The Blogs: Martin Buber, the Bund and a Binational State

We often look back retrospectively at historical cross roads in the story of Israel and inquire what if?

Take for example: What if Martin Buber’s organization Brit Shalom that promoted Jewish – Arab solidarity and co-operation accomplished its vision of creating a binational state. Would it have succeeded as a cohesive society, or become engulfed in fighting along sectarian lines? Would that country have reached the apex of technological innovation that makes Israel such a marvel of the world today, or rather resemble the squalor found in much of our region? Would the mass of subsequent Jewish immigration been feasible under such arrangements?

Buber’s vision indeed did have a strong appeal to the heart by extending the hand of friendship to a broader class of citizens. This idea has drawn fresh support by many nowadays, as the two state solution appears increasingly unrealistic. But had it been implemented rather than the UN partition it is entirely speculative what would have happened. It is all fine and dandy to esteem a lovely paradise of brotherhood. But that is the nature of imagined dreams. You don’t know what will happen until history takes its course.

A similar movement amongst 20th century European Jewry may provide some insight though. The Socialist Bund political party representing Jewish workers in Eastern Europe was opposed to Zionism, believing that Jews should strive to achieve political equality with their fellow citizens in the societies they already resided in. However this idealistic vision crumbled in the face of the rise of Nazism and ensuing genocide. This isn’t to equate the Palestinian Arabs with the Nazis, but the hostility present between Arabs and Jews in the 1930’s was already prevalent and didn’t seem conducive to coexistence en masse. Political arrangements have to account for how groups behave under deteriorating security conditions, not merely how they might behave under ideal conditions.

The issue with glorifying the prospect of a binational state is precisely that its proponents will face the same excruciating questions of governance, demography, immigration and security that any state would have to face. Every course of action adopted has a cost. Even the state of Israel itself is a compromise between the different visions of its founders and those who chose to make it home.

Buber’s ideal’s are not to be dismissed outright. He was fundamentally concerned with interpersonal relationships, and on that level they are are valid scheme for promoting reconciliation between Jews and Arabs on an individual and communal context.