Zionism, Power, and the Arab Question in Israel After 1948

The signatories of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence called on Arabs remaining in the state after the Arab-Israeli war to “preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship.” Yet from its founding, formal citizenship conflicted with the state’s Jewish identity. In 1952, following the Law of Return, the Knesset passed the Nationality Law, denying citizenship to Palestinian refugees who now found themselves outside of Israel and making legal recognition harder for Arabs than Jews. While some in Israel criticized this, few Jews in the Diaspora did. Writing from Brandeis University, the Polish-born thinker Simon Rawidowicz, though supportive of Zionism, viewed these measures with anguish. In an unpublished chapter meant for his Babylon and Jerusalem, he wrestled with the moral risks of Jewish sovereignty, warning that the “Jewish Question” and “Arab Question” were inseparable.