Reading the Bible with the Eyes of the Canaanites: Neo-Zionism, Political Theology and the Land Traditions of the Bible (1967 to Gaza 2009)
In modern times, a whole range of colonial enterprises have used the Bible. The book of Joshua and other biblical texts evoking the exploits of ancient Israelites have been deployed in support of secular Zionism and settler colonisation in Palestine. The mega narratives of the Bible, however, appeared to mandate the ethnic cleansing and even genocide of the indigenous population of Canaan. This article argues that, with the rise of messianic Zionism since 1967, a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the land traditions of the Bible, has emerged in Israel – a political theology that demanded the destruction of the so-called modern Canaanites; since 1967 fundamentalist rabbis have routinely compared the Palestinian people to the ancient Canaanites, Philistines and Amalekites, whose annihilation or expulsion by the ancient Israelites was predestined by a divine design. This article focuses on the politics of reading the Bible by neo-Zionists and examines the theology of the messianic current which embraces the paradigm of Jews as a divinely ‘chosen people’ and sees the indigenous Palestinians as no more than illegitimate squatters, and a threat to the process of messianic redemption; their human and civil rights are no match for the biblically-ordained holy war of conquering and settling the ‘Promised Land’.
Biblical Archaeology and the Politics of Nation-Building
Since the time of the British mandate, Zionist and, later, Israeli politics of nation-building has strongly influenced ‘biblical archaeology’ and has significantly undermined the integrity of Israeli scholarship. Critiques from Yael Zerubavel and Keith Whitelam to Nadia Abu El-Haj and Raz Kletter have repeatedly pointed out the consistent nationalistic distortions that have infected the field. The efforts of critical scholars to write a history of Palestine independent of biblical perspectives have corrected such distortions since the 1980s and have raised considerable doubt concerning the legitimacy of the Judeo-ethnocentrism which dominates nationalist Israeli claims on the heritage of ancient Palestine and the Bible.
Terrorism and war
MapsA note on the text9-11Searching for common groundA peaceful nation?The need for dissentWar on civiliansThe logic of warNot in our nameAcknowledgmentsAppendix A: Excerpts of the Geneva ProtocolsAppendix B: Suggestions for further readingAppendix C: Antiwar organisations and resourcesNotesIndex