the israeli incorporation regime45 population of superior human intellect and capacity, a settler-colonial state is established according to rational plans that effectively exclude a wretched and underdeveloped indigenous population from the discourse of historical, cultural, political and legal rights. A hegemonic strategy is thereby played out so as to detach the native population from the historical record of the space, while simultaneously entrenching the identity and legitimate claim of the settler population over the colonized land. As outlined in Altneuland, immigrating “in the full light of day,” the “Jewish settlers who streamed into the country had brought with them the experience of the whole civilized world” (Herzl 1987, 100, 127). Here surfaces one of the defining characteristics of the Zionist brand of colonialism: instead of claiming to apply full or partial control over the territory of another population, settlement of the land is presented as a process of reclamation by, or return to, its rightful custodians. The settlers are posited as indigenous to the land. “We led our people back to the beloved soil of Palestine,” says David Littwak, Löwenberg’s travel guide, “[and] milk and honey once more flowed in the ancient home of the Jews” (Herzl 1987, 151, 241). Using the language of colonialism, Altneuland also expands on a familiar universal humanitarian argument posited by the European colonialists of the time: settling the land will result in the progress of humankind as a whole. Throughout the text, the founders of the Old-New-Land remark that its foundations were laid in Europe. Littwak notes, colonized Palestine “punish[es] only those crimes and misdemeanours which were penalized in enlightened European states” (Herzl 1987, 98). Created in the image of Europe, the value of the achievements of the Jewish commonwealth in the areas of “education … land reform, charity organization, social welfare … the role of women … the progress of applied science,” literature, and technology are strictly measured in comparison (Herzl 1987, 223). That the “Jewish peddler … [can carry] herself so modestly and yet with such dignity beside the great English lady” is proof that “Jews have risen to their ‘proper place’ among the ‘great nations’ and ‘noble races’.”2 In Herzl’s novel, and within the Zionist framework, the logic of colonialism propagates the Jew as a liberal cosmopolitan “colonizer for progress” and Palestine is reduced to an “experimental land for humanity.”3 Overall, what is revealed in the fictional structure of Altneuland is the extent to which the Jewish national movement and its pundits employed the 2 See Herzl 1987, 258; Stolow 1997, 60. 3 See Stolow 1997, 60–61; Herzl 1987, 50.