Abstract
This article articulates a sociological conception of settler colonial remembering as a tool of legitimation. Theories of memory in the context of settler colonialism generally center counter-memories by the subaltern or colonized, or official hegemonizing representations at the level of state institutions. Underexamined is the dialectical nature of memory and discursive representations that help reproduce settler colonial processes of accumulation and displacement at the micro-level. The article draws on archival data from avowedly socialist-leftist Zionist colonies to explicate patterned representations of Palestinian villages that Zionist forces gradually displaced prior to and during the 1948 War/Nakba. I demonstrate how the colonial settlers attributed political meaning through five representational modes: contrasting the indigenous as backward and primitive and settlers as progressive and developed; denying an indigenous connection to the land; emphasizing amiable relations through the promotion of cultural progress and settler superiority; asymmetrically assessing settler and indigenous belongings to national collectives; and legitimizing land purchases that dispossessed indigenous cultivators, despite the settlers’ socialist ideology, while reducing conflict to the issue of economic compensation. I theorize a form of settler colonial memory based not merely on erasure, but on recognition and disavowal. Finally, I argue that local memory is a significant site of production in which the conceptual tools to both trace the historical processes of supremacy and subvert asymmetrical sociality lie.
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Notes
In the early 1930s, Hashomer Hatzair publicized its political definition of a bi-national entity: “As a political guarantee for fulfilling Zionism we propose to create a political regime of political, economic and social equality, a regime whereby no one will rule the other” (Zayit 1993:276). Thus, bi-nationalism was a means to realize Zionism and express the movement’s internationalism and its commitment to socialism. Hashomer Hayzair’s demand to create a bi-national state that would be neither exclusively Jewish nor Arab has been interpreted by some as a partial recognition by a faction of the Zionist movement of the national rights of Palestinians (see, e.g., Beinin 1990).
The literature’s estimate of the number of depopulated Palestinian villages ranges from 369 (Morris 2004:342) to 418 (Khalidi 2006:575) to 530 (Abu Sitta 2010:106). These differences can be attributed to variations in the definition of what constitutes a village or a small locale, the absence of systematic information, and whether the measurements include Palestinian villages that were uprooted before, during, and/or after 1948.
Palestinian scholarship has focused on remembrance of places and persons as a form of resistance, manifesting the names, knowledge, and history of Palestinian places destroyed but not fully erased from Palestinian memory and history (see, e.g., al-Khalidi 1997; Seikaly 1998; Maniere, 1998; Arraf 2004; Ghanaim 2005; al-Dabbagh 2006; Abu Sitta 2000; Hassan 2008; Sa’di and Abu-Lughod 2007; Said 2008; Arafat n.d.).
Benvenisti describes the process of erasure and re-writing of the Israeli map by giving new—and at times Biblical—names to Palestinian sites and geography. Kadman offers a detailed description of the actual erasure practiced by the Zionist institutions and Jewish settlers in the lands of 230 Palestinian villages, at times in their very homes. She argues that, in general, Palestinian villages have been pushed to the margins of the Israeli discourse.
E.g., in the Israeli journal History and Memory, conspicuously few articles discuss Zionism and colonialism.
Mishmar ha-Emek News, Ein Hashofet News, and Hazorea’s Ba-Sha’ar (At the Gate).
In January 1948, the movement joined with Ahdut Ha-Avoda-Poalei Zion Left to form MAPAM, which existed until 1992, when it joined Ratz and Shinuy to form Meretz.
Elisha Lin, “Stories Along the Way 1927–1992,” Interviews with Tamar Snir, 1994, Mishmar ha-Emek Archive.
Such examples can be found in the Ein Hashofet Archive, Lands file no. 302 (1953–1965); file on land-clearing and drainage, no. 301 (1938–1952), as well as in the archives of Hazorea and Mishmar ha-Emek.
“Relations with the Neighboring Arabs,” Mishmar ha-Emek News, November 3, 1976, Mishmar ha-Emek Archive.
Rafael Tavor, “The Kibbutz Founders Tell the Children on the Kibbutz Anniversary,” February 26, 1970, Hazorea Archive, file on relations with the Arabs of the region, no. 73, also file 021.
Elisheva Tamir, The Kibbutz Founders Tell the Children About the Kibbutz Anniversary, February 26, 1970, Hazorea Archive, file on relations with the Arabs of the area, no. 73. This segment is replete with exaggerated rhetoric: Palestinian peasants were typically required to hand over one-quarter to one-third of the harvest (Al-Hizmawi 1998).
A similar trend to the one presented here can be found in the archive of Mishmar ha-Emek: Micha Lin, “Geva, Tel Abu Shusha, Tel Shush,” 1986, file on Jewish–Arab relations, 3.41.
In the Hazorea archive: “Land file no. 21” and “File on Our Relations with the Arabs of the Area” contain materials on Palestinians who lived in Qira and Abu Zureiq; also “Turkmen in the Jezre’el Valley—the Tragic End,” an undated document, file on “Our Relations with the Arabs of the Area,” 073. In Mishmar ha-Emek archive: file on “Relations with the Arab Neighbors.” In Ein Hashofet Archive, container on the history of Jo'ara, 4; Ein Hashofet News, 1937–1939.
This is a general trend reflected in the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel, and can be seen in the case of Zionist disavowal of implication in the Tantura massacre (Confino 2015).
Arnon Tamir, conversation with Yohanan Ben Yaacov, March 12, 1976, Hazorea Archive, file on personal documentation of Hazorea members about their lives on the kibbutz a-f, no. 003/74.
“Mulk” is one of the categories of land ownership established in the Ottoman period. “Mulk land” is effectively privately owned, and its owners are free to use the land as they please.
Interview with Yitzhak Ben Shemesh, undated, among sundry materials from different kibbutzim regarding kibbutz members’ deliberations following the War of Independence—about Arab property that remained after inhabitants’ displacement from their villages, Hazorea archive, file on relations with the Arabs of the area, no. 073.
Such reflections were evident in interviews I conducted with Palestinian refugees, who asserted their rootedness to the land.
Elisha Lin, “Stories Along the Way 1927–1992, interviewed by Tamar Snir, February 1994, Mishmar ha-Emek Archive, (bi-national ideology), Shatil 1977:48–50 (socialism).
“Danny Nehab, Solution of the Riddle—Treasure Hunt” summer, 1988, Hazorea Archive, file on relations with the Arabs of the area, no. 073.
Beeri, Yesha’ayahu, (Shaiek), 1976, “We and Our Neighbors,” Mishmar ha-Emek News, November 3, 1976.
“Relations with the Arab Neighbors” (1940), reprinted in Mishmar ha-Emek, November 3, 1976.
The Yishuv is the term used in Zionist or Israeli literature to depict the Jewish population existing in Palestine before 1948. This naming can conceal the colonial facets of establishing settlement in Palestine. Based on my research that finds commonalities with other settler colonial cases, I suggest using the term “Jewish Colony in Palestine.”
“Musha'a” land is jointly owned, whereby each of the owners has claims to the entire area, albeit respective of their relative share.
“We and Our Neighbors,” Mishmar ha-Emek News, 1976, Mishmar ha-Emek Archive, file 3.41.
The military of the Arab nationalist leader.
Most of the lands were acquired by the Zionist movement from the landowners. In many cases, the landowners purchased the land for a relatively short time before selling it. In the years 1878–1936, only 9.4% of the 682,000 dunams sold to Zionists, for which we have information about, were sold by fellahin. Ottoman effendis, most of them non-Palestinians, who lived in Beirut and Syria, sold about 53% of the land purchased by Zionist organizations. Palestinian landlords also sold land to Jews; the sum of the sales to Jewish settlers was about 25% (see Shafir 1996).
Danny Nehab, “The Story of Kibbutz Hazorea’ Settling on the Ground and its Neighborly Relations with the Arab Villages in the Vicinity:, written for the game “Looking for History,” a video game marking Hazorea’s 59th anniversary (1988), Hazorea Archive, file on settlement, lands 012.
Arnon Tamir: conversation with Uri Bar, March 16, 1976, Hazorea Archive.
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The author thanks Amhal Bishara, Lisa Lowe, Lila Abu-Lughod, Gershon Shafir, Jose Itzigsohn, Joseph Kaplan Weinger, Aamer Ibraheem, Dirk Moses, and Iddo Tavory for offering feedback on different drafts of the paper.
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This title is drawn from Darwish’s (1995) Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982, but used here to describe a different form of memory.
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Sabbagh-Khoury, A. Memory for forgetfulness: Conceptualizing a memory practice of settler colonial disavowal. Theor Soc 52, 263–292 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-022-09486-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-022-09486-0