Aiming beyond ‘Allozionism’ without focusing on settler colonialism is like having a meal without food: Johannes Becke, ‘Beyond Allozionism: Exceptionalizing and De-Exceptionalizing the Zionist Project’, Israel Studies, 23, 2, 2018, pp. 168-193 | settler colonial studies blog

Aiming beyond ‘Allozionism’ without focusing on settler colonialism is like having a meal without food: Johannes Becke, ‘Beyond Allozionism: Exceptionalizing and De-Exceptionalizing the Zionist Project’, Israel Studies, 23, 2, 2018, pp. 168-193

25Mar18

Abstract: Based on Zygmunt Bauman’s understanding of Allosemitism, this article introduces the concept of Allozionism, a form of exceptionalism which assumes that Zionism and the State of Israel are fundamentally different from all other nationalist movements and nation-states. Instead of tracing exceptionalist claims about the Zionist project back to its attributes or the politics of affinity and resentment, this approach investigates the epistemic function of Allozionism, understood here as Allosemitism in postcolonial times: While European Allosemitism projected its anxieties about the problematic distinction between believer/non-believer and nation/non-nation on the Jewish people, global Allozionism projects its ambivalences about the indigenous/colonial distinction on the Zionist project as a puzzling case of colonization in the name of indigeneity. In order to overcome Allozionist exceptionalism, de-exceptionalizing the Zionist project implies the recognition of its cultural and political ambivalence, including colonial, anti-colonial, and post-colonial elements—both before and after 1967.

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