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Colonization and Decolonization: The Case of Zionist and African Elites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Dan V. Segre
Dan V. Segre
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
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Extract

At first sight there seems to be little in common between Zionism and the national movements of the Third World, and more particularly of Africa. The diplomatic and economic links established by the State of Israel with the new states of the Black Continent were impressive partly because they looked as if they were created ex nihilo. The speed with which the Israelis entered the ‘African game’ in the sixties and the equal speed with which they found themselves ejected from it in the seventies tended to underline the superficiality of these links. There were, of course, interested rationalizations of this newly found ‘brotherhood’: the historico-mythological relations between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba were stressed to give an historical dimension to a very new cooperation; the role of the Zionist and Messianic African churches and sects, and the possible latent influence of Jewish lore on certain African tribes, such as the Poeul or the Ashanti of Ghana, were dusted off and used in many ambassadorial speeches.

Type
Fresh Applications of Familiar Models
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 1980 , pp. 23 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1980

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References

1 The historical relationships between Jews and Africa have been studied in a very erratic way. The relationship between Jews, Palestine, and Ethiopia is well known: see Doresse, Jean, L'Empire du Prêtre-Jean (Paris, 1957), Vols. 1 and 2Google Scholar; Hammerschmidt, Ernst, ‘Jewish Elements in the Cult of the Ethiopian Church,” in The Journal of Ethiopian Studies 3:2 (07 1968)Google Scholar; and Sven, Rubenson, ‘The Lion of the Tribe of Judah Christian Symbol and/or Imperial Title,”Google Scholar in ibid. The links between the Jews and other parts of East Africa are less certain. There are many oral traditions and a few historical documents concerning Madagascar: see Ferrand, Gabriel, ‘Migration Musulmane et Juive a Madagaskar,” in Revue d'Histoire des Religions, 52 (1905), 381–417Google Scholar, and R.P.fr. Razakandrainy, X., Parenté des Hovas et des Hebreux (Tananarive, 1926)Google Scholar, as well as the more contemporary Oded, Arie, ‘Ha'Bayudaya Umyasda Semei Kakungulu” in Hamizrah HeHadash, 27:1–2 (1967), 65–66Google Scholar. With regard to West Africa, historical evidence of Jewish presence and influence less rich and extensive than for Northern Africa and the Sahara. There is a vast literature on the Kahima and the Berbers, see Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), 10, pp. 587–88 and 685Google Scholar, as well as an interesting article by Levi, Israel, ‘Le lait de la Mere et le Proselytisme” in Revue des Etudes Juives 87 (1929), 94–95Google Scholar, and Hirschberg, H.Z., ‘The Problem of the Judaized Berbers,” in Journal of African History 4:3 (1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An acute study of the ancient presence and role of the Jews in West Africa is Raymond Manny's ‘Le Judaisme, Les Juifs et l'Afrique Occidentale,” in Bulletin de l'lnstitut français d'Afrique Noire 11:34 (07–08. 1949)Google Scholar, Mendelssohn, G., Jews of Africa (London, 1920)Google Scholar and Williams, J. J., Hebrewism of West Africa: From the Nile to Niger with the Jews (London, 1930).Google Scholar

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9 The first open clashes between the old Jewish residents of Palestine and the immigrants took place in 1889, significantly, over the request of the Jerusalem rabbis to let the fields lie fallow during that sabbatical year. In 1890, performance of the first Hebrew play, Zurubabel by M. L. Lilienblum, was stopped by the Turkish authorities, who had received word that the play was subversive. The first Hebrew newspaper, Hazevi, aroused such deep resentment among the old Yishuv that its founder, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (who revived modern Hebrew) was denounced and then arrested by the Turks in 1894.

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16 In the case of the assimilationists, opposition to Jewish national revival strengthened that form of Jewish self-criticism for which the German philosopher, Theodor Lessing, coined the expression ‘Jewish self-hate.” Karl Marx is a well-known case: see Silberner, Edmund, ‘Was Marx an Anti-Semite?” in Historia Judaica 11:1 (04, 1949), 3–52Google Scholar. The phenomenon developed considerably after the creation of the State of Israel. See Tas, Luciano, ‘L'Odio Ebraico di Se,” in Gli Stati 1:7 (10. 1972), 3–7Google Scholar (Italian) and Livneh's, Eliezer article (in Hebrew), Ma'ariv (05 28, 1971).Google Scholar

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