276 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
This was the goal of Buber’s theopolitical project: to repeat, interpret, and re-
present the Jewish past as usable for the great Jewish awakening in which he saw
himself involved. Buber absented himself from the debate between revolution
and reform, speaking instead of “renewal.” Renewal intervenes between break
and continuity, between revolution and reform. By problematizing the parallels
between religious and secular messianisms, it decouples apocalyptic messianism
from social-prophetic commitment and distinguishes the redemptive vision of
the wolf lying down with the lamb from the achievement of a society in which
conflicts between individuals and groups no longer manifest on a macro level
as an unjust political order. The question remains whether and how the failure
of theopolitics in Buber’s context, like the failures of so many other anarchisms,
should be seen in light of its “successful” rival movements.
Zionism
Everything, so he had taught, depends on living what one believes in; was he living
what he believed in?
—Martin BuberRabbi Yitzhak Ze’ev (“Velvl”) ha-Levi Soloveitchik of Brisk, who lived in Jerusa-
lem, once heard a member of the Neturei Karta curse the State of Israel, to which
he responded, “This man is a Zionist.”
—Aviezer RavitzkyA Dream Betrayed versus the Telos of Settler Colonialism
Despite the dramatic changes, literal and political, in the Israeli-Palestinian
landscape over the past half century, the issues pertaining to the essential nature
of the conflict are still framed in ways that recall the debates of the 1920s and
1930s. This is because the logic of the conflict has never changed. Zionists still
think of their situation in terms of physical security: their “right to exist” as a
community in their ancestral land. Palestinians continue to see themselves as
resisting Zionist encroachment on their ancestral land, and continue to face a
whole apparatus of processes that prevent them from moving freely, accessing
essential public goods, and exercising collective power. Even though the borders
of the State of Israel have been uncertain for decades, every new conflict seems
to result in shrinking the land claimed by the Palestinians. The rhetoric in each
community, too, still reflects the old divides: the Jewish factions debate which
actions are most likely to preserve their Jewish polity; the Palestinians, which
methods of resistance will succeed in salvaging Palestinian land and gaining Pal-
estinian independence. The narrowness of contemporary discourse about Zion-
ism is a commonplace of that discourse itself; one bloc continues to treat Zionism
as a morally obligatory position, and the other treats it as morally proscribed.