in The Jewish Writings, Hannah Arendt wrote about her thoughts on the Jewish issue and in the essay, To Save The Jewish Homeland, she talked about the impossibility of a Jewish state and her thoughts on how to save the Jewish Homeland in the year 1948.
reading it now, 75 years later, amidst the attacks, it still seems relevant. or, does it?
Hannah Arendt
The Jewish Writings
online PDF of The Jewish Writings: https://pensarelespaciopublico.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hannah-arendt-the-jewish-writings-2007.pdf
summary of The Jewish Writings on Contemporary Thinkers: https://contemporarythinkers.org/hannah-arendt/book/jewish-writings/
To Save the Jewish Homeland republished online on Commentary Magazine: https://www.commentary.org/articles/mortbarrgmailcom/to-save-the-jewish-homelandthere-is-still-time/
To Save the Jewish Homeland
- P.388 – P.401
P.396
…Many opportunities for Jewish-Arab friendship have already been lost, but none of these failures can alter the basic fact that the existence of the Jews in Palestine depends on achieving it…
…There is very little doubt about the final outcome of an all-out war between Arabs and Jews. One can win many battles without winning a war…
…And even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist. The “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 and activities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy; economic development would be determined exclusively by the needs of war…
P.397
…Under such circumstances (as Ernst Simon has pointed out) the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large numbers of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland…
P.399
…a way out of this predicament may be found if the United Nations could summon up the courage in this unprecedented situation to take an unprecedented step by going to those Jewish and Arab individuals who at present are isolated because of their records as sincere believers in Arab-Jewish cooperation, and asking them to negotiate a truce…
…Such a move, however, could be effective only if concessions are made at once on both sides…
P.400
…It is true that many non-fanatical Jews of sincere goodwill have believed in partition as a possible means of solving the Arab-Jewish conflict. In the light of political, military, and geographic realities, however, this was always a piece of wishful thinking. The partition of so small a country could at best mean the petrifaction of the conflict, which would result in arrested development for both peoples; at worst it would signify a temporary stage during which both parties would prepare for further war. The alternative proposition of a federated state, also recently endorsed by Dr. Magnes, is much more realistic; despite the fact that it establishes a common government for two different peoples, it avoids the troublesome majority-minority constellation, which is insoluble by definition. A federated structure, moreover, would have to rest on Jewish-Arab community councils, which would mean that the Jewish-Arab conflict would be resolved on the lowest and most promising level of proximity and neighborliness. A federated state, finally, could be the natural stepping-stone for any later, greater federated structure
in the Near East and the Mediterranean area…
P.401
…No matter what the outcome of the present deadlock, the following objective factors should be axiomatic criteria for the good and the bad,. the right and the wrong:
I) The real goal of the Jews in Palestine is the building up of a Jewish homeland. This goal must never be sacrificed to the pseudo-sovereignty of a Jewish state.
2) The independence of Palestine can be achieved only on a solid basis of Jewish-Arab cooperation. As long as Jewish and Arab leaders both claim that there is “no bridge” between Jews and Arabs (as Moshe Shertok has just put it), the territory cannot be left to the political wisdom of its own inhabitants.
3) Elimination of all terrorist groups (and not agreements with them) and swift punishment of all terrorist deeds (and not merely protests against them) will be the only valid proof that the Jewish people in Palestine has recovered its sense of political reality and that Zionist leadership is again responsible enough to be trusted with the destinies of theyishuv.
4) Immigration to Palestine, limited in numbers and in time, is the only “irreducible minimum” in Jewish politics.
5) Local self-government and mixed Jewish-Arab municipal and rural councils, on a small scale and as numerous as possible, are the only realistic political measures that can eventually lead to the political emancipation of Palestine.
It is still not too late…
Wikipedia: Hannah Arendt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt
@narcissan 