Shlomo Avineri who died on 1 December 2023 was one of Israel’s most outstanding public intellectuals. Born Jerzy Wiener in Bielsko, now the twin city of Bielsko-Biała, Poland, Avineri’s life mirrored the entire history of the modern state of Israel. Fear and Zionist optimism sparked the move in 1939 of his parents, Michael and Ester-Erna Wiener, to Palestine, thereby escaping the cauldron; despair at the Shoah, the loss of relatives, and ancient Jewish communities of Eastern and Mitteleuropa; witnessing the defence of Israel in the war of independence in 1948; seeing the settlement of traumatised refugees from war-ravaged Europe; studying at the fledgling Hebrew University of Jerusalem; achieving high prestige as a public intellectual of global prominence; shaping the emergence of world-class institutions in academia and the Israeli public sector; serving as Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1975 to 1977 — playing a role in that capacity in peace negotiations with King Hussein of Jordan. In 1996, in recognition of his vast contributions to Israeli academia and public life, he won the coveted Israel Prize.
Avineri’s books on The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (1968) and Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (1972) became classics of interpretation, clearly explicating what each of those thinkers had to say. He attempted to rescue Marx from the Leninists and Stalinists, insisting that terms like ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ were rarely used by Marx. The latter thought that the ballot box might be the means of achieving change in advanced countries, particularly with England in mind. A consequence of Avineri’s interpretations and tracing the lineage of certain Jewish-influenced features of Marx’s thought (including ideas of emancipation and liberation), as well as Avineri’s dissection of areas of confusion and error, attracted the enmity of communist ideologues and their sympathisers, many of whom he would battle for fifty years in academic journals. One Avineri reply to a Marxist critic soberly stated he would refrain from comparable polemical fireworks and, “instead… focus on what seem to me to be the cardinal points of difference between our varying interpretations…” He saw the place of political democracy as the demarcation point between social democrats and their enemies on the ‘Left’.
Arguably, Avineri’s most interesting and profound contribution to the intellectual life of Israel and the wider world centre on his writings on Zionism, Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, prospects and pitfalls of a potential Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Works addressing such themes include The Making of Modern Zionism. The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (1981), Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism (1985) and Herzl’s Vision: Theodore Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State, English translation by Haim Watzman (2015).
Avineri always considered himself a man of the liberal, social democratic left, balanced by the smelling salts of a Realpolitik outlook. But his opinions shifted markedly over the years, to a deep pessimism about what might be realistically possible. This too mirrored many trends in Israeli attitudes, the healthy tension between desiring peace, respect for the ‘other’, genuine efforts to understand grievances and alternative perspectives, and scepticism about what might be achievable, and the time it might take to get there. A deep thinker, aware of the complexities of two peoples’ narratives – on the one part, the celebration of the ending of 2,000 years of banishment, ‘the ingathering of the exiles’ in Zionist rhetoric, versus the Nakba interpretation (the Palestinian view of the catastrophe, the defeat and exile of 1948), ensured that Avineri understood any overall solution by fiat should be given short shrift. The only sane way forward was step-by-step, confidence building measures, engagement, and gradual cooperation between two peoples.
In an article in Commentary magazine in 1970 he declared: “What I have in mind is a discussion with the Palestinians now under Israeli rule concerning the possibility of establishing a Palestinian Arab state on the West Bank and in Gaza.” But he wondered if and how this might be possible. To use an ambivalent Avineri phrase, he came to query if this was “no longer the conventional wisdom of wide circles.”
The emergence of the Edward Said (the American Palestinian academic) and Marxist view that Israelis are descendants of colonial exploiters, a perspective which captured the imagination of Palestinian leaders and scholars, meant that achieving ‘peace’ and normalcy became even more problematic. The intifada in the aftermath of Israel Prime Minister’s Ehud Barak’s peace offer to PLO Leader Yasser Arafat in 1999-2000, fuelled further disillusionment. Avineri wrote: “When terrorists who blow themselves up in cafeterias, bars, and other civilian centres are hailed as martyrs in Palestinian society and occasionally by Palestinian authorities, the sense that all Israelis — and the very existence of Israel — are under siege greatly diminishes the willingness of many Israelis to take risks in favour of Palestinian self-determination. This is true even of many Israelis who denounce the continued occupation of Palestinian territories but are sceptical about the chances of peaceful coexistence.”
The Israeli Left were mercilessly flayed by the Likud Party and conservatives in Israel for having dangerous expectations of dealing with the Palestinian leadership. Arafat was no Nelson Mandela. The PLO lacked the courage to sell half-a-loaf as better than none to their population. Israeli Labour melted away in the heat of cheated expectations.
Avinieri came to realise that the problem was more than a lack of political savvy or strategic nous by the Palestinian leadership, encapsulated in the 1973 quip of Ebba Eban, the former Israeli Foreign Minister, that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. No. The failure to truly accept the legitimacy of Israel and the moral right of Jews to a homeland was root and branch the problem. In an open letter to Edward Said in The Jerusalem Post in October 2000, Avineri wrote: “For those of us in Israel who thought that an eventual Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement would never wholly satisfy either side, but nevertheless give each a place in the sun, Oslo was the ray of hope. It has now been extinguished.” This was a reference to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the PLO. But after Barak’s (and in 2008 Israel Prime Minister Olmert’s) peace proposals were rejected Avineri, in his philippic to Said, regretfully wrote: “Somehow, we shall have to pick up the pieces. Israel will have to decide how to withdraw unilaterally from most of the Palestinian territories, because we should not and cannot hold on to them. Your people will then have an opportunity to have state of their own – it should have been achieved through an agreement, but if an agreement is impossible – better a unilateral action that leads to Palestinian statehood, than the continuation of the illusion of historical compromise.” In that pithy statement, Avineri displayed his compassion, disillusion, principles, and realism.
When Hamas in 2007 seized control of Gaza, Israel suddenly had on its doorstep an avowed enemy who fiercely rejected Oslo and fanatically for religious-ideological reasons wanted to drive Israelis from the land. This meant killing and holocaust. The events of October 7th, which Avineri commented on in the last months of his life, highlighted existential threats to Jews and the survival of Israel – indeed the very idea that at least in their own land Jews could be safe. In The New York Times, he noted the Hamas view that in Israel “every civilian is a soldier.” He warned: “This was not rhetoric.” This worldview identifies “the vulnerability of the Israeli communities inside Israel.” Hamas believed in victory through slaughter.
Appreciation for both peoples’ indigenous identity and claims to the land – a nuance Avineri always deeply appreciated – was core to the conflict. The 1947 UN proposed partition concerning the formation of a Jewish state and an Arab state out of the Palestine mandate could not be achieved if one side believed Jews had no right to nationhood. The emergence of ferocious anti-Jewish Arab nationalism in the late 1940s and 1950s meant, for the first time in a millennium, the systematic discrimination, hostility, and violence to Jews in the Muslim world. As a result, Jews emptied from the Arab lands, most moving to Israel. Hence, today, most of the Jewish population in Israel are Mizrahi Jews (i.e., Jews from the Middle East.) The idea – espoused frequently by extreme Israel critics that Jews should go back to where they came from is fanciful. There is nothing to return to. As there was not, realistically, for the survivors of the Holocaust in Poland and Eastern Europe after World War II.
Avineri thought that peopling parts of the West Bank by Jewish settlers added an unnecessary burden in conflict with Israel’s interests. He urged that economic incentives be given to resettle them in Israel proper. (Many, after all, had received subsidies to move to where they were now, a good number located on the West Bank for economic reasons – cheaper land, etc. Not every settler was a religious zealot.) The racist actions of the hard-line settler movement, however, their confiscation of Arab land and harassment of Palestinian farmers, could only stoke tensions. Poking the Palestinians in the eye, so to speak, making ordinary travel in the West Bank, say, from Nablus to Hebron a nightmare of checkpoints and traffic jams because of the location of settler outposts would radicalise Palestinians to despise Israel and Israelis. That was only one consequence. The diversion of resources from the Israel Defence Forces to protect the settlers would weaken Israel overall.
In 1981, be perceptively analysed one dilemma arising from the occupation: “…an army that will, over time, be more and more perceived in the public mind as involved in patrolling occupied Arab cities, imposing curfews on areas under military administration, chasing Palestinian school children out of the streets back into their classrooms — in short, an army that looks and acts like any other army, will cease to be a focus of identification of Diaspora Jews…” He added: “even if many, or most of them, continue to justify the policies making such acts necessary.”
He was cautious about the achievable in his most recent prognostications. Nevertheless, Avineri continued to believe Israeli public policy should strive to mitigate the severity of occupation and move both sides eventually to an agreed solution.
In 2017, Avineri argued: “Whoever aspires to continue the Israeli control over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza territories undermines the legitimacy of Zionism and of the State of Israel. Inasmuch as in 1947 it was not possible to obtain international recognition for a Jewish State in all the territory of the Land of Israel, so, too, today it is impossible to reach such an agreement; and whoever does not see that is denying reality and misleading the public.” Avineri above all was a humanist. He understood the injunction in the Qohelet (Book of Ecclesiastes): “For in much wisdom is much worry: and he who adds wisdom adds pain.” His writings and thought emblemise the complexities, challenges, and paradoxes of the nation and region he dedicated his life to understand.
