Coby Friedman, this essay is much closer to the history of Zionism that I recognize than your video about the Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and the supposed division of labor between respectable and terrorist Zionists.
But you have overlooked something fundamental in your own account. Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, Brit Shalom, and Ihud were not simply representatives of an anti-Zionist tradition. Their advocacy of binationalism was itself part of the history of Zionism. Buber, in particular, understood himself as a Zionist. He rejected the idea that Jewish national self-determination required exclusive Jewish sovereignty over the country.
That is quite different from the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, which rejected the understanding of Jews as a nation altogether. You have brought together people whose disagreements with political Zionism arose from very different understandings of Jewish peoplehood, national aspirations, and the rights of Palestinian Arabs.
I agree that these traditions deserve far more attention than they have received. I also agree that Jewish opposition to particular forms of Zionism cannot reasonably be treated as betrayal of the Jewish people. But I am a Zionist, and have been all my life, whose understanding of Zionism recognizes Jewish national self-determination alongside Palestinian national self-determination and political equality.
In your video, you effectively dismissed liberal Zionists as people who provide moral cover for the violence of others. Here you describe the intellectual and political traditions that demonstrate why that characterization is historically inadequate.
You cannot simultaneously insist that the suppressed history of Jewish nationalism deserves to be recovered and then disregard the Zionist identities of people whose understanding of Jewish nationalism contradicts your own definition.
I would welcome a serious examination of how these different Zionisms developed, why some prevailed, why others failed, and what their adherents actually believed and did. That would also require recognizing that opposition to territorial domination and Palestinian dispossession has existed within Zionism itself, and was not necessarily a calculated means of facilitating either.
You are right that an argument was not settled merely because one side acquired political power. But neither can you settle the meaning of Zionism retrospectively by excluding the Zionists who disagreed with the people who acquired that power.
Michael, thank you — this is the most useful thing anyone has said to me in these comments, and you’re right.
Magnes and Buber were not anti-Zionists. Buber called himself a Zionist. Magnes moved to Jerusalem and helped build its university. What they rejected was the claim that Jewish national self-determination required exclusive Jewish sovereignty over the country, which is a different argument from the one the Pittsburgh Platform was making — that one denied Jewish peoplehood altogether. I put two incompatible traditions in one basket and labelled it anti-Zionism.
I have less excuse than you know. My own manuscript says, about Magnes, that he was not anti-Zionist but a passionate believer in the Jewish renaissance in Palestine. I wrote that, and then published a post that contradicted it. I’ll correct the piece.
What I’d still hold is narrower. Whatever Magnes was, he was erased. Twelve years of school in Haifa and I had never heard his name — I found him on a bottom shelf in a San Francisco bookshop in my thirties. That’s true whether he was a Zionist or not, and your correction actually strengthens the point I was making to American Jews: the argument didn’t happen outside Zionism, it happened inside it, and it was still written out.
Where we’ll still disagree: I don’t think I’m settling the meaning of Zionism by exclusion. I think the version that got the state, the army and the land is the one that answers for what was done with them. Buber’s Zionism didn’t lose a debate. It lost a country. And a movement is what it does once it has power.
You said you’d welcome a serious examination of how these different Zionisms developed and why some prevailed. So would I, and I’d rather do it with someone who disagrees with me. If you’d write that, I’ll publish it here. If you’d rather just keep correcting me in the comments, that works too.
Coby Friedman, this essay is much closer to the history of Zionism that I recognize than your video about the Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and the supposed division of labor between respectable and terrorist Zionists.
But you have overlooked something fundamental in your own account. Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, Brit Shalom, and Ihud were not simply representatives of an anti-Zionist tradition. Their advocacy of binationalism was itself part of the history of Zionism. Buber, in particular, understood himself as a Zionist. He rejected the idea that Jewish national self-determination required exclusive Jewish sovereignty over the country.
That is quite different from the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, which rejected the understanding of Jews as a nation altogether. You have brought together people whose disagreements with political Zionism arose from very different understandings of Jewish peoplehood, national aspirations, and the rights of Palestinian Arabs.
I agree that these traditions deserve far more attention than they have received. I also agree that Jewish opposition to particular forms of Zionism cannot reasonably be treated as betrayal of the Jewish people. But I am a Zionist, and have been all my life, whose understanding of Zionism recognizes Jewish national self-determination alongside Palestinian national self-determination and political equality.
In your video, you effectively dismissed liberal Zionists as people who provide moral cover for the violence of others. Here you describe the intellectual and political traditions that demonstrate why that characterization is historically inadequate.
You cannot simultaneously insist that the suppressed history of Jewish nationalism deserves to be recovered and then disregard the Zionist identities of people whose understanding of Jewish nationalism contradicts your own definition.
I would welcome a serious examination of how these different Zionisms developed, why some prevailed, why others failed, and what their adherents actually believed and did. That would also require recognizing that opposition to territorial domination and Palestinian dispossession has existed within Zionism itself, and was not necessarily a calculated means of facilitating either.
You are right that an argument was not settled merely because one side acquired political power. But neither can you settle the meaning of Zionism retrospectively by excluding the Zionists who disagreed with the people who acquired that power.
Michael, thank you — this is the most useful thing anyone has said to me in these comments, and you’re right.
Magnes and Buber were not anti-Zionists. Buber called himself a Zionist. Magnes moved to Jerusalem and helped build its university. What they rejected was the claim that Jewish national self-determination required exclusive Jewish sovereignty over the country, which is a different argument from the one the Pittsburgh Platform was making — that one denied Jewish peoplehood altogether. I put two incompatible traditions in one basket and labelled it anti-Zionism.
I have less excuse than you know. My own manuscript says, about Magnes, that he was not anti-Zionist but a passionate believer in the Jewish renaissance in Palestine. I wrote that, and then published a post that contradicted it. I’ll correct the piece.
What I’d still hold is narrower. Whatever Magnes was, he was erased. Twelve years of school in Haifa and I had never heard his name — I found him on a bottom shelf in a San Francisco bookshop in my thirties. That’s true whether he was a Zionist or not, and your correction actually strengthens the point I was making to American Jews: the argument didn’t happen outside Zionism, it happened inside it, and it was still written out.
Where we’ll still disagree: I don’t think I’m settling the meaning of Zionism by exclusion. I think the version that got the state, the army and the land is the one that answers for what was done with them. Buber’s Zionism didn’t lose a debate. It lost a country. And a movement is what it does once it has power.
You said you’d welcome a serious examination of how these different Zionisms developed and why some prevailed. So would I, and I’d rather do it with someone who disagrees with me. If you’d write that, I’ll publish it here. If you’d rather just keep correcting me in the comments, that works too.
Coby