Summary Of Healing The Land And The Nation

“Healing the Land and the Nation” by Sandra M. Sufian delves into the twentieth century Zionist movement, and its complicated relationship with the Palestinian landscape and disease, specifically malaria. The chapters each serve to construct a narrative as to why and through what means Zionists attempted to use their influence over the land, science, and medicine to not only correct a landscape that they considered to be tainted, but also to cure a people that they viewed similarly. Sufian argues that the medical practice and land reconstruction efforts of the time are a manifestation of the Jewish desire for a racial rebirth, an attempt to shed the perception of the weakness and inferiority of the Jewish race that was pervasive throughout
A healthy landscape in the minds of Jewish nationalists meant a healthy Jewish populace, and early twentieth century Palestine was anything but. The mosquito infested swamps, filled with Arabs, were themselves diseased in the minds of the Zionist elite. They believed that it was their duty to cultivate the lands to rid them of these ailments to bring about a sort of Zionist renaissance to their people. This coincided with the idea that the Jewish people were culturally ill and in need of reform. The Zionist worried about European adulteration of Jewish values, and the increasingly bourgeois culture within Jewish communities. They believed this way of life engendered weakness, and wished to return to a more agrarian lifestyle. Manual labor was a way of strengthening the Zionist state and would lead to a generation of “muscle Jews”, stronger in stature and in moral resolve than the current working class population, whom they thought to be at the heart of Jewish decadence. The work that needed to be done in draining these natural areas was considerable, and presented the perfect opportunity to put people to work and begin the transition towards an agriculture state. This lead to Jewish institutions, such as the KKL, attempting to hire only Jewish laborers to cultivate the land. In this framework, the reconstruction would not only heal the
The perception of malaria as a ‘Jewish’ or theologically linked disease is embodied in the question presented at the beginning of chapter 1 by Dr. Herman Zondek “Is Judaism a Disease?”. Pivotal to the restoration of Jewish respectability in society was the eradication of malaria from their lands. The disease was believed to be one that afflicted races of a lower class, a plague of tropical climates that Europeans considered to be inhospitable. It’s presence in “primitive” cultures such as those in Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East only reinforced the idea of a racial etiology of the disease. In addition to the physical measures taken to rid Palestine of malaria, namely the aforementioned draining of the swamps and land alteration, if this movement was truly to be a success their needed to be accompanied by cultural changes as well. This resulted in a massive public health movement by the Zionist state in Palestine, aimed at educating the public on hygienic practices and ways in which they could protect themselves from malaria as well as other pathogens. These measures consisted of disseminating health pamphlets, informational ‘health week’ programs, and the creation of an ethos of healthy living. The results of this campaign were twofold: not only did it inform and help protect the population against malaria, it also served as a powerful form of biopolitics that allowed the Zionist