ABSTRACT
Cynthia H. Enloe's masculinized memory, humiliation, and hope offer starting points for understanding the gendered dynamics at play in the world surrounding the Balfour Declaration. Political Zionists linked masculinity and militarism in the masculinized memory of Biblical David, Judas Maccabeus, and the Hebrew military leader Bar Kochba to inform their own nationalist doctrine. For political Zionists, creating in the minds of the British policy-makers the idea of a "masculine" Jewish nation meant reversing nearly 1,800 years of counter-stereotypes pertinent to the European Jewish experience. As with the Zionist militarism and masculinization, women were crucial to the nationalist effort; however, they were more overtly engaged in Irish politics. Nations with martial/masculine characteristics may be the martial equals of the British Empire, or the emerging United States, but if racially defined perceptions lingered, legitimacy as a 'national' equal could just as well be denied.
