81 Tift! QUESTION OK PALESTINE to be dominant. Thus that implicit assumption o f domination led specifically in the ease o f Zionism to the practice of ignoring the natives for the most part as not entitled to serious consideration.11 Zionism therefore developed with a unique consciousness of itself, but with little or nothing left over for the unfortunate natives. Maxime Rodinson is perfectly correct in saying that Zionist indifference to the Palestinian natives was an indifference linked to European supremacy, which benefit­ ed even Europe’s proletarians and oppressed minorities. In fact, there can be no doubt that if the ancestral homeland had been occupied by one of the well-established industrialized nations that ruled the world at the time, one that had thoroughly settled down in a territory it had infused with a powerful national consciousness, then the problem of displac­ ing German, French, or English inhabitants and introducing a new, nationally coherent element into the middle of their homeland would have been in the forefront of the conscious­ ness of even the most ignorant and destitute Zionists." [n short, all the constitutive energies o f Zionism were premised on the excluded presence, that is, the functional absence of “ native people” in Palestine; institutions were built deliberate­ ly shutting out the natives, laws were drafted when Israel came into being that made sure the natives would remain in their “ nonplace,” Jews in theirs, and so on. It is no wonder that today the one issue that electrifies Israel as a society is the problem o f the Palestinians, whose negation is the most consistent thread running through Zionism . A nd it - is this perhaps unfortunate aspect o f Zionism that ties it ineluctably to imperialism— at least so far as the Palestinian is concerned. Rodinson again: The element that made it possible to connect these aspirations of Jewish shopkeepers, peddlers, craftsmen, and intellectuals in Russia and elsewhere to the conceptual orbit of imperialism was one small detail that seemed to be of no importance: Palestine was inhabited by another people.M