Myth and National Identity in Zionist and Israeli Posters

Yael Isaacs is a Master’s student of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Most of us are aware of the ease with which private and state actors can manipulate visual imagery for their benefit in the digital age. However, politically motivated iconography is a tool that far predates the post­modern period. Zionist movements in the 1920s­1940s, and the Israeli government in later years, used posters and other visual aids to promote national state creation, further a sense of common Israeli identity, and present their own version of history to the public. Relying on a core narrative formed through selective inclusion and exclusion, these posters formed a crucial part of the Israeli national myth­building effort.

Before the rise of political Zionism in the late 1800s, Jews in Ottoman Palestine comprised about 5% of the population. They comprised either Sephardic or Mizrahi Ottoman Jews and the occasional religiously motivated settler or Jewish refugee. Sephardi Jews originated from the Iberian Peninsula and settled in other parts of Europe, the MENA region, or South America after their expulsion from Iberia. The Mizrahi Jewish communities have lived in the MENA region since ancient times.

In the 1920s, Jewish organi­ sations in British Mandatory Palestine began to produce posters and other graphic publications to promote the image of a unified Jewish Palestinian identity. Communications scholar Ayelet Kohn and geographer Kobi Cohen­Hattab argue that the posters reflected the sentiments of the artists designing them. These posters reveal the artists’ hopes for a return to Israel and the construction of a Jewish nation rooted in European culture. Crucially, these posters also depicted a paradigm shift: the pilgrimage and movement to Palestine were seen as culturally and politically — rather than religiously — motivated. For most of Jewish histo­ ry, the return of Jews to Zion was seen as only being possible at the coming of the Messiah. Therefore, any pre­Zionist Jewish settlement in Palestine was founded on religious beliefs and based on individual interpretations of religious scripture. Political Zionism, a movement that advocated for the creation of a European­style nation­state where Jews would be the majority group, was conceptualized in response to increasing antisemitism in Europe despite the Enlightenment’s promise of tolerance. Zionist thinkers at the time proposed a Je wish homeland and self­governance so that they would not fall victim to the violent whims of the non­Jewish majority. The movement aimed to construct this homeland based on an idea of common Jewish ancestry. Kohn and Cohen­Hattab write that in the first few decades of the twentieth century, it became more common to view moving to Palestine as a ‘national act of settlement and revival.’ Tourism posters were, in many ways, a reflection of a growing desire for a Jewish settlement, and signalled an ever­increasing Jewish interest in Palestine.

Zionist propaganda posters proliferated in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to their aim of recruiting Jewish labour to construct a Jewish Palestine, they also promoted non­religious tourism. Some early propaganda posters depicted strong, Germanic­looking Jewish men performing agricultural labour. Others contained orientalist motifs such as desert landscapes, lemon trees, and stereotypical figures supposedly representing the native population, depicting a European­Jewish settlement on an exotic land. Kohn and Cohen­Hattab note that the artists of these posters were often new immigrants to Palestine from Germany and Austria, and were influenced by German and Russian­style ideological art.

The images on these posters suggest that hard agricultural labour in an egalitarian society could create a strong state. Kohn and Cohen­Hattab argue that many of the posters in this period combine artistic trends of the period with Zionist tropes, such as the holy land motif, with messages that promote European natio­ nalism, modernism, and consumerism. In this way, these posters promoted the ways in which Israeli statehood could be achieved. This utopian image of statehood combined socialism, capitalism, the grand past of the ancient Jews, and the perks of modernity and secular European culture.

The ideology behind the two types of posters—those aimed at recruiting labour and those encouraging tourism—differed sharply. The recruitment posters maintained a socialist worldview and were influenced by the contemporary Soviet style of revolutionary propaganda. The paintings of Jews working in the fields, operating tractors, or living simply off the land are similar to socialist realism in that they glorify the proletariat. Furthermore, in the images where Jews work or feast together, there is no clear hierarchy; everyone is working in tandem for the social good without the watchful eye of an imperial agent. In contrast, as Kohn and Cohen­Hattab write, the tourism posters with “oriental” figures and Levantine landscapes implied that the best way to build a state was through capitalistic enterprise, particularly tourism. The desire for a socialist state paired with the practice of emphasizing private capital is characteristic of Zionism throughout the years. Until the neoliberal turn in Israel in the 1980s, there remained a façade of egalitarianism that did not correspond with the reality of stark inequality, particularly among Israel’s non­Ashkenazi and non­Jewish population.

In the three decades following Israeli independence, visual and literary media aimed to create a coherent Israeli identity by spurring nationalism and an ideal of Israeli oneness. In these decades, the ‘heroic­nationalist’ genre, as described by Ella Shohat, depicted the main characters as heroic pioneers, with the Arab characters only existing on the periphery, merely benefiting from a Jewish presence. While Shohat’s analysis focuses on Israeli cinema, the images and tropes prevalent in movies are also present in posters. According to Stephen Sharot, visual media portrayed the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews as primitive and inferior to the Jews of European descent, but nonetheless assimilable. These films returned to Israeli theatres with renewed enthusiasm after the 1967 war, and Israeli posters mimicked these trends.

According to art historian Inbal Ben­Asher Gitler, a vital aspect of early Israeli posters includes the representation of ethnic differences among Jews in Israel. The poster to the right commemorates the holiday of Shavuot, a harvest festival, and portrays a communal agricultural settlement, demonstrating the ideal of the original Zionist leaders. One of the children has darker skin and wears a hat and peyot (side locks), indicating that he is a Mizrahi immigrant. As Gitler and Shohat both argue, in the 1950s, the representation of ethnic differences was manifested in the idea of kibbutz galuyot, or the ingathering of diverse Jewish exiles in Israel. Kibbutz galuyot is a part of an Israeli mythology that views pre­Israeli diasporic life as existing outside of history and, therefore, renders that history unimportant. For Gitler, this strategy manifests itself in the homogeneity of the colours of the clothes in the poster, representing national unity. Other posters from this period also display groups of people with homogenous features and clothing. Artists often downplayed ethnic differences among Israelis in these, as evident from the delicate shades used in their skin tones and the lack of detail in their faces.

The orientalized images of some figures in these posters are ambiguous regarding whether they represent Palestinian Arabs or Mizrahi Jews. Both were considered “others” to Israeli identity, though only the latter were thought to be assimilable. Thus, while some posters depicted Mizrahi Jewish and non­Jewish Middle Eastern figures as out of place and corresponding to stereotypical traditional tropes, others ignored ethnic differences entirely to promote an image of a singular Israeli identity. Both strategies contributed to the erasure of Mizrahi and Arab heritage: the former reinforced ethnic hierarchies by infantilizing the depicted Mizrahi Jews, while the latter ignored cultural differences and portrayed all Jews in Israel as abiding by the same norms and cultural practices. The notable absence of figures representative of Palestinians, with Islamic influence confined to the scenery and architecture, mirrors their political and social exclusion from Israeli so­ ciety. The posters, in Gitler’s words, ‘render Israel’s Others as stereotypical and generalized.’

Finally, the importance of military strength in securing and keeping a peaceful ancestral home is another vital component of Israeli national myth. Many posters combine images of the Israeli military with Jewish symbols, demonstrating the importance of military strength in maintaining a Jewish state. Other posters depict a gentle interaction between Israeli soldiers and the land, such as soldiers dancing at festivals, demonstrating that military force is essential to nation­building and peace.

Anthropologists Rebecca Stein and Ted Swedenburg argue for the importance of examining popular culture’s relationship to hegemony in Israel and Palestine. In the British Mandate era, Zionist organizations used posters to attract Jewish settlers to Palestine as a historical homeland and a potential new home for Jews. In effect, these posters erased the presence of Palestinian Arabs who had been living there for centuries. Post­independence posters, on the other hand, promoted a unified identity and advocated that Israel should be a “melting pot” for Jews while continuing to suppress any traces of Arab presence in Israel.

The Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews were eventually alleviated from the socio­economic oppression they initially experienced. However, extreme social inequality continues to separate Mizrahi Jews from their Ashkenazi counterparts, while Black Jews and Arab Israelis still face severe social and cultural mo­ bility barriers. These inequalities are obscured as the Israeli popular culture still plays with the idea of Israeli oneness, while the modern Settlement Movement still wields the idea of reclaiming land. Many of the myths propagated in early posters remain integral to Israeli national ideology. Given these myths’ tendencies to marginalize, generalize, and exclude Mizrahi and Arab Palestinians, they further undergird the existing inequalities that continue to plague Israel today.