Reading the Bible in Palestine

This magnificent, scholarly, well-researched and densely-argued book, written by the editor of Holy Land Studies, could be more realistically considered as three books in one. It charts the history of Zionism in its different strands and contexts; it is also a history of the Nakba (the catastrophe afflicting the Palestinian people since 1948), the subsequent Israeli occupation of the land and steadily worsening oppression of the people. Thirdly, it is an account of the use and abuse of the Bible in the justification of this oppression, specifically in the (alleged) legitimation of the Israeli government's seizing and colonising of Palestinian land by appealing to an assumed Biblical mandate. What is new and startling here are new strands in Biblical Studies (Biblical Minimalism), together with discoveries of 'New Archaeology' that challenge – definitively in the author's view – any Israeli claim to possess Palestinian land using historical arguments from the Bible. The book ends with two chapters drawing the author's hopes forwards towards a solution for Palestine: the first evaluates with appreciation and some emotion the contribution of Professor Revd Michael Prior, a colleague of the author, co-founder with him and editor of the Holy Land Studies, whose untimely death shocked and bereaved Masalha and his colleagues – including this reviewer; and the distinguished Palestinian scholar Edward Said, whose death has deprived the Palestinian community of its most challenging, courageous, creative and trenchant critical contribution on the international arena to the campaign against injustice to the Palestinians. Given the loss of such colleagues, this book is haunted by a strong sense of bereavement.

The first strand – the chronicling of the development of Zionism – is perhaps familiar territory to supporters of Sabeel, an ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians. Even so, it is helpful to be reminded that Zionism began as a Protestant, post-Reformation Christian movement about the importance of the restoration of the Jews to Palestine as preparation for the second coming (of Christ). Masalha charts the inspiration of this idea in the nineteenth century for reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury (influential in the Balfour Declaration of 1917), as well as, surprisingly, novelists such as George Eliot, whose novel, Daniel Deronda, evocatively expresses an upswelling of romantic longing for a Jewish homeland. What is extraordinary with Zionism specifically as a Jewish phenomenon is that what began as a wholly secular political movement would evolve eventually – after the founding of the state of Israel – into a religious movement of Jewish Messianism and Orthodoxy that would fuel the powerful Settler Movement in the West Bank – especially that of Gush Emunim.

This is one of the most chilling and stark accounts in the book. Masalha shows how the Bible was used systematically from the beginning by David Ben-Gurion (first Prime Minister of Israel) to justify the conquest of the land. The slogan 'a land without a people for a people without a land' (Lord Shaftesbury) became frequently invoked, especially to inculcate the idea that Palestine was an empty land, and that the Jewish presence was 'unbroken' since Biblical times. Thus the Bible as an historical document was crucial to the whole process, especially the Books of Exodus, Joshua and Deuteronomy, Joshua in particular acting as incitement to biblical Messianic militarism. The conviction – or deliberate policy – that the land was Jewish by right, was given specious credence by renaming Arabic place-names (especially shrines) with Jewish names and by Israeli leaders – usually from Eastern European origins – like Golda Meir, giving themselves Hebrew names. Masalha shows us how the State of Israel was founded on many pseudo-myths: even the star-rated song, 'Jerusalem the Golden', for example, as its author revealed on her death-bed, was cribbed from a Basque lullaby! Yet, no admission that the Biblical texts arose from specific historical contexts, or a recognition that they should not be regarded as historical documents at all, was on anyone's radar screen...