Two Flawed Attempts to Rethink Zionism

Two new theoretical works attempt to save Jewish nationalism and the state of Israel from their purported deficiencies and, simultaneously, to defend them against their critics. In Zionism and Judaism: A New Theory, David Novak argues that the only grounds for the rightness of Zionism are religious, and therefore Israel should be “a theistically based polity,” with its legal system undergirded not by halakhah but by the seven Noahide laws. Chaim Gans, in A Political Theory for the Jewish People, contends that the principles justifying Jewish statehood also justify Palestinian statehood, and also the right of Arabs to their own national culture within a Jewish state. Allan Arkush finds both books unsatisfactory (free registration required):