Zionism’s Identity Crisis, or The Final Defeat of Cultural Zionism
Why Cultural Zionists like Einstein and Arendt Should Be Called Anti-Zionists Today
In 2018, Israel’s Knesset passed the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. The chairman of the committee that drafted it said,
“This is the law of all laws. It is the most important law in the history of the State of Israel, which says that everyone has human rights, but national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people. That is the founding principle on which the state was established.” —Amir Ohana
The Nation-State Law has been criticized by Israelis and foreigners alike for excluding anyone in Israel who is not Jewish — one of its consequences was demoting Arabic from an official language to a special status language—but Ohana told the truth. It is not the principle that the best Zionists wanted, but it is the principle that Modern Israel was founded on.
In the 19th century, two incompatible visions of Zionism developed. Theodor Herzl wanted a Jewish state where Jews were the dominant majority—his approach is remembered today as political Zionism. Ahad Ha’am wanted a homeland for Jews in a state where Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together in peace as equals—his approach is remembered today as cultural Zionism.
Ha’am had visited Palestine and was appalled by the way the early Zionist colonists treated non-Jews. He wrote that they “deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions.” He called for Zionists to take a better path:
“We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in our dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment.” —Ahad Ha’am, “Truth from the Land of Israel”, 1891
Cultural Zionism is an important footnote in any history of Israel. Its supporters include Jewish critics of mainstream Zionism and modern Israel like Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, and Hannah Arendt.
But cultural Zionism was effectively irrelevant by 1917, when the Balfour Declaration gave British support to the political Zionists’ dream of a segregated Israel. By 1948, when Ben-Gurion launched Plan Dalet to take more land than the United Nations plan called for, cultural Zionism was completely irrelevant. If you use the definitions of people like Israel’s current leader, who insists his critics are antisemites, cultural Zionists are not Zionists. In modern terms, cultural Zionists were anti-Zionist Zionists.
Though cultural Zionism failed, it struggles to survive among Israel’s best supporters. That may be why the Knesset passed the Nation-State Law: It puts into law the triumph of political Zionism over cultural Zionism.
Some quotes by Einstein, Arendt, and other cultural Zionists
“I think that the time has come when the Jewish policy as to Palestine must be very clear, and that now only one of two policies is possible … The one policy may be termed that of militarist, imperialist, political Zionism; the other that of pacific, international, spiritual Zionism; and if some authorities will not choose to call the latter idea Zionism, then let it be called the Love of Zion, or the Return to Zion, or any other name you will.” — Judah Magnes , founding chancellor of the Hebrew University, to Chaim Weizmann, then president of the World Zionist Organization, 1929
“I feel that I can no longer remain a leading official within the Zionist Organisation… We pretend to be innocent victims. Of course the Arabs attacked us in August [1929]. Since they have no armies, they could not obey the rules of war. They perpetrated all the barbaric acts that are characteristic of a colonial revolt. But we are obliged to look into the deeper cause of this revolt. We have been in Palestine for twelve years [since the start of the British occupation] without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people. We have been relying exclusively upon Great Britain’s military might. We have set ourselves goals which by their very nature had to lead to conflict with Arabs… for twelve years we pretended that the Arabs did not exist and were glad when we were not reminded of their existence.” — Hans Kohn to Berthold Feiwel, 1929
“The unique durability of the Jewish community is to a large degree based on our geographical dispersion, and the fact that we consequently do not possess instruments of power that will allow us to commit great stupidities out of national fanaticism.” — Albert Einstein, 1936
“I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain — especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state.” — Albert Einstein, 1938
“I am in favor of Palestine being developed as a Jewish Homeland but not as a separate State. It seems to me a matter for simple common sense that we cannot ask to be given the political rule over Palestine where two thirds of the population are not Jewish. What we can and should ask is a secured bi-national status in Palestine with free immigration.” — Albert Einstein, 1946
“..they treat the Arabs, those still here, in a way that in itself would be enough to rally the whole world against Israel.” —Hanah Arendt, 1955
