Straight Talk About Zionism: What Jewish Nationalism Means
By Mark Weber
It’s important to understand Zionism, not just because it’s an influential
ideology and a powerful social-political movement, but also because there’s
a lot of ignorance, confusion and deliberate misinformation about it.
If you look up the word “Zionism” in a standard American dictionary, what
you’ll find is likely to be inaccurate, or least misleading. For example, a
popular and supposedly authoritative American dictionary in my office
defines Zionism as “A movement formerly for reestablishing, now for
supporting, the Jewish national state of Israel.” / 1 This definition, which
is typical of American reference works, is more than just misleading. It’s
deceitful.
The founder of the modern Zionist movement was a Jewish writer named Theodor
Herzl. In the 1890s he was living in Paris, where he was a journalist for a
major newspaper in Vienna. He was deeply troubled by the widespread
anti-Semitism, or anti-Jewish sentiment, in France at the time. He thought a
lot about the pattern of tension, distrust and conflict between Jews and
non-Jews that had persisted through the centuries, and he hit upon what he
believed is a solution to this age-old problem.
Herzl laid out his views in a book, written in German, entitled The
Jewish State (Der Judenstaat). Published in 1896, this work is the
manifesto or basic document of the Zionist movement. A year and a half
later, Herzl convened the first international Zionist conference. Fifty one
years later, when the “State of Israel” was solemnly proclaimed at a meeting
in Tel Aviv, above the speakers’ podium at the conference was, appropriately,
a large portrait of Herzl.
In his book Herzl explained that regardless of where they live, or their
citizenship, Jews constitute not merely a religious community, but a
nationality, a people. He used the German word, Volk. Wherever large
numbers of Jews live among non-Jews, he said, conflict is not only likely,
it’s inevitable. He wrote: "The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in
noticeable numbers. Where it does not exist, it is brought in by arriving
Jews ... I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which is a very complex
phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew, without hate or fear." / 2
In his public and private writings, Herzl explained that anti-Semitism is
not an aberration, but rather a natural response by non-Jews to alien Jewish
behavior and attitudes. Anti-Jewish sentiment, he said, is not due to
ignorance or bigotry, as so many have claimed. Instead, he concluded, the
ancient and seemingly intractable conflict between Jews and non-Jews is
entirely understandable, because Jews are a distinct and separate people,
with interests that are different from, and which often conflict with, the
interests of the people among whom they live.
A prime source of modern anti-Jewish sentiment, Herzl believed, was that the
so-called “emancipation” of Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries from the
confined life of the ghetto into modern urban society brought them into
direct economic competition with non-Jews in the middle classes.
Anti-Semitism, Herzl wrote, is “an understandable reaction to Jewish defects.”
In his diary he wrote: “I find the anti-Semites are fully within their
rights.” / 3
Herzl maintained that Jews must stop pretending -- both to themselves and to
non-Jews -- that they are like everyone else, and instead must frankly
acknowledge that they are a distinct and separate people, with distinct and
separate goals and interests. The only workable long-term solution, he said,
is for Jews to recognize reality and live, finally, as a “normal” people in
a separate state of their own. In a memo to the Tsar of Russia, Herzl wrote
that Zionism is the “final solution of the Jewish question.” / 4
Over the years many other Jewish leaders have affirmed Herzl’s outlook.
Louis Brandeis, a US Supreme Court justice and a leading American Zionist,
said: “Let us all recognize that we Jews are a distinctive nationality of
which every Jew, whatever his country, his station or shade of belief, is
necessarily a member.” / 5
Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and of the World
Jewish Congress, told a rally in New York in June 1938: "I am not an
American citizen of the Jewish faith. I am a Jew ... Hitler was right in one
thing. He calls the Jewish people a race, and we are a race." / 6
Chaim Weizmann
Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, wrote in his memoirs: “Whenever
the quantity of Jews in any country reaches the saturation point, that
country reacts against them … [This] reaction … cannot be looked upon as
anti-Semitism in the ordinary or vulgar sense of that word; it is a
universal social and economic concomitant of Jewish immigration, and we
cannot shake it off.” / 7
In keeping with the Zionist worldview, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon
told a meeting of American Jews in Jerusalem in July 2004 that all Jews
around the world should relocate to Israel as soon as possible. And because
anti-Semitism was especially widespread in France, he added, Jews in that
country should immediately move to Israel. French officials quickly, and
predictably, responded by rejecting Sharon’s remarks as “unacceptable.” / 8
But imagine if the leaders of France, the United States, and other countries
were to respond to those remarks by Sharon, and similar ones by other
Zionists, by expressing agreement. Imagine if an American president were to
respond by saying: “You’re right, Mr. Sharon. We agree with you. We agree
that Jews do not belong in the United States. In fact, we are ready to show
our support for what you say by doing everything we can to promote and
encourage all Jews to leave our country and move to Israel.”
That would be the logical and honest attitude of non-Jewish political
leaders who say that they support Israel and Zionism. But the political
leaders of the United States, France, Britain, and other such countries
today are neither honest nor consistent.
During the 1930s, one European government that was honest and consistent in
its attitude on this issue was the government of Third Reich Germany. Jewish
Zionists and German National Socialists shared similar views about how best
to handle what Herzl called “the Jewish question.” They agreed that Jews and
Germans were distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not
belong in Europe, but rather in the so-called "Jewish homeland” in Palestine.
On the basis of their shared views, Germans and Jews worked together for
what each community believed was in its own best national interest. The
Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to
Palestine from 1933 until 1940-41, when the Second World War prevented
further extensive collaboration. / 9
(During the war years attitudes hardened, and policy shifted drastically.
The German policy of collaboration with Zionists and support for Jewish
emigration to Palestine gave way to a harsh “final solution” policy.)
During the 1930s, the central SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps,
repeatedly proclaimed its support for Zionism. An article published in 1935,
for example, told readers: / 10
“The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not on
religion leads the German government to guarantee without reservation the
racial separateness of this community. The government finds itself in
complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry, the
so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around
the world, and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis,
Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in the
future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.”
In late 1933, a leading German shipping line began direct passenger service
from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, providing "strictly kosher food” on board.
In September 1935, the German government enacted the “Nuremberg Laws," which
prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in
effect, proclaimed the country’s Jews an alien minority group. / 11 A few
days after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, the main German Zionist
newspaper, the Jüdische Rundschau, editorially welcomed the new
measures. It explained to readers: / 12
“Germany ... is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when it
declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the
Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish
normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The new laws give the
Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life, its own national life. In
future it will be able to shape its own schools, its own theater, and its
own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all
aspects of national life ...”
During the 1930s, Zionist groups, working together with Third Reich
authorities, organized a network of some forty camps and agricultural
centers throughout Germany where prospective settlers were trained for their
new lives in Palestine.
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era was the
Transfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of German Jews to
migrate to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the
Ha’avara -- Hebrew for "transfer" -- was concluded in August 1933 following
talks between German officials and an official of the Jewish Agency, the
Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. / 13
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha'avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about ten
percent of Germany's 1933 Jewish population. Some Ha'avara emigrants
transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As
Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: "Many of these people, especially in
the late 1930s, were allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and
factories -- indeed rough replicas of their very existence." / 14
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of cooperation
between Hitler's Germany and international Zionism. Through this pact,
Hitler's Third Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to
support the Zionist movement and Jewish development in Palestine.
The essence of Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, is that Jews everywhere --
regardless of where they live, regardless of their religious outlook, and
regardless of their citizenship -- are members of the Jewish “people” or “nation,”
to whom all Jews owe a primary loyalty and allegiance.
The overwhelming majority of Jews in the United States today identify with
and support Israel, and are affiliated with Zionist groups and organizations.
Every significant Jewish group or association in the United States, and
every prominent Jewish American political or community leader supports
Israel and Zionism, in most cases fervently so. With very few exceptions,
even American Jews who are critical of some of Israel’s more embarrassing
policies nonetheless express support for Israel and the nationalist ideology
upon with the Zionist state is based.
A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish
community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to any
country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish community. That’s
why it’s difficult to accept as sincere or honest the pious assurances of
Jewish leaders in the United States that American Jews are just as loyal to
the US as everyone else.
In the United States, nearly every prominent political leader -- Jewish and
non-Jewish, Democrat and Republican -- ardently supports Israel and the
Jewish nationalist ideology upon which it is based. In Washington, political
leaders of both major parties insist on US support for Israel as an
ethnically Jewish state. They fervently support, and eagerly seek the favor
of, influential Jewish-Zionist groups, such as the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Everyone -- whether Jewish or non-Jewish -- who claims to support Israel
should, if he is honest and consistent, endorse the view of Israeli prime
minister Sharon, and other Zionist leaders, and support the migration of
Jews everywhere to Israel. But of course that’s not what happens.
With regard to Zionism and Israel, the attitude and policies of nearly all
American political leaders, Jewish and non-Jewish, is characterized by
hypocrisy and deceit. To put it another way, Zionist Jews and their
non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double standard. Jewish-Zionist
organizations, along with their non-Jewish allies, support one
social-political ideology for Israel and the world Jewish community, and a
completely different one for the United States and other non-Jewish
countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is evil and bad for non-Jews,
while at the same time they vigorously support ethnic nationalism -- that
is, Zionism -- for Jews.
They insist that Israel is and must be a Jewish nationalist state, with a
privileged status for its Jewish population, including immigration laws that
discriminate against non-Jews. At the same time, Jewish-Zionist groups and
leaders, and the non-Jews who support them, insist that in the United
States, Britain, France, Germany and other countries, there must be no
privileged status for anyone based on race, ethnicity or religion.
Our political leaders tell us that American Jews should be encouraged to
think of themselves as a distinct national group with an identity and
community interests separate from those of other Americans. At the same time
American politicians insist that Zionist Jews be given all rights as full
and equal US citizens. On the basis of this double standard, Jews are given
a privileged status in American political and cultural life.
Americans are led to believe that Zionism is a benign outlook of altruistic
and righteous support for a so-called Jewish homeland. In fact, Zionism is
an ideology and movement of ethnically-based Jewish nationalism that
reinforces the identity and self-image of Jews as a distinct and separate
community with interests different from those of non-Jews, and which
strengthens the already powerful world Jewish community.
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