The Million Plan: Zionism, political theology and scientific Utopianism

This article analyses Israel’s first prime minister’s plan for a Jewish fast mass immigration to Palestine during World War II. The ‘Million Plan’, as it was named later, envisioned an imaginary transfer of a million Jews to Palestine in a year and a half. It was formulated with the help of a big team of experts, professionals and scientists in what is known as the Planning Committee. We will attempt to analyze the Million Plan from several interconnected perspectives: First, we will read the event as marking the beginning of the establishment of a new sociopolitical order which Zionist historiography calls mamlakhtiyut (statism or etatism), usually linked to the establishment of Israel a few years later. Second, we will explain the event as a new stage in the relationship between the political and professional-scientific establishments in the Zionist movement. Third, we see the Million Plan as marking a new phase in the development of David Ben-Gurion’s political theology and representing a further fusion of his political and theological visions. We suggest viewing the Million Plan as a pivotal event in ‘imagining’ the Jewish state and in secularizing the theological concept of messianism, as a ‘site of fusion’ in which the political and the theological were fused through the introduction of modern science and technology.