A SINGLE STATE SOLUTION
Martin Buber, one of the great Jewish voices of this century, during his entire lifetime and until his death in Israel, did not stop denouncing the degeneracy and even the inversion of religious Zionism into political Zionism.
Martin Buber declared in New York:
"The feeling I had 60 years ago when I entered the Zionist movement is essentially the same feeling I have today ... I hoped that this nationalism would not follow the path of others a beginning with a great hope and degenerating later to become a sacred egoism, daring, even like Mussolini, to proclaim itself sacroegoismo, as though collective egoism could be more sacred than individual egoism. When we returned to Palestine, the decisive question was: Do you want to come here as a friend, a brother, a member of the community of people of the Middle East or as the representatives of colonialism and of imperialism?
"The contradiction between the end and the means to reach it divided the Zionists: some wanted to receive political privileges from the Great Powers, others, especially the youth, wanted to be allowed to work in Palestine with their neighbors, on behalf of their life together, and for the future.
"All was not always perfect in our relations with the Arabs, but there was, in general, good neighborliness between Jewish villagers and Arab villagers.
"This organic phase of establishment in Palestine lasted until the time of Hitler.
"It was Hitler who pushed the masses of Jews to come to Palestine, and not an elite who came to carry on their lives and prepare for the future. Thus, a selective organic development was replaced by a mass immigration requiring a political force for its security ... The majority of Jews preferred to learn from Hitler rather than from us ... Hitler showed that history does not follow the path of the mind, but that of power, and that when a people is quite strong, it can kill with impunity ... This is the situation that we had to combat ... To "Ihud" we proposed ... that Jews and Arabs not only coexist but cooperate ... This would make possible an economic development of the Middle East, thanks to which the Middle East could bring a great essential contribution to the future of humanity."
SOURCE: "Jewish Newsletter," June 2, 1958.
Addressing the 12th Zionist Congress in Kaarlsbad, September 15, 1921, Buber said:
"We speak of the mind of Israel and we believe that we are not like other nations ... But the mind of Israel is nothing more than the synthesis of our national identity, nothing more than a justification of our collective egoism ... transformed into an idol. We have refused to accept any prince other than the Lord of the Universe. While we are like all other nations and we drink with them from the same cup that intoxicates them. The nation is not the supreme value ... Jews are more than a nation: they are the members of a community of faith.
"Jewish religion was uprooted, and this is the essence of the disease whose symptom was the birth of Jewish nationalism around the middle of the 19th century. This new form of desire for land is the cornerstone of what modern Jewish nationalism has borrowed from modern nationalism of the West."
"What does the idea of 'chosen' have to do with all that? Being 'chosen' does not indicate a feeling of superiority, but a sense of destiny. This feeling does not originate from a comparison with others, but from a vocation and responsibility to accomplish the task of which the prophets keep reminding us: if you brag about being chosen, instead of living in obedience to God, you commit a felony."
Evoking this "nationalist crisis" of political Zionism, which is a perversion of the spirituality of Judaism, he concludes:
"We hoped to save Jewish nationalism from the mistake of making an idol out of people. We have failed."
SOURCE: Martin Buber, "Israel and the World." Ed. Schocken. New York, 1948, p. 263.