ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that sons of the soil (SoS) claims to the soil are part of the nationalist attempt to create homelands. It begins by elaborating how and why nationalisms so frequently employ a SoS logic. The chapter argues that nationalisms do so by transforming 'home lands' into 'Homelands' in an attempt to assert control over that space. It explores the ability of different mechanisms of change to account for the removal of this designation from particular territories in the context of Israeli nationalism. The alternative mechanisms for the change in the scope of the homeland sought by the Religious Zionists have much less empirical traction. The leaders of the Religious Zionist movement were certainly deeply affected by the Holocaust, feeling both tremendous guilt and a responsibility to save what was left of the Jewish nation. Like the Religious Zionist movement, the Revisionist Zionist movement also initially identified the Jewish homeland as including both banks of the Jordan River.