غرس النكبة

Tamar Novick skillfully examines the transformation of agriculture and animal husbandry adopted by the early Zionist settlers of Palestine, encouraged
by the British, and continued post-1948 by the Israelis. These practices involved the conversion of Ottoman Palestinian agriculture to a form of European capitalist-driven agrarian farming, involving draining the Hula Valley, getting rid of black goats and buffalo, inducing greater milk production from cows, and other such science-based agronomic developments. The two overall aims of this were/are to achieve a modern version of an imagined biblical land “flowing with milk and honey” and to fortify the borders between what became Israel and its neighbors. The replacement of Palestinian farming by the Israeli “pursuit of plenty” was central to the Nakba itself and leads readers to ask whether Novick’s narrative sheds light on the contemporary genocidal events in Gaza.