The parallels between a northern Arkansas group that is seeking to forbid Jews and people of color from buying on their adjacent tracts of land and Zionism are more significant than you might think.
The Forward has been running a series of articles about a group in northern Arkansas that owns adjacent tracts of land that Jews and non-whites are forbidden to purchase or live on. On Thursday, the attorney general of Arkansas said this was legal. The details are complicated — mostly focused on the fact that there’s been no purchase or sale or business transaction yet, so nothing formally violating the law — but the significance of this story for thinking about Israel and Zionism is not.
The Arkansas group is called Return to the Land, and it is part of a larger national movement. Focusing on people’s proof of “ancestral heritage,” it seeks, according to its mission statement, to “put land [in the United States] BACK [my emphasis] under the control of Europeans.”
The parallels between this movement and Zionism are striking. Both movements claim that they are movements of return; hence the “back to control of Europeans.” Both movements style themselves as the original owners/stewards of the land, with no reference to its previous indigenous inhabitants. Both movements focus on some proof of lineal descent.
Even more striking than the question of ownership of land is the question of whom the land can be sold to. While I would imagine anyone reading these articles in the Forward would be horrified by this Arkansas movement, what exactly do supporters of Israel think the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which many of us raised money for when we were children, is? It owns 13 percent of the land within the pre-1967 borders of Israel, and in the last few years, it…
Auteur: Corey Robin
