Abstract

Harvey Blume's review of Gershom Scholem's On Jews and Judaism in Crisis (Telos 31) misrepresents Zionism and Scholem's attitude toward the Palestinians, and contains serious historical inaccuracies regarding Scholem's record in the Israel-Arab conflict.

Blume claims that the absence of any discussion of the Arab-Jewish problem in this particular volume demonstrates that “Scholem completely shares the failure of Zionism” to consider the Arabs. In the first place, to argue that Zionism as a whole is monolithic or to argue that the Zionist movement was monolithic concerning the Palestinians is a serious factual distortion. There are and always have been serious differences within Zionism on just about every issue, including that of the Palestinians.