•  
  •  
 

Abstract

Israel as a state has been existing for almost 70 years. Despite of decades of its pres¬ence, the foundation and its struggle for survival and acknowledgement have been constantly challenged including from its own supposedly the backbone of its Israel national identity: intellectuals. This paper argues that the critics from some of Jew¬ish intellectuals represent the fundamental problem of the effort to build a national identity. If nationalism, especially in European context as its birthplace, was usually supported by the intellectuals as the source of imagination of bounded group, the case of Israel shows different direction, at least problematic. Two prominent Jewish intel¬lectuals, Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt, presented here are the examples of the challenge against Jewish domination on Israel nationalism. Although they did not wish to disconnect their identity as Jews and agreed with an authoritative political institution to protect the Jews both were against the idea of Jewish domination and annihilation of Palestinians. As their views were against the principles of pragmatism, lack of at¬tention and support from the Zionist political leaders has made their intellectual ideas relatively isolated from the mass.

Bahasa Abstract

Israel sebagai sebuah negara telah ada selama hampir 70 tahun. Meskipun kehadirannya telah berlangsung selama beberapa dekade, pendirian dan perjuangannya untuk bertahan dan mendapatkan pengakuan telah terus-menerus ditantang termasuk dari mereka yang seharusnya menjadi tulang punggung identitas nasional Israel yaitu kaum intelektual. Tulisan ini berpendapat bahwa kritik dari beberapa cendekiawan Yahudi merupakan masalah mendasar dari upaya untuk membangun identitas nasional. Jika nasionalisme, terutama dalam konteks Eropa yang menjadi tempat kelahirannya, biasanya didukung oleh intelektual sebagai sumber imajinasi untuk pengikat sebuah kelompok, kasus Israel menunjukkan arah yang berbeda, setidaknya bermasalah. Dua intelektual Yahudi terkemuka, Martin Buber dan Hannah Arendt, yang disajikan di didalam tulisan adalah contoh dari tantangan terhadap dominasi Yahudi di Israel nasionalisme. Meskipun mereka tidak ingin melepas identitas mereka sebagai orang Yahudi dan setuju dengan lembaga politik otoritatif untuk melindungi orang-orang Yahudi keduanya menentang gagasan dominasi Yahudi dan pemusnahan Palestina. Mengingat pandangan mereka yang menolak pragmatism politik, kurangnya perhatian dan dukungan dari para pemimpin politik Zionis telah membuat ide-ide intelektual mereka relatif terisolasi dari massa.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Arendt, Hannah. 1978. The Jews as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, Ed. Ron H. Feldman. New York: Grove Press.

Ashleim, Stephen E. 1997. “Nazism, Culture and the Culture of Totalitarianism: Hannah Arendt and the Discourse of Evil”, New German Critique, Special Issue (Winter), No. 70: 117-139.

Bernstein, Richard J. 1996. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Blumberg, Arnold. 1998. The History of Israel. London: Greenwood Press.

Brown, David. 2002. “Are There Good and Bad Nationalisms?”, Nations and Nationalism, 5 (April), No.2: 281-302.

Bulmer, Martin 1998. “Conceptualizing Fractured Societies: the Case of Israel”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21 (November), No. 3: 383-407.

de-Shalit, Avner. 2004. “Being Israeli”, Government and Opposition, 39 (Winter), No.1: 1-100.

d'Entreves, Maurizio Passerin 2014. "Hannah Arendt", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer Edition), in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), retrieved from . Accessed on October 10th, 2015.

Eisenstadt, SN. et. al. 1970. Integration and Development in Israel. New York: Praeger Inc.

Elmessiri, Abdelwahab M. 1977. The Land of Promise. New Jersey: North American.

Fisch, Harold. 1978. The Zionist Revolution: A New Perspective. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Friedman, Maurice S. 1954. “Symbol, Myth and History in the Thought of Martin Buber”, The Journal of Religion, 34 (Jan), No. 1: 1-11.

Gilbert, Martin. 1998. Israel: A History, New York, William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Hazony, Yoram. 2001. The Jewish State. The Struggle for Israel’s Soul. New York: Basic Books.

James, Paul. 1996. Nation Formation: Toward a Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.

Jenab, Tutunji and Kamal Khaldi. 1997. “A Binational State in Palestine: the Rational Choice for the Palestinians and Moral Choice for the Israelis”, International Affairs, 73 (January), No. 1: 31-58.

Jones, Clive and Emma C. Murphy. 2002. Israel Challenges to Identity, Democracy, and the State, London: Routledge.

Kedourie, Elie. 1993. Nationalism. Oxford, Blackwell.

Kimmerling, Baruch. 2001. The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military. California and London: University of California Press.

Mendes-Flohr, Paul. 1983. A Land of Two People: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mendes-Flohr, Paul R. 1986. “Martin Buber’s Reception among Jews”, Modern Judaism, 6 (May), No. 2: 111-126.

Mendes-Flohr, Paul R. 1989. “Nationalism as a Spiritual Sensibility. The Philosophical Supposition of Martin Buber’s Hebrew Humanism”, The Journal of Religion, 69 (April), No. 2: 155-168.

Merom, Gil. 1999. “Israel’s National Security and the Myth of Exceptionalism”, Political Science Quarterly, 114 (Fall), No. 3: 409-434.

Montserrat, Guibernau. 2004. “Anthony D. Smith on Nations and National Identity: A Critical Assessment”, Nations and Nationalism, 10 (January), No.1-2: 125-141.

Neusner, Jacob. 1987. “Israel’: Judaism and Its Social Metaphor”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 55 (Summer), No. 2: 331-361.

O’Grady, Siobhan 2015. “Khamenei: You Will Not Exist in 25 Years,” Foreign Policy Passport Edition, 9 September, [Online] retrieved from http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/09/khamenei-to-israel-you-will-not-exist-in-25-years/, accessed on September 23th, 2015.

Orr, Akiva. 1983. The UnJewish State. The Politics of Jewish Identity in Israel. London: Ithaca Press.

Orr, Akiva. 1994. Israel, Politics, Myths and Identity Crises. London: Pluto Press.

Peleg, Ilan. 1987. Begin’s Foreign Policy, 1977-1983: Israel’s Move to the Right. New York and London: Greenwood.

Porat, Dina. 1991. ‘Attitudes of the Young State of Israel toward the Holocaust and Its Survivors: A Debate over Identity and Values,’ in New Perspectives on Israeli History. Ed. Silberstein, Laurence J. New Perspectives on Israeli History. The Early Years of the State/ New York: New York University Press: 157-174.

Prior, Michael. 1999. Zionism and the State of Israel. A Moral Inquiry. London and New York: Routledge.

Rodinson, Maxime. 1983. Cult, Ghetto and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question. London: Al Saqi Books.

Roshwald, Mordechai. 1973. “Marginal Jewish Sects in Israel (I)”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 4 (July), No.2: 219-237.

Roshwald, Mordechai. 1973. “Marginal Jewish Sects in Israel (II)”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 4 (July), No.3: 328-354.

Rynhold, Jonathan. 2002. “In Search of Israeli Conservatism”, Journal of Political Ideologies, 7, No. 2: 199-220.

Safran, William. 2005. “Language and Nation-Building in Israel: Hebrew and Its Rivals”, Nations and Nationalism, 11 (January), No. 1: 43-63.

Scott, Sarah, ‘Martin Buber,’ The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, http://www.iep.utm.edu/, accessed on October, 10th, 2015.

Segev, Tom. 1986. 1949: The First Israelis. New York: Owl Book.

Shain, Yossi and Martin Sherman. 1998. “Dynamics of Disintegration: Diaspora, Seccesion and the Paradox of the Nation-States”, Nations and Nationalism, 4 (July), No. 3: 321-46.

Shandler, Shmuel. 1997. “Territoriality and Nation-State Formation: the Yishuv and the Making of the State of Israel”, Nations and Nationalism, 3 (December), No. 4: 667-688.

Shindler, Colin. 2006. The Triumph of Military Zionism. Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Rights. London and New York, IB Tauris.

Shlaim, Avi. 2004. “Israel between East and West 1948-56”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 36 (November), No.4: 657-673.

Silberstein, Laurence J. 1981. “Martin Buber: The Social Paradigm in Modern Jewish Thought”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 49 (June), No. 2: 211-229.

Silberstein, Laurence J. 1990. Martin Buber's Social and Religious Thought: Alienation and the Quest for Meaning. New York: NYU Press.

Smith, Anthony D. 1971. Theories of Nationalism. London: Duckworth.

Smooha, Shami. 2002. “The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State”, Nations and Nationalism, 8 (October), No. 4: 475-503.

Spencer, Phillip and Howard Wollman. 2002. Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage Publications.

Sternhell, Zeev. 1998. The Founding Myths of Israel. Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Urian, Dan and Efraim Karsh. Eds. 1999. In Search of Identity: Jewish Aspects in Israeli Culture. London: Frank Cass.

Weissbrod, Lilly. 1981. “From Labour Zionism to New Zionism: Ideological Change in Israel”, Theory and Society, 10 (November), No. 6: 777-803.

Zank, Michael and Zachary Braiterman, "Martin Buber", The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Download

Share

COinS