SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This essay takes the example of the documentation of Zionist crimes during the Nakba, such as the looting of Palestinian movable property, to examine how Israeli historians and philosophers assess the justness of Zionism and the legitimacy of the establishment of Israel in light of such disclosures of historical evidence. It shows that the attempt to morally salvage Zionism fails. This moral salvaging is selective, inconsistent, and self-justificatory. It displays questionable moral priorities because it condemns practices like looting from a moral or legal perspective and simultaneously justifies a collective project of ethnic cleansing and an institutional design of modes of dispossession. It thus has the effect of whitewashing the primary historical wrong and the more harmful (but officially authorized) practices by condemning the secondary, relatively less harmful practices. Finally, a similar distorting effect is achieved when this moral salvaging of Zionism posits a false distinction between Zionism as a theory and a historical practice, between the justness of Zionism and the assessment of its historical practices. By abstracting Zionism from history this distinction merely immunises Zionism because it evades the debate about its role and effects as a political movement in light of increasing historical evidence of morally objectionable actions, policies, and practices. Moreover, defenders of Zionism fail to reconcile it with fundamental human rights, such as equality, even at the abstract level. In fact, a liberal ethnocultural moral philosopher like Chaim Gans ends up justifying or excusing ethnic cleansing no less than amoral historians and fails to offer an egalitarian vision for the present or the future.