Below is a working draft of a section from the Blood and soil article.
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Zionist usage
editAccording to David Biale, "Before the Nazis came to power in Germany ... the language of 'blood and soil' ... held wide appeal for Jews searching for new ways of defining themselves."[1] Similarly, while acknowledging the pre-Nazi use of "blood and soil" as an "abstract, Hegelian term", Raphael Falk notes, "Zionists adopted the concept of Volk in terms of a nation-race as molded by the notion of Blood and Soil ..."[2] Falk cites Israel's national poet as an example:
A blunt, unfortunate example of the adherence of the Zionists to the nineteenth-century notion of Blood and Soil as ground for their territorial rights is the statement by the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik at a press conference at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the beginning of 1934: "I too, like Hitler, believe in the power of blood."[3]
Falk claims the only precedent for the Zionist effort to biologically sort humanity into Jew and non-Jew are the "Nazi efforts to diagnose the biological belonging of individuals to national-ethnic entities ..."[4]
Walter Laquer also identified Martin Buber "as an early protagonist of Blut und Boden ..."[5]: 398 For Laquer, Buber's advocacy, in its historical context, was "innocent".[5]: 398 Hans Derks criticizes Laquer for downplaying Buber's views and, quoting Laquer, those of other Zionist "advocates of the volkische idea".[6]: 186 Laquer's purpose, according to Derks, is "to avoid the painful nazism-zionism relationship."[6]: 186
To Derks, historical context does not exonerate Buber. As Derks asserts, "in that time many people in and outside Palestine rightly attacked zionists for their radical right-wing thoughts and warned their large audiences against it."[6]: 186 Biale, on the other hand, claims that Buber's invocation of Blood and Soil "was very far from either racism or integral nationalism."[7]
In his biography of Arthur Ruppin, Etan Bloom says the importation "of the Christian-European model of the Maccabeans" resulted in the establishment of the "Blut und Boden trope ... in the emerging Modern Hebrew culture."[8]: 116 Similarly, poets Ya'akov Cahan and Kadish Lieb Silman are also cited as propagators of Blood and Soil ideology in Zionist culture.[9]
Hannah Arendt also criticized Zionism for its insistence on the "politics of 'blood and soil'" and its "uncritical acceptance of German-inspired nationalism," an ideology that "explains peoples ... in terms of biological superhuman personalities."[10][11] In a 1942 essay titled "Jewish Politics", Arendt lamented that "for almost fifty years" Jewish politics had been dominated by "the habit of constructing its weltanschauung ... out of blood and soil and horoscopes." Specifically, targeting Revisionist Zionism and naming the "fascist organization Irgun", Arendt described Zionism as a "Jewish liberation movement" that had been hijacked by "Jewish fascists".
References
edit- ↑ Biale, David (2007). Blood and Belief The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians. University of California Pr. p. 184.
Before the Nazis came to power, though, many Jews fell under the influence of the German völkisch thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ideas that ultimately played a role in the rise of Nazism but in their earlier manifestations did not always have such sinister connotations. Despite the anti-Semitic overtones of some of these ideas, the language of 'blood and soil' (Blut und Boden) held wide appeal for Jews searching for new ways of defining themselves.
- ↑ Falk, Raphael (2017). Zionism and the Biology of Jews. Springer. p. 5. ISBN 978-3-319-57344-1.
In other words, the Zionists adopted the concept of Volk in terms of a nation-race as molded by the notion of Blood and Soil (Blut und Boden) – current in central Europe of the time ... Undoubtedly many of those who expressed themselves at the turn of the century in terms of Blut und Boden were referring to the abstract, Hegelian term, rather than to the anthropological or biological notion, and surely not to the later National Socialist interpretation of the term. Yet, considering the positivist attempts to impose social and humanitarian principles upon the principles of the natural sciences, it is difficult to accept that persons who adopted this term did not see the real life consequences of such an expression.
- ↑ Falk, Raphael (2017). Zionism and the Biology of Jews. Springer. p. 5. ISBN 978-3-319-57344-1.
- ↑ Falk, Raphael (2017). Zionism and the Biology of Jews. Springer. p. 6 note=6. ISBN 978-3-319-57344-1.
... except for Nazi efforts to diagnose the biological belonging of individuals to national-ethnic entities, there is no other example known to me like the Zionists' of an intensive effort to prove the immanent biological belonging or non-belonging of communities to what is considered to be the Jewish entity. [Emphases in original.
- 1 2 Laquer, Walter (2003). A History of Zionism. Schocken.
... in the light of the subsequent development of German nationalism, essays that were innocent enough when written appeared several decades later in a sinister light, with Martin Buber as an early protagonist of Blut und Boden and other Zionist ideologists as advocates of the voelkische idea. Torn out of their historical context they now make embarrassing reading and the critics of Zionism have not failed to make the most of them.
- 1 2 3 Derks, Hans (2025). The Market and the Oikos, Vol. III: The Last Western Colony, 1918 – 1948. Brill.
- ↑ Biale, David (2007). Blood and Belief The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians. University of California Pr. p. 185.
Although Buber shared the language of blood community with the racial thinkers of his time, his view was very far from either racism or integral nationalism.
- ↑ Bloom, Etan (2011). Arthur Ruppin and the Production of Pre-Israeli Culture. Brill.
- ↑ Biale, David (2007). Blood and Belief The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians. University of California Pr. pp. 191–193.
- ↑ O'Brien, Monica (2007). "Hannah Arendt, George Eliot, and the Jewish Question". Comparative Literature Studies. 44 (1/2). JSTOR 25659563.
For Arendt, Herzl's brand of Jewish nationalism mimics the nation-building practices of anti-Semitic governments because it insists on politics of 'blood and soil'—in other words, it requires a racially homogenous population, which inevitably renders minorities a problem (and in Palestine, the so-called "minority" was the Arab people).
- ↑ Arendt, Hannah (1970). "Zionism Reconsidered". In Selzer, Michael (ed.). Zionism Reconsidered: The Rejection of Jewish Normalcy. Macmillan. p. 241. LCCN 71-91031. Retrieved 2025-09-15.
Only in its Zionist variant has such a crazy isolationism gone to the extreme of escape from Europe altogether. But its underlying national philosophy is far more general; indeed, it has been the ideology of most central European national movements. It is nothing else than the uncritical acceptance of German-inspired nationalism. This holds a nation to be an eternal organic body, the product of inevitable natural growth of inherent qualities; and it explains peoples, not in terms of political organizations, but in terms of biological superhuman personalities.