A History of Zionism (72 page)

*
Basic Principles of Revisionism
, p. 6; see also E. Eoskin,
Das Kolonisationsproblem
, Paris, 1929, and
Kolonisations-Revisionismus
, Vienna, 1927; J. Jchechtmann,
Judenstaats-Zionismus
Prague, 1933; Lichtheim,
Revision der Zionistischen Politik.

*
Sefer Betar
, Tel Aviv, 1969, vol. 1, p. 32.

*
B. Bubotzki,
HaZohar uBetar
, Jerusalem, 1946, p. 12.

*
The proceedings of this conference are summarised in Schechtman and Benari,
History of the Revisionist Movement
, pp. 143–54.

*
Protokolle der III. Weltkonferenz der Union der Zionisten-Revisionisten
, Paris, 1929, pp. 35–6.

†
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 143.

*
The struggle is described in detail in
ibid.
, p. 158
et seq.
, and in Jakob Perelman,
Rewizjonizm w Polsce
, Warsaw, 1937, p. 227
et seq.

†
Herut
, 26 March 1933, quoted in Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 175.

*
For the programme of the State Party, see R. Stricker,
Di Judenstaatspartei
(Yiddish), Warsaw, 1935,
passim.

†
Lubotzki,
HaZohar uBetar
, Jerusalem, 1946, p. 11.

‡
The main source for the history of the revisionist youth movement is Ch. Ben Yeruham (ed.),
Sefer Betar
, Tel Aviv, 1969. See also Perelman,
Rewizjonizm w Polsce
, p. 168
et seq.

*
W. Laqueur,
Young Germany
, London, 1962, p. 133
et seq.

†
‘Rayon Betar’, in
Kitve Z. Jabotinsky, Baderekh lamedina
, Jerusalem, 1941, p. 321.

*
Ibid.
, p. 319.

†
Rassvet
, 18 September 1933.

‡
Chasit Ha’am
, 7 October 1932, quoted in Schechtman.

*
Ibid.
, 6 May 1932, quoted in Schechtman. On the early history of Palestinian revisionism (such as the
Amlanim
group), Schechtman and Benari,
History of the Revisionist Movement
, pp. 193-217.

†
Chasit Ha’am
, 29 March 1932, quoted in Schechtman.

‡
Y. Yedava,
Jabotinsky bechason hador
, Tel Aviv, 1950, p. 223.

§
Yerushalayim mechaka
, Tel Aviv, 1932, pp. 9-10.

*
Davar
, 23 August 1933.

†
On the history of this group, see
Brit Habiryonim
, edited by the Jabotinsky Institute, Tel Aviv, 1956; David Nir, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 179
et seq. Sefer Betar
, vol. 1, pp. 380-2;
Sefer Toldot Hahagana
, vol. 2, p. 493
et seq.

*
In an article on adventurism in
Chasit Ha’am
, 11 March 1932, quoted in Schechtman.

†
Letter to Yevin, 14 May 1933, quoted in Schechtman.

*
Brit Habiryonim
, p. 9.

†
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 441.

‡
His answer to J. Klausner in
Rassvet
26 September 1926.

§
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 290.

*
Judenstaat
, 30 March 1934.

†
Haint
, 4 November 1932.

‡
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 233.

*
‘We, the Bourgeois’, in
Rassvet
, 17 April 1927.

†
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 249.

*
On the support given to the revisionists in Poland, see I. Remba, ‘Hatnua harevisionistit’, in
Encyclopaedia shel galuyot
, Warsaw, Tel Aviv, 1959, vol. 6, p. 185
et seq.

*
Evidence submitted to the Palestine Royal Commission by Mr V. Jabotinsky
, 11 February, 1937.

*
Quoted in Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 295.

†
The Ten Year Plan for Palestine
, London, 1938.

‡
V. Jabotinsky,
The Jewish War Front
, London, 1940, p. 189.

*
Ibid.
, pp. 55-7.

†
The Futility of Revisionism
, London, n.d., p. 9;
Revisionism a Destructive Force
, New York, 1940, p. 3
et seq.

‡
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 340.

*
Ibid.
, p. 352.

*
D. Dir,
Ma’arakhot hairgun hazvai haleumi
, Tel Aviv, 1965, vol. 1, p. 156,
et seq.

†
Ibid.
, p. 268
et seq.; Sefer Toldot hahagana
, Tel Aviv, 1964, vol. 2, p. 722
et seq.

*
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 453.

*
Y. Yauer,
Diplomatia vemahteret
, Merhavia, 1963, p. 115.

†
See Y.Y. Yrenner, ‘The “Stern gang” 1940-8’, in
Middle Eastern Studies
, October 1965.

‡
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 460.

*
On Stern, see Y. Weinshal,
Hadam asher basaf
, Tel Aviv, 1956,
passim.

†
Lehi. Ktavim
, Tel Aviv, vol. 2., p. 714 and
passim
; on Lehi ideology, see also Eldad in
Sulam
, Tevet, 1962, p. 46.

‡
See Miriam Getter’s unpublished M.M. dissertation,
The Ideology of ‘Lehi’
(in Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1967, p. 79
et seq.

*
Weizmann,
Trial and Error
, p. 63.

†
Quoted in Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, p. 248.

‡
Ibid.
, p. 477.

*
Die Welt
, 3 April 1914.

†
Y. Yedava,
Jabotinsky bechason hador
, Tel Aviv, 1940,
passim.

*
Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet
, pp. 561-2.

8
ZIONISM AND ITS CRITICS

The opposition to Zionism is as old as Zionism itself. It has come from many directions, Jewish and non-Jewish, left and right, religious and atheist. It has been asserted on the one hand that the Zionist goal was impossible to achieve, on the other hand that it was undesirable, and by some that it was both illusory and undesirable. Arab opposition is not surprising, but attacks came from other quarters too, including the Catholic Church, Asian nationalists suspicious of European intruders, Arabophile European politicians and orientalists, and the Communists. Pacifists condemned it as a violent movement. Gandhi wrote that as a spiritual ideal Zionism had his sympathy, but that by the use of force the Jews had vulgarised and debased their ideal. Tolstoy said that Zionism was not a progressive but basically a militarist movement; the Jewish idea would not find its fulfilment in a territorially limited fatherland. Did the Jews really want a state on the pattern of Serbia, Rumania, or Montenegro?
*

Some antisemites welcomed Zionism, others denounced it in the sharpest terms; for both the Jews and Judaism represented a destructive element and their policy therefore was aimed at reducing Jewish influence and getting rid of as many Jews as possible. It might seem that they should have welcomed a movement which intended precisely that, namely to reduce the number of Jews in the various European countries, but in fact they have frequently turned against it. Palestine, it was felt, was too good or too important to be given to the Jews, who in any case had lost the capacity to build a state of their own. They were bound to remain parasites, and Zionism was therefore a sham. It was not a constructive effort, but on the contrary a mere ruse, part of the conspiracy to establish Jewish world rule. Mixing his metaphors and similes, Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi ideologist, wrote in 1922:

Some of the locusts which have been sucking the marrow of Europe are returning to the promised land and are already looking for greener pastures. At its best Zionism is the impotent effort of an unfit people to achieve something constructive, but in the main it helps ambitious speculators as a new field in which to practise usury on a world-wide scale.
*

Rosenberg demanded the outlawing of Zionism as an enemy of the German state, and the indictment of Zionists on the charge of high treason.

The present study does not intend to record all manifestations of hostility to Zionism throughout its history. Its scope is more limited, being confined to the opposition emanating from within the Jewish community. Broadly speaking, there have been, and still are, three basic anti-Zionist positions: the assimilationist, the orthodox-religious, and the left-wing revolutionary. All three have existed from the beginnings of Zionism to the present day. Other critics, such as the territorialists, who favoured a Jewish national revival outside Palestine, in the diaspora, have come and gone. It remains to be added that while opposition to Zionism from within the Jewish community was on the whole more intense sixty or seventy years ago than it is today, opposition from outside has become more vocal and much sharper in the same measure that Zionism has lost its Utopian character and become a political reality.

The Liberal Critique

The most plausible case against Zionism, and the one most frequently advanced up to the establishment of the state of Israel, was usually directed against its basically utopian character. Both those who welcomed the dispersion of the Jews, and those who deplored it, shared the belief that nothing could be done to undo this historical process. It was too late to concentrate millions of Jews in a part of the world that was already settled and which played an important role in world politics. Mankind was progressing towards assimilation, cosmopolitanism, a one-world culture. Everywhere, economic and social developments were reducing national distinctions. The attempt to arrest the movement of history, to resist this trend, was utopian and reactionary. Assimilation among the Jews of western Europe had proceeded too far to permit a return to Jewish nationalism. In eastern Europe, on the other hand, there was still both a Jewish national consciousness and a real social problem, but this was on such a massive scale that Zionism could not provide a cure. Before the First World War even leading Zionists thought that in the next twenty to thirty years between one hundred thousand and a million Jews at most would settle in Palestine (Lichtheim); Ruppin mentioned a figure of 120,000 families. But the ‘Jewish problem’ affected millions in eastern Europe, not hundreds of thousands. The critics of Zionism rejected the movement as Utopian ‘not because something like this has never happened before or because some imagination is needed to envisage such a solution’, but for the common sense reason that even the settlement of several hundreds of thousands, and cultural autonomy for the rest, would not be a solution. Landauer and Weil, who were among the most sober and best informed early critics of Zionism, maintained that the belief that west European Jewry could be preserved from assimilation was utopian, even if a Jewish state were to come into existence in Palestine. The Jewish question in the west would ultimately be solved by assimilation, but as for the situation in east Europe, no one had an answer.
*

These were weighty arguments. The Zionists had nothing to offer but the hope that somehow a
deus ex machina
would provide the Jewish state; rational grounds for such a belief there were none, or virtually none. Meanwhile, assimilation made further progress. Herzl felt about it as Marx did about the feasibility of non-violent revolution, namely that it might be possible in a few countries but not in others. With certain notable exceptions (such as Jacob Klatzkin) the attitude of the next generation of Zionist leaders was more radical: they thought assimilation not only undesirable and undignified but also practically impossible. A few individuals could possibly ‘pass’, and ultimately be absorbed into gentile society, but the great majority could not. For beyond the wishes and aspirations of individuals, there was the ‘objective Jewish question’.

This referred to sociological factors and also to the distinct character of the Jews as a race. Some western Zionists were influenced by the writings on race theory published during the two decades before the First World War, and a few (including Ruppin and Elias Auerbach) pursued their own studies in this field. The theory of racial constancy taught that certain distinctive qualities were inherited irrespective of social, cultural and geographical circumstances. These ideas were adopted, developed and ‘modernised’, especially in Germany (but not only there) by nationalist ideologists who on shaky scientific foundations erected imposing constructions proving the superiority of certain races and the inferiority of others. They also claimed that racial purity was the greatest blessing and racial mixture the greatest misfortune for every people. These views were later absorbed by the Nazis and provided the justification for Hitler’s racial policy, aimed at the extermination of Jews and the enslavement of other ‘racially inferior elements’. As a result the whole field of race study fell into disrepute, for was it not bound to stress differences and thus to aggravate tensions? But the suppression of studies of the significance of racial differences, however well meaning, has not helped to resolve racial conflict. Differences between races do exist even if there are no pure races. There was the indisputable fact that in Germany and in Austria, in Poland and Russia, Jews were often easily recognisable. According to the Zionists, this, for better or worse, was a matter of some importance, whereas the liberals either belittled these differences or refused to attach any significance to them. They regarded racialist antisemitism as a major nuisance, but of no consequence historically, a rearguard action by the retreating forces of reaction. The liberal critics of Zionism could point to the undeniable fact that, despite warnings by antisemites, mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews were on the increase all over central and western Europe and the United States. Given several generations of peaceful development, the Jewish question was likely to disappear. Zionists on the other hand, while not denying that assimilation was theoretically possible, claimed with Herzl: We shall not be left in peace. They pointed to the sociological theory of antisemitism: experience had shown that wherever Jews lived in substantial concentrations there was antisemitism – largely no doubt as a result of their anomalous social structure. For historical reasons Jews rarely engaged in primary production such as agriculture and industry, but there were many of them in trade, in sundry marginal occupations, and of late in the free professions. As a result they were bound to be the first victims of any crisis, to suffer more than others from competition, likely to be squeezed out of their occupations without finding new ones. Since a normalisation of the Jewish social structure was most unlikely in the given conditions in eastern Europe, Zionism was the only remedy. Nor was there any certainty that the process of emancipation which had begun in central and western Europe after the French revolution would not be halted and reversed. The Jewish millionaires, Nordau said in a speech in Amsterdam, with all their snobbishness and arrogance had an atavistic fear: they might not know much history but they felt in their bones that their position in the world was perhaps not as secure as they would have liked to believe. Perhaps they had heard that there were Jewish millionaires too under Richard Coeur de Lion, under Philip the Handsome in France, under Philip and Isabella in Spain, but that one dreadful day, without any warning, many were killed, others became beggars overnight and their descendants were now starving in the ghettoes of Poland and Rumania.
*

The liberals regarded this as a wilful misreading of the lessons of history, an irresponsible attempt to create panic. True, in the past Jewish emancipation had depended on the goodwill of the ruler, and what had been given could be taken away. True again that modern antisemitism could make assimilation more difficult by, for instance, closing certain professions to Jews. It could impede it, but it could not make it impossible. For the emancipation of the Jews was no longer based on subjective factors, but on world historical socio-economic trends and on the irresistible progress of civilisation. Liberals would explain antisemitism with reference to the backwardness of certain sections of the population, whereas Socialists would explain it as an attempt by the ruling classes to find a lightning conductor to protect themselves from the discontent of the masses. The Socialists also referred to an inclination on the part of the middle classes to make Jewish competition responsible for their economic and social problems. But as the labour movement gathered strength and became more class conscious, the workers would understand the real source of their misery: the lightning conductor would no longer function.
†

Zionists saw no reason for such optimism. The lessons of the past were not encouraging: the Reformation had broken some chains, but not those of the Jews. The enlightenment had freed the spirit, but hatred of Jews had not abated. The principles of the French revolution had conquered the world, but the liberals had indicated to the Jews more or less politely that their cooperation in the struggle for political freedom was not desired:

Socialism will bring the same disappointments as did the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the movement for political freedom. If we should live to see Socialist theory become practice, you’ll be surprised to meet again in the new order that old acquaintance, antisemitism. And it won’t help at all that Marx and Lassalle were Jews. … The founder of Christianity was a Jew too, but to the best of my knowledge Christianity does not think it owes a debt of gratitude to the Jews. I do not doubt that the ideologists of Socialism will always remain faithful to their doctrine, that they will never become racialists. But the men of action will have to take realities into account. In the foreseeable future the feelings of the masses will dictate to them an antisemitic policy.
*

Such fears seem to have been fairly widespread at the time. Ehrenberg, the old businessman in Schnitzler’s
Weg ins Freie
, tells his young acquaintance, a Jewish Socialist, that he will fare no better than the Jewish liberals and pan-Germans before him:

Who created the liberal movement in Austria? The Jews. … Who betrayed and deserted the Jews? The liberals. Who created the German national movement in Austria? The Jews. And who deserted them, who spat on them like dogs? … Exactly the same is bound to happen with Socialism and Communism. Once soup has been served, you’ll be chased from the dinner table. It was always like this, and it always will be.
†

Such dire predictions did not, however, in the least deter successive generations of young Jews in central and western Europe, who in their thousands continued to join the radical parties of the Left. For them the messianic appeal of Socialism was irresistible, incomparably more attractive than any political activity within the narrow confines of the Jewish community. They did not deny the existence of a Jewish problem, but they were firmly convinced that the solution would be found only when the ideals of humanism and internationalism prevailed, on the morning after the revolution. Nationalism, these Socialists maintained, was a thing of the past, and since they felt no special ties with the Jewish community, any appeal to their national consciousness and pride was bound to fall on deaf ears. At this point communication in the debate usually broke down and the most Zionists could hope for was that the anti-Zionist Jewish Socialists would learn by bitter experience that they were not wanted in the struggle for the social liberation of other peoples, and that by pushing themselves into positions of command and authority they would do more harm than good.