Sacralized nationalist myth suppresses concrete land history and indigenous presence

Evidence

But the main point is not to indicate the apocalyptic dimensions of secularization. The warning against messianism disguises the concrete attributes of the secular, of the “utopian return to Zion.” The suppression of the “apocalyptic” and the warning against “religion” are actually the suppression of the concrete realm itself: between the catastrophe and the utopian return there is no place for the land, for its inhabitants, for its past, and present. The constructed tension between “redemption” and “messianism” designed an exclusively Jewish territorial space that denied the history of the land and determined the exclusion of its Arab inhabitants from the image of redemption, and consequently from the land. The national-theological perception begot a mythical perception of “The Land,” regarded as the national motherland; “The Land” had no history outside its place in the Jewish-Christian theological myth and accordingly was imagined as the land of the Bible as depicted in conventional Orientalist imagery. Therefore, in Israel today, the history of Palestine since the Second Temple is absent from school curricula, both “secular” and “religious.” There is no “secular” history of the land, the history of its various inhabitants, communities, and rulers. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 355

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s inquiry on how manufactured enemies and sacralized narratives erase inconvenient reality — parallels the colonial epistemic-denial work in Along the Archival Grain (Anand) where colonial archives suppressed contradictory evidence. — connects to: Nationalists borrow another movement’s sacred-claims template to justify land conquest — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 184; National mythologies depend on suppressing contrary histories — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 284; Nationalist myths date mainly to the nineteenth century and impede shared identity — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 84 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Is the Arab exclusion deliberate political manufacture or emergent from the theological frame? Worth chasing how intentionality is attributed here.

Broader Connections

• National mythologies depend on suppressing contrary histories #corroborates (0.93) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 284
• A settler-colonial regime whose founding narrative is sacred cannot secularize without renouncing that narrative #expands (0.85)
• Nationalist myths date mainly to the nineteenth century and impede shared identity #corroborates (0.72) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 84