Beyond Sovereignty or Exile: The Limits of Exilic and Diasporic Jewish Politics and the Egalitarian Potential of Jewish Nationality

This article argues that Jewish accounts of exile or diaspora predicated on disaggregating Jewishness from Zionism cannot sustain the nonsovereign Jewish politics they endorse. Although these accounts provide new grounding for Jewish critiques of Zionism and the State of Israel, they prioritize a Jewishness that is not implicated in Jewish political responsibility for Palestinian subordination. As a result, they have a more contingent relationship to binational political equality between Jews and Palestinians. To overcome these issues, I offer a normative alternative: a creolized reading of Jewish nationality. I argue that such an account, which accepts the Zionization of Jewishness, can better support a Jewish communal turn toward binational political equality. This is a reading of Jewish nationality defined as the enactment of a localized, binational coalition with Palestinians based on a recognition of present inequality and shared opposition to Palestinian subordination. Such a politics could frame the State of Israel as a threat to Jewish politics not because it abrogates an idealized notion of Jewish identity or ethics but because it is hostile to the egalitarian, binational partnership on which any such politics must rest.