To call the Jewish-American thinker Judith Butler a controversial public figure is an understatement. In Germany in particular, their views on the Israel–Palestine conflict have frequently provoked outrage, accompanied by accusations of antisemitism – never more so than in the wake of the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Most observers, however, content themselves with snippets and soundbites from Butler’s lectures and panel discussions to gather incriminating material and declare them persona non grata.

This talk takes a different approach. It examines Butler’s most extensive and systematic statement on the subject: Parting Ways (2012), in which Butler reconstructs a Jewish intellectual tradition critical of Zionism and of the State of Israel. A central figure in this pantheon is Hannah Arendt, who has recently also been the focus of several German-language biographies.

The reception of Arendt’s writings oscillates between two poles: if Butler is placed at the anti-Zionist end of the spectrum, the newer biographical literature conjures up a Zionist poster child in the spirit of German Staatsräson. Both tendencies, it will be argued, stretch the source material to breaking point for political purposes and risk distorting Arendt’s ideas.

When it comes to her activism in support of Jewish emigration to Palestine, the role of “settler colonialism,” the plight of Palestinian refugees, the prospects for a binational federal polity, her fierce critique of a Jewish nation-state, or her eventual commitment to Israel once it existed, Arendt’s thought proves more unassimilable and unsettling than current appropriations, by Butler and others, allow for.