The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

Further, it will of course always be to the interest of those who desire to be rid of the Jewish element in their midst to argue that the Jewish State could be more peopled and that there is plenty of room for more citizens. Again, those hostile to the Jews in their midst can say: "Very well. Since there is no room for the whole mass of our Jews in your new State, we will not deal with the whole mass; allow us to suggest that such and such individuals shall leave our State, where they are not wanted, and shall go to their own." And they would pick out the Jews whose exile would most weaken the Jewish community in their midst.

In the present state of affairs, with the Cabinets of Rome, Washington, London and Paris still heavily influenced by Jewish finance, they have, for the moment, a military force behind them sufficient to impose their orders in some measure upon the reluctant nations of Eastern Europe and in some measure to create an artificial protection for the Jews there. Even if this protection were to last another generation (which is unlikely), the presence of Zionism, interpreted in the sense I have just quoted, would be enough to undermine its work. On any change in the situation, in case of any conflict between these Western powers, or of any change by one or more of them in its attitude towards the Jews, Zionism, thus interpreted, would be the ruin of the Jews in the Centre and East of Europe. The danger is of such great practical importance that it ought to be the very first matter for discussion. It is only our acquired habit of falsehood and secrecy upon the Jewish problem which has thrust it in the background. In the nature of things it must come to the front, and it would be far better to have the lines of some solution laid down before it becomes insistent.

What are those lines to be?

Their general character is clear enough.

Whether it be of advantage or no to have a purely Jewish State (I mean whether it be of advantage to Israel or no) may be safely left to the Jews themselves to discuss. But one thing is certain: if they decide in favour of its continuance, then they must decide also in favour of some form of recognition for the purely Jewish nationality of the Jews outside that State.

Thus only will the situation become open and therefore innocuous. If they try under the new conditions to maintain the old fiction that a Jew is at the same time a Jew and yet not a Jew, that he can be at the same time a Jew and an Englishman, or a Jew and a Russian, or a Jew and an Italian, they will be trying to maintain it under conditions quite other than those of the past, and under conditions where the falsehood will break down in practice.

Suppose you were to make such recognition partly voluntary, and leave it to the Jew wherever he might be to claim or not to claim his nationality as a Jew; to be regarded, if he so willed, as a national of the Jewish nation in Zion, or as a national of the people among whom he happened to be living for the moment. You may say that under this purely voluntary system (which would, I suppose, be more just) very few would choose for Zion. The great majority would like to go on under the old fiction. That is certainly true of the West; but would it be true of the East? Would it be true of either East or West in a moment of persecution? I think it would not. Even if it be true of the East to-day, it certainly would not be true of any body of Jews suffering there, in the future, any degree of molestation.

But apart from that: Supposing but a small minority availed themselves of this voluntary form of recognition, supposing only a small minority to claim Jewish nationality as defined in the terms of the Zionist State, there would still be the contrast between those who had thus publicly proclaimed themselves nationals of Zion and those who hung back. In other words, short of a general admitted maintenance of the old fiction (of which Zionism more than any other force must accelerate the breakdown), you must have, through Zionism, an accelerated tendency to treating Jews throughout the world as being, whether without the New Zionist State or within it, a separate people. And they are a separate people, they cannot be other. My whole plea is that this truth should be recognized and acted upon; for if it is shirked or denied it will take its revenge. Reality always takes its revenge upon unreal pretence.

There remains in connection with Zionism another consideration which is also of importance, though of a very different kind. Is the new Jewish State to rely upon its own military strength and its own police—though perhaps guaranteed (for what that may be worth) by international agreement—or is it to be a protected State occupied, defended and policed by the strength and fighting qualities of some other kind of men, not Jews—Englishmen, Frenchmen or what not?

As we know, the particular solution attempted, the particular Zionism of which the experiment is now being made in Palestine, plumps for the second solution. The protection of Jews from natives is to be undertaken by a garrison of Englishmen. It plumps for this solution under conditions as adverse as they well can be. The present experiment is, as we noted at the end of the last chapter, not an independent Jewish State, national, guaranteed, standing in its own strength; but a protected State; and that State protected by one nation: Great Britain. The new Zion does not depend for its internal peace, for its establishment against highly hostile forces, for the ex-propriation of the local landowners, for the keeping of the peace between local elements highly hostile to itself, upon Jewish soldiers and Jewish courage. It depends upon British soldiers, British organization and British sacrifice. Those who have promoted the Zionist experiment have deliberately chosen the very worst moment for such a folly.