The Radiance of the Jewish National Home
The Radiance of the Jewish National Home
Chapter 4 tells the story of Naharayim, the hydroelectric station at the confluence of the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers. Construction began in 1927 and was completed in 1932. The significance of Naharayim was both material and representational. The station served an important function as a staging ground for the Zionist project’s civilizing mission, which, like other such missions elsewhere, also engendered an ethno-national division of labor. By generating electricity and transmitting it to the entire territory, Naharayim marked Palestine out as a Jewish national space and economy, which seemed to validate the basic ideological thrust of Zionism, namely that Jewish efforts in Palestine would lift everyone’s boats. This relegated the Palestinians to the category of second-order beneficiaries of Zionist development.
Keywords: Naharayim, hydropower, Jordan River, civilizing mission, division of labor, national space
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