‘A False and Perverse Doctrine’

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 explores the origins of Jacob Robinson and Shabtai Rosenne’s ambivalence towards the Genocide Convention and Raphael Lemkin. At its core was their reading of the Convention as the extension of interwar protection of minority rights—in essence, as a programme of Diaspora Nationalism. The Convention was predicated on a competing model of Jewish nationalism that, following Simon Dubnow, identified the Diaspora—not Palestine—as the proper locus for Jewish national revival. It challenged Zionism’s core assumptions about the Jewish condition and the solution it prescribed to the ‘Jewish Question’. A return to minority rights, after the Holocaust, undermined Zionism’s achievement of majority status in Palestine and negated the need for a Jewish state to guarantee the protection of Jews. Both Robinson and Rosenne had previously subscribed to Dubnow’s teachings; the chapter traces their ideological transformations: from investment in to disenchantment with national autonomy, minority rights, and Dubnow’s theories.