Resolving Ontologies of Antisemitism, Orientalism, and the Question of Zionist Colonialism

Abstract

This study addresses the persistent charge of orientalism leveled against Zionism and explores the relationship between orientalism and antisemitism, which Edward W. Said describes in his 1978 book Orientalism as that of an ironic “secret sharer.” This study traces that sharing back into the early modern period and posits that antisemitism and orientalism both came into being within the context of the Reconquista and emergent Western Colonialism and Imperialism. This is followed by an examination of German Jewish history as a colonial history, and identifies the Zionism which arose out of that history as distinctively non-orientalist in nature.