1 Chase Carter Senior Thesis April 24, 2015

On Jewish Nationalism

Lacking the courage to fight for a change of our social and legal status, we have decided

instead, so many of us, to try a change of identity.1

Hannah Arendt, "We Refugees"

With the above statement, Arendt tells the story of the European Jew. This Jew has

transformed identities moving between those of religious devotee, persecuted heretic, assimilated

and secular member of modern society, ghettoized second-class citizen, state-less refugee and

finally, in an ironic and unexpected turn of events, militarized settler. Presently, there is a strong

conflation between Jewish people and the state of Israel. Israel perpetuates this incomplete and

often dangerous association by zealously defining itself as "the Jewish state” and therefore as

representing all Jews. Other organizations (media, governmental, non-governmental, etc.) do the

same. While Israel moves more to the political right, many Jews (ie. Open Hillel, Jewish Voice

for Peace) across the world are disassociating themselves, and their Jewishness, from the state of

Israel. While the state of Israel does not represent all Jewish people, it was created by Jewish

people and continues to be supported by a significant portion of Jews, particularly Jewish-

Americans. With all these facts in mind, Jewish identity is undoubtedly linked to the state of

Israel in its past, present, and future.2

1 Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile, ed. Marc Robinson (Boston; London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 116. 2 In my own opinion, and for the purposes of this paper, Judaism does not refer only to religious aspects, but also to the history, culture, and traditions of Jews.

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i. Jews Enter the Family of Nations

Modern Jewish history, arguably, is defined by a series of exclusions. Anti-Semitism in

Europe has afflicted the Jewish population for centuries, excluding them from rights their

Christian counterparts were ensured. With the rise of nation-states in Europe, national citizenship

became a ticket to guarantee one’s unalienable rights.3 Jews around Europe certainly noticed and

understood this reality. Due to their interest in wanting to survive and thrive (and partially due to

a certain shame of being Jewish), Jews started putting their national identity before their identity

as Jews.4 For instance, Franz Kafka is remembered as being either a German or Czech writer

before being a Jew. Many consider Trotsky a nationalist Russian revolutionary before

associating him with his Jewish background. Even Walter Benjamin is seen as a German

academic before his Jewishness is acknowledged. Although many Jewish families jump on the

opportunity to claim one as their own (“He was Jewish you know!”), Jewish people were

projecting their national identity before, and many times as a substitute for, Jewish identity. Due

to a combination of this reality and a general movement towards secularization and

modernization, 19th Century Europe saw Jews assimilate and integrate into whatever nationalist

culture and identity were enclosed within each sovereign state’s geo-political borders. However,

as hard as European Jews tried to assimilate, they were never accepted. Speaking from both first-

hand experience and observation of fellow Jews, in 1943 Hannah Arendt writes: “Lacking the

courage to fight for a change of our social and legal status, we have decided instead, so many of

us, to try a change of identity.” She goes on to describe the tragically accurate story of the

European Jew:

3 Étienne. Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene (London; New York: Verso, 2002), 82. 4 Arendt, “We Refugees,” 110.

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Some day somebody will write the true story of this Jewish emigration…and he will have to start with a description of Mr. Cohn from Berlin who had always been a 150% German, a German super-patriot. In 1933 that Mr. Cohn found a refuge in Prague and very quickly became a convinced Czech patriot – as true and as loyal a Czech patriot as he had been a German one. Time went on and at about 1937 the Czech Government, already under some Nazi pressure, began to expel its Jewish refugees, disregarding the fact that they felt so strongly as prospective Czech citizens. Our Mr. Cohn then went to Vienna; to adjust oneself there a definite Austrian patriotism was required. The German invasion forced Mr. Cohn out of that country. He arrived in Paris at a bad moment and he never did receive a regular residence-permit. Having already acquired a great skill in wishful thinking, he refused to take mere administrative measures seriously, convinced that he would spend his future life in France. Therefore, he prepared his adjustment to the French nation…As long as Mr. Cohn can’t make up his mind to be what he actually is, a Jew, nobody can foretell all the mad changes he will still have to go through…Whatever we do, whatever we pretend to be, we reveal nothing but our insane desire to be changed, not to be Jews…It is the history of a hundred and fifty years of assimilated Jewry who performed an unprecedented feat: through proving all the time their non-Jewishness, they succeeded in remaining Jews all the same.5

After the Holocaust, the remaining European Jewish population became state-less refugees.

Three million Jews were left to make new homes, learn new languages, and invent new modes of

survival, again. Remarkably, before WWII even ends, Arendt begins to reflect on what this

catastrophe means for the Jewish people and their stripped identity:

We lost our home, which means the familiarity, of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings. We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos and our best friends have been killed in concentration camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives…We were told to forget; and we forgot quicker than anybody ever could imagine.6

The Jewish diaspora spread wider across the world after the Holocaust, but the United States

became the new home for most. In the United States, as in Europe, Jews also tried their best to

assimilate and integrate. However, even in the US, presently seen as a relatively welcoming and

prosperous place for Jews, in the years following WWII, Jewish people encountered more (and

5 Ibid., 116–118. 6 Ibid., 110.

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familiar) anti-Semitic persecution.7 If, even in a country composed of immigrants, Jews faced

discrimination, where could they live openly as Jews? While Arendt’s narrative of Mr. Cohn is

true for Jewish intra-European migration and migration across the Atlantic to the United States,

there is an alternative history that many other Jews followed.

European Jews were nearly exterminated during the Holocaust, so it was imperative that

they find another way to live, besides the diaspora. Jews learned from their devastating

experiences in Europe that equality is only guaranteed through a secured nationality. Étienne

Balibar describes this new international order with which Jews in Europe were confronted as

…the modern (nationalist) nation-state, this equality having as its internal and external limits the national community and, as its essential content, the acts which signify it directly (particularly universal suffrage and political ‘citizenship’). It is, first and foremost, an equality in respect of nationality.8

If it is true that in order to have status, and to merely survive, one must be a citizen of a nation-

state, and if no country accepts Jews, within the nation-state logic Jews must then create a

nation-state of their own. However, Jews were not the only group looking, or rather being told, to

create a nation-state of their own: “In the international sphere, the vision of the political

leadership was to become part of ‘the family of nations.’”9 Zionists sought after “the

‘normalization’ of Jewish existence along lines similar to those of other nations.”10 Balibar,

building off of Benedict Anderson’s foundational work, Imagined Communities, reinforces the

importance of national identity at this pivotal moment in history, stating, “…no social ‘property’

– material or in the realm of ideas – can escape national determination nor can any be nationally

7 The US displayed its pre-WWII rejection of Jews through the Immigration Act of 1924 and its post-WWII Jewish persecution through the Red Scare. 8 Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London; New York: Verso, 2002), 50. 9 Dalia Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How?,” Israel Studies 18, no. 2 (2013): 72. 10 Michael Feige, “Introduction: Rethinking Israeli Memory and Identity,” Israel Studies 7, no. 2 (Summer 2002): vi.

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overdetermined. To each individual a nation, and to each nation its ‘nationals.’”11 Between the

late 19th Century and the end of WWII, hundreds of thousands of Jews immigrated to Palestine to

escape various anti-Semitic persecutions around Europe. Unlike Arendt’s ever-changing Mr.

Cohn, adapting and shifting for survival, losing and gaining different identities along the way,

these Jews found another way to live: if Jews were able to create a nation-state of their own,

opportunely in their ancient and biblical homeland, they would be guaranteed the same rights

that come to all citizens of a recognized nation-state.

ii. The Imagining of Israel

In Palestine, and what was to become Israel, Jews imagined a future where they could be

accepted for who they were, Jews. They could practice their religion and customs openly and

publicly identify as Jewish without any fear of persecution. While the age-old “Jewish Question”

– the combined issue of assimilation, integration, and emancipation – was absent in the

experience of living in Palestine, life there posed new questions, such as “what is Israeli

identity?” and “what are its people’s histories?” Israel, like all new nation-states, needed to

construct new mythologies.12 Israel is what Benedict Anderson, in his groundbreaking work,

calls an imagined community:

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.13

11 Étienne Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 13, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 337. 12 While undeniably a truth, the Holocaust was but built into a constructed narrative of the foundation of Israel and Jewish history. 13 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London; New York: Verso, 2006), 6.

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Therefore, not only is Israel an imagined community, but so are the Jewish people. While Jews

were already a religious group, arguably an ethnic group, and to many anti-Semitic white

supremacists at the time, a race, they were and are still imagined. Though, that is not to say that

this imaginary connection is not real. Balibar uses Anderson’s notion of an imagined community

to relate the idea of the imaginary to the real:

Every social community reproduced by the functioning of institutions is imaginary, that is to say, it is based on the projection of individual existence into the weft of a collective narrative, on the recognition of a common name and on traditions lived as the trace of an immemorial past. But…only imaginary communities are real. In the case of national formations, the imaginary which inscribes itself in the real in this way is that of the ‘people.’14

What is special about Israel, though, is its people’s extensive and rich historical connection well

before the emergence of nation-states. Although “gathered together externally from diverse

geographical origin,” the Jewish people were already “subject to a common law” – Judaism.15 It

is no wonder, then, why Zionism was such a strong and easily accessible nationalism for Jews. It

already has the momentum of a previous imagined (religious) community to start from, and one

that just so happens to have been outcast and at the margins of society for, it claimed, eternity.

It is this collective memory and identity that emerging nation-states strive to create.

Balibar reasons that nationalist movements

…justify their claims to autonomy by drawing an ideal trajectory going from a more or less mythical origin (linguistic, religious, cultural, racial) toward an end considered to be the only historically normal possibility, the creation of its own national state structure.16

Fortunately for Zionists, the Jewish people already possessed this “more or less mythical origin.”

As discussed earlier, “the creation of its own national state structure” was the only logical

possibility for the Jewish people, and according to this reasoning, their new nation-state belongs

14 Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, 93. 15 Ibid., 94. 16 Balibar, “The Nation Form,” 331.

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in their “mythical origins” of the Holy Land. While biblical justification is usually reserved for

religious fanaticism, Zionism – a simultaneously nationalist and colonialist movement – was able

to utilize religious mythos to construct Israel’s eternal history, a “characteristic feature of states

of all types”17 This concept of the eternal is an important notion not just for each individual

nation-state, but for the international order of nation-states as a system. Even though the nation-

state is a relatively new concept, it is difficult to imagine a world system without them. In order

for people to wholeheartedly believe in the nation-state system, they must not be able to imagine

any other alternative. Therefore, it is critical that people around the world believe nations have

been and always will be, just as each people always have been and always will be a distinct

people, forever into the past and future. Anderson elaborates on this issue of nation-states

existing as both new and historical:

If nation-states are widely conceded to be ‘new’ and ‘historical,’ the nations to which they give political expression always loom out of an immemorial past, and, still more important, glide into a limitless future.18

Immanuel Wallerstein complements Anderson’s thoughts with his own concept of pastness:

Pastness is a mode by which persons are persuaded to act in the present in ways they might not otherwise act. Pastness is a tool persons use against each other. Pastness is a central element in the socialization of individuals, in the maintenance of group solidarity, in the establishment of or challenge to social legitimation…pastness is by definition an assertion of the constant past…The past is normally considered to be inscribed in stone and irreversible.19

Therefore, as untrue as it may be, according to nationalist movements France always has been

France, and its people were always Frenchmen. The same goes for Germany, Denmark, England,

and even one of the youngest nation-states, Israel.

17 Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, 88. 18 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 11–12. 19 Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, 78.

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iii. Conflicting Imaginaries

This engrained myth that Israel was waiting empty, solely for the Jewish return plays

directly into the enduring and dangerous phrase depicting Israel as “a land without a people for a

people without a land.” As it is now – and always should have been – known, there were in fact

people already living in Palestine. However, deliberately ignoring the native population, and

therefore misrepresenting a land as empty, uncultivated, and ready for settlement is a common

theme among colonial movements, whether it be Europeans arriving in the Americas, the West

Indies, or islands off the coast of Africa. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab

Studies at Columbia University, reflects upon how the term “Eretz Israel” intrinsically

perpetuates Zionists' eternal claim to the Holy Land for Jews:

Eretz Israel, the land of Israel – this is not just a descriptor, this is not just a geographical place name. This is to ascribe to a land ownership by a people…This is the land of the people of Israel…Zionism involves a special, a presumptive, and a privileged relationship to that. If such a privileged relationship exists, then anybody else on that land, in that land is a problem, because Zionism takes Jewish history and appropriates it as every national movement does, and it turns it into a seamless whole – ending with the Holocaust, the establishment of Israel…The Palestinians are a problem for that entire narrative. The Palestinians, of course, have their own narrative, which is equally fictional, which is equally appropriative of elements in history that transformed into a modern national narrative.20

Regarding the Jewish return to Israel (Aliyah), Jewish Journalist I.F. Stone explains the parallel,

but conflicting implications for Jews and Palestinians:

For the Jews, the establishment of Israel was a Return, with all the mystical significance the capital R implies. For the Arabs it was another invasion…With each victory the size of Israel has grown. So has the number of Arab homeless.21

20 Rashid Khalidi, “On Palestinian Nationalism” (Lecture, Open Hillel Conference, Cambridge, MA, October 10, 2014). 21 I. F. Stone, “Holy War,” The New York Review of Books, August 3, 1967, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1967/aug/03/holy-war/.

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The supposition, then, is that Jewish nationalism (as Zionism) and Palestinian nationalism cannot

coexist in one theoretical space, as they both claim rights to the same land. Khalidi expands on

this issue of conflicting imaginaries:

Zionism posits a narrative…In that narrative, the Palestinians and Palestinian nationalism are extraordinarily disruptive. They’re disruptive because at every level, at the level of naming, the level of producing a national narrative, the level of understanding of the conflict. At every level, the very existence of the Palestinians posits serious, serious problems for the Zionist narrative.22

More specifically, Israeli anthropologist and sociologist Michael Feige points to 1948 as a point

of contention between Israeli and Palestinian national narratives:

Of all the contesting narratives, the Palestinian one is most serious threat to Zionism. It endeavors to transform the meaning of the 1948 war, the great Israeli founding myth, by including the Nakba (1948 events from the Palestinian perspective) as a major reference point.23

While in many cases Zionism has ignored the “Arab Problem,” that is the problem of their

existence within the Holy Land, it has also emphasized the Arab figure in various ways.

In addition to constructing Israeli identity, equally important was constructing the identity

of the other – the Arab. While crafting a simultaneously “new” and “historical” identity for

themselves, Zionists also constructed an identity, although sometimes more of a non-identity, for

the Palestinian Arab. In determining a new nation, and therefore a people, Israel needed to

further categorize and classify who was to be considered an Israeli. While imagining the

physical, geographic external borders of “Eretz Israel,” Zionists were also conceptualizing the

internal, immaterial, psychological borders of their future nation-state. Balibar refers to this dual

delineation of borders:

The heritage of colonialism is, in reality, a fluctuating combination of continued ‘exteriorization’ and ‘internal exclusion’…‘the external frontiers’ of the state have

22 Khalidi, “On Palestinian Nationalism.” 23 Feige, “Introduction: Rethinking Israeli Memory and Identity,” xii.

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become the ‘internal frontiers’…external frontiers have to be imagined constantly as a projection and protection for an internal collective personality…24

Stone elaborates on Israel’s construction of the “other” to dehumanize Palestinians:

A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements. The Others are always either less than human, and this their interests may be ignored, or more than human and therefore so dangerous that it is right to destroy them…For the Zionists the Arab was the Invisible Man.

Regarding Palestinian Arabs as subhuman, or nonhuman, legitimizes any and all violence

committed against them. If they are not humans, then no war crimes can in fact transpire. Within

the famous phrase, Israel is “a land without a people for a people without a land,” there is a great

deal of debate over the importance regarding the difference between identifying Palestinians as

“a people” or merely “people.” This debate, essentially, relies on the condition that disregarding

Palestinians as “a people” is somehow better than as “people.” The former does not recognize

them as a nation, while the latter does not even recognize them as humans. This distinction aside,

the point is that under the order of nation-states, if Palestinians are not considered “a people,”

they do not deserve to be treated as “people.” If we recall Balibar, we are reminded of the

guarantee of “equality in respect” only “of nationality.”25 One must possess a nationality and

citizenship belonging to a recognized nation-state in order to be seen as human. Zionism’s act of

dehumanizing Palestinian Arabs simultaneously strengthens Israeli national identity and

solidarity, giving Jewish settlers another identity to oppose themselves against as well as a

common enemy. They are barbaric, and therefore we are civilized. We are democratic, and

therefore they are tyrannical. We love and respect life, and therefore they place no value on life.

As false as these absurd dichotomies may be, this simplistic and delusional “us vs. them”

thinking is precisely what contributes to fundamentally dishonest impressions of an eternal

24 Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, 43, 95. 25 Ibid., 50.

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conflict between the two groups, reaching forever into the past and projecting forever into the

future.

iv. The Holocaust in Israeli Institutional Memory

The conflict between Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms is not the only conflict with

which Zionism is confronted. Zionism, while trying to shape Jewish history into a “seamless

whole,” starts to show signs of cognitive dissonance when attempting to both repress and

promote the remembrance of the Holocaust. Jewish-Israeli scholar Alon Confino discusses

Israel’s early suppression of certain memories and experiences over the promotion of others:

Survivors who came from "there," as the Holocaust was called in a mixture of awe and removal, symbolized the Diaspora Jews who went like lamb to the slaughter, a diametrically opposed image to the new Jewish man and woman of the Zionist revolution, who worked the land and defended the homeland. But the silence over the victim's experience in the heroic national narrative was commingled with many noises of Holocaust memories and traumas in Israeli society.26

These memories and experiences from the Holocaust create a rupture in the Zionist hegemony.27

Accordingly, Zionism ultimately found it beneficial to include the Holocaust as part of the

Zionist narrative. Rather ironically, the Holocaust was the catalyst for creating a widespread and

strong nationalism within the Jewish diaspora. Stone, in 1967, writes:

By the tragic dialectic of history, Israel would not have been born without Hitler. It took the murder of six million in his human ovens to awaken sufficient nationalist zeal in Jewry and sufficient humanitarian compassion in the West to bring a Jewish state to birth in Palestine.28

26 Alon Confino, “Remembering the Second World War, 1945-1965: Narratives of Victimhood and Genocide,” Cultural Analysis 4 (2005): 56. 27 “The meaning of hegemony in this context is that the national narrative was understood as “objective history,” and was taken at face value as irrefutable truth by most Israeli Jews.” Feige, “Introduction: Rethinking Israeli Memory and Identity,” vi. 28 Stone, “Holy War.”

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Furthermore, he adds that “Israel grows on Jewish catastrophe.”29 Stone is correct that,

historically, anti-Semitism is often followed by a growth in Jewish immigration to Israel. What is

perhaps more important about Stone’s comment, though, is that Israel’s ideological strength and

international support grows on Jewish catastrophe as well.

Confino observes that these narratives “were fundamental to national recovery and to

creating and sustaining national identity after the war.”30 Nationalist narratives – a people’s

history – are, perhaps, the most essential part to building national identity – the key identity for

the modern-nation state. Wallerstein secures this notion:

Any group who sees advantage in using the state’s legal powers to advance its interests against groups outside the state or in any subregion of the state has an interest in promoting nationalist sentiment as a legitimation of its claims.31

Aleida Assmann supposes that “without a story that we can tell about ourselves, there is no

identity.”32 Feige maintains: “National narratives give meaning to struggles for independence

and survival.”33 After all, what is independence, if not expressed through national terms?

Zionism, just like other nationalist movements, uses archetypal narratives of heroism,

martyrdom, and victimhood to construct a national identity for Jews after WWII.34 The heroic

narratives include both ghetto rebels and Zionist leaders (like its forefather Theodor Herzl and

Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion). Narratives of martyrdom and victimhood are

expressed through both the deceased and the survivors of the Holocaust. Just as Wallerstein

proposes, these narratives are deliberately used as tools for the construction of a new Israeli, and

Jewish, identity. Early in Israel’s history, the Holocaust was rejected as a narrative, because

29 Ibid. 30 Confino, “Remembering the Second World War,” 48. 31 Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, 82. 32 Aleida Assmann, “Remembrance and Memory,” Goethe-Institut, 2008. 33 Feige, “Introduction: Rethinking Israeli Memory and Identity,” vi. 34 Confino, “Remembering the Second World War.”

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Zionists wanted to replace “the Jew’s traditional self-image as victim” with “new Zionist ideals

of strength and determination.”35 However, in order to support strengthening the Israeli military

for the purposes of protecting the Jewish people from another Holocaust, it was brought into

Israel’s national mythology through the concise two-word maxim, “Never Again.”36 Historian

Dalia Ofer explains: “During those days [before the outbreak of the 1967 War] the ‘never again’

aspect of the Holocaust was dominant.”37 Furthermore, the Holocaust was also used toward the

martyrdom narrative as well. Demonstrating this point, Tina Wasserman quotes James E. Young

in her essay on Israeli trauma:

However, in a remarkable twist of history, Young continues, the early founders reframed the Holocaust as the first battleground in a fight toward Jewish self-determination and statehood: in this new narrative, the six million Jews that were exterminated by the Nazis become ‘martyrs’ and ‘are recollected heroically as the first to fall in defense of the state.38

In addition to both victimhood and martyrdom, Israel has even gone so far as to paint a picture of

heroism when it comes to the Holocaust, by establishing in 1959 the national Remembrance Day

for the Holocaust and its Heroism.39 Regarding Israel’s use of institutions to define memory,

Ofer writes:

Israel was aiming to construct a master narrative of the Holocaust that would ensure recognition of the major elements of the Zionist ethos of destruction and rebirth and those

35 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1993), 213. 36 In addition to being a common and ubiquitous saying, “Never Again” is the official slogan of the ultranationalist Jewish Defense League and has been used by organizations like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 37 Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How?,” 77. 38 Tina Wasserman, “Intersecting Traumas: The Holocaust, the Palestinian Occupation, and the Work of Israeli Journalist Amira Hass,” in Culture, Trauma and Conflict: Cultural Studies Perspectives on War (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publ., 2007), 232. 39 Confino, “Remembering the Second World War,” 48. Confino cites Segev 1993; Almog 2002; Young 1990.

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of exile and redemption by utilizing the tools it had devised – Yad Vashem, state ceremonies, and the educational system.40

The Holocaust not only operates internally within the collective consciousness of Israelis or

Jews, but also is a tool for building international support for Israel. Regarding this matter, Ofer

continues:

…the codes and symbols of the Holocaust are central to and extremely sensitive in the Israeli consciousness, and…political groups make use of it to promote their goals…This inevitably calls our attention to the political dimension, in which the memory and lessons of the Holocaust have been used and abused.41

Stone takes an even stronger and more critical stance on the political uses of the Holocaust,

quoting from Ba’ath Socialist Gabran Majdalany:

Some people admit the inevitably racist character of Israel but justify it by the continual persecutions to which the Jews have been subjected during the history of Europe and by the massacres of the Second World War.42

Israel understands the importance of support among those in the Jewish diaspora, and so, makes

efforts to lobby the American Jewish community:

Conversely, a ‘homeland’ government may exploit diaspora sentiments for its purposes…the Israeli government has used American Jewish leaders as interlocutors for the promotion of pro-Israeli policies…43

Today, Israel continues to use these narratives to legitimize their violent acts as “self-defense.” It

can be argued that self-preservation has become the most “important common denominator about

the message of the Holocaust – the commitment to ensure the future of the Jewish people.”44 It is

clearer now to see how present-day Israeli and Jewish mentalities are deeply rooted in these

40 Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How?,” 75. 41 Ibid., 70–72. 42 Stone, “Holy War.” 43 William Safran, “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Diaspora 1, no. 1 (Spring 1991). 44 Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How?,” 71.

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nationalist narratives of fear, sacrifice, and self-preservation built during the construction of the

Jewish State.

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Chapter 2

Exodus: Otto Preminger's Zionist Myth-Making

Otto Preminger’s 1960 epic film Exodus is the United States’ first Hollywood film about

modern day Israel.45 It is significant not only because it was the first, but also because of its mass

popularity. Exodus was a true blockbuster, grossing an estimated $19 million in the US, and $22

million internationally.46 Before the film’s release, Leon Uris’ Exodus (1958) was the best-

selling novel in the US since Gone with the Wind, and topped the New York Times best-seller list

for five straight months. It sold in the millions, was translated into fifty languages, and was said

to be the second most common book found in Jewish-American households, only after the

Tanakh (Hebrew Bible).47 Exodus (in both its printed and cinematic versions) thus became an

essential framing device for American and Jewish-American perspectives and beliefs about

Israel. While the novel was an essential piece of shaping the American and Jewish-American

psyche regarding Israel, I will be focusing primarily on the film. Although the film follows the

novel closely in some places, Leon Uris’ text includes some key differences. I am focusing on

the film because of its availability to and acceptance by a wide global audience. I will also be

comparing this film to a contemporary cinematic interpretation of Israel’s foundational story,

Amos Gitai’s Kedma (2002). Through this comparison, I am able to examine numerous

conflicting narratives concerning nationalism and identity in Israel over the last forty-two years.

My own analysis shares and develops many ideas from Rachel Weissbrod's essay “‘Exodus’ as

45 Otto Preminger, Exodus (United Artists Corporation, 1960). 46 “Exodus (1960) - Box Office / Business,” IMDb., http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053804/business. 47 Bradley Burston, “The ‘Exodus’ Effect: The Monumentally Fictional Israel That Remade American Jewry,” Haaretz, November 9, 2012, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/the-exodus-effect-the-monumentally-fictional-israel-that-remade-american-jewry-1.476411.

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Zionist Melodrama,” but where Weissbrod focuses on the melodramatic qualities of Exodus

(1960), I ground my argument in theories of national mythopoeia.

i. Mass Market Appeal

While critical response to Exodus (1958) was “by-and-large mocking,” its popular and

institutional reception was left largely unharmed. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was

quoted as saying, “As a literary work it isn’t much, but as a piece of propaganda, it’s the best

thing ever written about Israel.”48 As Rachel Weissbrod argues, the Israeli government used

Exodus precisely in that way, presenting it to members of a United Nations delegation, and

marketing translated versions of the novel to tourists and new immigrants.49 With the

government’s firm stamp of approval, Exodus was positioned as Israel’s official narrative for

many readers and viewers. While Exodus was clearly geared toward American audiences,

“Israelis flocked to the theaters to see the finished product, curious to see their story on screen,

and the film was enormously popular in Israel.”50 In Israel, the novel was also a success,

especially with youth, who in 1957 indicated a preference for American melodramas.51 While its

effects are most noticeable on the American mind, Weissbrod argues that Exodus (1958) was

published at a perfect time to affect Israeli consciousness. :

When Exodus was published, Israel was celebrating the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the State in the shadow of severe social problems. The novel bolstered Israeli national pride at a time when the nation apparently was in need of just this…52

48 Ibid. 49 Rachel Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” Israel Studies 4, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 129, 144. 50 Ibid., 146. 51 Ibid., 142. 52 Ibid.

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Israeli journalist and author Jeffrey Goldberg recalls that Exodus (1958) strengthened Jewish-

Americans’ pride of Israel as well, “Exodus set me, and many others, on a course for Aliyah, and

it made American Jews proud of Israel's achievements.”53

ii. An American, Melodramatic, Liberal Zionist Epic

Bradley Burston, Senior Editor for Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, has accused Uris of

“tailoring, altering, and radically sanitizing the history of the founding of the State of Israel to

flatter the fantasies and prejudices of American Jews.”54 Uris’ revisions to Israel’s history in

order to appeal to Americans (not just American Jews) can be spotted at multiple points in his

fictionalized version of history. For instance, the protagonist Ari Ben Canaan tries to gain

sympathy and support from Kitty Fremont (who functions as the American reader or viewer) by

drawing direct comparisons between the underdog (but ultimately victorious) qualities of the

American Revolutionary Minutemen and the Zionist fighters of the Haganah.55 Uris also made

political alterations. Understanding the tension that might occur if anti-Communist Americans

realized the “socialist character of the most important Zionist movement of the time,” he

sterilized the kibbutz of its fundamental socialist qualities.56 According to literary critic Jerome

A. Chanes, this appeal to American Jews “popularized Jewish empowerment…just what we

needed at the time – the Americanization of Zionism and Israel.”57 Uris, rather surprisingly for

the time, produced a novel that simultaneously empowered Jewish readers and allowed

American readers to identify with Jews.

53 Burston, “The ‘Exodus’ Effect.” 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 134. 57 Jerome A. Chanes, “‘Exodus’ And the Americanization Of Israel’s Founding,” The Jewish Week, September 6, 2011.

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Preminger and Trumbo only further Americanized, dramatized, and universalized Uris’

novel. Exodus was accurately characterized by Israeli critics as “the story of the establishment of

the State of Israel as Hollywood would have produced it.”58 Exodus was directed by veteran

filmmaker Otto Preminger, adapted by Oscar-winning screenwriter Donald Trumbo (who, in

1960, with both Exodus and Spartacus, returned to the public after being blacklisted), scored by

prolific composer Ernest Gold (who won Exodus an Academy Award for Best Music), included

titles and advertisements by the renowned graphic designer Saul Bass, and starred silver screen

icon Paul Newman as the Zionist sabra Ari Ben Canaan and starlet Eva Marie Saint as the

American Kitty Fremont. The Americanization of the film is noticed in the casting of Arabs too,

such as John Derek as Taha, Ari’s Arab counterpart. Exodus screams Hollywood.

Preminger’s version also sees the introduction of “a common American literary and

cinematic device.”59 At the film’s end, Nazis become the ultimate villains of the story. The

casting of Nazis as the final villains leads to three important outcomes. First, it removes much of

the burden of guilt placed on Britain, the previous antagonists until this turning point. Second, it

enables American viewers to easily accept this Israeli narrative into the United States’ own

World War II narrative. Third, the existence of undetected Nazis in Palestine increases the threat

of anti-Semitic persecution, and therefore strengthens the case for a militarized Jewish state. This

one plot point is incredibly important for cementing the bond between the United States and

Israel.

Exodus dramatized Israel’s foundational story, presenting “the story of Zionism in a

popular, readily accessible form – melodrama.”60 In Exodus, melodrama is not only used to

58 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 148. 59 Ibid., 140. 60 Ibid., 129.

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create a more digestible version of Israel’s foundational story, but also because “it provides the

ideal vehicle for transmitting clear ideological messages” by “neatly dividing the world into

diametric opposites” of good and evil. Following the model of melodrama, the central conflict of

the film is external; it remains between the conflicting forces of the Jewish heroes, and the

British, Arabs, and eventually Nazis as well. Through melodrama and its ability to sweep “the

reader up in a tide of emotional involvement and identification with the heroes,” Exodus

positions the Zionists as the protagonists of the story, and in this case history as well.

Along with its dramatization and Americanization of Israel’s past, Exodus whitewashes

history too. Humanistic themes of peace, brotherhood, and coexistence form the foundational

principles promoted by Exodus. According to statements made during the film’s public-relations

campaign, Preminger chose deliberately to present Arabs and Brits in a more positive light.61 By

removing anti-Arab language and focusing on these universal messages (instead of Zionism),

Trumbo and Preminger helped make Exodus more easily accepted and supported.62 In Exodus,

Kitty serves as an avatar for the non-Israeli, non-Jewish, and particularly American audience.

During several of Ari’s conversations with Kitty, he faces the camera, thus replacing Kitty’s

identity with the viewer’s. Kitty performs as “‘the foreign observer,’ whose indifference and

even hostility toward Zionism are gradually replaced by admiration.”63 Through her romance

with Ari and maternal relationship with Karen – a young Jewish refugee from Denmark that

really looks like she could be her relative – Kitty becomes a full-fledged supporter of Zionism.

Barak Ben Canaan serves as the perfect messenger for these themes, throughout the film

giving multiple speeches advocating for Arab and Jewish coexistence, attempting to unite them

61 Ibid., 139. 62 Ibid., 139–40. 63 Ibid., 134.

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together as oppressed, occupied people in their rightful homeland. At Gan Dafna, Barak tells the

recent arrivals from Exodus that the Kibbutz could only have been built due to the generous

donation from his “old-friend” Kammal, former Mukhtar of the neighboring Arab village Abu

Yesha. Barak ends this first speech with an imperative for the new arrivals to “speak always than

name [Allah] with respect.”64 Taha, Kammal’s son and current Mukhtar of Abu Yesha, supports

his sentiments of peace, brotherhood, and coexistence, illustrating the similarities between

Arabic and Hebrew:

In this Valley of Jezreel, we dwell together as friends. It is natural that we should live in peace, since even our words for it our exactly the same. We say salaam, and you, shalom. Let us seal our friendship forever with that most beautiful of Hebrew toasts: L’chaim, to life. [Together] L’chaim!65

They are shown to be successful of this mission on a micro-scale, through the two generations of

friendship built between Jews and Arabs, demonstrated by Barak and Kammal, and Ari and

Taha. However, a sense of irony sets in after learning Taha’s toast to life is followed by his

eventual death and the promise of a “friendship forever” between Israelis and Palestinians has

not panned out in the last sixty-seven years.

Barak’s second major speech comes after the UN agrees on the Partition Plan to divide

Palestine into two lands, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs. During a Jewish celebration of

the UN’s support for British withdrawal and an independent Jewish state, Barak addresses the

“Arab population of Jewish Palestine” with an appeal:

The Grand Mufti has asked you to either annihilate the Jewish population or to abandon your homes and your lands, and seek the weary path of exile. We implore you: remain in your homes and in your shops, and we shall work together as equals in the free state of Israel! [Together, the crowd sings Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem].66

64 Preminger, Exodus. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid.

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This speech posits the Jews as protagonists with liberal humanistic goals, and Arabs as a guarded

population, and therefore a potential obstacle toward those goals. Either due to an irrational fear

of Jews, they will exile themselves, or due to irrational hatred, they will commit murder.67

Barak’s appeal assumes that most Arabs inherently do not have the same humanistic values of

peace, brotherhood, and coexistence, and will act from self-destructive emotions of fear and

hatred. The film makes it clear that most Arabs either attacked the Jews or fled. Only a Jew’s

leadership can teach them these values, and steer them toward peaceful coexistence. While the

character of Taha could be used as an example against my argument, he and his village is

characterized in the story as only an exception to the norm. He plays the “benevolent Arab” that

is ultimately punished for his allegiance to the Jews. In fact, these claims of orders to “either

annihilate the Jewish population or to abandon your homes and your lands” have been

questioned and opposed by both Palestinians and Israel’s New Historians – a debate I will return

to later. Taha’s response to the UN Partition Plan diverges from Barak’s positive reaction. He

tries to make Ari, his oldest friend and “brother”, understand what this decision will mean for

Arabs living in the freshly established Jewish territory:

Taha: You’ve won your freedom, and I have lost mine. Ari: We never had freedom, you or I. All our lives we’ve been under British rule. Now, we’ll be equal citizens in the free state of Israel. The resolution guarantees it. Taha: Guarantees are one thing, reality’s another…I’m a minority…Now, where shall my people go?68

In the film, Taha is depicted as unnecessarily cynical – why should he distrust the Jews when the

Ben Canaan family has treated him with nothing but respect and equality for so long?

67 Of course any fear would not have been irrational, because Palestinians were harmed and murdered by Zionist militias. 68 Preminger, Exodus.

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Preminger and Trumbo liberalize Israel’s foundational story further by contrasting the

Irgun and Haganah as opposing forces within the Zionist struggle for independence. The Irgun

are represented as terrorists (rightly so), and the Haganah as noble heroes.69 This opposition is

represented through Ari and his uncle Akiva, who as leader of the Irgun supports more violent

methods of rebellion: Akiva serves as a foil to his relatives, the honorable Ari and Barak. These

groups could have been incorporated into a singular, simplified idea of the upstanding Zionist,

and so Akiva’s character does add complexity to the traditional black-and-white and holistic

archetypes of melodrama. However, this division of Zionist factions is more useful as a tool to

promote the Haganah, and therefore our protagonists, as “good.” Akiva is punished for his acts

of terrorism – imprisoned by the British – and so his (and the Irgun’s) principles are left behind,

confined to the past. On the other hand, the Haganah, and in turn their righteous values, becomes

the foundation for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Consequently, in the eyes of the viewer, the

IDF and Israel become associated with those liberal, humanistic, universal values of peace,

brotherhood, and coexistence.

The film’s messages culminate in the final scene, when Taha, an Arab, and Karen, a Jew,

are buried together. Ari gives the only eulogy during their joint burial:

It’s right that these two people should lie side by side in this grave, because they will share it in peace. But the dead always share the earth in peace. And that’s not enough. It’s time for the living to have a turn. A few miles from here there are people who are fighting and dying, and we must join them. But I swear on the bodies of these two people, that the day will come when Arab and Jew will share in a peaceful life in this land that they have always shared in death. Taha, old friend and very dear brother. Karen, child of light, daughter of Israel. Shalom. [After shoveling dirt onto the grave, they drive off to battle as Ernest Gold’s score intensifies. The film ends.]70

69 An interesting exception is the character Dov Landau, who serves with the Irgun, but is ultimately seen as a noble hero. I will return to analyze Dov’s character later. 70 Preminger, Exodus.

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Ari’s statements are filled with pro-peace sentiments, but are also infused with an imperative to

fight. This line of thought is “similar to right-wing texts” where “revolt and military action to

restore national honor are seen as the proper response to oppression.”71 Throughout the film, and

especially in this final scene, Ari and other Zionist soldiers promote the idea that peace can only

be won through armed resistance.

iii. From Victims to Heroes: Changing the Dialogue

Exodus is an essential early framing device for the development of the “sabra” in

American and Jewish-American minds.72 This “new Jew” exists in direct contrast to the

European and American Jew.73 The European Jew, most accurately described through Hannah

Arendt’s Mr. Cohn, is a powerless and defeated victim.74 Early on in the film, Dov Landau, a

Jewish teenager and passenger aboard the Exodus, describes an essential difference between

Jews in Europe and Palestine: “Because, there [in Palestine], Jews fight instead of talk.”75

Exodus is central to the development of “Jewish empowerment in a Jewish world that was yet

emerging from the ashes of its destruction in Europe.”76 Like the mythological phoenix, the

Diaspora Jew is resurrected as the sabra, Israel’s “new Jew.” The metaphor of the phoenix is

visually detected in the image Saul Bass designed for Exodus’ titles and advertisements, which

depicts hands rising out of flames to grip a rifle, serving as a representation for any Jew willing

to take arms to defend the survival of his people. Any potential victory for the Jewish people

71 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 134. 72 Sabra refers to a Jew born and raised in Israel. Israeli Jews are related to the sabra, a prickly pear cactus, because they have a hard and spiny exterior, but soft and sweet interior. 73 The use of generalizations here is because they are important and ubiquitous archetypes, and not because they are representative of actual populations. 74 Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile, ed. Marc Robinson (Boston; London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 116–118. 75 Preminger, Exodus. 76 Jerome A. Chanes, “‘Exodus’ And the Americanization Of Israel’s Founding.”

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resides with the fate of the Jews in Palestine, who have the power, agency, and self-

determination to fight for an independent Jewish state. Whereas Jews in Europe found only

defeat, there is a chance for Jews in Palestine to be triumphant.

The model of the “new Jew” is most clearly represented through Ari and Dov.77 They are

the strengthened, masculinized, and even Aryanized counterparts to the feminine, weak, and

ethnic Jews of Europe and the United States. First, both their names point toward masculinity

and strength; in Hebrew, Ari means “lion” and Dov means “bear.” Ari’s masculinity is clearly

observed through his portrayal by heartthrob Paul Newman, and romantic relationship with

Kitty, portrayed by Hollywood darling Eva Marie Saint. Hollywood often chose actors “already

identified with the qualities the embody in the film.”78 This deliberate casting also relates to

Newman’s light hair and blue eyes, which helped create the idea that the “new Jew” was also

physiologically different from his European counterpart. This notion of physiological difference

comes to a peak when Ari, undercover as a British soldier in Cyprus, chats with a British officer:

British Officer: And they look funny too. I can spot one a mile away. Ari: Would you mind looking into my eye, sir? It feels like a cinder. British Officer: Certainly. [The officer examines Ari’s eye closely]. You know, a lot of them try to hide under gentile names. But one look at that face, and you just know. Ari: With a little experience, you can even smell them out.79

While there is, of course, no way to “spot” a Jew, this scene supposes, “the ‘new Jews’ are so

different from their coreligionists in the diaspora that anti-Semitic gentiles can no longer identify

77 While she only has a minor role in the film (her role is larger in the novel), Jordana Ben Canaan (Ari’s sister) is also characteristic of the female “new Jew.” She is as Bradley Burston put, “the gun-toting, makeup-scorning antithesis of the Jewish American Princess.” 78 ` Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 137. 79 Preminger, Exodus.

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them.”80 It is specifically Ari, the light-haired, blue-eyed “new Jew” from Palestine that can

deceive an anti-Semite.

While it seems contradictory with the Aryanization of the “new Jew,” Ari embodies

another myth about the “new Jew” – that he is a “direct descendent of the biblical Hebrews.”81

Early in the film, while Ari is leading the ship Exodus to Palestine, he compares himself to

Moses, thus comparing these two Jewish journeys for freedom, the flee from Egypt to Israel and

from Europe to Palestine. After arriving in Palestine, Ari takes Kitty to look over the Jezreel

Valley, showing her (and in turn, the viewer) the beauty, history, and biblical importance of the

land:

Ari: If you dug straight down far enough there, you’d find the ruins of Meggido. You’d find the very same paving stones that Joshua walked on when he conquered it…That’s Mount Tabor…That’s where she [Deborah] stood when she watched Barak march out to fight the Canaanites…3,200 years ago. That’s when the Jews first came to this valley. It wasn’t just yesterday or the day before. Kitty: Isn’t your father’s name Barak? Ari: In Russia, he was Yakov Rabinski, but when he came here, he took the name of Deborah’s general. He called himself Barak, the son of Canaan, and this valley became a Jewish land once again…I just wanted you to know I’m a Jew. This is my country. Kitty: I do know. I understand.82

Again, his name is an important detail connected to this myth. Ari’s ethnicized family name, Ben

Canaan, relates them to the Canaanites, an ancient people of Israel. In this scene, Ari also uses

“biblical archaeology” as proof toward a direct inter-millennial connection to the Ancient

Hebrews, supporting the Zionist national narrative and a Jewish right to the land.83 By the end of

80 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 139. 81 Ibid., 133. 82 Preminger, Exodus. 83 “Biblical archaeology was one of the most important Zionist undertakings, aimed at mobilizing scientific practices to prove their truth of the national narrative.” Michael Feige,

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this scene, Kitty’s support for Zionism is sealed with a kiss, and she remains that way for the rest

of the film. According to Zionist mythology, the sabra – Israeli national identity – is both new

and historical, just as Benedict Anderson proposes in his theory about the myth-making of

nation-states in Imagined Communities. Through biblical archaeology, comparisons of modern

Israelis to the Ancient Hebrews, and the Aryanization of the Jew, Exodus posits Israel as both

new and historical – a characteristic necessary to represent nation-states as having both “an

immemorial past, and, still more important, glide into a limitless future.”84 Exodus adds a new

chapter to Israeli and Jewish mythology – the return of Jews to their homeland, and the

establishment of modern Israel. In this new chapter, there are not only new stories, but also a re-

imagining of Jewish identity through the birth of the “new Jew.” This simultaneous construction

of linked national narrative and identity is exactly what Anderson argues nation-states strive to

create.

Dov’s migration from Poland to Palestine is paralleled with his transformation from

helpless Holocaust survivor to proud Zionist freedom fighter.85 This transformation reaches a

climax during his interview with the Irgun. Akiva tests Dov’s memory by interrogating him

about his time in Auschwitz. Dov originally states that he learned demolitions during the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but after exhaustive questioning, he realizes that he learned

demolitions during his time at Auschwitz, blowing up mass graves for the dead, fellow Jewish

prisoners. Akiva makes him come to terms with his repressed memory of being a 12-year old

Sonderkommando in the camp. Dov and Akiva’s powerful descriptions horrify the audience:

“Introduction: Rethinking Israeli Memory and Identity,” Israel Studies 7, no. 2 (Summer 2002): xi. 84 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London; New York: Verso, 2006), 11–12. 85 Here the film takes an important departure from the novel, where Dov is courageous from the start.

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Akiva: It was the duty of those Jews who served as Sonderkommandos to shave the heads of other Jews…To remove dead bodies from the gas chambers. To collect gold fillings from their teeth. Dov: Yes! [Breaking down into tears] What could I do? What could I do? Akiva: …Is there anything else? Dov: …No, I won’t tell you. Please don’t make me tell you. Kill me. I don’t care. I won’t tell you…They used me. They used me, like you use a woman. [Crying.] [Directly after this, they swear Dov into the Irgun.]86

Dov originally repressed his memories, replacing the traumatic truth with the heroic narrative of

killing Nazis during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He feels ashamed, degraded, and emasculated

– common depictions of the Post-Holocaust Jew. Particularly, his rape “supports the perception

of the diaspora Jew as having feminine attributes or homosexual leanings.”87 However, by

joining the Irgun in Palestine, Dov is able to replace his traumatic memories from Europe with

new personal narratives of triumph and heroism. The Irgun enables Dov to gain back his

(Jewish) pride and manhood. He changes from a feminized, feeble European Jew to a

masculinized, militarized Israeli Jew. Dov is also the perfect candidate for the Irgun, as his

trauma facilitates “feelings of hatred and the desire for revenge.”88 His trauma is used as fuel to

the fire for the Irgun to commit acts of terrorism. Dov’s transformation is an allegory for the

story of many Holocaust survivors turned Zionist militants. These Zionists turned to violence

during the War of Independence, at least in part, because their trauma led them to believe it was

the only way to defend themselves, and ensure their continued existence.

86 Preminger, Exodus. 87 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 150, note 19. 88 Ibid., 134.

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The necessity for the Jewish people to create a nation in order to ensure their survival and

equal treatment is a prominent Zionist ideology in Exodus. While arguing with Ari about

methods of resistance, Akiva asserts,

I do not know one nation, whether existing now or in the past, that was not born in violence. Terror, violence, death. They are the midwives who bring free nations into this world.89

While Akiva is the most extreme member of the Ben Canaan family, Ari and Barak also express

“the pre-Zionist belief that the Jews are a nation apart, facing a hostile world alone” and that

Zionism will return “the Jews to the family of nations, from which the diaspora Jew had been

excluded.”90 This imperative of the Zionists in Exodus to establish the Jewish people as a

recognized member of the “family of nations” reaffirms the notion that much of Zionism’s

appeal relied on Jews’ understanding that equality is only granted “in respect of nationality.”91

iv. Exodus and Zionist Mythology Today

The effects of Exodus’s powerful myth-making over fifty years ago are still evident in

American, Jewish-American, and Israeli culture and politics today. Exodus has shaped

conceptions of Israeli, Jewish, and Palestinian identities. While still on Exodus, Karen and Dov

take two opposing outlooks regarding humanity, each perspective shaped by their individual

experiences. Dov’s trauma leads him to cynicism, whereas Karen, grateful for her assisted

escape, adopts an optimistic stance:

Dov: I’m going to kill Englishmen, kill and kill and kill them, ‘til there won’t be anymore, that’s all. Karen: The British aren’t all bad Dov.

89 Preminger, Exodus. 90 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 134. 91 Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London; New York: Verso, 2002), 50.

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Dov: They’re rotten, the whole bunch of them. The British, all the Russians, all the Poles. Karen: Not the Danes. When I was there – Dov: The Danes too. Don’t tell me. Karen: That’s not true. The Hansens were Christians, and they adopted me…When the Nazis marched into Denmark, they ordered every Jew to wear the yellow armband, with the Star of David on it…And the next morning, when every Jew in Denmark had to wear his armband, King Christian came out of Amalienborg Palace for his morning ride…He wore the Star of David on his arm…By afternoon, everybody was wearing Stars of David. [Karen breaks into a smile] The Jews and the Danes, and well, just everybody.

Karen’s story, although moving, is a myth central to Denmark’s alleged role during WWII as

altruistic saviors of the Jews. The first part of this national narrative is King Christian’s public

adornment of the Star of David, and his directive to the Danish nation to do the same as an act of

solidarity and defiance. The second part, not explicitly told by Karen but implied by her rescue,

of this national narrative is the Danish collaboration with Swedish resisters to covertly move

Jews from Nazi persecution in occupied Denmark to “neutral” Sweden. While both parts of this

story have been successfully propagated throughout the world – appearing as truth in historical

authorities, such as Yad Vashem in Israel, the US Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., and

other Holocaust museums – they are indeed fabricated.92 While there was a Danish resistance, as

in most Nazi-occupied areas, and King Christian X was opposed to the Nazi’s persecution of

Jews, he did not wear a Star of David and neither did the non-Jewish Danish population. Even

though Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II, granddaughter of King Christian X, has admitted this

story is false, its presentation as truth endures until today.93 The rescue operation was also not

organized secretly. Rather, it was known and possibly organized by Werner Best,

92 The original source of this story is attributed to various periodicals and organizations, but all potential authors are American. 93 Even the Danish version of Exodus (1958) removes text referring to this myth.

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“Reichsbevollmächtigter” to Denmark, as a way to preserve Germany’s relationship with

Denmark – a fellow Aryan nation. Exodus is often credited as popularizing this urban legend.

Another massively propagated myth present in American, Jewish-American, and Israeli

culture is the claim that Arabs benefitted from Jewish settlement of Palestine.94 This claim is

most often manifested through the myth that Jewish settlers cultivated the supposed barren and

unused Palestinian landscape. While there is truth to the Jewish settlers’ aggressive and

successful cultivation of the land, the myth presumes the Arab population was completely

inactive on the land, wasting it, therefore making a worthy argument for the Jews to take over.95

In Exodus, Barak’s storyline is a prime example of this:

Barak: And over in that valley, the swamps, and mosquitos so big, they were picking fights with the sparrows. Now we have changed those swamps into such fields. On a quiet night, you can hear the corn grow. Oranges so big, five already make a dozen. [Later] Ari: [Looking over the Jezreel Valley with Kitty] He called himself Barak, the son of Canaan, and this valley became a Jewish land once again. He can give you the date every clump of trees was planted there, to the month.

The absence of cultivated land is often used to imply the absence of people entirely –

perpetuating the “a nation without a people, for a people without a nation” myth. This narrative

undeniably invites a comparison to the American ideology of Manifest Destiny – a Divine

Providence for the recently settled and independent Americans to expand their territory

westward over uncultivated territory, disregarding any local preexisting indigenous populations.

Similar to biblical archaeology, Jewish agricultural success is regularly referenced as an

argument for the Jewish right to Israel.

94 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 33. 95 This myth of Arab inactivity also implies Arabs are lazy, unproductive, and uncivilized – unable to develop modern agricultural systems, a foundation for modern civilization.

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I now return to Barak’s UN Partition Plan speech, and the claim that Arab leaders

stipulated commands to either “annihilate the Jewish population” or “abandon your homes and

your lands.”96 In reality, this event has been questioned, problematized, and arguably debunked.

Since the 1980s, most historians have accepted that the major cause for the Palestinian exodus

was not voluntary, but rather due to Israeli military advances, attacks against Palestinian villages,

and expulsion mandates from Zionist militias.97 Yet, this outdated story is employed in Zionist

mythology regardless of its truth. Despite its refutation, this myth has been firmly cemented in

Jewish-American consciousness.98 The particular interpretation of these events is critical,

because it can be used to determine the refugee status of Palestinians. This scene in Exodus also

leads to another prominent myth in the Israeli and Jewish-American psyche. The alleged olive

branch offered by Barak to the “Arab population of Jewish Palestine” is the first example Israel

and the US point to in regards to the tired notion that there is “no partner for peace.” As stated

earlier, Barak’s plea assumes that most Arabs do not have the same desires for peace, and so they

must be persuaded into it. Connected to this belief is the impression that Palestinian hostility

toward Israel is founded in anti-Semitism of the same type that was widespread in Europe during

the 19th and 20th Centuries. This connection between Palestinians and European anti-Semitism is

cemented in Exodus when the audience is introduced to a Nazi officer who, supposedly,

collaborates with the Grand Mufti and takes control of Abu Yesha. While Palestinian anti-

96 Preminger, Exodus. 97 Several “New Historians,” like Ilan Pappé have also defined this exodus as ethnic cleansing, agreeing with the Palestinian perspective of the 1948 War of Independence as the Nakba, or catastrophe. 98 This myth, and Zionist myths in general, is perhaps even more embedded in Jewish-American consciousness than in Israeli Jews’ consciousness, as myths tend to work more effectively on an uneducated population. That is to say not that Jewish-Americans are uneducated, but that they have a lesser knowledge of Israeli history than Israelis, and therefore can be persuaded more easily by longstanding myths.

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Semitism exists, it is not of the same Third Reich category or proportions. Here, anti-Semitism

becomes a generalized term, applied regardless of any contextual differences. It erases individual

experience, which is so essential to understanding a conflict such as this. When anti-Semitism

does exist in Palestinians, it is largely due to frustration, anger, and misery resulting from

oppressive, violent, and destructive Israeli policies, which sometimes results in misguided

generalized hatred toward Jews – a conflation perpetuated by Israel, as it defines itself as “the

Jewish state.”

The final Zionist myth propagated through Exodus is related to the Catastrophe-

Redemption narrative.99 This myth, characterized by a “flight from slavery to freedom in the

Promised Land” is prevalent throughout western culture, and is “often used to interpret historical

events and to plant the seeds of hope in the hearts of oppressed groups.”100 The Catastrophe-

Redemption narrative started, of course, with the original biblical Exodus story. Its modern

equivalent is the Jewish migration from Europe to Palestine, as depicted in the aptly named

Exodus. The Catastrophe-Redemption narrative, in specific terms can be translated to the

Holocaust-Israel narrative, which supposes that immigration to Palestine was the dream of

Holocaust survivors. Due to this narrative, in the US the Holocaust “emerges to become the

driving force behind American Jewish identity.”101 Judaic scholar Jacob Neusner proposes that

Jewish-Americans “act out our Jewishness by way of Redemption that is, by commitment to the

State of Israel, that place which gives meaning and significance to a remission from the

99 Shaul Magid, “American Jews Must Stop Obsessing Over the Holocaust,” Tablet, January 26, 2015, http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/188365/stop-obsessing-over-holocaust. The term and idea behind the Catastrophe-Redemption narrative comes from Shaul Magid’s Tablet article on Jewish-American culture and review of Jacob Neusner’s work, therefore the term can be attributed Jacob Neusner as well. 100 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 142. 101 Magid, “American Jews Must Stop Obsessing Over the Holocaust.”

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terror.”102 The dominance of the Catastrophe-Redemption narrative greatly contributes to

Jewish-American support and connection to Israel. As the Holocaust becomes more important to

American Jewish identity, so does the significance of Israel. I.F. Stone, in 1967, understood the

impact of a growing Holocaust-Israel narrative and simply declared, “Israel grows on Jewish

catastrophe.”103 After WWII, American Jews became more connected to the myth of Holocaust-

Israel than to Judaism itself. This explanation is very useful in order to better understand the

reasons why Jewish critics of the State of Israel are not accepted into mainstream American

Jewish institutions and communities. However, “this commonly held view of post-World War II

European Jewry has recently been called into question.”104 One such challenge to the

Catastrophe-Redemption myth is Amos Gitai’s film, Kedma.105

v. Exodus vs. Kedma: Triumph vs. Defeat

Exodus and Kedma share similar setting, time period, and characters, but relay very

different messages. Similar to Exodus, Kedma follows the story of a group of Holocaust

survivors who migrate from Europe to Palestine on a ship named Kedma. Like Exodus, it was

also a real ship. However, instead of an easy escort to a nearby kibbutz as seen in Exodus, the

new arrivals are immediately met with violent hostility from British authorities. The remaining

survivors must travel across the country, not by bus, but by foot. To survive, the refugees must

sleep outside, make their own fires, and take arms against local Arabs. They escape from one

hardship only to experience another.

102 Ibid. 103 I. F. Stone, “Holy War,” The New York Review of Books, August 3, 1967, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1967/aug/03/holy-war/. 104 Weissbrod, “‘Exodus’ as a Zionist Melodrama,” 149, note 9. 105 Amos Gitai, Kedma (Kino International, 2002).

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Gitai’s interpretation of Israel’s foundational story and the migration of European Jewish

refugees to Palestine is different and probably more accurate than Uris, Preminger, and

Trumbo’s romantic and heroic epic. A modern-day Israeli response to Exodus, Kedma shows no

representations of Jewish redemption. Gitai’s refugees arrive in Palestine only to learn violence,

death, and tragedy has followed them from Europe. In Gitai’s film, it becomes clear that the

Haganah and other militant Zionists primarily sought to migrate Jews to Palestine not for their

salvation, but instead to bolster their military strength. One of the main characters, Menachem,

becomes a victim to the war. Menachem could be characterized as Gitai’s reinterpretation of Dov

– another traumatized young male set out for revenge, searching for his lost identity in the

cruelest of situations.106 He, too, gives a speech to his female companion, Rossa – one that is

comparable to Dov’s conversation with Karen while aboard the Exodus:

Menachem: Please let me pull the trigger. Please let me throw the grenade. When I attack, they’ll all burn. I’ll sow death all around me. Soon you’ll see, Ishmael. I’ll water my land with your blood. Your body will be laid out at my feet. It will be your corpse. Lion of Judah, I hunger not for bread, nor thirst for water, but to see your bodies riddles with bullets. That’s what my soul demands. Rosa: You’d kill all those who are against you? He who isn’t with you is against you? That’s your credo? Remember: There’s no life after death. Menachem: My mother and sister were killed after the whole community was deported. My father died on Yom Kippur, wrapped in his prayer shawl. I dug a hole and buried him, so the dogs wouldn’t eat him.107

A major distinction between the two versions of this conversation is apparent in a comparison of

Rossa’s response with Karen’s. Even though they both disagree with their outwardly bloodthirsty

friends, they take two different approaches. Whereas Karen tries to lift up Dov’s spirit with

optimistic views of humanity, Rossa attempts to bring Menachem back down to reality,

106 Menachem’s name means “the Comforter,” contrasting the strength associated with Dov’s’ name, meaning “Bear.” 107 Gitai, Kedma.

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reminding him that there is no glory in death. The key difference between Menachem and Dov is

their respective fates. Dov is successful in his transformation through militancy. He gains his

masculinity back, affirmed by his romance with Karen, and his (Jewish) pride, becoming a

central hero to Exodus. On the other hand, just after his conversation with Rossa, Menachem dies

in battle (off-screen); he is, after all, unprepared and not a “fighter.” He achieves no victory, no

glory, and no redemption.

Another major speech in Kedma comes from an unnamed Arab herder, a character

undoubtedly created as a response to Taha. Whereas Taha is represented as unnecessarily

cynical, Gitai (with the benefit of hindsight) uses the unintended irony found in Exodus to grant

his Arab character a prophetic speech, shouted toward Zionist militants and European Jewish

refugees as they leave the scene:

We’ll stay here in spite of you, like a wall! We’ll wash dishes in bars! We’ll fill glasses for the masters! We’ll scrub your kitchen floors to wrest bread for our youngsters from your blue clutches! But we’ll stay here in spite of you, like a wall! We’ll be hungry, we’ll be in rags, but we’ll defy you! Here we will stay, in spite of you, like a wall! We’ll write poems! Our demonstrations will fill the streets! We’ll fill the jails with our pride! We’ll father generations of rebellious children! We’ll remain here in spite of you! Like a wall!108

The irony here exists by the fact that his determination to survive despite all odds resonates so

well with narratives of Jewish determination, like that of Exodus. Now, after years of organized

Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, we have seen that his promises held true.

One of Ari’s revelations to Kitty early on in Exodus serves as a brief, but accurate

representation of its message:

Each person on this ship is a soldier. The only weapon we have to fight with is our willingness to die…‘Let my people go that they may serve me.’ – Exodus, Chapter 7, Verse 26.109

108 Ibid. 109 Preminger, Exodus.

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In contrast to Jews in Exodus, Gitai’s Jews are not martyrs, and as such they do not have a

“willingness to die.” Rather, they are victims, not specifically of Arab, British, or European

violence, but of an inescapable fate, as explained in the final scene through a five-minute

soliloquy spoken by a hysterical and traumatized Yanush:

Try to think, what’s it [Jewish history] made up of? Oppression, slander, persecution, martyrdom…No glory, no action, no heroes, no conquerors! Just poor wretches pursued, moaning, crying, always begging for their lives. I’d make it forbidden to teach our children Jewish history…Some find it heroic, the way we’ve endured our sufferings. To hell with that heroism! It’s the heroism of despair…You see, we suffer and we enjoy it. Because without it, we’d cease to exist…We prefer slavery to redemption, dreams to reality, hope to a future, faith to common sense, and so on. It’s horrible! Suffering is what makes us Jews. It proves we’re brave and heroic more than any other people. We don’t act. We don’t master our destiny. There’s a meaning to it. It means: You’ll never manage to break us. You won’t be able to destroy us. No power on earth can do it. There are limits to power, but not to the power of suffering. That explains everything: exile, martyrdom, the Messiah, all three united, so the Jews will never know salvation. So they continue to wander from country to country, pursued by hate. Exile, exile! How they love it! How they cling to it! It’s their most precious treasure, more precious than Jerusalem. Exile is our pyramid, with martyrdom at its base, the Messiah at its tip, and the Talmud as the Book of the Dead…Shall we remain exiles for all eternity waiting for heaven to send someone to come save us? I think that Israel isn’t a Jewish country anymore. Not now, even less in the future. Time will tell. Everything’s done for. Finished. They change your names.110

After his speech, the film ends the same way as Exodus, with military trucks driving off into the

distance, but Ernest Gold’s uplifting score is noticeably replaced with a more sorrowful

composition. Yanush (or the original Polish spelling Janusz) and Ari’s respective conclusions

could not be more different. Ari leaves the viewer hopeful for not just an independent Israel, but

a Jewish homeland and nation-state that is democratic, just, and equal – following its heroes’

virtues of peace, brotherhood, and coexistence. In Kedma, no one – Jew or Arab – is left

uninjured, unaffected, or better off than before. Yanush leaves the viewer with no definitive

answers, only questions. What is Jewish history made up of, and what will it be? Shall Jews

110 Gitai, Kedma.

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remain exiles or exile another people? In its pointed opposition to Exodus, Gitai’s Kedma

opposes several narratives essential to Israel’s mythology.

vi. Conclusion

As I wrote above, life in Palestine posed new questions, such as ‘what is Israeli identity?’

and ‘what are its people’s histories?’ The answers to these questions were essential for the

creation and legitimation of Israel. Exodus provided its audiences, primarily American and

Jewish-American, with answers to these critical questions and thereby significantly influenced

these groups' perspectives of Israel. Gitai’s Kedma problematizes and complicates these answers

(national identities and narratives) provided by Exodus. Kedma, on the other hand, offers an

alternative to the liberation narrative, or more specifically Catastrophe-Redemption narrative,

promoted by Exodus. Preminger’s Exodus resolves its plot with a position of victory, hope, and

salvation. Gitai’s Kedma, instead, leaves its plot and characters unresolved, still waist-deep,

wading in the trauma and struggle they sought to leave back in Europe.

However, for the last fifty-five years, Exodus is the film that has provided the dominant

framework and vocabulary through which we discuss Israel in the United States. Its documented

popularity and uses by the Israeli government serve as proof of its powerful potential to

influence. The Americanization, westernization, and liberalization of Israel’s foundational

narrative established in Exodus allowed both the film and Israel itself to be more widely accepted

by an international audience – in particular, an American audience. This framework positions

Israel as: the protagonists of all past, present, and future conflicts, suitable allies to the US, under

constant attack from neighboring anti-Semitic Arabs, the natural response to the Holocaust, and

therefore the answer to the age-old “Jewish Question.” Exodus also constructed the sabra as the

new and improved Jew. In what sounds like Hitler’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch,

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the new Israeli Jew was more Aryan, masculine, militant, and Jewish than his European

counterpart. Moreover, the Holocaust has become so engrained in the Jewish-American psyche

that seven-in-ten of Jewish-Americans named remembering the Holocaust as the most essential

characteristic of being Jewish.111 Due to the simultaneous dominance of the Catastrophe-

Redemption narrative, connection to and support of Israel also became an essential characteristic

of being Jewish.112 Exodus serves as a central producer of Jewish and Israeli mythology that

creates both a new story and identity for the newly established Israelis to attach themselves to.

Therefore, Exodus bolsters the ideological, or to return to Anderson, imaginative establishment

and defense of the state of Israel.

111 “…roughly seven-in-ten U.S. Jews (73%) say remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of what being Jewish means to them.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, A Portrait of Jewish Americans (Pew Research Center, October 1, 2013), http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/. 112 “About seven-in-ten American Jews (69%) say they are emotionally very attached (30%) or somewhat attached (39%) to Israel.” Ibid.

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