Zionism saw Palestine through the same prism as the European did, as an empty territory paradoxically filled with ignoble or, better yet, dispensable natives. This is the intellectual background that Zionism emerged from. It was this epistemic framework that shaped and informed Zionist attitudes towards the Arab Palestinian natives. Imperialism as theory and colonialism was the practice of changing the uselessly unoccupied territories of the world into useful new versions of Europe. For uncivilized people, land was either farmed badly or it was left to rot. This doctrine of cultural superiority had a direct bearing on Zionist practice and vision in Palestine.Ī civilized man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him on it, accordingly, he produced useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built.

This paradigm of imaginatively constructing a world predicated upon race was grounded in science, and expressed as philosophical axioms by John Locke and David Hume, offered compelling justification that Europe always ought to rule non-Europeans. The other was uncivilized, barbaric, and wholly lower than the advanced races of Europe. The works of Carolus Linnaeus, Georges Buffon, and Georges Cuvier, organized races in terms of a civilized us and a paradigmatic other.

“The imperialist found it useful to incorporate the credible and seemingly unimpeachable wisdom of science to create a racial classification to be used in the appropriation and organization of lesser cultures.

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