GENERAL SURVEY
The year 1914 will stand out as the Great Divide in contemporary history. It was a year of endings and beginnings. Humanity left an age behind it, and entered upon an age in which old things have passed away and all things had to become new.
Long feared and long foretold, yet never seriously expected, the European War came at last. Nations, great and small, arose in their strength, and gathered, in an avalanche of excitement, all their manhood to battle, all their old age to guard, and all their womanhood, not only as in bygone days, to tend and heal the wounded and sick, but also to do preparatory work for the fighting armies. Generations, young and old, rushed eagerly to defend their countries, leaving home, property, calling; knowing no fear save that here and there one of their fellow-citizens might prove less patriotic than themselves. The world was thrown back to the moral level and the ethical conceptions of thousands of years ago: man became again a wolf to man, as in the Pleistocene Age. On the one hand, the vast and bloody epic produced a sort of ecclesiastical moratorium which, for the duration of the war, annulled all moral obligations and abrogated the Ten Commandments, while on the other hand, it developed, to the highest degree, all the great and noble feelings—sense of honour, unselfishness, magnanimity, courage. Nationality, patriotism, the sense of duty, the spirit of sacrifice, enthusiastic heroism and patriotic martyrdom filled the hearts and created a new atmosphere, in which every kind of human activity was intensified: industry, art, science, and literature. This great storm, the greatest storm that had ever stirred mankind, produced the greatest spiritual tragedy the world has ever known. The most terrible aspect of the war was not the fact that Europe was being bled white, that all the amenities of civilization were breaking down with the strain of the military operations, and that each day some new and more brutal engine of destruction was prepared and brought into use, but—the ethical conflict carried on with minds and nerves on the rack of tense emotion which not only upset mental balance and changed the outlook of peoples, hitherto industrious and peaceful, but developed moral and social fears and passions which will not pass away in a day. This universal catastrophe would indeed have degraded the world into “a sort of malign middle term between a lunatic asylum and a butcher’s stall,” if it had not finally become—as it has become—“a war against war.” The peoples turned their ploughshares into swords, they ceased to make useful, beneficial rails and plates and angles and girders of their iron ore and their coal, and they manufactured harmful, destructive shells and guns to project them to the slaughter of the enemy, hoping that when the time came they would again turn their swords into ploughshares. They realized that the enemy of society is militarist despotism, and that militarist despotism therefore must be ended, or it will end society. A great moral idea arose out of this war: the liberation of oppressed small nations. Another great moral idea arising from it is the de-militarization of humanity. The whole world is now involved in a life or death struggle for righteousness. This is the justification for all the sufferings and all the sacrifices. If this war were not a war of principles and for ideals it would be nothing, and could result in nothing except the further enthronement of the doctrine and worship of force, and the perpetuation of the untold misery and degradation which that form of religion carries with it. It should never be forgotten that this was a war for liberty of the peoples, and in particular of the small peoples.
This great war has aggravated and made terribly clear the position of Jewry and the tragic problem of its existence as a small and oppressed nationality. The war has turned numerous Ghetti of Galicia, Bukovina, Russian Poland, Lithuania, Courland and Roumania into heaps of ashes, and hell would be pleasant compared with the situation of great masses of the Jewish people. In this war, particularly in Eastern Europe, hundreds of thousands of Jews were fighting against one another in the hostile camps of the belligerent countries; and the significant factor is that they were not fighting because they were forced to, but from a sense of supreme duty. Even among those that were fighting in the Russian Army before the Revolution, there were many who were not acting under compulsion: they were giving of their best and from their heart. They wanted to take their places in the virile, the over-virile world—which is also their world, they wanted to live and die taking their place in the great living society which called to them. The spirit of Europe—rather the spirit of present-day Europe, which was the spirit of obstinate conflicts and of extreme courage of devotion—has seized the Jews also: they also have entered into this tremendous catastrophe, into this pilgrimage through chaos towards a new world.
But for the Jews this war meant infinitely worse evil and greater danger; the nations were divided one from another, Jewry was divided against itself; each nation opposed its fixed shape and character, untouched even by defeat, to the overflooding chaos, but the Jewish nationality seemed to be its victim, in its own wavering and chaotic form of the Diaspora. It almost seemed as though there existed Jews, and divided Jews, but no Jewry.
And yet it was not really so. It was a dark time, and the storm was ghastly enough, but the lightning has revealed things that might otherwise have remained hidden. Rather should we believe that the time of the greatest trial for Jewry denoted a high self-recollection, and with it the commencement of a true gathering and union. In times of great stress men discover their own deeper selves. Great trouble somehow digs into the very foundation of a man’s existence, and he cannot explore there without finding what is most essential in him. When some tremendous trouble sends its plough through his heart of hearts, then he becomes aware of wonderful things he has never suspected before.
Now it is well worth our while to weigh all this and to make it part of our outlook and equipment as we face the great present events. Because, for one thing, it should go a long way towards delivering us from the worst of all fears—the fear of to-morrow and the next day, and all the days that the future hides. Nine out of ten of us are perpetually spoiling what is happening by dread of what may happen, so that we can all join Disraeli in saying that we have had many troubles, but the worst have been those that never happened. If only we could let the morrow be anxious for itself! But, to a large extent, we can, if we will, school ourselves to it;
“וכימיך דבאך׃...”
דברים לג׳ כה׳[¹]
is a promise perpetually justified by the best psychological findings and historic experience in the life of nations. It is really the fact, that our “day” stirs and heightens our strength. Only when challenged, do we know what we are capable of. Modern psychology tells us that “the human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below the maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.” And to rise to our maximum and optimum we need some unusual stimulus or some unusual idea of necessity.
[¹] “... And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.”—Deut. xxxiii. 25.
Jewish history has revealed this truth several times. One individual or another, one small group or another—separated from the masses of the people—may fall away from Jewry; whoever can do that to-day has never belonged to it. The majority, however, remain loyal, and are never more loyal than in times of stress. The illusion is destroyed that a man can live a truly moral life in a time of trial while he is only a spectator of the life of society. In the Jews, convulsed by the events of the war, the new unity of Jewry showed itself. The situation was so serious, so full of menace for all that we hold dear, that every thinking Jew saw that he must in these days help to create and maintain the moral energies which alone can carry him through the crisis. At this time the Jew had a duty to his country and a duty to Judaism. To his country he owed, as a citizen, duties which could not be shirked. Every support was to be given to all patriotic efforts for the prosperity, the victory, and the glory of the country. To Judaism he owed the obligation of securing and defending not only the existence, but also the development and the realization of its traditional ideals, and of strengthening its unity. The first expression of this unity was an increase of self-consciousness. Jewry was affected by the war, but the essential problems of the Jews in the modern world were not altered by the war.
When we speak of Jewry, we speak of a living historic, ethnic and cultural—although not political—nationhood, existing potentially in its unity, independently of the Jewries of the countries in the various forms of their divided destinies, and their dissensions at the present moment. We strive to fix and to assure it—as far as external conditions allow it—in the Diaspora. And when we wish to prepare for it a sort of central Metropolis, an organic chef-lieu in Palestine—we are not engaged in adding one more nationality to the existing nationalities which fight against and watch one another suspiciously. It is not the question of introducing Jewry into the divisions of the nations, to be absorbed by them, and thus to contribute to their conflicts, but it is rather a question of aiming at the union of all that is noble and just in the nations and in ourselves. We want our own centre of simple active life, because the spiritual and intellectual element without the simple active life degenerates into subtlety and trickiness. We want—at least, for a section of our nationality—normal life, with its variety and interpretation of different influences of Nature. This is a question in which every Jew should be interested, because not only does the nobility of a nation depend on the presence of the national consciousness, but also the nobility of each individual. Our dignity and our rectitude are proportioned to our sense of relationship to something great, admirable, pregnant with possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration by the presentation of aims larger than everyday life and personal ease.
What was the attitude of the Zionist Organization with regard to these great events? Why was the Zionist Organization more interested in the war than any other section of Jewry? And why is Zionism at present more up to date than it ever was? In order to answer properly these questions we have to cast a retrospective glance on the history of the last twenty years, and to recall to the minds of the readers a few important facts which, although dealt with in this work in previous chapters, must be again reviewed in their connection with the present political situation.
Twenty years ago several hundred Jews from all parts of the world met in the Swiss town of Basle and held a congress—the first Jewish congress in history.
A strange community of Jews, a representative assembly of the great Jewish Diaspora—from the most modern European writers to teachers in Talmud colleges in small Lithuanian towns, quiet respectable citizens and fiery students, bankers and Hebrew writers—representing all kinds of civilization and all languages—and, nevertheless, some bond unified the whole.
At the head sat a man of the kind which appears like meteors but once in the course of generations—Theodor Herzl. A sage, a hero, a leader of men, an artist? Everything—even more than everything—the embodiment of an idea. In the body of this man there existed a soul, and that soul was Zionism.
At his side there stood (besides other worthies whose titles to honour we may not here linger to mention) a tribune of the people, in the person of Max Nordau—another famous man only just awakened suddenly and with great power to his Jewish nationality.
There the veil was torn away from the tragedy of the Jews. There it was stated that the Jewish problem was a disease, and that against a disease one should not protest and struggle wildly, but one ought to cure it. Moreover, it was said that at times one cannot heal a wound except by cauterizing it. And all were agreed that it was not a good plan to postpone difficulties, but on the contrary that they should be anticipated.
Speakers there indicated the “Galuth”—the serpent with a thousand coils. And they pointed to the Land of Israel, to freedom, to redemption.
In the Land of Israel, it was there affirmed, Zionism could become a living reality.
Nothing new indeed was there discovered. It was simply stated that two and two make four.
Out of the vocabulary of modern political nomenclature the word “national” was adopted. Is Zionism national? Certainly. It can also be called “human”; perhaps still more simply, “natural.” Let us learn, however, from Nature, in its simplicity and honesty, which knows of no sophistries nor manœuvring.
We Jews have become again children of Nature. There exist species in Nature. The eagle does not toil for the pike nor the lion for the cat; neither can the light of the stars replace that of the sun. Each fulfils its own purpose, and thence results the sum total. Behold the trees and the standing corn—would they be so splendidly developed, so rich and so fresh in their growth, if they were forcibly mixed and mingled together so that one drew its sap from the other? They are flourishing and rich and beautiful, because each keeps its own natural form and each draws its nourishment from the breast of mother earth. “Give us our country,” said the Zionists. “Give it to us for our exiled and wandering ones, who unwillingly find themselves mingled in the great seething pot of assimilation, who drag themselves from place to place. Give it to us for those who long and thirst for another kind of life; our garments, our bread, and our freedom we do not wish to have as alms. We wish to work and to obtain the fruits of our honest labour. We love that little country; waters cannot quench and streams cannot drown our love for it. Our love has the power to move mountains, it is stronger than all material obstacles. We demand a peaceful spot for our future and for our children who are becoming lost to us. Beholding this misery, we are willing to sacrifice ourselves. Even a she-wolf throws herself against danger to protect her young ones. Shall our love be weaker then than that of a wolf? And shall those whom we love be worse off than the offspring of animals? We want to rend asunder our chains, to blot out the mark of serfdom upon us, and win for ourselves true human rights, and the privilege of living equal to others, by honest toil.”
This was the Jewish claim—the demand put by Zionists to the world. And then the world turned against us, especially the little Jewish world.
We shall not talk about the levity, the insolence, the egotism, nor about those satiated folk who philosophize with their stomachs, nor about those others who do not know their own minds, whose shallow little heads float like foam in any current. We do not talk about those idle jesters who have found another opportunity of showing the sad wit of the Ghetto which takes pleasure in ridiculing and despising one’s own self. Indeed even respectable, serious and honest, though unfortunately shortsighted and obstinate men, who imagined themselves enthusiastic concerning Judaism, kind-hearted but automatic leaders of Jewish communal life who, though philosophizing about mankind, are inwardly divided from their own people, came to us with “fatherly” advice, with moral lectures, with sonorous phrases about humanity. They wanted to destroy most quickly, annihilate and extinguish the “dangerous chimæra,” the “reaction,” the “chauvinism,” the “Sabbatai-Zvi’ism,” the “decay of religion,” “religious fanaticism,” “tribalism,” and all the other things they ascribed to Zionism in their political delusion and contradictory nomenclature.
“You must scatter yourselves all over the world,” they said, “just as a handful of seeds, scattered by the wind, germinate, grow and ripen, all in different spots, replenishing the earth with their fruits! What do you want with a country of your own? You are made for something better! To be priests, teachers of ethics, missionaries of God—that is a higher ambition! Your contribution to mankind is social justice and the brotherhood of men. Why be a nation and for what purpose? You will be great in the memory of peoples. You have earned a golden throne in history’s temple of fame. You have been, to-day you are no more!”
The Zionists replied: “We want to live. We know better than you do what we are able to do, and how we ought to influence mankind; but we do not wish to abdicate, we do not wish to be destroyed like a broken vessel, whose contents have run out and have drained into the soil without leaving a trace. We do not want to be lost like a falling star, which for a time had shone brightly in space, only to sink into nothingness. Our star is not yet dead. Our ambitions are not very high, but they are based on reality. We do not want to be an exception, and we want to be excused from such a ‘priesthood.’ We want to create a sound settlement, a strong centre where we can develop our own nature and our character to the highest and purest perfection. Should the world wish to learn from us and accept our influence, we shall place no obstacles; on the contrary, we shall be glad of it. But to drag ourselves from place to place, to be the scapegoat of every ‘Azazel,’ and the sacrificial lamb for every calamity, to mix everywhere with others, to lose more and more that which is our own personality, and to imagine that we are a sort of schoolmaster for everyone—for such imposture we are too honest, for such megalomania we are of too normal a mentality, and, morally, too modest. We do not want to be driven ad majorem Dei gloriam (for God’s greater glory) or to be intermingled with others. We do not want to be like the goose that was offered the choice of being either roasted, stewed, or boiled. Neither do we wish to have lavished upon us the pity given to old people, because it is certain that they will not for long continue to disturb the peace of the living. We are old, it is true, but on that account we are experienced. From Pharaoh and Balaam to the foreign Antiochus [Epiphanes] (ob. 164 b.c.e.) and our own Jason,[¹] from the Hellenists to the modern Assimilationists, we have been constantly invited, as the spider invited the fly into her parlour, just to get it entangled in her web and afterwards to suck it dry. No! a thousand times no! And if you say the Land of Israel is of no value to any one, then you are not speaking in our name! Speak for yourselves alone! For you the Land of Israel means perchance only a cemetery, a legend, an amulet, an archæological relic; for us its every pebble and grain of sand is beloved, not only in a spirit of worship and of inactive enthusiasm, but also as a necessity to our life labour. And if you believe that the Jewish people are of a similar species to the Mammoth and the Megatherium, which have been devoted to extinction, then please speak only for yourselves! Perhaps the sense of Jewish nationality in you has gone to sleep or has even died entirely. That is your own affair, a personal question which you have to fight out with your own selves. In us it is alive, suffering, fighting, clamouring! Zionism is the movement of the Jewish people to reconstitute itself and to collect again its scattered members, to provide Judaism, the Jewish spirit, the Jewish soul, with a home once again after two thousand years of exile and of wandering. Zionism is the struggle of the Jewish people to preserve its existence. Zionism feels that the raison d’être of Judaism is not ended, that the Jewish race can still contribute its share towards the raising of humanity, but to enable it to do so more efficiently, in an organized form, and in accordance with its own natural affinities and historic traditions, a Jewish milieu is necessary. To create such a Jewish milieu is the purpose of the Zionist movement. Such a Jewish milieu can take root in one land and one land only, for there is one land only that has a real glorious Jewish history and Jewish past. That land is the Land of Israel!”
[¹] יהושע or Jesus, High Priest from 174–171 b.c.e., brother of the High Priest. חוניא = נחוניא, Onias iii.
Both parties had exhausted the discussion—and, as is usual in such cases, did not succeed in convincing each other. Then they each went their own way.
The Zionists began to build straightway. No other colonial settlement in the world is of nobler birth than ours in Palestine. Tradition relates that young Rome was fed by a she-wolf. Some day it will be told in legends that our new settlement on old foundations was fed by a turtle-dove, by love, faithfulness, kindliness, and brotherliness. Not wild animals, but angels, stood round its cradle. Muses and Graces illuminated and crowned the morning star of its noble childhood. Jewish thinkers like Leo Pinsker, Perez Smolenskin, David Gordon; enthusiastic leaders and many others—a kind of Jewish Puritan pioneers, the “Bilu”—had started to build up the settlement even before our first and greatest, our immortal founder and leader of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, had drawn up our programme, created our organization, founded our institutions, and had given us the impetus, method and form of the Zionist movement.
The success of a wonderful, personal, magnetic power, the method of large-scale propaganda, the labour through relations with Governments had for a certain time given Zionism a political bias. More considered and everyday experience, on the contrary, pointed to a slow method of practical labour. Different parties amongst the Zionists opposed one another, and we need not be ashamed of that. Jews are inclined to freedom in all their spiritual tendencies, they do not easily submit to formulæ, they criticize, analyse, and search for the truth. Finally, the whole struggle was reduced to a question of tactics. Whether one attempts to reach the goal by means of the plough, plantations, schools, literature, or propaganda, it is a question of time and circumstances. And the essential truth was, that all means must be employed.
What was the result? The net balance was not great; forty settlements, some farms, co-operative societies, Tel Aviv, the new Achuzoth, the Carmel, the Pardes, the Aggudath N’taim, modern machines; new methods of work introduced not only among Jews, but also among Arabs; malaria centres disinfected; the best conditions for planting studied in experimental institutions; our banks, the Bezalel, public health centres, the music school, two well-filled secondary schools, the girls’ school in Jaffa, the Tach’kmoni school in the same place, the Petach-Tikwah school of agriculture, the settlement schools, the committee organization of the settlements, the workers’ associations, the teachers’ union, the Hebrew newspapers and literature, the “Houses of the People”—these represent what Chovevé Zion, Baron Edmond de Rothschild and the Zionists have created, and what we call the new colonization of Palestine. The earlier rivalries have vanished. The Chovevé Zion and the Zionists are at one as to the policy of Zionism. The Zionist Palestine office in Jaffa is the head-quarters of the work of colonisation. The struggle for Hebrew has shown how Palestine is becoming more and more an intellectual centre. The visit of Baron Edmond de Rothschild to Palestine in 1913 had set the seal upon this unanimity. Even the blind could perceive that a true Jewish Home was in process of establishment. No further arguments were needed. The Jewish population in the land, although a minority, is the only one that is growing and has grown during the past generation. It is the only progressive population in the land, the others are stationary in regard to numbers. Let any one go to Palestine, not on one of Cook’s lightning tours, but as a Jew to the land of Israel; let him remain in the settlements but a few weeks—that will be a certain cure for anti-Zionism. If it should happen that any one could not be cured even in this way, then he must unfortunately be regarded as incurable. We, however, know of a great many that have been cured.
Thus the organization grew. It is sufficient to compare the beautiful first Basle Congress of 1897 with the enormous Vienna Congress of 1913; it is sufficient to compare the phantom Jewish National Fund of 1899 with the existing Jewish National Fund, which can show an annual income of over two million francs; it is sufficient to compare the two or three Zionist pamphlets of eighteen years ago with the Zionist press and literature in existence to-day.
Thus Zionism has grown to what it is to-day for the Jewish people: a spring of life, a signpost, the foundation of a mighty edifice.
In a few words the author can give the essence of the personal impressions which he received during the course of his three months’ stay in Palestine, in 1913, before the war: a model factory of modern Jewish national life; a nursery for rearing the fruitful parent-stems for the blossoming tree of a living Hebraism; a laboratory for sociological experiments in self-help and self-government in Jewish economic life; a compendium of elements and corner-stones for the erection of the Home; a systematic, laborious, slow preparation of the preliminary conditions for a great, healthy, original Jewish province; the genesis of a new world, naturally with many defects, with many premature and unripe attempts, but that was just most beautiful and most natural in people who search and strive and venture. And all this was enlightened by a clear understanding, and glowed with a youthful national enthusiasm. That is what Jewish colonization in Palestine is.
Do not try and count it over! The wisdom of the multiplication table is too dull to be able to estimate it. Do not try and weigh it! On the great scales of history a single unit sometimes weighs down a hundred thousand! Enjoy it, as one enjoys art, or as the free soul becomes intoxicated with and rejoices in freedom. As musical natures become enraptured with music, so national natures become enraptured with national life.
And if you will have net results, then do not forget one thing, namely, that all this has been done, not by the entire Jewish people, but by a small handful of Jews. When this small handful has become the entire people, then this edifice will grow even grander. Palestine is a land that stretches forth its hands to the future. For two thousand years it has been ravaged by war and by misgovernment, until a country that was once famous throughout the world for its fertility, has become a desert land, degenerate from lack of cultivation. According to the statistics of the Ottoman Board of Trade less than 9 per cent of the area of European Turkey has been brought under cultivation, and still less of Turkey in Asia. There are in Palestine twenty-seven inhabitants to the square kilometre, and in the valley of the Jordan four; while in the irrigated districts of neighbouring Egypt ten thousand are concentrated within the same area. Why should not Palestine be resettled like Egypt? Why should it not be made a happy home for an unfortunate people?
Now the Zionists, after twenty years of work, plead their case again. They have not succeeded in putting an end to the “Galuth.” Their opponents maintain that they had overestimated their strength. Perhaps so, but this does not prove that their labours have been to no purpose. They have laid a few foundation stones, they have shown the way.
They defend their cause in the midst of a hell-fire. Our ancient people that has lived so long, has now experienced the greatest of wars, such as has never been in the world before. We live to-day in the most critical period of the world’s history. It has been our lot to share in the greatest drama which humanity has as yet lived through, not only as spectators, but also as actors. The history of this world war is written in letters of blood on the ancient and holy parchment, on the brow of the Jew. No seismograph has indicated beforehand the coming of this earthquake, of this outburst of the volcano of the nations. But one thing the Zionists have foreseen: the force of national consciousness; the flood of hate, our pitiful situation, which cause every storm to tear away the ground from under our feet.
Herzl had written his first pamphlet under the influence of the Dreyfus affair. That cry of twenty years ago thunders now in unison with the cries of mothers, wives, orphans, from underneath the pyres and ruins which in their brutal reality leave the worst imaginings of a Jeremiah far behind. The dead arise from their graves, covered with blood, trampled in the dust, with the fiery name of God, the “Shaddai,” on their pale foreheads, and they demand to be heard. They lament, and say:
“Vainly we strove to secure a little life—we could not grasp it. Withered with sufferings, with pain and injury, shivering and frozen with cold, we used to hug the earth closely, but it would not give us warmth. We were teachers of the most ancient peoples, but death and insult were the recompense paid us by our pupils. We shone like the stars, but we were treated like silkworms, which have to die, so soon as they have spun the fine web of their threads, so soon as they have drawn forth and sacrificed their life-blood—they have fulfilled their duty, and farewell!
“On our shoulders we bore the burdens of our masters’ interests, just as the sea bears the little fishing-boats on its waves. We were more faithful in guarding their property than dogs are. For the labour which we performed, for our hard and humble services, for the sacrifice of all our strength on their altars, for the resigned and patient suffering of all the tortures of exile, we did not receive even the reward of protection extended to the beast of burden, to the cow, or to the sheep for its wool. Deprived of all human rights, even stripped of the scantiest rags of toleration, we wandered and fell under the iron yoke of serfdom, like a weary and impotent herd of cattle driven over rocks and brambles. They felled us as a forest is felled, and we went down without the slightest possibility of suitable self-protection, with the dull thud of an old oak prostrated by a storm, yet with the pain of bereaved, insulted and humbled human beings. We are the victims not of the war, but of the ‘Galuth.’ Let no one talk to us about Belgium, Serbia. Theirs is the well-known scourge of mankind taking the shape of tyranny, militarism, war. Had we suffered only from these things, then we should have suffered but in common with others. Our misery, however, is of a peculiar kind. It is a double misery: we suffer with the rest, and in addition we suffer specially as a people without a country. Belgium and Serbia and Montenegro are nations with countries of their own; they cannot be annihilated, they must be restored. We envy Belgium in her misfortune, and sorely assailed Serbia; we behold the strength and health of the Polish peasant. Truly, he has been ruined for the time being, but he has his country, and though he has been driven away ten times by the fury of war he will return, and once again plant himself on his native soil, where his golden corn will grow again. Not only could he not be uprooted, but he will regain more than he had lost: a new, free, independent Poland!
“Everywhere the rights of nations are triumphant. Let it not be said that only countries that had been stolen fifty or a hundred years ago shall be returned to their former lawful owners. Whoever says so, falsifies history, either intentionally or unintentionally. The right of the Greeks to Greece is also a right which has remained through thousands of years. The right of the Armenians to Armenia has also been suppressed by force throughout the centuries. And yet these rights will be granted. Let it not be said either, that a nation robbed of the country must have remained on its native soil, or otherwise it will have lost its rights. That is not true. More Greeks live outside Greece than in Greece, and there are still other nations, the majority of whose citizens dwell outside the frontiers of their old home. Nor let it be said that it is sufficient to grant equal rights to mankind. Were not equal rights given to the Greeks—and yet the problem was not solved till Greece redeemed herself!
“We, the orphans, the disinherited, the playthings in history’s sports, the step-children of a world founded on nationalities—we summon the world before the high court of history.
“For two thousand years past they put us off with excuses and false promises. Civilization has been progressing for thousands of years: mankind now flies loftier than the eagle and dives deeper than the Leviathan. Has it become better for us? Have we not remained the same scapegoats from the time of Rome to the Crusades, from these to the ‘Haidamaks,’ and from them to the Pogroms of the present day?
“We, the wandering souls, demand our rest. Enough of wanderings and being bandied about! Give us back our body, our country! We want to be equal with the rest, suffer with the rest, fight with the rest, live with the rest.”
Thus lament the dead, teaching the living. Will the world not listen to them?
“What do you wish?” the Zionists are asked. They reply: We want a home in the land of Israel. On the day of Judgment, when every historical right—from the smallest to the greatest—is announced, elevated, proclaimed, and demanded; when even the weakest, the most doubtful claims of half-forgotten and but recently-awakened little peoples, based on old, torn, ambiguous and now scarcely legible documents and traditions, assert themselves and demand rights of ownership; when history takes its place as judge on the throne of justice, and the national territorial idea is accepted as the world’s code, in order to resolve every doubt and to arbitrate every dispute; when the great in power penitently declare that every injustice, especially towards suffering peoples, must be righted; when these things come to pass, then (we Zionists say) the Jewish people is in duty bound to proclaim its old, holy, historical right to the heritage of its heroes, its prophets, its civilization, its religion, its language, and its labours!
It is an ancient right, but it has not lapsed. It is the ancient oath, the ancient covenant. No right has been earned more honourably. None has been paid for with more and nobler blood. None is so highly established and deeply founded.
In order not to lay itself open to a verdict of letting its claim go by default, the Jewish people will have to proclaim its immortal right to the land of Israel. It is the sacred duty-right of loyal children towards their parents. Not to demand the land of Israel means that we tacitly waive our rights to it, and this means a waiving of our rights to everything: tradition, honour, justice, the law of Moses, and the general historical idea.
We don’t trust a man who denies his mother, however much of a patriot he may be in his country. He is an opportunist, but no patriot, because patriotism is idealism.
Nothing will daunt us in our resolve to proclaim solemnly our historical right and to demand it with all our energy. Do not trouble us with intimidations, on the score of a possible growth of anti-Semitism, and so on! These fears are senseless. Anti-Semitism is a consequence not of Zionism, but of the “Galuth.” Those who have the courage of their convictions and a sense of honour, are not to be influenced by craven fears. Our duty it is to proclaim our right, and we shall fulfil this duty. Will this bring us sufferings? Good: we are prepared for that. Martyrs from of old as we are, we have been through fire and water during thousands of years, we have been the target of every attack, the victims of every persecution, and we fear no chicanery when it is a question of fulfilling a holy duty of our conscience.
Whoever understands Zionism, knows it is not our intention to raise conflicts. We stand for a peaceful movement. We began in a time of peace and we desire to renew our work and substantially to enlarge it, in the coming time of peace. We did not wish to harm anyone, to wrong anyone, and we wish to do so still less, if possible, now than before. We wish to make our country a model of social justice and human brotherhood; the spirit of our prophets shall fill our land, and the ancient Hebrew genius shall there have its dwelling-place.
We certainly, not less than all the other Jews and all just men, are strongly interested and are anxious that we, wherever we live, wherever we are, and wish to be citizens, should have our rights secured. Where the Jews are not yet emancipated, they shall be emancipated; where they are but half emancipated, their emancipation shall be completed and perfected; and where they are already emancipated, their emancipation shall be in no way checked or diminished. This question of rights we had better formulate in the following manner: Not that rights should be given us, but that our rights shall no longer be filched away, restricted and encroached upon wherever we have our domicile, wherever we fulfil our duties, and bear all burdens in order to defend the soil of the country to the death; wherever we work, live, and die together with its other inhabitants. Not that we should be emancipated, but that people should emancipate themselves from the instinct of persecution, from malice, from envy, which find expression in various forms: in pogroms, in boycott, in social ostracism, in open or masked disabilities; that we should not be shut up in cages like wild animals, whether it be in the brutal form of a Ghetto, a “pale of settlement,” or in the more subtle form of social exclusion and coldly polite hypocritical repulse: whether it be finally, in that cunning form not of Anti-Semitism, but of Asemitism which declares that, as in the case of poisons, the country can at best absorb only a limited quantity of Jews, while any excess is dangerous.
If the civilized world really intends to make an end of war, then, also, this war against the Jews must not be overlooked. It is a war in time of peace, a war that has not the heroic character of a struggle between two opponents equal in arms, but the character of a systematic and brutal oppression of the weak by the strong.
That is the problem of the rights of the Jews in the countries of the Diaspora!
Some sophists have, in their speculative, casuistical way, evolved a strange doctrine. They assert, that when the Jews surrender their claims to the land of Israel, when they deny their own nationality, then they will “receive rights.” Pedants and arm-chair theorists as they are, they paint in their luxurious imagination a picture that recalls the classical example of Paris with the apple: in one hand, Palestine; in the other, rights in the Diaspora. And as they point to this picture, they cry out to the Jews: Choose! One or the other!
Such pictures may please children, but not grown-up men—since children are innocent and do not understand the laws of logic. There are no two kinds of truth, nor of justice, only one. If justice is done to us, then our right to Palestine will be recognized, and we shall also be left in peace in the Diaspora.
Be assured the Land of Israel will not injure our situation in the Diaspora. Only Zionism, not self-betrayal, is calculated to lend us authority and prestige in the world. Avoid the old error, avoid renunciation, stand true to your flag, to righteousness, like men!
We are asked, What are your politics? Others say that politics should be indeed excluded. Zionism must be only either colonization or a spiritual movement. We must be Zionists in colonization, in the spirit, and in religion. In what each says, there is some truth. The error lies only in the fact that in each of these assertions, a partial truth claims to represent the whole truth. Zionism is not a part; it is the totality, the sum, the synthesis of these efforts.
However little Zionists wish to enter into politics they cannot close their eyes to the fact that Zionism is—at least, in part—a political problem. However spiritual its arguments, its origins and its motives may be, however metaphysical its aims may be, and however much its methods may accordingly strive to remain pure, [♦]nevertheless, it is concerned with the problem of people desiring to settle in a particular country, under a particular form of social life. They, consequently, have to strive for a certain degree of political self-government, whether it be high or low, and thus they must come into relations with other groups and states already in existence, already formed, already in possession and having rights. The boundaries of rights will have to be drawn up, and these will soon become frontiers of existing spheres of influences, and these again, later on, will need to grow to new forms. Even if Zionism should devote itself entirely and with absolute exclusiveness to spiritual matters, its centre of colonization will have a political aspect, which must be developed as such. It is a good thing that the war has thrust political temptations upon Zionism. Nothing can become of greater advantage to it, than that it should always grow more clearly conscious of being something practical, the creator of life, of being conditioned and limited by frontiers, and not that it should simply fill the rôle of redressing grievances from a single point.
[♦] “neverthless” replaced with “nevertheless”
The Zionist policy must always be controlled by the national idea. Great changes will arise in the political situation in the world, the extent of which cannot as yet be surveyed in detail. But one thing is already certain; the national, the historical idea will be victorious. The people that suffer most, the small and weak people, must weigh on the scales of the coming changes in proportion not only to their physical strength, but also to their moral strength, and in proportion to the intensity of their will-power and self-determination—and this will-power and this self-determination, although at all times needing and capable of development, develops most rapidly under the influence of such moments as the present. The first preliminary condition for political success, therefore, is self-determination and will-power. The first and most important political task is the awakening of will-power. Only then commences the policy of finding support in the outer world. And under this head we know of one policy only, namely, truth—absolute and unconditional truth. Out of love for it Zionists desire to be just to all men, even to their opponents. This may be disagreeable to short-sighted people, but it does not trouble Zionists. Should truth beckon in one direction and the greatest successes in the other, Zionists should without a moment’s hesitation choose rather the former and exclaim, “Away with falsehood.” Only truth can be of service to us; wherever any shadow whatsoever falls upon that, there can be no place for us.
No cause that is unjust, even if at the first glance it appears to bring immediate help, and is advanced by people who wish us well, is worthy of Zionist support, and, likewise, every righteous cause, even though it appears to be against us, and is put forward by people who are indifferent and even opposed to us, is deserving of our support. For high above the plans dictated by benevolence or malice, stands the loftiest cause which so rules it that injustice cannot help Zionism, and that justice, on the contrary, must help it.
It is sometimes pointed out that certain among those who profess sympathy for Zionism do not exactly belong to the most trusty friends of the Jews, while, on the contrary, many so-called Liberals seem to be opposed to Zionism. Truly, we say to you: this is of no concern to us. Personal motives have no interest for us; we do not sit in judgment upon individuals. We are neither flattered by friends nor deterred by the envious. The Zionist’s only concern is the righteous cause.
The Zionist policy is one of principles, and not an opportunist policy. A policy founded on principles can only base itself on truth. The assistance of strangers can be of service to us only when it sees in us the truth, sees us as we really are, as we are in the continuity of our history, in our numbers, in our distress and in our hopes. Not the plans of any individual, whether personal or general, only fidelity to the axioms of international morality can help us. And if it be possible to obtain such assistance, then it can be attained only through a leading policy of true equality, but never through assimilation, which is opposed to the truth.
Truly, to be on an equality with others means the solving of our problem on national lines. That in the highest sense is equality of opportunity. If the principle of self-determination is applied to all, then it must be applied to us too. If historical rights are recognized, then ours must also be recognized. It is right and fair that Armenia should become Armenian; it is just as right and fair that the Land of Israel should become Israelitish. Grant equal rights and compensatory justice; all else is hatred, cowardice, hypocrisy, ambiguity.
The error of Jewish policy since the beginning of the last century lay in the fact that it was an opportunist policy. We tried to please different parties, to utilize political situations. Perhaps this was formerly an opportunity—we have now outgrown this standpoint. Human progress, like every development, advances ever further and further. Every new advance leads to a new stage that could be reached only through the earlier stages, and every new stage when reached has been reached only to be left behind in its turn. As soon as a stage has been reached, the time has once more arrived for leaving it. That is the essential reason why the Jewish problem has now become a national problem. Hence it is the purest childishness to wish to solve the problem by the means adopted by the Sanhedrin in Paris, in 1806.
It is not, however, to be supposed that because Zionists hold to a policy of principles they are on this account incapable of profiting from favourable opportunities, of utilizing a fortunate moment, that may come and bring more with it than many years of hard toil. “Whoever wants to sail to the new-discovered isles must use the winds as they blow.” The centre of gravity lies in the Jews alone, in their will-power, in the independence of their spirit.
The Jewish people have seen the dominion of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Rome, and still survive. Under the standards of Zion the Jewish people will rise to new life.
What ought Jews to do? To this question we answer: In these serious times all Jews should be united, all Jewish organizations, parties and communities should set to work, by all lawful means, through the press, literature, propaganda and personal connections, to attain the recognition of a national home for our people in the Land of Israel; and at the same time to carry through the abolition of all injustice against the Jews in the countries of the Diaspora.
And in view of the enormous importance of the already existing Jewish colonization in Palestine for our future, and, also, of the salvation of the Jewish people from want and misery accentuated by the war, the greatest possible assistance must be given to Palestine and to the suffering masses of Jews in the Diaspora. For the sake of these causes, and especially for the first, the Zionist Organization all over the world should not only be maintained, but also placed in a position to develop and enlarge its activities.