Gabriel Piterberg am 15. April 2010 in Berlin

Extract of his public speech: “… The idea of the Kibutzim is a colonial idea …”

Vortrag (Audio)

Diskussion (Audio)

Gabriel Piterberg is author of the book The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel. In this original and wide-ranging study, he examines the ideology and literature behind the colonization of Palestine, from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Exploring Zionism’s origins in Central-Eastern European nationalism and settler movements, he shows how its texts can be placed within a wider discourse of western colonization. Piterberg revisits the work of Theodor Herzl, Gershom Scholem, Anita Shapira and David Ben-Gurion, among other thinkers influential in the formation of the Zionist myth, to break open prevailing views of Zionism. He demonstrates that it was in fact unexceptional, expressing a consciousness and imagination typical of colonial settlermovement.

Organized by Zentrum Moderner Orient.

Gabriel Piterberg: “Erasures”. How the founding myths of Israel dictated conceptual removal of Palestinians, during and after physical removal. The invention of ‘retroactive transfer’ and ‘present absentees’ as the glacial euphemisms of ethnic cleansing. In: New Left Review 10, July-August 2001 PDF Datei

Gabriel Piterberg: “Zion’s Rebel Daughter”. Hannah Arendt on Palestine and Jewish Politics” Principally known for works on totalitarianism and the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt’s powerful and prophetic critiques of the Zionist project, written in the 1940s, have rarely been discussed. Gabriel Piterberg tracks the evolution of this brave and independent thinker. In: New Left Review 48, November-December 2007 PDF Datei

Gabriel Piterberg on Shlomo Sand: “Converts to Colonizers?” In: New Left Review 59, September-October 2009 PDF Datei