232 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
The fulfillment of which is bound up with the land, with the existence of a free
Jewish community in this country... communal ownership of the land (Lev.
25:23), regularly recurrent leveling of social distinctions (25:13), guarantee of
the independence of each individual (Ex. 21:2), mutual help (Ex. 23:4ff ), a com-
mon Sabbath embracing serf and beast as beings with equal claim (Ex. 23:12), a
Sabbatical year whereby, letting the soil rest, everybody is admitted to the free
enjoyment of its fruits (Lev. 25:5–7).... These are not practical laws thought
out by wise men; they are measures which the leaders of the nation, apparently
themselves taken by surprise and overpowered, have found to be the set task
and condition for taking possession of the land.... We went into exile with
our task unperformed.... We are not covetous, Mahatma: our one desire is
that at last we may obey.^128Here, in the language of covenant and command, Buber states the view that he
would restate years later, in secular language, in Paths in Utopia, when he wrote
that “the kibbutz owes its existence not to a doctrine, but to a situation, to the
needs, the stress, and the demands of the situation.”^129 James Horrox has argued
that this position has led the historiography of the kibbutz largely to underesti-
mate the role of ideology in collective settlement in Palestine.^130 Horrox might
have noted further that this is a familiar trope of Buberian praise, used to des-
ignate something that is socially alive rather than rigidified, and also, that this
seemingly “nonideological” formulation is actually deeply ideological. By down-
playing preexisting ideologies in the early kibbutzim, just as in his description
of what the Israelites faced when they first entered the Land, Buber suggests that
collective, nonhierarchical organization is just what happens when free people
first meet problems that confront them as a group. The Bible presents one record
of this truth; the story of the first kibbutzim presents us with another. But this
happening-to-be-true takes the form of a command—the necessity that must be
recognized and that in the end will be recognized.
In 1942, mainstream Zionism adopted the Biltmore Program and declared its
intention to establish a nation-state with a Jewish majority. That same year, Buber
and Magnes founded the Ichud, a splinter group in the League for Jewish-Arab
Rapprochement. As the league absorbed Hashomer Ha’tzair and other, smaller
parties, Buber and Magnes felt the need for a separate organization to represent
their own views. The Ichud platform called for “Government in Palestine based
on equal political rights for the two peoples,” a “Federative Union of Palestine
and neighboring countries,” and a “Covenant between this Federative Union and
an Anglo-American Union which is to be part of the future Union of the free
peoples.”^131 This quintessentially “binationalist” organization was an ad hoc re-
sponse to war conditions and part of an international framework. This “official”
binationalism was one element in Buber’s response to British commissions, UN
hearings, and requests for grand proposals. But it was only part of his effort to
force Zionism to live together with the Palestinian Arabs. After 1948, when the