[Plants for Palestine. Otto Warburg and the Natural Sciences in the Yishuv.] Published in German.
2019. VII, 267 pages.
What story does the cultivation of Palestinian plants and other Botanical Zionism crops tell us about the historical and political relations between people, politics, and ideology? Dana von Suffrin investigates the impact made by a group of Otto Warburg-inspired Zionists who wanted to establish a Jewish state with the help of science.
As history was being recorded, the so-called botanical Zionism that grew up around the German-Jewish colonial botanist Otto Warburg (1859–1938) was a mere footnote. The fact is though that traces of botanical Zionism are still evident to this today. This story of Palestine's transformation is not limited by nature, trees, or plants, however. As the author reveals, botanical Zionism united nature, politics, nation building, and science. She argues that science and technology at least partially compensated the Zionists' lack of political, financial, and military resources, and were the ideological and practical driving force behind their settlement plans. The botanical Zionists were thus scientists as well as political actors, with science the means used to smooth the way for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
