Idolatry of Land

In his essay 'Holy Landscape: Israel, Palestine and the American Wilderness',1 W.J.T. Mitchell explores what he terms the 'paradoxical relation between landscape and idolatry'. Defining idolatry as a false god that displaces the true one with a material image, Mitchell contends that extreme Zionism has transformed the landscape of Israel into an idol where the visible and unrepresentable God is made visible and material.2 He asserts that landscape here stands for more than ideology. As an idol it condenses ideology into a potent stereotype for mass consumptionan idolatry of place.3