Summary
Historian whose book Beyond the Nation-State Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine relies on for its argument that the demand for a Jewish state did not define Zionism until the 1940s (Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine, lines 164-168).
Details
- In Beinart’s presentation of Shumsky: pre-1940s Zionists, cultural and political alike, emphasized Jewish self-determination and autonomy rather than sovereignty; Herzl’s 1896 term “state” conventionally meant an autonomous district, not a sovereign nation-state (line 164).
- Shumsky is quoted by Beinart that Ahmed Tibi’s vision of equal national rights “is profoundly in line with the central principal aspects of Zionist political imagination of the prestate period” (“principal” as printed, line 166).
- On the 1940s turn, per Shumsky as Beinart presents him, Zionists envisioned “a new contract” exchanging a state expressing Jewish national identity alone for the extermination of European Jewry (line 168).
Related pages
Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine, Beyond the Nation-State, Zionism, Ahmed Tibi