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A land without a people for a people without a land

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Template:Partisan "A land without a people for a people without a land" is a widely-cited phrase usually assumed to have been a Zionist slogan.

At one time it was believed that the sometime Zionist Israel Zangwill “coined” the phrase in 1901,[1] , however, in 1991 Adam Garfinkle published an article showing that the phrase was used in 1853 by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who was thought by Garfinkle and others to have coined it. [2] In 2008 historian Diana Muir published an article demonstrating that the phrase was apparently coined by Church of Scotland clergyman Alexander Keith, D.D. in his 1843 book The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Keith was an early Victorian proponent of the idea of returning the Jews to the Land of Israel. [3] An anonymous 1844 review of Keith’s book in a church magazine (Edinburgh)[4] highlights the phrase with its most familiar wording: “a land without a people, and a people without a land.” [3]

Muir further asserts that it is not true "that early Zionists widely employed the phrase “A land without a people for a people without a land.” [3] The phrase, according to Muir, was primarily used by Christian advocates of a return of the Jews to their historic homeland. [3]

Variant phrasings in use in the pre-Zionist and pre-state eras include "a country without a people for a people without a country," and "a land without a nation for a nation without a land."[3]



states that it is not true "that early Zionists widely employed the phrase “A land without a people for a people without a land.” [3] The phrase was primarily used by Christian advocates of a return of the Jews to their historic homeland.[3] Variant phrasings in use in the pre-Zionist and pre-state eras include "a country without a people for a people without a country," and "a land without a nation for a nation without a land."[3] S. Ilan Troen and Jacob Lassner claim omitting the definite article 'a' constitutes "a common distortion". They argue: "Zionism never imagined the land was unpopulated." [5]

Historical context

In 1831 the Ottomans were driven from Greater Syria (including Palestine) by an expansionist Egypt, in the First Turko-Egyptian War. Colonial Britain (worried by the prospect of a rising military power sitting atop Suez and the route to India, and by the prospect of a weakened Ottoman Empire allowing Russia access to the Dardanelles) sent the Navy, which bombarded Beirut and in 1841 anchored in Alexandria harbor, forcing Egypt to withdraw from the Levant. In other words, at the time Keith coined this phrase, Britain controlled the fate of the Levant.

Keith did not perceive the Holy Land to be the seat of a people constituted as a nation, in the way that Greece was the seat of the Greek people. His solution was modeled on the successful British diplomatic and military operations by means of which “Greece was given to the Greeks” in 1829 (following centuries of Ottoman occupation.) Keith wrote his book to urge the British government to “give Judea to the Jews. [6].

The lead-up to the Crimean War (1854), like the military expansionism of Muhammad Ali two decades earlier, signaled an opening for political rearrangements in the Near East. In July of 1853, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury wrote to Prime Minister Aberdeen that Greater Syria was “a country without a nation” in need of “a nation without a country… Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” In his diary that year he wrote “these vast and fertile regions will soon be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to claim dominion. The territory must be assigned to some one or other… There is a country without a nation; and God now in his wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country.” [7] [8].

Early use of the phrase

According to Diana Muir: "It is not evident that this was ever the slogan of any Zionist organization or that it was employed by any of the movement’s leading figures. A mere handful of the outpouring of pre-state Zionist articles and books use it. For a phrase that is so widely ascribed to Zionist leaders, it is remarkably hard to find in the historical record." [3] She proposes that: "Unless or until evidence comes to light of its wide use by Zionist publications and organizations, the assertion that 'a land without a people for a people without a land' was a 'widely-propagated Zionist slogan' should be retired." [3]

Rachel Neuwirth argues that: "The phrase "a land without a people to a people without a land" was never a "Zionist slogan" and was never said (except to disagree with it) by any Zionist or Israeli leader."[9] Rather it was a phrase used by three nineteenth Christian proponents of a Jewish return to the land of Israel, who wrote before the (Jewish) Zionist movement was even begun by Theodore Herzl."[10]

Israel Zangwill, who was a Zionist briefly before breaking dramatically and publically with Zionism,movement, did use the phrase, attributing it to Lord Shaftesbury. [11]

Historian Alan Dowty has stated that the phrase was not in use among Zionists.[12]

The meaning and use of the phrase by proponents of a Jewish return to the land

According to historian Adam M. Garfinkle, the plain meaning of the phrase was that the Jews were a nation without a state while their ancestral homeland, Israel, was at that time (the nineteenth century) not the seat of any nation.[8][3]

Steven Poole explains the phrase this way, "The specific claim was not the blatantly false one that the territory was unpopulated, nor that those living there were not human, but that they did not constitute 'a people', in other words, it was argued that they had no conception of nationhood in the modern western sense." [13]

William Eugene Blackstone (born 1841) became an evangelist at the age of 37. A trip to the Holy Land in 1881 made him into a passionate restorationist. Like most people in the 1880’s and 90’s, he was appalled by the government-instigated pogroms being carried out against Russian Jews. Blackstone’s solution was laid out in the Blackstone Memorial presented to President Harrison in 1891, imploring the officers of the American government to use their “influence with the Governments” of a list of “Imperial Majesties” that included “Abdul Hamid II, Sultan of Turkey”:

“Why not give Palestine back to them (the Jews) again? According to God’s distribution of nations it is their home, an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force…. Let us now restore to them the land of which they were so cruelly despoiled by our Roman ancestors.”[14]

Blackstone’s Memorial was signed by several hundred prominent Americans, and received wide attention. Although the Memorial did not contain the phrase “land without a people,” shortly after returning from his trip to Israel in 1881 Blackstone had written, also in the context of his concern over the fate of the Jews of the Russian Pale, “And now, this very day, we stand face to face with the awful dilemma, that these millions cannot remain where they are, and yet have no other place to go… This phase of the question presents an astonishing anomaly – a land without a people, and a people without a land.”[15]

Blackstone is known to have thought that the Arab population of Palestine would not be an obstacle to Jewish restoration.[16]

John Lawson Stoddard, a popular speaker and author of travel books, published an 1897 travelogue in which he exhorts the Jews, “You are a people without a country; there is a country without a people. Be united. Fulfil the dreams of your old poets and patriarchs. Go back, go back to the land of Abraham." [3] [17]

What Keith, Shaftesbury, Blackstone, Stoddard and the other nineteenth century Chrristian who used this phrase were saying was that the Holy Land was not the seat of a nation in the way that Japan is the land of the Japanese and Denmark is the land of the Danes. The Arabic-speaking Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the "Holy Land" did not, in the view of European and American Christians of that era, appear to constitute a people or nation defined by their attachment to Palestine, they appeared, rather, to be part of the larger Arab, Armenian or Greek peoples. [8] [3]


Interpretation and use of the phrase by opponents of the Jewish return to the land

According to Muir, opponents of Zionism began to attack the slogan shortly after England issued the Balfour Declaration. [3] In 1918, Ameer Rihami, a Lebanese-American, Christian Arab nationalist, wrote that "I would even say ... 'Give the land without a people to the people without a land' if Palestine were really without a people and if the Jews were really without a land." He argued that Jews needed no homeland in Palestine because they enjoyed everywhere else "equal rights and equal opportunity, to say the least." [3] An anti-Zionist, early twentieth-century academic Arabist wrote, "Their very slogan, 'The land without a people for the people without a land,' was an insult to Arabs of the country." [3] Anti-Zionist American journalist William McCrackan said, "We used to read in our papers the slogan of Zionism, 'to give back a people to a Land without a People,' while the truth was that Palestine was already well-peopled with a population which was rapidly increasing from natural causes." [3]

Muir states that "Anti-Israel propagandists seized upon the phrase following the 1964 founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)." [3] On November 13, 1974, PLO leader Yasir Arafat told the United Nations, "It pains our people greatly to witness the propagation of the myth that its homeland was a desert until it was made to bloom by the toil of foreign settlers, that it was a land without a people." [18] In its November 14, 1988 "Declaration of Independence," the Palestinian National Council accused "local and international forces" of "attempts to propagate the lie that 'Palestine is a land without a people.'" [19] PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi suggests that the phrase shows that Zionists "sought to deny the very existence and humanity of the Palestinians." [20] [3] Salman Abu Sitta, founder and president of the Palestine Land Society, calls the phrase "a wicked lie in order to make the Palestinian people homeless." [21]

Many writers have since cited the phrase to make the point that Zionists asserted or believed that the land was "empty." [3]

In his book The Question of Palestine, Edward Said claims, incorrectly according to other scholars [22] [3] [23], that the slogan "A land without people for a people without land," was "formulated" by Israel Zangwill [24] and castigates Zionists for asserting that Palestine was a land without people. The omission of the article "a," changes the meaning of the the phrase. [25] [3] Stephen Poole calls this omission of the indefinite article "a subtle falsification." [26] Historians S. Ilan Troen and Jacob Lassner allege that this is a "common distortion" by "Edward Said and his followers" and thit is done "perhaps malevolently" with the intention of altering the meaning of the phrase. [27]

Another common but, according to many historians[28] [3] [29], inaccurate citation is used by Christian anti-Israel activists including Keith Whitelam, who alleges that Zionists used the slogan "a land without people for a people without land" to present Palestine as being "without inhabitants."[30] and Mitri Raheb who refers to "the well-known Zionist slogan, 'a land without people for a people without land[31].' "

Noam Chomsky attributes to Theodore Herzl the statement that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without land, [32] incorrectly according to historian Adam Garfinkle who states that Herzl "never" used this phrase. [33] Again, the absence of the article is problematic according to many historians. [34] [3] [35]

References

  1. ^ Said, Edward, (New York: Times Books, 1979), The Question of Palestine, p. 9.
  2. ^ Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x “A Land without a People for a People without a Land; An oft-cited Zionist slogan was neither Zionist nor popular," Diana Muir, Middle Eastern Quarterly, Spring 2008, Vol. 15, No. 2
  4. ^ The United Secession Magazine vol. 1, p. 189
  5. ^ Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined; Jacob Lassner, Ilan Troen, 2007, p. 303
  6. ^ ”Alexander Keith, The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob (Edinburgh: William Whyte and Co., 1843), p. 43.
  7. ^ Shaftsbury as cited in Hyamson, Albert, “British Projects for the Restoration of Jews to Palestine,” American Jewish Historical Society, Publications 26, 1918 p. 140
  8. ^ a b c Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27
  9. ^ American Thinker: A Tarnished Golden Anniversary
  10. ^ American Thinker: A Tarnished Golden Anniversary
  11. ^ Zangwill, Israel, The Voice of Jerusalem, 1921, p. 109
  12. ^ Alan Dowty, The Jewish State, A Century Later (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 267.
  13. ^ Poole, Stephen, Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How that Message becomes reality, 2007, Page 84
  14. ^ Yaakov, Ariel (1991). On Behalf of Israel; American Fundamentalist Attitudes Toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865-1945. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing. pp. 70–2.
  15. ^ Davis, Moshe (1995). America and the Holy Land, Vol. 4 in the series, With Eyes Toward Sion. Westport, CT.: Praeger. pp. 64–66.
  16. ^ Yaakov, Ariel (1991). On Behalf of Israel; American Fundamentalist Attitudes Toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865-1945. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing. p. 74.
  17. ^ John L. Stoddard. Lectures: Illustrated and Embellished with Views of the World’s Famous Places and People, Being the Identical Discourses Delivered During the Past Eighteen Years under the Title of the Stoddard Lectures, Vol. 2. 1897), as cited in Garfinkle, “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.”
  18. ^ Walter Laquer and Barry Rubin, eds., The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin, 2001), pp. 174-5
  19. ^ "Palestinian National Council Declaration of Independence," Algiers, Nov. 14, 1988
  20. ^ The Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 6, 2003
  21. ^ Matt Horton, "The Atlas of Palestine 1948," The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Aug. 2005, p. 58
  22. ^ Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined; Jacob Lassner, Ilan Troen, 2007, p. 303
  23. ^ Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27
  24. ^ Said, Edward, (New York: Times Books, 1979), The Question of Palestine, p. 9.
  25. ^ Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined; Jacob Lassner, Ilan Troen, 2007, p. 303
  26. ^ Poole, Stephen, Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How that Message becomes reality, 2007, Page 84
  27. ^ Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined; Jacob Lassner, Ilan Troen, 2007, p. 303
  28. ^ Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined; Jacob Lassner, Ilan Troen, 2007, p. 303
  29. ^ Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27
  30. ^ Whitelam, Keith, The Invention of Ancient Israel: the silencing of Palestinian History, Routledge, London, 1996, p.58
  31. ^ Raheb, Mitri, I Am a Palestinian Christian, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1995 p. 152
  32. ^ Chomsky, Noam, Middle East Illusions: Including Peace in the Middle East? Reflections, Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. p. 47.
  33. ^ Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27
  34. ^ Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined; Jacob Lassner, Ilan Troen, 2007, p. 303
  35. ^ Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27

See also

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