[I]n colonial zoological literatures between 1870 and 1935. This was the historic period of colonial zoologistsâ speculation about [âŚ] the whereabouts of the last Palestinian crocodile. [âŚ] [T]he Palestinian crocodile extinction story is intertwined with violent histories of colonial resource extraction, racialized labor exploitation, and indigenous human dispossession. [âŚ]
Clarence the crocodile drifts about lazily in the thick summer heat [âŚ] at the [âŚ] Zoological Gardens in West Jerusalem [âŚ]. Nile crocodiles once lived in Palestineâs Mediterranean coastal marshlands. The poster narrates [âŚ]: âIn 1905, the last crocodile was hunted in Israel by residents of [the Palestinian village] Jisar-A-Zarka.â [âŚ] [T]he market for late Ottoman Palestineâs small and dwindling crocodile population was overwhelmingly driven by colonialists [âŚ]. [T]he [âŚ] zoo poster implies that Palestinians were responsible for Nile crocodilesâ regional extinction. This historical narrative hinges on the last crocodileâs symbolic singularity [âŚ]. Several âlast Palestinian crocodilesâ â that is, crocodiles hunted when the local population was at the brink of extinction â remain to this day in British, German, and Israeli collections. The last Palestinian crocodile, therefore, is a dynamic rhetorical figure rather than a singular specimen. [âŚ]
[We can] contextualize [âŚ] the colonial scientific archive with Palestinian-authored scholarship from this historic period, as well as [âŚ] interviews with local [Palestinian] historians [âŚ] By tracing the last Palestinian crocodileâs rhetorical circulation to 1935 â when an [Israeli] zoologist declared that Palestinian crocodiles were finally extinct â [we can] connect the story of Palestinian crocodile extinction with the British Mandate and Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PJCA)-led drainage and destruction of the crocodileâs former habitat and the dispossession of the Ghawarna who lived on that land. [âŚ] [I]t was only after the wetlands were drained that the PJCA transferred the Ghawarna community to Jisr al-Zarqa, newly created on a fraction of the Ghawarnaâs [âŚ] lands. [âŚ]
The freshwater Nahr al-Zarqa, known for its clear blue waters, was used for drinking and agriculture. [âŚ] The marshlands themselves were home to two communities of Bedouin origin, âArab Kabbara and âArab al-Ghawarna [âŚ]. âArab al-Ghawarna roughly translates to âpeople of the lowlandsâ or âmarshes.â For reasons of social status intertwined with their marshland dwelling-place, the name carries a fraught and at times stigmatized history. The Ghawarna who lived in the Zor al-Zarqa/Kabbara marshlands were primarily members of the âAmmash and Jurban families. As recounted to me by the local historian Mohamad Hamdan and the environmental and community activist Saidah alAli â who live in Jisr al-Zarqa [âŚ] â the Ghawarna earned a living [âŚ] weaving mats from the marshâs abundant supple, springy reeds. [âŚ]
Palestinians of Sudanese descent were also affiliated with the Ghawarna during this period. [âŚ] Their [âŚ] âdarknessâ [âŚ] was the subject of repeated, disproportionate fascination in the writings of colonial researchers who came to hunt crocodiles and document marshland flora and fauna. [âŚ]
The relationship between imperial science, natural resource extraction, and territorial expansionism during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods is well-documented. [âŚ] Why did Palestinian crocodiles â especially the last crocodile â attract so much attention from colonialists? What did they find so intriguing about this small, localized, and rapidly dwindling (if not entirely extinct) population? [âŚ]
Lastness [âŚ]. Colonial zoologistsâ fixation on the last Palestinian crocodile was in part driven by an enduring European fascination with âlastnessâ as a spatial-temporal construct. This fascination exemplifies the convergence of evolutionary science and imperial sensibilities [âŚ]. [I]t converged with the myth of âthe last of the raceâ and an enduring fascination with the ârise and fallâ of civilizations. [âŚ] [T]hese sentiments [âŚ] were often cloaked in an air of âimperialist nostalgia.â [âŚ]
Scarcity [âŚ]. The interlocking relationship between imperial science, capitalist exploitation, and racist dehumanization is apparent in an 1887 PEQ article by the Templer German-American researcher Gottlieb Schumacher. Schumacher did not merely represent the Ghawarna as existing outside the circuits of capital. To him, they were capital. [âŚ]
Place [âŚ]. Palestinian crocodilesâ popularity among Europeans was heightened by place-based historical associations. The crocodiles were associated by name with several archeological and geographic sites near their habitat which were connected to Hellenistic and medieval Crusader histories in Palestine. These sites included the ruins of the Greco-Roman port city Crocodilopolis and the nearby river Nahr alZarqa, which during the Greco-Roman period was allegedly known as Crocodeilon. The ruins and river attracted a broad spectrum of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europeans [âŚ]. Through their excavation and representation of Palestinian crocodilesâ placebased historical associations, colonialists perpetuated a Eurocentric interpretation of Palestineâs material history.Â
The crocodile served as a reptilian conduit for rewriting â and claiming ownership over â Palestineâs past, thereby de-Arabizing the history of the coastal marshlands. [âŚ]
Nearly a century has passed since Bodenheimer proclaimed the Palestinian crocodileâs extinction, obscuring the violent processes of Palestinian dispossession and ecological destruction.
All text above by: Elizabeth Bentley, âBetween Extinction and Dispossession: A Rhetorical Historiography of the Last Palestinian Crocodile (1870-1935),â Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 88 (Winter 2021). Published by Institute for Palestine Studies. DOI: doi. org /10.70190 /jq.188.pg [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]
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