Zionist eugenics

"Eugenics is considered to be something that only happened in Germany. Germany was indeed the most murderous manifestation of eugenics, but in fact it was a movement that attracted many followers. In every place it took on a unique, local aspect. It is interesting to note that both in Germany and in Israel a link was made between eugenics, health and nationalism. "

--Sachlav Stoler-Liss, 2004

Dr. Sachlav Stoler-Liss received her doctorate from the Department of Health Management, in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University.


"Mothers Birth the Nation": The Social Construction of Zionist Motherhood in Wartime in Israeli Parents' Manuals

by Sachlav Stoler-Liss in Nashim, Fall 2003
Published in Nashim, issue 6, pages 104 to 118

Who is a proper Zionist child? And who is a proper Zionist mother? These questions have been an inherent part of the subtext of the Israeli nation-building process from the start.


Abstract

Who is a proper Zionist child? And who is a proper Zionist mother? These questions have been an inherent part of the subtext of the Israeli nation-building process from the start. To consider them here, we will employ a textual field which, thus far, has almost wholly escaped attention: the early parenting guides, known as parents' manuals, used in Israel from the 1920s through the late 1950s.

During the 1920s and 1930s, a group of Israeli physicians and psychologists inaugurated what would become a prolonged effort to provide child-rearing guidance for parents. At the time, the establishment of the State of Israel was no more than a wish for Israelis (and perhaps the worst nightmare of their Arab neighbors). The Jewish towns and villages in Mandate-era Palestine were not heavily populated, but their inhabitants were fully aware of what they saw as their historical role in creating a "new native Jew."

The principal argument of this paper is that Israeli mothers of that era embraced their duty as "mothers of the nation" neither by chance nor as a consequence of some kind of natural process; rather, they were subjected to an unremitting program of education, indoctrination and regulation that formed the subtext of the apparently innocuous medical advice provided to them throughout their childbearing years. Ideological messages were embedded within the most ordinary counsel regarding proper breastfeeding, toilet training, and how to avoid spoiling one's children.

The boundaries that restricted women primarily to their domestic and maternal duties owed much to the ongoing perception of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in what would become Israel), and afterward of the State of Israel, as existing in an ongoing state of war. The obligations of mothers and other women (mothers-to-be) in wartime were discussed openly in the parents' manuals, which were but one of a number of social instruments of ideological...

http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/nashim/v006/6.1liss.html


Last update - 01:50 16/06/2004

`Do not have children if they won't be healthy!'

By Tamara Traubmann

A shocking new study reveals how key figures in the pre-state Zionist establishment proposed castrating the mentally ill, sterilizing the poor and doing everything possible to ensure reproduction only among the `best of people.'

MORE:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=437879