222 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
This was the first Zionist Congress to follow three momentous events: World
War I, the Balfour Declaration, and the San Remo Conference, at which Britain
assumed the Palestine Mandate. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Great
Britain and France were splitting the Middle East between them. The Balfour
Declaration, issued by Britain in 1917, seemed to signify that Herzl’s dream that
a Great Power would grant the Jews a charter for Palestine had finally been real-
ized. Buber, however, dissented from the common view that this was a boon to
Zionism. In 1919, Buber had warned that “we must... make it clear that we have
nothing to do with [the League of Nations’] present system of values, with im-
perialism masquerading as humanitarianism. We must therefore abstain from
all ‘foreign policy’ except for those steps and actions which are necessary for the
achievement of a lasting and amicable agreement with the Arabs.”^64 In 1920, the
first major outbreak of Arab violence against Jews in Palestine took place after a
Nebi Musa march. Whereas many Zionists compared this to Cossack pogroms
in Russia, viewing the Arab rioters as a mob incited by hateful antisemites, Buber
perceived its political motive: “We... must not appear before the East, which is
awakening from its dull slumber, as agents of a West which is doomed to destruc-
tion, lest justified suspicion fall on us... it depends on us.”^65 At the Twelfth Con-
gress, Buber repeated these warnings, proposing a resolution that would express
solidarity with the Arab national movement and disavow imperialism:
Our return to the Land of Israel, which will come about through increasing
immigration and constant growth, will not be achieved at the expense of oth-
er people’s rights. By establishing a just alliance with the Arab peoples, we
wish to turn our common dwelling-place into a community that will flourish
economically and culturally, and whose progress would bring each of these
peoples unhampered independent development.
Our settlement [in the Land of Israel], which is exclusively devoted to the
rescue of our people and their renewal, is not aimed at the capitalistic ex-
ploitation of the region, nor does it serve any imperialistic aim whatsoever.
Its significance is the productive work of free individuals upon a commonly
owned soil. This, the socialist nature of our national ideal, is a powerful war-
rant for our confidence that between us and the working Arab nation a deep
and enduring solidarity of true common interests will develop and which in
the end must overcome all the conflicts to which the present mad hour has
given birth.^66The resolution that was finally adopted, however, was so watered down that Buber
viewed it as a mere “tactical gesture” meant to defend against the accusation that
Zionism was hostile to the Arabs. In Buber’s view, it lacked the courage of its con-
victions; it eliminated his rejections of domination, imperialism, and capitalistic
exploitation, replacing them with expressions of indignation at the 1920 violence
and a reaffirmation of the Balfour Declaration. Instead of calling for an “alliance”
with the Arabs, it desired a mere “entente.” Buber was so dismayed by this turn