Abstract

The purpose of this article is, firstly, to expose the basic assumption in Hannah Arendt’s The Jewish Writings, and, secondly, to discuss her critique of Jewish life and the Zionist entity—later the Jewish state—in Palestine. As I will suggest, her basic assumption is that politics can exist only as a dynamic process, as an interplay between different players with different worldviews and interests. Thus, politics cannot be reduced to a state of inertia, what Arendt calls “inalterable substance.” According to Arendt, adherence to such inertia leads to the destruction of politics and the loss of any chance to conduct a normal and fully productive life. As it turned out, the Zionist movement was fixed from its very inception in a state of inertia and thus introduced into its own definition a permanent antagonism toward other nations. As a result, Israel is in a permanent state of war and conflict, in danger of being annihilated, in a perpetual arms race, and is degenerating into a modern Sparta. The nation-state is an embodiment of the state of inertia. Arendt believes that it is only by adopting a federal system instead of a nation-state system that the Zionist enterprise could turn into a dynamic political process and a place where one can conduct a productive and fruitful life. I will firstly present Arendt’s main claims and then criticize them, pointing at the merits and fl aws in her thesis.