Finkelstein on Flotilla Bloodbath

Finkelstein on Flotilla Bloodbath
from Norman G. Finkelstein website

Separation Anxiety: Zionism, Colonialism, Messianism

Jon Stratton

Curtin University of Technology

© borderlands ejournal 2007

It is sometimes called the Separation Wall. Its intention is to mark the divide between Israel and the Palestinians. I drafted this article about it sometime in 2004. Today, the Wall remains, though one of its most insistent instigators, Ariel Sharon, is no longer a political force. Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, an illegal West Bank settlement, claims that Sharon had shown him a map with the line for the Wall as long ago as 1978. Somehow keeping Israelis and Palestinians apart has been a constant fantasy of the Israeli state, a fantasy born of the Zionist idea of a Jewish homeland and inflected with colonialist myths about the Palestinians and messianic myths of a Jewish return to the land bequeathed to Abraham. Here, I address some of these myths that have contributed to the building of the Wall. I have structured the article to show how these myths work, layer on layer each reinforcing the others. The Wall gives substance and permanence to these myths. The longer it stands the more it is understood as legitimating the myths that gave birth to it.

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