A Radical Transformation?
The Introduction notes the tendency of international law and Jewish history scholars to read the international law engagement of Jewish scholars as a cosmopolitan project yet limit inquiry to the period preceding Israel’s establishment and the ‘sovereign turn’ in modern Jewish history; as well as the emphasis, in scholarship on Israel’s foreign policy, on the ‘Jewish aspect’ of the Jewish state’s international outlook. Against this backdrop, the Introduction presents the object, scope, and underlying argument of the book: a study of Israel’s early ambivalence towards three post-war international law reform projects, at the United Nations arena, given voice by two Ministry of Foreign Affairs legal advisers. The Introduction points to ideology as the force driving the protagonists’ ambivalence towards international law. It argues that how Jacob Robinson and Shabtai Rosenne approached international law was determined by pre-sovereign sensibilities expressing the creed of the Jewish national movement and its political experience.