In 1925, Buber became an active member of the German chapter of Brith Shalom (The Peace Association), which means literally, the Covenant of Peace, an organization dedicated to cultivating mutual relations between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.[1] Buber later played an integral role in the League for Jewish-Arab Rapprochement and Cooperation, and headed the creation of an associated party, Ichud (Union), established in August of 1942.[2] Buber’s vision for Arab-Jewish relations in the Middle East was the creation of a bi-national state, consisting of direct relationships between Jewish and Arab communities. This vision, however, was not shared by the majority of Jewish Israelis who believed the central aim was simply the defense and security of the Jewish “homeland” from the supposedly imminent Arab threats. Buber, as it turned out, was tragically prescient in his warnings about the aggressive political tactics adopted by the Israeli government, most clearly expressed in his debates with David Ben-Gurion, who eventually would be named the first Prime Minister of the state of Israel.[3] Ben-Gurion and other political leaders, as Jewish historian Laurence Silberstein notes, “elevated the nation and the state to the level of ultimate value”.[4] In contrast, Buber did not see the bi-national state as an absolute solution; rather, it would create the conditions for dialogue, wherein the Jewish and Arab peoples could come to together to address problems and challenges – whether economic, cultural, political, or social.[5] Hence, in regards to the question of Palestine and the future of the Arab and Jewish peoples in the region, Buber called on the people of each nation to take an active part in the creation of a bi-national state, rather than allow political leaders, consumed by political illusion to dictate the future of the region. Alas, Buber’s call was and has largely been ignored, and the region, since the creation of the state of Israel in 1947, has been beset with political unrest, violence, and a growing distrust between the two peoples.[6]
As early as 1921, Buber believed the grounds for cooperation had to be cultivated through “intensive and systematic cultivation”.[7] What Buber meant by intensive and systematic cultivation was not the simple imposition of formula and program on the Jewish and Arab communities. Rather, he saw that the framework of a bi-national state, cultivated through Arab-Jewish rapprochement, would create the possibility for trust between the two peoples. The actualization of this trust, however, was not a task left to politicians, scholars, or bureaucrats; trust would be actualized through the participation of communities and its members in addressing common interests, such as economic interests. Rather than simply consenting to decisions and programs formulated by politicians such as Ben-Gurion, providing such political ends “the absolute form of unambiguous moral imperatives”[8], Buber, through his involvement in Ichud, actively tried to cultivate social and political relations between the two peoples; but such attempts failed, because the ‘majority’ of Arabs and Jews did not believe cooperation was possible, due in large part to the prevalence of political distrust, which painted the other side as threat or enemy.
The creation of the state of Israel, built upon a series of unilateral actions that neither acknowledged nor considered the claims of the Arab population, only reinforced a Palestinian Arab view of Jews “as invaders bent upon dispossessing the Arab masses”.[9] Therefore, politicians such as Ben-Gurion, in their “realist” approach to the situation in Palestine, willingly took on the stereotypes regular Arabs inscribed onto Jews, while considered the Arab population within and around Palestine to be threats to the security of the newly created Jewish state, and took political steps towards militarizing the new state.[10] Although Buber reluctantly embraced the new Jewish state, he insisted that the Jews’ historical re-entry into their homeland “took place through a false gateway”[11]. For Buber, without the possibility of trust, and its subsequent cultivation through dialogue between peoples of the two nations, there would be no lasting peace for the new Jewish state or its neighbours. This view, as Silberstein notes, would often lead Buber into direct confrontation with Israeli government leaders.[12] And as Buber points out in a January 1962 speech, “whoever considers war to be inevitable collaborates, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, in bringing about war,”; addressing directly the readiness of most Jews to accept the political illusions fed them by government and its leadership.[13]
Buber poses a challenge to the idea that the task of a citizen is to legitimate the current regime - through ballot, party participation, or activism, and tacitly consent to the actions undertaken by leaders – “Argue as much as you want and about whatever you like, but obey!”[14] This reasoned capitulation, argues Buber, leads humanity towards illusions and away from the actual life between persons. For Buber, political surplus, afforded by tacit consent, exacerbates political illusions by fostering and addressing phantom threats rather than confronting the actual problems that threaten the life of the interhuman. Let us turn our attention to an article by written Buber in May 1946 concerning the escalating tensions between Arabs and Jewish Israelis in order to explore this point. In the course of the article, Buber wonders why the emerging conflict had been framed as a zero-sum political game. Although real conflicts do arise between groups of people, these conflicts, according to Buber, can be resolved “within the domain of life itself”, a domain between persons not dominated by the political principle.[15] However, in modern politics, the ‘other side’ is assumed to absolutely untrustworthy until proven otherwise, entrenching the myth that conflict between groups are necessarily irreconcilable, the ineluctable divide between victor and defeated.[16] The assumption is that conflict and contestation is necessary for a regime to retain its distinctively political character.[17] This imbalanced need to sustain politics for the sake of politics generates illusory threats by exaggerating real conflict to grotesque proportions. In his short article, “A Tragic Conflict?” (1946), Buber writes, “The politics of a group produces within its members a sense of conflict with proportions much greater than those of the real conflict, and accords it a different, seemingly absolute, character.”[18]
[1] From a 1925 document produced by the group, it states its object. “The object of the Association is to arrive at an understanding between Jews and Arabs as to the form of their mutual social relations in Palestine on the basis of absolute political equality of two culturally autonomous peoples, and to determine the lines of their co-operation for the development of their country.” And as Mendes-Flohr notes, the bi-national state the group had in mind, at least at this stage, “was a modus vivendi” between Zionism and Palestinian Arab nationalism within the existing political framework of the 1920 British Mandate (which, in short, established the goal of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, elaborating upon the 1917 Balfour Declaration that initially set out this aim). Hence, according to Mendes-Flohr, “Birth Shalom envisioned as the most reasonable solution to the problem of Palestine a constitutional agreement whereby Jews and Arabs would enjoy political and civil parity within the unitary framework of the Mandate.” Martin Buber, “Brith Shalom”, A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs. Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 72-75.
[2] In the program of the Ichud published on September 3, 1942, which Buber composed along with his colleagues Robert Weltsch and Judah L. Magnes, once again asserts the need for co-operation between Jewish and Arab peoples. Article 2 of the program states: “The Association Union (Ichud) therefore regards a Union between the Jewish and Arab peoples as essential for the upbuilding of Palestine and for cooperation between the Jewish world and the Arab world in all branches of life – social, economic, cultural, political – thus making for the revival of the whole Semitic world.” Buber, “The Ichud”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 148-49.
[3] This debate between the two regarding the composition of a Jewish state is expressed clearly in an article entitled, “A Majority or Many? A Postscript to a Speech”. In the article, Buber explicitly disagrees with Ben-Gurion’s proposal for creating a Jewish majority in Palestine and politically justifying the creation of a Jewish state on those grounds. Buber, “A Majority or Many? A Postscript to a Speech”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 164-68.
[4] Laurence J. Silberstein, Martin Buber’s Social and Religious Thought. (New York: New York University Press, 1989), p. 255.
[5] For example, in “A Majority of Many”, he contends that a “commonality of interests” would be beneficial in cultivating trust between Arabs and Jews. “The separate national economic systems should be replaced, as much as good economic allows, by one shared countrywide system, in whose success both nations are interested and whose shared development may well create mutual trust, that in turn will lead to far-reaching agreements.” Buber, “A Majority or Many? A Postscript to a Speech”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 168.
[6] This is reflected by the most recent Middle East crisis between Hezbollah, a militia within Lebanon, and Israel in July and August of 2006.
[7] “In this land, whose population is both sparse and scattered, there is room both for us and for its present inhabitants, especially if we adopt intensive and systematic methods of cultivation.” Buber, “A Proposed Resolution on the Arab Question”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 61.
[8] Buber, “A Majority or Many? A Postscript to a Speech”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 165.
[9] Silberstein details some of these myopic actions on the part of the Jews, i.e., buying up land from wealthy land owners rather than negotiating with Palestinian Arabs about potentially common economic interests. Silberstein, Martin Buber’s Social and Religious Thought, p. 255
[10] In his May 1958 address to the American Friends of the Ichud, Buber recounts an event from the “unhappy partition of Palestine” that is particularly chilling. “It happened one day, however, that outside of all regular conduct of the war, a band of armed Jews fell on an Arab village and destroyed it.” In a footnote, Mendes-Flohr provides some further context. “On 9 April 1948, during the siege of Jerusalem, a combined force of Irgun and he Stern Gang attacked Deir Yasin, an Arab village commanding the road to Jerusalem, reportedly killing 254 of its inhabitants – men, women, and children.” Buber, “Israel and the Command of the Spirit”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 292, 293, n. 4.
[11] In the May 1958 address, Buber affirms the factual reality of the State of Israel, but warns that without Jewish-Arab rapprochement, the unrest between the two would only persist. He says during the address, “There can be no peace between Jews and Arabs that is only a cessation of war; there can only be a peace of genuine cooperation.” Buber, “Israel and the Command of the Spirit”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 293.
[12] Silberstein, Martin Buber’s Social and Religious Thought, p. 262, 328, n. 53.
[13] Buber, “We Must Grant the Arabs Truly Equal Rights”, A Land of Two Peoples, p. 299.
[14] Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”, Kant: Political Writings. Hans S. Reiss, ed., H.B. Nisbet, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, 1991), p. 59.
[15] Martin Buber, “A Tragic Conflict?” A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs. Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 187.
[16] “Politics, seeking to retain its domination of life, has an interest in treating the interests of the various groups as if they were irreconcilable. But since this in fact is not so, politics has to make it so.” Buber, “A Tragic Conflict?” A Land of Two Peoples, p. 187.
[17] “The essence of all politics…is conflict, the recruitment of allies and a voluntary following.” Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany”, Weber: Political Writings, p. 173. To reiterate, Weber contends that political struggle is the crucible in which the modern politician is forged, sustaining individual initiative in the face of growing authoritarian and bureaucratic regimes. “But the given palaestra for the modern politician is parliamentary conflict and the fight for party in the country, and there is nothing of equal value which can replace such struggle – least of all competition for promotion…where the leader achieves power in the state.” Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany”, Weber: Political Writings, pp. 173-74.
[18] Buber, “A Tragic Conflict?” A Land of Two Peoples, p. 187.
