"A Land without a People for a People without a Land"

[msmcghee]

(I thought some here would like to read a cited scholarly examination of the origins and use of this phrase since it is so often quoted in this forum as an example of Zionist motivations / intentions. I don't claim that anything here is factual although it seems to be well-sourced and offers a different viewpoint than the one I have usually heard. I offer this only as grist for discussion, not as some form of "truth" that I wish to defend. The webpage info says this was first published today. If anyone wishes to know more about the author, she is not listed as a fellow of ME Quarterly. Her bio is here: http://www.dianamuir.com/default/Biography.html )

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by Diana Muir
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2008, pp. 55-62

http://www.meforum.org/article/1877

"A land without a people for a people without a land" is one of the most oft-cited phrases in the literature of Zionism—and perhaps also the most problematic. Anti-Zionists cite the phrase as a perfect encapsulation of the fundamental injustice of Zionism: that early Zionists believed Palestine was uninhabited,<1> that they denied—and continue to reject—the existence of a distinct Palestinian culture,<2> and even as evidence that Zionists always planned on an ethnic cleansing of the Arab population.<3> Such assertions are without basis in fact: They both deny awareness on the part of early Zionists of the presence of Arabs in Palestine and exaggerate the coalescence of a Palestinian national identity, which in reality only developed in reaction to Zionist immigration.<4> Nor is it true, as many anti-Zionists still assert, that early Zionists widely employed the phrase.

Origins of the Phrase

Many commentators, such as the late Arab literary theorist Edward Said, erroneously attribute the first use of the phrase to Israel Zangwill, a British author, playwright, and poet.<5> In fact, the phrase was coined and propagated by nineteenth-century Christian writers.

In 1831, Muhammad Ali Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, wrested control of Greater Syria from direct Ottoman control, a political change which led the British Foreign Ministry to send a consul to Jerusalem. This development catalyzed the popular imagination.

The earliest published use of the phrase appears to have been by Church of Scotland clergyman Alexander Keith in his 1843 book The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.<6> Keith was an influential evangelical thinker whose most popular work, Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfillment of Prophecy,<7> remains in print almost two centuries after it was first published. As an advocate of the idea that Christians should work to encourage the biblical prophecy of a Jewish return to the land of Israel, he wrote that the Jews are "a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people."<8> Keith was aware that the Holy Land was populated because he had traveled to Palestine in 1839 on behalf of the Church of Scotland and returned five years later with his son, George Skene Keith, believed to be the first photographer to visit to the Holy Land.

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[Igel]

1. Interesting.

I assumed the assertions it was a Zionist slogan were true, and understood it as Said rephrased it--perhaps because that's how I've usually seen it interpreted, by Zionist apologists and Palestinian nationalists.

[The Magistrate]

2. A Pleasure To See Reference To The Period Of Lord Palmerston In This Connection, Ma'am

It is not often realized how long this sort of thing simmered as an undercurrent in English policy, as part of that country's convoluted relations with the Ottoman, and Ottoman relations with Russia and France.