ABSTRACT
This chapter examines perceptions of nomadism in Zionist discourse by drawing on the legacy of Zionist pioneers in Mandate Palestine, notably A. D. Gordon, Moshe Smilansky, David Ben-Gurion, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Mining primary sources in Hebrew, it shows how Zionist tribal discourse marked both ruptures and continuities with British narratives on nomadism, at once borrowing and reinventing colonial taxonomies on race, nationhood, and statehood. The chapter maintains that these taxonomies transformed not only native Palestinian conceptions of nomadism, but also conceptions which had characterized early Zionist literature. To this end, it locates Zionist attitudes to nomadism into two formative stages in the development of the Jewish yishuv in Palestine. The first is characterized by the emergence of autochthonous movements with unmistakably Bedouin character, notably Ha-Shomer (the Watchman), Ha-Roeh (the Shepherd), and the Sabra. The second is marked by the founding in the Jewish yishuv of new forms of political expedience and social organization with a distinctly and increasingly territorialist character, such as the kibbutz, Hebrew Labor, and Conquest of the Land. A major theme of this chapter is how Zionist national enterprise in Mandate Palestine, its legal apparatus and para-state institutions, have been largely defined by their opposition to nomadism.
