses to include andexclude particular time periods within the narrative form creating continuityand unity out of fragmentation and difference. (Kimmerling, 1995; Ram, 1995).
As important as the content of national narratives are the forms they take,the frameworks that constrain them (White, 1987). These frameworks become
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critical to the ways in which events of the past will be interpreted, givingmeaning and power through moral authority to the narratives. James Wertsch(2001), in his work in the ex-Soviet Union, has discussed how national groupstend to imagine their past according to certain patterns — or what he callstemplates. In the case of the Israeli national narrative, the most distinctivepattern is the repeated story of how victims became victors, how a persecutedpeople found salvation in their homeland — the repeated theme of return andredemption. This template is recognisable in ancient and biblical Jewish historyand repeated in the modern and post-modern era. The Jews were persecuteduntil they entered the Holy Land, and persecuted again in modernity until theyreturned to the homeland. This framework defines and gives meaning to theevents within it. The same events would be interpreted entirely differently ifthe framework changed. If, for example, the template described a powerfulpeople, a conquering people who take over the land of another people andestablish their own society and sets of laws to which the other people mustthen submit, the meaning of particular struggles and their outcomes would becompletely different. In this sense, the literary nature of national narratives isextremely important. In terms of the culture being studied here, the narrativeform is required to make the story recognisable and intelligible, including abeginning causally linked to a valued end. For nationalist narratives, a mostpositively valued end is the establishment of a state for the national people asin the case of Israel. The events leading up to this grand finale are necessarilyendowed with a great deal of value and the actors evaluated accordingly. Thus,in the national narration there will be heroes and villains whose moral identityreflects that of the national group they represent. (Anderson, 1983). Or at least,this is what we would expect. However, in the case of the national narrative inthe high school history class and at the Palmach Museum, the villains, enemiesor ‘others’ are somehow not quite there.
In the Israeli/Palestinian context the past weighs heavily on the present andpossible futures. Past and present are intimately intertwined and the import-ance of creating a positive national moral identity through national narrativescannot be underestimated as it provides the basis for justification of events inthe past, present and political decisions for the future. National groups tend torepresent themselves as highly moral in character. In the case of Israel, thenation has been represented as highly moral in a number of specific ways. Ithas represented itself as a nation based on socialist ideals, seeking to establisha new society in its homeland, seeking sovereignty as one among nations whileaiming to become a ‘light among nations’ as well. The Israeli nation from itsoutset has represented itself in hegemonic discourses as always seeking peace,and acting with force only in its own defence. These characterisations havetheir basis in historical narratives and are re-inscribed in more current politicaldiscourses that emerged during the fieldwork for this article. In 2000, forexample, one could easily recognise the highly moral nation in former primeminister Ehud Barak’s characterisation of his policy of ‘leaving no stoneunturned’ in his quest for peace.(Barak, Camp David, 2000). The highly moralnation was again re-inscribed by the following government under PrimeMinister Ariel Sharon, which described its policy as one of ‘restraint’ in the face
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of escalating Palestinian violence (2000–2001, ‘Al-Aqsa Intifada’). Then lateracting with force ‘only when it is necessary in self defence’.10 These character-isations are then reinforced by the way in which news is and is not reported,which events are covered and what is silenced, but mostly in the availableinterpretations of events.
Finally, we should take careful notice of the processes and techniquesinvolved in the presentation of national historical narratives. I would like tosuggest that strategic elements in the presentation of national history in thePalmach Museum, are also found in the high school history classroom. Onewould expect museum commemoration and history teaching to take distinctlydifferent forms. While there are indeed differences, most notably the testingand grading found in schools, the similarities are also quite striking if notanticipated. These similarities strengthen the argument for approaching na-tional history in schools as collective memory rather than analytic history. Thisis more than a theoretical issue or a matter of definition, it is precisely aboutthe hegemonic (Gramsci, 1971) micro-processes that participate in the powerfulconstruction of ‘truth’. These elements include:
1. Solidarity/identification2. Charisma3. Constraints created by ‘busyness’ and the need for consumer satisfaction.
Solidarity/Identification and Charisma
In the classroom, the history teachers’ tactics for teaching history for thenational standardised bagrut test was to create a sense of solidarity with thestudents and unite with them in the struggle to pass the standardised test. Inthe museum we shall see that the characters depicted engender a sense ofidentification and solidarity among the students. In both cases there is a senseof camaraderie — an emotional strategy — ‘brothers in arms’ against the testand within the narration.
Charisma
During my observations of history lessons in Iris’s class, sitting in the back ofthe room, watching, listening and taking notes, I often found myself swept upin the teacher’s enthusiastic portrayal of this epic story of triumph against allodds. The teacher’s charisma was central to my experience, but perhaps it is thecharismatic representation of Zionist heroes that is so effective. The high schoolstudents I interviewed often expressed enthusiasm about the Zionist past andZionist heroes. They told me ‘you have to admire those guys’, referring to theleaders of Zionist organisations and the leaders during the pre-state Yishuvperiod. They expressed feeling connectedness, being linked to the national past,a sense of being related to the actors and the tale while studying the history ofAm Yisrael (the people of Israel, Jewish history):
I feel more of a connection and am much more interested in the subject,it is related to me personally and I feel proud and it’s fun and I enjoythe lessons.
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Some students internalised a sense of nostalgia for the pre-state period andeven said they ‘feel sad that … we were born into this disgusting period oftime … the people then really did something’. ‘They really had fun, they hada vision, they had an ideology’. ‘They were working to realise their ideas’.
The method of presentation as well as the characters depicted at thePalmach Museum while semi-fictional, were also quite charismatic. They toosucceeded in filling their audience with admiration, a sense of identification, aswell as a longing for a past they never had.
Consumer Satisfaction
Teachers expressed concern over what is of interest or relevant to theirstudents, as well as a keen awareness of student responses to their lessons. Itseems to me that students’ happiness or satisfaction is important to teachersand administrators and that this is no trivial matter. Teachers often judge thesuccess of their lessons and other school events based on whether or notstudents ‘liked it’. In this consumer culture, education must be marketed andsold, and consumer satisfaction is crucial. Satisfaction in school can be thoughtof as part of individual happiness, which is according to Foucault, a
requirement for the survival and development of the state. It is acondition, … an instrument, and not simply a consequence. (Foucault,1988, p. 158)
School satisfaction is linked both to the enjoyment of daily life in school and toschool success, which is measured by test outcomes. The rewards of passingtests include both immediate pleasure and longer term life options. Therewards of passing the national standardised matriculation tests (bagrut) can beconsidered part of what Gramsci calls the ‘prize-giving’ ways in which the stateobtains consent and collaboration (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 242, 247) as students andteachers conform to the requirements of their own success in the system.
The Palmach Museum is, of course, also concerned with pleasing itsvisitors. The museum has a message to send and can only succeed if it attractsvisitors. We will see that the unique way that this museum operates succeedsin pleasing even the most discerning consumers — high school students whowould not normally choose to spend an afternoon at a history museum.
’Busyness‘
An important constraint on presenting the past is ‘busyness’. In the classroomit creates a situation in which time constraints and overwhelming amounts ofcontent often do not allow for student questioning. However, teachers askmany questions, often building their lesson plans around a set of questions thatthey will answer. This technique should be understood as part of the processof constructing truth. The questions are not posed to the class as though they
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were indeed questions or problems requiring consideration or discussion.Rather they are organising principles that determine what will and willnot be discussed. These questions set the limits, determining the contentand signalling students, directing their attention. Even if they were posedas issues to be considered, the questions themselves are predeterminedby the larger constraints of the process of constructing knowledge. That is,they are determined by the overall curriculum and by the content studentswill be required to know for their exams. There are, of course, ‘correct’answers to these questions and it is quite clear to the students that theyare not actually being asked. I have never seen a student attempt to answeran organising question that the teacher posed, nor have I seen a studentpropose an alternative answer. Student questions are generally requestsfor clarification or technical requests. Students ask the teachers to speakmore slowly, to repeat themselves or to write things on the board. Thehigh school history classroom is not an environment conducive to moremeaningful questioning — nor is the Palmach Museum. In the classroom, thesheer quantity of content that students are expected to be responsible forknowing virtually eliminates the possibility of finding time in the overbur-dened schedule for having meaningful discussions. In the museum, one isushered in and out to keep pace — there is no one to ask until the experiencehas ended. This museum is a monologue, not a dialogue, and its unique natureleaves little room for interactions/interpretations among visitors during theexperience. Visitors may identify, become a part, participate in (or theoreticallyreject) the presentation, but it would be extremely difficult to actively engagewith it.
Once in a while, in the classroom, a student is able to take in theinformation being lectured and think at the same time — the fast paceand need to record notes often precludes this. On these occasions, a studentmay interrupt the lesson by asking a question. The high school classroom andthe museum cannot be considered out of their context in ‘Western’, middle-class (post-) modernity. Life in this context is experienced as a fast-paced race,and the overwhelming content of life creates a sense of busyness that is apowerful technique of hegemony. Busyness, it seems, is positively valued inand of itself. That is, in this culture busyness tends to connote prestige.Consider, for example, having to make an appointment to meet with someone.There are also taken for granted notions of time well-spent rather than ‘wastedtime’ clearly connected to capitalist values more broadly. In such a context,individuals may develop a critical consciousness toward any discourse, yet beso burdened with life requirements, like bagrut requirements, to becomeincapacitated in the struggle against those discourses. Student questions thatarose once in a while in a pause in the teachers’ cadence might point tosomething that was missing, a silence in the curriculum. More than a silence,they seemed to point to deeper underlying assumptions/frameworks thatdiscursively construct reality. For the purposes of this short article, we will dealwith one important question and see how the emerging theme was played outduring the museum field trip.
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Where are the Palestinians?
At the end of class one day in February 2000, the teacher Iris was discussingField Marshal Lord Plumer who was the second British governor in ‘EretzYisrael’ (Mandatory Palestine) during what is know as the ‘disturbances of1929’.11 Iris was explaining that Plumer established certain rules regarding aliya(Jewish immigration to Israel) at that time, when a student raised her hand andasked: ‘Wasn’t there an Arab aliya?’
The teacher, whose tone and response were indicative of a certain level ofannoyance, immediately replied,
no, from where, why? What would be their goal in bringing Arabs fromother countries? To establish a state? No they already have … No, it’sthe other way around they were running away, not coming …
This young woman, trying to grasp the context of the period being pre-sented in the lesson, looked at the Palestinians12 in terms of the Zionisthistorical narrative. The question this young woman asked does not makesense to the teacher and, in addition, stopping to answer this question requireda sidetrack that might mean the material for that day would not be covered.Given the context, it is not surprising that the teacher answered as she did —not really answering at all. The question may have been indicative of a greaterlack of overall understanding on the part of this and perhaps other students.However, the student was simply trying to get the facts straight and copy theinformation into her notebook. This, after all, is the immediate goal of moststudents. The question she asked seemed naıve, but it does point to a greatersilence, the extent to which the Palestinians, their perspective, their story, theirvery humanity, is somehow just not there.
It is important to note that this question was raised in the winter of the year2000, a time when the ‘peace process’ seemed to be progressing well from theIsraeli progressive, secular perspective.13 It was a time when the Palestiniansseemed to be a ‘problem solved’ the solution to the conflict appeared on thehorizon. Public attention, through mass media, was focused on other issues.The Palestinians, it seemed, were no longer a central concern. But, I would liketo suggest, this attitude toward the Palestinians has deeper roots. In this caseit was as though they had somehow been wished away. Less than a year later,a new round of violence broke out, unsettling what had seemed to be settled.
I should now like to turn to the class trip of Spring 2001 to the PalmachMusueum. The trip through the museum is an enacted narrative of violentevents in the past. In such a genre one might expect to find romanticism,glamorisation and the creation of heroes regarding ‘our side’ of this violentevent. In addition we might expect to find demonisation and deligitimisationof the enemy. However, as in the classroom and on the stage in the instancespresented above, we find that the enemy is surrealistically almost entirelyabsent from this narrative. Valentine Daniel writes that silence is the result ofviolence, but that justice requires words (Daniel, 1996). What emerges here isa particular kind of silence. Perhaps more accurately described by the legalterminology used to expropriate Palestinian land during the British Mandate
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period, ‘present absence’ (Wood 1994; Atran 1989). There is no content spoken,no narrative told, yet an uncanny presence remains. This, I contend, ischaracteristic of this particular articulation of a settler-colonial imagination —although the template of this narrative is far more reminiscent of the victims’return and redemption template described above. Before continuing with thisargument, I would like to take the reader briefly through the Palmach Museumwith the 12th graders from Our School in the Spring of 2001.
Spring 2001 History Trip: The Palmach
The calculations involved in planning the history outing in 2001 were dis-cussed in relation to teachers’ perceptions of the graduating class. It was not atall uncommon among these and other Israeli teachers to characterise theirstudents collectively. This year’s class was considered a relatively weak groupacademically, and relatively immature. This year, ‘selling’ the trip to studentsinvolved enticing them by promising to take to them to a big, popular mall inTel Aviv as an added attraction. Again, we see the importance of consumersatisfaction. The entire trip was relatively short, requiring minimum effort onthe part of participants. This year Iris and Alan, the12th grade history teachers,decided to organise a trip to a relatively new museum commemorating thePalmach, a pre-state military brigade, the elite unit of the Hagana. Based onthese teachers’ declarations of the importance of critically reading the past,their knowledge of revisionist historiography, and their expressed interest inteaching alternative narratives, one might have expected a different choice forthe field trip. The teachers, for example, might have chosen to show theirstudents the remains of Palestinian villages in places where Jewish towns nowstand. However, this museum’s newness and technology appealed to theteachers who also thought it would receive high ratings among students. Thisdecision was also part of a pattern, like Avi’s decision in 1989, in whichteachers consistently chose ‘their own story’ the hegemonic and homogenisingtales that view the Zionist experiences separately from the Palestinian experi-ences in the same times and places. Hearing that we would be visiting amuseum, many students were disconcerted, expecting a dry, boring experience.The teachers assured them, that this museum was different, and indeed, no onewas disappointed.
The Palmach Museum,14 largely established through private donationsorganised by the Palmach Veterans’ Association, is an experience, a theatrical,audience-participation journey. Our museum tour guide told us that themuseum had received an award from the Disney Corporation and, indeed, ithad a Disneyland quality to it.
We were divided into two small groups, each group with one of theteachers and taken to a classroom for a brief introduction to the museum givenby a young woman soldier. She told us of a romantic and magical time, placingus at the scene we were about to enter. The students were listening intently asshe spoke. She was very successful in drawing them in, speaking so quicklythat full attention was required so as not to miss a beat. She was also veryyoung, just a year older than our students, attractive and easy for students to
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identify with. Our guide told us of this underground armed force, about howhard they were training to be soldiers and working on the kibbutz at the sametime. They were young and vital, girls and boys fighting together and fallingin love.
The tour guide then led us to the beginning of the tour. She remained withus, but was no longer the narrator. Once the tour began, we literally steppedinside a movie. We walked from room to room, from scene to scene findingourselves inside a three dimensional tale. We moved through a story, whilehearing sounds, feeling vibrations, and even smelling odours that were all partof the Palmach experience.
In the first room we entered Tel Aviv in 1942, where notices to join the armywere posted on the walls. Then a film began on a huge screen portraying lifesize characters among us. Next we found ourselves in the woods. The actorswere in the woods too, their images projected among the trees. There wereyoung soldiers talking among themselves. Then the scene shifted to anotherpart of the room where the soldiers had gathered around their tents. We hearda loud voice proclaiming, ‘you are the new recruits’.
Next we saw the young recruits walking through the desert and climbingthe winding path up Masada. Then, apparently after a long hard day, they(we?) were sitting around the campfire in the desert singing songs. Some of ourstudents joined the singing. These are well-known songs, our students werefamiliar with the tunes and their words from school, home and the youthmovement. We listened to the stories they told each other of their experiences.One young man read from a letter received from Hannah Senesh, before herplane crashed in 1945. The sense conveyed is of the Nazi Holocaust happeningin Europe while the Palmach is fighting for Jewish independence here.
Throughout this historical dramatisation there is a dramatic sub-plot, verymuch like high school life itself with its dramatic social sub-plots. A love storyis taking place and we become involved in the characters’ feelings for eachother and in their immediate concerns. The museum experience was clearlyplanned to make it personal and intimate, creating a keen sense ofidentification with actors in the past, much in the way that Iris had often taughthistory lessons in the classroom.
It is now 1946; the young fighters are planning attacks and explosions. Theyspeak of tactics, how they will blow up bridges. It is decided that the girlfriendwill not participate in these acts. She will stay behind. We hear her worryingthat her boyfriend may not come back. We continue walking, and findourselves with the fighters, underneath the bridge as they set the dynamite toblow it up. They found weapons stored and some of them were taken prisoner.
We walk on, it is 1947 and we are on a ship. A character on the ship speaksabout survivors from the Holocaust making their way here on boats, thema’apilim. There is a battle on board the ship, we continue walking. It is still1947 and the scene is a restaurant. We see the young people with whom we areby now well acquainted, sitting around tables discussing their lives. One youngcouple announces that they plan to get married. Then, the sound of a radiobroadcast interrupts the more intimate chatter in the restaurant which fades aseveryone listens with intense anticipation to the news; a Partition Plan in the
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UN We hear the vote being taken as the characters in our story stir slightly,expressing hope that the plan will pass, they hope this will mean a state for theJewish people. Then, great excitement, exuberance and celebration as the votesare counted and the Partition Plan is passed.
Immediately, the scene changes and we find ourselves on a battlefield.There is fighting, death and horror. We hear a voice saying ‘Arabs abused deadbodies’. We are witnessing the battlefields of the 1948 War, the Israeli War ofIndependence. Somehow both witnessing and in the midst of that war all at thesame time. The whole room is shifting as we view different scenes. The youngwoman, who had just announced her engagement, is killed. We see the few,poorly armed soldiers fighting against the many and strong. An announcementis heard; ‘the Egyptians lost their first battle in the Negev’. Our students, bynow completely entranced and taken in by this experience, applaud at theannouncement.
Next we find ourselves at a gravesite, ‘now we have a state’, the young mansays, now Shayke is not with us’. Shayke had been a leader throughout thestory; it was his fiancee who was killer earlier on. Another funeral participantreads the poem, ‘The Silver Platter’.
‘The Silver Platter’, by Natan Alterman, is very well known in Israel andoften read at army induction ceremonies and on Memorial Day for fallensoldiers. It builds on the biblical myth of Isaac’s sacrifice, the sacrifice ofchildren for a supreme value. In this case, it is the sacrifice of young men andwomen for the Jewish State. I have emphasised the most famous and dis-turbing lines of this poem:
So the land grows still. Red fades in the skyOver smoking frontiers in Israel.Heartsick but breathing, the people greetThe wonder that has no parallel.
Beneath the moon, they stand and wait,Facing the dawn in awe and joy;Then slowly towards the waiting throngTwo step forth — a girl and a boy.
Clad for work and for war, heavy shod and still,Up the winding path they make their way,Their clothes unchanged, still soiled with the grimeOf the battle-filled night and the toilsome day.
Weary past telling, strangers to sleep,But wearing their youth like dew in their hair,Dumb they approach — Are they living or dead?Who knows, as they stand unmoving there.
Tear-stained, wondering, the people ask,‘Who are you?’ —softly reply the two,‘We are the silver platter, on whichThe Jewish State is handed you!’
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In shadow they fall when their tale is told —The rest let Israel’s story unfold.
Natan Alterman 15
As the words of the poem fade away, the names of the fallen in the War ofIndependence appear, overshadowing the scene at the cemetery. I look aroundand see that some of the girls in our group are brushing tears from their eyes.This was a very powerful, emotional experience, designed to create a sense ofidentification with the ancestors and, as those tears indicate, was very success-ful in doing so.
The tour is over. We walk through Remembrance Hall, again seeing thenames of the fallen, then out into the bright Tel Aviv sunlight. Iris’s group hadcompleted the tour before us. She was just outside the door having a sandwichand reflecting on the museum experience with another teacher who had joinedus on her day off. Everyone agreed that the museum was impressive, anamazing experience unlike any museum they had known. Iris offered a wordof critique. She pointed out that there was something surrealistic about thewhole experience. We witnessed the fighting, but it was as though the Palmachwas fighting against no one. The enemy, somehow, was not really there.
I have argued that teaching national history in high school is best under-stood as the construction of collective memory — creating a useable past forthe purpose of constructing loyal, patriotic citizens. Most history teachers Iencountered would not be opposed to their role in creating patriotic citizens.However, it seems that they believe they are engaged in teaching academichistory and are helping to develop critical thinking. Even more important is theassumption by students and their parents that they are learning history.Perhaps no one would expect the Palmach Museum to be engaged in anythingother than constructing collective memory, yet some might object to thisclassification of high school teaching. In addition to the techniques and strate-gies described above, I should also like to point out the format of high schoolhistory textbooks. It is important to remember that textbooks have no footnotesor references. One can not go and check the original sources as they are notcited. While a textbook does have an author, it is not a collection of articles orperspectives by different historians. This, combined with the testing that holdsstudents responsible for knowing the content of the text, creates the sense thatan omniscient voice is speaking. What we have is the denial and mystificationof both the complex processes as well as human relationships, includingrelationships of power that are involved in creating such texts. All are erasedfrom view. We are left with the authoritative text, presumed to be speaking theonly truth, taken for granted, unquestioned and therefore at once powerful,mystifying and dangerous.
Discussion
I would now like to return to the central issue of this article — the re-inscrip-tion of a settler imagination through an unexpected absence of the Palestinian/Arab ‘other’. The teacher’s footnote to the Palmach Museum experience stands
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out as an important commentary on history fieldtrips, the teaching of nationalhistory more generally and the way in which these descendants tended to goabout their daily lives. The Palestinians are, in a certain sense, missing from theZionist narrative. Scholarship has shown erasures and silencing of a Palestinianpresence and of their history (Swedenburg, 1990, 1995; Whitlam, 1996). But itseems that ‘absence’ is insufficient in describing this situation. Even ‘present-absence’, while coming closer, does not quite capture the deeper culturalexperience. Iris said the museum left her with the feeling that ‘we were fightingagainst something unidentified’, or perhaps, we might say, someone withoutan identity, lacking somehow in full humanity. It is not so much that thePalestinians are not explicitly there, but that they are not fully known, andtherefore that much more frightening. We might consider Freud’s descriptionof the ‘uncanny’, which he says derives its terror not from something externallyalien or unknown but — on the contrary — from something ‘long known to us,once very familiar’ (Freud, 1946 [1919], p. 370) which defeats our efforts toseparate ourselves from it, being at once familiar and at the same time‘concealed and kept out of sight’ (p. 375) The phenomenon of local populationsin settler-colonial societies not being ‘known’ by the settler population is notunique to Israel/Palestine. Nicholas Thomas wrote of his childhood in Aus-tralia:
The look of the bush told us that they (Aborigines) did have historiesthat were eclipsed — concealed partially and temporarily — by ourown, both by the national narratives of white settlers, and by thepersonal narratives of white individuals; though knowing that thosehistories were there did not, of course, tell us what their forms or plots were.(Thomas, 1999, p. 43, emphasis mine)
The teacher’s remarks about the Palmach Museum were nothing more thanfootnotes — told to another teacher who had joined the trip for the free entryto the museum and because it allowed her to spend the day in Tel Aviv. Hercomments paled in comparison to the powerful effect of the Disney-likeexperience in the museum in which sentiment was stronger than historicalcomplexity and history seemed to act as sorcery (Taussig, 1987).
If we place these field trips within a colonialist/Orientalist (Said, 1978)framework, it might not be surprising to find the representations that we did.Yet, this is not the demonisation or savage degradation we might expect of acolonialist narrative. The school that is the focus of this study describes itselfas left wing and liberal, and the history teachers said they were interested indemystifying national historical myths. In this context we might have expecteda more critical perspective like those found among some Israeli scholars whosuggest more than giving voice to the ‘other side ‘of the story, and re-situatingthe historical narrative in a settler-colonial framework (Kimmerling, 1995).16
Within this paradigm, Israel/Palestine can be understood as other settlercolonial societies in which the settlers came from European Imperial centresbut were not sent as agents of the empire and, as opposed to other colonialists,do not have the option of returning to the European metropolis. The situationthat is created, as Peter Read explains in reference to Australia, is one in which
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the ‘non-indigenous have nowhere to go and don’t want to go’, and at the sametime of course, ‘the indigenous have nowhere to go to either’ (Read, 2000, p. 1)In addition, since the settlers came to stay and to establish their own society ina place they imagined as empty, the struggle for land remains a centraldefining characteristic. Understanding settler colonialism as a structure ratherthan an event, as Wolfe suggests, and as a primary and central characteristic ofthe society, as Shafir suggests, requires an additional level of analysis of thescenes depicted above.
Within this paradigm, we might conclude that the Zionist narrative partic-ipated in the settler-colonial project by discursively removing the local popu-lation. However, among the population group that is the focus of this study, amore specific explanation is required. For this group of left-wing descendants,who aspire to critical self-evaluation and imagine themselves as upholding thevalues and beliefs of democracy, human and civil rights, the usual discoursesof colonialism would simply not be suited to their own representations ofthemselves. Being a late form of settler-colonialism, Zionism and, in particular,the Zionism of the descendants of the socialist–Zionist founders of the state,must be understood within its own social and historical context. A number ofscholars have been focusing on white settler narratives in post-colonial settlersocieties showing how settlers in New Zealand construct their own belongingto the land (Dominy, 1995), the changing depictions of aboriginal/Europeanrelations in the stories of Australia’s national past (Furniss, 2001) and howsettler nationalism is driven to give some account of, and come to terms with,the dispossession of the indigenous (Moran, 2002). In the space of Israel/Palestine, decolonisation has not yet been accomplished making it impossibleto speak of this as a post-colonial setting. The liberal sensibilities of descen-dants — the milieu of political correctness — preclude the possibility ofconstructing natives in terms that might have been acceptable in an earlier eraor in a different instance of settler colonialism. The result is a particularsettler-colonial imagination that fantasises a removal of the local population,often without force, but somehow magically. This is evident in the nationalnarrative as it appears in high school history classrooms. It was expressed byAvi’s decision on Israeli Independence Day in 1989, and once again in thePalmach Museum. Kibbutz residents live in an almost entirely Jewish spacewithin the larger de facto segregation in Israel. There are certainly places in thecountry where Jewish and Palestinian citizens meet and interact, cities wherethey live side by side. This is not the case in kibbutz communities whereinteractions with Palestinians would probably only result from their labourbeing employed. That, too, is becoming much more uncommon as Palestiniancheap labour is replaced by imported cheap labour. Perhaps it is easier fordescendants to disengage, to imagine away the people who were there whentheir ancestors arrived. I have argued elsewhere that descendants tend toidentify in opposition to other Israeli Jews (Dalsheim, 2003). The secular liberalIsraeli sees himself in contrast to and in struggle with more religious Jews andmore right wing nationalists. Contrary to what we might expect, for membersof this group, Palestinians are not their significant other.17 As we have seen,they are instead an uncanny other, not fully recognised, not fully known,
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somehow magically imagined away, and for all these reasons that much morefrightening. This is perhaps the current version of ‘a land without people fora people without land’, a way in which the logic of separation/eliminationcentral to the settler-colonialist project can be expressed while maintaining amorally acceptable self-portrait among descendants.
Joyce Dalsheim may be contacted at [email protected].
Notes
1. Anthony Moran explains why existing theories of nationalism fall short inthe case of settler nationalisms and suggests distinguishing between na-tionalisms that emerged in Europe and those in the former colonies. Ofcourse, here too, a distinction must be made between decolonising nation-alisms and settler nationalism (Moran, 2002, p. 1013). Perhaps ‘colonisingnationalism’ might come closest to describing the processes involved insettler-nationalism. Patrick Wolfe pointed out that settler colonialism is‘irreducibly heterogeneous’ to imperialism more generally and that itsstructural distinctions have not been adequately addressed in post-colonialscholarship (1997, p. 418; 1999, p. 1) The political economy of settler-colo-nialisms have been usefully compared in Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis (1995).For useful illuminations comparing settler-colonial cultures and racisms seeThomas (1999) and Wolfe (2001) respectively.
2. There are a variety of settler nationalist narrations within the space ofIsrael/Palestine. This article focuses on one without intending to concludethere is a single uncontested narrative.
3. Terra nullius was a legal concept reflected in much of the Australian settlerimagination. It has since been revoked by the Australian high court, seePovinelli (2002). The pervasive myth that Australia had been settledpeacefully, without conflict, violence, or bloodshed and the associated ideaof terra nullius — that Australia was empty and unoccupied at the time ofEuropean ‘discovery’ dominated historical writings on Australia’s pastthrough the first half of the twentieth century. See Furniss on this point.‘Land without people for a people without land’, was a central feature ofearly the early Zionist myth. See Abdo and Yuval-Davis (1995).
4. See also Abdo and Yuval-Davis (1995).5. The Journal of Palestine Studies maintains an updated chronology in the
sections called ‘Settlement Monitor’ and ‘Peace Monitor’. The Israeli PeaceMovement, Peace Now documents settlement activity on its website,http://www.peacenow.org.il/English.
6. See Yiftachel (1999) on Israeli ethnocracy, the project of Judaising andde-Arabising the space of Israel/Palestine. In addition to the well knownIsraeli/Palestinian national struggle, ethnocracy involves real estate strug-gles with Palestinian citizens and dispossession and transfer of the Bedouinof Palestine, see Cook (2003) It also involves land battles between the
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dominant Ashkenazi Jews (European and North American) and MizrachiJews (Middle Eastern and North African), see Yiftachel (2000).
7. Such legitimising ideologies of manifest destiny, or the disappearing nativein addition to terra nullius are by now well documented in the literature.See for example, Richardson (1993) and Wetherell and Potter (1992).
8. All names of people and places are pseudonyms.9. See Amnon Raz (2001) whose analysis shows that the central aspects of
Zionist historical consciousness and self-perception are maintained as thenew curriculum preserves and reproduces previously established discur-sive boundaries. See also Shenhav (2001) on the relative lack of representa-tion of Mizrachim in the newer textbooks. My conversations with membersof the Ministry of Education indicate their understanding that the newcurriculum changed more in the order in which content is presented thanin the content itself. See Chapter five of my dissertation. In addition to theformal changes or lack of changes, my research shows that even teacherswho are highly conscious of the more critical ‘new’ Israeli historiography,and those who claim they intend to deconstruct ‘myths’ of the pastcontinue to re-inscribe the major contours of the hegemonic nationalistnarrative.
10. I would like to suggest that these moral characterisations are not unique tothe Israeli state. They are centrally located in the discourse of the modern,secular nation, see Asad (2003).
11. This is a euphemism for Palestinian riots. The word ‘event’ is often used inIsraeli news reports of nationalist violence. The ‘disturbances’ are givenHebrew names by using the letters that stand for numbers and pronounc-ing them as an acronym. These riots, for example, are known as thedisturbances of ‘Tarap’.
12. Referring to Palestinians as ‘Arabs’ is quite common. It reflects a certaineducated confusion as it denies a national status to those Arabs ofPalestine. Today it is more common to refer to Palestinians living in theoccupied territories or the Palestinian Authority as ‘Palestinian’, whilethose who are citizens of the state of Israel are called ‘Arabs’.
13. ‘Peace process’ is a contested term in Israel/Palestine. At one end of thespectrum, there are those who believe this term has been used to gloss overnew forms of Israeli occupation (Radical Israelis and Palestinians). At theother, there are those who see the process as a farce in which the Land ofIsrael is being ‘given’ to the Palestinians. At this writing, there is also amiddle ground of confusion and disillusionment among Israelis.
14. The Palmach History Museum, Beit Ha-Palmach, is considered an inter-national architectural accomplishment and an example of an outstandingmuseum. The museum is not yet completed, but after almost nine years ofbuilding and an investment of about 6.7 million Euro, it opened its doorsto visitors in January 2001.
15. This translation was found on the Israeli English teachers’ website ETNI(http://www.etni.org.il )as a resource for use on Memorial an Indepen-dence Day.
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16. Kimmerling explains that the refusal by Israeli historians to compare theJewish experience with any other creates a uniqueness which avoidscategorisation of Israel as an immigrant- settler-colonialist state as such acategorisation is taboo.
17. ‘The Dangerous and the Despicable’, in Uncertain Past, Uncertain Selves?Israeli National History and Identity in Question. Doctoral Dissertation, NewSchool, May 2003. See Crapanzano (1985) for a parallel situation amongwhite groups in apartheid South Africa.
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