Martin Buber’s Bi-Nationalism

SAMUEL HAYIM BRODY SHMA.COM

You hesitate, you doubt — you know from history that each unchaining is answered by new chain-
ing? You do not understand, then, that history no longer holds. —Martin Buber
n the spring of 1949, Martin Buber walked divinely ordained Jewish task of initiating the

I into a Jerusalem store whose owner had in

the past expressed solidarity with Buber’s
generally unpopular support of a bi-nationalist
realization of justice on earth.
From that perspective, Buber asserted, “The
cry of victory does not have the power of pre-
solution to the Zionist-Arab conflict. This time venting the clear-eyed from seeing that the soul
though, with almost a year having passed since of the Zionist enterprise has evaporated….
the War of 1948 and the establishment of the What sober and honest man, looking about
State of Israel, the tenor of the conversation was himself in today’s reality, could say that we are
different. “An utter political rout like the one
your circle suffered is no common thing,” the “Yes, a goal has been reached, but it is not called Zion…
shopkeeper said to Buber. “It looks as if you’ll [The] day will yet come when the victorious march of which our
have to face the facts and resign yourselves to
people is so proud today will seem to us like a cruel detour.”
total silence for the time being.” The shop-
keeper was saying that Buber’s circle had suf- engaged in a process of regeneration?” If the es-
fered something more than an ordinary setback tablishment of the state had in fact achieved the
— that history itself, by establishing the State of goal of Zionism, the shopkeeper would have
Israel in the manner it had, had rendered the been right that the Ichud had been rendered ir-
bi-nationalists obsolete, and had decreed their relevant. But, in reality, the goal seemed further
irrelevance. away than ever. “Yes, a goal has been reached,
Buber recounted this story in a speech he but it is not called Zion…[The] day will yet
delivered to a meeting of the Ichud, one of the come when the victorious march of which our
more prominent bi-nationalist organizations in people is so proud today will seem to us like a
Palestine in the 1940s. The speech was called cruel detour.”
“Should the Ichud Accept the Decree of Of course, up to that point, the primary po-
History?” Answering that question meant defin- litical tradition in Zionism had been the Labor
ing what, exactly, History-with-a-capital-H had movement, descended from Herzl’s “political”
just decided against, and what it had left open. Zionism; it saw the primary goal of Zionism as
In other words, the creation of the State of Israel statehood for the protection of Jewish bodies
was to be accepted as a fait accompli — but of and independence for the protection of Jewish
what kind? honor. Influenced as well by European socialist
Even before the establishment of the state, tendencies, it certainly strove to establish inter-
the Ichud had carefully defined bi-nationalism nal justice in the laws of the Jewish state and
as but a means to the ends of Zionism. Because conceived itself as dealing with the Arabs as
of this, they did not consider themselves utterly justly as possible — with the proviso that just
defeated by the events of 1948. “We aim at a dealings with the Arabs could never be subor-
social structure based on the reality of two peo- dinated to the need for physical security. But
ples living together,” Buber had written in even this need, Buber alleged, even this sup-
1947. “But this program is only a temporary posedly non-utopian, limited goal of Zionism
adaptation of our path to the concrete, histori- could never be met along the path chosen by
Samuel Hayim Brody is a
cal situation — it is not necessarily the path it- the Zionist mainstream: “The might of battal-
doctoral candidate in the
self.” The pre-state period, of course, was the ions is decisive only temporarily.” And indeed, history of Judaism at the
era of (Balfour) declarations and (white) papers Revisionist predictions that an Israeli iron wall University of Chicago Divinity
and (Biltmore) programs; it was the time when would wear down Palestinian Arab determina- School. His research focuses
each group could proclaim its grand vision and tion to struggle against Zionism do not seem on the interactions among
contend for its realization, as if politics was re- any likelier to be realized today than 80 years religion, politics, and
philosophy in Jewish thought
ally a matter of building from a blueprint. ago. Meanwhile the two-state solution, the sup-
in the modern period. His
Buber attempted to skirt this dogmatic trend by posedly limited, non-utopian goal of all good dissertation deals with the
keeping his focus on the goal of Zionism itself: moderates, seems no more or less utopian than relations among anarchism,
not statehood, per se, not independence for its any other settlement that calls itself a solution. messianism, and Zionism in
own sake, but only as a means to fulfill the Since the heyday of the bi-nationalist Martin Buber’s theopolitics.

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 movement, significant intellectual and histori- each perceive the other as atavistic: The post-
cal shifts have colluded to prevent its re-emer- Zionists see the entire Zionist spectrum, from
gence. Firstly, bi-nationalism was a product of parties such as Yahad to Yisrael Beiteinu, as im-
SHMA.COM the same intellectual environments that pro- prisoned by an obsolete 19th-century national-
duced 19th- and 20th-century European na- ist vision, while Zionist ideology continues to
tionalisms themselves, which asserted that the regard assimilationist liberalism as precisely the
world was divided into distinct peoples defined outdated worldview that Zionism originally
by shared language and territory. Its principle of emerged to correct. Meanwhile, the original re-
duality sought to acknowledge the reality of ligious underpinnings of the bi-nationalist idea
two peoples in Palestine while eliminating the have been phased out and replaced with a thor-
standard nation-state’s numerical determina- oughgoing secular framework. This may have
tion of power according to majority and minor- contributed to the current reputation of the sin-
ity. However, after 1948 and 1967, as favor for gle-state solution as the solution nobody wants.
a single-state solution migrated from being the If there is to be a renewed “bi-nationalism,” in
living motivating force of a small Zionist far-left the sense of an approach to living together
to being the polemical watchword of a non- based on the reality of two peoples sharing the
Zionist and anti-Zionist far left, it also assumed land, it will likely be forced to draw on the re-
the usual characteristics of a non-nationalist lib- sources of Judaism and Islam. Here too, both
eralism. This is the background behind the skeptics and adherents to conventional wisdom
early-’90s post-Zionist call for Israel to be a should be asked to defend the record of their
“state of all its citizens.” This has produced a own purportedly sober and realistic approaches
strange polemical situation in which two sides to conflict resolution.

Israel’s War of Liberation, 1944-1948

YISRAEL MEDAD
he founding myth of the Herut move- war, 338 British subjects had been killed in

T ment, which in 1973 evolved into the

Likud and, with a plurality of Knesset
seats in 1977, facilitated Menachem Begin’s as-
Palestine, while the military forces there had cost
the British taxpayer 100 million pounds. The re-
newal of Arab violence on the announcement of
cendancy to the position of Prime Minister of the United Nations decision to partition
Israel, was that in its pre-state form — as the Palestine and the declared intentions of Jewish
Irgun underground — it had expelled the British extremists showed that the loss of further British
from Mandate Palestine. This claim was derided lives was inevitable…[The] continued presence
by the hegemonic socialist Zionist factions that there of British troops and officials could no
dominated Israel’s political scene until 1967. longer be justified. As the British admitted, they
They treated the Irgun and the Lehi (another were forced to surrender their mandate because
militant Zionist group) derisively as “dissi- of what Winston Churchill referred to in early
dents.” For decades, Israel’s schoolchildren 1947 as a “squalid, senseless war.”
never read that in early 1944 an armed revolt What was obvious to England’s Prime
was declared against the mandatory regime, ul- Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Minister
timately, over the course of four years, forcing Ernest Bevin in 1946-48 was consistently denied
the British to leave. Oddly enough, it was the for decades after Israel’s establishment: Without
British government, in a white paper published the armed underground resistance against the
on May 15, 1948, that had recorded the circum- British regime in the Land of Israel, initiated and
stances that forced it to decide to bring to an led by the Irgun and Lehi and, during November
end its mandate and to prepare for the with- 1945 to July 1946, joined by the Haganah (an-
drawal from Palestine of all British forces. In this other paramilitary group that later became the
Yisrael Medad is the director of official version, we read that: Israel Defense Forces) and the Palmach (the
information resources at the …84,000 troops, who received no coopera- Haganah’s elite strike force), the State of Israel
Menachem Begin Heritage tion from the Jewish community, had proved in- could not have been established at that time.
Center in Jerusalem and co-
sufficient to maintain law and order in the face Moreover, if the establishment of the Zionst
editor, with Harry Hurwitz, of
Peace in the Making: The of a campaign of terrorism waged by highly or- state had been predicated solely on the creation
Menachem Begin-Anwar Sadat ganized Jewish forces equipped with all the of more kibbutzim and the bringing in of ships
Personal Correspondence. weapons of the modern infantryman. Since the with “illegal” immigrants from Europe — even

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