ZIONISM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ITS VICTIMS 87 Palestine proceeded always as a fact o f repetition; The Jews were not supplanting, destroying, breaking up a native society. That society was itself the oddity that had broken the pattern o f a sixty-year Jewish sovereignty over Palestine which had lapsed for two millennia. In Jewish hearts, how ever, Israel had always been there, an actuality difficult for the natives to perceive. Zionism therefore reclaim ed, redeem ed, repeated, replanted, realized Palestine, and Jewish hegem ony over it. Israel was a return to a previous state o f affairs, even if the new facts bore a far greater resemblance to the methods and successes o f nineteenth-century European colonialism than to some mysterious first-century forebears. Here it is necessary to make something very clear. In each of the projects for "reestablishing” Jewish sovereignty over Palestine there were always two fundamental components. One was a careful determination to implement Jewish self­ betterment. A bout this, o f course, the world heard a great deal. Great steps were taken in providing Jews with a new sense o f identity, in defending and giving them rights as citizens, in reviving a national “ hom e" language (through the labors o f E liezer Ben Y ehudah), in giving the whole Jewish world a vital sense o f growth and historical destiny. Thus “ there was an instrument [in Zionism] for them to turn to, an instrument which could absorb them into the new life .” 30 For Jews, Zionism was a school— and its pedagogical philosophy was always clear, dramatic, intelligent. Y e t the other, dialecti­ cally opposite com ponent in Zionism , existing at its interior where it was never seen (even though directly experienced by Palestinians) was an equally firm and intelligent boundary between benefits for Jews and none (later, punishment) for non-Jews in Palestine. The consequences o f the bifurcation in the Zionist program for Palestine have been immense, especially for Arabs who have tried seriously to deal with Israel. So effective have Zionist ideas about Palestine been for Jews— in the sense of caring for Jews and ignoring non-Jews— that what these ideas expressed to Arabs was only a rejection o f Arabs. Thus Israel itself has tended to appear as an entirely negative entity.