Ant/agonizing Settlers in the Colonial Present of Israel-Palestine

Abstract

What do secular, left-wing Israelis living inside the Green Line have in common with religious, right-wing 'settlers'? Despite their conflicting positions, I argue that there is a depth of commonality that fuels the hatred and intolerance between these groups. This article aims to reveal a positional unity that appears as conflict, difference, and disunity. Resituating the apparently incommensurable discourses, I contend that this discord is best understood within the context of a society that is continually struggling with the outcomes of its settler origins and ongoing settlement activity. The focus is on the arguments between the two groups concerning uses of the past, which serves as a reference from which to demonstrate that the desire, particularly among the secular, to differentiate rather than identify is located in a fear of what today's settler activity reveals about the Zionist project in a broader sense and what it therefore stands to potentially undermine.

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

“…Until the last decade, this distinct difference was assumed and often reproduced in scholarly work, which tended to represent post‐1967 settlers as radically different from other Jewish Israelis (Dalsheim & Harel ). However, as Joyce Dalsheim explains (; ), the desire of left‐leaning Israelis to differentiate from ‘settlers’ is one of the forces that allows Israel's broader settler‐colonial project to continue: it enables the colonial power to differentiate itself from itself and thus disguise the continuous logic of its settler project. Although I was theoretically aware of the capacity of settler colonialism to obscure ‘the conditions of its own production’ (Veracini : 14), in practice, under the cover of the kippah , I attempted to maintain a clear ontological separation between myself, ‘an ordinary Israeli’, and them, ‘the settlers’.…”

“…The next section discusses the symbolism of the kippah before locating it in relation to studies of settler colonialism (Dalsheim ; Wolfe ), material culture (Appadurai ; ; El Or ; Miller ), and performance/performativity (Butler ; Ginsberg ; Goffman ; Jackson ). It then delves into my ethnographic use of the kippah , and explains how my experiences led to insights about the breakdown of distinctions between settlers and ‘ordinary’ Israelis.…”

On Demonized Muslims and Vilified Jews: Between Theory and Politics

“…They include both political activists usually categorized at the extreme left, and Orthodox Jews who oppose the modern state of Israel because its establishment contradicts their beliefs. For more on Orthodox opposition to the state, see Rabkin 2006. seems to be located less in their deep differences than in a desire to differentiate, which is particularly pronounced among the secular and those of the left (Dalsheim 2005). Settler practices include conflicts over territory, property demolition by the state, and other conflicts over civil and human rights that are not limited to the post-1967 occupied territories.…”

“…Unlike other studies (Lustick 1988; 1993; Silberstein 1993; Sivan 1995; Feige 2003; Zertal and Eldar 2007), which emphasize ideological differences or point to the settler project in the occupied territories as having fundamentally altered the very foundations of Israeli society, my work finds a depth of commonality beneath this tension. I theorize the antagonism between these groups as a case of a Freudian narcissism of minor differences (Dalsheim 2005).…”

“…If we find historical connections and continuities between the left and right, secular and religious practices of Zionism, and we find one set of practices morally problematic, does that result in undermining the moral legitimacy of the entire Zionist project? I have argued that it is largely the fear of this—that the legitimacy of the entire project will be undermined—that propels the vilification of religiously motivated settlers (Dalsheim 2005). While this might explain the virulence expressed toward religiously motivated, right-wing settlers by members of the secular and liberal Zionist left, the problem of living together with significant differences remains.…”