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A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs

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This is an excellent book. Buber's intelligence and sincerity are on display throughout it. Of course, I disagree with much of what Buber says. I'm a Polytheist, and I do not like Monotheistic religions. And I find some of Buber's advice to Israelis to be puzzling at times. Even after the British White Paper of 1939, he thought a Levantine Jewish state unnnecessary, although he admitted that most Levantine Jews disagreed. Still, one can see in these essays how he's always interested in equal rights, including rights for Jews that are neither more nor less than those of others.

I know that some Zionists are more than a little suspicious of Buber. But please try reading Mohandas Gandhi's 1938 article, "The Jews." I consider that article a vicious repudiation of human rights. Then read Buber's calm and dignified response to it.

I know that many anti-Zionists like to cite Buber. But I would advise them to copy his honesty and sincerity, traits I have been seeing far too little of from modern anti-Zionists. In my opinion, Buber would have been more than a little hesitant to excuse, let alone support, Arab aggression and slander, all in the name of equal rights.

Reading this book is like being struck by lightning.

It consists mostly of occasional pieces by the great German-Jewish "philosopher of dialogue" Martin Buber, who moved to Palestine in 1935 (rather late in the game). He was involved in the Zionist movement from the very start, however -- Herzl even put him in charge of editing Die Welt. Of course, he was always a "cultural" rather than "political" Zionist, and quickly lost his taste for the politics of Zionist Congresses.

Still, reading through this book, and becoming aware of the wisdom, compassion, and yes, political perspicuity with which Buber responded to the events of the day, one cannot resist the temptation to imagine how things might have gone if more people had listened to him.

As I said, Buber moved to Palestine late, but like many Zionists in the early twentieth century, he editorialized from afar. The timespan of the essays is wide, and one can see Buber's reactions to events such as the 1929 riots and the Arab Revolt of 1936-39. One of the most interesting aspects is Buber's polemic against the Zionist far-right and the lens through which it interpreted such events. Buber believed in the prophecy of Isaiah that it was only "B'Mishpat," with justice, that Zion could be redeemed, and opposed any conception of settlement that would commit Zionists to eternal enmity or warfare with the present inhabitants. He, and the rest of Brit Shalom, favored approaching the Palestinian Arabs, and getting a declaration from them, rather than settling under the aegis of British imperialism -- even if that meant temporarily reducing the numbers of Jews who could immigrate. At the same time, however, Buber resisted the Kantian moral purity of colleagues such as Hans Kohn, who resigned from the Zionist movement once he saw that it was implicated in violence. Buber argued that responsible engagement on behalf of the Jewish people meant acting to the limits of justice in the given situation.

Prof. Mendes-Flohr's introductions provide excellent background as well as a clear outline of Buber's much-neglected political theory, which might best be described as a kind of Jewish Biblical pragmatism or realism -- akin perhaps to the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, but with a definite tilt to the left.

There is much more I could say about this work. Reading it opened up the world of pre-state Palestine for me in a way I had not thought possible. It formed an entry point for me into the morass of contested history and politics that the discourse on the conflict has always been. An attack on Buber's political work and thought has been written by Yoram Hazony under the title "The Jewish State." The problem with the attack is, mainly, that once having directed the reader to the source, it is Buber's own words that retain the ring of truth.