# 47. The Yearning of the Jews for Palestine

Not a few intelligent people will find every word spoken about the strange meeting that took place a few days ago in Basel under the name “Zionist Congress” superfluous. The fact that a number of Europe-weary Jews came together to propagate the idea of establishing a new Palestinian empire and to bring about the emigration of Jews to this new “promised land” appears to these clever people to be the mad imagination of a pathologically excited fantasy. They are soothed by this judgment. They do not discuss the matter any further. But I believe that these clever people are ten years behind the times in their assessment. And ten years is a small eternity in our time, when events flow so quickly. Ten years ago, one could justifiably consider a Jew to be half-mad if he had the idea of moving his fellow Jews to Palestine. Today he can only be considered oversensitive and vain; in another ten years things may be quite different. In the case of Mr. Herzl and Mr. Nordau, the current leaders of the Zionist movement, however, I believe I perceive more conceitedness than heightened sensitivity towards the anti-Semitic current. The banal phrases that Herzl put forward in his brochure “The Jewish State” (M. Breitensteins Buchhandlung, Leipzig and Vienna 1896) and the verbal fluff with which the sensationalist Nordau regaled his audience in Basel certainly did not spring from the deepest depths of troubled souls. But they do come from intelligent minds who know what has the strongest effect on those Jews who have a sensitive heart and a highly developed sense of self-respect. These latter members of the Jewish people will, I suspect, form the following of Mr. Herzl and Mr. Nordau. And the number of these members is certainly not small.

What use is it when it is emphasized so often that the Jews who feel this way are in serious error? They turn a blind eye to the great strides that Jewish emancipation has made in recent decades and only see that they are still excluded from so many positions and deprived of so many rights; and what is more, they hear that they are being vilified by anti-Semites in the most vicious ways. They act this way because their wounded feelings cloud their reason. They are incapable of realizing the impotence of anti-Semitism; they see only its dangers and its revolting excesses. He who says to them: see how hopeless the machinations of the Jew-haters are, how all their enterprises end in disgrace, he is looked at doubtfully. They only hear those, like Theodor Herzl, tell them: And those to whom such sentences find the most powerful response today were, until very recently, passionately willing to let their own nationality be absorbed into that of the Western tribes. Not real anti-Semitism is the cause of this Jewish oversensitivity, but the false image that an overwrought imagination forms of the anti-Jewish movement. Anyone who has dealings with Jews knows how deeply rooted this tendency to form such a false image is in even the best of its people. Mistrust of the goyim has thoroughly taken possession of their souls. They suspect an unconscious, instinctive, secret hatred of Jews even in people in whom they can perceive no trace of conscious anti-Semitism. I consider it one of the most beautiful fruits that human inclination can bear when it wipes out every trace of suspicion between a Jew and a non-Jew in the direction indicated above. I would almost call such an affection a victory over human nature.

> “Anti-Semitism is growing among the population daily, hourly, and must continue to grow because the causes persist and cannot be eliminated. ... Our prosperity seems to contain something provocative because for many centuries the world was accustomed to seeing us as the most contemptible of the poor. In this, out of ignorance or narrow-mindedness, people do not realize that our prosperity weakens us as Jews and erases our distinctive features. Only pressure presses us back against the old tribe, only the hatred of our surroundings makes us strangers again. Thus we are and remain, whether we want it or not, an historical group with a recognizable identity. We are a nation — the enemy makes us one against our will, as has always been the case in history.”

It is possible that in a short time such inclinations will become impossible. There may come a time when the emotional sphere of Jewish personalities is so irritated that any understanding with non-Jews becomes impossible. And the so-called Jewish question depends on the pulling of intimate strings from Jew to non-Jew, on the development of emotional inclinations, on a thousand unspeakable things, but not on rational arguments and programs. It would be best if there were as little talk as possible in this matter. Only the mutual effects of individuals should be emphasized. It makes no difference whether someone is Jewish or Germanic: if I find him nice, I like him; if he is disgusting, I avoid him. It's so simple that you almost sound stupid if you say it. But how stupid you have to be to say the opposite!

I think the anti-Semites are harmless people. The best of them are like children, they want to have something to blame for an evil they are suffering from. When a child drops a plate, he looks for someone or something he has knocked that is to blame for the accident. They don't look for the cause, the blame, in themselves. That's what the anti-Semites do. Many people are struggling. They look for something to blame. Circumstances have brought it about that many currently see this something in Judaism.

Far worse than the anti-Semites are the heartless leaders of the Europe-weary Jews, Messrs. Herzl and Nordau. They have turned an unpleasant child's game into a world-historical movement; they have exchanged harmless banter for a terrible cannon fire. They are seducers, tempters of their people. They sacrifice the understanding which all reasonable people should desire, to their conceitedness, which craves programs, because — where actions are lacking, a program appears at just the right time.

As harmless as anti-Semitism is in itself, it becomes dangerous when the Jews see it in the light in which Herzl and Nordau put it.

And they understand the language of the Tempter, these gentlemen: “People will pray in the temples for the success of the work. And in the churches too! It is the solution to an old oppression from which everyone suffered. But first there must be light in their minds. The thought must fly out into the last miserable nests where our people live. They will wake up from their dull brooding. For a new content is coming into all our lives. Everyone need only think of himself, and the movement will become a mighty one. And what glory awaits the selfless fighters for the cause! That is why I believe that a generation of wonderful Jews will grow out of the earth. The Maccabees will rise again.” Thus Mr. Theodor Herzl in his writing “The Jewish State”.

I fear that a time will come when the Jews will no longer believe anything we non-Jews tell them about anti-Semitism, and will instead parrot to their Jewish seducers. And like so many beguiled people, the sensitive Jews will translate the empty phrases of these seducers into the language of their hearts. The seduced will suffer; but the seducers will triumph over the successes that their vanity has achieved.

In Basel, the question was basically decided: What should be done to make the solution to the Jewish question as impossible as possible? Whether Mr. Herzl and Mr. Nordau really believe that the Palestinian empire can be established, I am not in a position to decide. In honor of their intelligence, I hypothetically assume that they do not believe in it. If I am right in this assumption of mine, then one must reproach these leaders for raising more obstacles which are likely to lead to more confrontation between Jews and non-Jews than the anti-Semitic rabble-rousers.

The Zionist movement is an enemy of Judaism. The Jews would do best if they took a good look at the people who are painting spectres for them.