SUMMARY:

Yfaat Weis’s article seeks to historicize the concept of bi-nationalism in Zionism and locate its heritage and tradition within Central European perceptions of space. This is done through a close examination of the “Brit Shalom” organization, which was a principal advocate of bi-nationalism in Palestine in the 1920s. Weis argues that it is the liberal Jewish criticism of the illiberal turn to ethno-nationalist practices in Central Europe (rather than the liberal spirit of Central Europe) that gave rise to a synthesis in the spirit of conciliatory Zionism. To prove this, the author breaks down “Central European heritage” into its diverse geopolitical and cultural components, by focusing on two of the key “Brit Shalom” figures – Hans Kohn and Arthur Ruppin. In the case of the former, Weis also recovers the Central European and Zionist “heritage” of his famous typology of nationalism. She concludes that for Hans Kohn, the national escalation between Czechs and Germans that he had experienced in his youth from a minority position constituted a negative example, from which he hoped to save Zionism by means of a bi-national structure. Ruppin’s starting point in supporting bi-nationalism was different. He chose the experience of the Posen border area, which he had experienced out of identification with the Prussian position, as a model to be copied in Palestine. The article’s deconstruction of a monolithic “Central European heritage” supports the validity of the contextualized approach and the general view that Western nationalism was no more able to accommodate ethnic diversity than the Eastern one.