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From Federalism to Binationalism: Hannah Arendt's Shifting Zionism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2015

GIL RUBIN
GIL RUBIN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Columbia University, 413 Fayerweather Hall, MC 2527 1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10025; [email protected]
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Abstract

The German-Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) had famously opposed the establishment of a Jewish nation state in Palestine. During the Second World War, however, Arendt also spoke out repeatedly against the establishment of a binational Arab-Jewish state. Rejecting both alternatives, Arendt advocated for the inclusion of Palestine in a multi-ethnic federation that would not consist only of Jews and Arabs. Only in 1948, in an effort to forestall partition, did Arendt revise her earlier critique and endorse a binational solution for Palestine. This article offers a new reading of the evolution of Arendt's thought on Zionism and argues that her support for federalism must be understood as part of a broader wartime debate over federalism as a solution to a variety of post-war nationality problems in Europe, the Middle East and the British Empire. By highlighting the link between debates on wartime federalism and the future of Palestine, this article also underscores the importance of examining the legacy of federalism in twentieth century Europe for a more complete understanding of the history of Zionism.

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Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 393 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 Arendt's intellectual fascination with federalism predated and extended beyond the 1940s. Yet it was during and in the aftermath of the Second World War, when Arendt believed there existed a real opportunity to reshape the global political order, that her political commitment to federalism was most intense. For the centrality of federalism to Arendt's political thought, see Moses, Dirk ‘Das römische Gespräch in a New Key: Hannah Arendt, Genocide, and the Defense of Republican Civilization’, The Journal of Modern History, 85, 4 (2013), 867–913Google Scholar, as well as Klusmeyer, Douglas, ‘Hannah Arendt's Case for Federalism’, Publius 40, 1 (2010), 31–58.Google Scholar

2 In several of her wartime essays Arendt portrayed the Second World War as a battle between the principle of the ethnic nation state – represented in its extreme by Nazi Germany – and the federal political model – represented by the United States, the Soviet Union and a future more inclusive British Commonwealth of Nations. Though Arendt is famous for her later critique of the Soviet Union, particularly in her major work The Origins of Totalitarianism, during the war she had a more tolerant view of the Soviet state. In her 1943 essay ‘The Crisis of Zionism’ Arendt wrote: ‘There are many problems unsolved in Soviet Russia, and I for one do not believe that even the economic problems have been resolved there, let alone the most important question of political freedom; but one thing has to be admitted: the Russian Revolution found an entirely new and – as far as we can see today – an entirely just way to deal with nationality or minorities. The new historic fact is this: that for the first time in modern history, an identification of nation and state has not even been attempted.’ See Arendt, Hannah, ‘The Crisis of Zionism’, in Kohn, Jerome and Feldman, Ron, eds., The Jewish Writings (New York: Schoken, 2007), 336Google Scholar, as well as Arendt, ‘The Return of Russian Jewry’, ibid. 173. For more on Arendt's wartime view of the Soviet Union see Piterberg, Gabriel, ‘Zion's Rebel Daughter: Hannah Arendt on Palestine and Jewish Politics’, New Left Review, 48 (2007), 49.Google Scholar

3 For a comprehensive study of Magnes' engagement with binationalism, see Heller, Joseph, Mi-Berit shalom le-Iḥud: Yehudah Layb Magnes ṿeha-maʾavaḳ li-medinah du-leʾumit (Jerusalem: Magnes University Press, 2003)Google Scholar. The literature on Zionist binationalism, particularly on Brit Shalom, the binationalist political organisation that preceded Ihud, is voluminous and expanding. For the most recent works on the topic, see Gordon, Adi, ed., Brit shalom vehatsiyonut haduleumit: ‘hasheelah haaravit’ kesheelah yehudit (Jerusalem: Carmel Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Dimtiri, Schumsky, Ben prag li-yerushalayim: Tsiyonut Prag ve-ra'ayon ha-medinah ha-du-le'umit be Erets Yisra'el (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2010)Google Scholar and Weiss, Yfaat, ‘Central European Ethnonationalism and Zionist Binationalism’, Jewish Social Studies 11, 1 (2004), 93–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent overview and reconsideration of the scholarship on Brit Shalom and Zionist binationalism, see Aschheim, Steven, Beyond the Border: The German Jewish Legacy Abroad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 6–44.Google Scholar

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5 The exception is Gabriel Pietersburg's review of Arendt's so-called ‘Jewish Writings’, a collection of essays Arendt wrote on Jewish themes published in 2007, in which he discusses the distinction Arendt drew between federalism and binationalism. See Pieterberg, ‘Zion's Rebel Daughter’, 39–57.

6 Butler discusses Arendt's commitment to federalism in the context of her engagement with Zionism as part of a work whose goal is to advance a new conception of binationalism. While Butler briefly acknowledges Arendt's critique of binationalism, overall she views binationalism and federalism as two different versions of the same political programme. Butler writes, ‘By the 1940s, Arendt, Buber and Magnes argued in favor of a binational state, proposing a federation in which Jews and Arabs would maintain their respective cultural autonomy’. See Butler, Judith, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 120Google Scholar, as well as Butler, ‘I Merely Belong to Them’, London Review of Books, 10 May 2007. Similarly, Raz- Krakotzkin examines Arendt's thought on federalism in the context of a paper aimed at exploring ‘Arendt's political articulation of binationalism’. While he acknowledges Arendt's critique of Magnes, he argues it should be understood ‘within a concrete historical situation’ and not as a general rejection of the principles of binationalism which he defines as ‘the principle that includes the rights of both, that takes into consideration the rights of Palestinians when we discuss the rights of the Jews and vice versa’. Such a broad definition, however, obscures our ability to better understand Arendt's views on Zionism in the 1940s, a decade in which binationalism was not a merely philosophical principle but a concrete political programme that Arendt repeatedly opposed until 1948. See Raz-Krakotzkin, , ‘Jewish Peoplehood, “Jewish Politics,” and Political Responsibility: Arendt on Zionism and Partitions’, College Literature 38, 1 (2011), 57–74Google Scholar. In an earlier essay Raz- Krakotzkin entirely ignored Arendt's commitment to federalism and her critique of Magnes and suggested she should be viewed as an intellectual who followed the line forged by Brit Shalom in the 1930s. See Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon, ‘Binationalism and Jewish Identity: Hannah Arendt and the Question of Palestine’, in Ascheim, Steven, ed., Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem (Berkeley: California University Press, 2001), 173.Google Scholar

7 For the salience of post Zionism in Israeli culture in the mid-late 1990s, see Ram, Uri, ‘Post-Zionist Studies of Israel. The First Decade’, Israel Studies Forum, 20, 2 (2005), 26Google Scholar. For recent reflections on Arendt in the context of the post-Zionist moment in the Israeli academia see Hever, Hannan, ‘The Post-Zionist Condition’, Critical Inquiry 38, 3 (2012), 630–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11 Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 70.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. 92.

13 Ibid. 105.

14 Arendt admired Buber in the 1930s and maintained a close, though at times troubled, friendship with Gershom Scholem, two prominent members of the Brit Shalom association. For Arendt's views on Buber see Hannah Arendt, ‘A Guide for Youth: Martin Buber’, in Kohn and Feldman, eds., Jewish Writings, 31–3. For a consideration of the Arendt-Scholem relationship see Aschheim, Steven, ‘Between New York and Jerusalem’, Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2011, 5–8.Google Scholar

15 Young-Bruehl, Arendt, 72–3. Arendt articulated her ideas on the issue of Jewish collectivity succinctly in 1935 with regard to German Jewry, though she believed that this held true for the rest of European Jewry: ‘When, almost two years ago, the German Jewish community, in its entirety, had to respond to the isolation imposed by the laws of exception, and the material and moral ruin of its collective existence, all Jews, whether they liked or not, had to become aware of themselves as Jews.’ Arendt, ‘A Guide for Youth’, in Kohn and Feldman, eds., 31.

16 Arendt, ‘The Minority Question’, in Kohn and Feldman, eds., Jewish Writings, 125–31.

17 Ibid. 128.

18 See, for example, the article by international lawyer Nicolas Politis, ‘Les Transfert de populations’, Politique étrangère, 2, 5 (1940), 83–94. For a general consideration of public and official attitudes toward population transfers in the Second World War see Matthew Frank, ‘Reconstructing the Nation-State: Population Transfers in Central Eastern Europe, 1944–8’, in Reinisch, Jessica and White, Elizabeth, eds., The Disentanglement of Populations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 27–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Arendt, ‘The Minority Question’, 129.

20 Ibid. 130.

21 Arendt, ‘A Way Toward the Reconciliation of Peoples’, ibid. 261.

22 For a general discussion of wartime federalism see Lipgens, Walter, A History of European Integration, Volume 1 1945–1947 (New York: Clarendon, 1982), 44–76Google Scholar; Case, ‘Strange Politics of Federative Ideas’, as well as Mark Mazower, Dark Continent. Europe's Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 1998), 197–202 and Rudolf Schlesinger, Federalism in Central and Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945).

23 For a discussion of wartime plans for a Franco-British Union, see Shlaim, Avi, ‘Prelude to a Downfall: the British offer of Union to France, June 1940’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9, 3 (1974), 27–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mazower, Dark Continent, 199.

24 Quoted in Shlaim, ‘Prelude to Downfall’, 50.

25 Lipgens, Walter, ‘European Federation in the Political Thought of Resistance Movements during World War II’, Central European History, 1, 1 (1968), 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as Mazower, Dark Continent, 201.

26 Streit, Clarence, Union Now: A Proposal for a Union of the Democracies of the North Atlantic (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939Google Scholar).

27 Mazower, Mark, No Enchanted Palace. The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 54–63.Google Scholar

28 For Arendt's analysis of wartime federalist plans for east-central Europe see Arendt, ‘Foreign Affairs in the Foreign Language Press’, in Kohn, Jerome, ed., Essays in Understanding: 1930–1954 (New York: Schoken, 1994), 81–105Google Scholar. On federalism in east-central Europe see also Case, ‘Strange Politics of Federative Ideas’, as well as Case, ‘Reconstruction in East-Central Europe’.

29 For accounts on the subject written by contemporaries, see Taborsky, Eduard, ‘A Polish-Czechoslovak Confederation, A Story of the First Soviet Veto’, Journal of Central European Affairs, 9, 4 (1950), 379–95Google Scholar, as well as Wandycz, Piotr, Czechoslovak-Polish Confederation and the Great Powers 1940–43 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956).Google Scholar

30 Arendt, ‘Can the Jewish Arab Question be Solved?’, in Kohn and Feldman, eds., Jewish Writings, 196.

31 Ibid.

32 Arendt, ‘The Return of Russian Jewry’, ibid. 173.

33 Arendt, ‘The End of Rumor’, ibid. 206.

34 See, for instance, Pinson, Koppel S., ‘Antisemitism in the Postwar World’, Jewish Social Studies, 7, 2 (1945), 112.Google Scholar

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36 The exception is David Sphiro's account of the Biltmore programme that traces the deliberately ambiguous way in which both Ben-Gurion and Weizmann employed the term ‘Jewish Commonwealth’ during the war. Sphiro's account, however, generally overlooks the broader political debates over the question of federalism and more specifically the subject of an Arab federation. See Sphiro, David H., From Philanthropy to Activism: The Political Transformation of American Zionism in the Holocaust Years 1933–1945 (New York: Pergamon, 1994), 71–101.Google Scholar

37 The text of the resolution is reprinted in ibid. 99–101.

38 Natan Feinberg, ‘Hamusag Ke'hiliya’, A306/100, Papers of Natan Feinberg, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem.

39 In a memorandum drafted by Weizmann and Ben-Gurion on 9 September 1941 it was stated that ‘considering the strategic and economic importance of Palestine, the inclusion of the Jewish state in the British Commonwealth would be to the interest of both; but we should also be ready, if necessary, to consider joining, under proper safeguards, in a Federation with Arab states’. See Chaim Weizmann to Harry Sacher, 25 Sept. 1941, in Michael J. Cohen, ed., The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Vol. XX (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1979), 203. Weizmann repeated these views in a January 1942 article for Foreign Affairs, see Weizmann, Chaim, ‘Palestine's Role in the Solution of the Jewish Problem’, Foreign Affairs, 20, 2 (Jan. 1942), 338CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ben-Gurion, too, stated on several occasions that the Jewish Commonwealth would be part of the British Empire or a Mid-East Federation. See Shpiro From Philanthropy to Activism, 75.

40 Historians of Zionism are now increasingly examining the ways in which Zionist leaders conceived of a Jewish Palestine as part of a British imperial framework. See, for example, Dubnov, Arie M., ‘The Dream of the Seventh Dominion: Liberal Imperialism and the Palestine Question’, presented at the Ninth International Seminar on Decolonization, , Washington DC, 2014Google Scholar. I wish to thank Arie Dubnov for sharing the paper with me.

41 Chaim Weizmann to Blanche Dugdale, 8 Jan. 1943, in Cohen, Chaim Weizmann, Vol XX, 386.

42 For more on the wartime discussions on an Arab federation, see Porath, Yehoshua, In Search of Arab Unity 1930–1945 (London: Routledge, 1986), primarily 106–48Google Scholar and 257–66, as well as Zweig, Ron, Britain and Palestine during the Second World War (London: Royal Historical Society, 1986), 89–115Google Scholar and Thornhill, Michael, ‘Britain and the Politics of the Arab League, 1943–1950’, in Cohen, Michael J. and Kolinsky, Marin, eds., Demise of the British Empire in the Middle East: Britain's Responses to Nationalist Movements 1943–55 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 41–63.Google Scholar

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44 Shpiro, From Philanthropy to Activism, 77.

45 In particular, Zionist leaders were hoping to win the support of the British and Saudi leadership for the creation of a Jewish autonomous region in Palestine that would be part of an envisioned Arab federation led by King Ibn-Saud. See Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, 80–106.

46 Arendt, ‘The Crisis of Zionism’, in Kohn and Feldman, eds., Jewish Writings, 335–6.

47 Ibid. 334.

48 Magnes, Judah Leon, ‘Toward Peace in Palestine’, Foreign Affairs, 21, 2 (1943), 239–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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50 Arendt, ‘Can the Jewish Arab Question be Solved?’, in Kohn and Feldman, eds., Jewish Writings, 194.

51 Arendt, ‘The Crisis of Zionsim’, in ibid., 336.

52 Arendt, ‘Can the Jewish Arab Question be Solved?’, ibid. 195.

53 Ibid. 195.

54 Arendt, Hannah, ‘Concerning Minorities’, Contemporary Jewish Record, 7, 4 (1944), 366.Google Scholar

55 Ibid. 366.

56 See Engel, David, ‘Crisis and Lachrymosity: On Salo Baron, Neobaronianism and the Study of Modern European Jewish History’, Jewish History, 20, 3/4 (2006), 259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 For the early relationship between Arendt and Baron, see the following letters: Hannah Arendt to Salo Baron 28 Oct. 1941; 13 Nov. 1941; 18 Nov. 1941; 4 Jul. 1942; 28 Jul., 1942; 2 Oct., 1943, M0580, box 11, Salo W. Baron Papers, Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections and University Archives. For more on the relationship between Arendt and Baron see Natan Sznaider, Jewish Memory and the Cosmopolitan Order: Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Condition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), 47–9, as well as Elisabeth Gallas, ‘Das Lecichenhaus der Bücher’: Kulturrestitution und jüdisches Geschichtsdenken nach 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2013), primarily 234–44.

58 Engel, ‘Crisis and Lachrymosity’, 255.

59 Salo Baron, ‘Israel's Present’, Address to the Union of American Jewish Congregations, New York, 1941, M0580, box 386, Salo W. Baron Papers.

60 Baron, Salo, ‘Reflections on the Future of the Jews of Europe’, Contemporary Jewish Record, 3, 4 (1940), 362Google Scholar. This address was first delivered to the joint session of the National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare meeting, Pittsburgh, 25 May 1940. While Baron's support for federalism had been strengthened during the Second World War, his support for a European federation should be traced back to the interwar period and is found prominently in his A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937). See also Engel, ‘Crisis and Lachrymosity’, 255.

61 Baron, ‘Reflections on the Future’, 362.

62 Salo Baron, ‘Prospects of Peace in Palestine’, public lecture, University of Chicago, 28 June 1942. Reprinted in Phillip W. Ireland, ed., The Near East: Problems and Prospects (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1942), 130.

63 Ibid. 133.

64 Ibid. 133.

65 Arendt, Hannah, ‘To Save the Jewish Homeland: There is Still Time’, Commentary, 5 May 1948, 400.Google Scholar

66 Ibid. 400.

67 Ibid. 402.

68 Ibid. 405.

69 Cohen, Michael J., ‘Truman and the State Department: The Palestine Trusteeship Proposal, Mar. 1948’, Jewish Social Studies, 43 2 (1981), 165–78Google Scholar, as well as Judis, John B., Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 301–11.Google Scholar

70 Arendt, ‘To Save the Jewish Homeland’, 405.

71 Ibid. 405.

72 Ibid. 405, as well as Hannah Arendt, ‘Peace or Armistice in the Middle East?’, Review of Politics, 12, 1 (1950), 56–82. The essay was published in 1950 but was written in 1948, most probably during September or October.

73 Arendt, Hannah, ‘The Failure of Reason: The Mission of Bernadotte’, in Kohn, and Feldman, , eds., Jewish Writings, 408–13Google Scholar. Originally published in Oct. 1948 in the magazine New Leader.

74 Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 222–33.

75 Judah Leon Magnes, ‘For a Jewish-Arab Confederation’, letter to the editor, Commentary, Oct. 1948.

76 Arendt to Magnes, 14 July 1948, The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress; Arendt, ‘The Failure of Reason’, 409–10. See also Arendt's memo on the first Bernadotte proposal, ‘Memo on the Bernadotte's Proposals for a Palestine Settlement’, Aug. 1948, The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress.

77 Arendt, ‘The Failure of Reason’, in Kohn and Feldman, eds., Jewish Writings, 408.

78 Ibid. 411.

79 Magnes to Arendt, 7 Oct. 1948, The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress.

80 Hannah Arendt, Review of Nationalities and National Minorities by Oscar Janowsky, Jewish Social Studies, 8, 3 (1946), 204, as well as Arendt, Review of Two Continents: A Democratic Federation of East-Central Europe by Felix Gross, Commentary, 1 Dec. 1945, 92–3.

81 See ‘The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man’, in Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Florida: Harcourt, 1968), 267–304.

82 Arendt, Hannah, ‘“The Rights of Man”: What Are They?’, Modern Review, 3, 1 (1949), 31.Google Scholar

83 See, for example, Arendt to Magnes, 17 Sept. 17 1948, The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress. In this letter Arendt edited a letter Magnes submitted to Commentary magazine and suggested a formulation that included the following sentence: ‘It is most unfortunate that the same men who for many years would point to the tragedy of Jewish Displaced Persons as the main argument for immediate mass-immigration into Palestine, are now willing, as far as the world knows, to help create a new category of Displaced Persons.’ While Magnes originally wrote these words, it seems plausible to assume that Arendt would not have carefully revised Magnes' original formulation had she not subscribed to the same view herself.