Jewish Settlement Research Articles

The Ottoman Policies on the Jewish Colonization of Palestine in the Late 19th – Early 20th Centuries

The article considers the factors that influenced the policies of the Ottoman Empire on the Jewish colonization of Palestine at the turn of the 20th century – such as the spread and the fear of separatist sentiments, the increasing European influence, and the incompatibility of Zionism with the dominant ideology of Pan-Islamism – and discusses the mechanisms that allowed the Jews to bypass the imposed restrictions and continue their colonization efforts.

Baron Hirsch, the Jewish Colonization Association and the Future of the Jews

Baron Hirsch, the Jewish Colonization Association and the Future of the Jews

Fauzi al-Kawukdżi i Abd al-Kadir al-Husajni w walce o niepodległość Palestyny

Artykuł omawia działania podejmowane przez Fauziego al-Kawukdżiego i Abd al-Kadira al-Husajniego w czasie tzw. wojny domowej w brytyjskim Mandacie Palestyny. Pierwszy stał na czele Arabskiej Armii Wyzwolenia, stworzonej przez Ligę Państw Arabskich. Jego siły miały charakter ochotniczy, były nieliczne i słabo uzbrojone. Drugi powołał Armię Świętej Wojny, która składała się z ochotników palestyńskich, stanowiła siły podporządkowane rodzinie Husajnich. Obaj dowódcy mieli za zadanie nie dopuścić do wejścia w życie rezolucji Organizacji Narodów Zjednoczonych dotyczącej podziału Palestyny na dwa państwa oraz chronić arabską ludność cywilną. Prowadzili działania bez współpracy ze sobą i nie udało im się powstrzymać działań osadników i sił żydowskich.

Nationalism and Monolingualism: the “Language Wars” and the Resurgence of Israeli Multilingualism

With the establishment of a Jewish settlement in Palestine in the early 20th century, and a Hebrew culture with it, furious debates arose among Jewish writers about the future of Jewish literary multilingualism. Until this period, the idea that Jewish monolingualism was a preferred mode of cultural existence or that a writer would have to choose between the two primary languages of European Jewish cultural production was a relatively new one. Polylingualism had been characteristic of Jewish culture and literary production for millennia. But in modernity, Jewish nationalist movements, particularly Zionism, demanded a monolingual Jewish culture united around one language. Nonetheless, polylingual Jewish culture has persisted, and despite the state of Israel’s insistence on Hebrew as the national language, Israeli multilingualism has surged in recent years. This article surveys a number of recent developments in translingual, transcultural, and transnational Israeli literary and cultural forms

Nof kdumim: Remaking the ancient landscape in East Jerusalem’s national parks

This article explores two national parks in East Jerusalem and their legal administration as the focus of contradictory and complementary attempts at preservation, colonization, and normalization. Drawing on in-depth interviews with, and observations of, officials from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and others, I expose the Judaizing of the landscape in Jerusalem. Nature never stands for itself; it is always an echo of a human presence and, in this case, of a Jewish past and its modern reunion. The project of imagining the natural landscape as one that embodies an ancient past—what Israeli officials have referred to in our interviews as nof kdumim—and the contemporary Jewish people as those who hold the key to its revival as such, is a central aspect of Israel’s colonial dispossession agenda in East Jerusalem and a prerequisite to the land becoming Jewish in practice. Focusing on the perspectives of Israel’s nature officials, this article highlights not only the imaginary but also the legal technologies of erasing and remaking the national park landscape and the tensions between personal and collective, inclusion and exile, and memory and erasure that it inhabits. Arguably, while the identity of the Jewish settler as a nature lover who has returned to her lost Indigenous land is strengthened by the ancient biblical landscape of nof kdumim, the Palestinian is only granted authenticity and Indigeneity when she does not engage in what Israel perceives as “refugee camp” landscaping, and when she is willing to practice traditional forms of farming (or adam ba’har) so as to normalize this place as a universal tourist recreation site. Even then, however, the Palestinian’s labor goes to support orientalist environmental imaginaries. The natural landscape of East Jerusalem is thus recruited, only to discover that it has always been Jewish.

The Role of Mathematics in the Palestinian Economy: Estimating the Speed of the Swallowing of Palestinian Lands by the Israeli Settlements

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of mathematics in the Palestinianeconomy by deriving a dynamic model for the speed –the rate of change – of the expansion for theIsraeli settlements and thus the “swallowing” rate of Palestinian lands. Partial DifferentialEquations were used to derive a theoretical model for the “swallowing” rate of Palestinian landsby Israeli settlements, which in turn result in tremendous negative effects on both the agriculturaland industrial sector of the Palestinian economy. The developed dynamic model explains theprocess of which the Israeli settlements expands and the variables affecting the “swallowing” rate.The data was plotted and a mathematical equation was fitted for the growth rate of the settlements.This will give the policymakers an approximation of how fast the settlements are expanding andmay aid them in their strategic planning of Palestinian development.

The Relations Between the Ottomans, Zionists and Palestinian Jews as Refl ected in Israeli History Textbooks

Israeli history textbooks published since 1948 dwell at length on the Ottoman government's relations with the Zionists and its policies toward the Palestinian Jews. Explaining the Ottomans' opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine, the textbooks acknowledge their concern that a non-Muslim majority could emerge there to demand autonomy or independence, as had happened earlier in the Balkans. However, they sharply criticize the wartime policies of Jamal Pasha against the Jewish community in Palestine. Although they concede that the majority of the community remained loyal to the Ottoman government, they mainly attribute this to their fears of a harsh retaliation from the part of the government. In contrast, they consider the pro-British activities of Nili and the Hebrew Battalions as the right kind of investment for the future of the community.

Pragmatism and Prejudice: Revisiting the Origin of the Pale of Jewish Settlement and Its Historiography

Pragmatism and Prejudice: Revisiting the Origin of the Pale of Jewish Settlement and Its Historiography

Urban Built-Up Area Estimation and Change Detection of the Occupied West Bank, Palestine, Using Multi-temporal Aerial Photographs and Satellite Images

The study aims to investigate the urban change in the West Bank between the years 1997 to 2016, under complicated geopolitical conditions. High-resolution aerial photographs (1.25 m and 0.1 m) and moderate-resolution satellite imagery (30 m resolution Landsat data) were used in this study. The results of the study showed that the Palestinians suffer from serious limitations imposed by the Israeli occupation due to the urban expansion, especially in the so-called area C, which represents 61% of the West Bank. The Israeli occupation controls this area. On the other hand, the Israeli occupation provides an opportunity to the Israeli settlers to build more houses and buildings for various purposes. The study also shows that most of the Palestinian urban expansion comes at the expense of agricultural lands. The study recommends that the international community has to place more pressure on Israel to give the Palestinians their freedom to plan for their future, and use their lands freely.

Arado y literatura, trabajo y cultura

Resumen
 Este artículo explora el establecimiento de bibliotecas en los asentamientos judíos de las provincias de Chaco, Santiago del Estero, Río Negro y La Pampa, que se produjo cuando los judíos emigraron de Europa oriental en 1889. Los principales temas que se tratan son el desarrollo de las bibliotecas como centros educativos y sociales en los cuales los colonos encontraron un espacio para interactuar después de una larga jornada de trabajo en los campos; cómo se establecieron estas bibliotecas, y el apoyo y los fondos que se les proporcionaron. La migración a las ciudades por parte de los hijos de los primeros pobladores acarreó la desaparición de estas bibliotecas, la reubicación de su material y la desaparición de la mayoría de los archivos que podrían contarnos sus historias. A través de las memorias de los colonos, leemos acerca de las dificultades que tuvieron que enfrentar y las alegrías que lograron disfrutar durante el difícil período de adaptación al suelo argentino.

The Jewish Communities of Central Asia in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

When the Jews first settled in Central Asia is uncertain, but circumstantial evidence clearly indicates that this happened at least two and a half thousand years ago. In the first millennium AD, the Jews lived only in cities no farther than 750 km east of the Caspian sea (in the eighth–eleventh centuries the sea was called Khazarian). Only later did they migrate to the central part of the region, to cities like Samarkand and Bukhara. It is possible that Jews from Khazaria joined them, since they already had tight trade connections with Central Asia and China. There is no trace of evidence regarding the existence of Jews in the entirety of Central Asia in the early sixteenth century. At the very end of the sixteenth century Bukhara became the new ethnoreligious center of the Jews in that region. In the first half of the nineteenth century, thanks to European travelers visiting Central Asia at that time, the term “Bukharan Jews” was assigned to this sub-ethnic Jewish group. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary source materials, this article aims to prove that the presence of Jews in Central Asia was not continuous, and therefore the modern Bukharan Jews are not descendants of the first Jewish settlers there. It also attempts to determine where Central Asia’s first Jewish population disappeared to.

Theater for Kindergarten Children in the Yishuv: Toward the Formation of an Eretz-Israeli Childhood

Abstract “The Children’s Theatre by the Kindergarten Teachers Center,” that was founded in 1928, was the first Hebrew repertory theatre exclusively addressing the audience of children attending kindergarten and the first grades of elementary school. This article explores how The Children’s Theater conveyed a set of performative practices that consolidated a habitus of Eretz-Israeli childhood. The theater articulated the embodied repertoire of Eretz-Israeli childhood and established it on two pillars. First, it epitomized the concept of an innocent and secure childhood. The world performed on the stage created a utopian notion of childhood. Second, it encouraged the children to participate in the world of adults, but in a way suited to their age and psychological needs. The ability of this theatre to create an enriching and a secure environment for children was deeply needed in the Jewish settlement of Palestine of the 1930’s and 1940’s, which was constituted of immigrants struggling to build a future in the land.

Under the cover of the kippah: on Jewish settlers, performance, and belonging in Israel/Palestine

AbstractWhat can a kippah – the Jewish head cover – reveal about settlers’ politics of belonging in the Israeli‐Palestinian space? During fieldwork among settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, I selectively put on and took off the kippah, using it to control social identity and interactions, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. This article interrogates my use of the kippah as a reflexive means of highlighting its powerful meanings and effects within the Israeli‐Palestinian space. In showing how the wearing and removal of the kippah bears upon the social construction of Jewish identity, this article offers new insights into the sociopolitical significance of sartorial practices in Israel/Palestine. These insights contribute more broadly to debates at the intersection of studies of settler colonialism, material culture, identity, and performativity.

The political role of date palm trees in the Jordan Valley: The transformation of Palestinian land and water tenure in agriculture made invisible by epistemic violence

In the West Bank, date palm trees have been sweeping over the Jordan Valley at an accelerating rate since the 2000s. The current scientific literature has depicted this transformation as sustainable development. This article proposes a method to harness social sciences in a meaningful manner within the interdisciplinary study of agricultural transformation. Focusing on appropriation rather than bundles of rights, within an exploration of water and land tenure, allows uncovering actors and mechanisms that remain undetected by the current scientific discourse. Date palms transform both land and water tenure. As seasonal labor replaces sharecroppers that lived on site, the livelihoods, housing security, and food security of those practicing family farming are compromised. Geospatial analysis allows a triangulation of the results produced by qualitative methods. Mapping and quantifying the spatial progression of Israeli and Palestinian date palm trees between 1999 and 2016 allows assessing the number of sharecroppers displaced by date palm trees during that period. This demonstrates a Valley Clearance is now occurring, akin to the Highland Clearances that took place in 18th century Scotland. The present transformation of agriculture in the Jordan Valley has clear social and political impacts. Donors, the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian date palm agribusinesses refer to the Palestinian water law within the perspective of a two state solution. The Israeli Water Authority and Israeli settlers further a network of wastewater reuse which stands as the only reliable source of water for date palm cultivation in the foreseeable future and contributes to the development of a one state solution. Meanwhile, Palestinians practicing family farming rely on legal pluralism to secure their access to water.

Devaluation, erasure and replacement: Urban frontiers and the reproduction of settler colonial urbanism in Tel Aviv

This paper examines the continuity of the Israeli settler colonial project into the contemporary moment – as manifested in the city of Tel Aviv – and its transfiguration into current socio-political and spatial processes in the urban arena. It offers a close reading of a case study from which such continuity emerges, exposing the settler colonial terms of production of Tel Aviv in current entrepreneurial real-estate projects. The case study under analysis is of the Giv’at-Amal neighbourhood, established on the emptied Palestinian village of Jamassin in the war of 1948, now facing eviction by private entrepreneurs constructing a luxurious residential compound. The paper aims to expose the ways in which the urban entrepreneurialism in Giv’at-Amal reproduces the settler colonial logic of devaluation, erasure and replacement of existing inhabitants of the land. It further conceptualises the area as an urban frontier, in which current neoliberal restructuring plays an active role in the ongoing production of the settler colonial urban space. By so doing, it aims to undermine the notion that settler colonial projects of replacing existing people and geographies are completed historical events, and to re-articulate them as ongoing contemporary processes.

Zionist Frontiers: David Ben-Gurion, Labor Zionism, and transnational circulations of settler development

ABSTRACTThis article examines how settler colonial narratives, structures and relations constitute development. The article offers a new concept, settler development, to show how development, as a colonial template of liberal rule and economic improvement, and settler colonialism, augment and imprint each other. To understand how settler development works, I present a case study that analyzes settler texts that circulate between Zionists in the United States and in Palestine before 1948. In particular, David Ben-Gurion, leader of Jewish settlement in Palestine, and writers in the Jewish American magazine, Jewish Frontier, sought to justify settlement based on economic productivity to appeal to the British to hand over the Mandate to settlers, not indigenous Palestinians. These circulating discourses valorized the ‘pioneer’ as the quintessential subject of settler development who is assumed to have a right over indigenous land through their ability to improve economic productivity. The article combines settler colonial and critical development studies to suggest creative analyses of the way that development is epistemologically linked to the networks of settler colonialism.

Edward Said’s Home, Martin Buber’s Mailbox

This article examines the primary means by which Israeli settler colonialism has appropriated and reconfigured Jerusalem since 1948—discursively no less than physically. It analyzes how the Jewish state, building on the colonial suppositions and discourses of the pre-1948 Zionist movement, has sought to efface Palestinian attachments to and histories in this contested urban realm. This piece foregrounds the life and works of Jewish Israeli philosopher Martin Buber and the binationalist, antistatist politics he sought to build in Palestine with the indigenous Arab populations before the creation of Israel in 1948. However, it also offers a critique of the ways in which even Buber and other Zionist binationalists’ dovish political positions were implicated in settler colonialism and the displacement and erasure of the Palestinians. The article details some of the ways in which the mobilization of presence and absence has been crucial to Israel’s colonization of Jerusalem and how they have been utilized in the service of the state’s drive for exclusive control over this symbolically potent city. This is done, principally, through a reading of the Palestinian house in Jerusalem in which Buber resided during his first four years in the country: the family home of Palestinian scholar and activist Edward Said. This article explores the relationship between the exiled intellectual, Said, and this structure, commandeered by Zionist forces in 1948. This article also explores some of Said’s views on colonial landscapes and binationalist futures for Israelis and Palestinians.

In vino veritas? Indigenous wine and indigenization in Israeli settlements

In recent years, wineries have proliferated in Israel’s West Bank settlements, some of which are now producing world‐class wine. However, growing grapes and making wine in this context represents more than simply commercial viticulture. These wineries are part of a trend to re‐establish ancient Jewish winemaking practices, which fosters the imagination of returning and reconnecting to biblical sites. Moreover, high‐tech grape science is now being employed to engineer wines from so‐called indigenous varietals to create a wine identity for Israel. Some religious settlers regard these developments as the fulfilment of a messianic biblical prophecy. This pursuit of indigenous wine thus bolsters a religiously inflected historical imagination of indigeneity that naturalizes the Jewish presence in this contested territory. This article shows that claims to authentic indigeneity emerging from viticulture entangle high‐tech grape science, biblical prophecy and an aesthetic connection to the land so that indigenous wine and an indigenous identity are co‐produced in a mutually constitutive process.

When Buddhist vipassanā travels to Jewish West Bank settlements: openness without cosmopolitanism

ABSTRACTInsight meditation (vipassanā) originated in Theravāda Buddhism. However, participants in a “Jewish Vipassanā” meditation retreat – held at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank region controlled by Israel since 1967 – often depicted vipassanā as essentially Jewish. Indeed, to validate their adoption of insight meditation, many participants first needed to establish their exclusive commitment to orthodox Judaism. Consequently, they culturally appropriated vipassanā, decoupling this practice from “religious” Buddhist elements and instead depicting it as “theirs”. While this appropriation entailed significant dimensions of openness to cultural otherness, including an appreciation of “eastern” expertise in meditation, it would be difficult to characterize it as “cosmopolitan”. Rather, in this case openness ironically depended on, and resulted in deepening, meditators’ belief in the superiority of national-religious Judaism. Thus, far from being identical to openness, cosmopolitan attitudes may actually preclude openness in settings that emphasize an exclusive commitment to a single tradition. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Publication of maps and plans of Jewish settlement from the first half of the 18th century

Abstract. A unique set of maps and plans, showing in detail the Jewish settlement in the Czech Republic originating from the first half of the 18. century, was compiled and expertly handled by researchers of the Czech National Archives. The set consist of 98 plans and sketches produced on the basis of the Imperial Translocation Rescripts (1726). All maps and sketches have been produced within one year 1727 and depicted small towns and villages in some cases already extinct. During research large data base file was created with the aim of spatial identification of individual maps and plans, and objects that appear on them. In cooperation with the VÚGTK application has been developed to publish this unique map set through the Web application. The application allows viewing individual maps including the preserved archive materials, their overlap with other major cartographic sources, mainly with the Index Sketches of the Stable Cadastre dating from the first half of the 19th century. (The Index Sketches of the Stable Cadastre was one of the main sources used in the professional processing and spatial identification of individual maps.) The application also allows comparing with the current cartographic materials (aerial imagery, nowadays maps, GIS data etc.) The benefit of application is not only for research of Jewish settlement development in the Czech Republic but also for other research like urban planning and development of the countryside and its settlements.