Nation, Society and the State: The Reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish Nationhood

By Dr. Abraham Weizfeld

This work treats the European political philosophy that has engendered the Nation-State concept -- considered to be the logical evolution of human history as a linear periodization into the Modern State. This Modern State concept is treated as the end of history in liberal democratic theory, in spite of it remaining a European phenomenon. Where it has been imposed beyond the European political culture it has provoked a plague of civil wars and occupations, such as in Palestine. In Europe itself it has also resulted in such features as the Spanish Inquisition, the latter-day Spanish civil war and the fascist dictatorship that followed, as well as the Nazi regime and its Holocaust in alliance with the various fascist allies seeking their own Nation-State. Various attempts have followed in Europe itself to overcome the Nation-State itself by means of the European Union which sought to unite the Nation-States with a federated effort to bring some stability to the economy and life of the region in light of the disastrous wars of the twentieth century. The contradictions of the Nation-State and Federalism become ever more apparent as the EU now descends into economic chaos.

This sub-title invites a comparison and a contrast between the Jewish political-culture and the Zionist movement. One may consider political-culture as encompassing Civil Society, history, religious theology and law; comprising a collective consciousness, this historical heritage forms a national identity which is currently oriented into nationalism by the State. The endurance of national identity apart from the State and with the extinction of the State is projected as the basis of an independent Civil Society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468545272

Dr. Abraham Weizfeld

dr. abraham Weizfeld B.Sc., M.A., Ph.D. cand., is an activist, since 1967, with Palestinian and socialist movements in Canada and Québec, including periods in Toronto, Waterloo (1970 - 75), Ottawa (1982 - 85), and Montréal (1986 - ). Raised in a refugee Jewish family of parents who escaped the ghettos of Warsaw and Lublin, he carries the heritage of the Jewish Workers’ Bund of Warsaw; a socialist Jewish movement that contested the Zionist minority tendency in the Jewish political culture of Europe. His two published works are the documentary study Sabra and Shatila (1984, 2009) and The End of Zionism: and the liberation of the Jewish People (Clarity, 1989), an anthology of Jewish dissident writings. After meeting Yasser Arafat in Beirut during the 1980 solidarity conference, he worked as assistant to the unofficial Palestine Embassy during the first 1982-85 Israel invasion of Lebanon. His doctoral thesis, accepted by the Département de science politique at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2005, critiqued the Hegelian concept of ‘Nation-State’. This Thesis is entitled, ‘Nation, Society and The State: the reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish Nationhood’. As co-founder of the Alliance of Non-Zionist Jews in Toronto 1974, founder of the J-PLO (Jewish People’s Liberation Organization) in 1988, and co-founder of the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians in 2005, Weizfeld works to build the international Jewish opposition. During the Fall of 2011 Weizfeld worked for three months with the Tanweer Cultural Enlightenment Forum in Nablus, Palestine.

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Contents

RÉSUMÉ

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

VOLUME ONE

CHAPTER I

VOLUME TWO

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

POSTSCRIPT

TEXTS

DOCUMENTS

PAPERS/CHAPTERS/LECTURES

ARTICLES/PAMPHLETS

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

APPENDIX D

APPENDIX E

APPENDIX F

APPENDIX G

APPENDIX H

PROGRAMME SOCIAL

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX J

APPENDIX K

ENDNOTES

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dr. abraham Weizfeld

B.Sc., M.A., Ph.D. cand.,

[e-mail]

Is an activist, since 1967, with Palestinian and socialist movements in Canada and Québec, including periods in Toronto, Waterloo (1970-75), Ottawa (1982-85), and Montréal (1986—). Raised in a refugee Jewish family of parents who escaped the ghettos of Warsaw and Lublin, he carries the heritage of the Jewish Workers’ Bund of Warsaw; a socialist Jewish movement that contested the Zionist minority tendency in the Jewish political culture of Europe. His two published works are the documentary study Sabra and Shatila (1984, 2009) and The End of Zionism: and the liberation of the Jewish People (Clarity, 1989), an anthology of Jewish dissident writings. After meeting Yasser Arafat in Beirut during the 1980 solidarity conference, he worked as assistant to the unofficial Palestine Embassy during the first 1982-85 Israel invasion of Lebanon. His doctoral thesis, accepted by the Département de science politique at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2005, critiqued the Hegelian concept of ‘Nation-State’. This Thesis is entitled, ‘Nation, Society and The State: the reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish Nationhood’. As co-founder of the Alliance of Non-Zionist Jews in Toronto 1974, founder of the J-PLO (Jewish People’s Liberation Organization) in 1988, and co-founder of the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians in 2005, Weizfeld works to build the international Jewish opposition. During the Fall of 2011 Weizfeld worked for three months with the Tanweer Cultural Enlightenment Forum in Nablus, Palestine.

FORWARD 2012

This work treats the European political philosophy that has engendered the Nation-State concept—considered to be the logical evolution of human history as a linear periodization into the Modern State. This Modern State concept is treated as the end of history in liberal democratic theory, in spite of it remaining a European phenomenon. Where it has been imposed beyond the European political culture it has provoked a plague of civil wars and occupations, such as in Palestine. In Europe itself it has also resulted in such features as the Spanish Inquisition, the latter-day Spanish civil war and the fascist dictatorship that followed, as well as the Nazi regime and its Holocaust in alliance with the various fascist allies seeking their own Nation-State. Various attempts have followed in Europe itself to overcome the Nation-State itself by means of the European Union which sought to unite the Nation-States with a federated effort to bring some stability to the economy and life of the region in light of the disastrous wars of the twentieth century. The contradictions of the Nation-State and Federalism become ever more apparent as the EU now descends into economic chaos.

This sub-title invites a comparison and a contrast between the Jewish political-culture and the Zionist movement. One may consider political-culture as encompassing Civil Society, history, religious theology and law; comprising a collective consciousness, this historical heritage forms a national identity which is currently oriented into nationalism by the State. The endurance of national identity apart from the State and with the extinction of the State is projected as the basis of an independent Civil Society.

National identity is evident enough for a second generation refugee survivor of the Nazi occupation and Holocaust in Poland, such as the author. Apart from identity the concept of nationalism had little to do with a political-culture that has endured over 2000 years without a Nation-State and a culture that emerged in a struggle to escape a State in the first place and which places its Crown on the Torah scrolls and not on a King. This was ingrained in his years of Cheder studies in the Orthodox tradition. At the same time a Bundist mother from Warsaw provided a cloak of invulnerability against the Zionist indoctrination of the B’nai Akiva youth party.

The consequences of 57 years of experience are found in the concluding Thesis chapter from 2005, which is a Bundist critique of the Zionist ideology and its Nation-State, ‘Israel’. The drive to preserve the Jewish identity by superimposing identification with a State and its administered territory is put into the context of the European Nation-State, nurtured by the Protestant Christian Reformations of each particular Nation. As such, little remains of the Jewish political-culture in the context of the segregation and assimilation inherent in the European experience, even though the Zionist State claims its legitimacy in such a paradigm.

DEDICATION

For the contribution to this work’s method of thinking nurtured by Sylvia Wajsfeld Goldseider, a mother, a Bundist and a young Jewish worker from Warsaw.

Warsawa-Lodzer Mutual Benefit Society member of Toronto.

UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL

FACULTÉ DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE ET DROIT

DÉPARTEMENT DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE

NATION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE:

THE RECONCILIATION OF PALESTINIAN AND JEWISH NATIONHOOD

THÈSE

PRÉSENTÉE

COMME EXIGENCE PARTIELLE

DU DOCTORAT EN SCIENCE POLITIQUE

PAR

ABRAHAM Y. WEIZFELD

MARS 2005

FORWARD AND DEDICATION

Being confronted with the impasse of the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian People—together with the liberation of the Jewish People from Zionism and Judaeophobia—a critical analysis in political theory becomes necessary. This work seeks to resolve this continuing crisis by examining Palestinian national aspirations in conjunction with the emancipation of the Jewish People; mutual liberation from racism and the Zionist ideology with which it is associated. Let the prescience of thought give inspiration to the will for the reconciliation of our collective identities and cultures, so ensuring our mutual continued existence.

Acknowledgements:

Meyer Goldseider, Partisan and brother to Sylvia Goldseider-Wajsfeld/Weizfeld

Directeur de Thèse: Professeur Lawrence Olivier

Ross Dowson, (IV International, Canada)

Professeur Thierry Hentsch, l’Université du Québec à Montréal

Di Algemeiner Yiddisher Arbeter Bund

(The General Jewish Workers’ Alliance/League)

La Galerie Fôkus (OSBL—OB)

In Appreciation

Dr. Pierre-Michel Huet (CHUM, Montréal)

Dr. Bernard Willems (CHUM, Montréal)

RÉSUMÉ

La nation comme entité sociale existe en raisons de dynamiques socio-économico-culturelle. Une Société Civile forme un berceau à une conscience collective donnant naissance à une personnalité commune, un soi-disant Esprit National, une culture politique, une histoire, et peut-être une religion ou une philosophie existentiel ou epistemologie. La Nation-État devient un phénomène transitoire correspondant à la classe sociale, au genre et aux relations nationales répandues dans la société.

La revendication d’une autodétermination est fondamentale face à l’impasse d’un conflit social basé sur la question nationale et ses contradictions, comme l’avancent les théories classiques.

Chaque partie à un conflit fait des demandes basées sur son existence par principe, isolement par rapport à d’autres revendications semblables. Ainsi, la revendication nationale à l’autodétermination est regardée comme problématique puisqu’elle constitue une proposition mutuellement exclusive.

Un examen de l’antinomie entre le moi et le non-moi permet de faire apparaître une méthodologie rendant possible la poursuite de l’analyse du conflit national.

La différentiation entre la nation et société, et l’État (et autres connotations idéologiques) permet à la conception de la société civile d’émerger comme le contexte pour la nation. Par conséquence, la distinction entre identité-national et l’idéologie de nationalisme permit la conservation de d’identité de la nation dans le cadre d’une société commune.

Par l’observation du conflit entre les peuple palestinien et Israël, l’analyse de la culture-nationale permet de trouver les bases pour la réconciliation de leurs existences nationales comme Peuple, qui est dans cet exemple fondée sur des droits mutuels selon un principe de réciprocité.

La méthodologie par laquelle la résolution de conflits nationaux permet la réconciliation devient la base pour la formation de la société civile, en tenant compte de la composition plurinationale de la population prête à former une association fondée sur l’autonomie de leurs diverses communautés en réciprocité. De plus, de telles relations deviennent codifiées dans des dispositions constitutionnelles symbolisant une telle réconciliation.

Mots clés:   Nation, autodétermination, état, autonomie, société, société civile, Palestinien, Palestinienne Palestine, Juive, Juif, Israélien, Israélienne, Israël, Sioniste, Sionisme, la question nationale, Peuple, culture, Bund, Bundist

ABSTRACT

The Nation, as a social entity, arises as a result of socio-econo-cultural dynamics. The Civil Society forms a cradle for a collective consciousness giving rise to a common personality, a National Mind so-called, a political culture, a history, and perhaps a religion or a particular existential framework or epistemology. The Nation-State consequently becomes a transitory phenomenon corresponding to the class, gender and national relations prevalent in the associated society.

The claim to self-determination is a fundamental element to the impasse in the social conflict based in the national question and its contradictions, as in the manner put forward by the classic theories. Each party to a conflict conceivably makes demands based upon their existence as a matter of principle, in isolation from other such claims. Thus the national claim to self-determination is examined as problematic since it remains a mutually exclusive proposition.

An examination of the antinomy between ‘the self and the other’ furthermore allows a methodology to emerge by which an analysis of national conflict may continue.

The differentiation of the Nation and Society from the State (and other ideological connotations) enables a concept of the Civil Society to emerge as the context for the Nation. Likewise, the distinction between national-identity and the ideology of nationalism allows for the retention of the identity of the Nation in the framework of the common Society.

By way of observing the conflict between the Palestinian People and Israel, the analysis of national-culture finds the basis for the reconciliation of national existence to be founded upon mutual rights in a Principle of Reciprocity.

The methodology by which the resolution of national conflict results in reconciliation becomes the bases for the formation of Civil Society, taking into consideration the poly-national composition of the population willing to form an association based upon the autonomy of their various communities, in reciprocity. Furthermore, such relations become codified in the Constitutional arrangements signifying such reconciliation.

Key words:   Nation, self-determination, State, autonomy, society, Civil Society, Palestinian, Palestine, Jewish, Israeli, Israel, Zionist, Zionism, the national question, People, culture, Bund, Bundist

INTRODUCTION

0.1 Problematic

A) How can one reconcile the presence of national consciousness in a pluralist society by multi-ethnic minorities in a majoritarian national culture? In the global Inter-National/s setting involving an increasing number of independent Nation-States, and Peoples striving to become so—again, how would the various national interests be reconciled? 1

B) The question of conflict and war between various nations is oftentimes expressed as the nationalism of each State in defence of its own interests or identity. By an examination of the traditional antinomy between the self and ‘the other", a methodology emerges by which an analysis of national conflict may proceed. By analysing the war between Palestinians and the State of Israel we are seeking to resolve this apparent contradiction between Nations in conflict. The lack of such a conceptual analysis has by default nurtured a climate of fatalism in a region that has endured a state of war for five decades and sustained more than 100 years of Zionist-Palestinian conflict.

C) If Society emerges as more enduring than the State, how would the nature of political representation maintain cohesion in poly-national societies and in relations with similar social formations?

0.1.1 Problématique

A) Comment peut on réconcilier la présence dans une société pluraliste de la conscience nationale de minorités multi-ethniques et d’une culture majoritaire nationale? Dans le contexte global Inter-National/s comprenant un nombre toujours plus grand de nation-états indépendantes, et de peuples efforçant de le devenir—comment réconcilier les divers intérêts nationaux?

B) Le question du conflit et de la guerre entre plusieurs nations est souvent expliqué par le nationalisme de chaque État défendant son identité ou ses propres intérêts. L’examen de l’antinomie traditionnelle entre le soi/moi et l’autre/le non-moi, permet l’élaboration d’une méthodologie qui rend possible l’analyse du conflit de type national. Par l’analyse de la guerre entre les Palestiniens et l’État d’Israël nous cherchons à résoudre cette contradiction apparente entre des nations en conflit. L’absence d’une telle analyse, telle conceptuelle, a nourri un climat de fatalisme dans une état de guerre qui a duré cinq décennies et soutenu plus que cents années de conflit sioniste—palestinien.

C) Si la société apparaît comme plus durable que l’État, comment la nature de la représentation politique qui la fonde pourra-t-elle maintenir sa cohésion dans des sociétés plurinationales et dans les relations avec des formations sociales similaires?

0.2 Preface

It may be noted that, by coincidence, when the first edition of this work was submitted on the 28th of September 2000, the openings events of the second Palestinian Intifada emerged. The impulse provided by the immediacy of the forthcoming series of rapid of events corresponds to the preciseness specified here which allows for a comprehensive deduction of the conceptual resolution of national-identity with itself.

The prospect of a Jihad as then projected, in all its interpretations, has come to fruition arising from the underlying contradictions referred to in this work. By a negative reciprocity as a replication of Zionist methodology in response to the repression which the Palestinian People as a whole are subjected to, the Islamist tendency diverts the Intifada to a reductionism that opens a strategy of war between religions and Peoples.

The current social and political crises in the historic Holy Land tends to perpetuate itself, increasing in intensity, interrupted occasionally by the international influence of various States or social opposition movements. The imbedded contradictions perpetuating this conflict may be dislodged by a critique of ideological constraints which lock this battle into this dynamic. In effect, such research is not only necessary but inevitable, as various initiatives and cease-fires continue to breakdown. An examination of the nominally institutionalized State-imposed structure is thus a necessity following from its ideological justifications found in nineteenth century European political thought, carried over out of context into the twenty-first century. Such an anti-Zionist critique should necessarily take into consideration the Jewish critique of the racist practice known as Judaeophobia. 2

The denunciations made of various anti-Zionist critiques have often mentioned an association to an anti-Jewish perspective. In the current actuality, there are such anti-Jewish critiques which are provided to supply the stereotypic prejudices found in the Muslim or the Christian political cultures (prejudices that parallel those to be found in the Judaic culture). This diversion is why one is obligated to assume the responsibility of opposing the regeneration of anti-Jewish racism which seeks to associate that prejudice with a critique of the Zionist State. Other critical writings, though not explicitly anti-Jewish, fail to confront the political stereotypes that do utilize the critique of Zionism to make of it an attack on the Jewish People, whether it originates implicitly, or by ambiguity; consciously or unconsciously. The association of Zionist ideology and anti-Jewish sentiment is found in such ideological interpretations as Zionism itself as well as its current co-sponsors, the Christian evangelical movement (Dispensationalism)—having been preceded by Restorationism. Other such racialist associations are made in neo-Nazism3, Populism 4 as well as the sectarian tendencies of Islamic thought. The lack of clarity on the subject is evident and its identification is crucial to the resolution of that problematic.

The attempt to have anti-Zionism included in a list of racisms ¹ is merely the tentative of the adherents of that ideology seeking to legitimatize a racist political programme. While it is claimed that the Jewish People are being singled out as not having a right to sovereignty, such a claim is actually seeking to have the Zionist movement proclaimed as the national liberation movement of the Jewish People as a whole, even though Zionism only represents a minority of the Jewish people world-wide. In effect such ideologues are seeking an endorsement of Zionism by the human rights community even though there has never been a Jewish mandate for the Statist utopian adventure, which has given rise to five wars and two Intifadas. The Zionist proposition is basically that such a State is the only means of exercising Jewish auto-emancipation and as such, the State is the only expression of national independence by default, supposedly. This leads to the claim that a denial of the Israel State’s legitimacy is a denial of the Jewish right to self-determination. This claim is thus based in the proposition that anti-Zionism is equivalent to the denial of the national-identity of the Jewish Nation itself.

Such a proposition as Zionism makes is mistaken in identifying national-identity with the State per se and with a particular State. Although the basic proposition that denies national-identity-together with the necessity for its defence—is to be considered a racist denial of national-identity in general, this does not in and of itself define the anti-Zionist critique. The claim by Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir that the Palestinians have no national-identity is one such instance of denial in addition to the anti-Zionist tendency that nonetheless denies the national-identity of the Jewish People, although it affirms the national-identity of the Palestinians. These are the racist blinders that tunnel consciousness into a single direction. The Marxist paradigm oftentimes finds itself in the same position by denying the nationality of the Jewish People.

Jewish autodetermination is a many faceted matter and cannot be considered to be encapsulated by the State of Israel. The Jewish People as a whole is not represented by the State of Israel as indicated by the fact that Jewish people in general do not even have a vote in the Israeli political process. The claim that the Israel State represents all Jewish People is a claim to having established a dictatorship over the Jewish Nation as a whole. The State established by a minority tendency of the People is not equal to the Jewish Nation as a whole.

This Thesis provides a proof for a conceptual reappraisal. The proposed differentiation made here between national-identity and nationalism has required further elaboration and is followed with a qualitative deductive proof.

The crucial differentiation made between national-identity and nationalism is interpolated into the difference between the Jewish Nation/People and the State of Israel, considered in the context of the Jewish political culture. This differentiation is the precursor to the Jewish political revolution necessary to unblock the current unending battle between the Israel Zionist State and the Palestinian People as a whole, who continue to be threatened with complete expulsion or ghettoisation from or in the lands of the remaining Palestinian territory not currently annexed to the State of Israel. The counter-position of the Jewish Nation to the Zionist State is a key to unblocking the international diplomatic process which has been hampered by the Zionist movement’s support network in the United States of America’s Christian crusading evangelicalism that carries the strategic weight of that country’s population as a coherent social force. While the Jewish political culture provided the impression of homogenous support on behalf of the various governments of Israel, the spokesperson responsible for the World Jewish Congress (president Edger Bronfman) had become a public critic of the government of the State of Israel. Together with the revolt from within the Israeli military; draftees, officers and pilots, the basis for the implementation of the theoretical distinction between the Civil Society, Nation and the State has been set into motion.

In terms of political theory, we may review this very distinction made by a founding Zionist theoretician Theodor Herzl who entitled his principal work The State of Jews, although it is known by a previous translation as, The Jewish State and so has remained prevalent in public discourse. However, the rendering of Der Judenstaat as The Jewish Sate has two shortcomings. The first of these refers to the fact that Herzl really does not conceptualize his proposed state as anything particularly Jewish; the nature of his state is fully derived from general Western and European conceptions of the State. What he has in mind is not a state that is Jewish in nature structure or tradition, but that it is a modern state based on conceptions of modern sociology, economy, technology and law, in which Jews can live as full-fledged citizens: a state for Jews, in fact.² Introduction, p. 3

Or, more precisely, for Zionist Jews.

The editor-translator Henk Overberg continues on this point;

It is not the state which was to be Jewish, in fact, but its population. The semantic difference between Jewish State and Jews’ State may be a fine one, but it has been stated that this ‘fine semantic difference [has] exerted considerable influence on the direction and course of the World Zionist movement (Patai, 1971: 629). It is not without interest that the most recent French translation by Claude Klein (1990) refers to the works as L’état des Juifs rather than the traditional L’état juif, and that Klein offers an apologia analogous to my own (Herzl/Klein, 1990: 8-11).³

Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginzberg (1856-1927) in his essay The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem in 1897 makes the distinction as well in his proposal writing, to establish a State which will be a Jewish State, and not merely a State of Jews.⁴ Likewise Eric Lee explains, "Herzl consciously selected the name Judenstaat, which literally translates as ‘Jew-state.’"⁵

The focus of this work’s analysis comes to point to the Zionist praxis as representing the penetration of European Statism into the eastern Mediterranean. The assimilation of Jewish political culture as a consequence of the lack of completion in the process of the historic wave of liberal Jewish emancipation exemplified by 1776 in the USA, 1796 in Holland, 1806 in France, 1822 Prussia, 1837 Québec, 1861 in Italy, 1869 Germany, 1878 in Balkans, (1848) 1867 in Austria and 1917 in Russia,⁶ has created a political vacuum. The failure of this liberal form of emancipation, as citizens, engendered the Zionist reaction by its adoption of the identical prevailing norm in reciprocity as a consequence of the inherent limitations of liberalism, which have failed to recognize the collective national-identity of Jewish citizens. Liberal ideology being centred on the individual alone does not allow for collective identities and their rights as such, faced with the dominant national identity associated with the State.

0.3 In Relation to Political Theory of Nationalism

During the course of the research for this Thesis, the original distinction made between ‘exclusive nationalism’ and ‘inclusive nationalism’ (as in the treatment of nationalism by Hans Kohn) underwent a transformation as significant as the differentiation between Nation and State. Thus, ‘exclusive nationalism’ became simply ‘nationalism’, or, the nationalist ideology of the State, and ‘inclusive-pluralist nationalism’ (cosmopolitanism) became ‘national-identity’; as in the sense of a social formation. As such, the Hegelian Nation-State conception is negated by a federated Civil Society with multiple Nations, each with its particular civil society, all united in the Republic by its Civil Constitution. v In such a multi-national social environment there are an indefinite number of identities ranging from the individual to one or more national-identities; whether or not they happen to be associated with an existing State. The concept of National-Identity tends to dissolve the effort made to unite the Nation with the State. Likewise, the attempts to fuse the State to Civil Society fail, in light of the ‘National-Identity’concept. The independence of Civil Society is only guaranteed by its auto-sufficiency in operation with an economy that is community-oriented operating as a social-collective. The subordination of the Judiciary to the State, for example, exerted by means of the budget control exercised exclusively by government agency collection, is overturned by the prioritization of civil society. The nature of the collective social economy is methodologically similar to its civil society, as determined by the nature of the federative pluralist social relations, rather than having a civil society suffocated by the dominance of the private sector or, by State monopolization of the economic institutions. The nature of the Republic is dependent upon the social relations involved in the specific balance of identities for that particular civil society. The practical consequences of the distinction made between ‘nationalism’ and ‘national-identity’ are evident when applied to either the Middle-East (eastern Mediterranean) or the Québec-Canada dichotomy.

In the Land that is called ‘Holy’, there is a demographic balance of the predominantly two national identities in the Arab Palestinian and the Jewish Israeli populations. This points to a bi-national federation of social formations organized as national-cultural and territorially autonomous constitutionally guaranteed civil administrations, so providing for an autonomous co-existence which may accommodate the right of return for the Palestinian refugees. In the Québec/Canada contexts there is a 1:4 proportionality which is territorially polarized, opening the prospect of territorial autonomy as a constitutional necessity, in default of which there is the option of political independence. The direction by which such a conceptual demarcation is accomplished is found in differentiation between national-identity and The State.

The need for the operative distinction between ‘national-identity’ and ‘nationalism’ is apparent from a critique of the political theories of nationalism. Shafer delimits nationalism to the modern era,

Nationalism, historically, is one of many group loyalties, a special and more or less unique form that first began to manifest itself rather late in human history, probably—though the question is debatable—during the late Middle Ages in western Europe and England. Not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did it begin to assume something like this modern form and then again, chiefly, in western Europe and England.⁷

even while recognizing that Nations, however, may not have an autonomous or independent government or state⁸, in effect dissociating nationalism from studies of the Nation.

Within the framework of the liberal idealisation of the individual seeking an egalitarian universalism of either bourgeois or Marxist inspiration, there is a lack of comprehension of what Gellner calls romantic nationalism⁹. The Modern notion of identity was presumed to have surpassed the mere enculturation of the daily activities of a local group¹⁰. It has become evident more recently that this is not the case. Gellner explains this deficiency in liberal theory as an aspect of uneven development that leaves some localities in a relative disadvantage leading to the perpetuation of an idealized defence mechanism which manifests itself as nationalism, situated amongst what he chooses to call, cultural pools¹¹. This approach coincides with that of Benedict Anderson who also refers explicitly to imagined community¹². The ‘primordialist’ position, as it is considered, nonetheless sustains its identity with the ‘nation’ in spite of its premature burial by liberalism.

The territorial association with ‘nationalism’ is proposed as an inherent propensity of national identity by way of the defined characteristics of a State. This Statist conception of the nation is derived from the presumption of national identity rooted in an organic rural element rather than in civil society. Gellner’s ‘populist nationalism’ is characteristically ‘Gemeinschaft’, inward looking and exclusivist, even though ‘national-identity’ succeeds in forming a collective consciousness that surpasses the atomized units of the State that is characteristic of the ‘Gesellschaft’, Gellner himself recognises:

The nationalist vision and the social reality which engenders it, cut across the Platonic/Kantian dichotomy. Nationalism borrows its imagery and verbiage from the organic option, but is based largely on the social reality of anonymous atomized society.¹³

The dichotomy between ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Gesellschaft’ is parallel to the classic distinction made between ‘le moi’ et ‘le non-moi’ extrapolated into collective identities i.e. between the individual and the social context that one finds oneself in, one social context found within another, and so forth. The ideological hedge comes into play when the individual is identified solely with the self and its manifestation in the State, as if all the citizens shared a monarchical power. The State effaces such identities in the campaign for homogenization, called democracy, or majoritarianism. The ‘Gemeinschaft’ is exemplary of the ‘self’, although it is also interpreted as ‘identity’. As such ‘le non-moi’, extrapolated into ‘le autrie/les autries’, may take on a collective sense as in ‘Gesellschaft’. Not only is cultural identity human, it is a human right.

The coordination of these parallels is found in the necessary reciprocity of identity. In these terms the State is overruled as a substitute for personal and collective identity/ies. Gellner’s confusion of Society with the State in his references to community and society is presented as the dichotomy between the ‘organic’ and ‘citizenship’ criteria. The lack of distinction between participants in a society and the citizenship of a State leads to a definition of the Nation that is a State-defined National status. Thus territory is considered a fundamental imperative to Nation; "Roots are indeed rural: the imaginary community invoked by the new ethos is territorial and has intimate links to the land.¹⁴ His ‘populist nationalism’ is thus exclusive of the Jewish People per se who are considered ‘déraciné’ and so by consequence, according to such methodology, logically subject to ‘antisemitism’. On the other hand he asserts, Zionism created not merely a fine military instrument which saved Israel in 1948… it also restored, with a vengeance, the imbalance in ‘roots’¹⁵ by the creation of an artificial peasant in the kibbutz. This fixation with the land and its State ignores the majority of the Jewish Nation, which abstains from adopting the identity provided by the ‘Land of Israel’. Such a view also requires one to ignore the urban concentration of the Israeli Jewish residents, 78% of whom still occupy only 14% of the land surface of the pre-1967 Zionist State, 55 years after the establishment of this ‘Nation-State’ 6. This political construction becomes the rationale in recognising the Nation simply by virtue of it being a State called The Land of Israel, ‘Eretz Israel’. On the other hand, the Palestinian ‘fellaheen’ peasant roots do not appear in the methodology of the ‘roots’ of this ‘populist nationalism’. Gellner’s criterion for a Nation falls into a self-contradictory formality, incapable of recognizing a peasant-based National entity because it lacked a State, even though a peasant class is considered essential to a Nation according to Gellner; this alone being a crucial failing in nationalist theory.

As such, Gellner’s approach is absent a criterion by which one may discern the emergence of a ‘virulent’ nationalism, as he concludes, all this does not mean that nationalism may not once again re-emerge in its virulent form… . It may do so. The question is open, and must obviously be our main concern.¹⁶ The concern with the re-emergence of a virulent nationalism is an expectation that is not misplaced even while its root cause is not taken into consideration. Gellner maintains that, . . . nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist.(11)7¹⁷ so asserting his Statist hypothesis, as if a nation does not have an existence prior to forming a State. Since the State is essential to the theory of nationalism, he is thus blinded to the effect of the State upon the Nation. This is why the root cause of virulence in nationalism is obscured as the State instills an ideology of nationalism fostering an exclusive Monist identity.

Although Benedict Anderson differs with Gellner over the lack of appreciation of the prior existence of the Nation, Anderson as well leaves the Nation as an imaginary entity which is created in the Form of the State. 8 And so he makes reference to the essential correctness of Gellner’s point.¹⁸

Michael Mann, in his A Political Theory of Nationalism and its Excesses¹⁹, sets up the nut of the problem to be defined. On his way to the identity of the State and the Nation he forgives state militarism, in the name of the Nation rather than the State, but only by the assumption of the dual identity made of the Nation-State.

But the clarity of focus on the nation as conterminous with the state cries out for a predominantly political explanation. Self-conscious nations emerged from the struggle for representative government, initially born of the pressures of state militarism. Whatever atrocities were later committed in the name of the nation, its emergence lay with those democratic ideals of this period that we most value today.

²⁰ 9

This exercise being a current justification for the Zionist ideology which continues to pursue its State, irrespective of the Israeli population, both Jewish and Palestinian. 10

As for the international Jewish communities which are constituted as a People hosting a national-identity, there is little sense in being led to believe that the interests of the Zionist State necessitates and justifies state militarism, when the same justification had been utilized for its own national-genocide, Judaeocide.

This fundamental contradiction in Jewish political culture is addressed here as well as the concurrent identity made between Jews (‘Yehudi’) and the Zionist State—Zionism being the particular ideology of nationalism which upholds this State. This false identity made of the Jewish People and the Zionist State is also the attribute of the religious ideological tendency to make an identity of itself with the Nation as a theocratic State. Thus the Arab Nations are identified with Islam, by ideological criterion, in spite of the Jewish Arabic communities’ presence (Sepharade, Mezrachi, and Yemenite). Likewise the Jewish Nation is identified with the State of Israel by the Zionist ideology even though the 1948-67 territory is actually the ancient Phoenicia and Philistine, and not the once Kingdom of Solomon or David. During the period of Solomon, the Kingdom was a neighbouring territory smaller than the Land of Canaan, shared by various nations, resulting from the peace treaty with the Hittite Nation concluded by Joshua. Canaan existed as a pluralist society of seven nations nurturing the Aramaic dialect which became the common oral language, intermediatory between ancient Hebrew and Arabic. Evidently such a constituted society is not a parallel to the modern nation-state named Israel—neither socially, culturally nor territorially. Such contradictions lead to the conclusion that state militarism is simply associated with the State alone and need not be considered a feature of Nation-building representing that which Mann comes to refer to as ‘nation-statists’. This phenomenon is distinct from the process of national democratization and auto-determination.

The original class and social struggles in their particular national contexts, were and are tendencies in the process of democratization that has swept the continents and the centuries as illustrated by Michael Mann ²¹ 11, including gender and national identities (otherwise known as ethnic/cultural minorities). The consequence has been significant for the various struggles that have developed as a result of the joint character of the combined class and national dynamics. This aspect of permanent revolution arrives with the confluence of the various national formations in society, each of which seek the status of an equal person, and as such national membership, by definition. The process itself continues in spite of the absence of a State to claim the Form of the emergent Nation.

The criterion for an emergent Nation is recognized as being dependent upon the proliferation of institutions of self-expression forming a civil society serving to distinguish a People as a Nation 12. A further analysis by John Keane based upon the Yugoslav crisis sums up the advances made in this respect;

The Badinter report ‘de-politicizes’ and de-territorializes’ national identity. It recaptures something of the eighteenth-century view, championed by thinkers like Burke and Herder, that nationality is best understood as a cultural entity; that is, as an identity belonging to civil society, not the state. It sees national identity as a civil entitlement of citizens, the squeezing or attempted abolition of which, even when ostensibly pursued by states in the name either of higher forms of human solidarity or of protecting the ‘core national identity’ (Isaiah Berlin), serves only to trigger off resentment, hatred and violence among national groupings.²²

With the obligation to differentiate such social movements from the exercise of State-sponsored nationalism, Mann found it convenient to refer to ‘state-subverting nationalism’, a self-contradictory formulation, but appropriate. Mann also makes the association between the ‘state-subverting nationalism’ and the nature of civil society that is named federalism.

Since regionalists deeply opposed the former [Habsburg centralists], they increasingly sought to expand the latter, first into genuine federalism involving regional autonomies, then (when the empire would not concede this) into state-subverting nationalism.²³

This use of the term ‘state-subverting nationalism’ is the indication of a consciousness that is not essentially nationalist, in the Statist sense. This necessitates its own conceptual term which is associated with the Nation even though it is not tied to the State, this is national-identity. As Keane acknowledges, "The distinction between national identity and nationalism—overlooked by many commentaries on the subject, including Eric Hobsbawm’s Nations and Nationalism since 1780—is fundamental in this context."²⁴ This distinction is related to his fundamental distinction that, democracy requires the institutional division between a certain form of state and civil society²⁵, a Civil Society in the sense of ‘res publica’.

The recognition and resolution of national-identity is to be found in federalism, although Mann and the theories of nationalism fail to resolve the co-existence of national-identity in the State, concluding pessimistically;

Mild nationalism—whether state-reinforcing or state-subverting—is democracy achieved, aggressive nationalism is democracy perverted. The solution is therefore, to achieve democracy—especially federal, inter-regional democracy. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.²⁶

While having drawn the distinction between State-driven nationalism and the consciousness of state-subverting nations, Mann does not apply the differentiation necessary between Nation and State to postulate a form of federalism that is other than a self-contradictory mirage of a civil society that is supposedly independent of the State. Democracy remains imprisoned in Liberal theory by its subordination to the State taken as the Form of the Nation.

Theories of federalism nonetheless make some advances in terms of the treatment of consociationalism 13 and Max Weber follows such prescriptions for a federation of nationalities under a supranational state²⁷ much along the lines that were later expressed by the humanist-Zionist tendency associated with Martin Buber, who proposed a multi-national state, based upon parity among the various nationalities.²⁸ Such proposals have not been fulfilled and remained idealist conceptions only due to the failure to distinguish the Nation from the State and consequently national-identity from nationalism. Keane recognizes the problem and makes reference to Karl Deutsch as symptomatic of this problematic impasse.

‘State’ and ‘‘nation’ came to be used interchangeably… Such expressions reinforce the assumption traceable to the eighteenth century, that there is no other way of defining the word ‘nation’ than as a territorial aggregate whose various parts recognize the authority of the same state, an assumption captured in Karl Deutsch’s famous definition of a nation as ‘a people who have hold of a state’. (7) 14

The theorist Elie Kedourie recognizes this failure of federalism in the Statist context,

The national state claims to treat all citizens as equal members of the nation, but this fair-sounding principle only serves to disguise the tyranny of one group over another.²⁹

This pessimism is only a consequence of the ideological exclusivity of Statism and its ideology of nationalism which Kedourie describes as follows,

In nationalist doctrine, language, race, culture, and sometimes even religion, constitute different aspects of the same primordial entity, the nation. The theory admits here on no great precision, and it is misplaced ingenuity to try and classify nationalisms according to the particular aspect which they choose to emphasize. What is beyond doubt is that the doctrine divides humanity into separate and distinct nations, claims that such nations must constitute sovereign states, and asserts that the members of a nation reach freedom and fulfilment by cultivating the peculiar identity of their own nation and by sinking their own persons in the greater whole of the nation.³⁰

In reference to the Austrian Social Democrates’ (Otto Bauer and Karl Renner) proposal for national-cultural autonomy, in the context of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Kedourie concludes;

. . . attempts to stem the tide of nationalist discontents are seldom successful, since nationalists consider that political and cultural matters are inseparable, and that no culture can live if it is not endowed with a sovereign state exclusively its own.³¹

Here the reference to political and cultural matters is symptomatic of the problem in that cultural identity is not considered ‘political’ in and of itself. The artificial dichotomy made between culture and politics in the nationalist context is the difficulty. Culture is thus postulated as being political only in the context of the State.

In the analysis of Power by Karl Deutsch, social cohesion is based upon the means of communication rather than the means of production and although his theory is relatively abstract he has chosen to put aside the subjective definitions of nation as superficial. In so far as his orientation to the forms of communication remains materialist 15, with its cultural and economic consequences, his theory remains dislocated or abstract since it does not situate culture in the organisms which transmit such consciousness, and that is found in Civil Society. National formations are consequently debased to, oppressed, submerged, or otherwise disadvantaged groups… [such as] Negro fellow citizens, when they are subject to a lack of Power. The preconception of the Nation as a people self-conscious of its corporate identity based in a unity formed by the State, is tied to the formulations of Burke.³²

The notion of society in Deutsch is only defined in economic terms³³ while civil society is unmentioned and subjected to an extensive theory of social communication related to the economy again and only referred to as "The inner source of political power"³⁴, very much in the economic determinist tradition 16. Consequently, the nation is only considered as such according to Deutsch by virtue of the attribute of power which compels other such formations to recognize it as a sovereign nation.

The defining characteristic of the nation according to Deutsch is simply power, in any other case he defines such formations as nationalities although they are otherwise indistinguishable from nations in general.³⁵ Such a criterion is simply a form of alienation by which the nation is considered from the externalized perspective alone which presents itself to the world at large by means of its self-governing economy thus becoming of interest to other such formations. As Deutsch puts it in his flippant manner, The nation-state, it seems, is still the chief political instrument for getting things done.³⁶ The practice of using the term nationalities by Deutsch and others is an effort to overcome the actualities of national formations which are not befitted with its own State, thereby revealing the contradiction of the Nation-State concept as in John Kautsky, . . . nationalism, the identification of state and nationality³⁷. The utility of the term nationality is only appropriate for those nations which are situated in a number of different States, such as the Jewish, Palestinian, Kurdish, Berber, Gitan/Roma, Basque or Kashmiri case or, on behalf of a nation associated with a State but living also in a number of other States, such as the well known hyphenated Canadians or other such immigrant communities or national minorities; British-Canadians, French-Canadians, Irish-Americans, German-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, or Israeli-Americans.³⁸ The term national-minorities is debassed since it contains an hierarchical connotation which implies an inferior status by virtue of being a minority and so alienated to a majoritarian established national consensus.

The ‘National Principle’ substitutes State for Nation as if to contradict Kedourie’s awareness of the difference between perception and objective reality which explains how the perceived sense of a sovereign State is only an apparent manifestation of the Nation.

. . . the sensations which the categories of our mind transform into objective experience we only know in space and time. Now space and time, Kant argued, are not properties of things; they are rather something contributed by the perceiving self to the sensations impinging on it.³⁹

In theories of nationalism, the Nation is perceived as a State and so assume the necessity of the latter, although Kedourie himself reveals in various instances how the Nation is historically independent of the State. His failing to maintain the differentiation of Nation and State into their derivatives, of national-identity and nationalism, leads to the collapse of this analysis and nationalist theories in general, as he admits;

The invention [nationalism] has prevailed, and the best that can be said for it is that it is an attempt to establish once and for all the reign of justice in a corrupt world, and to repair, for ever, the injuries of time. But this best is bad enough, since to repair such injuries other injuries must in turn be inflicted, and no balance is ever struck in the grisly account of cruelty and violence… . It is a question which, in the nature of the case, admits of no final and conclusive answer.⁴⁰ 17

This is not to say that all theories of the Nation have been tainted with Statism. This critical overview of the political theories of nationalism is only limited to the Statist theoreticians. One may seek theoretical treatments of the Nation that do not limit themselves to State forms of appearance. The problem is rooted in the Eurocentric definition of State which is found in the Treaty of Westphalia Article VI, . . . States (therein comprehending the Nobility, which depend immediately on the Empire) . . ..⁴¹

The colleague of Martin Buber’s, the Jewish-German political philosopher Gustav Landauer, went beyond the confines of the State to declare that,

The state, with its police and all its laws and its contrivances for property rights, exists for the people as a miserable replacement for Geist [Nation] and for organisations with specific purposes; and now the people are supposed to exist for the sake of the state, which pretends to be some sort of ideal structure and a purpose in itself, to be Geist. . . . Earlier there were corporate groups, clans, gilds, fraternities, communities, and they all interrelated to form society. Today there is coercion, the letter of the law, the state.⁴²

As in Kedourie, Michael Mann chooses to differentiate between Nation and State without drawing the corollary of the distinction between national-identity and nationalism. By identifying the State with the self-realization of the Nation as an independent self-sufficient and sustainable entity, there is a general lack of correspondence of national entities and a given State since organic diversity cannot correspond to the formal limitations of the State. As a result, the theories of nationalism treat national conflict as inevitable.

The danger rests that having distinguished between Nation and State, the ‘National Doctrine’, in defining the State as an essential attribute giving precedence to the existence of the State rather than the Nation turns against itself in principle. The rationalization of the Hegelian State continues in the name of the Nation but not as the Nation, only as ‘nationalism’.

Landauer’s rejection of the State allows him to have remained aloof from the Zionist movement, unlike Buber. He remarks, Strong emphasis on one’s own nationality, even when it does not lead to chauvinism, is weakness 14.⁴³ His subsequent rejection of a Zionist State was indicative of such analysis. The prospect he projects of a Gesellschaft von Gesellschaften (a society of societies) is reminiscent of the Proudhon formulation in his Federal Principle; a federation of federations.

Another recently uncovered treatment of national-identity written by Sigmund Freud in 1930 is indicative of the wealth of perspectives available outside of the confines of the Statist theories of nationalism.

Je’aurais trouvé plus sensé de fonder une patrie juive sur une terre moins grevée d’histoire. Mais je reconnais qu’un point de vue aussi rationnel aurait peu de chance d’obtenir l’enthousiasme des gens et le soutien financier des riches.⁴⁴ 18

Je concède avec tristesse que le fanatisme infondé de notre peuple soit en partie à blâmer pour avoir éveillé la méfiance Arabe. Je ne puis cultiver de sympathie pour une piété mal dirigée qui transforme un morceau du mur d’Héroïde en relique nationale offensant ce faisant les sentiments de autochtones.⁴⁵ 19

One is thus obligated to move outside the parameters and paradigms of the political theory of nationalism if there is to be a resolution of the incompatibilities presented by the Statist model. Trevor Purvis also concludes that, as a hegemonic project, the unity of the people-nation constituted by the modern state has always been open to contestation. In turn this has implied an open character to the nation, one that belies its mythological closure in the discourses of nationalism.⁴⁶

While the works on nationalism are rich in overview and opinion, the approach that is explored in this work seeks to meet the needs of current conflict resolution and in particular the Palestinian-Zionist knot. It is with such a perspective in mind that one may express the desire for the means by which such a conflict may be resolved, in meeting the essential needs of each nation involved, leaving aside the categorical imperatives of the State.

0.4 Rationale 20

Fundamental to this discussion and the deductions to be derived, is the distinction being made between national-identity and nationalism. It may be noted that the voluminous treatment of nationalism has not arrived at a resolution of the various conflicting expressions of nationalist ideology. The nature of nationalism is related to its Statist orientation, giving rise to an ideological rational for its sovereignty. However, such a State self-determination will tend to present the case for its superiority with respect to other such formations as the means by which its own security and sovereignty are guaranteed. The self-defence mechanism of the State is defined in militarist terms. Recognizing this state of affairs leads to the recognition of nationalism as the ideological attribute of the State. Nationalism remains unresolvable as is the nature of State relations. National identity, however, is not necessarily associated with a State formation and often precedes the formation of a State. Empirically then, national-identity and nationalism are distinct conceptual entities.

The impasse of nationalism in terms of its co-existence with other such expressions is at the root of the proposition for the eventual abolition of national consciousness itself, even though its associated State is nonetheless preserved in a stasis of stabilized inter-State relations. Such a prospect is necessarily utopian and is based merely in the possibility of a hegemonic State-power capable of exercising its will upon other State formations in a balance of forces. This has been known as a Pax Romana or a Pax Americana and has proven to be of limited duration, although it does tend to replicate itself.

National-identity persists in spite of the various State formations and their ideological rationalizations. Rather than a vestige of pre-modernist times, national-identity challenges State formations and their hegemonic ambitions. Statism has been unable to resolve the existence of its prodigy. Furthermore, the decline of the State has not been resolved by an alternative form of Statism. One impediment has been the presumption that the Nation only exists as in the Form of the State, leaving the Nation as mere content.

Necessarily, the Nation is inversed here to be the Form, with the State as its transitory Content by an elaborated conceptualization of national-identity. Therein lies the difference between nationalism and national-identity; in that they treat Nation and State in opposite manners, reversing the relation between Form and Content.

National-identity, as a conceptual entity, reverses the Hegelian relation to make the Form as Nation and the Content as the State. In reversing the relation, the potential for an alternative content becomes apparent. Rather than replacing the State with another State, when the former falters, it becomes possible to consider replacing the State with another Content. Now, by abandoning the hypothesis of the inevitable evolution to a universal identity (in a homogenous State), national-culture becomes a significant foundation upon which a social formation may coalesce forming a society with other such cultures. Annulling universal homogeneity allows for a diversity of methodology to find its balance of reciprocity in a federated society composed of the various civil societies already organized on the local level. The federation of civil societies has the potential to provide the stability for the National-cultures to live in peace with one another, without ideological nationalism, while preserving their own national-identity. After all, national-identity is based in the independence to utilize one’s own cultural intelligence while not being dependent upon another and still being able to learn from other such autonomous national-collectives.

The primordial consciousness of culture is usually expressed in language(s). This is an attribute of a culture that is usually treated to the hierarchy of power assigning an official State language, in spite of the diversity found in society at large or within a particular national culture. However, not even a federation of language can overcome the hegemonic power of the State. The dependent national-language is associated with the depressed economic status of the secondary nation, so associating class differentiations with national existence. In consequence, the class question becomes a national question, when the equality of language is constrained by the inequality of economic power. The dependent underdevelopment of the status of a language also gives rise to empirical presumptions of superiority, providing the formal rational for racism.

The nature of national identity has been mis-diagnosed to the extent that national relations have been responsible for the last century’s exorbitant number of casualties; more than 100 million. This is the continuing actuality of our epoch in spite of the Wilsonian call (originally Painist, becoming Leninist) for self-determination in the aftermath of