224 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
After 1900, however, the founding of the Jewish National Fund and the Pal-
estine Land Development Company, both intended to coordinate Jewish pur-
chases, changed things. These new agencies assumed that land purchase included
the right to determine who lived on it and worked it; they also sought to prevent
future resale of the land, now considered the perpetual and collective property
of the Jewish people.^75 Moreover, the immigrants of the Second Aliyah developed
an ideology, kibbush avodah, which made them more likely to employ exclusively
Jewish workers. As a result, purchases after 1900 often involved the eviction of
the Arab tenants and their replacement with Jewish settlers.^76 In 1905, Yitzhak
Epstein, a Russian-born Jew who settled in the Upper Galilee in 1886 and would
later become a member of Brit Shalom, gave a controversial speech at a confer-
ence of the cultural Zionist organization Ivriya. This speech was published two
years later as an essay called “A Hidden Question;” in it he raised grave doubts
about the Zionist method of land acquisition:
We buy the lands, for the most part, from the owners of large estates; these
owners, or their predecessors, acquired their land by deceit and exploitation
and lease it to the fellahin.... [I]t is customary in Eretz Israel for the estate to
pass from one owner to another while the tenants remain in their place. But
when we buy such a property, we evict the former tillers from it.... [C]an we
really rely on this way of acquiring land? Will it succeed, and does it suit our
purpose? One hundred times no.... Will they not in the end rise up to take
back with their fists what was taken from them by the power of gold? When we
come to buy lands in Eretz Israel, we must thoroughly check whose land it is,
who works it, and what the rights of the latter are, and we must not complete
the purchase until we are certain that no one will be worse off.^77Epstein’s plea evoked angry responses from Zionists. Moshe Smilansky respond-
ed in Ha’poel Ha’tzair that if Epstein was right, Zionists “have no place” in Israel:
“The land of our fathers is lost to us. [Or] if the Land of Israel belongs to us, to the
Jewish people, then our national interests come before all else.... It is not pos-
sible for one country to serve as the homeland of two peoples.”^78 Smilansky’s view
that Zionists should consider their own interests paramount, and get to know
Arabs only the better to fend them off, was more widespread than Epstein’s moral
anguish. As Berl Katznelson put it: “The quest for peaceful co-existence with the
Arabs is not new.... To those who preach morality [to the Yishuv], we have
only one thing to say: Come to Eretz Israel and prove that you could establish
more amicable relations with the Arabs than we have.”^79 Katznelson accused Brit
Shalom of being “alienated.”^80 His view was widely shared among Labor Zion-
ists, who heard calls like Epstein’s (if they heard them at all) as injunctions to do
more than the Zionist movement could while also accomplishing its goals; they
weighed the evils in a balance, and usually concluded that Zionist interests were
paramount. Arthur Ruppin is a good example: while a member of Brit Shalom,