Abstract
When Zionists in Late Imperial Russia spoke about Palestine, they did not usually rely on traditional discourses and hardly showed their emotional attachment to Palestine. In fact, many Zionists even had an aversion to any essentialist discourse on nationality. Why, then, did they chose Palestine, a particular land? Especially focusing on the arguments of Daniel Pasmanik, a prominent ideologist of "Synthetic" Zionism, this paper explores an imagery that the Zionists at that time in the Russian Empire had in mind, by which the Zionists considered Palestine necessary for their project. When we read Pasmanik's Wandering Israel (1910) and some other articles by him, it becomes evident that his thoughts were based on an evolutionary perspective, underlining the role of environments that created characteristics of the Jewish people. While he also highlighted people's "will" to life, he considered that without a free social environment, free national creation would be impossible. For him, ancient Palestinian Jews created valuable culture for humanity, proving potential capacity of Jews for creation. He believed that Palestine would be an environment where a part of Jews would resurge to be such people liberating Jews in the Diaspora from the evil influence of the Galut (Exile).
