Zionism and Anti-Semitism

by Max Simon Nordau; Gustav Gottheil

For the moment the committee of action is trying to obtain from Turkey a charter for the colonization of such land in Palestine as can be disposed of, and which at present is lying waste, and for the opening of its neglected resources. The exploiting of such a charter is not possible without considerable sums of money. In order to be armed financially for the time that Turkey will accord such a charter, the second Zionist congress (1898) decided to found a national Jewish bank institute, the "Jewish Colonial Trust," with its headquarters in London. This resolution was carried out the following year (1899). The bank has been brought into being. Its capital in shares is two million pounds sterling. It can, by the statutes, start business when one eighth of this capital, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, has been actually paid up. This has already been done.

Another financial instrument of Zionism is the "National Fund," created by the fifth congress (1901), which is raised by voluntary subscription and which is to amount to two hundred thousand pounds sterling. The half of this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of land in Palestine, the other half to remain an intangible common property of the Jewish people, which will by means of compound interest and gifts continually increase, so that at important junctures the interest may be used for great national purposes.

V.

I have taken pains to show, in as brief and as objective a manner as possible, what Zionism is, what it desires to do, how it came into being, and how it has developed up to the present. I have also repeatedly mentioned that its most violent opponents have arisen from the Jewish community.

Many of them content themselves with libeling and insulting the leaders of the Zionist movement. This kind of hostility they who are vilified can afford to despise. Men who, without expecting the slightest advantage to themselves, out of the purest, most unselfish love for the unhappy ones of their race, out of reverence for their forefathers, out of a general spirit of philanthropy, have made the greatest sacrifices in money, time, strength, and health, in order to elevate their people and to free millions of innocent, persecuted men from the bitterest misery, have the right smilingly to shrug their shoulders when irresponsible fanatics or pitiable paid scribes reproach them with self-interest or with vanity.

Besides these opponents of a lower type, there are others who do not merely lie and slander, but also seek to argue. They delight in comparing the apostles of Zionism with the false Messiahs like the notorious Sabbathai Levi, who have appeared only too often in Jewish history, and who have always done the greatest mischief to the Jewish people they have deceived. To compare Zionism with the vagaries or impostures of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, presupposes great foolishness or great bad faith. Zionism is precisely characterized by the complete absence of any mystical element. It promises its adherents no miracles; on the contrary, it continually impresses on them that their emancipation from a situation they find intolerable can only be the result of their own work, the fruit of their long, strenuous, and combined efforts.

People declare Zionism to be a dream, and deny that its practical realization is possible. To objections of this category the Zionists have a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This simple negative criticism can be passed over. Its only real refutation is in deeds, such as the Zionists have already performed and as they intend further to perform.

The one point which probably forever excludes the possibility of an understanding between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is the question of the Jewish nationality. Whoever maintains and believes that the Jews are not a nation can indeed be no Zionist; he cannot join a movement which is only justified when it is admitted that it desires to create normal conditions of existence for a people living and suffering under abnormal conditions. He who, on the contrary, is convinced that the Jews are a people must necessarily become Zionist, as only the return to their own country can save the everywhere hated, persecuted, and oppressed Jewish nation from physical and intellectual destruction.

Many Jews, especially those of the West, have, in their heart of hearts, completely broken with Judaism, and they will probably soon do so openly, and if they do not break away, their children or grandchildren will. These desire to be entirely absorbed by their Christian fellow-countrymen. They resent it as a great annoyance when other Jews proclaim that they are a people apart, and desire to bring about an unequivocal separation between themselves and the other nations. Their great and constant fear is to be denounced as strangers in the land of their birth, of which they are free citizens. They fear that this will be more than ever the case, if a large section of the Jewish people openly claim for themselves rights as an autonomous nation, and still worse, if anywhere in the world a political and intellectual center of Judaism should really be created, in which millions of Jews would be grouped together, united as a nation.

All these feelings on the part of the assimilation Jews are comprehensible. From their standpoint they are justified. These Jews, however, have no right to expect that Zionism should for their sake commit suicide. The Jews who are happy and contented in the land of their birth, and who indignantly reject the suggestion of abandoning it, are about a sixth of the Jewish nation, say two millions out of twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, feel themselves profoundly unhappy in the countries where they reside, and they have every reason for doing so. These ten millions cannot be called upon to submit forever unresistingly to their thraldom, and to renounce every effort for redemption from their misery, merely in order that the comfort of two million happy and contented Jews may not be disturbed.