Haggai Ram, Intoxicating Zion: A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel

Since the early 2000s, there has been a considerable growth in the number of high-quality histories of drugs and of cannabis, in particular. Such histories have radically transformed how the academy and the general public understand the relationship between people and the drugs they consume. Despite growth in the field, there remain significant holes in regional and temporal historiographies. The Middle East especially remains remarkably understudied, in spite of the large role the region plays in contemporary drug trades and cultures.

Israel, which today is home to one of the world’s most vibrant cannabis cultures, remains largely unexplored by historians. Haggai Ram’s Intoxicating Zion comes as a timely contribution to drug and Middle Eastern history. By weaving the story of hashish (a form of cannabis) within the broader history of Mandatory Palestine and the emergence of the Israeli state, he demonstrates how hashish became an “illicit commodity smuggled across borders; a substance that was traded, consumed, regulated, and endlessly debated” (p. 6). Ram’s book is groundbreaking in more ways than one, It is the first monograph to explore the social history of hashish in Palestine and Israel; it also examines the drug in an area that underwent profound social and political changes, revealing how hashish was influenced by colonialism, Zionism, international drug regulations, and regional and global shifts in the drug trade.

Intoxicating Zion begins with the story of hashish during the late Ottoman empire and follows a general chronology, ending with the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Drawing from a rich and dynamic array of regional and international sources, Ram paints a textured social history of hashish, focusing especially on the criminalization of the drug and the culture of illicit use. This structure allows the reader to “identify connections between people and places in the Levant” (p. 9) that are often overlooked in more traditional national or political histories. Early chapters show how Palestine was affected by the shifting sands of the hashish trade in the region. Located between Lebanon and Egypt, both hashish hotspots, Palestine ultimately emerged as an ideal smuggling route during the interwar period. Over time, Palestinians developed their own taste for the drug, and hashish use increased dramatically, especially among working-class Arabs in port cities.

Even with the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, hashish use continued to grow. Ram shows how anti-hashish discourses emerged, building on earlier moral panics among Palestinian Jews and expanded by Israeli Jews, who often viewed hashish “as an abominable Oriental vice,” posing a “threat to the integrity and future of the Zionist project in Palestine” (p. 14). Ram’s analysis of antidrug discourses in the region presents both novel and well-trodden ideas in broader drug historiography. On the one hand, anti-Arab and Orientalized drug discourse was unique to this time and place. On the other hand, as many historians of drugs will be familiar with, those highly racialized and xenophobic ideas of drug users as a threat to “modern” societies shared many characteristics with other antidrug moral panics in global history.

Given this rich and remarkably textured history, Ram’s book largely focuses on the effect of international and national government’s attempts to create and enforce laws that criminalized hashish and how that shaped the relatively nascent regional hashish trade and cultures of use. The transnational elements of the hashish trade, in which Israel was the key link between Lebanon and Egypt, proved to strengthen over time and be increasingly difficult to stop. Whether it was Mandatory Palestine or later Israel, borders were largely impossible to enforce, as “smugglers moved swiftly across established and incipient political borders to exploit weak points in international law enforcement systems, ensuring that the loss of one drug source would quickly be replaced with another” (p. 150). The subsequent growth of hashish use in Palestine and Israel led to a growing moral panic among Ashkenazi Jews, who largely blamed the hashish vice first on Arabs and then on Mizrahi Jews, reinforcing why criminalization took on greater importance to the Israeli state.

This predicament proved difficult for the Israeli state to enforce in full. After the 1967 war, especially as Israel emerged from decades of diplomatic isolation, the country was inundated with Western tourists, many of whom flocked there for its cheap and easily accessible hashish. The 1968 Dangerous Drugs Ordinance Amendment Law, induced by the postwar moral panic, was “to ensure that Egypt’s hashish-hazed present realities would not become the dark future of the Jewish state” (p. 157). Despite the harsh legal stance against hashish, use continued to grow, pushing some to challenge the criminalized approach in favor of legalization. Obviously, the racialized hysteria that justified criminal laws proved (and continues to prove) unable to stop the flow of hashish into and out of the country or the use of the drug. The various attempts by authorities reinforce the theme at the heart of Ram’s book: criminalization and moral panics not only failed to stop hashish use and trade, they even helped nurture it.

For those in the academy, especially historians of drugs and of the Middle East, Intoxicating Zion is an essential read. It masterfully weaves various histories into one dynamic, illuminating text. Whether discussing diplomatic pressures for international drug regulation converging against hashish as a growing regional and global commodity, or moral panics, largely reinforced by racialized anti-Arab, antimodern discourses, failing to stop hashish use from spreading, Ram’s book is an intoxicating read. Moreover, for those interested in cannabis cultures or drug policy, especially those in Israel, this book provides rich context as to why the country has such a massive role in the rapidly evolving global cannabis culture.

With Intoxicating Zion, Haggai Ram has provided readers with a book that is novel in its research, keen with its insight, and altogether eloquently written. It is deserving of its high praise, here and elsewhere.