Jewish nationalism

“ The nationalists among them beheld in the very same factors in which the German Jews saw the possibilities of a Diaspora Judaism, the chances for organizing Jewry on purely nationalistic lines. Nowhere else, except perhaps in Russia, can be found a greater amount of Palestinian sentiment, as well as a larger manifestation of a one-sided Jewish nationalism, than is to be met with in this country. ”

“ This article, therefore, at the risk of appearing tedious, has sought to summon from many sides and from many periods the testimony which should be taken whenever the subject of Jewish nationalism comes under discussion. Regardless of what may be said to Gentile authorities for the purpose of hindering or modifying their action, there can be no question as to what the Jew thinks of himself: He thinks of himself as belonging to a People, united to that People by ties of blood which no amount of creedal change can weaken, heir of that People’s past, agent of that People’s political future. ”

“ A true Mosaic Jew—not a Talmud Jew—would be a good citizen. A nationalist Jew would at least be logical. But an international Jew has proved an abomination, because his internationalism is focused on his own racial nationalism, which in turn is founded on his ingrained belief that the rest of humanity is inferior to him and by right his prey. Jewish leaders may indulge in all the platitudes they possess, the fact which they cannot deny is that the Jew has for centuries regarded the “goyim” as beneath him and legitimately his spoil. ”

“ In the attitude of the Russian people towards the Jews at the present moment we recognise all the features made familiar by the history of the Jewish nation in the past. Social nonconformity and aloofness led to anti-Judaism in antiquity. To this motive of persecution the advent of348 Christianity added religious rancour, and the Middle Ages economic rivalry. The nineteenth century was destined to strengthen the texture of hatred by the addition of a new strand—Nationalism. ”

“ In the eye of the law they were heretics, to be compelled or converted into Christianity, but to stand distinctly outside of it meanwhile. War was the all but universal profession. Jews might not hold military rank. They might not even be civil guardians of the peace, since ‘no Jew in any cause could be witness against a Christian.’ They might neither aspire to be owners of land, nor leaders of men. ”

“ Twenty centuries of a terrible oppression has made of the Jews in Europe an element of no small importance in all the struggles for popular liberties, but throughout it all they have always remained a relatively conservative force. ”

“ Thus the present war has again demonstrated the great truth that, in times of struggle as in times of peace, the Jews constitute a most valuable asset to those nations that accept them as an integral part of their population and permit them to develop freely, but wherever an autocratic government demoralizes its people by confronting them with the spectacle of an unprotected minority denied all human rights, the government itself feels the reaction and the moral tone of the nation is thereby impaired. ”

“ To the autocracy and the bureaucracy there was the added fear from their intellectual superiority and their zeal for education of their playing a powerful part among the liberal forces seeking political freedom. Indeed, the Jews, whose economic and cultural activities and interests bound them closely to Western Europe and were in themselves modernizing and liberalizing influences, growing all the stronger through the greater freedom offered them during the liberal epoch, excited the deep repugnance of the feudal forces now directing the destinies of the state. ”

“ As long as the Jews were self-respecting and self-governing, they and their government and their religion had been respected and left alone. As soon as their leaders began to riot and quarrel among themselves the fate of the bundle of sticks fell upon the people. ”

“ Till now, however, beloved friend, the barren wood preponderates in Occidental Judaism. Most of the German Jews, as soon as they come in contact with European civilization, begin to feel ashamed of their religion and descent. The Germans have so frequently and thoroughly demonstrated to us that our nationality is an obstacle to our "inner" emancipation, that we have finally come to believe it ourselves and, giving up our Jewish culture and denying our race, have made every effort to be deserving of the "blond" Germanism. ”

“ The short answer to it in the case of the Jews is that it is an invention, and that not only is there no trace of it in the history of the Dispersion, but that, on the contrary, the Jews, even as a Church, and still more in their secular relations, have suffered more from the want of international organisation and uniformity than any other Church or religious community. ”

“ When one thinks of the carnival of murder to which the idolatry of territorial, political patriotism has led, one cannot but wonder whether the Jewish people throughout the world might not afford an example for all to follow. In Judaism we have tradition, culture and race dissociated from any special habitat or from any political form; and this nation without a land, this nation without a king, is developing, prospering, unconquerable. ”

“ The international Jew, as already defined, rules not because he is rich, but because in a most marked degree he possesses the commercial and masterful genius of his race, and avails himself of a racial loyalty and solidarity the like of which exists in no other human group. ”

“ There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, simple, just, like the old—a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western freedom amid the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the outraged Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Israel gains. ”

“ The temptations to cultivated society, which hardly assailed them, they regarded with bitter hatred and contempt, and they clung to their own distinctive ways and customs and modes of dress and speech, with a fervour of anger as well as of religion. Thus it came to pass that the main body of the Jews in Germany continued to be almost as little as ever German citizens, and social prejudice against Jews remained at its old high-water mark till Napoleon’s wonderful series of conquests, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, made a change in the position. ”

“ Now, that principle may do for other countries, but not for the United States. If the Jew is wise, he ought speedily to take warning that in this country the old line of action will not succeed. If Jews continue to show a disposition to defend the malefactors of their race against the just expostulations of the rest of the people, they must not be surprised if the public begins to view them as all one crowd—an inner nation set against the outer nation. ”

“ The Jew has always been a patriot, but his patriotic devotion, service, and self-sacrifice shown in the present War has never been surpassed and in point of magnitude and scope never equaled. The effect of it will be the abatement of anti-Jewish prejudice and suspicion, increased respect for the Jew, and complete recognition of his position and rights as a citizen everywhere. ”

“ We therefore perceive in Judaism a general pervading anti-social element, which has been carried to its highest point by the historical development, in which Jews in this bad relation have zealously co-operated, a point at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. ”

“ The Jews wish to have a State, and they shall have one.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own home.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. ”

“ As these formed the ruling economic, social and political power in Eastern Europe, they were the chief instrument in creating a situation that was full of danger for the Jews. In the politico-economic struggles between these privileged classes and the liberal middle classes that accompanied the transition, the Jews were found, consciously or unconsciously, on the side of the liberals, who sought to introduce the economic, social and political conditions of modern civilization. ”

“ There is scarcely an event in modern Europe that cannot be traced back to the Jews. Take the Great War that appears to have come to an end, ask yourself what were its causes and its reasons: you will find them in nationalism. You will at once answer that nationalism has nothing to do with the Jews, who, as you have just proved to us, are the inventors of the international idea. ”

“ And often, in order that the royal treasury might be kept well filled, and the ‘protection’ of the king secured, the Jews were forced to prey upon the people. Their neighbours could not have liked them if they would, and thus, Jews were quite alone in the kingdom, left to themselves, without the chance of making a friend among the populace, or the priests, or the nobles. ”

“ According to the same evidence, the wars which have drenched the world with blood and rent it with passion, including racial wars in Asia and Africa, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Russo-Japanese War, and the recent World War, were all brought about deliberately by Jewish cunning, for the purpose of weakening the fabric of non-Jewish states and providing the Jews with new sources of strength and power to be used to establish their universal dominion. ”

“ When the history of the emancipation of the Jews is written, a place of honor surely will be accorded to the help rendered by America, through some of her foremost and most humane statesmen, from Theodore Fay [86] to John Hay, and through the energy and self-sacrifice of her Jewish citizens.
Nor would our survey be sufficient without a reference to the patriotism of the American Jew. If the patriotism of the Jew has been proved in every country, nowhere has it been more ardent and ready than here. ”

“ In the international discussions of the question of religious liberty which preceded the outbreak of war, the Powers only concerned themselves with the Christian communities. The French Jews at once took alarm, and the Central Consistory addressed the Emperor Napoleon III and applied to the Board of Deputies in London to make similar representations to the British Government. ”

“ The main problem of the Jewish national movement is not of a religious nature but centers around one point, namely, on how to awaken the patriotic sentiments in the hearts of our progressive Jews, and how to liberate the Jewish masses, by means of this patriotism, from a spirit-deadening formalism. ”

“ But the Jew also can only conduct himself towards the State in a Jewish fashion, that is as a stranger, by opposing his chimerical nationality to the real nationality, his illusory law to the real law, by imagining that his separation from humanity is justified, by abstaining on principle from all participation in the historical movement, by waiting on a future which has nothing in common with the general future of mankind, by regarding himself as a member of the Jewish people and the Jewish people as the chosen people. ”

“ The Christian State can only behave towards the Jew in the manner of a Christian State, that is in a privileged manner, by granting the separation of the Jew from the other subjects, but causing him to feel the pressure of the other separated spheres, and all the more onerously inasmuch as the Jew is in religious antagonism to the dominant religion. ”

“ As a matter of fact, there can be no doubt that, in accordance with the main considerations set out above, the universally organised international revolutionary Jewry must be confronted by other enemies, apart from Russia, who by that alone must become the friends and allies of the Imperial Government. ”

“ Persecution of the Jew throughout the world had convinced him that Jews were likely to remain strangers wherever they dwelt, that emancipation was difficult to reconcile with Jewish national feeling, and that a Jewish Nationality was the only solution of the problem. ”

“ It is quite useful when there is a revolution in Paris to have the 600 houses which you may own spared by the incendiary mobs—as were Rothschild’s houses. Zionism has been one of the subjects upon which Western and Eastern Jew can unite. ”

“ Not only do the literary lights of Jewry acknowledge the Jew’s propensity to revolution generally, and his responsibility for the Russian situation particularly, but the lower lights also have a very clear idea about it. The Jew in the midst of the revolution is conscious that somehow he is advancing the cause of Israel. ”

“ The ousting of American Jews from the Zionist movement at the behest of Eastern Jews indicates that if the political center of world Jewry has shifted to the United States, the power is still in the hands of aliens resident here. The center is still in Jewry; the United States is merely a square on Jewry’s world checker-board. ”

“ Just at the present time, when the light which was shed by the fires of war has revealed so many matters formerly hidden in shadow, the awakening of world attention is called “anti-Semitism,” and the explanation is given that “after every war the Jew becomes the scapegoat”—a curious admission which would lead a less self-centered people to inquire, Why? ”