Jewish Critics of Zionism - a Testamentary Essay Part 1
May I, to begin with, let some outstanding exponents of prophetic Judaism, of Zionism ("Jewish" secular political nationalism),
and of honest Jewish critics of Zionism, enunciate in capsule form the gist of what each one stands for? Properly digested, it should
help the reader understand the deviation and degeneration of prophetic Judaism into rabid "Jewish" secular political nationalism.
Properly digested, it should also help the reader draw definite lines between true, uncompromising Jewish critics of Zionism on one hand,
and compromising fence sitters, professional idealists — professional Jews, on the other hand — men who are
primarily motivated by image building of themselves in public life.
Prophetic Judaism
"And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all in that
ye say: we shall be as the nations, as families of the countries . . . as I live,
saith the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and with an outstretched
arm, and with fury poured out, will I be King over you ..." (Ezekiel)
"Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit! " (Zechariah)
"And what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justice and love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy Lord. " (Micah)
"I hate, despise your feast days, and will not delight in the day of
your solemn assemblies. Put thou away from me the noise of thy song. But
let justice run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. "
(Amos)
In short, Jews were destined to be a kingdom not of this earth.
Zionism ("Jewish" Secular Political Nationalism)
"We fight, therefore we are. Out of blood, fire, tears and ashes, a
new specimen of human being was born, a specimen completely unknown
to the world for over eighteen hundred years ... the fighting Jew!" 1
1 From The Revolt, by Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun Z'vai Leumi (National
Military Organization) who, among many other massacres, slaughtered the Arabs of
Deir Yassin; subsequently member of Golda Meir's Cabinet and of the Knesset.
Early Jewish Critics of Zionism
What I felt sixty years ago when I joined the Zionist movement is essentially what I feel today. I have joined this national
movement because it was not called 'Jewish' nationalism but Zionism ... I believed that this nationalism would not go the
way of all others : beginning with a great hope and then deteriorating, decaying, becoming a collective egoism, even
daring, like Mussolini, to call itself a sacro egoismo as if collective egoism could be more sacred than the egoism of any
individual.
When we returned to Palestine, the decisive question was, do we want to come there as an ally, as a friend, as
a brother, as a member of the coming community of the peoples of the Near East, or as the representative of colonialism and
imperialism? The majority of the Jewish people preferred to learn from Hitler rather than from us . . . Hitler showed that
history does not go the way of the spirit but the way of power, and if a people is powerful enough, it can kill with impunity . . .
This is the situation that we had to fight . . 2
2 Professor Martin Buber, from an address delivered in New York, in 1958. See the
Jewish Newsletter, June 2, 1958
Early in my life — a Jewish critic of Zionism
Let me say it outright - I am a Jewish critic of Zionism (rabid, aggressive, secular "Jewish" political Zionism)
and were it possible to say that I am an extreme Jewish critic of Zionism, I would unhesitatingly say so,
except that I believe that in moral issues a critic of immorality cannot be a fence sitter or a compromiser. He must call a spade a spade.
For when a Jewish critic of Zionism gives an account of conquests, occupations, murder, napalming, exiling, dispossession of the
subjugated innocent Arab population, or of torturing suspected Resistance Fighters (terrorists, the ionists call them),
or of dynamiting Arab homes and villages, no honest observer can call it dramatizing, rhetoric, self-hating, anti-Semitic, Jewish disloyalty.
On the contrary, the moral imperative — call it the prophetic Judaism of the Jew — demands the exposing of the immoral and inhuman
deeds practiced in the manifestation of the decadence (degeneration) of Judaism in our time by misled Jews.
I became a Jewish critic of Zionism when I was a young student at the Zionist Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa-Tel Aviv, Palestine, during
the years 1908-1913. After having been brought up in my grandfather's home in Jerusalem on universal, ethical, humane, prophetic Judaism (he
was a sincere, honest, genuine traditional orthodox, scholarly Jew), I could not stomach the daily preachings of Amaynooh, Artzaynooh,
Moladtaynooh (our nation, our country, our birthplace) by our hyper-nationalistic, (hating), Zionist Hebrew teachers.
Not one of the students at the Gymnasia Herzlia was born in Arab Palestine; we all came to Palestine from Russia, Poland, Rumania, Galicia, etc.
as refugees or immigrants. The hatred and contempt for goyim (gentiles) - Arabs in our case - was
irrational and inhuman. My teachers did not succeed in inculcating in my heart their spirit of "Jewish" nationalism.
It could not be Jewish, as far as I was concerned. All the other students became fervent "Jewish" nationalists.
In 1913, when I graduated from the Gymnasia Herzlia, I was the only one to immigrate to the United States because I wanted
to support myself and be independent. I refused to accept any scholarship offered me by the
Gymnasia to go to study where they could supervise my doings.
After the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the year I graduated from New York University, I became more disenchanted with practical
"Jewish" nationalism as it was manifested in the bureaus of the Zionist Organization of America and all over the world. As I grew into manhood
and became a world traveller with my son Yehudi, and could thus watch the tragedy of mankind after World War I as a result of insane political
nationalism, I became a more intense critic of Zionism. When time permitted, I plunged into a research study of Judaism and decided to
write The Decadence of Judaism In Our Time.
Today, at the age of 80, I must confess that to me the question of the decadence, the degeneration, of Judaism and of the majority of the
Jews of our time, transcends all other international problems. Zionism as it is manifested in the national-socialist expansionist ambitions of a
Greater Eretz Israel empire under the excuse of "secure boundaries" has become unwittingly the most dangerous world issue between the United
States and the Soviet Union, as a result of Zionist machinations in the United States - their propaganda, their hold on the Jewish voters and
more importantly, on Jewish contributions to political campaigns. The Zionist Jews must have their "lollipop," their "Jewish" national homeland,
which as a result of easy military victories has escalated into an ambition of a Greater Eretz Israel empire, in accordance with the
seventy-five year old grand design of Dr. Herzl - and if not the nationalistic "lollipop" then an apocalyptic, catastrophic "Armageddon,"
in the spirit of a blind Samson who pulls down the house.
I am a man possessed by this monstrous Jewish problem: how long can the arrogant, greedy and anachronistic nationalistic children of the
3000 year-old civilization of prophetic Judaism continue to be misled into worshipping their nationalistic Moloch, so late in history, after national —
socialism in Germany has learned the hard way, indeed, that depraved and predatory political nationalism does not pay in the end. In fact, all of the
Western political nationalist-colonialists and imperialists of England, France, Spain, Italy, Holland etc., . . . have learned the hard way and have
paid dearly for the insane religion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and its sacrificial offerings of the youth of each country. The
Germans, as late-comers, have repented; so did the Britishers and Frenchmen who, as late as 1956, tried to re-establish imperialism in Egypt, in
collusion with Ben Gurion's Zionist expansionist Israel. May the Jewish critics of Zionism redeem the name of Judaism and of the Jews,
and together with the current awakening of our post-World Wars new world order bring about an internal combustion inside Jewish life in Israel
and in the "Diaspora", particularly among the young generation, so as to bring the Jewish people back to morality, humanity, justice, and above all
to genuine, sincere repentance. Zionist Israel must be made to withdraw completely from its newly conquered territories in 1967; it must repent
and make amends, and try hard to live in peace with its one hundred million Arab neighbors, and live inside its United Nations allotted
nation-state — a small nationalistic "lollipop", rashly donated to the Jewish immigrants in 1947-1948 at the expense of the Arabs. One of the high
points in the teaching of prophetic Judaism is: "In the place where the repentant man stands, even the completely righteous man cannot stand."
(The Talmud)
The Prophets Were the First Jewish Critics of Zionism
From the very beginning of Jewish history there have been conflicts between the leaders of "Jewish" political nationalism and the Jewish
critics of "Jewish" political nationalism (Zionism). Prophetic Judaism was pre-eminent among, and peculiar to the ancient Hebrews, and the
traditions of prophetic Judaism came down through the ages, constantly evolving and being applied to the difficult and tragic life of a people
summoned to be humane, ethical, and just under all circumstances.
Let me quote the prince of all Hebrew writers and philosophers of modern times, the father of the now moribund Spiritual Zionism, Ahad
Ha'am. In his essay "Priest and Prophet" (1893), he put it this way:
Other nations have at various times had their prophets, men whose life was the life of an embodied idea . . . But it is
pre-eminently among the ancient Hebrews that prophecy is found, not as an accidental or temporary phenomenon, but
continuously through many generations. Prophecy is, as it were, the hall mark of the Hebrew national spirit; the fundamental
idea of the Hebrew national spirit. The fundamental idea of the Hebrew prophets was the universal dominion of absolute justice
. . . This idea, with all of its religious and moral corollaries, was the breath of life to the Hebrew prophets. It was their all in all,
beyond which there was nothing of any importance. Righteousness for them is beauty, it is goodness, wisdom, truth. Without
it, all these are naught . . . These prophets of righteousness transcended in spirit political and national boundaries, and
preached the gospel of justice and charity for the whole human race. Yet they remained true to their people Israel: they too saw
in it the "Chosen People" and from their devotion to the universal ideal, had its effect on their national feeling. Their
nationalism became a kind of corollary to their fundamental idea.
All through the history of the ancient Jewish nation-state, the prophets dogged their people constantly every time they reverted to
savagery and immorality - to depraved and predatory acts "like the other nations" ; every time the kings, priests, or other public servants (the
professional idealists) pursued their collective or personal sacro egoismo to use Professor Buber's expression - they brought down upon
themselves the wrath and damnation of the prophets: Hear this I pray you, you heads of the House of Jacob and rulers of the House of Israel, that
abhor justice, and pervert all equity: that built up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity . . . Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed
as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps . . . (Micah). And while the prophets loved their people and hoped that in time with God's help, they
would get used to wearing the yoke of morality, they never failed to remind the Jewish people that God is universal, the Father of all
humanity, and that the Jews were: As the children of Ethiopia unto me . . . (Amos)
There is no question that the late, mature prophets were Jewish critics of Zionism. But one could, and I do, accept Ahad Ha'am's
judgement that Moses was "the prince of the prophets", 3 and therefore one could say that Moses was the first Jewish critic of Zionism. Here,
however, I would have to divert the attention of the reader into Biblical exegesis and dwell at great length on the historical fact that the Torah,
Megilloth, Nitnah (The Torah (the five books of Moses: Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Estera) came down the ages
in the form of small "megilloth" (scrolls)) some of which were hundreds of years apart, many of them
contradictory and repetitious — the barbarous elements were often attached to and even identified with the noblest teachings; the predatory
"Jewish" nationalistic ones were covered up, sanctified and labelled with the same presentation: "The Lord spoke to Moses", or "So Moses at the
Lord's bidding instructed the Israelites, saying . . ."
3 See his wonderful essay on Moses (1904) in Hebrew or in English translation.
Let us remember that priests and military leaders have quoted and used the Torah, as Ben Gurion has been quoting and using the Bible, or as
the devil does. Anyhow, the Moses we admire and adore surely gave the Jewish people, and thus to humanity, the Ten Commandments: "You shall
not murder . . . You shall not steal . . . You shall not covet . . . There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger that dwells among you . . .
Justice, justice, you shall pursue . . . You shall not respect the strong . . . You shall not wrong the stranger . . ." This is prophetic Judaism and it is
equivalent to the preachings of a Jewish critic of Zionism - secular, "Jewish" nationalism - decrying being "like the other nations" -
depraved and predatory.
The Eighteen Hundred Years of No "Jewish"
Political Nationalism and No Jewish Critics of Zionism
Please recall Menachem Begin's dormant eighteen hundred years that passed in Jewish history before "the new specimen of fighting Jew" was
reborn - a specimen completely unknown to the world for over eighteen hundred years. After the fall and destruction of Jerusalem 70 C.E., and
of the last fortified town of Betar (132-135), Jewish political nationalism died a natural death. The way of the spirit was entered upon by the
children of Moses, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and Jeremiah - Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakkai opened the school of Jewish studies in Yavneh,
with the permission of the Roman general Vespasian, and Yavneh took the place of Betar in the hearts and minds of the scattered Jews all over the
world. The rabbi, the Yeshivah (school of Jewish Talmudic studies) and the synagogue became the center and content of spiritual life of the Jew
during the eighteen hundred years - until the nineteenth century. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, " was the philosophy of life.
During the long Talmudic era presided over by the nonprofessional rabbis (great scholars who, on principle, supported themselves as wood-choppers,
blacksmiths, tailors, tanners, watercarriers . . .), and later in the ghettos of Europe in the long dark ages of medieval, uncivilized Christian
Europe, the Jews constantly hoped and prayed for one thing: the realization of the prophetic ideals in the entire world. That was the essence of
evolved Judaism- Jewishness. The Church-State ruled and exploited poor humanity, Gentiles no less than Jews, by "divine right". It was encrusted
with corruption and immorality. Not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did the period of humane nationalism arise in the context of the
age of enlightenment, liberalism and tolerance.
Nationalism, at that time, was a movement for the assertion of individual liberty and the freeing of the mind from the shackles of
traditional authority, for an open society in contact with similar open societies. In its beginning, nationalism was a deeply humanitarian
movement; it was unthinkable that "Fatherlands" could war against each other. After 1848, nationalism became an instrument in the hands of rulers,
generals and adventurers of the nation-states and "graduated" into political nationalism - depraved, predatory, fratricidal political nationalism. To
return to our thesis: until the nineteenth century there was no "Jewish" political nationalism (Zionism) because there were no such rabid ideals as
general political nationalism, and therefore there was no such thing as a Jewish critic of Zionism.
The Age of Universal Selfishness:
Europe's Nineteenth Century Rabid
Political Nationalism Gives Birth to Tragic Insane "Jewish" Political Nationalism (Zionism)
The cruel and immoral age of insane political nationalism in Europe as it was manifested in the fratricidal wars inside Europe and in the
colonial-imperial conquests overseas by England, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium and then the newcomer Prussianized Germany,
can be best understood by reading a few examples of brazen and shameless declarations of the German political nationalists, newcomers, who
expressed the general philosophy of expansionist political nationalism of all the bloody empire builders of Europe:
"We teach that if the welfare of our Fatherland should require conquest, subjugation, dispossession, extermination of foreign nations,
we must not be deterred by Christian or humanitarian qualms ... It is necessary that our (national) civilization build its temple
on a mountain of corpses, on an ocean of tears, and on the death cries of men without number . . ." 5
"Despite all attempts to outlaw it, war is still a law of nature which may be challenged but not eliminated, it serves the survival of the race and
state, or the assurance of its historical future. This high moral purpose gives war its total character and its ethical justification."6
Hitler put it more simply and brutally: "Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. The stronger man is right . . ."
Lebensraum was the core of the colonialist -imperialist's "religion", and Hitler, the latecomer, simply asked his people to do
what all others did, only slightly less brutally, all over the world. The war of the Nazis which devastated and impoverished
the whole world finally opened the eyes of poor misled humanity about the insanity, absurdity, inhumanity and emptiness of content of the
religion of political nationalism. A new world order, a new Europe, a more humane and fraternal world is now gradually, though painfully, being born
out of the crucible of a century of internecine nationalistic blood baths. People are now beginning to demand integrated sovereignties,
supranational political as well as economic unions, in order to improve the lot of the individual and the citizens of the world, in accordance with the
Judeo-Christian ethical standards, all of which have evolved from prophetic Judaism.
Alas, the "Jewish" political nationalists (the Zionists) have swallowed the whole hog of the prevailing secular nationalism of their
nineteenth century persecutors, and, like them, have become inspired and obsessed by the "sacred egoism" of a grasping, expanding, conquering
political nationalism. Although today, in our post-World War era, the whole world now repudiates the old world order, Zionism will not budge
from its old, anachronistic grand designs, and will not disavow, disown, and repudiate the old insane "Jewish" political, national program of
creating from a land that belongs to the indigenous Arab population of Palestine a "Jewish" nation-state, ingathering into it the Jews of the world
and thus creating a Greater Eretz Israel empire.
5 See T.H. Tetens. The New Germany and the Old Nazis
6 See about the German High Command in Tristram Coffin's The Passion of the Hawks
The Greatest Jewish Critic of Zionism, Ahad Ha'am, Father of Spiritual Zionism,
Confronts Theodor Herzl, Father of Political Zionism at the Very First World Zionist Congress (1897)
The word Zionism once had quite a different meaning than political Zionism, just as nationalism once had quite a different and contrary
moaning than political nationalism. There were the "Choveveh Zion" ( Lovers of Zion) several decades before Dr. Theodor Herzl appeared on the
scene. Rabbi Kalisher was the leader of this spiritual movement.
At the same time there emerged the great and noble Hebrew writer and philosopher, Ahad Ha'am. His Zionism was spiritual Zionism and
the goal of this movement was to regenerate the ghetto Jew from his degraded status as luftmensch through the creating of a
spiritual center in old Palestine where the Jew should learn to till the soil, work, regain his self-respect and dignity, and thus
establish a new Jewish life based on prophetic Judaism. This center would in turn exert a spiritual influence on the Jews in the
ghettos and elsewhere.
Political Zionism officially dates back to 1897 when Dr. Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist, assembled the First World Zionist
Congress in Basel, Switzerland and declared:
" We are here today to lay the foundation stone of the house which is to shelter the Jewish nation . . .
Zionism seeks to secure for the Jewish nation a publicly recognized, legally secure home (or homeland) in Palestine."
Soon after the First Zionist Congress, Herzl's adviser, David Triestsch, told him:
I would suggest to you to come around in time to the "Greater Palestine' program before it is too late.
Otherwise it is nonsense.
You do not get ten million Jews into a land of 25,000 kilometers.
Another adviser, the erratic mystic, guide and teacher of Herzl, the Reverend Hechler:
. . . unfolded his Palestine map and instructed (me) ... by the hour.
The northern frontier is to be the mountains facing
Cappadocia (Asia Minor):
the southern, the Suez Canal.
Our slogan shall be The Palestine of David and Solomon.'
When Herzl's colleague Professor Max Nordau heard for the first time that there was an Arab population in Palestine,
he ran to Herzl crying :
"I did not know that; but then, we are committing an injustice!"
Herzl gave him the silent treatment.
Herzl tried to negotiate with the British Colonial Minister Chamberlain about securing a Jewish settlement in Cyprus, from which
the Jew might then take Palestine by force 'as it was taken from us' . . Chamberlain replied:
"Cyprus is inhabited by Greeks and Moslems whom we could not evict for the sake of newcomers. If the Greeks were to resist
a Jewish immigration, the difficulties would be insuperable".
Herzl further records in his "Diaries":
"Not everything in politics is disclosed to the public but only results.
I then unfolded my plan . . . five million pounds;
the Greeks would gladly sell their lands at a good price and migrate
to Athens or Crete."
He then asked the King of Italy for Tripoli, as he asked Chamberlain for Cyprus, to which the young king
replied: Ma e encora casa di altri! (But it is still someone else's home!)
Here is another precious quote from Herzl's "Diaries":
"Noise is everything! In truth noise amounts to a great deal.
A sustained noise is in itself a noteworthy fact.
World history is nothing but noise: noise of arms and of advancing ideas. Men must put noise to use . . ."
Before he died in 1904, he entered the following in his "Diaries": "I believe that I shall be named among the great
benefactors of mankind or is this feeling of mine the beginning of delusions of grandeur?" Herz was a megalomaniac
suffering also from paranoia. To the Zionists he is, of course, the father of Zionist Israel.
Before continuing with the followers of Herzl, I must stop here to quote again the great Jewish critic of Zionism and of
Dr. Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, who attended the first Zionist Congress, but never again would attend any other Zionist Congress
during the lifetime of Dr. Herzl. Immediately after the first Zionist Congress, Ahad Ha'am lashed out at
political Zionism with the following admonition:
In Basel, yesterday, I sat lonely among my brothers, like a mourner at a wedding . . .
<
This new enthusiasm is an artificial one, and the results of treacherous hopes will be despair . . .
The salvation of Israel (the Jewish people) will come through prophets and not through diplomats . . .
One thing is clear to me: We have destroyed much more than we have built up.
Who knows whether this was not the last sign of a dying people. I cannot get this out of my head . . .
There is only one objective which we can actually approach, and that is the moral objective, our self-liberation from inner slavery . . .
Years later, after Ahad Ha'am settled in Palestine and saw the bloody results of the pursuit of political Zionism,
he addressed two open letters of protest to Haaretz, one of the Hebrew dailies in Palestine, parts
of which read:
Jews and blood! Are there any greater contradictions than these? . . .
What have we saved from our destruction if not the teachings of our prophets
which we took along with us on the long road of our exile to enlighten our dark life?
Our blood was shed in all corners of the world during thousands of years, but we shed no one's blood . . .
Thus lived our people from one generation to another,
lived among nations who lived on their swords and who normally shed the blood of their fellow men.
Our people wanted no part of this barbarous life . . .
What shall we say now if this is really true (about murdering innocent Arabs in vengeance)?
My God is this the end? Is this the goal for which our fathers have striven and for whose sake all generations have suffered?
Is this the dream of a 'return to Zion' to stain its soil with innocent blood? . . .
And now God has afflicted me to have lived to see with my own eyes that I apparently erred ...
If this be the 'Messiah' then I do not wish to see His coming . . .
Let us first meet the outstanding leaders of political Zionism and then meet the outstanding Jewish critics of Zionism.
After Ahad Ha'am left the Zionist Congress, particularly after the Balfour Declaration (1917), there was never ainy common ground
where Zionists and Jewish critics of Zionism could meet and exchange thoughts. The Zionist machine defames, denigrates,
smears anyone who dares criticize the doings of Zionists in Zionist Israel and abroad; but the truly honest Jewish critics of Zionism
carry on a lull scale frontal attack, with no holds barred, on the injustices and hypocrisies of political Zionism.
Their number, alas, is tragically small today. The Jewish people are mostly either inter-marrying and assimilating out
of an inner disgust and revolt against the nationalization of the Jews, or they are subverted and brainwashed, and support
the dreadful cause of Jewish nationalism. The issue is the life and death of true Jewishness - prophetic Judaism.
Political Zionists
Meet the Political Zionist, Theorist-Ideologist Jacob Klatzkin
Dr. Jacob Klatzkin was a bosom friend and collaborator of Dr. Nahum Goldmann. So if you want to know the true Nahum Goldmann,
hear what Klatzkin had to declare about "Jewish" nationalism - Zionism. Klatzkin mixed with top-level Zionists, and provided
a philosophical underpinning for them. Here is the essence of his book, in German, Krisis und Entscheidung
(Crisis and Decision), published in 1921, long before there was a Nazi movement in Germany:
We are not hyphenated Jews, we are Jews with no qualifications or reservations.
We are simply aliens: we are a foreign people in your midst, and we emphasize, we wish to stay that way . . .
Whosoever calls the foreign land a Fatherland is a traitor to the Jewish people . . .
We recognize a national unity of diaspora Jews, no matter in which land they may reside ...
(We are) a nation within a nation; a state within a state . . .
Meet the "Father" and Creator of the Zionist National-Socialist Israel
Nation-State, David Ben-Gurion
Books have been written by Ben Gurion and about Ben Gurion. I shall give here just a few of
his "gems", and make a few remarks.
From 1939 to 1948, Ben Gurion was Chairman of the Zionist State Executive of the Jewish Agency.
After proclaiming the State of Israel May 1948, he became Prime Minister as well as Defense
Minister and held on to this dual job until recent years. To his dying day, he talked from
both sides of his mouth. He was responsible for the conquest of Arab Palestine, and for the
policies of subjugation, oppression and dispossession. He always suffered from Arab phobia,
and refused to learn to speak Arabic. At the Hotel Biltmore Conference in New York
(May 6-11, 1942), where the leading Zionists of Europe and America met (in the midst
World War II), Ben Gurion exhorted and inspired the gathering to produce
the Biltmore program, the chief demands of which were: that the gates
Palestine be opened for mass immigration; and that the Jewish Agency a
as the unofficial government of the coming "Jewish" (Zionist) State.
Richard Grossman in his "Washington Diary" for 1946, said:
"The Zionists are terrific . . .
Their main preoccupation is not to save Jews alive out of Europe but to get Jews into Palestine."
And that is what Ben Gurion managed by hook or by crook.
The wars with the resisting Arab Governments soon came. Ben Gurion was using the Bible to
justify bloodshed amid masked aggression and expansion. As an example, in the colonialist war
against Egypt, in 1956, in collusion with Great Britain and France, the newspapers of the world
were carrying the reports of Ben Gurion's jubilation after the conquests of
Sinai, Tiran, etc. . . "
Tiran was liberated yesterday by the Israeli Army . . .
Israel terms the Gaza Strip an integral part of the nation ...
No force Whatsoever is going to make Israel evacuate Sinai . . .
and the words of Isaih the Prophet were fulfilled."
Let us cite one more sample of Ben Gurion's inhuman and shamelessly Nazistic gems
( from " For a New Approach to the Israeli-Arab Conflict " - New York
review of Books, August 3, 1967 )
"Israel is the country of the Jews and only of the Jews.
Every Arab who lives here has the same rights (sic) as any minority citizen in any country of the world,
but he must admit the fact that he lives in a Jewish country"
Meet Menachem Begin: Leader of the "Irgun Z'vai Leumi" Terrorists,
Now
Member of the Israeli Cabinet and the Knesset
In the very beginning of this essay, I let Menachem Begin speak for political Zionism because he is overt and honest with himself, unlike Ben
Gurion and the others who cloak their evil deeds with hypocritical quotations from the Bible. "We fight therefore we are . . . out of blood,
fire. . ." Here are a few plainspoken words by the "new specimen of fighting Jew":
"There is no such thing as 'illegal' immigration of Jews into Palestine. It cannot be illegal for a Jew to go to his own home ...
I deeply believe in launching a preventive war against the Arab states without futher hesitation.
By doing so we will achieve two targets: firstly, the annihilation of Arab power; and secondly, the extension of our territory ...
( New Tork Times April26, 1956 )
Immediately after the massacre of Deir Yassin by Menachem Begin's terrorist army, he described its purpose:
" Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. In the rest of the country, Arabs began to flee in terror . . .
All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance . . .
like a knife through butter. The Arabs began to flee in panic shouting: 'Deir Yassin' . . .
Meet Moshe Shertock (Sharett): At a Conference with Count Bernadotte, in 1948
Moshe Shertock was a classmate and benchmate of mine for five years (1909-1913)
at the rabidly nationalistic-xenophobic Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa - Tel Aviv.
He swallowed the endless teachings and preachings about artzaynooh, amaynooh, moladtaynooh
(our country, our nation, our birthplace). In 1948 he served under Prime Minister Ben
Gurion as Foreign Minister of the State of Israel. When Ben Gurion
proclaimed Israel a State on May 14, 1948, Count Bernadotte was
appointed by the United Nations as mediator in Palestine. On his arrival in
Palestine he was shocked to see tens of thousands of Arab families fleeing
from their homes in search of food, shelter and safety. He held long
conferences with the heads of the Arab governments in Egypt, Syria,
Lebanon, and Jordan; they assured him that they would now agree to
recognize the State of Israel provided it did not expand its boundaries. A
lengthy conference with Moshe Shertock followed, at the end of which
came the following shocking declaration: "Shertock agreed that I had been
right in that the three alternatives I had suggested for the Arab part of
Palestine doubtless exhausted the possibilities. (But) he hinted that there
might possibly be a fourth alternative, namely that the whole of Palestine
should belong to Israel . . ." (Read the fascinating account of these futile
mediations in Count Bernadotte's "To Jerusalem")
Before Count Bernadotte was assassinated by members of the "Irgun" terrorists who were part
of the Israeli Army, he sent a long report to the United Nations General Assembly,
parts of which read:
The Jewish State was not born in peace as was hoped for in the (partition) resolution of the 29th of November, 1947,
but rather ... in violence and bloodshed ... It is, however, undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete
if recognition is not accorded to the rights of the Arab refugee to return to the home
from which he has been dislodged by hazards ... of the armed conflict ...
It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict
were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine,
and indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees
who have been rooted in the land for centuries . . .
A Few of the Leading Fuhrers of Zionist Israel
I will allow only a few words to such GREATS as Moshe Dayan, General Ezer Weizmann,
Golda Meir, Abba Eban, the two Chief Rabbis of Israel, Nahum Goldmann, and one sample of the
leaders of the Greater Eretz Israel movement in Zionist Israel, Zvi Shiloach, in his Hebrew book
A Great Land for a Great Nation .
Moshe Dayan. "It lies upon the people's shoulder to prepare for war, (First Sinai-Suez war of collusion
with Great Britain and France in 1956) but it lies but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the
ultimate object of erecting the Israeli empire... ."our fathers made the borders of '47; we made the borders of '49;
you made the borders of '67; another generation will take our frontiers to where they belong."
(From a statement broadcast on the Arabic program, Israel Radio)
General Ezer Weizmann. The former Air Force General put it in a nutshell:
"What you (reporters) call the occupied territories, I call Israel!"
Golda Meir. "It was not as though there was a Palestine people in Palestine
and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Here is another one,
even more shameless and heartless . . ."There is something else that is absolutely immoral, because
it never happened before in human history — the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by force . . .
How many around the table of the Security Council can really stand up and swear they have never done it . . .
never held any other territory?" Golda Meir is perfectly at home in the atmosphere of the pre-World Wars, in the old world order . . .
Abba Eban. The Foreign Minister of Golda Meir, former Ambassador to the United States
as well as to the United Nations - pontificating, cloven-footed Abba Eban who decries the policy of the Arabs as "lacking a
sense of altruism," and who reassured President Eisenhower and the American people the day before the invasion of
Egypt on October 29, 1956 (a war planned to the most minute detail, months ahead of time, in concert
with Great Britain and France) that "Israel will start no war." In addressing the notorious Anti-Defamation League,
Abba Eban warned that in the conditions imposed by the United Nations on Great Britain, France and Israel, following their
attack on Egypt, he saw "a missed moment in history. (From the New York Times November 25, 1956)
The following historical declaration of President Eisenhower made around the same time Abba Eban made the above
Nazistic statement, should be recalled. Said Eisenhower to the American people:
Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations' disapproval
be allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal?
There can be no peace without law if we are to invoke one code of international conduct
for those who oppose us, and another for our friends ...
We judge no man by his name or inheritance, but by what he does and for what he stands, and so likewise we judge other nations . . .
Israel insists on firm guarantees as a condition for withdrawing its forces of invasion ...
if we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purpose of the assailant,
then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order.
We will have countenanced the use of force as a means of settling international differences and gaining national advantages ...
If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force,
then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization and our best hope for establishing a real (new) world order . .
(Tv and Radio, Report to the Nation on October 31, 1956 and carried by all newspapers on November 1)
Rabbi Nissim. "It is forbidden by the Torah for all Jews, including the Israeli government, to return even
one inch of the territory of Eretz Israel now in our hands."
Rabbi Untermann. Chief Rabbi Untermann on October 6, 1970, wished the Jewish settlers in the upper Jordan valley
that by the following year the border be moved east to include Gilead (east of Jordan territory),
and he added: "Anyhow, we have not yet finished to conquer what is our own and what was promised to our fathers . . ."
Dr. Nahum Goldmann. Dr. Goldmann collected more money, billions of dollars, travelled more around the world
in his propaganda campaigns for Zionism, headed more Jewish organizations all at the same time - World Zionist Organization,
World Jewish Congress, World Conference of Jewish Organizations, World Conference on Jewish Education,
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and the Jewish Agency Executive - than any other Zionist leader!
For years he collaborated with Dr. Jacob Klatzkin. In my book, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time, many pages were
dedicated to this smart professional idealist, professional Jew.
Let me say this: Goldman never repented for having helped finance the conquering Israeli army, the vast immigration of subverted
Jews to Arab Palestine, and the extensive apparatus of propaganda in order to win the world's sympathy for the conquests,
expansions, uprooting of hundreds of thousands of innocent Arabs. By 1970, he probably began to see an eventual defeat of
the Zionist-Israeli armies and wanted to meet Nasser in Egypt to discuss a negotiated peace. He even asked that the United
Nations together with the Arab governments, neutralize Israel and guarantee its existence.
Naturally, the intoxicated junta in Israel despises him now and he has been thrown out of practically all Zionist
organizations which he had once presided over. But, in truth, he is still the impenitent Zionist leader -
who can agree with Ben Gurion that all the Jews who live in the Diaspora (outside of Israel) are in exile, and will eventually
have to be redeemed in Israel; and who laments that "the disappearance of anti-Semitism in its classical meaning, while beneficial
to the political and material situation of Jewish communities, has had a very negative effect on our eternal life,"
(bad for Zionist business.) In short, Goldmann is a hopelessly dyed-in-the-wool political Zionist.
-
Zvi Shiloach. (Israeli labor leader and author of a popular book in Hebrew
A Great Land For A Great Nation) Lately I have been reading Shiloach's Hebrew book,
published in August, 1970, and already sold out in several editions, with shock,
incredulity, and a broken heart. The tens of thousands of Israelis who support the "Movement for Undivided Land of Israel,"
or "The Land of Israel on Both sides of the Jordan," heartily agree with Zvi Shiloach that the Israeli army should conquer
Baghdad and Kuwait, thus making room for the majority of the Jews of the world to "settle in their own
Jewish homeland. . ." The book was favorably reviewed in the Israeli Press.
Here are a few lines from this worshipper of Lebensraum, "Jewish" National Socialism:
In the two thousand years we have been removed from our homeland,
it was the Jewish religion which preserved Jewish existence.
In the 19th century that foundation was shaken, and Jewish nationalism took the place of religion; enlightened nationalism . . .
The six day war has aroused the slumbering forces of the Jewish people ...
In its wake the people rediscovered its land. A renewed covenant between the people of Israel and the land of Israel
can again become a source of enthusiasm, inspiration and devotion to the high ideals of Zionism.
The revival of the Jewish nation has now gained sufficient strength so that this state deserves
to be an equal partner with equal rights in the Middle East.
We Jews had returned to the source of our birth, the East, the land which is between the Big Sea and Persia . . .
This is the radical change which has taken place since the Six-Day War:
The Fertile Crescent, with the big Desert in the midst of it, is the arena
of which the land of Israel owes it to itself to become an integral part.
Under true peaceful conditions, between Israel and the Arabs, there should be a division across the width of the Fertile Crescent
the northern part of federation between Israel, Jordan and Kuwait.
The last three countries will count five million citizens. At present the Jews would be half the population, numerically speaking.
But from the point of view of scientific, technological and military potential, the power of the Jews is much greater than the others put together,
and it is going to grow with the kibutz goliyuth (the return of all Jews from the Diaspora) . . .
True peace will oblige the Southern Federation, at the head of which will stand Israel, to keep the whole territory open
for more and more Jewish settlers, so that the Federation can become the United States of the Middle East.
The road to peace is long, but one thing must be borne in mind: the real peace must be based on the boundaries
that were created by the Six-Day War that are the least boundaries for the time being ...
We must therefore assume that a true peace can only be signed in Baghdad.
This peace will put an end to the myth of the existence of one united Arab nation whose country extends from Gibraltar to the Persian Gulf.
The philosophy and arguments of this extreme political nationalist is typical of the old classical Geopolitical philosophy of National-Socialist
(Nazi) Germany. The book is full of this sort of thinking and preaching.
The question that arises as one reads this sort of Hebrew-Israeli
racist-chauvinist book is: how low can a once spiritual, compassionate,
God-fearing people fall? Another question: What have I, a Jew who!
believes in prophetic Judaism, in common with these insane "Jewish"
nationalists? Another question: when I read of the recent ravings of Socialist
Harold Wilson about the "genuine commitment to Socialism by Golda Meir and
Israeli leaders", I asked: Would National Socialist Adolph
Hitler be welcome to take part in an international Socialist Congress?
Jewish Critics of Zionism
The first Jewish critic of Zionism I met as a child of eleven, and lived with for four years (1904-1909) in old Orthodox Jerusalem was my
revered, scholarly, sincere, honest Orthodox grandfather, Yehuda Laib Mnuchin (the original name for Menuhin).
Yehuda Laib Mnuchin. When Dr. Herzl died, in 1904, Jews everywhere talked about him and his political Zionism.
Many, particularly the scholarly orthodox Jews, regarded him as a charlatan. Like Ahad Ha'am who was not an orthodox Jew, but a great Hebrew
scholar and philosopher who commanded respect from all Jews, orthodox Jews believed in prophetic Judaism — in prophets and not in politicians.
I was brought to Jerusalem as a refugee from Russia in 1904 to live and to be brought up by my revered grandfather Yehuda Laib Mnuchin.
I loved and adored my good, humane, old grandfather. He was a great Hebrew scholar and a fine public speaker.
He used to take me along in all public gatherings which he addressed. One evening, my grandfather brought me to a wedding to which he
contributed the dowry of the poor bride, At the feast, Reb. Laibeleh Mnuchin - the public adored him - was asked to address the gathering.
The topic he chose was Dr. Herzl. He began ( in Yiddish, with a lot of Hebrew metaphors mixed in):
I shall tell you a parable, and you please find in it my answer about that charlatan Theodor Herzl . . . The Czar of Russia was
curious to meet and talk to a representative fine Jew. So he instructed his Minister of Interior Affairs to invite an outstanding rabbi,
a 'good Jew' - ein gooter Yid - to come to St.Petersburg, the capital, to the Palace, on a certain day and hour.
As the Minister's emissaries were searching for the right man, they came across one small town where they were persuaded
that the local rabbi was the right man to go to St. Petersburg ... The rabbi and his courtiers held a special meeting, and agreed
that because it was so important that the rabbi make a good impression on His Majesty, the Czar of all Russia, surely God
Almighty would sanction that the rabbi's long beard and earlocks be shaved, and his long kaftan replaced by a modern business suit
with a white collar and tie, and the rabbi's strimel (fur-edged oriental headgear) be replaced by a real homburg. The
rabbi was also advised to learn to speak Russian, so he could talk to the Czar in his own language, directly.
The day finally arrived, and the rabbi appeared dressed up in his modern clothes at the gate of the Palace in St. Petersburg, at the
appointed hour. The Czar had been looking forward with great curiosity to meet an enigmatic, pious, real representative Jew . . .
It was with some Chootzpah (audacity, gall) that the rabbi forced himself upon the attendants at the Palace gate and asked
in Russian to be presented to His Majesty the Czar. The attendants did not believe their ears and eyes. They protested
saying: There must be some mistake . . .' But the rabbi produced his credentials, so the 'modern rabbi', with the airs and
bearing of a businessman, was brought before the shocked Czar. As the rabbi approached the Czar, he opened up in Yiddish-
Russian, but the Czar did not let him go far. "Pfui" exploded the Czar, Pashol Von(Get out of here) you spurious, counterfeit,
fraudulent, pretender; swine like you I have plenty around me every day. I looked forward to meet a reverent, saintly man to
represent the Jews. Pashol Von.
I was too young to read and understand Ahad Ha'am's writings about Dr. Herzl: "In Basel, yesterday, I sat lonely among my brothers, like
a mourner at a wedding, etc." This, I did later, between 1909-1913, at the Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia.
But my grandfather's Yiddish-Hebrew speech I understood perfectly, and he was the first Jewish critic of Zionism I ever
met until I began to read Ahad Ha'am stealthily at the Gymnasia Herzlia My teachers and classmates did not like my quoting Ahad Ha'am.
Professor Martin Buber. I have already quoted some of the noblest words of Professor Martin
Buber, but I shall give here just one paragraph which appeared in "Ihud's" Ner the organ of Professor Buber,
Dr. Magnes, Professor Ernest Simon, Reb. Binyomin, Dr. Shereshevsky, and many others. It appeared in the
issue of January-February, 1961:
Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness
of causeless hatred (for the Arabs). It is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then
will the old and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab
refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought from afar; whose homes
we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and
vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed, we put up houses of education,
charity, and prayer while we babble and rave about being the 'people of the book' and the 'light of the nations!'
Dr. Judah L. Magnes . Young Dr. Magnes matured rapidly only with the coming of the
First World War. He played a prominent part in organizing the Join Distribution Committee which
helped the victims of war in Easter Europe. He expressed his unhappiness about "imperialism's iniquitous gif
to the Jewish people, the Balfour Declaration, which ought not to have been accepted . . ."
He threw himself heart and soul into the building of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and
became its Chancellor and then its President.
Writing about "Jewish" political nationalism and the rights of the
Arabs of Palestine, Magnes asked:
Will the Jews here in Palestine in their efforts to create a political organism become devotees
of brute force and militarism as were some of the late Hashmonayim (Maccabees)? We seem to have
thought of everything except the Arabs. If we wish to live in this living space, we must live
with the Arabs, try to make peace with them ... Is our nationality, like that of all the nations, pagan,
and based upon force and violence, or is it a spiritual nationality? The right of the Jew does not
confer the right of political majority. ..(From Norman Bentwich, For Zion's Sake)
Professor Albert Einstein. Like Dr. Magnes, his close friend Professor Einstein also matured
slowly and for a long while agreed with both sides of the controversy. Again, like Dr. Magnes, once he matured
in his observation and analysis, he spoke out categorically. I shall give here one quote that Einstein made in
1933, and then a few lines from the recently published book by Ronald Clark, Einstein, the Life and Times.
In his book Out of My Later Years, Einstein talks about "the fateful
flliease of our time, exaggerated nationalism borne up by blind hatred", saying :
I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a
Jewish state. Apart from the practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature
of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state, with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal
power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain, especially from
the development of a narrow nationalism within a Jewish state. We are no longer the
Jews of the Maccabee period! A return to a nation in the political sense of the word would
be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualism of our community, which we owe to the
genius of our prophets.
Ronald Clark, in his voluminous book on Einstein, unfortunately repeat some of the cheap mythical
publicity created by the Zionist machine. Thus, the tale that Weizmann invented TNT and in return
recived from Great Britain the Balfour Declaration is given, in spite of Weizmann's protests about it,
and regardless of Weizmann's disgust with the irresponsible Zionist machine. Yet, having collected both good
and bad material Ronald Clark did reveal, unwittingly perhaps, what Einstein stood for when he matured.
Clark states: ". . . He would not remain associated, he said, with the Zionist movement unless it tried to
make peace with the Arabs, in deed as well as in word." He later quotes Einstein, saying:
"... Should we be unable to find a way to honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned
absolutely nothing during our 2000 years of suffering, and deserve all that will come to us . . ."
Louis D. Brandeis.
Like many other emancipated and integrated philanthropic American Jews, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Judge Julian
Mack and young Felix Frankfurter (later a Supreme Court Justice) joined the Zionist movement during and immediately after World War I on
humanitarian and spiritual grounds. They even became leading officers and aides of the Zionist movement. Like many Zionist Jews, Brandeis took
little cognizance of the fiery nationalistic Arabs of Palestine who constituted the predominant majority of the land.
He knew even less of what was in the minds and hearts of the East European Zionist leaders who were resolved to make Palestine
into a Jewish state, and the Jewish people into a Jewish nation. In 1920, he discovered the true political objectives of the political Zionists in London,
where he went to attend the World Zionist Organization Conference. Brandeis could not countenance any organic nationhood for Jews;
nor any sharing by Jews of other countries, or any Jewish national system of rights and obligations belonging to
Palestine. He decided to abandon all affiliations with the Zionist organization.
Facing Brandeis, Zionist Chayim Weizmann finally burst out in these historic
words:
"I do not agree with the philosophy of your Zionism, with your conception of Jewishness.
We are different, absolutely different! There is no bridge between Washington and Pinsk"
Speaking for Brandeis and Frankfurter at the Zionist Annual Convention
(Cleveland, June 1921), Judge Mack exclaimed:
I now assert that there is no political tie binding together the Jews of the world,
but that politically the Jewish citizens of the U.S.A. are exclusively American citizens ...
We asserted then, as we assert now that in the U.S.A., and in the countries of western Europe,
there are no group-nationality political rights, and we asserted and claimed such rights for ourselves . . .
The thought of a political status of the Jews of the world was an impossible conception ...
Professor Morris B. Cohen.
Here was one of the greatest healthy and outspoken Jewish critics of Zionism, the best example of an East European Jew who became fully
Integrated into American intellectual life. The following golden declarations
are taken from his book, A Dreamer's Journey :
I know of no religious belief by any substantial number of Jews which is not to be found also, in some measure, among other people.
Jews are people first, and only Jews incidentally ... We are not a homeless people. We helped build our American homeland.
The overwhelming majority of Jewish immigrants and their descendants in this country have committed their lives
to the basic principles of American democracy, that here in these United States,
men and women of many different backgrounds may cooperate, bringing each his contribution to a greater civilization than has yet existed . . .
Zionists fundamentally accept the racial ideology of the anti-Semites, but draw different conclusions.
Instead of the Teutons, it is the Jew that is the purer or superior race. All sorts of virtue, idealism etc. are the characteristic qualitites of its spirit.
Only in Palestine can this spirit find root.
William Zukerman .
I loved and admired this wonderful Jew for his courage, integrity and unique talents as an observer of life. Into the four small pages of his
bi-weekly Jewish Newsletter, Zukerman managed to cover Jewish life in depth and judge the entire Jewish world, particularly
the Zionist world. I have selected a few passages from the issues of the Jewish Newsletter dated February 22, March 7, and April 4, 1960,
where Zukerman dwells on the degeneration of the United Jewish Appeal as a result of its subservience to political Zionism.
I refer the reader to a complete study of Zukerman in my Decadence of Judaism in Our Time. Here are some
painful observations that Zukerman made:
. . .The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) which started out to be a purely philanthropic and humanitarian organization has,
since the emergence of the State of Israel, become an arm of the Jewish Agency, a department of Israel's government.
Instead of helping impoverished Jews to reconstruct their lives ...
It has become primarily an agency for financing 'ingatherings' and other nationalistic and political policies of Israel,
policies which are at times far from humanitarian: some are even of a military character . . .
Why does the richest and most powerful Jewish community choose voluntarily to live in an atmosphere of ideological subservience
and controlled thought which can be imposed only by force in countries behind the iron curtain?
To this writer, the present UJA crisis is but a symptom of a much more serious crisis ot the Jewish community which,
for the last three decades, has not lived its own life, but largely that of another people and country seven thousand miles away....
(There is) the complete and uncritical surrender to a tribalistic nationalism which made of organized American Jews
a typical ideological satellite of our time, one which clings to satellitism as principle, glorifies it and lives by it through free choice . . .
Henry Hurwitz .
Henry Hurwitz gave his whole life to the cause of being a worthy Jewish critic of Zionism. I first met and heard him as the editor of the
Menorah Journal in 1914 when I entered New York University and he addressed the Jewish students on the campus.
He was a great man and a great Jew and a very brave personality, as well as an outstanding scholar. I had the privilege of corresponding often
with Dr. Hurwitz as well as with Mr. Zukerman, and I cherished these warm and friendly contacts for many years. The Menorah Journal
always maintained its intellectual independence as an American-Jewish non-Zionist publication. Henry Hurwitz was not a man the Zionist
machine could buy, bribe or frighten. In 1959, he drew together a group of Jewish scholars and writers to form the Menorah Collegium
"to provide Jewish knowledge upon which an enlightened modern Jewish allegiance can be based"
(Professor Hans Kohn was one of the many scholars who joined Hurwitz).
Judaism, not Zionism, interested them. His friends and admirers were collecting a special fund to make it possible for him to carry
on his lifework, but the Zionist machine torpedoed and destroyed his work. A few months before he died, Dr. Hurwitz wrote to me, in a rather
optimistic and hopeful spirit, about his persecutors:
They have at least made it painfully clear by withdrawing their personal support from Menorah;
and more serious than that, by seeing to it that all the Jewish federations and so-called 'Jewish Welfare Funds,'
across the country expelled the Menorah Association of the Menorah Journal from their beneficiary agencies.
The miracle is, in a way, that Menorah is still alive.
Of the one thing you can be assured: our standards and independence will be maintained at all costs.
We have had more than one coy proposal from this and that healthy organization to take us over.
Our financial problems would be solved. And our freedom - that is, our true life - dissolved.
I have resolutely turned a deaf ear to all such proposals of partisan organizations.
In fact, the din of 'Jewish life' has really deafened me; so that I wear a hearing aid, and can really turn a deaf ear to unlistenables . . .
Professor Hans Kohn.
Among all of the great and true Jewish critics of Zionism who believed in and were guided by prophetic Judaism all through their lives as
young students and as scholars-professors in Jewish and Gentile organizalions and universities, there is no one who holds a higher moral stature
than this outstanding authority on the phenomenon of the growth of political nationalism from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to our
modern time. Professor Kohn's books are universally recognized as the ultimate study and reference works.
Professor Kohn was born in Prague in 1891 , and earned his degree as Doctor of Law at the German University there.
He was taken prisoner by the Russians in World War I and spent almost five years in Turkestan and Siberia where he witnessed
the Russian revolution and civil war. Returning to Europe by way of Japan, he spent several years in Paris and London,
afterwards he settled in Jerusalem, where he studied the history and politics of the Middle East and of political Zionism.
In 1926 he joined Dr.Magnes' Brit Shalom (League of Peace) to foster Arab-Jewish understanding.
He emigrated from Palestine to the United States in 1931. He joined Dr. Hurwitz' Menorah Collegium "to provide Jewish knowledge upon
which an enlightened modern Jewish allegiance can be based".
Professor Kohn was professor of History at the City College of New York, and in various other American colleges and universities.
The following is a list of some of the best known books by Hans Kohn: American Nationalism, Nationalism and Liberty,
The Idea of Nationalism, Twentieth Century, Prophets and People, and Nationalism, Its Meaning and History.
In his books, Hans Kohn made clear the degeneration of political nationalism from "a movement for the assertion of individual liberty and
The rights of the citizen against his government, for an open society in contact with similar open societies, into degenerative, depraved and
predatory aggressive political nationalism". Again and again, Kohn points out how degenerative nationalism began to stress the
exclusiveness of various ethnic and linguistic groups to arouse the pride and passions of the nation or race.
He points out how in the darkening European world wars, violence and fanaticism, nationalist passions, were often the force nurtured
and exploited to undermine democracy and corrupt the people's humanitarian spirit so as to emphasize Cultural Superiority,
Blood, Soil, Manifest Destiny, Chosen People, and Power above all. Political nationalism became a depraved and predatory movement
on a universal scale, and Hans Kohn saw in political Zionism a product of these insane nationalistic, imperialistic, colonialistic drives,
which became the pattern and philosophy of the life of the nations of Europe, and which culminated in the two World
Wars.
Professor Kohn wrote much on Ahad Ha'am whom he admired immensely. Particularly important is his comprehensive article
on "Zion, and the Jewish National Idea" in the Menorah Journal, Autumn-Winter 1958.
|
