| Zionism Reconsidered (Typoskript, 1944) | Zionism Reconsidered (Menorah Journal, 1945) |
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Zionism Reconsidered | Zionism Reconsidered |
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By Hannah Arendt | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
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The end result of fifty years of Zionist politics was embodied in the recent resolution of the largest and most influential section of the World Zionist Organization. American Zionists from left to right adopted unanimously, at their last annual convention held in Atlantic City in 1944, the demand for a “free and democratic Jewish commonwealth... | The end result of fifty years of Zionist politics was embodied in the recent resolution of the largest and most influential section of the World Zionist Organization. American Zionists from left to right adopted unanimously, at their last annual convention held in Atlantic City in |
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Why “general” Zionists should still quarrel officially with Revisionists is hard to understand, unless it be that the former |2 do not quite believe in the | Why “general” Zionists should still quarrel officially with Revisionists is hard to understand, unless it be that the former do not quite believe in the |
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In any case, the significant development lies in the unanimous adherence of all | In any case, the significant development lies in the unanimous adherence of all |
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It would certainly be very naive to believe that such a cutting would invariably be to the Jewish advantage, nor is there any reason to assume that it would result in a lasting solution. To be more specific, the British Government may tomorrow decide to partition the country and may sincerely believe it has found a working compromise between Jewish and Arab demands. This belief on the British part would be all the more natural since partition might indeed be an acceptable compromise between the pro-Arab | It would certainly be very naive to believe that such a cutting would invariably be to the Jewish advantage, nor is there any reason to assume that it would result in a lasting solution. To be more specific, the British Government may tomorrow decide to partition the country and may sincerely believe it has found a working compromise between Jewish and Arab demands. This belief on the British part would be all the more natural since partition might indeed be an acceptable compromise between the pro-Arab |
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Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts nothing but the rude force of the nation. A nationalism that necessarily and admittedly depends upon the force of a foreign nation is certainly worse. This is the threatened fate of Jewish nationalism and of the proposed Jewish State, surrounded inevitably by Arab states and Arab peoples. Even a Jewish majority in Palestine-nay, even a transfer of all Palestine Arabs, which is openly demanded by Revisionists-would not substantially change a situation in which Jews must either ask protection from an outside power against their neighbors or effect a working agreement with their neighbors. | Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts |
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If such an agreement is not brought about, there is the imminent danger that, through their need and willingness to accept any power in the Mediterranean basin which might assure their existence, Jewish interests will clash with those of all other Mediterranean peoples; so that, instead of one “tragic conflict | If such an agreement is not brought about, there is the imminent danger that, through their need and willingness to accept any power in the Mediterranean basin which might assure their existence, Jewish interests will clash with those of all other Mediterranean peoples; so that, instead of one “tragic conflict” we shall face tomorrow as many insoluble conflicts as there are Mediterranean nations. For these nations, bound to demand a mare nostrum shared only by those who have settled territories along its shores, must in the long run oppose any outside |
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II | II |
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The Revisionist landslide | The Revisionist landslide |
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In the light of present decisions, this ideology must appear to any neutral and not too well-informed spectator like deliberately complicated talk designed to hide political intentions. But such an interpretation would not do justice to the majority of Zionists. The truth of the matter is that the Zionist ideology, in the Herzlian version, had a definite tendency toward what later was known as Revisionist attitudes, and could escape from | In the light of present decisions, this ideology must appear to any neutral and not too well-informed spectator like deliberately complicated talk designed to hide political intentions. But such an interpretation would not do justice to the majority of Zionists. The truth of the matter is that the Zionist ideology, in the Herzlian version, had a definite tendency toward what later was known as Revisionist attitudes, and could escape from |
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The political issues on which the course of the whole movement depended were few in number and could be plainly recognized. Foremost among them was the question of which kind of a political body Palestine Jewry was to form. The Revisionist insistence on a National State, refusing to accept a mere | The political issues on which the course of the whole movement depended were few in number and could be plainly recognized. Foremost among them was the question of which kind of a political body Palestine Jewry was to form. The Revisionist insistence on a National State, refusing to accept a mere |
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Here enters the double-loyalty conflict, never clearly answered, which is an | Here enters the double-loyalty conflict, never clearly answered, which is an |
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The answer is that in Palestine we have a Hebrew nation, in the Diaspora a Jewish people. This chimes in with the old theory that only the remnant will return, the remnant being the | The answer is that in Palestine we have a Hebrew nation, in the Diaspora a Jewish people. This chimes in with the old theory that only the remnant will return, the remnant being the |
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Of equal importance has been the question, always open, as to what Jews should do against antisemitism: what kind of fight or explanation the new national movement, which after all | Of equal importance has been the question, always open, as to what Jews should do against antisemitism: what kind of fight or explanation the new national movement, which |
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The last, and at the moment certainly most important, issue is the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine. The intransigent attitude of the Revisionists is well known. Always claiming the whole of Palestine and Transjordan, they were the first to advocate the transfer of Palestine Arabs to Iraq-a proposition which a few years ago was earnestly discussed in general Zionist circles as well. Since the latest resolution of the American Zionist Organization, from which neither the Jewish Agency nor the Palestine Vaad Leumi differs in principle, leaves practically no choice for the Arabs but minority status in Palestine or voluntary emigration, it is obvious that in this question, too, the Revisionist principle, | The last, and at the moment certainly most important, issue is the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine. The intransigent attitude of the Revisionists is well known. Always claiming the whole of Palestine and Transjordan, they were the first to advocate the transfer of Palestine Arabs to Iraq-a proposition which a few years ago was earnestly discussed in general Zionist circles as well. Since the latest resolution of the American Zionist Organization, from which neither the Jewish Agency nor the Palestine Vaad Leumi differs in principle, leaves practically no choice for the Arabs but minority status in Palestine or voluntary emigration, it is obvious that in this question, too, the Revisionist principle, |
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The only distinct difference between the Revisionists and the general Zionists today lies in their attitude towards England, and this is not a fundamental political issue. The Revisionists, decidedly anti-British, share this position, at least on sentimental grounds, with a great many Palestine Jews who have the experience of British Colonial administration. Moreover, they enjoy in this respect the support of | The only distinct difference between the Revisionists and the general Zionists today lies in their attitude towards England, and this is not a fundamental political issue. The Revisionists, decidedly anti-British, share this position, at least on sentimental grounds, with a great many Palestine Jews who have the experience of British Colonial administration. Moreover, they enjoy in this respect the support of |
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III | III |
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In a rather summary way it may be asserted that the Zionist movement was fathered by two typical nineteenth-century European political ideologies-socialism and nationalism. The amalgam of these two seemingly contradictory doctrines was generally effected long before Zionism came into being: it was effected in all those national-revolutionary movements of small European peoples whose situation was equally one of social as of national oppression. But within the Zionist movement such an amalgam has never been realized. Instead, the movement was split from the beginning between the social-revolutionary forces which had sprung from the east European masses and the aspiration for national emancipation as formulated by Herzl and his followers in the central European countries. The paradox of this split was that, whereas the former was actually a people’s movement, caused by national oppression, the latter, created by social discrimination, became the political creed of intellectuals. | In a rather summary way it may be asserted that the Zionist movement was fathered by two typical nineteenth-century European political ideologies-socialism and nationalism. The amalgam of these two seemingly contradictory doctrines was generally effected long before Zionism came into being: it was effected in all those national-revolutionary movements of small European peoples whose situation was equally one of social as of national oppression. But within the Zionist movement such an amalgam has never been realized. Instead, the movement was split from the beginning between the social-revolutionary forces which had sprung from the east European masses and the aspiration for national emancipation as formulated by Herzl and his followers in the central European countries. The paradox of this split was that, whereas the former was actually a people’s movement, caused by national oppression, the latter, created by social discrimination, became the political creed of intellectuals. |
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For a long time the eastern movement had so strong an affinity with socialism in the Tolstoyan form that its followers almost adopted it as their exclusive ideology. The Marxists among them believed Palestine to be the ideal place to “normalize” the social aspects of Jewish life by establishing there appropriate conditions for Jewish participation in the all-important class struggle from which the ghetto existence had excluded the Jewish |9 masses: this was to give them a | For a long time the eastern movement had so strong an affinity with socialism in the Tolstoyan form that its followers almost adopted it as their exclusive ideology. The Marxists among them believed Palestine to be the ideal place to “normalize” the social aspects of Jewish life |
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The national aim of the socialist Zionists was attained when they settled in Palestine. Beyond that they had no national aspirations. Absurd as it may sound today, they had not the slightest suspicion of any national conflict with the present inhabitants of the promised land; they | The national aim of the socialist Zionists was attained when they settled in Palestine. Beyond that they had no national aspirations. Absurd as it may sound today, they had not the slightest |Arendt-III-014-00000008 suspicion of any national conflict with the present inhabitants of the promised land; they |
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Out of these social ideals grew the chalutz and kibbutz movement. Its members, a small minority in their native lands, are a hardly | Out of these social ideals grew the chalutz and kibbutz movement. Its members, a small minority in their native lands, are a hardly |
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Great as | Great as these achievements |
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Not even the events of 1933 roused their political interest; they were naive enough to see in them, above all, a God-sent opportunity for an undreamt-of wave of immigration to Palestine. When the Zionist Organization, against the natural impulses of the whole Jewish people, decided to do business with Hitler, to trade German goods against the wealth of German Jewry, to | Not even the events of 1933 roused their political interest; they were naive enough to see in them, above all, a God-sent opportunity for an undreamt-of wave of immigration to Palestine. When the Zionist Organization, against the natural impulses of the whole Jewish people, decided to do business with Hitler, to trade German goods against the wealth of German Jewry, to |
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This consenting to the Nazi-Zionist transfer agreement is only one outstanding instance among many of the political failure of the aristocracy of Palestine Jewry. Much as, despite their small number, they influenced the social values in Palestine, so little did they exercise their force in Zionist politics. Invariably | This consenting to the Nazi-Zionist transfer agreement is only one outstanding instance among many of the political failure of the aristocracy of Palestine Jewry. Much as, despite their small number, they influenced the social values in Palestine, so little did they exercise their force in Zionist politics. Invariably they submitted to the Organization which, none the less, they held in contempt, as they held in contempt all men who were not producing and living from the work of their hands. |
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Thus the social-revolutionary Jewish national movement, which started half a century ago with ideals so lofty that it overlooked the particular realities of the Near East and the |13 general wickedness of the world, has ended-as do most movements- with the unequivocal support | Thus the social-revolutionary Jewish national movement, which started half a century ago with ideals so lofty that it overlooked the particular realities of the Near East and the general wickedness of the world, has ended-as do most |
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IV | IV |
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Socialism-which, despite all its materialist superstitions and naive atheistic dogmatism, was once an inspiring source of the revolutionary labor movement-laid the heavy hand of “dialectical necessity” upon the heads and hearts of its adherents until they were willing to fit into almost any inhumane conditions. They were so willing because, on the one hand, their genuine political impulses for justice and freedom had grown fainter and fainter and, on the other hand, their fanatical belief in some superhuman, eternally progressive development had grown stronger and stronger. As for nationalism, | Socialism-which, despite all its materialist superstitions and naive atheistic dogmatism, was once an inspiring source of the revolutionary labor movement-laid the heavy hand of “dialectical necessity” upon the heads and hearts of its adherents until they were willing to fit into almost any inhumane conditions. They were so willing because, on the one hand, their genuine political impulses for justice and freedom had grown fainter and fainter and, on the other hand, their fanatical belief in some superhuman, eternally progressive development had grown stronger and stronger. As for nationalism, |
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The pressure of this general European situation made itself felt in Jewish life through a new hostile philosophy, which centered its whole outlook around the role of the Jews in political and social life. In a sense, antisemitism was the father of both | The pressure of this general European situation made itself felt in Jewish life through a new hostile philosophy, which centered its whole outlook around the role of the Jews in political and social life. In a sense, antisemitism was the father of both Assimilationism and Zionism-to such a degree, indeed, that we can hardly understand a single word of the great war of arguments between them, that was to last for decades, without |
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At that time antisemitism was still the expression of a typical conflict such as must inevitably occur within the framework of a national state whose fundamental identity between people and territory and state cannot but be disturbed by the presence of another nationality which, in whatever forms, wants to preserve its identity. Within the framework of a national state there are only two alternatives for the solution of nationality-conflicts: either complete | At that time antisemitism was still the expression of a typical conflict such as must inevitably occur within the framework of a national state whose fundamental identity between people and territory and state cannot but be disturbed by the presence of another nationality which, in whatever forms, wants to preserve |Arendt-III-014-00000012 its identity. Within the framework of a national state there are only two alternatives for the solution of nationality-conflicts: either complete |
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But now the way was free for talking in general terms and developing the respective isms | But now the way was free for talking in general terms and developing the respective isms |
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[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | V |
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Sad as it must be for every believer in government of the people, by the people and for the people, the fact is that a political history of | Sad as it must be for every believer in government of the people, by the people and for the people, the fact is that a political history of |
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It was only after Herzl’s death in 1904, and because of the failure of all of Herzl’s ventures into high diplomacy, that they became converts to Weizmann’s “practical” Zionism, which preached practical achievements in Palestine as the basis for political success. This approach, however, was to meet with as little actual success. In the absence of a political guarantee (Herzl’s famous Charter) and in the presence of the hostile Turkish administration, very few Jews could be induced to settle in Palestine prior to the Balfour Declaration in | It was only after Herzl’s death in 1904, and because of the failure of all of Herzl’s ventures into high diplomacy, that they became converts to Weizmann’s “practical” Zionism, which preached practical achievements in Palestine as the basis for political success. This approach, however, was to meet with as little actual success. In the absence of a political guarantee (Herzl’s famous Charter) and in the presence of the hostile Turkish administration, very few Jews could be induced to settle in Palestine prior to the Balfour Declaration in |
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For the most part interested in the relationship between the movement and the Great Powers, and in the propaganda results among a few outstanding personalities, the General Zionists were sufficiently unprejudiced, despite their bourgeois origin, to leave to their |17 eastern brethren-those who actually did go to Palestine-a completely free hand with their experiments in social and economic life, insisting only on | For the most part interested in the relationship between the movement and the Great Powers, and in the propaganda results among a few outstanding personalities, the General Zionists were sufficiently unprejudiced, despite their bourgeois origin, to leave to their eastern brethren-those who actually did go to Palestine-a completely free hand with their experiments in social and economic |Arendt-III-014-00000014 life, insisting only on |
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The men who now assumed Zionist leadership were no less the moral aristocracy of western Jewry than were the founders of the Kibbutz and Chalutz movement of eastern Jewry. They constituted the best part of that new Jewish intelligentsia in central Europe, whose worst representatives were to be found in the offices of Ullstein and Mosse in Berlin or the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna. It was not their fault they were not of the people, for in these western and central European countries a | The men who now assumed Zionist leadership were no less the moral aristocracy of western Jewry than were the founders of the Kibbutz and Chalutz movement of eastern Jewry. They constituted the best part of that new Jewish intelligentsia in central Europe, whose worst representatives were to be found in the offices of Ullstein and Mosse in Berlin or the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna. It was not their fault they were not of the people, for in these western and central European countries a |
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Western Zionists, then, were a fraction of those sons of wealthy Jewish bourgeois families who could afford to see their children through the university. Simply by so doing, and without giving the matter much thought, the wealthy Jews, mainly of Germany and Austria-Hungary, created an entirely new class in Jewish life-modern intellectuals | Western Zionists, then, were a fraction of those sons of wealthy Jewish bourgeois families who could afford to see their children through the university. Simply by so doing, and without giving the matter much thought, the wealthy Jews, mainly of Germany and Austria-Hungary, created an entirely new class in Jewish life-modern intellectuals |
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This, however, quickly proved almost as difficult as complete assimilation with self-respect. For in “the house of their fathers” (Herzl) there was no place for them. The Jewish | This, however, quickly proved almost as difficult as complete assimilation with self-respect. For in “the house of their fathers” (Herzl) there was no place for them. The Jewish |
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However, the new Jewish intellectuals had not been provided for in this undirected but nevertheless efficiently functioning organization. True, if they were lawyers and doctors-the heart’s desire of all Jewish parents-they still needed Jewish social connections for their living. But for those who chose the professions of writers and journalists, of | However, the new Jewish intellectuals had not been provided for in this undirected but nevertheless efficiently functioning organization. True, if they were lawyers and doctors-the heart’s desire of all Jewish parents-they still needed Jewish social connections for their living. But for those who chose the professions of writers and journalists, of |
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Zionism, hence, was destined primarily, in western and central Europe, to offer a solution to these men who were more assimilated than any other class of Jewry and certainly more imbued with European education and cultural values than their opponents. Precisely because they were assimilated enough to understand the structure of the modern national state they realized the political actuality of antisemitism even if they failed to analyze it, and they wanted the same body politic for the Jewish people. The hollow word-struggles between Zionism and assimilationism has completely distorted the simple fact that the Zionists, in a sense, were the only ones who sincerely wanted assimilation, namely, “normalization” of the people (“to be a people like all other peoples”), whereas the assimilationists wanted the Jewish people to retain their unique position. | Zionism, hence, was destined primarily, in western and central Europe, to offer a solution to these men who were more assimilated than any other class of Jewry and certainly more imbued with European education and cultural values than their opponents. Precisely because they were assimilated enough to understand the structure of the modern national state they realized the political actuality of antisemitism even if they failed to analyze it, and they wanted the same body politic for the Jewish people. The hollow word-struggles between Zionism and assimilationism has completely distorted the simple fact that the Zionists, in a sense, were the only ones who sincerely wanted assimilation, namely, “normalization” of the people (“to be a people like all other peoples”), whereas the assimilationists wanted the Jewish people to retain their unique position. |
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In sharp contrast to their eastern comrades, these | In sharp contrast to their eastern comrades, these |
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[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | VI |
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V | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
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During the decade after Herzl’s death | During the decade after Herzl’s death |
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This appraisal of antisemitism-as an eternal phenomenon attending inevitably the course of Jewish history through all the Diaspora countries-sometimes took to more rational forms, as when interpreted with the categories of the national state. Then antisemitism could appear as | This appraisal of antisemitism-as an eternal phenomenon |Arendt-III-014-00000018 attending inevitably the course of Jewish history through all the Diaspora countries-sometimes took to more rational forms, as when interpreted with the categories of the national state. Then antisemitism could appear as |
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This Zionist attitude toward antisemitism-which was held to be sound precisely because it was irrational, and therefore explained something unexplainable and avoided explaining what could be explained-led to a very dangerous misappraisal of political conditions in each country. Antisemitic parties and movements were taken at their face value, were considered genuinely representative of the whole nation, and hence not worthwhile fighting against. And since the Jewish people, still in the manner of antique nations with their own ancient traditions, | This Zionist attitude toward antisemitism-which was held to be sound precisely because it was irrational, and therefore explained something unexplainable and avoided explaining what could be explained-led to a very dangerous misappraisal of political conditions in each country. Antisemitic parties and movements were taken at their face value, were considered genuinely representative of the whole nation, and hence not worthwhile fighting against. And since the Jewish people, still in the manner of antique nations with their own ancient traditions, |
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Not less dangerous and quite in accord with this general trend was the sole new piece of historical philosophy which the Zionists contributed out of their own new experiences; “A nation is a group of people ... held together by a common enemy” (Herzl)-an absurd doctrine containing only this bit of truth | Not less dangerous and quite in accord with this general trend was the sole new piece of historical philosophy which the Zionists contributed out of their own new experiences; “A nation is a group of people ... held together by a common enemy” (Herzl)-an absurd doctrine containing only this bit of truth |
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Even before the Zionist Organization descended into the shameful position of joining the part of Jewry that willingly treated with its enemy, this doctrine had several not unimportant consequences. | Even before the Zionist Organization descended into the shameful position of joining the part of Jewry that willingly treated with its enemy, this doctrine had several not unimportant consequences. |
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One immediate consequence was that it made superfluous a political understanding of the part Jewish plutocracy played within the framework of national states, and its effects on the life of the Jewish people. The new Zionist definition of a nation as a group of people held together by a common enemy strengthened the general Jewish feeling that “we are all in the same boat”- which simply did not correspond to the realities. Hence the | One immediate consequence was that it made superfluous a political understanding of the part Jewish plutocracy played within the framework of national states, and its effects on the life of the Jewish people. The new Zionist definition of a nation as a group of people held together by a common enemy strengthened the general Jewish feeling that “we are all in the same boat”-which simply did not correspond to the realities. Hence the |
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In the second place, the new doctrine of nationalism influenced very strongly the Zionists’ attitude toward the Soviet attempt to liquidate antisemitism without liquidating the Jews. This, it was asserted, could in the long and even short run lead only to the disappearance of Russian Jewry. It is true that today little is left of their hostility, although it still plays a role, if only a subordinate one, in the minds of that minority who are wholly tied up with Weizmann and, consequently, hostile to any influence in the Near East besides the British. We witness, rather, a new sympathy for Soviet Russia among Zionists throughout the world. So far it has remained mostly sentimental, ready to admire everything Russian; but, out of disillusionment with Great | In the second place, the new doctrine of nationalism influenced very strongly the Zionists’ attitude toward the Soviet attempt to liquidate antisemitism without liquidating the Jews. This, it was asserted, could in the long and even short run lead only to the disappearance of Russian Jewry. It is true that today little is left of their hostility, although it still plays a role, if only a subordinate one, in the minds of that minority who are wholly tied up with Weizmann and, consequently, hostile to any influence in the Near East besides the British. We witness, rather, a new sympathy for Soviet Russia among Zionists throughout the world. So far it has remained mostly sentimental, ready to admire everything Russian; but, out of disillusionment with Great |
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A third political consequence of a fundamentally unpolitical attitude was the place which Palestine itself was assigned in the philosophy of Zionism. Its clearest expression may be found in Weizmann’s dictum during the ’thirties that “the upbuilding of Palestine is our answer to antisemitism”-the absurdity of which was to be shown only a few years later, when Rommel’s |26 army threatened Palestine Jewry with exactly the same fate as in European countries. Since antisemitism was | A third political consequence of a fundamentally unpolitical attitude was the place which Palestine itself was assigned in the philosophy of Zionism. Its clearest expression may be found in Weizmann’s dictum during the ’thirties that “the upbuilding of Palestine is our answer to antisemitism”-the absurdity of which was to be shown only a few years later, when Rommel’s army threatened Palestine Jewry with exactly the same fate as in European countries. Since antisemitism was |
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At the core of this hope which-were ideologies not stronger for some people than realities-should by now be blown to bits, we find the old mentality of enslaved peoples, the belief that it does not pay to fight back, that one | At the core of this hope which-were ideologies not stronger for some people than realities-should by now be blown to bits, we |Arendt-III-014-00000021 find the old mentality of enslaved peoples, the belief that it does not pay to fight back, that one |
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Ideologically more important was the fact that, by their interpretation of Palestine in | Ideologically more important was the fact that, by their interpretation of Palestine in |
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This pessimism for Jewish life in any other political form, and in any other territory of the earth, seems to be unaffected in the Zionist mind by the very size of Palestine, a small country that at best can give homestead to several millions of the Jewish people but never to all the millions of Jews still remaining throughout the world. Hence only two political solutions could be envisioned. Zionists used to argue that “only the | This pessimism for Jewish life in any other political form, and in any other territory of the earth, seems to be unaffected in the |Arendt-III-014-00000022 Zionist mind by the very size of Palestine, a small country that at best can give homestead to several millions of the Jewish people but never to all the millions of Jews still remaining throughout the world. Hence only two political solutions could be envisioned. Zionists used to argue that “only the |
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VI | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
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It was during and after the First World War the Zionist attitude towards the Great Powers took definite shape. There had already been, however, almost since the seizure of political leadership by the western branch in the ’nineties, significant signs indicating the way the new national movement was to choose for the realization of its aims. It was well known how Herzl himself started negotiations with Governments, appealing invariably to their interest in getting rid of the Jewish question through the emigration of their Jews. It is known, too, how he invariably failed, and for a simple reason: he was the only one who took the anti-Jewish agitation at its face value. Precisely those Governments that indulged most in Jew-baiting were the least prepared to take his proposal seriously; they could scarcely understand a man who insisted on the spontaneity of a movement which they themselves had stirred up. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
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Even more significant for the future were Herzl’s negotiations with the Turkish Government. The Turkish Empire- one of |29 those nationality-states based on oppression which were already doomed and, indeed, disappeared during the First World War- was to be interested in Jewish settlements on this premise: a new and completely loyal factor would be introduced with the Jews into the Near East; and a new loyal element would certainly help to keep down the greatest of the menaces that threatened the Imperial Government from all sides, the menace of an Arab uprising. Therefore when Herzl, during these negotiations, received cables from students of many oppressed nationalities protesting against agreements with a Government which had just slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Armenians, he only observed: “This will be useful for me with the Sultan.” | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
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It was in this same spirit, following what had already become a tradition, that as late as 1913 the Zionist leaders, in their reawakened hope to sway the Sultan to their side, broke off negotiations with the Arabs. Whereupon one of the Arab leaders shrewdly remarked: “Gardez-vous bien, Messieurs les Sionistes un gouvernement passe, mais un peuple reste.” (For this and later references to Arab-Jewish negotiations, see M. Perlmann’s “Chapters of Arab-Jewish Diplomacy, 1918-1922” in Jewish Social Studies, April 1944.) | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
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Those who are dismayed at the spectacle of a national movement that, starting out with such an idealistic elan, sold out at the very first moment to the powers-that-be-that felt no solidarity with other oppressed peoples whose cause, though historically otherwise conditioned, was essentially the same- that endeavored even in the morning-dream of freedom and justice to compromise with the most evil forces of our time by taking advantage of imperialist interests-those who are dismayed |30 should in fariness consider how exceptionally difficult the conditions were for the Jews who, in contrast to other peoples, did not even possess the territory from which to start their fight for freedom. The alternative to the road that Herzl marked out, and Weizmann followed through to the bitter end, would have been to organize the Jewish people in order to negotiate on the basis of a great revolutionary movement. This would have meant an alliance with all progressive forces in Europe; it would certainly have involved great risks. The only man within the Zionist Organization known to have ever considered this way was the great French Zionist Bernard Lazare, the friend of Charles Peguy-and he had to resign from the Organization at the early date of 1899. From then on no responsible Zionist trusted the Jewish people for the necessary political strength of will to achieve freedom instead of being transported to freedom thus. No official Zionist leader dared to side with the revolutionary forces in Europe. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
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Instead, the Zionists went on seeking the protection of the Great Powers, trying to trade it against possible services. They realized that what they could offer must be in terms of the interests of the Governments. In the consequent subservience to British policy, which is associated with Weizmann’s unswerving loyalty to the cause of the British Empire in the Near East, the Zionists were abetted by sheer ignorance of the new imperialist forces at work. Though these forces had been active since the ’80’s of the last century, they had begun to show clearly in all their intricacies only at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since theirs was a national movement, the Zionists could think only in national terms, seemingly unaware of the |31 fact that imperialism was a nation-destroying force, and therefore, for a small people, it was near suicide to attempt to become its allies or its agents. Nor have they even yet realized that protection by these interests supports a people as the rope supports for hanging. When challenged by opponents the Zionists would answer that British national interests and Jewish national interests happen to be identical and therefore this is a case not of protection but of alliance. It is rather hard to see what national, and not imperial, interests England could possibly have in the Near East; though it has never been hard to foretell that, till we achieve the bliss of messianic times, an alliance between a lion and a lamb can have disastrous consequences for the lamb. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 65 | |
Opposition from within the ranks of Zionists themselves never gained enough numerical strength to offset the official political line; moreover, any such opposition showed itself hesitant in action, uneasy and weak in argument as though it were insecure in thought as well as in conscience. Such leftist groups as Hashomer Hazair-which have a radical program for world politics, so radical that, at the beginning of this war, they even opposed it on the ground of its being an “imperialist war”-express themselves only by abstention when it comes to vital questions of Palestine foreign policy. In other words, they sometimes, in spite of the undoubted personal integrity of most of their members, give the all too familiar impression of leftist groups of other countries, that hide under official protests their secret relief at having the majority parties do the dirty work for them. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 66 | |
This uneasiness of conscience, widespread among other leftist groups and explainable by the general bankruptcy of |32 socialism, is among Zionists older than the general conditions and points to other and more special reasons. Since the days of Borochov, whose adherents can still be found in the small sectarian group of Poale-Zion, the leftist Zionists never thought of developing any answer of their own to the national question: they simply added official Zionism to their socialism. This addition hasn’t made for an amalgam, since it claims socialism for domestic and nationalist Zionism for foreign affairs. The result is the existing situation between Jews and Arabs. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 67 | |
In fact, the uneasiness of conscience dates from the days of the surprising discovery that within the domestic field, in the upbuilding of Palestine, there were factors present of foreign policy-by the existence of “a foreign people”. Since that time Jewish Labor has fought against Arab Labor under the pretense of class-struggle against the Jewish planters, who certainly did employ Arabs for capitalist reasons. During this fight-which more than anything else, up to 1936, poisoned the Palestine atmosphere-no attention was paid to the economic conditions of the Arabs who, through the introduction of Jewish capital and labor and the industrialization of the country, found themselves changed overnight into potential proletarians, without much chance to find the corresponding work positions. Instead, Zionist Labor repeated the true but wholly inadequate arguments regarding the feudal character of Arab society, the progressive character of capitalism, and the general rise of the Palestine standard of life shared in by the Arabs. How blind people can become if their real or supposed interests are at stake is shown by the preposterous slogan they used: although Jewish Labor fought as much for its economic position as for its |33 national aim, the cry was always for “Avodah Ivrith” (“Jewish Labor”); and one had to peer behind the scenes to detect their chief menace was not simply Arab labor but, more actually, “avodah solah” (cheap labor), represented, it is true, by the unorganized backward Arab worker. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 68 | |
In the resulting pickets of Jewish workers against Arab workers the leftist groups, most important among the Hashomer Hazair, did not directly participate; but they did little else: they remained abstentionists. The consequent local troubles, the latent internal war which has been going on in Palestine since the early ’20’s, interrupted by more and more frequent outbreaks, in turn strengthened the attitude of official Zionism. The less able Palestine Jewry was to find allies among their neighbors, the more the Zionists had to look upon Great Britain as the great protecting power. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 69 | |
Outstanding among the reasons why Labor and left-wing groups consented to this policy is again the general outlook of Zionism they had accepted. With an eye only for “the unique character” of Jewish history, insisting on the unparalleled nature of Jewish political conditions which were held to be unrelated to any other factors in European history and politics, the Zionists had ideologically placed the center of the Jewish people’s existence outside the pale of European peoples and outside the destiny of the European continent. all the misconceptions harbored by the Zionist movement because it had been influenced so strongly by antisemitism, this false notion of the non-European character of the Jews has had probably the far-reaching and the worst consequences. Not only did the Zionists break the necessary solidarity of European peoples- |34 necessary not only for the weak but for the strong as well; they would even incredibly, deprive the Jews of the only historical and cultural homestead they possibly can have; for Palestine together with the whole Mediterranean basin has always belonged to the European continent, geographically, historically, culturally, if not at all times politically. Thus the Zionists would deprive the Jewish people of its just share in the roots and development of what we generally call Western culture. Indeed, the attempts were numerous to interpret Jewish history as the history of an Asiatic people that had been driven by misfortune into a foreign comity of nations and culture wherein, regarded as an eternal stranger, it could never feel at home. (The utter absurdity of this kind of argumentation could be proved by citing the example of the Hungarian people alone: the Hungarians were of Asiastic origin, but had always been accepted as members of the European family since they were christianized.) Yet no serious attempt was ever made to integrate the Jewish people into the pattern of Asiatic politics, for that could only mean an alliance with the national-revolutionary peoples of Asia and participation in their struggle against imperialism. In the official Zionist conception, it seems, the Jewish people is uprooted from its European background and left somehow in the air, while Palestine is a place in the moon where such footless aloofness may be realized. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 70 | |
Only in its Zionist variant has such a crazy isolationism gone to the extreme of escape from Europe altogether. But its underlying national philosophy is far more general; indeed, it has been the ideology of most of central European national movements. It is nothing else than the uncritical acceptance of German-inspired nationalism. This holds a nation to be an eternal |35 organic body, the product of inevitably natural growth of inherent qualities; and it explains peoples, not in terms of political organizations, but in terms of biological superhuman personalities. In this conception European history is split up into the stories of unrelated organic bodies, and the grand French idea of the sovereignty of the people is perverted into the nationalist claims to autarchical existence. Zionism, closely tied up with that tradition of nationalist thinking, never bothered much about sovereignty of the people, which is indeed the prerequisite for the formation of a nation, but wanted from the beginning that utopian nationalist independence. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 71 | |
To such an independence, it was believed, the Jewish nation could arrive under the protecting wings of any great power strong enough to shelter its growth. Paradoxical as it may sound, it was precisely because of this nationalist misconception of the inherent independence of a nation that the Zionists ended by making the Jewish national emancipation entirely dependent upon the material interests of another nation. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 72 | |
The actual result was a return of the new movement to the traditional methods of shtadlonus, lobby-politics, which the Zionists once had so bitterly despised and violently denounced. Now Zionists too knew no better place politically than the lobbies of the powerful, and no sounder basis for agreements than their good services as agents of foreign interests. It was in the interest of foreign powers that the so-called Weizmann Feisal agreement was “allowed to pass into oblivion until 1936. It also stands to reason that British apprehension and compromise was behind the tacit abandonment...” (Perlmann, cited above.) When in 1922 new Arab-Jewish negotiations took place, the British |36 Ambassador in Rome was kept fully informed, with the result that the British asked a postponement until “the Mandate has been conferred”; The Jewish representative, Asher Saphir, held “little doubt that members of a certain political school took the view that it was not in the interest of the peaceful administration of Near and Middle Eastern territories that the two Semitic races... should cooperate again on the platform of the recognition of Jewish rights in Palestine.” (Perlmann) From then onward Arab hostility has grown year by year; and Jewish dependence on British protection has become so desperate a need that one may well call it a curious case of voluntary unconditional surrender. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 73 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | But in the face of the terrible catastrophe in Europe, there are few Zionists left who would stick to their former doctrine of the necessary perishing of Galuth-Jewry. Therefore, the alternative solution of the problem, once preached only by Revisionists, has won the day. Now they talk the language of all extreme nationalists. To the puzzling question of how Zionism can serve as an answer to antisemitism for the Jews who remain in the Diaspora they cheerfully assert, “Pan-Semitism is the best answer to anti-Semitism.” |
| 74 | |
VII | VII |
| 75 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | It was during and after the First World War that the Zionist attitude toward the Great Powers took definite shape. There had already been, however, almost since the seizure of political leadership by the western branch in the ’nineties, significant signs indicating the way the new national movement was to choose for the realization of its aims. It is well known how Herzl himself started negotiations with Governments, appealing invariably to their interest in getting rid of the Jewish question through the emigration of their Jews. It is known, too, how he invariably failed, and for a simple reason: he was the only one who took the anti-Jewish agitation at its face value. Precisely those Governments that indulged most in Jew-baiting were the least prepared to take his proposal seriously; they could scarcely understand a man who insisted on the spontaneity of a movement which they themselves had stirred up. |
| 76 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Even more significant for the future were Herzl’s negotiations with the Turkish Government. The Turkish Empire was one of those nationality-states based on oppression which were already doomed and, indeed, disappeared during the First World War. Yet the Turkish Empire was to be interested in Jewish settlements on this premise: with the Jews a new and completely loyal factor would be introduced into the Near East; and a new loyal element would certainly help to keep down the greatest of the menaces that threatened the Imperial Government from all sides, the menace of an Arab uprising. Therefore when Herzl, during these negotiations, received cables from students of various oppressed nationalities protesting against agreements with a Government which had just slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Armenians, he only observed: “This will be useful for me with the Sultan.” |
| 77 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | It was in this same spirit, following what had already become a tradition, that as late as 1913 the Zionist leaders, in their reawakened hope to sway the Sultan to their side, broke off negotiations with the Arabs. Whereupon one of the Arab leaders shrewdly remarked “Gardez-vous bien, Messieurs les Sionistes, un gouvernement passe, mats un peuple reste.” |
| 78 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Those who are dismayed at the spectacle of a national movement that, starting out with such an idealistic élan, sold out at the very first moment to the powers-that-be-that felt no solidarity with other oppressed peoples whose cause, though historically otherwise conditioned, was essentially the same-that endeavored even in the morning-dream of freedom and justice to compromise with the most evil forces of our time by taking advantage of imperialistic interests-those who are dismayed should in fairness consider how exceptionally difficult the conditions were for the Jews who, in contrast to other peoples, did not even possess the territory from which to start their fight for freedom. The alternative to the road that Herzl marked out, and Weizmann followed through to the bitter end, would have been to organize the Jewish people in order to negotiate on the basis of a great revolutionary movement. This would have |Arendt-III-014-00000024 meant an alliance with all progressive forces in Europe; it would certainly have involved great risks. The only man within the Zionist Organization known to have ever considered this way was the great French Zionist Bernard Lazare, the friend of Charles Péguy-and he had to resign from the Organization at the early date of 1899. From then on no responsible Zionist trusted the Jewish people for the necessary political strength of will to achieve freedom instead of being transported to freedom; thus no official Zionist leader dared to side with the revolutionary forces in Europe. |
| 79 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Instead, the Zionists went on seeking the protection of the Great Powers, trying to trade it against possible services. They realized that what they could offer must be in terms of the interests of the Governments. In the consequent subservience to British policy, which is associated with Weizmann’s unswerving loyalty to the cause of the British Empire in the Near East, the Zionists were abetted by sheer ignorance of the new imperialist forces at work. Though these forces had been active ever since the ’eighties of the last century, they had begun to show clearly in all their intricacies only at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since theirs was a national movement, the Zionists could think only in national terms, seemingly unaware of the fact that imperialism was a nation-destroying force, and therefore, for a small people, it was near suicide to attempt to become its allies or its agents. Nor have they even yet realized that protection by these interests supports a people as the rope supports for hanging. When challenged by opponents the Zionists would answer that British national interests and Jewish national interests happen to be identical and therefore this is a case not of protection but of alliance. It is rather hard to see what national, and not imperial, interests England could possibly have in the Near East; though it has never been hard to foretell that, till we achieve the bliss of messianic times, an alliance between a lion and a lamb can have disastrous consequences for the lamb. |
| 80 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Opposition from within the ranks of Zionists themselves never gained enough numerical strength to offset the official political line; moreover, any such opposition always showed itself hesitant in action, uneasy and weak in argument as though it were insecure in thought as well as in conscience. Such leftist groups as Hashomer Hazair- |Arendt-III-014-00000025 which have a radical program for world politics, so radical that, at the beginning of this war, they even opposed it on the ground of its being an “imperialist war”-express themselves only by abstention when it comes to vital questions of Palestine foreign policy. In other words, they sometimes, in spite of the undoubted personal integrity of most of their members, give the all too familiar impression of leftist groups of other countries, that hide under official protests their secret relief at having the majority parties do the dirty work for them. |
| 81 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | This uneasiness of conscience, widespread among other leftist groups and explainable by the general bankruptcy of socialism, is among Zionists older than the general conditions and points to other and more special reasons. Since the days of Borochov, whose adherents can still be found in the small sectarian group of Poale- Zion, the leftist Zionists never thought of developing any answer of their own to the national question: they simply added official Zionism to their socialism. This addition hasn’t made for an amalgam, since it claims socialism for domestic and nationalist Zionism for foreign affairs. The result is the existing situation between Jews and Arabs. |
| 82 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | In fact, the uneasiness of conscience dates from the days of the surprising discovery that within the very domestic field, in the upbuilding of Palestine, there were factors present of foreign policy-by the existence of “a foreign people.” Since that time Jewish Labor has fought against Arab Labor under the pretense of class-struggle against the Jewish planters, who certainly did employ Arabs for capitalist reasons. During this fight-which more than anything else, up to 1936, poisoned the Palestine atmosphere-no attention was paid to the economic conditions of the Arabs who, through the introduction of Jewish capital and labor and the industrialization of the country, found themselves changed overnight into potential proletarians, without much chance to find the corresponding work positions. Instead, Zionist Labor repeated the true but wholly inadequate arguments regarding the feudal character of Arab society, the progressive character of capitalism, and the general rise of the Palestine standard of life shared in by the Arabs. How blind people can become if their real or supposed interests |Arendt-III-014-00000026 are at stake is shown by the preposterous slogan they used: although Jewish Labor fought as much for its economic position as for its national aim, the cry was always for “Avodah Ivrith” (“Jewish Labor”); and one had to peer behind the scenes to detect that their chief menace was not simply Arab labor but, more actually, “avodah zolah” (cheap labor), represented, it is true, by the unorganized backward Arab worker. |
| 83 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | In the resulting pickets of Jewish workers against Arab workers the leftist groups, most important among them Hashomer Hazair, did not directly participate; but they did little else: they remained abstentionists. The consequent local troubles, the latent internal war which has been going on in Palestine since the early ’twenties, interrupted by more and more frequent outbreaks, in turn strengthened the attitude of official Zionism. The less able was Palestine Jewry to find allies among the neighbors, the more the Zionists had to look upon Great Britain as the great protecting power. |
| 84 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Outstanding among the reasons why Labor and left-wing groups consented to this policy is again the general outlook of Zionism they had accepted. With an eye only for “the unique character” of Jewish history, insisting on the unparalleled nature of Jewish political conditions which were held to be unrelated to any other factors in European history and politics, the Zionists had ideologically placed the center of the Jewish people’s existence outside the pale of European peoples and outside the destiny of the European continent. |
| 85 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Among all the misconceptions harbored by the Zionist movement because it had been influenced so strongly by antisemitism, this false notion of the non-European character of the Jews has had probably the most far-reaching and the worst consequences. Not only did the Zionists break the necessary solidarity of European peoples-necessary not only for the weak but for the strong as well; incredibly, they would even deprive the Jews of the only historical and cultural homestead they possibly can have; for Palestine together with the whole Mediterranean basin has always belonged to the European continent, geographically, historically, culturally, if not at all times politically. Thus the Zionists would deprive the |Arendt-III-014-00000027 Jewish people of its just share in the roots and development of what we generally call Western culture. Indeed, the attempts were numerous to interpret Jewish history as the history of an Asiatic people that had been driven by misfortune into a foreign comity of nations and culture wherein, regarded as an eternal stranger, it could never feel at home. (The absurdity of this kind of argumentation could be proved by citing the example of the Hungarian people alone: the Hungarians were of Asiatic origin, but had always been accepted as members of the European family since they were christianized.) Yet no serious attempt was ever made to integrate the Jewish people into the pattern of Asiatic politics, for that could only mean an alliance with the national-revolutionary peoples of Asia and participation in their struggle against imperialism. In the official Zionist conception, it seems, the Jewish people is uprooted from its European background and left somehow in the air, while Palestine is a place in the moon where such footless aloofness may be realized. |
| 86 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Only in its Zionist variant has such a crazy isolationism gone to the extreme of escape from Europe altogether. But its underlying national philosophy is far more general; indeed, it has been the ideology of most central European national movements. It is nothing else than the uncritical acceptance of German-inspired nationalism. This holds a nation to be an eternal organic body, the product of inevitable natural growth of inherent qualities; and it explains peoples, not in terms of political organizations, but in terms of biological superhuman personalities. In this conception European history is split up into the stories of unrelated organic bodies, and the grand French idea of the sovereignty of the people is perverted into the nationalist claims to autarchical existence. Zionism, closely tied up with that tradition of nationalist thinking, never bothered much about sovereignty of the people, which is the prerequisite for the formation of a nation, but wanted from the beginning that utopian nationalist independence. |
| 87 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | To such an independence, it was believed, the Jewish nation could arrive under the protecting wings of any great power strong enough to shelter its growth. Paradoxical as it may sound, it was precisely because of this nationalist misconception of the inherent |Arendt-III-014-00000028 independence of a nation that the Zionists ended by making the Jewish national emancipation entirely dependent upon the material interests of another nation. |
| 88 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | The actual result was a return of the new movement to the traditional methods of shtadlonus, which the Zionists once had so bitterly despised and violently denounced. Now Zionists too knew no better place politically than the lobbies of the powerful, and no sounder basis for agreements than their good services as agents of foreign interests. It was in the interest of foreign powers that the so-called Weizmann-Feisal agreement was “allowed to pass into oblivion until 1936. It also stands to reason that British apprehension and compromise was behind the tacit abandonment....” When in 1922 new Arab-Jewish negotiations took place, the British Ambassador in Rome was kept fully informed, with the result that the British asked a postponement until “the Mandate has been conferred”; the Jewish representative, Asher Saphir, held “little doubt that members of a certain political school took the view that it was not in the interest of the peaceful administration of Near and Middle Eastern territories that the two Semitic races ... should cooperate again on the platform of the recognition of Jewish rights in Palestine.” From then onward Arab hostility has grown year by year; and Jewish dependence on British protection has become so desperate a need that one may well call it a curious case of voluntary unconditional surrender. |
| 89 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | VIII |
| 90 | |
This, then is the tradition to fall back upon in times of crisis and emergency like ours-these the political weapons with which to handle the new political situation of tomorrow-these the “ideological categories” to utilize the new experiences of the Jewish people. Up to now no new approaches, no new insights, no reformulation of Zionism or the demands of Jewish people have been visible. And it is therefore only in the light of this past, with consideration of this present, that we can gauge the chances of the future. | This, then |
| 91 | |
One new factor, however, should be noted, although so far it has not brought about anything like a fundamental change. It is the tremendously increased importance of American Jewry and American Zionism within the World Zionist Organization. Never before has any Jewry of any country produced such a large number of members of the Zionist Organization, together with an | One new factor, however, should be noted, although so far it has not brought about anything like a fundamental change. It is the tremendously increased importance of American Jewry and American Zionism within the World Zionist Organization. Never before has any Jewry of any country produced such a large number of members of the Zionist Organization, together with an |
| 92 | |
The Zionism of the American Jewish masses, however, differs remarkably from Zionism in the countries of the old continent. The | The Zionism of the American Jewish masses, however, differs remarkably from Zionism in the countries of the old continent. The men and women who are members of the Zionist Organization here would have been found in Europe in the so-called Pro-Palestine Committees. In those Committees were organized the people who held Palestine to be a good solution for oppressed and poor Jews, the best of all philanthropic enterprises, but who never considered Palestine to be a solution for their own problems, the very existence of which they were rather inclined to deny. At the same time, most of those who here in America call themselves non-Zionists also have a pronounced tendency towards this pro-Palestine view; at any rate, they take a much more positive and constructive attitude towards the Palestine enterprise, and for the rights of the Jewish people as a people, than did the “assimilants” in Europe. |
| 93 | |
The reason is to be found in the political structure of the United States, which is not a national | The reason is to be found in the political structure of the United States, which is not a national |
| 94 | |
However, this “normalization | However, this “normalization |
| 95 | |
Probably on account of this unique position of theirs in |39 the World Zionist Organization, their vague if not explicit consciousness of it, American Zionists have not attempted to change the general ideological outlook. That is held to be good enough for European Jews who, after all, are the principal ones concerned. Instead, American Zionists have simply taken the pragmatic stand of the Palestine maximalists, and hope-together with them, though for more complex reasons-that American interest and power will at least equal the English influence in the Near East. This would, | Probably on account of this unique position of theirs in the World Zionist Organization, their vague if not explicit consciousness of it, American Zionists have not attempted to change the general ideological outlook. That is held to be good enough for European Jews who, after all, are the principal ones concerned. Instead, American Zionists have simply taken the pragmatic stand of the Palestine maximalists, and hope-together with them, though for more complex reasons-that American interest and power will at least equal the English influence in the Near East. This would, |
| 96 | |
It must be admitted, however, that while the questions of present and future power politics in the Near East are very much in the foreground today, the political realities and experiences of the Jewish people are very much in the background, and they have only too little connection with the main movements in the world. |40 But the new experiences of Jewry are as numerous as the fundamental changes in the world are tremendous; and the | It must be admitted, however, that while the questions of present and future power politics in the Near East are very much in the foreground today, the political realities and experiences of the Jewish people are very much in the background, and they have only too little connection with the main movements in the world. But the new experiences of Jewry are as numerous as the fundamental changes in the world are tremendous; and the |
| 97 | |
VIII | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 98 | |
The most important new experience of the Jewish people is again concerned with antisemitism. It is a matter of record that the Zionist outlook for the future of emancipated Jewry has always been dark, and Zionists occasionally boast of their foresight. Compared with the earthquake that has shaken the world in our times, those predictions read like prophecies of a storm in a teacup. But the outburst of popular hatred which Zionism predicted, and which fitted well with its general distrust of the peoples and over-confidence in Governments, did not take place. Rather, in a number of countries it was replaced by concerted Government action, which proved infinitely more detrimental than any popular outburst of Jew-hatred had ever been. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 99 | |
This strange fact, all but unnoticed among the daily stories of atrocities, signified that the national conflict which was very strong at the end of the last century and survived up to the ’twenties of the present century-that national conflict of which popular antisemitism was but one outstanding expression- has definitely subsided; and although it doubtless was responsible for the atmosphere of indifference to Jewish sufferings during the initial stages of “liquidation,” it was no longer strong enough in itself to create more than local disturbances. The solution to this riddle is very simple, the average citizen of Europe is indifferent to questions of mere nationalist politics-with the result that nationalist parties get more extravagant every |41 day, since they feel the ground of popular support slipping from under their feet. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 100 | |
However this statement on the decline of popular hatred of Jews in the midst of the most violent agitation for murder that history has ever known needs a certain qualification. It is only partly true for the much younger nations of the east and south-east of Europe. Poland, as we well know, was antisemitic even under German occupation, and the same holds true for Rumania and other Balkan countries. In all those regions of mixed populations the Jews were taken as the symbol for the unsolved nationality-conflicts in the new States established by the 1919 Peace Treaties. The new states suffered from those conflicts all the more since they could not bring themselves to follow the classic French example for the national emancipation of a people-an emancipation that began in the economic sphere, with the distribution of land to the peasants. The antisemitism of all those other countries today is very similar to the old pogrom-passions of the Ukrainian people-the result of a combination of Government oppression and feudal land ownership, which could disappear in less than twenty-five years after the solution of national conflicts and the agrarian question. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 101 | |
In fact, in those central and western European countries which had the good fortune of a normal development to nationhood and an older national tradition, popular Jew-hatred has gone as one of the major political passions. This is confirmed nowhere better than in Germany itself. There has hardly been a stranger spectacle in our times than the ghastly, delusive sense of security with which Jews would go through the streets of German cities during the years of Government agitation, which practically absolved in advance every murderer of a Jew. The |42 majority of German Jews stubbornly refused emigration prior to 1938; and their ignorance of what was in store for them was matched only by the later wishful thinking of French Jews during the first years of the Vichy regime. Most of the Jews in Germany finally awoke to find themselves deported and liquidated in a systematic way that surpassed by far the horrors any popular uprising ever could inflict. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 102 | |
The point is that antisemitism, in Europe at least, has been discovered as the best political, and not merely demagogic, weapon of imperialism. Wherever politics are centered around the race-concept, the Jews will be in the center of hostility. It would lead us too far here to ask the reasons for this entirely new state of affairs. But one thing is certain. Inasmuch as imperialism-in sharp contrast to nationalism-does not think in terms of limited territories but, as the saying goes, “in continents,“ Jews will be secure from this new type of antisemitism nowhere in the world, and certainly not in Palestine, one of the center-spots of imperialist interests. The question to be asked of Zionists today would therefore be what political stand they propose to take in view of a hostility that is far less concerned with dispersed Jewish individuals than with the people as a whole, no matter where it happens to live. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 103 | |
Another question to be asked of Zionists concerned national organization. We have been seeing the catastrophic decline of the National State system in our time. The new feeling, ever growing among European peoples since the last war, is that the National State is neither capable of protecting the existence of the nation nor able to guarantee the sovereignty of the people. The national border lines, once the very symbol of |43 security against invasion as well as against an unwelcome overflow of foreigners, have proved to be of any real avail no longer. And while the old Western nations were threatened either by lack of manpower and the resulting lag in industrialization, or by an influx of foreigners they could not assimilate, the Eastern countries gave the best possible examples that the National State cannot exist with a mixed population. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 104 | |
For Jews, however, there is only too little reason for rejoicing on the decline of the National State and of nationalism. We cannot foretell the next steps of human history, but the alternatives seem to be clear. The resurgent problem of how to organize politically will be solved by adopting either the form of empires or the form of federations. The latter would give the Jewish people, together with other small peoples, a reasonably fair chance for survival. The former may not be possible without arousing imperialist passions as a substitute for the outdated nationalism, which was once the motor setting men into action. Heaven help us if that comes to pass. | [keine Entsprechung vorhanden] |
| 105 | |
IX | IX |
| 106 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | The most important new experience of the Jewish people is again concerned with antisemitism. It is a matter of record that the Zionist outlook for the future of emancipated Jewry has always been dark, and Zionists occasionally boast of their foresight. Compared with the earthquake that has shaken the world in our time, those predictions read like prophecies of a storm in a teacup. The fierce outburst of popular hatred which Zionism predicted, and which fitted well with its general distrust of the peoples and overconfidence in Governments, did not take place. Rather, in a number of countries it was replaced by concerted Government action, which proved infinitely more detrimental than any popular outburst of Jew-hatred had ever been. |
| 107 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | The point is that antisemitism, in Europe at least, has been discovered as the best political, and not merely demagogic, weapon of imperialism. Wherever politics are centered around the race-concept, the Jews will be in the center of hostility. It would lead us too far here to ask the reasons for this entirely new state of affairs. But one thing is certain. Inasmuch as imperialism-in sharp contrast to nationalism-does not think in terms of limited territories but, as the saying goes, “in continents,” Jews will be secure from this new type of antisemitism nowhere in the world, and certainly not in Palestine, one of the center-spots of imperialist interests. The question to be asked of Zionists today would therefore be what political stand they propose to take in view of a hostility that is far less concerned with dispersed Jewish individuals than with the people as a whole, no matter where it happens to live. |
| 108 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | Another question to be asked of Zionists concerns national organization. We have been seeing the catastrophic decline of the national-state system in our time. The new feeling, that has grown among European peoples since the first war, is that the national state is neither capable of protecting the existence of the nation nor able to guarantee the sovereignty of the people. The national border lines, once the very symbol of security against invasion as well as against an unwelcome overflow of foreigners, have proved to be no longer of any real avail. And while the old western nations were threatened either by lack of manpower and the resulting lag in industrialization, or by an influx of foreigners they could not assimilate, the eastern countries gave the best possible examples that the national state cannot exist with a mixed population. |
| 109 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | For Jews, however, there is only too little reason for rejoicing in the decline of the national state and of nationalism. We cannot foretell the next steps of human history, but the alternatives seem to be clear. The resurgent problem of how to organize politically will be solved by adopting either the form of empires or the form of federations. The latter would give the Jewish people, together with other small peoples, a reasonably fair chance for survival. The former may not be possible without arousing imperialist passions as a substitute for outdated nationalism, once the motor to set men into action. Heaven help us if that comes to pass. |
| 110 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | X |
| 111 | |
It is within this general framework of realities and possibilities that the Zionists propose to solve the Jewish question by means of a | It is within this general framework of realities and possibilities that the Zionists propose to solve the Jewish question by means of a |
| 112 | |
In other words, the slogan of a Jewish Commonwealth or Jewish State actually means that Jews propose to establish themselves from the very beginning as a “sphere of interest” under the delusion of nationhood. Either a bi-national State or a Jewish Commonwealth might conceivably have been the outcome of a working agreement with Arabs and other Mediterranean peoples. But to think that by putting the cart before the horse one can solve genuine conflicts between peoples is a fantastic assumption. The erection of a Jewish State within an imperial sphere of interest may look like a very nice solution to some Zionists, though to others something desperate but unavoidable. In the long run, there is hardly any course imaginable that would be more dangerous, more in the style of an adventure. It is, indeed, very bad luck for a small people to be placed without any fault of its own in the territory of a “sphere of interest,” though one | In other words, the slogan of a Jewish Commonwealth or |
| 113 | |
In this connection there is a further question. The most optimistic estimates hope for annual postwar emigration from Europe to Palestine of about | In this connection there is a further question. The most optimistic estimates hope for annual postwar emigration from Europe to Palestine of about |
| 114 | |
The last question, then, which Zionism has so far succeeded in not answering, solemnly protesting that an answer would be “beneath its dignity,” is this old problem of the relationship between the new State and the Diaspora. And this problem is by no means restricted to European Jewries. | The last question, then, which Zionism has so far succeeded in not answering, solemnly protesting that an answer would be “beneath its dignity,” is this old problem of the relationship between the |
| 115 | |
It is a matter of record, ideologies notwithstanding, that up to now the Yishuv has been not only an asylum for persecuted Jews from some Diaspora countries | It is a matter of record, ideologies notwithstanding, that up to now the Yishuv has been not only an asylum for persecuted Jews from some Diaspora countries |
| 116 | |
These are some of the | These are some of the |
| 117 | |
[keine Entsprechung vorhanden] | 1 This program was confirmed by the World Zionist Conference held in London in August, 1945. |