Horner's Corner

Arendt’s Modest Proposal

by on Jan.02, 2010, under history, politics

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HISTORICAL NOTE (IRONY DEPARTMENT): In the late 1940s, when the question of a homeland for the Jewish people had passed from being a dream to a serious possibility, the philosopher Hannah Arendt broke ranks with the conventional (Zionist) wisdom. She suggested that the very worst model the Jews could emulate was the German one: the racial nation state. Only a state in which Palestinians and Jews had equal rights and recognition as citizens would hold out a hope for a conflict free future, based on justice.  She went on to make the following proposal: instead of an Israel based on race (Jewishness), carved forcibly out of Arab lands, why not found an independent state for Jews and Palestinians and make it part of the British Commonwealth of Nations? The Commonwealth would ensure both ethnic groups got a fair deal.

The idea found little support.

A wacky proposal, bound to fail? Maybe.

I wonder, though, if it was such a bad one, given what happened afterwards…

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2 Comments for this entry

  • Sam
    January 5th, 2010 on 2:34 am

    Here’s a selection from a paper I wrote for a Political Science conference on exactly this area of Arendt’s thought.

    Arendt favored a Jewish homeland as a solution to the perpetual statelessness of the Jews and saw a federation among the Arabs and Jews in Palestine as a key component to the survival of a Jewish homeland. Arendt was concerned about the future character of a Jewish state that did not live in peace with its neighbors. Arendt was uneasy about the political situation of the future Jewish state. She worried that “[t]he ‘victorious’ Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded inside ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests” (Arendt et al., 2007, p. 396). Without a federation external threats would overwhelm all other concerns, especially social experiments (like the Kibbutzim) and Jewish culture. Political theory and economic development would be centered solely on military survival and war (Arendt et al., 2007, p. 396). Arendt predicted that the Jews of Palestine would become like the Greeks of Sparta and change character to such an extent that they would no longer be able to represent world Jewry as a whole, becoming a state that was no longer the Jewish homeland (Arendt et al., 2007, p. 397).

  • Chris
    Chris
    January 5th, 2010 on 6:12 pm

    What an interesting comment -thanks for that. Your article sounds very interesting indeed.

    I’m impressed at Arendt’s creativity and prescience, in this and in so many other areas. I’m currently working on a book length study of her thought, focusing on her use of ‘reflective judgement’.

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