Recently, I came across a 1937 pamphlet titled A Letter to a Zionist Friend by an author named Ben David. It was digitized by Google and made available through the HathiTrust Digital Library. I’m sharing it here in full because of how powerfully it reflects the debates around Zionism, Jewish identity, and the future of Palestine that were already deeply active nearly 90 years ago.
What’s striking is how many of the questions this letter raises—about nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, and solidarity—still feel urgently relevant today. This text is particularly fascinating in that it captures the ongoing debate between Jews in the diaspora and those who were Zionist or supported the Zionist project in Palestine. It shows that, much like today, many Zionists were insistent on adopting a worldview rooted in creating a fortress in Palestine at any cost, often with little regard for the political rights and wellbeing of Palestinians and the people of the region as a whole. As we see in this letter, Jews in the diaspora who were critical of Zionism and the Zionist project were able to recognize—and even predict—that such policies and aims would create nothing but perpetual crisis and instability, endangering the lives of both Arabs and Jews. ….more