Summary
Israeli author of a book about the Israelis, unnamed in the passages Said quotes in the text but named in Said’s Chapter Notes as The Israelis: Founders and Sons (1971), used by Said for the blindness of the settlers toward the Arabs and for the purpose of Avoda Ivrit.
Details
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Elon, as described by Said, accurately showed that the Zionists considered the Arab problem as something either to be avoided completely, or denied (and hence attacked) completely; his book describes the blindness of the early- and mid-twentieth-century settlers without making the connection back to Balfour and the moral epistemology of imperialism (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.39 / printed p.18).
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Elon on Avoda Ivrit, as quoted by Said: it aimed at a completely separate economic sector for the newcomers, in which native labor must not be exploited, Jews must do everything themselves, and Arab laborers therefore could not objectively be opposed to the Zionists; in effect it created a subculture enjoying immunity from Turkish, British or Arab reality (see Jewish Labour Only) (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.42-43 / printed p.21-22).
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Said’s criticism: even Elon cannot see the moral distinction between British and Arab reality in Palestine, or that the native presence, by its unbroken existence for centuries, has incomparably greater moral authority than the imperial European power (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.43 / printed p.22).
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Said’s Chapter One notes name the book: Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons (1971; reprinted New York: Bantam Books, 1972), cited at pp.194 ff. (note 16) and pp.220, 222 (note 21) (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.265-266 / printed p.244-245).
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In Manna, Elon appears as a Haaretz reporter on the Remainers: at the beginning of 1951 he reported on thirty months of Israeli rule over Nazareth — the Arabs disappointed with promises of equality and of a citizenship uniting Jews and Arabs — and months later, reporting the climate among eligible voters, he quoted a teacher: “I shall not vote, just as prisoners do not vote. Israel has pushed us all into a giant prison.” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.276).
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Elon commented, in the report Manna quotes, that the Arabs could elect ten or eleven MKs “if they were to establish an independent national Arab organization”, yet there was not a single independent Arab slate among the twenty slates, and he expected most Arab votes to go to Mapai and Maki; Manna calls the article frank criticism of the ruling party and its order of fear, but an incomplete picture (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.276).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Jewish Labour Only, Balfour Declaration, Nakba and Survival, Nazareth