Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and other Pariahs

Jonathan Graubart's book Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and other Pariahs recovers and adapts the pre-1948 dissenting binational Zionism of Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt to develop a transformed vision of Jewish self-determination that reckons with Zionism's foundational failings and breaks from the European-derived insular nationalist model. The book engages Buber and Arendt with a range of contemporary Jewish dissenters, including Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, and Peter Beinart, and with the preeminent Palestinian counterpart Edward Said. The result is a distinct Jewish self-determination committed to cultural enrichment and emancipation, reparations, a just and collaborative coexistence, and an updated binational program.

Biography:
Jonathan Graubart is a professor of political science at San Diego State University who specializes in the areas of international relations, international law, Zionism and Jewish dissent, Israel-Palestine, the UN, normative theory, and resistance politics. He received his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002 and his JD from UC Berkeley Law School in 1989.
Graubart's recent book is Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and other Pariahs (Temple University Press 2023). Richard Falk describes it as “An exciting, profound, and humane critical rethinking of Zionism as the ideological foundation of the Israeli state, Graubart's alternative vision reinforces what Zionism might have become if its leaders had not opted for an exclusivist Jewish state necessitating the continuous repression, exploitation, and discrimination of the Palestinian people in their own homeland. The recent surge to the Israeli far right gives this fine book a timely urgency, especially for liberal Jews, who should be deeply disturbed by what has happened in Israel beneath the banner of Zionism.”
His other publications include “Reimagining Zionism and Coexistence after Oslo's Death: Lessons from Hannah Arendt” (Arendt Studies Quarterly, 2019), “David in Goliath's Citadel: Mobilizing the Security Council's Normative Power for Palestine” (European Journal of International Relations 2016, co-authored with Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi), and “War is Not the Answer: R2P and Military Intervention,” (part of an edited volume by Cambridge University Press on Responsibility to Protect, 2015). In 2008, Graubart published Legalizing Transnational Activism: The Struggle to Gain Social Change from NAFTA's Citizen Petitions with Penn State University Press.