Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East [Hardcover]

Fred Jerome (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0312362285 | ISBN-13: 978-0312362287 | Edition: First Edition

Albert Einstein thought and wrote extensively not just on the most difficult problems in physics, but also in politics. For the first time, this book collects his essays, interviews, and letters on the Middle East, Zionism, and Arab-Jewish relations. Many of these have never been published in English, and all of them contradict the popular image of Einstein as pro-Zionist. He was offered and refused the Presidency of Israel, but had he taken it, he may have said things the Zionists didn’t want to hear; he favored a non-religious state that would welcome Jew and Palestinian alike.

One person’s letters, even Einstein’s, cannot resolve the crisis in the Middle East, but decades later, when horrors of the conflict in the Middle East are familiar to everyone, the reflections of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers are a signpost, showing his commitment to social justice, understanding, and friendship between Jew and Arab.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Einstein on Israel and Zionism:

 

“Einstein on Israel and Zionism is a welcome and necessary contribution to the discussions about the Middle East crisis. You do not have to be a genius in order to understand the gravity of the situation, but it is essential to listen to one, especially if his name was Einstein. His thoughts make for fascinating reading, allow us new insights into the mind of one of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers and remind us that it is never too late."

-- Avraham Burg, author of The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes

 

“Reading the newly revealed correspondence in Fred Jerome’s book makes it clear that Einstein was a social commentator and humanitarian with a world view worthy of his scientific genius. It’s a pity that the Zionist movement as embodied in the State of Israel took a direction so divergent from the path advocated by the Jewish people’s greatest intellect.”
--Michael Palumbo, author of The Palestinian Catastrophe and Imperial Israel

 “Fred Jerome’s Einstein on Israel and Zionism is a valuable and timely contribution. Einstein’s views of Zionism were prescient. His actions regarding the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and his passionate beliefs regarding what that homeland should represent call for reconsideration by all Israelis and Palestinians and by all Jews and Muslims.” --Silvan. S. Schweber, author of Einstein and Oppenheimer and In the Shadow of the Bomb

"Einstein on Israel makes a great contribution to the history of Jewish engagement with Israel. Reading Einstein's letters makes it clear that there has never been a Jewish consensus on the critical questions of Zionism and a Jewish state. While sadly it seems Einstein's fear that Israel would become a "captive of narrow nationalism" has been realized, his humanism and call for equal rights and equal power between Jews and Palestinians in Israel/Palestine remains an inspiration, and model, today."--Adam Horowitz, coeditor, Mondoweiss.net

"Albert Einstein is all-too often depicted as a naif about politics; he was anything but that. He followed international and national politics assiduously, corresponded with leaders and ordinary people, and brought a passionate moral stance to the whole--fighting anti-semitism, racism, fascism, and nationalism. In this volume, Fred Jerome has assembled a myriad of documents bearing on Einstein's views of Zionism. Telegrams, letters, magazine articles, interviews--all contribute to a dense and heartfelt analysis of what it would mean to avoid the pitfalls of dogmatic nationalism, and to create a Jewish homeland utterly respectful of Palestinian rights and equality. Of course Einstein's physics speaks to us still; astonishingly, we can still learn from his moral-political reflections." -- Peter Galison, author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps and Image and Logic

 

 

About the Author

Fred Jerome is senior consultant to the Gene Media Forum, Newhouse School of Communications, Syracuse University. His articles and op-ed pieces have appeared in many publications including Newsweek and the New York Times. As a reporter in the South during the early 1960s, he covered the exploding Civil Rights movement, and has taught journalism at Columbia and New York University.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312362285
• ISBN-13: 978-0312362287
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very enlightening, July 22, 2009

By 

Samer Atiani - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East (Hardcover)

I thanked my friend a hundred times after he gave me this book. As a physicist, I hold Einstein dearly but I have always wondered about his stance on the State of Israel and its displacement of an indigenous population. I was pleasantly surprised by all the ideas and the foresightedness of Einstein, and saddened at how his compatriots at the time labeled him as naive and inexperienced, especially since his ideas couldn't appear to be more correct in light of the current situation in Israel/Palestine.

A big plus is that this book provides translations from German of letters that Einstein has written, so it lets Einstein express his own views for himself. Therefore, I disagree with some of the reviewers who term this book as "propaganda", unless they are implying that Einstein's personal intent was propaganda.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Was Einstein a Zionist?, November 8, 2009

By 

F. Bernadotte - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East (Hardcover)

The conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, which in Einstein's own lifetime was bitter and which has only grown sharper since, was not inevitable. So thought Albert Einstein at least. In "Einstein on Israel and Zionism", Fred Jerome has compiled a selection of Einstein's writings and speeches concerning the enterprise to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionism was controversial from the start, since it was clear that Palestine already had a number of inhabitants -- non-Jewish -- who could not reasonably be expected to welcome any effort naturally designed to dispossess them. Therefore, in their outward show the early Zionists very quickly ceased speaking of building a *state*, and instead spoke of creating a *homeland* for the Jews.

From his earliest contact with Zionism in 1914 at the age of thirty-five, Einstein was supportive of the Jewish homeland concept. He did so for two major reasons. First, he felt that a Jewish homeland in Palestine would raise the self-esteem of Jews in the diaspora; and, second, he believed firmly that because of anti-Semitism Jews needed a place of refuge as a last resort against persecution. His primary concern is with Jews in the diaspora; at no time does he suppose that life in the diaspora is invalid or impossible. In 1927 he stated: "For me the importance of the Zionist work lies precisely in the effect it will have on those Jews who will not themselves live in Palestine" (p. 60) But what about the Arabs who were already living in Palestine, what effect will Zionism have on them?

Einstein's view can be described as "cultural Zionism", the belief that in Palestine Jews could create an entity, a spiritual and intellectual center which would serve to foster Judaism as a culture, and Hebrew as a language, to unite Jews worldwide. In 1929: "It was a great achievement of Herzl to have realized and proclaimed...the establishment of a national home or, more accurately, a center in Palestine..." In this sense there is no question but that "Zionist" is a term that can justly be applied to Einstein.

However, Einstein never favored the existence of Israel as a political state. In fact, his writings attest that he firmly and consistently throughout his life opposed political Zionism. But wasn't that what the movement begun by Herzl was all about? One gets the impression that at the beginning Einstein, it could almost be said, deceived himself about the actual Zionist goals; but as time wore on, the scales fell from his eyes. He came to see that Weizmann and the rest of the Zionists represented a Jewish chauvinism whose realization would render impossible any just rapprochement with the Arab inhabitants of Palestine -- and which in the end would fail. To Weizmann, 1929: "If we are not able to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned nothing in our two thousand years of suffering, and deserve the fate which will befall us" (p. 78). In this sense, Einstein was anti-Zionist -- much to the chagrin of Weizmann and the mainstream Zionist movement.

One asks, what then is the right way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs? In today's world there is a widely accepted view that the only way to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict is to allow a Palestinian state to be created on the land that Israel has illegally occupied since 1967 and from which it must now withdraw. This is the vaunted "two-state solution". As demonstrated in this collection of his writings, Einstein was adamantly opposed to any two-state solution. To him it was very clear that Jews needed to share all the land of Palestine on an equal basis with Arabs. In 1947 the United Nations voted to partition Israel by creating separate states for Arabs and Jews -- this was the original two-state solution. Einstein opposed it, favoring instead a single bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs were represented on an equal basis: "What we can and should ask is a secured bi-national status in Palestine....if we ask more we are damaging our own cause" (1946, p. 176). He clearly felt that a *Jewish state* was incompatible with the need to maintain just relations with the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. The conflict was resolvable, but if only the Zionists renounced chauvinism and agreed to share the land equally. This has never happened, of course. Since Einstein's death in 1955, the situation for the Palestinians has grown starkly worse, and Jewish chauvinism has starkly increased.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What we never knew about Einstein, July 12, 2009

By 

Claire S. Carsman (Long Beach CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East (Hardcover)

We tend only to think about Einstein as defining energy and the atomic bomb. This book reveals much of the true character of this wonderful person.