Zionism (1919)

Excerpt from the book: The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages by Alfred Rosenberg.

By Alfred Rosenberg.

Now, within the entire scope of the international Jewish question, there stands out one factor which has, especially during the course of the war, increasingly gained in importance, Zionism. Already in the last decades of the 19th century, Jewish circles contemplated transferring their expatriate money to settlement in Palestine.

In this way a number of Jews went back to their old “homeland”. But this effort remained without any success in spite of the millions of collected Zion funds. Because the Jews did not work in Palestine but lazed or haggled as usual.

Since the plots received rose in price, the land speculators set to work, the settlers sold their land advantageously and returned to Europe. Thus did things stand when Theodor Herzl emerged as the preacher of political Zionism.

His energy succeeded in interesting further circles in the Jewish state that was to be built, whereupon he summarised his programme in 1897 at the first Congress in Basel saying that “a homeland guaranteed by public law for the Jewish people in Palestine” was to be created. Soon thereafter there followed, on the stimulus of Prof Schapira of Heidelberg,the establishment of a Jewish National Fund. The possessor of land acquired through it was henceforth no longer a colonist but only a tenant; in this way land speculation was removed and the farmers, in spite of great financial support, were nevertheless forced to work whether they wanted to or not.

Most important, above all, was that the Jews were expressly designated as a nation in the Zionist programme. Now, they have always been that, and an especially characteristic one besides, but since they were at the same time citizens of all states they found it good not to emphasise their national consciousness. For whenever new unpleasant machinations were discovered, they always took cover behind the ''state citizen” or "religious community” and discarded the uncomfortable membership in the Jewish race.

That was the age-old principle; if a Jew had acquired even a small income it was immoderately exaggerated by his Jewish comrades as Jewish virtue, but if one traced Jewish mass cheating (as today) it was said that the Jews could not be made responsible, they were to be perceived as state citizens, as religious members, but not as a uniform nation.

All the honest peoples fell for this, in itself truly baseless, snare; as a state citizen a Jew could do eveiything that he could not have done as a Jew.

Thus it was understandable that this public emphasis on the national standpoint was sometimes painful to many Jews, both assimilated and orthodox, and they envisaged the emergence of laws for foreigners.

Rabbi Blumenfeld indeed says: "The attempts at denationalisation of the 19th century have only led to a masking by which the non-Jews have not allowed themselves to be deceived”, but that is not right, for many innocent people believed in the amalgamation of the Jews into the German state- and national consciousness.

On the other hand, the Jew Dr. R Theilhaber is perhaps right when, at the end of a work, he expresses the opinion, in bold print, that: “Even leaders and champions of the purely religious understanding of Jewry feel instinctively that even the factors that are indifferent to the religious side of Jewry and all the political, economic and ethical interests of their environment are closely connected to the Jewish society through the physical factor”

And Dr. A. Briinn said at the meeting of the “Central association of German citizens of Jewish faith”, behind which the Jews hid at every opportunity as a “religion”, that the German Jews cannot “have German national feeling” and further: “By Jewish national consciousness I understand the living consciousness of a common origin, the feeling of a belonging together of the Jews of all lands and the firm will to a common future”.

It would take too long to illustrate all that in greater detail; let a statement of one of the most influential Zionists, Dr. Weizmann, suffice: “The existence of the Jewish nation is a fact and not a question to be argued about”.

With this observation a complaint is by no means expressed, as many people believe, but it is merely ascertained that the Jews are to be deemed a nation, that they are firmly connected through world associations (“Alliance Israelite”, “Anglo-Jewish Association”, “Jewish Congregation Union”, “Agudas Israel”), consequently have common interests and, thanks to the immense means standing at their disposal, are able to achieve these as well. No even partially honest man can get round this fact any longer; but from it it follows with inexorable consequence that the Jew cannot be a state citizen, in any state. When the war broke out, the Zionists too found themselves in two hostile camps. It may be that one part of the German Jews at first saw the war as being conducted against the anti-Jewish Russian government, that the Zionists really believed that tliey could align their interests with those of the German eastern policy, but the impossibility of this standpoint came increasingly to the fore. A German, Lazar Pinkus, dared to express this recognition in the following words: “A Jewish community in Palestine cannot become the central point of German interests in the east. The strong national feeling of the Jewish people guarantees the complete exclusion of foreign special interests”.

Since Turkey now was once Germany’s ally, the Zionists could not loudly voice the wish for a partitioning of Palestine but had to satisfy themselves with obtaining reasonable colonisation rights or with removing the question at first from the war-aims in order to bring it up so much more vigorously later. All the abovementioned Jewish statesmen supported the English world-empire as a patron saint of Jewry.

The latter wish to be based in a strong state which represents a power in the east that is strong enough to ensure, for the Jews, a maximum of national security there. Now England possessed Egypt, India, bases in the Persian Gulf, and lacked only an overland connection between these countries, and there Palestine was positioned excellently as a link in a chain. Turkey was, besides, the enemy, and to promise their land to the Jewish people as a state territory meant getting their sympathy.

This was increasingly understood by the Jews and the English and the statement of the hot-blooded man and at the same time cool-headed politician, Theodor Herzl, was fulfilled:

"‘England, the powerful, free England, which with its glance encompasses the world, will understand us and our aspirations. With England as the point of departure we can be certain the Zionist idea will be powerful and will rise higher than ever before”. In England Dr. Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, H. Samuel, S. and W. Rothschild were the most enthusiastic promoters of the idea: the Zionists travelled from country to country and everywhere support was promised to them. Of course, many Jewish associations opposed, for the above-mentioned reasons, the national-political aspect of the the programme, but Rothschild’s open letter in which he stated that he could not understand how it could harm since obviously their rights would have to remain guaranteed to the Jews in all countries, and also the letter of Lord Balfour to Rothschild, brought new followers to Zionism.

This memorable letter goes as follows: “His Majesty’ government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

In Russia, the Revolution broke out in March 1917 and the Central Committee of the Zionists turned to the English ambassador Buchanan with the following address in which the following significant paragraph occurred: “We consider it an especially fortunate stroke of fate that at this world-historic moment the interests of the Jewish nation are identical to those of the British nation”. Thus there was no talk of Russian state interests. The Russian government had to swallow this down, they stood under the guardianship of the Entente. The hearts of the Zionists of Germany, who, according to the evidence of Lazar Pinkus, supported the entire war enthusiastically with money through the general association, beat with joyful excitement when the Balfour Declaration was made public. The Judische Rundschau wrote on 10 September 1917: ‘This declaration of the English government is an event of extraordinary scope”, and on 26 November 1917: “It must arouse real satisfaction within all serious Jewish circles inside and outside Germany that England has decided in such a clear way for the recognition of Jewish claims in Palestine”. The Lemberger Tageblatt wrote on 16 November 1917 about the “diplomatic victory ofZionism” and about its sympathy for England, etc.

Now began an activity centred on Canaan but the offers of Turkey did not come up to the price that England set; however, the German Zionists, who could not demand everything openly, manoeuvred back and forth, yet the German Empire was not so powerless that one could hand over a letter of thanks to Lord Balfour as one could have allowed oneself to do with impunity with regard to Buchanan in Russia.

At any rate, we see the tragicomic drama that the government of a nation of 70 million is eagerly concerned to take into consideration the wishes of a tiny nation that lives amongst it, and not vice-versa; and then they dared to speak of “citizens of the Mosaic faith”!

ow indeed, when the English conquered Jerusalem, there was no end to the jubilation. The Jewish Worlds the organ of the above-mentioned four Jewish world-associations wrote: “The fall of Jersusalem and the government declaration (of Lord Balfour) have made England the greatest power on earth”. Giant congresses in America expressed the same joy and Nathan Strauss explained that England had fulfilled all the wishes of the Jewish people”

Now one would think that, since the entire Jewish world had declared itself for England, the German Jewish committee had to be dissolved or had (as German citizens) to openly and finally break with the English group; nothing of the sort happened.

But for the people from beyond the borders the temporary silence or manoeuvring did not suffice, the German Zionists were blamed for pursuing “German patriotic interests”, for allowing “traitorous Jewish assimilation” to be granted in Germany, etc., and one of the many German Jews, the already cited Pinkus, who did not feel comfortable in his German skin, rose to the proclamation: “We Zionists cannot be frightened by the fact that the GermanTurkish offensive may be able to drive the English army once again from the mountains of Judaea. May be! A single cry of indignation will then go through the millions of the Jewish people and not stop before the borders of the Central Powers and Turkey”.

Indeed the man had to know! Another “German” state citizen, the prophet of the “future”, Isidor Witkowsky, seconded eagerly: “For millions of poor, for hundred thousand Jews advanced in property rights, Balfour’s Declaration had the bright tones of a long-awaited messianic message: the day that heard Great Britain’s decision to deploy the entire imperial power for the Jewish cause remains one that cannot be erased from world-history”.

Now in many states pogroms had begun and so the Zionist Congress in London decided to make all the states in which these took place legally responsible for all the injuries and to have aid money paid to the surviving victims of these persecutions. The “German” imperial government which, in preparation for the Peace Congress, concerned itself particularly with the Jewish question, had naturally decided to renounce its own standpoint and accepted fully the statutes of the London Jewish Congress. How else could one have acted since the leading men, Landsberg and Preuss, were themselves of the tribe of Judah!

But the best thing in the German tragicomedy was that, among the delegation that was supposed to represent German interests in Versailles, there was a leader of Jewry, Mr. Melchior. Were the Germans aware of what that meant? Truly the letter of homage of the Russian Jews was relatively harmless compared to this fact.

Thus far had the German Empire and German honour come and the worst was that many apparently quite honest people did not feel all that to be frightening. But slowly in other heads the awareness that Martin Luther powerfully expressed is beginning to dawn: “Know and do not doubt that, next to the Devil, you have no more bitter and poisonous enemy than the Jew”. (And in 1930 the Arabs rose against the Jews streaming into Palestine under England’s protection. For their protection ten thousand British soldiers had to be mobilised!)