-
Chapter 1. Zionist Voices of Dissent: Ahad Ha’Am and Martin Buber
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 Zionist Voices of Dissent Ahad Ha’Am and Martin Buber Against a Jewish State Like All States The determination with which both Ahad Ha’Am and Martin Buber disapproved of political Zionism would most likely have earned them vehement denunciations from the establishment Zionists of today.1 In its own time the dominance of political Zionism effectively silenced dissenting voices. Although it is true that neither Ahad Ha’Am nor Buber could be completely ignored in the Zionist arena due to their intellectual stature, their position that the Zionist project of Jewish return to the land should by no means imitate Western colonialist nation-states hardly left a mark on the Zionist platform, while their opposition to the Zionist emphasis on utilitarian political interests went largely unnoticed. Nonetheless both intellectuals persisted in their unpopular positions despite personal grief and disenchantment . Based on the conviction that human beings have some degree of control over their fates and therefore must assume responsibility for charting their historical destinies, both Ahad Ha’Am and Buber continued to speak and write of their vision of Zionism as a source of spiritual renewal for the Jewish people rather than a means to achieve Jewish political sovereignty. It is impossible to gauge the effect of their foresight had they been accorded a measure of attention when the Yishuv in Eretz Israel was in its initial, pioneering stages. Prominent Zionist scholars reject the “what would have happened if” question, claiming that speculations about hypothetical historical developments cannot replace the facts 27 28 Zionism and the Discourses of Negation that actually occurred.2 However, in view of today’s intensifying debate over the character of the Zionist Jewish state and its position vis-à-vis Israeli Arabs as well as the Palestinians under Israeli occupation , this question has assumed increasing relevance. The two thinkers remind us that there were voices that opposed the Zionist politics of denial and negation of others and their histories. Indeed, their perspectives have increasingly been recognized in scholarly and popular debates on Zionism.3 In an important 1897 essay entitled “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,” written in response to the First Zionist Congress, Ahad Ha’Am denounced the spiritual destitution of the Zionist political platform. As he foresaw it, the desire for political sovereignty would lead to excessive materialism, which would preclude national unity and its safeguards of Jewish moral tradition and historical memory: “A political ideal which is not grounded in our national culture is apt to seduce us from loyalty to our own inner spirit and to beget in us a tendency to find the path of glory in the attainment of material power and political dominion, thus breaking the thread that unites us with the past and undermining our historical foundation.”4 Fifty years later (June 1947), before the decisive partition plan vote in November,5 Buber spoke about the Palestinian problem on Dutch radio. Buber claimed that excessive materialistic considerations motivated the drive for political power and prevented Jewish settlers from establishing relationships of trust and cooperation with the Palestinian people. He observed that “the society of men, infected by the domination of the political element, seeks to achieve more than what it truly needs.” In Palestine, Buber claimed, “there is no doubt that the possibilities for cooperation, flowing from the two peoples’ common origin and shared task, could have overcome all . . . obstacles —were it not for the intervention of the political element . . . [that] has interfered to an ever-increasing extent with the creation of . . . mutual trust.”6 Both thinkers characterize Zionist political ambitions as the wish to possess more in order to control and subjugate those who have less. According to them, the desire for economic gain is integral to a system of governance predicated upon enslavement and exploitation of the weak. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that [44.201.131.213] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:35 GMT) Zionist Voices of Dissent 29 both Ahad Ha’Am and Buber fully subscribed to the Zionist idea of an independent, persecution-free, full Jewish life in the ancestral land. For neither, however, did homeland signify political sovereignty. On the contrary, the Yishuv in Eretz Israel should have become the source of spiritual and cultural revival of the Jewish people. They saw the Jewish settlement in Palestine as a unique opportunity to create a model of governance other than that of a nation-state; they talked about creating a community that...