Zionist history and the exclusion of Palestinians

This project analyzes the way in which Zionist history is constructed for the use of the Zionist, settler colonial project that is the State of Israel. In this paper I argue that, in order to maintain the appearance of being a just and democratic state since its very inception, Zionist history must then erase Palestinians, the people who are indigenous to the land on which Israel was built. As Zionist historians worked to prove that the land of Palestine has belonged to the Jewish diaspora since before the arrival of the Zionist movement in the late 1800s, Palestinians find their historical existence shift. They went f from either being nonexistent in the "Empty Land” narrative to being present upon the arrival of the Zionist movement but unable to revel in the modernity that Zionist colonialists brought to Palestine due to their inept leadership. The narratives that anchored Jewish folks to Palestine and relegated Palestinians to an irresolute existence, were created by Zionist historians that fused Zionist ideology with their professions as historians, thus allowing them to create a useable past for the Israeli government to then justify their actions in the present. An example of the Israeli government’s need to preserve their image as a historic just and democratic state is the manner in which the Nakba, commemorated as a day of mourning for Palestinians who’s families were forcibly removed from the land, is subject to attempts by the state to eliminate it from public memory.