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“Not by Might, Nor by Power”

The Zionist Betrayal of Judaism

Moshe Menuhin

CONTENTS

Series Introduction

Introduction by Adi Ophir

Note to Second Impression

Preface

PART ONE

Palestine, the Jews and the Arabs

PART TWO

The Case of the Jews and of Judaism Versus “Jewish” Political Nationalism

PART THREE

Quo Vadis Zionist Israel? A 1969 Postscript

Index

About the Author

Series Introduction

I

We the people seem to have the freest book trade in the world. Certainly we have the biggest. Cruise the mighty Amazon, and you will see so many books for sale in the United States today as would require more than four hundred miles of shelving to display them—a bookshelf that would stretch from Boston’s Old North Church to Fort McHenry in South Baltimore.

Surely that huge catalog is proof of our extraordinary freedom of expression: The US government does not ban books, because the First Amendment won’t allow it. While books are widely banned in states like China and Iran, no book may be forbidden by the US government at any level (although the CIA censors books by former officers). Where books are banned in the United States, the censors tend to be private organizations—church groups, school boards, and other local (busy)bodies roused to purify the public schools or libraries nearby.

Despite such local prohibitions, we can surely find any book we want. After all, it’s easy to locate those hot works that once were banned by the government as too “obscene” to sell, or mail, until the courts ruled otherwise on First Amendment grounds—Fanny Hill, Howl, Naked Lunch. We also have no trouble finding books banned here and there as “antifamily,” “Satanic,” “racist,” and/or “filthy,” from Huckleberry Finn to Heather Has Two Mommies to the Harry Potter series, just to name a few.

II

And yet, the fact that those bold books are all in print, and widely read, does not mean that we have the freest book trade in the world. On the contrary: For over half a century, America’s vast literary culture has been disparately policed, and imperceptibly contained, by state and corporate entities well placed and perfectly equipped to wipe out wayward writings. Their ad hoc suppressions through the years have been far more effectual than those quixotic bans imposed on classics like The Catcher in the Rye and Fahrenheit 451. For every one of those bestsellers scandalously purged from some provincial school curriculum, there are many others (we can’t know how many) that have been so thoroughly erased that few of us, if any, can remember them, or have ever heard of them.

How have all those books (to quote George Orwell) “dropped into the memory hole” in these United States? As America does not ban books, other means—less evident, and so less controversial—have been deployed to vaporize them. Some almost never made it into print, as publishers were privately warned off them from on high, either on the grounds of “national security” or with blunt threats of endless corporate litigation. Other books were signed enthusiastically—then “dumped,” as their own publishers mysteriously failed to market them, or even properly distribute them. But it has mainly been the press that stamps out inconvenient books, either by ignoring them, or—most often—laughing them off as “conspiracy theory,” despite their soundness (or because of it).

Once out of print, those books are gone. Even if some few of us have not forgotten them, and one might find used copies here and there, these books have disappeared. Missing from the shelves and never mentioned in the press (and seldom mentioned even in our schools), each book thus neutralized might just as well have been destroyed en masse—or never written in the first place, for all their contribution to the public good.

III

The purpose of this series is to bring such vanished books to life—first life for those that never saw the light of day, or barely did, and second life for those that got some notice, or even made a splash, then slipped too quickly out of print, and out of mind.

These books, by and large, were made to disappear, or were hastily forgotten, not because they were too lewd, heretical, or unpatriotic for some touchy group of citizens. These books sank without a trace, or faded fast, because they tell the sort of truths that Madison and Jefferson believed our Constitution should protect—truths that the people have the right to know, and needs to know, about our government and other powers that keep us in the dark.

Thus the works on our Forbidden Bookshelf shed new light—for most of us, it’s still new light—on the most troubling trends and episodes in US history, especially since World War II: America’s broad use of former Nazis and ex-Fascists in the Cold War; the Kennedy assassinations, and the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Orlando Letelier, George Polk, and Paul Wellstone; Ronald Reagan’s Mafia connections, Richard Nixon’s close relationship with Jimmy Hoffa, and the mob’s grip on the NFL; America’s terroristic Phoenix Program in Vietnam, US support for South America’s most brutal tyrannies, and CIA involvement in the Middle East; the secret histories of DuPont, ITT, and other giant US corporations; and the long war waged by Wall Street and its allies in real estate on New York City’s poor and middle class.

The many vanished books on these forbidden subjects (among others) altogether constitute a shadow history of America—a history that We the People need to know at last, our country having now become a land with billionaires in charge, and millions not allowed to vote, and everybody under full surveillance. Through this series, we intend to pull that necessary history from the shadows at long last—to shed some light on how America got here, and how we might now take it somewhere else.

Mark Crispin Miller

Introduction by Adi Ophir

I

This book presents a thorough critique of Zionism—the ideology, the mass movement, the colonial project, the nation-state to which it eventually gave rise, and the policies the new State carried out in the name of that ideology. The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time (as it was then titled) first appeared in 1965, published by Exposition Press, a small vanity house that refused to advertise the book, or even distribute it. Four years later, it was reprinted (with a postscript written in the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967) by the Institute of Palestine Studies in Beirut.

The Palestinian embrace of Menuhin’s wholesale critique of Zionism could not help him reach the Jewish readership he was hoping to persuade: Menuhin wrote as a Jew, and treated Zionism as a Jewish affair. Although he was concerned with its impact on Jews and non-Jews alike, Menuhin dealt with Zionism from an emphatically Jewish point of view, treating the Zionist movement, and the young Jewish State that claimed to embody it, as a most urgent Jewish problem. But very few Jews were willing to listen. The stories Menuhin told, the documents he quoted, his passionate plea for an alternative account of Zionist history and events in Israel/Palestine, and for a different kind of Judaism—all went unheard, and were forgotten.

By 1965, and even more so after the war in 1967, Menuhin had little chance of reaching anyone even slightly sympathetic to the Zionist cause and the state of Israel. He was labeled an “extremist” and an “anti-Semite,” vilified, and shunned. That reception is not hard to understand. Menuhin was not very nuanced in his accusations, nor very sophisticated or sufficiently detached in his historical analyses, which he did not care to separate from his personal memories, or from his moral and political judgments. He bluntly cast Israel’s Zionist leadership, the heroes of Israel’s War of Independence (1948) and the Six-Day War (1967), as a militarist, nationalist junta, calling them “international gangsters, and ‘Jewish’ Nazis.” He described the building of settlements by the Jewish migrant “pioneers” as a form of colonialism (naïve at first, then militant and nationalist), and pointed out the racist elements in Zionist ideology, even daring to liken them to Nazism.

Even the most sympathetic reader might be troubled by such sweeping condemnations—not out of political correctness, but because they are not based on any serious comparative analysis, and preempt a more careful critical engagement with the darker aspects of Zionism. Thus Menuhin’s strokes of “blasphemy”—essentially rhetorical expressions of his fury—do injustice to the rest of this important book; and, more importantly, Menuhin’s fierce tone and inflammatory terms do not explain the shunning of this book, or his pariah status. After all, Menuhin’s fate was no different from that of other, much milder critics of Zionism among American writers at the time—critics as diverse in origin and orientation as Judah Leon Magnes, Hans Kohn, Elmer Berger, Simon Rawidowicz, and I. F. Stone. They too were often ferociously attacked and aggressively marginalized. For those who rejected Menuhin’s critique, the problem lay not in his angry style, but, first and foremost, in the fact that, like those other critics, he attacked Zionism by questioning the nationalist project itself, and not just some of the events, actions, or policies associated with it. And, more than anyone else in his time, he offered a critique based on a close personal acquaintance with, and comprehensive knowledge of, the actual unfolding of the Zionist project.

For this book is no mere catalogue of slanders and libels by an angry old man (Menuhin was seventy-two in 1965). Situated somewhere between professional historian (which he was not) and ideological polemicist (which he sometimes was), Menuhin wrote a memoir of his time, which was actually the first revisionist history of Zionism. While dealing critically with the ways Zionists conceived and treated the Palestinians, this book is also a groundbreaking critique of the instrumentalization of the Holocaust and the manipulation and exploitation of the Mizrahi Jewish immigrants at the hands of the ruling Labor-Zionist elite; and, perhaps most importantly, it is a lucid history of how Zionist propaganda was constructed and disseminated to win over American public opinion, the Jewish-American public in particular.

In a way, Menuhin was a forerunner of the “new historians,” or “revisionist historians”: a famous, loosely associated group of Israeli Jewish historians—among them Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé, Benny Morris, and Tom Segev—who, starting in the mid-1980s, questioned some key aspects of the conventional Zionist narrative of Israel/Palestine, using materials discovered in State archives that had just been partly opened. Menuhin wrote this book in the early sixties, without access to any of those archives, and prior to the writing of much mainstream Zionist history of Israel/Palestine, which the new historians challenged. Apart from his own recollections, his research and narrative were based almost entirely on, and assembled from, secondary sources—memoirs, essays, speeches, reports of governmental and international organizations, and, to a large extent, newspapers and magazines. Many of those texts, if not most, were written by avid Zionist activists and thinkers. What makes Menuhin’s account especially powerful, then, is the fact that many of the daunting revelations that eventually put the Zionist project into question were, in fact, not revelations after all, but documents that always lay out in the open, most of them written by mainstream Zionists, and the pile whereof is very high indeed.

Menuhin quotes generously from his sources, letting them speak for themselves. His revision consists of re-vision and accumulation. He re-views the documents that had always been available for anyone to see, shedding new light on familiar stories and arguments, forcing them to reveal “the other side” of the national Jewish revolution—the darker side of the liberation, renaissance, and modernization of Jewish life affected by the Zionist movement. And he links those quoted documents, enlighteningly, in series, like separate strings of beads. One string is straightforward and chronological, stretching from the late nineteenth century to Menuhin’s present, based on a quick, rather conventional survey of Jewish history. The other strings are woven throughout the text: nationalism and chauvinism, colonization and dispossession, violence and militarization, lies, demagoguery, and propaganda.

The mere accumulation of what those strings reveal—events, acts, plans, policies, and the arguments and doctrines used to justify them or extenuate whatever was horrid, damning, or at least questionable about them—is quite shocking. Even if we deem Menuhin’s selection partisan or biased, it is damning enough to call even the most orthodox Zionists to account, and move them to reflection.

Menuhin’s evidence not only justifies the need to reexamine Zionism but also requires us to do so by returning to the origin of Zionism, as both a comprehensive ideology and a multilayered project, and to review its whole history accordingly. Thus Menuhin’s concern is not “the occupation,” with which he deals briefly in a postscript added after the Six-Day War—predicting, much like Yeshayahu Leibowitz at the time, many of the horrors still to come. Nor is it the Naqba—the destruction of Palestinian society and land in 1948, and the ethnic cleansing it entailed—to which Menuhin refers in some surprising details without ever using the term. What this book puts into question, rather, is the very idea of establishing a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. Menuhin’s readers will be able to ask, with him, how a particular ethnic-nationalist interpretation of Zionism became hegemonic, and how it gave rise to, and was fed by, a militarized state, with ever more racialized security apparatus. Menuhin also helps us understand the ruinous world-view promoted by that apparatus: the non-Jew within (whether a citizen or a noncitizen) is always positioned and conceived as an enemy by inclination, if not in practice, while the Jew without is basically nothing but an inexhaustible resource for the project of nation-building.

Menuhin’s perspective is quite unique among his contemporaries, including the small, shrinking circle of Jewish anti-Zionists. Unlike many of those Jewish-American writers, intellectuals, rabbis, and academics who, since the 1920s, had struggled unsuccessfully against the Zionist turn in American Jewry, he was not an opponent of Zionism from the very beginning. He was, rather, a disillusioned Zionist who was able to free himself of the Zionist paradigm quite early—in fact, long before the Zionist project itself accrued a substantial history of its own. He was raised as a Zionist and went through—and then left—the Zionist ideological apparatus, and so he knew it inside and out. Thus this book was probably the first critical study of Zionism written by a participant observer. Menuhin’s acquaintance with many of his sources was personal, not only academic, and his theological and ideological reflections were steeped in memories of firsthand experience of a boy growing up and educated in a Jewish Zionist community in Ottoman Palestine. In short, Menuhin was not another American or European Jew who refused to convert to Zionism, but “a bad subject” of the Zionist ideology, who early on abandoned the national project and converted back to an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology.

II

Moshe Menuhin (1893–1983) was a student in the inaugural class to attend the first Zionist high school in Palestine, the Herzliya gymnasium in Tel Aviv. Among his classmates were future leaders and heroes of the Zionist Yeshuv, including Moshe Shertok (Moshe Sharett), Israel’s second prime minister; Eliyahu Golomb, founder and leader of the main Zionist militia, Haganah; and Tzila Feinberg, feminist and leading activist in Women Zionist organization. Among his teachers were prominent Zionist intellectuals like Haim Bograshov and Ben-Zion Mosenson. The Herzliya gymnasium was a crucible of secular Zionist education, where geography was taught as “Love of Homeland” and critical bible studies were introduced as a platform for rewriting Jewish History as a story of sovereignty, exile, and return (categories that Menuhin uses in his survey of Jewish history below, along with others like ghetto, enlightenment, and assimilation, which he stripped of the positive or negative values ascribed to them in Zionist ideology). Soon after Menuhin’s graduation, the school became the birthplace of many Zionist civil organizations, and served as an important underground station of the Haganah. The Herzliya gymnasium soon became a paradigm of liberal education tailored to serve the project of nation building, and a key site for the militarization of the young generation of Zionist Jews—trends Menuhin documents in this book.

Like many young Jews of his generation, Menuhin left a Jewish orthodox (Hasidic) home—rejecting the rabbinic authority, and abandoning the way of life of the orthodox community, but without rejecting Judaism itself. Like many others, he first understood Zionism as a vehicle for modernizing Jewish life while embracing Judaism selectively and critically, finding in Jewish culture an invaluable source of spiritual wealth, wisdom, and moral teachings while rejecting all archaic vestiges of the premodern Jewish ghetto. Early on Menuhin saw himself as a bearer of this modernized tradition, committed to maintain, transmit, and disseminate it. But unlike most of his friends and compatriots who grew up in Palestine in the early twentieth century, he was quick to realize that Zionism was far more than a movement to modernize Jewish life. According to his own report, both in this book and in his autobiography, The Menuhin Saga (1984), his early discomfort with Zionism began when he was still in high school in Tel Aviv. He was enraged by the newcomers’ aggression toward Palestinian Arabs, conceived their nationalism as antimodern, backward-looking, parochial and segregationist, and found in Ahad Ha-Am’s “spiritual Zionism”—which shied away from the dream of a Jewish State and opposed the political-colonialist efforts to bring it about—a creed he could believe in, and a critical vantage point for coping with the fast changing realities in Palestine.

Menuhin was still a spiritual Zionist when, supported by a relatively wealthy family, he left Palestine in 1913 for higher education in the United States (there being no university in Palestine back then). As a student in Palestine’s first Zionist high school he had come of age as an idealist committed and mobilized to struggle for the collective Jewish cause. But, for him, that cause was not nationalist Zionism but universalist Judaism. Living in New York and then Los Angeles, where he experienced other forms of modernized Jewish life, and gratefully adopting the progressive aspects of the American way of life, Menuhin became more acquainted with this more inclusive brand of Judaism. He adopted it as a blend of the teachings of the prophets, the wisdom of the Talmud, the rationality of Medieval Jewish philosophy, and the universalist ideals of the Jewish enlightenment. Within this framework of ideas, religious life was but an option, which, if adopted, should be modernized, and political-ethnic nationalism was an aberration, whose slightest sign must be opposed.

Menuhin’s version of universalist Judaism could not have served as a proper ground for his critique of Zionism, especially not after the Holocaust, if it were not for the aggressive rise of Jewish nationalism, with its chronic violence against the non-Jewish population of Palestine. Menuhin was able to grasp how this violence became inevitable for the very structure and perpetuation of the Israeli regime. At the same time, he also perceived the growing blindness toward such violence by its perpetrators, who, ever more self-righteous, turned ever more unconscious of the meaning and wrong of their own deeds. Universalist Judaism became for Menuhin a critical vantage point from which he tracked the Zionist project, which he deserted when it was still in its infancy. Thus he turned from a disillusioned Zionist to an anti-Zionist activist and a critic who interpreted Zionism as a historical betrayal of the Judaism that he knew and loved. This book is the story of that betrayal.

But today’s readers do not need to share Menuhin’s version of Judaism to appreciate this story, and to learn from it. Anyone who is at all reluctant to accept the Zionism manifest in the “Jewish-democratic” state in Israel/Palestine will learn a great deal from this story written half a century ago, when the aspirations for a truly peaceful, democratic Jewish state in part of Palestine could still be conceived as both innocent and realistic. The innocence and realism of those aspirations, which until recently were pillars of faith of mainstream Zionism, must be revisited in light of Menuhin’s extensive documentation of the violence by Zionist militants and colonists, before and after the establishment of the State, and of the belligerent and oppressive policies by the government since 1948. These acts and policies must be especially probed with respect to an ideology that has never stopped denying the atrocities it could not justify, and justifying those it could not deny, and so has rendered Jewish supremacy an obvious aspect of the “natural” course of affairs.

At the same time, this book will give contemporary readers an amazing sense of déjà vu, concerning recurring patterns of violence, and the discursive formula deployed by the Israeli government and media to represent them. In these stories decades old, many readers will be surprised to recognize the now-familiar patterns of relations between Jews and Palestinians, Israeli Jews and American Jews, Israeli officials and representative of other governments and international organizations. Again and again, the Jews are cast as victims, their worst atrocities committed by a few “extremists” who do not represent the majority (and the motives of these are often represented as understandable if not legitimate). Meanwhile, Jews who still live in the Diaspora are expected—then as now—applaud the Zionist project always; and any gentiles who dare criticize it, much less oppose it, are, by definition, “enemies of Israel”—potential or actual anti-Semites, who cannot be trusted and may always be manipulated. These patterns, as Menuhin amply documents, emerged long before the Second World War—and so before the Holocaust, and Israel’s founding as a state. In short, Menuhin demonstrates that those patterns were endemic to the Zionist project from its inception.

This certainly does not mean that all arguments for Zionism are necessarily void, and that all anti-Zionist arguments are valid; or that Israel is doomed to remain a product and agent of settler or that the Palestinians have played no role in the prolongation of their own occupation and colonization. What it means, rather, is that no one who refuses to endorse the current from of Zionism—openly colonialist, increasingly racist—can afford to turn a blind eye to this book. And those who see themselves as friend of the State of Israel or as sympathizer of the Zionist cause, must also face the truth that Moshe Menuhin was brave enough to tell us here, and, finally, come to terms with it.

NOTE TO SECOND IMPRESSION

At the request of the Institute for Palestine Studies the author has kindly given his permission for The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time to be reprinted, and specially written a Postscript covering developments between 1965, when the book was first published, and March 1969. This Postscript is also appearing as a separate volume.

The Institute for Palestine Studies wishes to express its gratitude to Mr. Abdallah Najjar, Lebanese scholar and ex-diplomat, whose generosity made the publication of this work possible.

Beirut, April 1969

“Tsdakah [Justice, Salvation, Charity] did God to Israel by dispersing them among the nations.”

—The Talmud

“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

—John 8:32

PREFACE

I have entitled this book The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time, but I almost prefer an earlier title, “Jewish” Nationalism: A Monstrous Historical Crime and Curse. Please take your choice. Both titles mean the same thing to me.

I have reached the age and stage in life (I am now past seventy, but I still hope to complete before long a complementary book* that I am now updating and revising) at which an intellectually honest, free and independent man is moved by an inner compulsion to stand up and bear testimony to the beliefs, convictions and conclusions of a lifetime. As a conscientious Jew, I feel it necessary to set forth my views on Jewish history after studying and observing for many years the lofty and dignified Judaistic past of pure ethics, philosophy and religion, on the one hand, and the current decadent, tragic and revolting perversion of it into boisterous “Jewish” nationalism—Judaism turned into rampant Israelism—on the other.

It is not an easy or a pleasant job to perform; yet my very strong sense of duty and my anxiety compel me to undertake it. I am absolutely convinced of the truthfulness of my studies, observations and conclusions. I serve nobody’s interests, and I am paid by no one. Yet, though I carefully and honestly stick to facts, I know that I am bound to antagonize the fanatical and professional idealists among the “Jewish” nationalists. Therefore, please remember this: my son Yehudi Menuhin is in no way responsible for any opinion expressed here on Jewish life. In fact, he knows nothing about this spiritual adventure of mine. He has not read my manuscript. At this stage of our lives we are two wholly independent persons, fully emancipated from each other, intellectually and spiritually. Neither of us is answerable for the other. If the “father has eaten sour grapes … the son shall not bear the sin of the father …”

I am now ready to “tell it in Gath,” think the unthinkable and mention the unmentionable, tell what for a lifetime has been in my heart and on my mind. I feel that I must take stock of my Jewishness, and clear up my personal equation with the Jewish people and with historical Judaism from the point of view of a twentieth-century Jew who is a free and fully integrated citizen of his country, which in my case happens to be the United States of America. I am writing this account—a documentary—as a man of my time, of the fast-evolving nuclear and universal one-world, after two devastating and agonizing world wars. I feel that it would be a cowardly dereliction of duty, which would contribute by default to the delinquency of today’s stultified and therefore irresponsible Jewish leadership, not to speak out openly about the tragic muddle and degeneration in which Jews and Judaism find themselves all over the world. My object is not so much to denounce the malefactors as to expose and clarify the actual state of affairs.

For two generations now, the din emitted by oppressed, frustrated and despondent Jewish leadership, which first emanated from the tortured ghettos of Czarist Russia, Poland and Hapsburg Vienna, has gathered momentum and spread epidemically throughout the pathetic, amorphous and unsophisticated Jewish world. It has declared that the Jews of the world, wherever they may be and no matter what their legal citizenship and nationality, form one transnational ethnic and political entity. With the advent of the state of Israel, this “entity” has graduated into an “internationally recognized Jewish nation,” whose sovereign state and homeland is Israel. All this in spite of a two-thousand-year-old history of Judaism testifying to its overwhelming evolutionary development along spiritual, universal and nonpolitical lines; in spite of the radical and vital changes in the soul of civilized man everywhere after two world wars; in spite of the new advanced conception of free individual citizenship, of equal privileges and obligations in a new fully integrated and harmonious civilized human community.

To stultify, brainwash and inoculate the amorphous body of world Jewry with the virus of secular, rampant “Jewish” political nationalism, Jewish education for Aliyah (“ingathering of the exiles” through immigration into Israel) under the pretense of spiritual and religious immunity or liberty has been instituted everywhere. This, in turn, has been undoing the normal and natural processes of the integration and evolution of the Jew into the new order of universalism and brotherhood. Cultural isolation, hiding behind the much abused expression “cultural pluralism,” has been self-segregating the Jew from the Gentile in America, England, France and elsewhere in the free world, to prepare him for Aliyah.

“Let the Book give place to the Sword, and the Prophet to the fair beast!” is how the great Hebrew writer and philosopher Ahad Ha-’Am, father of the now dead spiritual Zionism, or Judaistic Zionism, characterized “Jewish” political nationalism (political Zionism) from the very beginning, when he attacked Dr. Theodor Herzl, the father and founder of political Zionism. Today, in our new one-world, pretexts for action based on Blood, Soil, Manifest Destiny, Redemption, Gloire and Grandeur, the Chosen People and the White Man’s Burden are well recognized and fully rejected, with a sense of shame and compunction, by intelligent and awakened Europeans. Nevertheless, persistent, stagnant, decadent and anachronistic “Jewish” nationalism still preaches, now more than ever, these time-worn and degenerate ideas of “collective Sacro Egoismo,” as Professor Martin Buber calls them. In its own way, it has already brought much misery to a million uprooted innocent Palestinian Arabs who were exiled from their homes and homeland, and to hundreds of thousands of uprooted Jews, particularly in the Arab lands.

Advancing, evolving, universal and spiritual Judaism, which was the core of the Judeo-Christian code of ethics, is now becoming the tool, the handmaiden, of “Jewish” nationalism, so that the ethical injunctions Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet have been transformed into the unethical, primitive and tribalistic “Covenant of the Chosen People” and “Israel First.” So much so, that Israelis regard themselves today as Israelis only, an elite, and not, God forbid, as Jews, who in their eyes are a lower breed of humans, traitors to the sacred cause of “Jewish” nationalism unless they emigrate to the “sacred-secular Jewish Homeland.”

While the old militant expansionist Europe is making a clean break with its depraved political and nationalistic past, and considers that maniacal past gone with the wind, gone with all its dogmas and deceiving slogans; while the new Europe, reborn out of the crucible of a century of internecine nationalistic blood baths, now advocates integrated sovereignties, a supranational political union; and while a United States President expounds international interdependence on Independence Day in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, four-thousand-year-old Jewry, praying and hoping all through its history for the day of universal brotherhood, is now being subverted into becoming segregated nationals of the “sovereign authority of the Jewish homeland” and to “do as Ben Gurion expects you to do.”

In this nuclear age, when the movement toward Christian unity and supranational unity is sweeping the world, the Jews of the world, through indoctrination with the regressive political-Zionist philosophy, are being dragged back ideologically into the old, dark East European ghettos, where self-segregation and cultural isolation once reigned supreme.

Hence this book. And hence my other book, now in preparation. I have found it necessary to begin the present book, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time, with a thorough study of Palestine, the Jews and the Arabs. This study forms Part One. The reason for it is the corroding “Centrality of Israel” in the scheme of the newfangled secular-political Judaism’s “full Jewish life” resulting from “Jewish education for Aliyah.” It should help the reader to understand better the thesis of the whole book. I have laid it out as a chronological documentary study, giving the high lights of the history of the Jews and the Arabs as regards Palestine from time immemorial to this day. And inasmuch as I possess no cold detached attitude toward the Jewish people but, on the contrary, a deep feeling of sympathy and concern, I have expressed my reactions and views in connection with the facts given. Part Two contains the thesis, the core, of this book: the case of the Jews and of Judaism versus “Jewish” political nationalism.

My relation to the Jewish people of today is hearty, but rational. I feel as a sailor feels toward former shipmates with whom he has been on a long voyage through many stormy seas and shipwreck. While the survivors pursue thereafter each his own way, none of them wants to or can forget the dangers, trials and tribulations they shared jointly, nor the common spiritual and cultural values of a permanent nature they acquired during the long hedged-in isolation. One naturally feels ever ready to stretch out a helping hand when a shipmate happens to find himself in trouble or in need, so long as he minds his own business in life.

*“The Menuhins: The Autobiography of Moshe Menuhin, A Former Nationalist Jew Becomes an American; and the Biography of Yehudi Menuhin, a Genuine Genius.”

PART ONE

Palestine, the Jews and the Arabs

“Toffasto Meroobah Lo Toffasto” (If you grabbed too much, you grabbed nothing).

—The Talmud

“They have healed also the hurt of My people lightly, saying: ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

—Jeremiah 6:14

“Algeria is the patrimony of all of us. For generations you Europeans have called yourselves Algerians. Who contradicts you? But, in becoming your country, Algeria has not ceased to be ours. Understand that, and admit that for us, Algeria is the only possible fatherland.… Your grandfathers and your fathers thought and acted in the context of their time, which is gone.… In today’s world there is no place for the colonial concept or for racial supremacy.…”—FERHAT ABBAS (an early revolutionary leader of the Algerian Arabs, then Speaker of independent Algeria’s first National Assembly, in an appeal to the Europeans of Algeria during the war of liberation, as reported in the New York Times, February 18, 1960)

Around the Twentieth Century B.C.E.

About four thousand years ago, between the twenty-first and the nineteenth centuries B.C.E., our biblical patriarch Abraham found himself wandering away from his homeland Chaldea (today’s Iraq). Here is how Genesis, chapter 12, puts it:

Now the Lord said unto Abram: ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great’ … and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan … And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said: ‘Unto thy seed will I give this land,’ and he builded there an altar unto the Lord … And there was a famine in the land; and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was sore in the land.…*

Later, we read in Genesis, chapter 15:

… The Lord came unto Abram in a vision … And Abram said: ‘Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go hence childless’ … And He brought him forth abroad, and said: ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars, if thou be able to count them’; and He said unto him: ‘So shall thy seed be’ … ‘Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs’ … In that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying ‘Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite, and the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite … and the Canaanite … and the Jebusite.’

Thus the Promised Land, the Land of Canaan, homeland of the ancestors of some of today’s Arabs of Palestine, was promised to the “seed” of Abram.

In the Thirteenth Century B.C.E. Moses Proclaims the Ten Commandments in the Desert of Sinai. After His Death, Joshua Conquers the Promised Land.

Leading the Apiru, or Khabiru, or Ibri (Hebrew) slaves and seminomads out of Egypt, Moses kept the folks in the Sinai desert forty years in apprenticeship, to give the older ones time to die off, and the younger generation time to grow up in the severe climate of the desert so as to be prepared for the severe ethical Judaism he was to impose upon them.

The Ten Commandments and many other laws were proclaimed in the desert, and thus was laid the moral foundation of universal Judaism for all time. Eventually it became the core of Christianity. Here is where our forefathers learned the thou-shalt-not’s and such other injunctions as Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Having accomplished his mission of proclaiming what ought to be, not what can be, the prophet Moses died in the desert at the frontiers of the Promised Land, and the man of action, Joshua, took over, and led his people into the Promised Land. Some scholars believe that about two million souls were under Moses and Joshua. Recently, Premier David Ben Gurion of Israel stirred up a biblical dispute to the point where the religious leaders in the Knesset (Parliament) “introduced a no-confidence motion as an intended rebuke for his assertion that the Biblical Exodus had not been on so grand a scale as the Scriptures had led people to believe, and that only 600 took part in the journey from Egypt.”¹ Mr. Ben Gurion thinks that “the great majority of the children of Israel had never left Canaan for Egypt. This fits in with Mr. Ben Gurion’s political conception that the Jewish people had never broken their direct ties with the Land of Israel.”²

Joshua’s exploits are graphically described in the Book Of Joshua. We can get no clearer picture of his accomplishments during the first “ingathering” of the Israelites than by just quoting some passages from Joshua. Said the harlot Rahab to the two spies Joshua sent to view the land of Jericho:

… I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you … For we have heard … what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were beyond the Jordan, unto Sihon and to Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard it, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more spirit in any man because of you … (Chap. 2)

Joshua said unto the people, Shout! for the Lord hath given you the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, both young and old, and ox and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. (Chap. 6)

And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, even in the wilderness wherein they pursued them, and when they were all fallen by the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all Israel returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai. For Joshua drew not back his hand, wherewith he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which He commanded Joshua.… So Joshua burnt Ai, and made it a heap for ever, even a desolation … Then Joshua built an altar unto the Lord, the God of Israel, as Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses … (Chap. 8)

And to quote one more passage, this time from Numbers 33:55:

But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.

“As it is written in the Book of the law of Moses.” Quoting the Bible and using terror to spread panic were ancient devices for “redeeming” a “Promised Land” and getting rid of the native population. Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin had only to look up the Book of Joshua before applying the old methods of terror in Palestine, at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, at Qibya on October 14–15, 1953, and in many other unforgettable massacres of the Palestinian Arabs. Only, Joshua tells his story with unvarnished primitiveness, in the name of a young Jehovah who had not as yet grown up, and in the context of his barbaric times; whereas today’s Joshuas, who are public-relations diplomats of expediency, act in the same way as ancient Joshua, but cry “Peace, peace; all we want is the status quo!” after the dirty job has been done.

William Foxwell Albright, Professor of Semitic Languages at Johns Hopkins University, in his treatise “The Biblical Period” in The Jews, by Louis Finkelstein, has this to say about that period:

The wild and warlike Israelites followed the custom of the day. Later tradition recognized that the destruction of a large part of the Canaanites population had saved Israel from the process of acculturation which might have had disastrous consequences for the new faith [acculturation, says Webster’s Dictionary, is the teaching of culture or knowledge by one tribe or race to another].… The religion of Moses was a missionary faith with a dynamic appeal to the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of that time.… After the first great victories over Sihon, converts may well have flocked to join the triumphant standards of the new faith. Among them was the Syrian diviner Balaam to whose brief conversion we owe the oracles which have been transmitted to us in fragmentary form in Numbers 23–24.³

Going Back for a While, Many Centuries Prior to the Twentieth Century B.C.E. The Canaanites, Ancestors of Some of the Arabs of Palestine of Today.

More than four thousand years ago, as we know through the foregoing biblical narratives, the Canaanites lived in Palestine. Some of today’s Palestinian Arabs, who are now exiled refugees living in tents and huts in camps outside the border of their homeland, stem from these ancient Canaanites, who were a sort of blending of earlier Semites, Indo-Aryans and Hittite conquerors and settlers. These Canaanites built cities and palaces, used horses and chariots, and built temples and shrines adorned with idols. They worshiped nature. The great storm-god was their lord of gods and creator of mankind. Their homes were well built and well drained, something unique at that time.

The Canaanites who survived the wars of conquest of the early Israelites watched their conquerors win and lose their Promised Land twice over. They watched, as we shall see later on, two “ingatherings” and “redemptions” of the Promised Land, while minding their own business as peasants, workers and slaves. Some of the Canaanites undoubtedly embraced Judaism. Others, later on, in the early stages of Christianity, embraced the new religion. And when Mohammed swept out of Arabia to conquer the world and convert everybody (except the Jews and Christians, the peoples of the Scriptures) to Islam at the point of the sword, most of the natives of Palestine embraced Islam to form one united Arab people, beginning in the seventh century C.E. Thus we have the Arabs of Palestine, the predominant population of the country since those days.

Some Arabs, during the period of the Crusaders’ expeditions, in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, embraced Christianity. Thus the Christian Arabs of Palestine, since medieval times.

King David and King Solomon (1000–927 B.C.E.).

It was under King David and King Solomon that the various Jewish tribes consolidated their conquests and united into one kingdom. During that short period of about seventy-three years, they were truly an independent and powerful nation whom their enemies feared and respected. There was only one section, the coastline from Jaffa to Gaza and the Sinai peninsula, that they were unable to wrest from the Philistines, though for a short while even the Philistines had to pay tribute to David and Solomon.

927 B.C.E.–722 B.C.E.–586 B.C.E. Things Go to Pieces Politically While the Glorious Era of the Prophets Dawns Upon the World.

About 927 B.C.E., King Solomon died. Immediately after his death, the united kingdom broke up into two quarreling and fighting independent kingdoms: the larger one, Israel, consisting of ten tribes, lasted until 722 B.C.E.; the smaller one, Judah, lasted until 586 B.C.E. It was during this period that the glorious, severe and despairing prophets tried to lift one notch higher the standards of applied justice and moral decency, as proclaimed by Moses many years before in the wilderness of Sinai.

Actually, outside of David and Solomon, we can hardly look back on any of the whole lot of kings and priests with much admiration or pride. But the whole world will forever remember the names of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah and their like with the greatest admiration and reverence. It is the immortal spirit of dauntless moral independence that we revere in the prophets, not the old political independence fought over endlessly, sometimes in self-defense, and sometimes in offensive wars to carve out more territory, to rule over more slaves, to be richer at the expense of neighbors.

Assyrian and Babylonian Exiles.

In 722 B.C.E. the Israelites were defeated by the Assyrians, who exiled their upper-class nobles and priests, never to return. And in 586 B.C.E. the Judeans met a similar fate at the hands of the Babylonians, who exiled many of them to Babylonia (now Iraq), where the great majority of them settled for good. It was to these, the Jews of Babylonia, that the great prophet Jeremiah sent the following message:

Thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, unto all the captivity whom I have caused to be carried away captive from Jerusalem unto Babylon: Build ye houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat the fruit of them; take wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there and be not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.

The Second “Ingathering,” 538 B.C.E.

In 538 B.C.E., after Babylonia was overrun and conquered by the Persians, King Cyrus of the Persians gave the Jews permission to return to their former homeland. Under Zerubbabel (a grandson of the royal house of David, born in Babylonia), 42,360 men and women chose to go back. Among these were priests, Levites, singers and porters (all Temple servants) who were required for the rebuilding and running of the new Temple in Jerusalem. Others hoped to recover the lands that had belonged to their forefathers. A thousand mounted Persian soldiers accompanied the party, to protect them and help them get possession of the land, so far as possible.

It must have been this element of Jews in Babylonia who badly wanted another Jewish state, even under the Persians, and who, “sitting by the rivers of Babylon, … wept when they remembered Zion.” That was the second “ingathering,” the fulfillment of so many prophetic consolatory promises made to the exiled Jews. Nevertheless, the overwhelming bulk of the exiled Jews in Babylonia stayed put, and, in accordance with the injunction of Jeremiah, called it quits as far as territorial-political aspirations of a nationalistic nature were concerned.

It was not easy and simple for the forty-two thousand “ingathered” returners to “reedeem” the “Jewish homeland” under the suzerainty of Persia. It is remarkable that, while the common masses were industrious and most anxious to eke out a living in the hill country left to them (the fertile lands in the valleys of old Judah were now occupied by other settlers), and most anxious to live in peace with the many nationals who had been settled in Palestine by various conquerors, the old gang of priests and politicians, who served as agents of the Persian government under Persian satraps, soon rose to be rich landowners and patricians, and formed a new aristocracy that began to dream and act along the lines of the pre-exile rulers of Judah. The old pattern of “divine right” returned to the new Judah—Judea.

Resurgent political nationalism, with all its ugly predatory ambitions of aggrandizement, raised its head, and from then on there were constant internal battles between the parties of peace and the parties of war—war for conquest and exploitation. Soon, even as under Persian and, later, Greek suzerainty, the plebeians were enslaved by their priests and kinglets, and their sons drafted into the army to battle for a bigger and better fatherland. The “fatherland” was resanctified and assumed new divine rights, behind which self-anointed heads of state and the new professional aristocracy exploited and embittered the masses of the new Judea.

The sinecure jobholders and their unsocial practices brought down upon them a timely prophet who had come to Judea from Babylonia. In typically fearless moral indignation he thus addressed himself to the exploiters of the people:

Ye exact usury! We, after our ability, have redeemed our brethren the Jews that sold themselves unto the heathen; and would ye nevertheless sell your brethren. The thing that ye do is not good; ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God? Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive yards, and their houses, also the hundred pieces of silver, and the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them. (Neh. 5:7–11)

Nehemiah, cupbearer and butler to the King of Persia, was a Jew who never had known exile. He probably was one of the many Jews who had lived abroad from time immemorial. He obtained a leave of absence to go to Judea to render some service to his coreligionists.

The words of Nehemiah remind us of the very same unsound, unjust and unsocial practices that were at the bottom of the disintegration of the old political Judean kingdom, and of the strong words Jeremiah had used to chronicle the state of degeneration, before the Judeans were exiled to Babylonia: “Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by injustice; that useth his neighbor’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work.”

Universal, ethical, humane Judaism, a long step ahead of political nationalism, was already live and vigorous.

The Second Commonwealth, 538 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. and to 135 C.E.

The period from 538 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, we call the Second Commonwealth. Then there was another fierce flare-up of rebellion against the Romans that lasted from 132 to 135. Politically speaking, Judea was hardly a fully autonomous commonwealth, or nation. The Jewish rulers were, most of the time, satrap rulers. Occasionally they had a native Jewish king. They had a Sanhedrin, a higher body of representative people, who looked after the religious laws. But the satrap rulers, together with the priests and clericalists, overwhelmed the people with their political and unsocial preoccupations and ambitions. As a result; destruction was visited upon them with blood, fire and exile.

While this happened in the new Judea, Jewish life in Babylonia flourished economically and spiritually; and in Egypt there developed a prosperous and happy Jewish community that reached one million in the first century C.E. The center of Jewish life had long since shifted to Babylonia and Egypt, as we shall see later on. Here we are dealing with the Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and we must stay within this limited area for a while.

Judea was first ruled by the Persians, then by the Greeks; and for a while afterward, during the period from 165 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., the Judeans enjoyed a few ephemeral periods of political independence. The most interesting period was during the reign of the pious, honest and brave Mattathias Hashmonayi and his son Judah the Maccabee, who led their people against the Greek-Syrian oppressors. They fought primarily for religious freedom, and they defeated powerful Greek-Syrian armies. It was a victory of Judaism over paganism, of spiritual independence over forced Hellenization of the country. Some of the noblest poems of the Psalms, expressing hope, despair and confidence, belong to that short period of fanatical warfare and victory over tremendous odds. But after the death of the dauntless Mattathias and his son Judah the Maccabee, things rapidly deteriorated under the descendants of the Maccabees, who became Hellenistic puppets even as they indulged in political and military exploits that brought ruin to the masses of Jews under them.

Meanwhile, Rome was closing in on Judea in its march eastward, and on the ninth of Ab (Jewish calendar), 70 C.E., the Temple in Jerusalem was set afire by Titus, while the Roman legions massacred the resisting Jews and destroyed their homeland. There were about one million Jews in Judea at that time.

Yavneh, the Spiritual Center. Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakkai, 70 C.E. Rabbi Akibah.

An extraordinary historic and dramatic event happened on the eve of the destruction of Jewish political independence. While Jerusalem lived through the terrible last days of the long siege, Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakkai, a firm believer in the advanced philosophy of the Judaism of Hillel (“What is hateful to thyself do not do to your fellow man. This is the whole ‘law,’ all else is but its exposition.… Judge not thy neighbor until thou art in his place.”), reached the conclusion that the Jewish people were not a nation like any other nation, that they must live by the spirit and not by the sword, and that the war against Rome was therefore a mistake. One of the most respected of all the Pharisees, Johanan Ben Zakkai decided that the time was ripe for him to act. Here is how he acted:

Some of Johanan’s pupils announced that their master had died and asked permission to carry his body for burial outside of Jerusalem. They managed to carry the living Johanan beyond the lines of danger where he rose out of his coffin and made his way to Vaspasian, the Roman general.… Vaspasian was astonished when Johanan requested permission to open a school in a little town called Yavneh … Rome and Jerusalem were personified in them—the sword versus the spirit … Vaspasian knew that the man before him was a very influential man … He was ready (and was glad) to grant almost any request that Johanan made.…

That school in Yavneh more than any other single event in history proved that the spirit is mightier than the sword.… Before many months passed by, the school of Yavneh was known wherever Jews lived.⁴

Johanan Ben Zakkai represented the new leadership in Jewry—the rabbi. We shall return to the role of the spiritual leader in Jewish life.

There was one exceptional rabbi, Rabbi Akibah, who would not confine himself exclusively to the world of the spirit in leading his people, but who hopelessly collaborated with the fanatical political nationalists in their uncompromising resistance against the Roman conquerors of Judea. He, together with the fabulous Bar Kochbah, organized a revolt against the Romans. They even defeated some local Roman legions in battle, and for more than two years they fought valiantly against superior forces until Severus, the Roman general, laid the land waste, starved the new Jewish armies under Bar Kochbah, and finally penetrated the fortified town of Bettar, where the defenders met a heroic death alongside their leaders. The revolt lasted from 132 to 135.

The Jewish army was destroyed. Thousands upon thousands of them exhausted by the siege fell fighting in and outside of Bettar. Simeon Bar Kochbah was among the dead. The Romans also suffered heavy losses, but the second revolt was over.… Five hundred and eighty thousand men are said to have been killed in battle alone. Tens of thousands more must have fallen before the relentless destruction carried out by the Romans.… The slave markets were again glutted with Jewish captives. Judea lay desolate. Even before the fighting was over, Jerusalem began to be rebuilt as a pagan city. Hadrian prohibited the practice of Judaism.… Also forbidden was the meeting of the Academy and Bet Din [court] established by Johanan Ben Zakkai.… Rabbi Akibah was condemned to be flayed alive, and with his last breath he exclaimed, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

In time the Romans came to realize the uselessness of persecuting Judaism. The Academies were reopened.… The first choice, the [Bettar] way of the sword, for keeping the Jews alive as a [nationalistic political] group, had failed. The second choice, the way of the spirit, was now entered upon with enthusiasm.… The Jews wore destined to be a kingdom not of this earth.⁵

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit!”

The Post-Mortem of Jewish Political Nationalism.

As a result of the continuous bloodletting on the altar of political nationalism, the spirit as well as the body of Judea began to wither. Mens sano in corpore sano. The particular terrain of political Judea became unhealthy for the development of universal Judaism. Prophetic Judaism came from the desert, not from Bettar, and was destined for the universe. And so we see the center of gravity shift from Judea to Babylonia, where the spirit of honest integration with other people in the tragically slow common evolution of mankind could and did thrive for many healthy centuries.

Before long most of the Jews of Judea were scattered all over the Roman Empire in Asia and in Europe. The achievements of the remnant of Jews left in Palestine became thereafter puny and inconsequential compared with the colossal achievements of the Jews in Babylonia, where the hegemony now resided. The entire spiritual and intellectual world of Jew and Gentile was immersed for over a millennium in hardly any pursuit but religion. Thus the Geonim (heads of the Babylonian academies), whose oral studies and disputations later became the written Talmud, enriched Jewish scholarship with ‘interpretations upon interpretations of interpretations” of the Bible. That was the part Jews contributed during that time of stagnant humanity to the slow evolution of civilization. The Talmud they created in Babylonia embodied’ all the laws and legends, all the history and “science,” all the theology and folklore, of all the past ages in Jewish life—a monumental work of consolidation. In the Talmud, Jewish scholarship and idealism found their exclusive outlet and preoccupation all through the ages, all the way up to the era of Enlightenment. It became the principal guide to life and object of study, and it gave Judaism unity, cohesion and resilience throughout the dark ages. Alas, the ultra-Orthodox Jews of today are still living in that frozen past world; study of the Talmud and observance of the codified laws dominate their archaic life, as if nothing has happened in the evolution of mankind.

Before long, the center of Jewish life shifted from the Near East to Egypt, then spread throughout North Africa, and then to Europe. But all this we come to later on in this book. Here we must concentrate on Palestine, the Jews and the Arabs.

The Advent of the Arabs and Islam in Palestine in the Seventh Century.

As the Romans embraced Christianity, Palestine’s Jews were displaced by Christians. Thus, during the fifth and sixth centuries, while there were a few small and scattered Jewish settlements in Palestine, the Christians were a majority in the land. But not for long.

Since before the time of Moses, Palestine, the Land of Canaan, had been the crossroads of the world. Aggressive tribes and nations, in the name of God or in the name of the sword, or both, overran it, only to be subdued and conquered in turn by more powerful predators. Thus the Egyptians, Hyksos, Hittites, Jews, Assyrians, Babylonians, and then Persians. In the fourth century B.C.E. Palestine fell to the manners of Alexander the Great, who left behind a number of Greek colonies. From then until the arrival of the Roman conquerors, Palestine remained within the political and cultural hegemony of successive Hellenistic monarchies. The rule from Rome ended with the Moslem conquest in 636. As of the seventh century, with the exception of some periods in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (when the Christian Crusaders partly ruled Palestine), the entire country and all the lands around it remained in the hands of Islam. First the Arabs became the suzerain overlords, then the Turks, while the Arabs served as satraps, or underling rulers.

Let me quote here Ilene Beatty’s Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan:

In the seventh century C.E., by the thousands the desert Arabs settled in Palestine. They converted the Canaanites (who through all the changing sovereignties—although much diluted by foreign blood—still formed the backbone of the rural population) to the Moslem faith, intermarried with them; and the language and customs of the crossroads in time became Arabic; the architecture in time, Arabic; the population itself, partially Arabic.

The Arabic followers of Mohammed called themselves Moslems, and their religious world Islam.… Under the Arabs, religious persecution finally developed, and by A.D. 1000, the Christian followers of Jesus were obliged to carry ten-pound crosses, and the few scattered Jews still remaining in Palestine were required to wear black garments and bells round their necks.… This prompted Christians, still farther afield in Europe, to organize an army and try to free the Holy Land from Moslem domination. The movement was called a Crusade, and the army of Crusaders, coming from the West across the sea, took Jerusalem in A.D. 1099.… By means of constant reinforcements through later Crusades, the Europeans maintained a limited and uncertain occupation for almost two hundred years.

In the later parts of this period, one of the most glamorous figures in history, Saladin, the brave and gallant leader of the Moslem armies, who had come down from the Northeast, out of the mountains of Kurdistan, dealt the Crusaders their death sentence. This was their defeat at the battle of Hattin, on July 4, 1187. Eventually, the Mamluks (Egyptian Moslems) expelled the Christians from the Middle East for good and all.…

The position of the Arabs in Palestine was unique, for unlike all the other foreign conquerors, they did not hold themselves aloof, but instead, made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin.…

When any of the conquerors of the crossroads took prisoners in ancient times, they took them from the cities they besieged and captured. They did not take the time and trouble to go out into the remote valleys and ferret out the inhabitants one by one. So we may be sure that from the beginning the settled population in the rural districts and small villages remained the same. We may be equally sure that the original stock—the ancient Canaanites—remained where they were, and their descendants did likewise.…

Among today’s people in Palestine, blue eyes are attributed to the Crusaders. And, of course, there is probably a higher percentage of Arab blood than any other, for the Arabs flooded the country, settled down, intermarried and stayed.⁶

The Palestinian Arab of today, then, is a descendant of the Philistines, the Canaanites and other early tribes, and of the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Mongols and Turks.

We must not forget another important fact: Jerusalem became to the Moslem Arabs El Makdis, El Mukaddis (The Sanctuary). For, right at the very beginning of their conquest of Palestine, they built in Jerusalem the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat-as-Sakhra), the most sacred and splendid Islamic shrine outside Mecca. Jerusalem thus became thrice holy—to Jews, to Christians and to Moslems. The Dome of the Rock is also known as the Mosque of Omar.

Palestine became part of one vast Arab empire that embraced Arabia; North Africa, including Egypt; and the Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel of today, which formed the Palestine of yesterday—one Arab region of Greater Arabia. Under the Turks (1517 to 1918) no lines were drawn between Egypt and Palestine. The predominant people were the Arabs. They enjoyed an undisputed common land, a common language, a common religion and a common culture. The lands were entirely contiguous under one rule. When the Turks took over sovereignty (the Turks also are Moslems), the Arabs hardly felt the suzerainty of their masters until the world was contaminated by the raging West European virus of political nationalism, which soon became, artificially, the uppermost thing in the life of the poor masses of mankind. All spiritual and social and cultural progress was drowned in the morass of aggressive, insane political nationalism. The Arabs too were contaminated by this virus, and began to indulge in a luxurious preoccupation with xenophobia like the rest of the victims of exclusive political nationalism. They fought the Turks, and later the Zionists, for their homeland, as all other subjugated and exploited underdeveloped peoples fought and bled for an artificial, illusory independence and freedom, under the all-absorbing viewpoint of the collective sacro egoismo of exclusive political nationalism.

Summary of a Millennium and a Half of a Long, Dark Night for the Jews While Christianity Slowly Grows Up Out of Its Own Juvenile Backward Stage Into Adolescence, and Finally Into Civilized Adulthood. From the Fifth Century to the Eighteenth Century in Western Europe, and to the Twentieth Century in Eastern Europe.

We cannot just skip from the period of the destruction of the Jewish political state, or semistate, in Palestine in the first and second centuries to the Balfour Declaration and the “return” of some Jews to Arab Palestine to claim it as their “homeland,” and to the present irreconcilable issues and continuous wars between the new state of Israel and the exiled Arabs. We must make connections and give some summary of the millennium and a half that elapsed from the time the young Christian church became the dominant factor in the life of the so-called civilized world of those days to our modern times. The long, dark night in Jewish history actually begins in the fifth century with the incipient merging of state and church “when the principle was laid down that none could belong fully to the State who was not a true member of the State-Church. Henceforth, no Jew, while he remained a Jew, could have full citizenship in a Christian State.”⁷

For eight hundred years the Jews lived in peace and harmony in Babylonia. For three hundred years after the destruction of their political homeland, they lived in peace in the Roman Empire and amalgamated with all other subjugated peoples, even as they were holding their own spiritually and religiously. But in the fifth century “the long series of Jewish massacres by Christians began at Alexandria, instigated by the bishop of St. Cyril.… Later, Islam borrowed from the Christian church the theocratic principle. The unbeliever was to be put to the sword, and, if one was of the ‘Peoples of the Book’ (Jews, Christians and Sabeans), he was accorded a contemptuous and degraded tolerance. Henceforth, both Church and Mosque put the Jews of Christian and Moslem lands outside the pale of citizenship.”⁸

Only here and there does one encounter some bright spots. In Moslem countries (sometimes in Egypt, sometimes in Bagdad, and most of all in the caliphate of Cordoba), Jews were accorded decent treatment. In the history of the Jews, such periods stand out as “golden ages.” Thus we read of Jewish viziers (state councilors), doctors, scientists, poets and writers (in Arabic and in Hebrew) in the Arab lands. Sometimes in Christian lands also—under Charlmagne in the ninth century, or in Toledo, Castile, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for example—Jews were tolerated. Thus we read of Jews serving and fighting in the ranks of both the Castilian and the Moorish armies, fighting on the sides of the host countries. They were loyal subjects who during the “golden age” became integrated with their fellow subjects. But all these exceptions only prove the rule; and the rule was: sell the Jews and their properties, persecute them, murder them when useful, “for they have to pay for their sins.”

Relatively speaking, the Jews were, most of the time, treated more humanely in most Moslem countries. That explains why they rose there to good fellowship in the fields of literature, medicine and science, which they had brought along with them; and later on, when the great Jewish migration began flowing from the Near East westward in the tenth century, and, still later, northward to Europe.

In Europe “the Jews became buffers in the medieval state between the conflicting forces of king, nobles and municipalities, and, whenever the position of any of these forces became secure, the Jews were expelled as unnecessary and expensive.”⁹

One thing, however, we must always bear in mind when we read of the disabilities of the Jews during the long, dark night: all the enslaved peoples of Europe had to go through their own savage medieval era. They had a hopeful Renaissance, but a sacrificial Reformation; a period of Enlightenment, but also bloody revolutions; innumerable depredations of royal and feudal lords, and insane, protracted religious wars, for which they paid with millions of lives—always, of course, under the cloak of and in the name of a silent God. “Anti-Semitism, indeed, through the ages, has been forced from above downwards, as a part of political or ecclesiastical policy. The mob easily takes up the State or the Church cries without fully appreciating their bearing.”¹⁰

Thus, subjugated Christian “citizen” slaves tortured and oppressed Jewish fellow slaves, while all together they jointly served their masters in the church-state. And when finally, though very slowly, “the idea grew of citizenship apart from participation in the rites of the national church,” the Jews of Western Europe plunged with all their heart, as grateful and enlightened citizens, into opportunities—physical, spiritual and civil—to show their merits alongside all other subjects and citizens.

I shall return to this era at greater length when I come to develop my thesis about “Jews and Judaism versus ‘Jewish’ political nationalism,” in Part Two of this book.

Alas, Eastern Europe, whither most of the Jews flocked, was nearly two hundred years behind in progress and emancipation. The Jews in Eastern Europe found themselves in utter darkness and degradation. Only echoes of freedom reached the downtrodden in the ghettos of Russia and Poland. The Jews there could only clandestinely read about the movements of emancipation and about the benign young movement of early nationalism in the awakening of Western Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, the Jews, in desperation and martyrdom, began to flee from Russia and Poland, crowding all avenues of escape. Millions of them streamed to America, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, South Africa and South America. Only a few intransigent ones among the refugees were won over to dream of an apocalyptic Messianic “redemption”; and in imitation of the newfangled, malignant and aggressive political nationalism that then began to rage in Western Europe, a movement was started for the Jews “to return to the Promised Land.” Some brave souls were given encouragement and aid to go up (Aliyah) to Arab Palestine to “redeem” the land and establish colonies and live in Eretz Israel (Land of Israel). They called that movement Zionism.

And so a few thousand stalwart Russian, Polish and Galician Jews went to settle in Palestine. Some were mere fanatical Orthodox Jews, such as my grandfather, who went to Palestine more to die in the “Holy Land” than to live and to create. Others, younger men who absorbed the new “sacred nationalism,” went to Palestine to become farmers instead of merchants, workers instead of peddlers and brokers. Political ambitions, however, had to be very modest in the early stages. It was a domain of illusions and delusions, and above all of naïveté—a puerile and idealistic “return” to the “ancient fatherland,” whose arms must surely be wide-open for all of its “exiled” children. Later on, when Dr. Herzl’s political Zionism was publicly organized, the slogan became “Let the people without a land return to a land without a people.” As if the “ancient fatherland” had been waiting empty for the last sixteen hundred years as an available, uninhabited, unoccupied piece of real estate that one could buy without hurting others’ deep feelings of patriotism, and without displacing and dispossessing other good people whose homeland it had become during the long period of Jewish wanderings and settlings all over the world.

A Traditional and Ancient “Love of Zion”—a Purely Religious, Spiritual, Symbolic and Sublimated Yearning of the Jews for the “Holy Land”—Is Turned Into a Secular, Violent and Xenophobic “Jewish” Political Nationalism (Zionism) in Our Days. From Judah Halevi and Moses Montefiori to Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin.

This long caption covers much ground. It is put here deliberately to serve us as introduction to a study of how the ancient, but most innocent and harmless, strong religious, spiritual and sublimated yearning of world-scattered Jewry for a distant Holy Land—often actually called “Jerusalem of the Heights, of Heaven”—has been turned into an aggressive secular, political, nationalistic movement that has led in our time to the establishment of the state of Israel in Arab Palestine.

We must touch upon the high lights in the life stories of the leading men who brought it about. We must particularly and thoroughly understand how a small but militant group from among the persecuted and bedeviled East European Jews cleverly managed to captivate the unsophisticated West European and American Jews, who were on the road to becoming fully integrated nationals of their adopted or native countries. We must understand how European and American Jews were dragged into and drugged into an involuntary and unconscious political identification with the state of Israel behind a cloak of simulated philanthropy and innocuous-sounding “togetherness.”

I shall start with two outstanding idealistic, sentimental and religious Jews whose “love of Zion” had that pure religio-Messianic sublimated yearning—Judah Halevi, the great Hebrew poet of the twelfth century, and Sir Moses Haim Montefiori, the great financier of the nineteenth century. Then I shall go on to the late-nineteenth-century “dreamers of the ghetto”—idealistic, romantic, sentimental and despondent Zionists who dreamed big but settled for little or nothing—Moses Hess, Smolenskin, Pinsker, Sokolov, Weizmann, Dr. Herzl and Ahad Ha-’Am. And a little later I shall go into a study of the thinking and doings of the aggressive “Jewish” political nationalists—Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin and company.

Judah Ben Samuel Halevi (1086–1145).

Born in Toledo, Spain, Judah Halevi was the greatest Hebrew poet of the Middle Ages, next only to the psalmists of old. A great scholar and writer in both Hebrew and Arabic, a noted physician and philosopher, Judah Halevi dreamed and sang rapturously “My soul is yearning unto Thee, Zion,” in his many odes to Zion.

In the days of Judah Halevi, there were very few Jews in Zion (Palestine). It was the time of the Christian Crusades, when the Arabs fought back the invaders from Europe who came in droves to occupy Palestine. It was a fanatical religious world that spoke through the sword, while the peace-loving, peace-craving religious poet Judah Halevi, believing in the holiness of the Jewish people and in their destiny to become the religious guides of mankind, sublimated Zion and sang and wrote impassioned liturgical hymns in Hebrew and five books of long dialogues in Arabic about what he believed to be the superior merits of Judaism as against Christianity and Islam.

Judah Halevi’s beliefs and hopes about God’s ultimate redemption and restoration of the “Holy Land” to the “Holy People” led him to undertake the long, hazardous trip to settle in Palestine. Friends in Cairo and Damascus tried to dissuade him from continuing the trip. Actually, nothing is known about his arrival in Jerusalem; but there is a legend that an Arab horseman hurled a spear into his prostrate body as he bent down to kiss the earth of the Holy Land when he arrived at the gate of Jerusalem.

Judah Halevi’s liturgical hymns are used extensively by the Sephardic Jews (descendants of the former Jews of Spain and Portugal). His “love of Zion” was a purely sublimated, religious, spiritual attachment to the “Holy Land” with no political implication. It was an apocalyptic-Messianic hope and prayer. Judah Halevi was an enthusiastic religious-poetical zealot, not unlike those zealots of the Jewish, Christian and Moslem faiths who for ages sacrificed themselves as pilgrims to Jerusalem, Mecca or other holy lands and holy places.

Sir Moses Haim Montefiore (1784–1885).

Montefiore was another great and fascinated religious “lover of Zion,” who during the long one hundred and one years of his life visited Palestine seven times. A well-integrated Englishman and a very religious Jew, Montefiore spent the last half of his life helping to support those “who wished to return [to the Holy Land] for the observance of the holy religion.”

There were only nine thousand Jews in all of Palestine’s four principal cities—Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron—when Montefiori visited there. The Jewish colonies that Montefiori established in Palestine with his fortune—colonies that were later continued by Baron Edmond de Rothschild—benefited Jewish colonists without in any way threatening the Arabs of Palestine. The motives for helping the Jewish colonists were purely religious and philanthropic.

We shall now pass on to the new kind of “lovers of Zion”—the “dreamers of the ghetto” who, with the exception of Ahad Ha-’Am, prepared the ground for the designers, conspirators and conquerors of Zion—the “Jewish” political nationalists.

Moses Hess (1812–75), the Real Father of “Jewish” Political Nationalism.

A German Jew—who was born in days of liberalism and enlightenment, when integration appeared to be the natural hope of Jewry and the answer to the “Jewish problem,” but who, after throwing himself into the revolutionary movements of the mid-nineteenth century, suddenly found himself in the midst of a tragic reaction to all humanism caused by the spread of the virus of superior-race theories and reactionary, aggressive, predatory political nationalism—gave the old “love of Zion” a new twist and translated it into a new craving for nationalistic realizations according to the context of the times.

Moses Hess had been, in turn, Spinozist, Hegelian, anarchist, communist and then socialist, associated with Karl Marx for a number of years. He played an active role in the German revolution of 1848, and when things collapsed he fled to France. But he could never forget the sudden anti-Semitism, with its manifestations of discrimination and prejudice in all walks of life, that he discovered in his native Germany, the Germany of Hegel, which he adored.

In France he learned of the struggle for national independence in Italy, Hungary and the Balkans. By contagion, he became a frenzied “Jewish” political nationalist. In 1862 he wrote a book entitled Rome and Jerusalem. In it he promulgated these ideas:

We Jews shall always remain strangers among the nations.… It is a fact that the Jewish religion is above all Jewish nationalism.… Each and every Jew, whether he wishes it or not, is automatically, by virtue of his birth, bound in solidarity with his entire nation.… Each has the solidarity and responsibility for the rebirth of Israel.… If it were true that Jewish emancipation in exile is incompatible with Jewish nationality, then it is the duty of the Jews to sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter.… The European nations will never respect us so long as we place our own great memories in the second rank and accept as our first principle “Ubi Bene Ibi Patria” [wherever I am well off, there is my homeland]. One must be a Jew first and a human being second.

The Panama Canal scandals and the Dreyfus affair were still brewing, invisible to Hess, who at the moment found the French to be liberal, cultured and humane on the surface. Hess could not see the historical ups and downs in the struggle for democracy and justice. He expected only the ups in history, and would not allow for the inevitable, periodic downs. And so he advocated to the French a sort of mandated Palestine for the benefit of the Jews, so that it would eventually become a Jewish state.

Today in Israel, Moses Hess is considered the father of socialist Zionism, since he was a pioneer in the socialist movement and a colleague of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

East European “Dreamers of the Ghetto”: Smolenskin, Pinsker, Sokolov, Weizmann, Herzl and Ahad Ha-’Am.

We are now coming to the “dreamers of the ghetto” of Eastern Europe—ghetto Jews from Russia, Poland, Rumania and Hungary—where oppression and discrimination produced a pathological ghetto mentality, a hopeless feeling of frustration and desperation. The negative factors created some fantastic “solutions.”

It is a long distance, covered with blood and much inhumanity, from the days when Russia and Poland elected Jewish kings in the ninth and sixteenth centuries, or when a Jew was the envoy of the Khan of the Tartars to the King of Poland in the sixteenth century, to the days of 1881–82 and 1903–4, when Jews and their homes and business places were destroyed en masse in organized pogroms throughout Russia. By the millions, Russian Jews were exiled from a land their forefathers had inhabited long before the Russians took possession of their vast empire by “divine right” of conquest. There is still in Feodosia, near Yalta, in the Crimea, a synagogue at least a thousand years old.

There were intervals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and briefly in the nineteenth century, after the accession of Czar Alexander II (1855), when schools in Russia were opened to the Jews, and freedom of opportunity raised the spirits of Jewry. Jews quickly showed their mettle: they excelled in medicine, mathematics and philosophy. They became leaders in finance and industry. There began a serious movement for naturalization and Russification. Every Jew from time immemorial had deemed it his duty to educate his son. “Torah is the best schorah” (Learning is the best merchandise) was an old adage. Alas, these were only the exceptions. The Jews of Russia and Poland were not given a decent chance to naturalize, fraternize and integrate. The primitive masses of Russia and Poland (Poland was under Russia) were led and incited to persecute the Jews for no reason except to engross the masses with the business of theft, murder, lust and hatred, so that they would not awaken to a realization of their true exploiters—the Government and the corrupt upper classes—and thus would keep out of revolutions against the order of things.

Medievalism raged in Russia until World War I. Extermination of the Jews by any and all means was the aim of the Czarist Government. While in Western Europe the shameless and inhuman accusations of ritual murder (blood libel—that the Jews were murdering Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes such as the preparation of Matzos for Passover) were made in the twelfth century, in Russia the clergy and the government indulged in this bestiality right up to the outbreak of World War I. The Ministry of Justice in Russia prosecuted and persecuted the martyred Beilis in the infamous trials of 1911.

The Jews, therefore, having been treated as aliens in Russia, formed a sort of state within a state, leading their own communal and spiritual life to the extent permitted. The Jew thought of and saw the goy (Gentile) only when he came to collect the special taxes imposed on Jews, or when he came to take away his property or his life. It was in this climate that “Jewish” political nationalism—neurotic, paranoid nationalism—was conceived by some of the spiritually maimed ghetto intelligentsia as the desperate solution to the “Jewish problem” and as the salvation of Jews all over the world. They became infected with the virus of Europe’s all-absorbing neonationalism that was raging in the Balkans, in Italy and in the predatory big nations. They refused to emigrate to America or elsewhere, as most Jews actually did individually out of a healthy instinct of self-preservation. Instead, they presumed to speak not only for the Russian Jews (whom they knew), but also for world Jewry, without knowing what Western democracy was—what naturalization and integration in the modern, civilized world did for all refugee immigrants, including the Jews, in the host countries of America, Western Europe, South America and South Africa. “The West ended at the Rhine, and beyond that boundary, there was only an unknown world” was how Weizmann described himself and his fellow Jewish leaders of those sad, frustrated days.

Peretz Smolenskin (1842–85).

The pogroms of 1881–82 made Smolenskin, an eminent Hebrew author and journalist, say: “The salvation of the Jews lies in their distinctiveness, and renationalization will prove the only solution of the Jewish problem.… Jews are disliked not because of their religious persuasion, not for their reputed wealth, but because they are weak and defenseless. What they need is strength and courage. These they will never regain save in a land of their own.”¹¹

Dr. Leo Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation (1882).

Dr. Pinsker (1821–91) was a noted Russian-Jewish physician in Odessa who first believed in assimilation; but the pogroms of 1881–82 turned him into an ardent “Jewish” nationalist. He published in 1882, in Berlin, an anonymous pamphlet that he called Auto-Emancipation, the core of which was the outcry: “Now or never … Jew hatred is ‘platonic hatred’—a hereditary mental disease which two thousand years’ duration has so aggravated as to render it incurable.… As the Jewish problem is international, it can be solved only by nationalism. Far, very far, is the haven of rest towards which our souls are turning. We know not even whether it be east or west. But, the road cannot seem too long to the wanderers of two thousand years.”¹²

At first, Dr. Pinsker cared little whether the Jewish homeland was to be Palestine or some other place. He electrified Russian Jewry with his ringing words and emotional appeals. All were made to believe that “colonization would be the shortest road to renationalization.… Some preferred America, or even Spain. In Southern Russia a society by the name ‘Am Olam’ [The Eternal Nation] was organized on communistic principles. It sent an advance guard to the United States, where as ‘The Sons of the Free’ they established several settlements, the best known of which was New Odessa in Oregon.… the majority, however, preferred Palestine.”¹³

“In 1884 (13 years before Dr. Herzl called his political Jewish [Zionist] Congress in Basel, Switzerland) for the first time in Jewish history, a Jewish International assembly was held in Katowitz, Germany, near the Russian frontier, where representatives from all classes and different countries met and decided to colonize Palestine with Jewish farmers.”¹⁴ It was an emotional “solution” based on ancient sentimental and poetical religious yearnings of a sublimated nature; they made no inquiries about what had happened to their “homeland” since they were exiled from it two thousand years before.

Those who preferred Palestine organized themselves into Hoveveh Zion (Lovers of Zion) societies. At their head was a public-spirited rabbi by the name of Kalischer. Dr. Pinsker helped a great deal by traveling about Europe, organizing new societies and appealing for funds to buy land in Palestine for the establishment of colonies. Actually, little resulted from the insignificant amounts collected, and whatever colonies were established were financed by Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Baron Edmond de Hirsch, two extraordinary philanthropists from the West who spent fortunes to help their fellow Jews. Baron Hirsch established the JCA (Jewish Colonization Association), which, together with the fortunes offered by Baron Rothschild, bailed out the hard-pressed colonists most of the time. For the citified Russian Jews, unused to hard labor and to the malarial climate they found in Palestine, could not become farmers overnight. The corrupt Turkish government and the hostile Arabs made things tough for the wretched, hungry, helpless “farmers” who came to “redeem” the land, but became dependent on outside charity and welfare institutions.

Nahum Sokolov (1860–1936).

This popular writer and leader is principally remembered for his strong and poignant Hebrew essay “Sinat Olam Laam Olam” (Eternal Hatred for the Eternal People), which he wrote in Warsaw in 1882. He said: “Anti-Semitism is ineradicable; the fight against the Jews is a fight to the death. Even emancipation helps little to remove the animosity innate in one people against another. And, until the ‘end of the days’ foretold by the prophets of yore, there will never cease the eternal hatred to the eternal people.”¹⁵

Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952).

Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who late in life, in 1948, became the first president of the state of Israel, was a product of the fantastic nationalistic agitation carried on by the Hebrew press in his childhood days in Russia and his student days in Germany. He was one of those thousands of “lucky” Russian-Jewish students who flocked to study in German and Swiss universities in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. They all became “eternal students,” a foreign intellectual proletariat, unemployed and unemployable, with nowhere to go to use their acquired knowledge and diplomas. Here is how Weizmann puts it in his autobiography:

When I was a child, I lived in the separateness of the Jewish life of our townlet.… Non-Jews were to me something peripheral.… The Gentile world was poisonous.… I knew little of Gentiles, but they became to me, from very early on, the symbols of the menacing forces against which I should have to butt with all my young strength in order to make my way in life.… The acquisition of knowledge was not for us so much a normal process of education as the storing of weapons in an arsenal by means of which we Loped later to be able to hold our own in a hostile world.…

The environment I was born into and grew up in as a child, the upbringing which I received, made Jewishness—the Jewish nation, nationalism, as others term it—an organic part of my being. I was never anything but Jewish. I could not conceive that a Jew could be anything else.…

We had nothing to do with our immediate surroundings outside of the university [in Germany and Switzerland]. Local German and Swiss politics did not exist for us. We constituted a kind of ghetto, not a compulsory one.¹⁶

And what did Weizmann and the other Jewish students (who later became the leaders of “Jewish” political nationalism) know about the Western world, about America and the rest of the world outside their ghettos in Russia and Germany? Recall, please, Weizmann’s admission: “The West ended at the Rhine, and beyond that boundary, there was only an unknown world.”

We shall return to Weizmann a good many times in the course of this book.

Dr. Theodor Herzl (1860–1904). His “Answer” to the “Jewish Problem”: “Jewish” Political Nationalism (Zionism). Dr. Herzl and the Dreyfus Affair.

Into the frustrated and hopeless lives of the “dreamers of the ghetto” of Russia and Poland came the most fantastic of them all—Dr. Theodor Herzl, who became the founder of all-absorbing dynamic political Zionism as a result of his own experience with anti-Semitism.

Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest, Hungary (then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire), on May 2, 1860. He died on July 3, 1904, at the premature (and in his case immature) age of forty-four. His was a case of a transporting, controlled megalomania. His magnificent, enchanting, ambitious, egocentric and dictatorial personality, and the tragic state of his persecuted people, combined to make him the creator, leader and exponent of “Jewish” political nationalism, a sort of legendary political Messiah to this day. And because of the deep influence he exerted on depressed and gullible Jewry, and particularly because of what resulted from his dreams and yearnings, we must, long after he died, go into the life of this remarkable man as thoroughly as possible. Dr. Herzl had become a sacred cow, immune from any criticism or analysis. Yet we cannot begin to understand what has happened to Palestine, the Jews and the Arabs unless we understand Dr. Herzl and the movement he created.

The Hungary Dr. Herzl was born into, from the Jewish point of view, and from the point of view of progress and civilization, was a backward country, much like the neighboring countries it bordered on—Poland, Rumania and the Balkans. Accusations of ritual murder were prevalent in Hungary alongside the regular anti-Semitic persecutions and disabilities. Herzl, therefore, independently arrived at his conclusions early in life without even knowing anything about the writings of such Jewish leaders as Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker.

Until he was eighteen, Herzl attended the schools of Budapest; but in 1878 he lost his only sister to typhoid fever, and the parents and their only son, within one week after the death, found life intolerable in the city where so many memories of the girl tormented them. They moved to the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Vienna. Here Theodor enrolled as a law student in the University of Vienna and led the normal though restricted Jewish student life.

His father was a successful banker and lumber merchant. Jewishness consisted in attending services at the synagogue on Sabbath days and holy days. As a little boy Theodor used to go to the synagogue with his father. It was, however, his mother’s influence that was strongest on the boy. Even though she was Jewish, her conscious efforts were all directed toward implanting the German cultural heritage in her children. And it was from his mother that Theodor inherited his deep-set brown eyes, at once dreamy and penetrating, eyes that shone with an inner light of their own and exercised a strange fascination over those upon whom they fell.

Reuven Brainin, a Hebrew-Yiddish writer, tells of an interview Dr. Herzl gave him half a year before his death. “At about the age of twelve [so Herzl fold Brainin] he read in a German book about the Messiah-King whom so many Jews still awaited and who would come riding on an ass. The history of the Exodus and the legend of the liberation by the King-Messiah ran together in the boy’s mind.… A little while thereafter, Herzl was visited by the following dream: ‘The King-Messiah came, a glorious and majestic old man, took me in his arms and swept off with me on the wings of the wind.… On one of those iridescent clouds we encountered the figure of Moses.… The Messiah called to Moses: “It is for this child that I have prayed.” But to me he said: “Go, declare to the Jews that I shall come soon and perform great wonders and great deeds for my people and for the whole world.”’”¹⁷

Another inspiration of Theodor Herzl’s in his early years was the practical visionary, builder of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps. In 1869 the gigantic canal was opened, and the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps became world-renowned. Lesseps was the man Theodor Herzl accepted as his model.

As a student at the university he came face to face with anti-Semitism in all its ugliness. While in his native Hungary anti-Semitism could still be aroused and whipped up through primitive, fabricated ritual-murder trials, in Vienna, the big city and capital, it manifested itself through exclusive clubs and closed doors when one wanted a good job.

In May, 1884, Herzl was graduated as Doctor of Laws, and in July he was admitted to the bar in Vienna. He entered on his law practice in the service of the state, but his heart was not in his juristic work. As a Jew he knew the limits he could reach as a lawyer; the high levels were closed to him. He would gladly have been baptized and been done with it, but he could not offend his father He tried to write plays and feuilletons. But with the first he rarely had any real success; and with the second it was at first slow and hard climbing, and Herzl was a very ambitious and proud young man who wanted the kind of quick success of which the whole world takes notice.

Thus, in his diary, which he started in January, 1882, he wrote on his twenty-second birthday: “I have not even the tiniest success to show, not the slightest achievement of which to be proud.”¹⁸ Before long, however, Herzl developed an extraordinarily fine talent for journalism, particularly in the field of feuilleton writing. Thus, in 1886 he was writing weekly for the Berliner Tageblatt. In 1887 he wrote a series of articles on his Italian journey for the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, and in the same year he became feuilleton editor of that paper. In August, 1891, he was separated from his wife on account of incompatibility, and while plunging into a lonely, meditative trip in the south of France, from where he wrote some of his best feuilletons, he received a telegram from the Neue Freie Presse, the most important newspaper in Vienna, offering him the post of Paris correspondent. This was the ideal job and outlet for his personality, energy and ambitions, and it soon gave him the opportunity to try to realize the dream he had had on that iridescent cloud with the King-Messiah and Moses in his childhood days.

From Paris, Herzl wrote to his parents: “The position of Paris correspondent is the springboard to great things, and I shall achieve them, to your great joy, my dear parents.”¹⁹

The Paris of 1891 was not the Paris of 1789 with that pure brand of idealism expressed as Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Corrupted politicians, wars of conquest and reactionary forces bent on stemming the demands of the people for realization of some of the rights of man played havoc with the people of France. First came the Panama Canal scandal. This was followed immediately by the Dreyfus affair, which kept France in turmoil for a good many years. As always in those days, the scapegoats were the Jews.

At first Herzl tremendously enjoyed his professional visits to the French Parliament, where he relished the game of parliamentary debates and procedures. He faithfully reported his observations to his newspaper in Vienna. Soon, however, the Panama financial scandal developed into a political scandal that reverberated in violent scenes in the daily sessions of Parliament. The Panama Canal was hardly one-third built by Ferdinand de Lesseps (who organized the company) when a financial catastrophe overtook it because of crooked deals. Thousands of workers had died in vain, tens of thousands of small investors were ruined. The real scoundrels were hard to find; so the merchants of Jew-baiting blamed it all on the Jews, even though not one Jew was involved in the Panama Canal organization.

The ignominious canal scandal was only a prelude to the oncoming Dreyfus affair, which shook the world with its shameless brutality and downright dishonesty. In December, 1894, the French General Staff discovered that some secret documents were missing from their files, and that these documents had been sold to their potential enemy, the Germans. A French officer by the name of Alfred Dreyfus, a thoroughly integrated and patriotic French Jew, was arrested and charged with this frightful act of disloyalty, without any evidence except some questionable papers, later proved to be false and to have been concocted by anti-Semites among the higher military officers to protect the malefactors. Dreyfus was hastily and unanimously declared guilty, summarily court-martialed and publicly disgraced. Military degradation and deportation for life was the sentence of the court. As the buttons and cords of his uniform were torn off, mobs screamed, “Death to the traitor! Death to the Jews!” Dreyfus lifted his right arm and called out: “I declare and solemnly swear that you are degrading an innocent man. Vive la France!” His voice was drowned by screams of “Judas! Traitor! Down with the Jews! Death to the Jews!” This in republican France, one hundred years after the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Dr. Herzl fully reported the rigged trial and the demonstrations of anti-Semitism. But more than he could tell was torturing his soul. Suppose Dreyfus was indeed guilty; suppose one Jew did turn out to be a scoundrel and traitor—why should all Jews be blamed and insulted in such violent anti-Semitic demonstrations? The Dreyfus affair turned him into a conscious and vigorous “Jewish” political nationalist. In his diary, on July 6, 1895, Herzl entered this elucidating remark: “Nordau and I agreed that only anti-Semitism had made Jews out of us.”²⁰ This, in turn, inspired him to resolve that he must lead his people out of this “perpetual enemy territory.” He thus arrived at the very same conclusion as Hess, Smolenskin, Pinsker and Sokolov, that anti-Semitism is a hopeless Gentile pathology, that there is therefore a universal “Jewish problem” that can be solved only through a Jewish state. And this is what he resolved to do: secure for the Jewish people a homeland through a publicly recognized charter, under the protection of some European power, be it Turkey, Germany, England or Italy.

Herzl was going to secure the Jewish homeland through high politics (Hochpolitik), following the very same devious and spurious means used by the “great” statesmen of the chancelleries of the big powers, about whom he had had a good chance to learn much in the French Parliament and in the sidewalk cafés of Paris. As a journalist of high stature, he had every opportunity to learn about the prevalent international banditry, the games of colonialism and imperialism, and the sanctimoniousness of the “white man’s burden.”

His people had always had their religious Messianic hopes. And now they were in terrible troubles all over the continent of Europe. Why not convert their old sublimated yearnings and prayers into territorial political claims?

Here I must stop to make my observations about Dr. Herzl’s narrowness, egocentricity and limited vision. He was too close to Eastern Europe (Jews and Gentiles) to be able to take a universal, objective and historical approach to the Dreyfus affair and to the progressive, advancing forces that fought against the forces of darkness he saw everywhere. Dr. Herzl saw anti-Semites in all Gentiles, exactly as did the ghetto Jews of Russia and Poland. His yardstick, too, was exactly like theirs: Is it good for the Jews? The disabilities, injustices and exploitations that the common masses of the Gentile world lived through and revolted against escaped him completely. He could not and would not see the evolution of history, the struggle for emancipation of the entire world, the brotherhood of man that was evolving gradually and most painfully, but surely. Impatient with the trying though momentary irritations stirred up by the Dreyfus trial (and the trials and tribulations of Jews elsewhere). Dr. Herzl was totally blind to the comprehensive, broad issues involved in the Dreyfus case: a century of continuous struggle against democracy by the reactionary elements of France for their vested interests; church-state battling against country-state; clericalism against “carrière ouverte aux talents”; royalists and Jesuits against people’s rights; Catholicism against Protestantism; financial banking interests controlled and mismanaged by the “nobility” against the house of Rothschild the Jew.

By 1894, when the Dreyfus affair broke out, France had already lived through a precarious century under democracy. It was only an accident that the dark forces conjured up a Jewish scapegoat through which they hoped to reconquer their old position of strength in France. They failed ignominiously because a healthy and sound, liberal and democratic France fought tooth and nail for justice, and because enlightenment was there to stay. It was a Frenchman, Émile Zola, author of the famous “J’accuse,” who vindicated the name of the Jew Dreyfus, and it was the legendary Jean Jaurès who exposed the forgeries. It was another Frenchman, Clemenceau, who in 1902 “proved the innocence of Dreyfus, and the French Cabinet, led by Clemenceau, curtailed the rights of the Catholic Congregations, and the severance of the State and Church was effected in order to prevent the recurrence of similar dangers. This was no crisis that was Jewish in character (as far as the Western democratic world was concerned). The fundamental issue in France was democracy itself, and it survived the crisis. Emancipation had not failed; it worked!”²¹

Herzl, the East European ghetto Jew, was unable to see that, any more than could the other “dreamers of the ghetto” who were born and reared in the darkness of Russia and Poland, and who could not divest themselves of their frustrations and unqualified prejudices against the Gentile world. And Hess, the German Jew (the Germany of those days was hardly a Western democracy), after losing one battle, quickly arrived at the conclusion that he had lost the war.

Two years before the Dreyfus affair, at the age of thirty-three, Herzl conceived another “solution,” different from “Jewish” political nationalism. He wrote in his diary, in Paris in 1895: “Two years ago, I wanted to solve the Jewish question, at least in Austria, with the help of the Catholic Church. I wished to arrange for an audience with the Pope and say to him: ‘Help us against anti-Semitism, and I will lead a great movement for the free and honorable conversion of the Jews to Christianity.’ In broad daylight, at twelve o’clock, a Sunday, the exchange of faith would take place in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, with solemn parade and the peal of bell.”²²

Around that time, Herzl had still another “solution” to anti-Semitism—socialism: have all the Jews become socialists and thus create a counter movement that would fight backward movements, including anti-Semitism.

Then, in 1895, Herzl concluded that the dissolution of the Jews through conversion or socialism wouldn’t do. “The thought grew stronger within me that I would have to do something for the Jews. Throughout the two thousand years of our dispersion, we have lacked unified political leadership. I consider this our greatest misfortune. It has done us more harm than all the persecutions.”²³

To this idea Herzl now dedicated his life, and, like the Jesuits of old, he must have concluded that the end justifies the means. He had a consuming ambition to lead his people, his nation that he now discovered; to meet with kings and with high-level ministers and personages; to be accepted and recognized everywhere as the leader of the Jewish nation—all the Jews of the world. “There is something of the pride of the ghetto Jew at being first of his kind to enter erect and self-conscious into a relationship with the exclusive leader caste for the prosecution of Jewish political plans.”²⁴

Dr. Herzl’s Judenstaat (“Jewish State”). His Zionist Congress. The Fundamentals of His Program and Methods.

With a flaming fantasy and inspiration Dr. Herzl set down his brilliant ideas in the form of a pamphlet that he called Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), addressed to the Rothschilds. (The Rothschild fortunes were to play a prominent role in his creation of the Jewish state.) In this pamphlet he elaborated a scheme for the establishment of an autonomous Jewish commonwealth in Palestine under the suzerainty of the Sultan of Turkey. The Jews, particularly the Rothschilds, had to raise enough money to finance the emigration of millions of Jews to the national homeland. In a planned letter to the Rothschilds, which later became a part of his Judenstaat, Herzl wrote: “I shall issue the Jewish National Loan. First I negotiate with the Czar (to whom our protector the Prince of Wales introduces me.) He shall give me his imperial word. Then I negotiate with the Kaiser. Then with Austria. Then with France. In order to make a proper impression at the European courts, I must secure the highest decorations, the English first.”²⁵

The above is an echo of an earlier thought he had entered in his diary: “I shall turn to Bismarck. He is big enough to understand me, or else to cure me. I will go to the German Kaiser. He will understand me, for he has been educated to the reception of great ideas.… I will say to the Kaiser: Let our people go. We are aliens here.…”²⁶

Baron Rothschild did not think much of Dr. Herzl. He regarded him as a “demagogue and windbag.” Western Jews laughed at Herzl’s premise that the Jews were a nation; some even thought that Herzl was mentally unbalanced. On the other hand, East European Jews responded enthusiastically to his call for a world Jewish (Zionist) congress. Jewish student bodies, particularly the Kadimah of Vienna, hailed Dr. Herzl most enthusiastically. Thus encouraged, he issued a call to the Jewish communities to send elected representatives to meet in Basel, Switzerland, on Sunday, August 29, 1897. It was a one-man job. He personally attended to all the minutiae; he worked day and night; he spent his own money; he personally wrote each letter.

Over the portals of the Basel Casino, where the Congress was to meet, a large sign read ZIONISTEN KONGRESS, and a flag, a white background with two blue stripes and the Star of David, waved. Most of the delegates believed that this was a replica of the old Jewish flag. One hundred and ninety-seven delegates greeted Dr. Herzl. The dean of the Praesidium, Dr. Lippe of Jassy, Rumania, an old Hovev Zion (Lover of Zion), covered his head, and amid the tears of a good many of the delegates, he pronounced the ancient Hebrew benediction Shehechiyanu (“Blessed art Thou, O Lord Our God, King of the Universe, for keeping us alive, preserving us, and permitting us to attain this day”).

After years of watching and studying the French Parliament in Paris as correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse, Dr. Herzl handled and manipulated the Congress like a veteran. He first moved that a resolution of thanks and devotion be sent to the Sultan of Turkey. Then he delivered his speech, which fired the assembly. We shall soon go to the concrete resolutions and programs of the First Congress and of the following annual congresses. May I, meanwhile, record here Dr. Herzl’s psychological triumph, which was the first and fundamental step he prized.

Ben Ami, a Hebrew writer and Hovev Zion, described the historic event in these words: “Before us arose a marvelous and exalted figure, kingly in bearing and stature, with deep eyes in which could be read quiet majesty and unuttered sorrow. It is no longer the elegant Dr. Herzl of Vienna; it is a royal scion of the House of David, risen from among the dead, clothed in legend and fantasy and beauty. Everyone sat breathless, as if in the presence of a miracle. And, in truth, was it not a miracle which we beheld?… For fifteen minutes the delegates clapped, shouted, and waved their handkerchiefs. The dream of two thousand years was on the point of realization; it was as if the Messiah, son of David, confronted us; and I was seized by an overpowering desire, in the midst of this storm of joy, to cry out, loudly for all to hear: ‘Yechi Hamelech!’ (Hail to the King!).”²⁷

To return to Dr. Herzl’s speech, and to the Basel Program (the official program of the Zionist movement)—in a single sentence he set forth the task of the Congress: “We are here to lay the foundation stone of the house which is to shelter the Jewish nation.”²⁸ Then came the core of the First Congress’s “foundation stone”: “Zionism seeks to secure for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally secured home [or homeland] in Palestine.”

To achieve its purpose “the Congress envisages the following methods:

“(1) The programmatic encouragement of the settlement of Palestine with Jewish agricultural workers, laborers and artisans;

“(2) The unification and organization of all Jewry into local and general groups in accordance with the laws of their respective countries;

“(3) The strengthening of Jewish self-awareness and national consciousness (Volkbewusstsein);

“(4) The preparation of activity for obtaining the consent of the various governments, necessary for the fulfillment of the aim of Zionism.”²⁹

The “Jewish people” must be educated to “self-awareness and national consciousness”; the “preparation of activity … necessary for the fulfillment of the aim of Zionism.” Who are the “Jewish people”?

From its very beginning the purpose of Zionism was to establish legal recognition of a “Jewish nationality” automatically claiming all Jews to comprise an entity called “the Jewish people.” But what of those Jews who did not conceive themselves to be part of this national peoplehood; those satisfied with—even insistent upon—their identification solely with the rights and obligations inherent in the nationalism of the various countries of their citizenship?…

The Zionist apparatus developed and clearly enunciated its policy for dealing with any such Jews. Theodor Herzl told the Second World Zionist Congress in Basel in 1898: “Campaigning against Zion in the Jewish communities cannot be tolerated any longer. It is an abnormal and untenable situation. We must put an end to it … The authority of the community, its means and the persons it has at its command must never be used against the concept of peoplehood. Therefore, I believe, I speak for you too, distinguished Congress members, when I propose capturing the Jewish communities as one of our next targets.”

Those Jews who entrusted their national destiny to their citizenship rights in the nations where they lived were not to be tolerated, and the apparatus advocating the “Jewish” nationality created a deliberate policy to crush them.

The cardinal, irreducible principle of Zionism is this claim that the “Jewish people” is entitled to legal recognition as a nation. This claim has never changed, nor has Zionist attitude and policy, toward any who differ.³⁰

And—to return again to Dr. Herzl’s personal triumphs and leadership—having fascinated the assembly, he took full advantage of it and played his majestic role for all it was worth, and as such, it was worth very much. He knew exactly what he wanted his “legislative body”—the Congress—to do, and he saw to it that it was done. He was going to keep the members of his legislative body busy with all of the internal business, while he dived alone into that “glorious” cesspool of Hochpolitik. Thus, internally, his supporters were busy organizing the Zionist movement on a worldwide scale. An Actions Committee was organized to function from Vienna. A Jewish national bank (The Jewish Colonial Trust) was organized, and the Jewish National Fund “to purchase land in Palestine to become the inalienable property of the Jewish people.” Both the bank and the National Fund were established by means of subscriptions and collections. Of course, Herzl played his part even in the internal affairs. Nothing escaped his sharp eye.

But the “political leadership” (“the lack of which during the two thousand years of our dispersion had done us more harm than all the persecutions”), Herzl reserved exclusively to himself. He took it for granted that there would be blind following and a blanket vote of confidence. And he enjoyed it all until the going got rough and hopeless as far as Palestine was concerned. It was at the point where he got ready to switch the sought Jewish homeland from Palestine to some other land that he collided head-on with the ancient yearnings for Palestine, which the East European Jews had been led to believe would soon become a Jewish state through Dr. Herzl’s Messianic intervention.

Actually, Dr. Herzl thought very little of his followers. “I have only an army of schnorrers. I stand at the head of a mass of youths, beggars, and jackasses”³¹ he entered in his diary.

The Fiasco of Political Zionism. The Death of Its Salesman. Political Machinations Are Abandoned As the “Practical” and “Spiritual” Zionists Take Over, Only to Return to Herzl’s Hochpolitik a Little Later.

We shall now go into some high lights of Dr. Herzl’s political activities and see how the pursuit after puerile bluffs and megalomaniacal delusions broke his heart and brought about his early death, and with it the death of the political dreams about a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Of course, Dr. Herzl badly wanted to secure Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people. But he made up his mind, in spite of the stubborn and “benighted” Russian-Polish Jews, that in case he could not possibly secure Palestine for them, they would simply have to accept, at least temporarily, some sort of Jewish homeland, be it in Syria, Sinai, El Arish, Cyprus, Tripoli, Portuguese Mozambique, the Belgian Congo, Uganda—in any one of these territories for which he was always “negotiating.” To this end Herzl roamed about Europe, from one capital to another, from one court to another, from one scheme to another. Sometimes he used his position as correspondent of the Vienna Neue Freie Presse, a position that opened most doors to him. Sometimes he used his position as head of the Zionist organization. Always he deluded himself, and hoped that “at the very next Congress” he might be able to announce the coming day of redemption and exclaim, “Leshonoh Haboh Be-Yerusholayim!” (Next year in Jerusalem!)

Herzl’s methods and means were simple. He explained it all thus, in his diary, on May 12, 1898: “Noise is everything! In truth, noise amounts to a great deal. A sustained noise is in itself a noteworthy pact. World history is nothing but noise: noise of arms and of advancing ideas. Men must put noise to use.…”³²

Let us focus on some of Dr. Herzl’s political manipulations and meet some of his agents. Let us see what he actually accomplished with the Kaiser, the Sultan, the King of Italy, the Pope and the others. Let us meet that erratic, mystic, teacher, guide and agent of Dr. Herzl, the Rev. Mr. Hechler, chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna. They are both traveling in a train compartment to meet some “big” diplomat. En route Herzl gets a lesson about the geographic boundaries of “Jewish” Palestine. “Hechler unfolded his Palestine map in our compartment and instructed me by the hour. The northern frontier is to be the mountains facing Cappadocia; the southern, the Suez Canal. Our slogan shall be: ‘The Palestine of David and Solomon.’”³³

By some devious, mystic, astrological, “prophetic” calculations, Hechler convinced Herzl that the years 1897 and 1898 would see the restoration of Palestine to the Jews. Therefore, little time was to be lost. Hechler knew the Grand Duke of Baden, who knew the Kaiser, who knew the Sultan of Turkey (who ruled over Palestine). Here was a way of getting the charter.

One day Herzl heard from Count Eulenberg that the Kaiser was terribly interested in securing a protectorate over Palestine. Surely the Kaiser had nothing in mind but the good of the Jews. That was enough for Herzl to exclaim in his diary on November 15, 1898: “Wonderful, wonderful! The intervention of Germany! The protectorate is therefore a fait accompli.”³⁴ “To live under the protection of strong, great, moral, splendidly governed and thoroughly organized Germany is certain to have the most salutary effects upon the national character of the Jews.”³⁵

An audience was finally arranged for Herzl to meet the Kaiser in Constantinople. The Kaiser was to stop over in that city during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was to dedicate the Church of the Redeemer, built with German funds. Herzl wanted the Kaiser to intercede on his behalf when he met the Sultan, because the Sultan would not receive Herzl. Behind the Kaiser’s voyage were, of course, his political strategies connected with his historical dreams of a Berlin-Bagdad railway and penetration into the Middle East in rivalry with Britain and France.

The Kaiser received Herzl gladly. A correspondent of the world-famous Vienna Neue Freie Presse coming from Paris had plenty of jolly gossip and grapevine news for him to relish. The Kaiser assured Herzl that he always read his newspaper. They talked a lot about France. Finally they came to the subject of the Jews and Palestine. The Kaiser, after making some nasty remarks about Jewish usurers of Hesse, Germany, whom he would have loved to see quit Germany and go to Palestine, said: “Tell me in brief what you want me to ask of the Sultan.” “A chartered company under German protection.”³⁶ The Kaiser stretched out his hand and promised to see him again, in Jerusalem, soon after visiting with the Sultan.

Later, in Palestine, the audience with the Kaiser lasted just a few minutes. Again the Kaiser made a few sarcastic remarks about the “plenty of money” that the Jews possess, “more than all of us.” Then another remark about the scarcity of water in Palestine. Someone presented the Kaiser with a collection of photographs of Jewish farms. The audience was over. Not a word about the charter, a protectorate, the Sultan. On the contrary, in the press releases of the German Government, the Kaiser stressed his respect for the sovereignty of the Sultan over his empire.

The result of Herzl’s costly regal voyages in the wake of the Kaiser was less than zero. The voyages were catastrophic. They did not tally with the wild promises and expectations he had so lavishly indulged in only one month before his much publicized trip began. In London, after the trip, Herzl addressed a mass meeting. The London Jewish World described it in these words:

The enthusiasm had something of the legendary about it. The souls of these people were in the hands of this man. He transmitted to his audience the feeling of impending fulfillment. “I do not want to draw a picture of the homeland for you, for it will shortly begin in reality. I know what I am saying. I have never spoken so definitely before. I ask you to accept my word even if I cannot make it quite definite!” were some of the words of Herzl.

Dr. Alex Bein (from whose book Theodore Herzl, A Biography I got the above quotation) made the following remarks:

His untimely London speech, the numerous articles not all of them in the best of taste which he had written on the subject of the Kaiser’s visit to Palestine, the vague hints of vast things to come—all this had led to immense excitement and tension among friends and foes alike.… Now came the German communique from which it was not even clear whom it was that the Kaiser had received. Herzl was exposed as a visionary, in fact as a liar, who had promised more than he could perform, who had deceived himself and others, a man who stirred up and misled the masses.³⁷

Even so, while his followers were disappointed and depressed, Herzl turned around and made the following astounding entry in his diary, with complete levity of mind: “That the Kaiser did not assume a Protectorate in Jerusalem is naturally an advantage for the future development of our cause.”³⁸ For, inherently (or pathologically), the main “accomplishment” has been attained: another audience with a big potentate. Was not that good enough for the “army of schnorrers”?

Another typically great “political achievement”—a treasured achievement—was a letter Herzl secured, or, may we say, extracted, from Plehve, Minister of Internal Affairs in the Czar’s Government. Plehve was the man directly answerable for and undoubtedly the sponsor of the Jewish pogroms in Russia. Herzl craved an audience with the Czar. It was denied him. So, through his agents, he succeeded in getting an audience with the bloody Plehve. Plehve could not help being polite to the correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse. He was brutal enough to admit that he had no objections to getting rid of as many Jews as possible; in fact, he would become a “sympathetic” supporter of Zionism. Herzl then proposed that Plehve should write him a letter that he would present before the Zionist Congress, to the effect that the Zionist movement could count on the Russian Government’s “moral and material assistance.” Plehve’s letter became Herzl’s most cherished asset. He carried it around everywhere; he showed it to the Pope. The murderer of his people had shaken hands with him, talked to him politely. Was that not wonderful?

For Plehve, for the Kaiser, for the whole crowd of blackguards and reactionaries who ruled Europe, Herzl had a favorite promise: Zionism would dissolve all revolutionary and socialist elements among the Jews. This was the same Herzl who, only a few years before, was going to make all Jews socialists in order to defeat anti-Semitism.

One mercenary papal count, Lippay, suggested to Herzl that he had better approach the Pope to assume the protectorate over Palestine for the Jews. The Count arranged an audience with the Pope. It is easy to guess what the Pope’s attitude was toward those who denied the divinity of Christ: let the Jews first embrace the Catholic faith. To Herzl, this too was a constructive accomplishment. Had he not had an audience with the Pope, as the leader of the Jews? That meant a lot to his ego. And, meanwhile, the papal Count Lippay “received for his services rendered stacks of one-thousand-lira notes.”

Dealing intimately with the trash of the political underworld, Herzl would not, nevertheless, go out of his way to meet the American ambassador to Turkey, the noted Oscar Straus (a Jew), who happened to pass through Vienna on his way to Constantinople. “I do not think it would be dignified for me to call on him first,” he entered in his diary on December 27, 1899. Two days later he had one of his aids arrange a meeting with Straus, who told Herzl that “Palestine was impossible of attainment.”³⁹

Herzl felt himself observed on every side. He laid great weight on his appearance. Should it this time be gray or black clothes—what kind of gloves, shoes, hat, to wear? Occasionally he carried along with him a clothes brush. The crease of his trousers, the shine of his shoes, the color of his gloves, are often mentioned in his diary, and the effect they had, in his estimation. He was breathing an air of natural superiority; he was acting the part of the great redeemer.

Herzl had great faith that his extortionist secret agent Nevlinsky would arrange an audience with the Sultan in Constantinople. He went there to await results. Nevlinsky spent plenty of Herzl’s money on baksheesh all around. But the Sultan would not receive Herzl. To save face, Herzl secured some visible token of a decoration “for the sake of my people in London.” But, nothing concrete to show for it. Yet he managed to turn his trip into a political victory along other lines. En route back from Constantinople, it was arranged that he be welcomed in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, by the Jewish community, as befitting the man who had just returned from a secret visit in Constantinople. The synagogue in Sofia was filled with hundreds who came to pay homage to “King-Messiah” Herzl. Here is what Herzl entered in his diary on June 30, 1896: “I stood in the pulpit before the Holy Ark. When I hesitated for a moment as to how to face the congregation without turning my back to the Ark, someone exclaimed: ‘You may turn your back even to the Ark, you are holier than the Torah.’”⁴⁰

Finally, after years of greasing the wheels in Turkey and nobbling the pashas all over the place, Herzl did succeed in obtaining an audience with the Sultan, not as head of the Zionist Congress, but as the brilliant correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse. The audience lasted two hours. He talked to the Sultan about high finance, loans, debts, empire and Turkey’s everlasting problems, but not a word about Palestine or Zionism. “Uncle” Vamberry (another costly stooge and actually a spy for the Sultan, and for England), who arranged the audience, had warned Herzl not to mention Zionism.

The following entry in his diary in connection with his planned trip to and activities in Constantinople is enlightening: “If Baron Hirsch hands me a few millions, we can create tremendous reverberations.… And we will be able to spend something for baksheesh in Turkey.…”⁴¹

Another example of “the end justifies the means” philosophy of Herzl is the story of Weizmann’s pointing out to Herzl that a certain very rich man he was associating with was a terrible fool. To this Herzl answered: “But he opens the portals of royalty to me.”

No baksheesh, no “rich fools,” no highly paid secret agents did Herzl any good. He had to give up his dreams of a charter from the Sultan as he had had to give up his dream of the Kaiser’s protectorate over a Jewish Palestine. But there were still England and Italy, and “we must play the politics of the hour!” according to his motto.

Herzl repaired to London to see Colonial Minister Chamberlain about a Jewish settlement in Cyprus, from which the Jews might then take Palestine by force “as it was taken from us.” Here is Herzl’s own report about the “negotiations” as entered in his diary on October 23, 1902:

Chamberlain said: “As to Cyprus, the island 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.” I replied: “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.⁴²

One of the last and “most precious” audiences Herzl had before he died (in July, 1904) took place on January 23, 1904, in Rome, with the young King of Italy. Herzl came to ask him for Tripoli in North Africa. They got to chatting about the false Messiah Sabbetai Zevi, who, according to the King, had conspired with one of his ancestors about some ambitions of the old King—“but he was a bit crazy and had some grand ideas.” Then Herzl described his difficulties in winning a “publicly recognized, legally secure new homeland” for the Jews, and broached his scheme about Tripoli, saying how wonderful it would be if Italy should offer a protectorate over such a “Jewish state.” To which the uncorrupted young King innocently replied, “Ma e encora casa di altri!” (But it is still someone else’s home).⁴³

Please remember this “Ma e encora casa di altri” later on in this book.

In 1904—the year of the massacres all over Russia—and right up to the day of his death, Herzl still hoped that by the time the Seventh Congress came around he might be able to announce publicly that he had finally obtained a Jewish fatherland, or else admit the complete futility of his efforts. He never lived to have any choice. “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?”⁴⁴

Megalomaniac, Machiavellian, egocentric, or sensationalistic, Messianic redeemer-dreamer, as Herzl returned his soul to his Maker, had he been told about the establishment of the Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa-Tel-Aviv, in 1904, he would have smiled with deep satisfaction. All his political ideas about “Jewish” nationalism were being sown anew, at the very same time that small “seeds of change” were being planted in a rented schoolhouse somewhere between Arab Jaffa and the future Jewish Tel-Aviv; and these seeds, well fertilized and manured by the decaying forces and rapid developments of predatory colonialistic imperialism, would soon germinate and produce a new generation of indoctrinated, wild nationalists, who would fight for their assumed Jewish fatherland, Arabs or no Arabs, casa di altri, or casa d’Israel. From this source, there was fast developing a new Jewish intelligentsia that spread the word of the Founding Father all over the frustrated Jewish world—word of that which Hitler, more than anyone else, helped to realize: “Jewish” political nationalism.

I know whereof I speak, because I was reared in the Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia. I was one of the very first graduates of this unique school of “Jewish” nationalism. And it took me a long time to rid myself of all the hate-filled, asphyxiating xenophobia toward Gentiles, including, of course, the Arabs of Palestine, that was implanted in our young hearts. But this is no place to go into a study of the Gymnasia Herzlia; I shall cover it thoroughly in my autobiography.

To conclude our story about Herzl and his political machine—things went to pieces after the death of the “miracle man.” Said Weizmann, immediately after Herzl’s death: “The method of bluff and ostentation, the Viennese tone, must be dropped, and serious [“practical”] work started.”⁴⁵ Another remark, elsewhere, by Weizmann: “The effects wore off as the years passed, and nothing remained but the phrases.”

Another prominent “practical Zionist” leader, Dr. Ruppin, said this in 1913, on the occasion of the Eleventh Zionist Congress (the Congresses now met every other year): “We have come to terms with the fact that we must achieve our object not via the Charter but via practical work in Palestine.”

Most amazing is the fact that, for the first time, Zionist leaders began to discover the indigenous Arabs of Palestine, the casa di altri. Weizmann says in his autobiography: “It was from Victor Jacobson [in 1907], director of the Anglo Palestine Bank, that I first heard something of the nascent Arab national movement.”⁴⁶ Then Weizmann goes on to say: “The dead hand of Chalookah [charity, doles] lay on more than half of the population.… The Belus [first wave of Jewish colonists] too had fallen into the grip of a kind of Chalookah institution, but the funds for them came not from public collections but from the never-ending generosity of Baron Edmond Rothschild.” And still another account given by Weizmann about the measly aggregate of Jewish workers: “Most of the labor [in Palestine] was Arab, and the Jews were overseers.… By 1914 we had increased our agricultural workers from 500 to 2,000; the Chalookah spirit of Palestine was at last attacked, though it yielded very slowly.”⁴⁷

The first Jewish cooperatives were organized just before the outbreak of World War I. “In 1910, the first ‘Kvutzah’ [cooperative colony] was set up, embodying an original human kinship of free creative work, mutual help, common interests, and complete equality, combining an ideal social structure with a sound economic foundation, so far hardly known elsewhere.” And in 1912 “there were about 600 Jewish workers in the settlements. The following year, the Palestine Office counted 650 men and 151 women. Towards the end of the First World War, our Moshavim [settlements] in Judea employed 607, all told; Samaria 145; and Lower Galilee 125, making with a half a dozen in Upper Galilee a total of 883. At that time, there were in addition 410 workers in the Labor Settlements.”⁴⁸ This account comes from Ben Gurion’s Rebirth and Destiny of Israel.

At the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1918, there were, all in all, fifty-six thousand Jews in Palestine, and the Jews owned only 2 per cent of the land. In other words, apocalyptic, political Zionism had died with Dr. Herzl. In its place came a return to Hibat Zion (love of Zion), to the Katowitz Conference program and to the philanthropic funds steadily proffered by Baron Hirsch, Baron Rothschild and the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The post-Herzl Zionist organization showed a growing tendency to concentrate on the revival of the Hebrew language and culture as well as helping the Jewish colonists, to whatever extent possible. At the Eleventh Zionist Congress a resolution was passed in favor of the early establishment in Jerusalem of a Hebrew university. That was in 1913, the year the first graduates of the Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia (I among them) were ready to continue their studies in a university, without any higher school of learning available to them in Palestine. All through the years of our studies at the Gymnasia, we daily imbibed an endless harangue about our sacred obligations toward Amaynooh, Artzaynooh, Moladtaynooh (our nation, our country, our fatherland). It was drummed into our young hearts that the fatherland must become ours, “goyim rein” (clear of Gentiles—Arabs); that we must dedicate our lives to serving the fatherland and to fighting for it. These “seeds of change” paved the way and eventually forced the “practical” Zionists to return to Herzl’s dreams of charter and state—to the Balfour Declaration and later to the state of Israel.

Chaim Weizmann, the “Practical” Zionist Leader, Makes a Turnabout to Herzl’s Charter and “Jewish” Political Nationalism.

At this point, we can only dwell on the interregnum between the end of the Herzl epoch and the beginning of the Weizmann–Ben Gurion epoch. The Zionist leaders of those days called themselves “practical” Zionists. At their head was Chaim Weizmann, who had taken over the reins of the movement directly after Herzl’s death. Weizmann was one of the few independent young Zionists who had had enough self-respect to stand up from time to time against Dr. Herzl’s gimmicks. He was a cultured Jew who was also conscious of the great heritage of Judaism. He was a man of refinement and humanism.

From 1904 to the outbreak of World War I, Weizmann was quite satisfied with the “small beginnings” in Palestine, with the modest progress made in the colonies already established and with the gratifying progress made in the new Hebrew schools, elementary and secondary, in Jaffa–Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. For a short while, still, there were no political conflicts, no open issues with the overpoweringly predominant native Arab population and their leaders. The hosts, the Arabs, were the absolute majority in Palestine; the Jews, the guests, were the insignificant minority. Peace and quiet reigned in Palestine until World War I broke out and let loose the smoldering fires of political nationalism that were engendered everywhere simultaneously. The Arabs of Palestine took the new world-sweeping idea and ideal of self-determination literally. The Arabs’ political nationalism was natural and rational: they lived in their country. But the new generation of Palestinian Jews, raised on simon-pure apocalyptic “Jewish” nationalism, gave a “biblical” twist to the idea of self-determination: “The rights to Palestine do not, as in other countries they do, belong to the existing settlers, whether they be Jews or Arabs. The crux is ‘The Right of Return of Jewry Dispersed,’ a prerogative of rebuilding and development, of freedom and sovereignty. To be impervious to that concept is to vitiate our title to Israel,”⁴⁹—an “axiomatic” credo expressed by a young man named David Ben Gurion, the “Activist,” whose twinkling star was just rising in the firmament of poor little condemned Palestine.

In fact, in the midst of World War I, to force the hands of the “practical” Zionist Weizmann, who lived and worked in England during the war, Ben Gurion managed to come to Jewish New York to raise a volunteer Jewish Legion to come along with him to Palestine, to fight to liberate Palestine alongside the British army of General Allenby. Weizmann, goaded by the young “activistic” political nationalists, began to see “golden opportunities” in the midst of the tumult and scheming that was going on in the chancelleries of the victorious powers. Fishing was good in the dirty waters. Suddenly, they all got tired of the “small beginnings,” put on. Dr. Herzl’s political boots, and began “walking on eggs” and using “the methods of bluff and ostentation” and the “big phrases” of Dr. Herzl—the “charter” and the “Jewish state”—the very things Weizmann and his fellow “practical” Zionists had condemned in Herzl after he died in 1904. By horse-trading, haggling and pledging, he succeeded in extracting from Great Britain a confounding, verbose “charter,” the Balfour Declaration (which we shall study a little later), even while the Arabs of Palestine insisted on their fundamental rights of self-determination and the promises and pledges made to them by Great Britain. Now it was only a question of time until the two young and flaming rival movements would meet and clash in a head-on collision that would shake the world.

Ahad Ha-’Am (1856–1927).

Were I to proceed at this point to the Balfour Declaration, which triggered the outbreak of war between the Arabs and Jews in Palestine; were I to skip the chapter on Ahad Ha-’Am—that remarkable and unique “dreamer of the ghetto” who towered infinitely over and above all the leaders of Jewry of his time in intellectual and moral stature as well as in the conception of historic Judaism—I would be completely ignoring the historical and ethical continuity of Judaism, which temporarily fell into a coma ever since Jewishness went awry and degenerated into “Jewish” political nationalism.

Ahad Ha-’Am (“One of the People”) was the pen name of Asher Ginzberg, a businessman (an agent of the famous Wissotzky Tea Company) who dedicated his spiritual life to the study of historic Judaism and its problems. He wrote privately in Hebrew, Russian and English, but his famous essays he wrote only in Hebrew, with a precision and beauty of language derived from the flowing classical Hebrew but in a style all his own, mastered by none before him and very few after him.

Ahad Ha-’Am’s public life ran parallel to Dr. Herzl’s, but it both preceded and succeeded Herzl’s epoch. He was a most unusual man and writer, as we shall see in the course of this short study, and yet he was much like the other Russian-Polish “dreamers of the ghetto” in some pathetic premises. He honestly and innocently believed, like the rest of them, that anti-Semitism was an inveterate, endemic, congenital pathology of the Gentile world. He was a deeply convinced Jewish nationalist, though only a “spiritual” Zionist and not a “political” Zionist. He innocently believed that the Jews have a historic right to immigrate into Palestine to establish colonies there according to the capacity of the country, though taking full cognizance of the rights of the Arab population. The basic purpose of the “return to Zion,” according to Ahad Ha-’Am, was to create a spiritual center in Palestine where the Jews could live dedicated lives, could create a renaissance of the three-thousand-year-old ethical and philosophical Judaism evolving from the prophetic ideals.

Ahad Ha-’Am abhorred professional idealists. Above all, he abhorred politics and politicians, political machinations and political conquests. The low standards of the political nationalists of his time, seen from an ethical and human point of view, were anathema to him. He therefore had no respect and no use for Dr. Herzl, and pronounced him a dangerous and harmful Jewish leader. He wanted no part of the degenerate, predatory political nationalism of Europe. The climate of the whole world was such that he would not accept on a gold platter any idea of assimilation through integration anywhere. Ahad Ha-’Am’s Zionism, therefore, was a spiritual Zionism, an aspiration for the fulfillment of Judaism, and not political Zionism.

To understand Ahad Ha-’Am properly, we must first recall the times he lived in. After all, a man belongs to his times, unless he really is a prophet who can rise completely above them and above mortal limitations, by divine inspiration. A mortal being, no matter how great he is—and Ahad Ha-’Am was a great man, a colossus, one might say—cannot help being deeply influenced by the long, unbroken pattern of life surrounding him, which makes him believe that things will remain as they are forever; and he judges things accordingly.

We already know enough about the precarious life of the Jews in Russia and Poland in Ahad Ha-’Am’s day. The 1881–82 pogroms and the turbulent times in France, which began with the Panama Canal scandal and ended with the Dreyfus affair, were too painful and terrifying for anyone to think in terms of a future new Russia or in terms of Zola’s “J’accuse” and Clemenceau’s triumphs over the reactionary forces in France. It was beyond the capacity of the East European Jews to believe in and thoroughly understand the new matter-of-fact pattern of social justice and the new community of integrated citizen-nationals such as prevailed in the United States of America and in the whole English-speaking world. They would not believe that no one in the West wanted to interfere with the spiritual and religious traditions of Judaism, the only things that really counted from the point of view of survival.

On the other hand, rabid political nationalism in Europe, though actually only about one hundred years old, captured the imagination and life content of all Europe. It predominated as a transcendental goal in life. The professional idealists and politicians manipulated their world in such a way as to serve the depraved and predatory purposes of the ruling circles. The newspapers, magazines and literature of the European world played up the philosophy of political nationalism as the noblest of man’s concerns on earth. This trumped-up emotional movement also infected the Jewish intelligentsia everywhere, and thus it became the answer to all Jewish problems, in spite of the fact that Jews had no physical terrain on which their political nationalism could stand.

Wandering and resettling had been the lot of the Jew ever since the Babylonian exile. Adjustment and political integration had been the time-honored answer of the Jew to his disabilities and persecutions, to the extent that he was permitted to enjoy political identification with his host countries. What the various European nationals learned to do ever since the sixteenth century about their individual physical, religious or political disabilities—make a clean break with their national-political past and emigrate from their political homelands to happier lands—the sophisticated and experienced Jews had done for two thousand years. Having long ago learned to put only a relatively small and ephemeral value on political nationalism, the Jews became more engrossed in religious, spiritual and moral values, which, in turn, gave them a higher vehicle for historic development than territorial and parochial political nationalism. The Jews became universalists, primarily interested in the advancement of freedom and social justice.

Alas, in the modern epoch of depraved political nationalism, even though millions of Jews solved their “Jewish problem” by emigrating from Russia and Poland and easily adjusting themselves to the new mode of citizenship, most of the “dreamers of the ghetto” who remained in Eastern Europe found in “Jewish” political nationalism the “ideal” answer to the “Jewish problem.” They became impatient with the slow processes of evolution. In fact, they were unable to see any evolution at all in their dark lives. They got tired of struggling and hoping, and so they fell back on an old, ready-made Messianic apocalyptic quick “answer” to their “long exile.”

We should now be able to better understand Ahad Ha-’Am in contrasting him with the “Jewish” political nationalists. Perhaps I had better quote at this point one more important passage from Dr. Pinsker’s famous Auto-Emancipation, for he actually influenced Ahad Ha-’Am deeply in his early writings, especially before Ahad Ha-’Am had had a chance to discover for himself the big indigenous Arab population of Palestine, and with it discover that Palestine was not an unoccupied land. Ahad Ha-’Am even translated Dr. Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation from German into Hebrew. Here, therefore, is the important passage in Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation, echos of which one discovers in many of Ahad Ha-’Am’s early writings:

The Jews miss the very marks by which a nation is recognized. They miss the peculiar life which cannot exist without a common language and common habits—common interests in one joint place. The Jew has no Fatherland though he belongs to many lands; he has no center, no Government, and no representatives. You find him everywhere, but there is no place which is his. Never have the nations any business with a Jewish nation, but with individual Jews only.…

Without a place where a Jew lives at home, where he is considered a son of the Fatherland, he is a stranger everywhere, even if he and his forefathers were born in the land.… Usually they treat him as a stepson, as an abandoned orphan; at best he is considered as a foreigner who was granted civil rights as a gift which can be taken away. Never is he considered as a member of his country.…

In the end we must have some special piece of land allotted to us, even if it is not our Fatherland.… We must not grab too much.… It is hard enough without grabbing too much.… We must not strive for our Holy Land, but to our own land. We do not demand from anyone except a stretch of land big enough for our poor brethren, a land which will be ours.… There will we bring our holy of holies which we saved from the destruction of our ancestral Fatherland: the idea of Godliness and the Bible; for, only these, and not Jerusalem, or the Jordan, made our old Fatherland the Holy Land.⁵⁰

Now to Ahad Ha-’Am himself. He laid down his main theory in one of his early essays, “The Way of Life”:

The vicissitudes of Israel throughout the dispersion, but particularly during these latter days of ours, make it plain that we Jews cannot hope to lead the life of a separate nation among strange peoples and yet be as one of them, taking part in all the activities about us as thought we were full-blooded natives of the land of our sojourn, and at the same time remain a nation peculiar in view and distinct in character. Misfortune maimed our manhood; favorable circumstances maimed our national spirit. The former make us despicable in the eyes of our fellowmen; the latter, a nation despicable in its own eyes. Two paths lie stretched out before us: The path of life and the path of death. If our eyes are fixed upon the death goal, then let us disregard the counsel of temporizing healers, let us await death with a calm spirit.… If, however, we choose life, then it behooves us to build a house for ourselves alone, and in a secure spot, and, can there be any spot securer than the land inherited from our forefathers? Then it behooves us to consecrate our noblest powers, material and spiritual, to the one purpose, the regeneration of our people in the land of our forefathers.⁵¹

And in another early essay, “This Is Not the Way,” he laid down a warning “which all his future writings continued, that the revival of Zion was desirable and practicable only if the Jews did not become like other peoples. He opposed a settlement in the Holy Land based upon over-valuation of numbers and power and speed. He knew that the means determine the end, and the way in which the foundations are laid defines the strength of the structure. Like all ethicists, he was modest as regards goal, and exacting about the means. ‘The main point, upon which everything depends, is not how much we do but how we do it,’ he wrote in his report ‘The Truth From Palestine,’ after his visit there in 1891.”⁵²

Ahad Ha-’Am’s views on emancipation and anti-Semitism are clearly exposed in the following two excerpts from two other essays. The first is from “Slavery in Freedom,” written in 1891:

Today, while I am still alive, I try, mayhap, to give my weary eyes a rest from the scene of ignorance, degradation, of unutterable poverty, that confronts me here in Russia, and find comfort by looking yonder, across the border where there are Jewish professors, Jewish members of academies, Jewish officers in the army, Jewish civil servants. And, when I see there behind the glory and the grandeur of it all, a two-fold spiritual slavery, moral slavery and intellectual slavery, I ask myself: “Do I envy these fellow-Jews of mine their emancipation?” I answer in all truth and sincerity: “No, I may not be emancipated; but at least, I have not sold my soul for emancipation!”⁵³

The other is from “Two Masters,” written in 1892:

Hatred of the Jews is one of the best established commands of the past to the nations of Europe, among whom its roots are firm and deep.… It is not outside the bounds of possibility that in the course of time, the gospel of humanity will grow and spread, until it readily embraces the whole human race, white, black, and yellow, and until its wings shelter even the worst of criminals, to the satisfaction of certain well-known criminologists: Then, our world will be a world of righteousness and justice, mercy and pity, in relation to every living thing. Its mercy will extend even to the bird in its nest, but always except the Jews.… If any man arise in that day and ask: “How can this be? Surely the contradiction is obvious and glaring,” he will receive two answers: Thinking man will say with Secchi: “When we are occupied with humanity, we forget the Jews, and when we are occupied with the Jews, we forget humanity.” But simple man will give a simple answer: “That is an old objection.”⁵⁴

Ahad Ha-’Am dreamed of an elite composed of select groups of intellectual and idealistic Jews who would emigrate to Palestine to establish colonies there, and with it revive a national Jewish creativeness, a Jewish cultural renaissance. Insisting that the Jews were not like any other political nation, he regarded the Jews as a unique sort of nation who formed a homogenous body apart from the other nations (there was no talk as yet in the world about a League of Nations, one world, etc.) because of their common heritage of culture and philosophy, an affinity forged into bonds that had tied them all through the ages of wanderings and common experiences.

Ahad Ha-’Am felt that the prophetic ideals and teachings of absolute justice could now be better revived and could better thrive in a Jewish spiritual center in Palestine, which, in turn, would become a “Light to the Diaspora,” and eventually enable the Jewish people to become a “Light to the nations.” He fully realized that Palestine could in no way answer the economic and human problems of the millions of Jews who were actually wandering away, before his very eyes, from Russia and Poland, and through heartbreaking agonies finding new homes and homelands wherever they were admitted. But what tortured Ahad Ha-’Am in particular was to see the spiritual deterioration that went with the tragedy of ghetto life and refugee life—obsequiousness, arrogance, cunning, ignorance and the abandonment of the old spiritual, philosophical and scholastic ideals and refinements that were organic parts of historic Judaism. He was seeking a solution for the ills of his people. He wanted the rebirth of the “Jewish heart.” He hoped that the “return to Zion” would rekindle the spiritual heritage and the ethical traditions of Judaism.

Weizmann summarized Ahad Ha-’Am’s “spiritual Zionism” in these words:

For Ahad Ha-’Am, Zionism was the Jewish Renaissance in a spiritual sense. Its colonization work, its political program, had meaning only as an organic part of the re-education of the Jewish people.… A facade of physical achievement meant little to him. He measured both, the organization in the Diaspora and the colonies in Palestine, by their effect upon Jewry. His first concern was with quality, perfection. He was what Gandhi has been to many Indians.⁵⁵

Ahad Ha-’Am’s “spiritual Zionism” became synonymous with classical, prophetic Judaism. But in an age of raging nationalism, Judaism now needed a central national terrain on which to nurse its wounds and revive its spirit. It is this approach to Palestine as a spiritual home for the Jewish people that distinguished Ahad Ha-’Am from all of his colleagues, and above all from Dr. Herzl. No foreign political nationalism, no imitation of West European predatory political nationalism inspired his thoughts and ideals. The Hebrew-reading Jewish intelligentsia followed Ahad Ha-’Am and worshiped him until the advent of Dr. Herzl, who, on the occasion of his First Zionist Congress, in Basel in 1897, captured their imagination and won them to apocalyptic-Messianic “redemption” and “ingathering.”

Ahad Ha-’Am attended the First Congress, but he could not be persuaded to attend any other Congress during the lifetime of Dr. Herzl. From the time of the First Congress, Ahad Ha-’Am lashed out at “political Zionism” with all his heart and soul, through his extraordinary and inspired writings, and did not quit fighting for his ideals until the day of his death in British-mandated Palestine, in 1927, ten years after the Balfour Declaration. Immediately after the First Congress, in a series of essays, Ahad Ha-’Am thundered, in his caustic and merciless logic, against the plague of the new Zionist political nationalism that was to usurp the historical nature of pure Judaism:

There is only one objective which we can actually approach, and that is the moral objective, our self-liberation from inner slavery. We must so strengthen our common labor in all the branches of our national life that we shall become prepared for a life of dignity and freedom.…

After its millennial suffering, the question is whether the Jewish people would accept as its historic task, the creation of a little State which would again become the football of its stronger neighbors.…

In Basel, yesterday, I sat lonely among my brothers, like a mourner at a wedding.… This new enthusiasm is an artificial one, and the result of treacherous hopes will be despair.…

The salvation of Israel will come through prophets, not through diplomats!⁵⁶

And in “The Transvaluation of Values,” written in 1898:

… The latter day Zionists who base their Zionism on purely political and economic grounds and who scoff at moral missions, who believe in the emancipation of the physical life from its subservience to the limiting powers of the spirit, who would say: “Let the Book give place to the sword and the Prophets to the fair beast” … they fondly imagine that our people could suddenly, after thousands of years, change its values, forego its national preeminence in the moral sphere in order to become “the tail of the lions” in the sphere of the sword; could overthrow the mighty temple which it had built to the God of righteousness in order to set up in its place a mean and lowly altar to the idol of physical force.⁵⁷

Dr. Alex Bein tells the following story about the relation of Ahad Ha-’Am to Dr. Herzl, in Theodore Herzl, A Biography:

Shortly before the first Zionist Congress, and again on the last day, Ahad Ha-’Am had two short conversations with Dr. Herzl. His impression was that Herzl did not think responsibly; that his ideas and plans breathed the “feuilleton spirit,” and that the intimations he had given to the Congress of his negotiations in Constantinople had no reality behind them. Herzl appeared to him, in fact, in the light of a misleader, a bluffer who was diverting the loyalty and attention of the old Zionists from their laborious but fruitful enterprises by his fantastic representations. The day after the Congress, Ahad Ha-’Am wrote to Ravnitzky [a noted Hebrew writer and Zionist]: “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 simply cannot get this out of my head!”⁵⁸

After Dr. Herzl died in 1904, the “practical” Zionists fell again under the influence of Ahad Ha-’Am. But as I mentioned before when dwelling on Weizmann, World War I brought out the “activist” elements of the young generation in Palestine (the product of the Gymnasia Herzlia, and of young “workers” like Ben Gurion), who persuaded Weizmann to become another Herzl and serve their interests politically in London.

The story of Ahad Ha-’Am will be incomplete unless I also bring out his attitude toward the Arabs of Palestine. He was the only one in the Zionist organization who dwelt on the “Arab problem” from a moral and humane point of view as behooves a Jew. Here I shall lean heavily on Dr. Hans Kohn, who in an extraordinary article “Zion and the Jewish National Idea,” in the Menorah Journal (Autumn–Winter issue, 1958), also dwelt on Ahad Ha-’Am’s continuous warnings, all the way from the very beginning of Jewish colonization in Palestine, about the relations of the Jews to the Arabs of Palestine. I shall cull a number of passages about the remarkable prophetic foresight of the great Ahad Ha-’Am.

In 1891 Ahad Ha-’Am laid his finger on the problem which, for practical and ethical reasons alike, was the fundamental though neglected problem of Zionism in Palestine—the Arab problem. To the eyes of most Zionists, the land of their forefathers appeared empty, waiting for the return of the dispersed descendants, as if history had stood still for two thousand years. From 1891 on Ahad Ha-’Am stressed that Palestine was not only a small land but not an empty one.… He pointed out that there was little untilled soil in Palestine, except for stony hills or sand dunes. He warned that the Jewish settlers must under no circumstances arouse the wrath of the natives by ugly actions; must meet them rather in the friendly spirit of respect. “Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of the Diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in freedom, and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination.” That was written in 1891 when the Zionist settlers formed a tiny minority in Palestine. “We think,” Ahad Ha-’Am warned, “that the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not understand what is happening around. This is, however, a great error.”

This error unfortunately has persisted ever since. Ahad Ha-’Am did not cease to warn against it, not only for the sake of the Arabs but for the sake of Judaism and Zion. He remained faithful to his ethical standards to the end. Twenty years later, on July 9, 1911, he wrote to a friend in Jaffa: “As to the war against the Jews in Palestine, I am a spectator from afar with an aching heart, particularly because of the want of insight and understanding shown on our side to an extreme degree. As a matter of fact, it was evident twenty years ago that the day would come when the Arabs would stand up against us.” He complained bitterly that the Zionists were unwilling to understand the people of the land to which they came and had learned neither its language nor its spirit.…

In a letter of November 18, 1913, to Moshe Smilansky, a pioneer settler in Palestine, Ahad Ha-’Am had protested against another form of nationalist boycott proclaimed by the Zionist labor movement in Palestine against the employment of Arab labor, a racial boycott: “Apart from the political danger, I can’t put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to men of another people; and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: If it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve ‘at the end of time’ power in Eretz Israel? If this be the ‘Messiah,’ I do not wish to see him coming.”

Ahad Ha-’Am was in the prophetic tradition not only because he subjected the doings of his own people to ethical standards. He also foresaw, when very few realized it, the ethical dangers threatening Zion.

Ahad Ha-’Am returned to the Arab problem in another letter to Smilansky, written in February, 1914. Smilansky had been bitterly attacked by Palestinian Zionists because he had drawn attention to the Arab problem. Ahad Ha-’Am tried to comfort him by pointing out that the Zionists had not yet awakened to reality. “Therefore they wax angry towards those who remind them that there is still another people in Eretz Israel that has been living there and does not intend at all to leave its place. In the future, when this illusion will have been torn from their hearts and they will look with open eyes upon the reality as it is, they will certainly understand how important this question is and how great is our duty to work for its solution.”

… In 1920 (three years after the Balfour Declaration) Ahad Ha-’Am warned against exaggerated Zionist hopes. ‘The Arab people,” he wrote, “regarded by us as nonexistent ever since the beginning of the colonization of Palestine, heard [of the Zionist expectations and plans] and believed that the Jews were coming to drive them from their soil and deal with them at their own will.” Such an attitude on the part of his own people seemed to Ahad Ha-’Am unthinkable. In his interpretation of the Balfour Declaration he stressed that the historical right of the Jews in Palestine “does not affect the right of the other inhabitants who are entitled to invoke the right of actual dwelling and their work in the country for many generations. For them, too, the country is a national home, and they have a right to develop national forces to the extent of their ability. This situation makes Palestine the common land of several peoples, each of whom wishes to build its national home there. In such circumstances it is no longer possible that the national home of one of them could be total.… If you build your house not in an empty space, but in a place where there are also other houses and inhabitants, you are an unrestricted master only inside your own house. Outside the door all the inhabitants are partners, and the management of the whole has to be directed in agreement with the interests of them all.”

As we shall soon learn, Ahad Ha-’Am’s voice became a voice in the wilderness, and his peaceful “spiritual” Zionism died with the switch by Weizmann and company from “practical” Zionism to “political” Zionism, by way of the Balfour Declaration. By 1922, Ahad Ha-’Am had settled in Palestine, only to find that some Palestinian Jews were doing acts of primitive vengeance against the aroused Arab population, acts of murder and terrorism. He could not contain his disillusion and sorrow. In his loneliness and despair he addressed two open letters of protest to one of the Hebrew dailies of Palestine (Haaretz), parts of which are given here:

“Jews and Blood! Are there any greater contradictions than these?”—thus I concluded one of my essays many years ago, and I was then certain of this axiomatic assumption that no Jew will ever doubt its verity. For what have we saved from our [national] 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. We always remembered that the great moral teachings which we inherited from our forefathers was the Torah of the future which we had to guard and sacrifice our lives for it, until it becomes the heritage of all mankind. 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 rumor 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? Many years ago I wrote an essay in which I stated that our people will willingly give their money to build up their state, but they will never sacrifice their prophets for it. This was to me an axiomatic truth. And now God has afflicted me to have to live and to see with my own eyes that I apparently erred. The people do not part with their money to rebuild their national home but, instead, their inclination grows to sacrifice their prophets on the altar of their “renaissance”: the great ethical principles for the sake of which they have suffered, and for the sake of which alone it is worth while to return and become a people in the land of our fathers. For without these principles, my God, what are we and what can our future life in this country be, that we should bring all the endless sacrifices without which this land cannot be rebuilt? Are we really doing it only to add in an Oriental corner a small people of new Levantines who vie with other Levantines in shedding blood, in desire for vengeance, and in angry violence? If this be the “Messiah,” then I do not wish to see his coming.⁵⁹

To Ahad Ha-’Am, spiritual Zionism meant to live according to “the word of the Lord,” the teachings of the prophets. The prophets, according to the Bible, fought tooth and nail against the attempts of the old Hebrews “to be like the other nations of the world” and escape from the yoke of morality and humanity in order to live “normal lives.” Reluctance and rejection of “the word of the Lord” started with the dance around the golden calf. It is still going on.

To recall the noble and pure spirit of Ahad Ha-’Am is like trying to recall a tantalizing whiff of fresh air from a world that is gone from Jewish life.

In trying to give a comprehensive though compact picture of Ahad Ha-’Am to the end of his life (because he fought to the very end for his conception of “spiritual” Zionism as well as for peace and justice for Jews and Arabs alike), I had to go a bit beyond the fateful events that occurred during the trying and tragic years of World War I, between Great Britain and the Arabs and then between Great Britain and some Zionist leaders. Much as I am trying to follow a chronological line, it is impossible to give a full picture of the high lights of important historical persons or events without overlapping chronology from time to time.

And now, down from the heaven of the lonely and isolated, noble Ahad Ha-’Am to earth and the dirt of the secret chambers of the politicians, where in the midst of the double-talk and double-cross deals with the Arabs, on one hand, and the Zionists, on the other, an illegitimate, enigmatic, gnarled baby—the Balfour Declaration—was born in sin.

Whose sin? Really! Let us follow chronologically the developing historic events of the Old Order, which shook the world then and will keep on shaking the world until justice is restored to the land of the Ten Commandments.

The Arabs and the British Government. Arab Nationalism and Independence. The Hussain-McMahon Correspondence and Treaty, 1915–16.

Long before 1914 and World War I, nascent Arab nationalism was aflame, following the lines of all other awakening subject peoples. The Arab world aspired to recover the dignity they had lost during the centuries of domination by external powers. They wanted independence. When World War I broke out, the Arabs were not happy to be on the side of the Turks fighting Great Britain. And when they heard and read about the ideals of self-determination, they were inspired to revolt against the Turks and join Great Britain in its war in the Middle East, in what is now Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. Great Britain needed all the help she could get. In 1916 the great Arab revolt broke out under the leadership of King Hussain of Mecca and his four sons. The anniversary of the great revolt is still celebrated in several Arab countries. In most constitutions of the Arab states (alas, they were going to have one Arab state, but were broken up by the British and French victors), the first article emphasizes that the Arab country is a part of the great Arab homeland, that its people are a part of the Arab nation, and that its policy is to achieve a complete Arab union.

Secret negotiations and diplomatic notes were exchanged between the Shariff Hussain (later King Hussain) of Mecca on behalf of the Arab people and Sir Henry McMahon, British Commissioner in Egypt on behalf of Lord Kitchener, Minister of War in the British Government. McMahon concluded a treaty with the Arabs, the essence of which was “that the Arabs would revolt and fight against their suppressors. Britain would recognize Arab independence in all Arab territory.… This is what Sir Henry McMahon wrote in his first note to Shariff Hussain: ‘In earnest of this, we hereby confirm to you the declaration of Lord Kitchener, as communicated to you through Ali Effendi, in which was manifested our desire for the independence of the Arab countries and their inhabitants, and our readiness to approve an Arab Caliphate upon its proclamation.’”⁶⁰

George Antonius, a great Arab scholar, in his classical book The Arab Awakening, in speaking of the McMahon correspondence, says: “The note which McMahon dispatched in reply to Abdullah, Shariff of Mecca, Hejaz, dated October 24, 1915, … contains pledges which brought the Arabs into the war openly on the side of the Allies. The note recognizes and upholds the independence of the Arabs in the area contained within the frontiers proposed by the Shariff, with the exception of certain parts of Asia Minor and of Syria.”⁶¹

The exceptions referred to above were parts of northern Syria and Lebanon that Britain, in simultaneous secret negotiations with France, gave to France. “The Arab view is that Palestine did fall within the area promised Arab independence.… As late as the spring of 1917, at any rate, Palestine was treated on a footing with those other parts of Syria in which Great Britain had pledged herself, without reservations, to recognize and uphold an independent Arab State.”⁶²

Secret British-French (Sykes-Picot) Agreement. Shameful Duplicity of Pledges and Counterpledges, April–May, 1916.

A secret British-French (Sykes-Picot) agreement was revealed to the world by the Bolshevik Government soon after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. The Russians exposed the papers kept secret in the archives of the Czar’s government.

Negotiations were opened early in 1915. The Allies [France and Britain] helped themselves handsomely to the Ottoman Empire. In the course of carving up the Sultan’s dominions, Great Britain found herself driven to contract certain fresh obligations, some of which conflicted with the pledges she had given in 1915 through McMahon to the Arabs.⁶³

The agreement shows that Britain did not mean to give Arabs their independence. It included the following: “France in the Blue Area [Lebanon and Syria] and Great Britain in the Red Area [Transjordan and Iraq] shall be at liberty to establish such direct administration or control as they may desire, or, as they may deem fit to establish after agreement with the Arab State or confederation of Arab States.

“In the Brown Area [Palestine] there shall be established an international administration of which the form will be decided upon after consultation with Russia, and after subsequent agreement with the other Allies and the representatives of the Shariff of Mecca.

“There shall be accorded to Britain the ports of Haifa and Acre.”

George Antonius, in his book The Arab Awakening, wrote: “The Sykes-Picot Agreement is a shocking document. It is not only the product of greed at its worst … It also stands out as a startling piece of double-dealing.”⁶⁴

The Balfour Declaration, November 2, 1917. British and Zionist Hagglings and Interpretations. “Weizmann’s” TNT Gimmick.

The double-dealing and double-crossing in the two mutually exclusive and irreconcilable agreements—the agreement with the Arabs that presupposed a single united Arab country, and the secret agreement with France that mutilated and fragmentized the land of the Arabs along the old lines of “divide and rule”—was enriched by a third deal that ran afoul of the other two—the Balfour Declaration. On November 2, 1917, Arthur James Lord Balfour, Foreign Secretary under Lloyd George (who was Prime Minister of Great Britain), addressed the following letter to Walter Lord Rothschild on behalf of the British Government:

His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors 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 or political status enjoyed by Jews in-any other country.

The sixty-seven pilpulistic and ambiguous words, issued by a hard-pressed British Government fighting a life-and-death struggle with the Kaiser’s mighty armies, nevertheless had some substantial implied restrictions in the document given Lord Rothschild: (1) “View with favor” and “will use their best endeavors” do not mean a categorical, forceful imposition of a Jewish state; (2) “In Palestine” is not “of Palestine”; (3) A “homeland” can be interpreted to mean anything but a state. It is also known that Great Britain had a hard time putting over this formula. For “when this formula was originally submitted to the Zionist Organization it wanted to substitute the words ‘the reconstitution of Palestine as the national home’ for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home.’ The British government rejected the demand.… The Zionists even demanded the inclusion of Trans-Jordan, Hauran, Hermon, and the southern part of Lebanon in the area of the promised Jewish national home.”⁶⁵ In the first draft of the Balfour Declaration, the words “asylum for the Jews” were used in place of the words “national home.”

Let this be said for the British people—and one can almost say the same thing about the Christian world—“In 1917, they imagined Palestine to be still the land of the Jews, and it never occurred to them to doubt that the vast majority of its people were of that faith. They would have been surprised to hear they formed only seven per cent of the inhabitants, the remaining ninety-three per cent being Muslims or Christians … Knowledge of Palestine was to a great extent limited to Bible study. The Bible narrative ends before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 … A further illusion prevailed, arising from indiscriminate use of the word ‘Arab,’ that the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine were nomads from the desert. ‘Why cannot the Arabs return to their desert?’ was a question which used to be frequently asked.”⁶⁶

Very interesting is the fact that when the Balfour Declaration was brought up later, before the supreme body of the Allied Conference, Baron Sonnino, the Foreign Minister of Italy who played a part in the secret councils, protested against the words “civil and religious rights” in the passage reading, “… nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish [Arab] communities in Palestine.” Baron Sonnino, a Jew but an integrated citizen of Italy, unsuccessfully demanded certain emendations—the substitution of the words “juridical and political rights” for “civil and religious rights” for non-Jews … The perceptive Jew Sonnino sensed the possibilities of some ulterior injustice implied or schemed by those “Jewish” political nationalists who bargained for and extracted the Balfour Declaration.

Antonius put it this way: “A national home can be established for one people in the country of another only by dislodging or exterminating the people in possession.”⁶⁷

What prompted the British government to issue the Balfour Declaration?

The Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 quotes the following remarks by Lloyd George, Prime Minister, in 1917:

The Zionist leaders gave us a definite promise that if the Allies committed themselves to giving facilities for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause. They kept their word.

And Churchill, dwelling on the “darkest hour of the war,” said this about the Balfour Declaration: “[It was worked out] not from sentimental motives [but] as a practical measure taken in the interest of a common cause, at a moment when that cause could afford to neglect no factor of material or moral assistance.”

The reasons given by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill why the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration were not enough for the Zionist propaganda machine. The machine concocted a wonderful public-relations gimmick, a grand story that to this day is allowed to be exploited to the utmost. The story ran like this: The Germans were continually having the upper hand over the Allies. Then, just in the nick of time “Professor Chaim Weizmann contributed immeasurably to the Allied victory by inventing a synthetic acetone changing the explosive concept of warfare. In gratitude, Lord Balfour asked Weizmann what he wished. A Homeland for his people, Weizmann answered. Thus came about in 1917 the famous Balfour Declaration supporting the principle of a Jewish Homeland.”

The above version of the concocted story about Weizmann inventing TNT and thus saving the Allies is a quote from an editorial written by the Editor-in-Chief of the Hearst press in America, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., on March 3, 1957. It appeared in the Sunday issue of the San Francisco Examiner and undoubtedly in all the other Hearst newspapers throughout America.

For nearly fifty years now, the story has been peddled around by the Zionists’ public-relations agents.

Let us read what Professor Weizmann himself had to say about this precious, romantic, sentimental, heroic fable. Here is what he wrote in his autobiography Trial and Error (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949, p. 271):

For some unfathomable reason they always billed me as the inventor of TNT. It was in vain that I systematically and repeatedly denied any connection with, or interest in, TNT. No discouragement could put them off.

The Zionists literally lost their heads when they commenced to give their own Messianic interpretations of the Balfour Declaration, reading into it things that were not there and were never meant to be there. The broadcasts about “redemption” and “ingathering” spread like wildfire. Weizmann himself, who was far from being as much of an “activist” as young, offensive Ben Gurion was, made a public statement that “Palestine would be as Jewish as England is English.”

It was this aggressive, wild interpretation of the Balfour Declaration that aroused the Arabs of the world, particularly the Arabs of Palestine. It took the Arabs only two years to realize what a fate and misfortune the future held for them.

Interesting is the gullibility and innocence of the Arab world.

When the news [about the Balfour Declaration] reached King Hussain, he was greatly disturbed.… Commander Hogart arrived in Jedda in the first week of January, 1918. The message Hogart gave the king on behalf of the British Government was an explicit assurance that the Jewish settlements in Palestine would only be allowed in so far as would be consistent with the political and economic freedom of the Arab population.… Hussain was quite explicit and said to Hogart that in so far as the aim of the Balfour Declaration was to provide a refuge to Jews from persecution, he would use all his influence to further that aim.… King Hussain caused an article to be published in his official mouthpiece calling upon the Arab population in Palestine to bear in mind that their sacred books and their traditions enjoined upon them the duties of hospitality and tolerance, and exhorting them to welcome the Jews as brethren, and cooperate with them for the common welfare. The article seems to have been written by Hussain himself.⁶⁸

Meanwhile the long, protracted peace negotiations were going on at the Peace Conference in Paris. Most of the work there was done behind closed doors—horse-trading along classical, shady “diplomatic” lines. Young Felix Frankfurter (later Supreme Court Justice in Washington) was in Paris to help the cause of Zionism, according to the ideas he and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and Judge Julian Mack entertained. The Hejaz Arab delegation, still slumbering under the anesthetic administered by Commander Hogart to King Hussain in Jedda, headed by Emir Feisal (later King Feisal of Syria and Transjordan), wrote a touching and innocent letter to Mr. Frankfurter. Some of its passages are worth remembering:

Hejaz Delegation

Paris, March 1919

DEAR MR. FRANKFURTER:

We feel that the Arabs and the Jews are cousins in race, suffering similar oppression at the hands of Powers stronger than themselves. We Arabs look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. We are working together for a reformed and revived Near East.… And our two movements complete one another.… There is room in Syria for both of us. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other.… I look forward to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once again take their place in the community of civilized peoples of the world. [Signed] FEISAL⁶⁹

Alas, only a few days after this the Arabs and the rest of the world learned with chagrin the true facts about the double-dealing and double-crossing deals through the Bolsheviks, who, having seized power, published the secret documents of the Sykes-Picot agreement found in the archives of the Czarist Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This revealed treaty threw a new light on the Balfour Declaration and the real relations of Great Britain and France toward the Arabs. The Arabs suddenly realized that they had been duped, and the reactions were fierce and desperate. A gulf was suddenly created between the Arabs and the Jews of Palestine, on one hand, and between the entire Arab world and the British and French, on the other. Hereafter, every Jewish immigrant who was admitted into Palestine by the occupying British forces was regarded as a political infiltrator, an enemy, instead of a “cousin,” as Emir Feisal was going to treat Jewish immigrants. The Arabs resisted, as would any people, being turned into a minority in their own country by immigration from without. Ever since then the gulf has widened between the Jews and the Arabs in proportion to the influx of the Jews into Palestine, and more than ever after the exile of the Palestinian Arab population later on.

Representative American Jews Protest to Woodrow Wilson Against the Idea of a Jewish State. March 4, 1919.

On March 5, 1919, the New York Times published a long and remarkable protest that Congressman Kahn of California submitted to President Wilson on behalf of himself and thirty prominent American Jews against the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. President Wilson acknowledged the petition and agreed to have the matter put before the Peace Conference after his return to Paris. The text is a long one, going deeply into all the implications of the issues involved. I give here only a few important paragraphs that go to the heart of the matter. These words turned out to be prophetic:

As a future form of government for Palestine will undoubtedly be considered by the approaching Peace Conference, we, the undersigned citizens of the United States unite in this statement, setting forth our objections to the organization of a Jewish State in Palestine as proposed by the Zionist societies in this country and Europe, and to the segregation of the Jews as a nationalistic unit in any country. We feel that in so doing we are voicing the opinion of the majority of American Jews born in this country and of those foreign-born who have lived here long enough to thoroughly assimilate American political and social conditions. The American Zionists represent, according to the most recent statistics available, only a small proportion of the Jews living in this country, about 150,000 out of 3,500,000 (American Jewish Year Book, 1918, Philadelphia).

At the outset we wish to indicate our entire sympathy with the efforts of Zionists which aim to secure for Jews at present living in lands of oppression a refuge in Palestine, or elsewhere, where they may freely develop their capabilities and carry on their activities as free citizens.…

But, we raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. The demand not only misinterprets the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionist project of a “National Home” for the Jewish people in Palestine.…

Zionism arose as a result of the intolerable conditions under which Jews have been forced to live in Russia and Rumania.…

Jews are dedicated, heart and soul, to the welfare of the countries in which they dwell under free conditions. All Jews repudiate every suspicion of a double allegiance.…

By the large part taken by them in the Great War, the Jews have once and for all shattered the base aspersions of the anti-Semites which charged them with being aliens in every land, incapable of true patriotism and prompted only by sinister and self-seeking motives.…

The proposition [of a Jewish State in Palestine] involves dangers.… These dangers are adverted to in a most kindly spirit of warning by Sir George Adam Smith who is generally acknowledged to be the greatest authority in the world on everything connected with Palestine, either past or present. In a recent publication “Syria and the Holy Land,” he points out … that “it is not true that Palestine is the national home of the Jewish people, and of no other people.… To subject the Jews to the recurrence of such bitter sanguinary conflicts, which would be inevitable, would be a crime against the triumph of their whole past history and against the lofty and world embracing visions of their great prophets and leaders.”

A Jewish State involves fundamental limitations as to race and religion, else the term “Jewish” means nothing. To unite church and State in any form, as under the old Jewish hierarchy, would be a leap backward of two thousand years.…

As to the future of Palestine, it is our fervent hope that what was once a “Promised Land” for the Jews may become a “Land of Promise” for all races and creeds, safeguarded by the League of Nations which, it is expected, will be one of the fruits of the Peace Conference to whose deliberations the world now looks forward so anxiously and so full of hope. We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government, recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State.

I shall not reproduce here the complete list of the thirty-one prominent American Jews who formed the committee, but I shall give a few names I well remember as outstanding in the Jewish as well as in the general community:

Hon. Julius Kahn, San Francisco. Member, House of Representatives

Hon. Henry Morgenthau, New York. Former Ambassador to Turkey

Max Senior, Cincinnati. Former President, National Conference of Jewish Charities

Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, Philadelphia. Chancellor, Jewish Chautauqua

Professor Edwin R. Seligman, New York. Columbia University

Adolph S. Ochs, New York. Publisher, New York Times

Judge M. C. Sloss, San Francisco

I. W. Hellman, San Francisco. President, Union Trust Company

San Remo Conference Confirms the Balfour Declaration and Gives Great Britain the Mandate Over Palestine, May 5, 1919.

Woodrow Wilson was a thorn in the flesh of the imperialists and colonialists who were set on profiteering from the war that was “to make the world safe for democracy.” And so, while they sat at the Peace Conference table during Woodrow Wilson’s absence (he had to return to the United States to win proper backing for his ideals), a golden opportunity was opened to those who wanted to divide and rule. An innocuous word, “mandate,” was used and abused (a “sacred trust of civilization to bring forward these peoples to ultimate self-determination”) and exploited without any sense of shame and decency, to fool the world.

With Woodrow Wilson’s proclamation about “open covenants openly arrived at” out of the way for a while, and his “prickly objections” no longer hampering them, “the Prime Ministers of Great Britain and France found it possible, at last, to reach an agreement about the division of spoils.… Each power grabbed as much as the other would let her.… The decisions taken were made public on May 5, 1919, and their promulgation gave birth to a new sentiment in the Arab world: Contempt for the powers of the West … Breach of Faith … Disappointment and Despair … Betrayal.… Feelings mounted to fever pitch.”⁷⁰

Searing disgust and seething frustrations filled the Arab world. The Arabs got a feeling that all their dreams and hopes were dashed to pieces.

Memorial Day, May 30, 1919. Woodrow Wilson Back in Europe.

On May 30, 1919, Memorial Day, Woodrow Wilson returned to Europe to tell the world that he sensed what was going on behind his back. At the Suresnes cemetery in France he revealed his heart:

You are aware, as I am aware, that the airs of an older day are beginning to stir again; that the standards of an old order are trying to assert themselves again. There is here and there an attempt to insert into the counsel of statesmen the old reckonings of selfishness and bargaining and national advantage which were the roots of this war.⁷¹

Congress of Arabs in Damascus Issues an Appeal to Woodrow Wilson and the American People. July 2, 1919.

Modern Arab nationalism began in Syria and Lebanon. Already, in the nineteenth century, secret societies had been organized in Syria by the intellectuals of that region. Damascus had always been the “throbbing heart of Arabism.” On July 2, 1919, a Congress of Arabs issued the following resolution:

We rely on President Wilson’s declaration that his object in entering the war was to put an end to acquisitive designs for imperialistic purposes.… We reject the claims of the Zionists for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in that part of southern Syria which is known as Palestine.… We desire that there should not be any dismemberment of Syria, and no separation of Palestine or the coastal regions in the West, or the Lebanon, from the mother country.… We look to President Wilson and the liberal American nation who are known for their sincere and generous sympathy with the aspirations of weak nations, for help in the fulfillment of our hopes.… We should not have risen against Turkish rule under which we have enjoyed civic and political privileges, as well as rights of representation, had it not been that the Turks had denied us our right to a national existence.…⁷²

“What It Means to Be Arab.”

I shall stop here for a while in the sequence of events to quote a few paragraphs from a long, authoritative article on “What It Means to Be Arab,” by James Morris, so that we can better understand the movement of the Arabs for unity. The article appeared in the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times, November 16, 1958:

Today’s Arabness is still largely an ideal, still hazy and ill-coordinated. Each year, though, it hardens and crystallizes. For generations the Arabs have been talking of their march toward political unity and the revival of their ancient dignities, and there are signs that they are in fact stepping down from their debating platform and throwing off their cloaks of impatient disgruntlement, and are on the road at last.…

Who are the Arabs, and by what right of logic do they talk so grandly of their renaissance?… The Arabs have a mystical yearning for comradeship and common purpose, perhaps derived from the rigid fraternity of the desert tribe. They are, in a diplomatic sense, very clubbable people when they are not blackballing each other.… Animated by this predilection, nostalgic for their golden centuries, they have long cherished the dream of unity.… Not so long ago, their most cultivated thinkers conceived of unity in terms of an Islamic revival.… More recently the emphasis has changed. Nobody can now seriously consider a union of all the Moslem peoples.… But, secular Arab nationalism, envisaging a purely political reunion, is riding high.…

The Arabs are still plagued … by excesses of personal rivalry and ambition; by unscrupulousness in politics, bickering, backbiting and opportunism.… There could be no grander contribution to the welfare of the world than an Arab Commonwealth truly cohesive, genuinely neutral, honestly progressive, mature and statesmanlike. This, we must hope, will be the prize of Arab nationalism. And we must keep our fingers crossed and pray that all this splendid heritage, all this effort and defiance and will power and braggadocio, will not decline and disintegrate, after all, into tattered chaos.

The 1919 King-Crane All-American Commission of Inquiry in Palestine.

Woodrow Wilson could not help listening to the voice of the Arab world. He

invited Lloyd George and Clemenceau [British and French Prime Ministers] to join him in sending an Allied Commission to Syria and Palestine to ascertain the wishes of their people. The British and French declined the invitation, but Wilson was not to be put off, and sent an all-American commission, consisting of two distinguished and impartial persons, Dr. Henry King and Mr. Charles Crane, both members of the Amercan Peace Delegation and of the Peace Conference’s Mandates Commission. They began their studies of Zionism with minds predisposed in its favor; they proceeded under the impact of the actual facts in Palestine, coupled with the force of the general principles proclaimed by the Allies and accepted by the Syrians, to recommend serious modifications of the extreme Zionist programme for Palestine of unlimited immigration of Jews looking forward to making Palestine a Jewish State.… The Commission uttered a solemn warning, “The Peace Conference should not shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine and Syria is intense and not lightly to be flouted. No British officer consulted by Commissioners believed that the Zionist programme could be carried out except by force of arms.”⁷³

“The Year of Catastrophe,” 1920.

“The year 1920 has an evil name in the Arab annals: The year of Catastrophe and armed risings … Serious outbreaks took place in Syria, Palestine, Iraq; acts of violence everywhere … The first of those outbreaks occurred in Palestine at Easter when the Arab population in Jerusalem, taking alarm at the activities and utterances of the Zionist leaders, made an onslaught upon the Jews.… The causes were political and had their roots in the fears felt by the Arab population for the future of their country.”⁷⁴

British High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, Tries to Allay Arab Fears.

In the summer of 1920, the British Mandate Government appointed Sir Herbert Samuel its first High Commissioner over the civil administration of Palestine. He was appointed because of his active sympathy with Zionism as well as for his fine record as a British high official. He had held offices as Postmaster-General and Home Secretary, and in 1919 was Special Commissioner to Belgium. On June 3, 1921, realizing what was going on in war-swept Palestine, he declared:

I hear it said in many quarters that the Arab population of Palestine will never agree to their country, their holy places, and their lands being taken from them and given to strangers.… People say that they cannot understand how it is that the British Government, which is famous throughout the world for its justice, could ever have consented to such a policy. I answer that the British Government … has never consented and will never consent to such a policy.… [The Balfour Declaration] means that the Jews, a people who are scattered throughout the world, but whose hearts are always turned to Palestine, should be enabled to find their home, and that some among them, within the limits that are fixed by numbers and interests of the present population, should come to Palestine in order to help by their resources and efforts to develop the country to the advantage of all its inhabitants. If any measures are needed to convince the Moslem and Christian population … that their rights are really safe, such measures will be taken. For the British Government, the trustee under the Mandate for the happiness of the people of Palestine, would never impose upon them a policy which that people had reason to think was contrary to their religious, their political, and their economic interests.⁷⁵

Pinsk Versus Washington. Weizmann Versus Brandeis. American Zionist Leaders Balk East European Zionists. Diaspora Nationalism Not Wanted, 1920–21.

Like many other emancipated and integrated philanthropic American Jews, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Judge Julian Mack and young Felix Frankfurter (later Supreme Court Justice) joined the Zionist movement during and immediately after World War I on humanitarian and spiritual grounds. They even became the leading officers and aides of the Zionist movement in America. Brandeis’ Zionism was defined in these words:

Zionism seeks to establish in Palestine, for such Jews as chose to go and remain there, a legally secured home, where they may live together and lead a Jewish life, where they may expect ultimately to constitute a majority of the population, and may look forward to what we should call home rule.… It is not a right merely but a duty of the Jewish nationality to survive and develop.… By securing for those Jews who wish to settle in Palestine the opportunity to do so, not only those Jews, but all other Jews will be benefited and the long perplexing Jewish Problem, at last, find a solution.

However, once the Balfour Declaration was publicly and internationally recognized, Brandeis was convinced that Zionism’s “political work” was finished.… What was needed—and all that remained for Zionism to do—was to provide, as quickly as possible, economic assistance and management to develop the resources of Palestine so as to absorb the greatest possible number of distressed Jews of Central and Western Europe. The British mandate was to be regarded as temporary. Eventually the people of the country were to be granted self-government. If, when this happened, the majority population of the country were Jews, well and good.

Like all Zionists, Brandeis took little cognizance of the fiery nationalistic Arabs of Palestine who constituted the predominant majority of the land; and less than that did Brandeis know what was in the minds and hearts of the East European Zionist leaders who were resolved, come what may, to make Palestine into a Jewish state and the Jewish people into a Jewish nation. Brandeis discovered the true political objectives of the European Zionists in London, in 1920, where he went to attend the World Zionist Organization Conference. There he discovered the basic commitment of the World Organization to establish in international law the concept of all Jews—the Jewish people—as a body politic possessing national rights in, and national obligations to, the “National Home.” The Zionist organization, in this commitment, was to act as the “public body” not for colonization plans for Palestine, which Brandeis supported, but for the building of a world-wide “Jewish” nation, and, in Palestine, was to insist upon a mandate period that could end only in a “Jewish” state.

Brandeis could not countenance any organic nationhood for Jews; or any sharing, by Jews of other countries, in any national system of rights and obligations belonging to Palestine. For Weizmann and the East Europeans, this was the essence of Zionism. The fundamental incompatibility between the emancipated and integrated Jews of the West and the East European “Jewish” nationalists was made clear in the acrimonious debates at the London Conference, where Weizmann, facing Brandeis, 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!” In fact, the debate in London is known in Zionist history as “Pinsk versus Washington.”

The encounter in London between Brandeis and the East European Zionists caused a bitter and deep conflict, which lasted for more than a year, and finally ended in Brandeis’ virtual withdrawal from the organized Zionist movement. Back in the United States, Brandeis felt his position on the Supreme Court made it inappropriate for him to engage in public controversy. He therefore entrusted the campaign to establish his policies, defeated in London, as the basis for operation of the American Zionist movement to a man hardly less distinguished than himself, Judge Julian Mack.

In June, 1921, the London battle was re-enacted in Cleveland, at the Zionist Annual Convention. Judge Mack, speaking for Brandeis, Frankfurter and himself, concentrated chiefly on “the principle of the so-called Diaspora Nationalism”:

I now assert that there is no political tie binding together the Jews of the world, but that politically the Jewish citizens of the United States of America are exclusively American citizens.… We asserted then, as we assert now, that in the United States of America, and in the countries of Western Europe, there are no group-nationality political rights, and we asserted and claimed none for the Jews in America, as no group in America asserted or claimed such rights for itself. We asserted then, as we assert now, that in Palestine the Jew, when the time came, would be the dominating element, would form a political nation in Palestine, but that the thought of a political status of the Jews of the world was an impossible conception.

To which an old, powerful leader of the East European Zionists, Schmarya Levin, had this to say about Brandeis, Frankfurter, Mack and the fully integrated American Jews: “It is against Jewish nationalism as such that their opposition is directed. Its purpose is to destroy Jewish nationalism throughout the world.” Precisely! But it was the 1921 Cleveland Convention that started the solid infiltration and imposition of East European ideas of “Jewish” nationalism into America, for the Brandeis-Mack administration was defeated by a vote of 153 to 71. The machine of Machtpolitik took over, biding its time for the day in history when the Zionists would turn Palestine into a Jewish state and would try, by hook or crook, to turn the Jewish people into a Jewish nation.

(Most of the above story about Brandeis and the Zionist movement is taken from an article by Dr. Elmer Berger, “Disenchantment of a Zionist,” which appeared in the Middle East Forum, American University, Beirut, Lebanon, April, 1962.)

Jews Refuse to Emigrate to the “National Homeland.”

After all the trumpeting in London and in Cleveland about the visions of “redemption” and the “ingathering” of the Jewish nation in the national homeland, there were only 83,794 Jews in all of Palestine by 1922. In the four years since the Balfour Declaration scarcely 28,000 Jews had been added to the 56,000 who were in Palestine when World War I ended in 1918. (There were about 660,000 Arabs in Palestine in 1922.)

On August 25, 1922, at the World Zionist Congress in Carlsbad, Weizmann announced that “in spite of the smallness of our immigration, there are already some fifteen hundred to two thousands unemployed in Palestine—a heavy proportion of our population.”⁷⁶

Weizmann Lets the Cat Out of the Bag About the Balfour Declaration and About the Refusal of the Jews to Emigrate to Palestine.

The average yearly net immigration of Jews into Palestine until the advent of Hitler came to about 7,700. In 1927 there were 3,000 more emigrants from Palestine than immigrants to Palestine. On a mission to Rumania in 1927 to obtain immigrants for Palestine—to secure manpower for the “national homeland”—Weizmann declared:

We Jews got the Balfour Declaration quite unexpectedly; in other words, we are the greatest profiteers. We never dreamt of the Balfour Declaration. To be frank, it came to us overnight. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air, and a foundation had to be laid for it through years of exacting work; every day and every hour of these last ten years, when opening the newspapers, I thought: Whence will the next blow come? I trembled lest the British Government would call me and ask me: Tell us what is this Zionist organization? Where are your Zionists? For these people think in terms different from ours. The Jews, they know, were against us; we stood alone, on a little island, a tiny group of Jews with a foreign past.⁷⁷

Did “Jewish” political nationalism actually interfere with a possible bigger flow of Jewish emigrants to Palestine? Jewish emigrants were still streaming on the highways of the world, but very few of them chose to go to Palestine. Why? Why did they practically all choose to go to the United States, Australia, South Africa, South America and other countries, instead of to the nearest of them all, Palestine, which was now declared to be their “homeland”? The answer is obvious: There was war in Palestine, in the form of riots and protests, brought about by loud threats to the Arabs of Palestine; and there was peace in the rest of the world. With “Jewish” nationalism still very much an artificial movement in its infancy, why should any responsible head of a family have gone to Palestine?

Arab Riots in Palestine.

The Arabs translated the idiom of militant nationalism as did the rest of the world in those days. If an insignificant number of Russian and Polish Jews could claim Palestine as their homeland in the name of a distant past, surely the Arabs, who were the predominant majority in Palestine for more than a thousand years, who had their holy shrines and the Mosque of Omar and all the history of their glorious past linked to their Arab homeland—surely, the Arabs thought, in the face of the loud claims by professional and fanatical Zionists, they had the patriotic duty to expel, or at least protest and interfere with, the “outsiders” becoming “insiders” in their country.

Let us call a spade a spade: for less important casus belli have “civilized” European nations declared war on their neighbors. The Arabs of Palestine loved their country; they were attached to their homeland, their homes, their farms, their business places, their holy places. They had no organized armies to protect their homeland against any sort of invasion, whereas the British mandated forces protected the immigration of Jews into their Arab homeland so that the Jews could create a “Jewish” homeland out of it. The war took the form of riots, pogroms, sneak assaults—mostly, of course, against innocent farmers and peaceful residents, since they were the easiest to kill and rob, and thus be used for wreaking vengeance on their “enemies.”

No one can condone the shedding of innocent blood, but one can understand evil in the context of the times. All Jews became enemies in Arab eyes, and the Arabs went after them with all their hot Levantine blood. Riots took place in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936 and 1939 against the Jewish settlers, but almost as much against the British occupying forces. There were rebellions against the British in Syria and Iraq. After the terrible outbreaks in May, 1921, Sir Herbert Samuel, High Commissioner in Palestine, suspended Jewish immigration. Later on, in 1929, when an enlarged Jewish Agency was formed—an organization of Zionists and non-Zionist Jews from all over the world, to supervise the building of the “Jewish homeland” in Palestine in accordance with the requirements of mandated Britain—it was immediately followed by one of the most serious outbreaks of violence. On August 23, 1929, troops and warships had to suppress the assaults on the Jews. Sixty-six Jews were murdered in Hebron alone. The total death toll of Jews was about one hundred thirty. Hundreds were wounded and much Jewish property was destroyed. Arab losses were also considerable.

The British Government and People Discover the Facts Too Late.

To the end, the British Government, in accordance with their straight understanding of the Balfour Declaration, have certainly “used their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of its object,” even though they discovered many surprises that shocked them. They were forced to make many declarations and explanations. Thus, in 1922, Winston Churchill, who was then the Colonial Secretary of Great Britain, “tried to appease Arab fears from Jewish domination. He issued a White Paper … a part of it read: ‘Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that “Palestine is to become as Jewish as England is English.” His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectations as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated … the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language, or culture, in Palestine.’”⁷⁸

In 1924–25, Lord Asquith, who was Prime Minister of Great Britain during the early years of World War I, visited Palestine. He wrote: “There are less than a million people in the country of whom about one tenth are Jews, the remainder Christians and Arabs, the Arabs being three fourths of the whole. The talk of making Palestine a Jewish national home seems to me just as fantastic as it had always been.”⁷⁹

A Ray of Light in the Darkness: The Hebrew University Is Established in Jerusalem by Dr. Judah L. Magnes. Dr. Magnes Expresses Fears About the “Jewish Homeland.”

In December, 1924, in the midst of all the political turmoil of the Arab-Jewish war in Palestine, a ray of light and hope appeared on the horizon of the unhappy land—the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Institute of Jewish Studies was opened in the presence of the High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel. Ahad Ha-’Am, “the teacher of our generation” (as Dr. Magnes called him), whom Dr. Magnes always consulted about everything, was to have graced the opening, but was sick. I shall return to Dr. Magnes and the Hebrew University later on.

In speaking to Lord Passfield, British Colonial Secretary, about the state of affairs in Palestine, Dr. Magnes expressed his fears about the future.

What I missed most was the absence of any constructive suggestion as to how this conflict might be resolved short of war between the two peoples. Whatever be the warlike preparations of our militarists on both sides, I trust and believe the rest of the world will not let it come to that, and will not be content to have us base our absolute claims on “natural rights” or “historical rights” or other “rights”.… The Jews have more than a claim upon the world for justice.… But, as far as I am concerned, I am not ready to try to achieve justice to the Jew through injustice to the Arab.… I would regard it as an injustice to the Arabs to put them under Jewish rule without their consent. If I am not for a Jewish State, it is solely for the reason I have stated: I do not want war with the Arab world.⁸⁰

German Jews Pour Into Palestine Under the Protection of Great Britain. Manpower From Unexpected Quarters Arrives to Augment the Jewish Population.

From 1932 to 1939 (the year World War II broke out), the tragedy of the Jews of Germany brought a mass immigration into Palestine. They had to find an immediate haven, and it is to the credit of the mandate Government of Great Britain that so many Jewish refugees from Germany were admitted into Palestine in spite of Arab hostility and rebellion.

In 1932, 9,000 German Jews entered Palestine. In 1933, 30,000; in 1934, 40,000; in 1935, 61,000.

In 1931, there were only 174,616 Jews in Palestine, but by 1939 the number had risen to 445,457. By that time, the Arabs numbered more than one million.

After the German Jews entered Palestine on a big scale, Arab riots multiplied, but not for long, because the fresh element of Jews augmented the power of resistance and the pugnacity of all Jews. From then on there were Jews, Arabs and Englishmen among the dead and wounded. Thus, “between April, 1936, and March, 1937, 93 Jews were killed and over 400 wounded. In 1938, 69 British, 92 Jews, and 486 Arabs were killed.”⁸¹

From 1939, with the onset of World War II, the Arab rebellion fizzled out. The British were in no mood to be trifled with because of the mobilization of all their forces; and the Jews of Palestine were becoming more and more militant against the Arabs. Already, in 1937, Irgun terrorists were organized to wage war as violent “activists” on the Arabs and the British.

On the Eve of World War II, Young Professor Albert Einstein Speaks Out.

It was in 1938 that young Professor Albert Einstein spoke out on the subject of

the fateful disease of our time, exaggerated nationalism, borne up by blind hatred.… 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 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 the equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets.⁸²

Late Efforts at Reconciliation in Palestine.

In 1939, the “twentieth Zionist Congress gathered in Switzerland. It was apparent that, after three and a half years of Arab revolt, a fresh effort at reconciliation had to be attempted. The Congress decided to appoint a committee for the study of the Arab-Jewish relations. Dr. Magnes was one of the committee.… In August, 1942, the committee rendered a majority report, with proposals for a political solution. These included Jewish immigration up to parity of numbers with the Arab population, and the creation of zones predominantly Jewish or Arab, enjoying a progressive measure of autonomy.”⁸³

The Biltmore Declaration of May, 1942. The “Ihud” Organization in Palestine (1942) and the American Council for Judaism (1943) in Reaction to the Biltmore Program.

In May, 1942, in the midst of World War II, an American Zionist Conference inspired by David Ben Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency (and Prime Minister of Israel after 1948), adopted a program aimed at making all Palestine a Jewish state or commonwealth. This conference was named the Biltmore Conference, after the new hotel in New York in which it was held. Unlimited Jewish immigration into Palestine was another resolution of the Biltmore Declaration, or Biltmore Program.

To Dr. Magnes [who was head of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem] it was clear that the attempt to carry out the Biltmore Program must lead to war with the Arabs.… He decided to form an independent political association in order to promote discussion of the Bi-National State plan, and he gave it the watchword “Ihud” (Union).

Ihud was designed not as a party, but as a free association of men and women who shared the conviction that Jews and Arabs should form one commonwealth, that Palestine should not be partitioned between them, and that it was both right and possible to bring into being the bi-national state.⁸⁴

The outstanding members of Ihud who joined Dr. Magnes were Professor Martin Buber, Dr. Ernest Simon, both of the Hebrew University, and “Reb Binyomin” (pseudonym of the Hebrew essayist Benjamin Feldman-Radler), who became the editor of Ner, organ of Ihud in Hebrew and English.

Another powerful reaction against the Biltmore Declaration took place in the United States in the shape of organizing the American Council for Judaism, in 1943. More about the American Council for Judaism and the Biltmore Program a little later.

In the spirit of the Biltmore Program, the underground terrorist organization Irgun in Palestine became openly active against the British forces there. World war or no world war, the old yardstick “Is it good for the Jews?” prevailed. There already existed Haganah, the so-called self-defense organization “which had been created in the 1920s and continued to function with the tacit approval of the British administration during the years of Arab rioting in the 1930s.”⁸⁵

The End of World War II. 1945. Catastrophe of European Jewry Revealed. Only a Small Remnant Survived. National Redemption Versus Individual Salvation.

Of the six million Jews that Hitler and his gangs of murderers could lay their hands on, only about 125,000 were left alive, or half alive, in the Displaced Persons camps, among hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish victims of torture and persecution. They were all semi-starved, desperate men and women who broke the hearts of mankind. They all well deserved every sympathy and sacrifice, and, had things been left on a simple humane basis, immediate relief and decent, safe new quarters could have been secured for their bodies and minds in the wide civilized world.

The Jewish victims in the Displaced Persons camps (DP camps) having suffered as Jews, it undoubtedly seemed good to them to dream of Eretz Israel as it was presented to them by wily Zionist propaganda and pressure. Most of the victims would have been happy indeed to find peace and quiet, work and food, in a normal and existing Jewish homeland. But there was war in Palestine; the militant Jewish nationalists terrorized the British and the Arabs; the Arabs hated both the Jews and the British, and were waiting for the day of vengeance and victory; and the British were thoroughly fed up with both Jews and Arabs.

The victims in the DP camps needed immediate relief and a safe and quiet haven. The world was ready to open its heart and its purse. There is an incredible story that President Roosevelt sent his Jewish friend Morris L. Ernst—the noted civil-liberties attorney—to persuade Great Britain to take some 100,000 to 200,000 survivors of the Nazi holocaust. Mr. Ernst, according to his story, persuaded the British to take 150,000, Jews and Gentiles. America was then supposed to match this. The President was happy at the success of the mission. Finally, when Mr. Ernst came to see the President, here is what the President is supposed to have said to him: “Nothing doing! We cannot put it over, because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won’t stand for it.… They are right from their point of view. The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors there is no other place this poor Jew can go.…”⁸⁶

In other words, letting the victims go to America, England, Australia, South Africa and other countries might undermine the political, national “Jewish homeland.” President Roosevelt was forced to yield to the fanatical and professional Jews.

I shall quote here two typical expressions of horror about the tragedy of the DP victims. “Dr. Louis Finkelstein, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, stated in an interview in 1951, that it had always been his feeling that ‘if the U.S.A. Jews had put as much effort into getting D.P.’s admitted to this country as they put into Zionism, a home could have been found in the New World for all the displaced Jews of Europe.’ And the New York Times publisher, Sulzberger, said: ‘Why, in God’s name, should the fate of all those unhappy people be subordinated to the single cry of Statehood? I cannot rid myself of the feeling that the unfortunate Jews of Europe’s D.P. camps are helpless hostages for whom statehood has been made the only ransom.”⁸⁷

The British Labour Party Before and After the 1945 Elections In England.

During their long period of being His Majesty’s opposition, the British Labour party, like all other parties that are mindful of elections and votes while having no responsibilities, and as “rash and brash revolutionaries,” came out with the following statement in 1945 before it was voted into power: “There is surely neither hope nor meaning in a Jewish national home unless we are prepared to let the Jews, if they wish, enter this tiny land of Palestine in such numbers as to become a majority.… There is an irresistible case for it now after the unspeakable atrocities of the cold-blooded calculated German Nazi plans to kill all the Jews of Europe. Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in. Let them be compensated handsomely for their land, and their settlement elsewhere be carefully organized and generously financed.”

Once, however, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin suddenly came face to face with the realities and facts about the Arabs’ attitude toward eviction from their homeland, the Labour Party’s “pie in the sky” for the Jews in Palestine became a burning issue that nearly consumed him. At the same time, Menachem Begin’s Irgun set Palestine on fire with their “revolt against the occupying Power,” the British, without whose benevolent declarations and backing there would never have been any Jewish immigration into Arab Palestine.

Haganah soon became the official “legal” army of the coming state of Israel, and Irgun was the “dissident” branch of the army that generally did the dirty work for and with Haganah, even though Haganah sometimes screamed bloody murder, professing to protest against the too flagrant murderous deeds of Irgun.

Let us recall here a few enlightening figures. When the British forces took over Palestine in 1918, there were about 56,000 Jews there, all told. In 1939, when World War II broke out, there were 445,457 Jews in Palestine, principally as a result of the exodus to Palestine of German Jews. In 1946, one year after World War II ended, there were 528,702 Jews in Palestine, and in 1948 there were 660,000. Any reasonable person will admit that until German Jews began to pour into Palestine after 1931, it would have been easy for the Palestinian Arabs to throw all the Jews out into the Mediterranean Sea except for the British forces that protected them.

Meet Mr. David Ben Gurion and Mr. Menachem Begin.

This is the logical place to meet the two outstanding leaders of Palestine Jewry, who also exercised a powerful influence on American Jewry through their aggressive and reckless personal characters, as well as through diabolically clever and efficient Madison Avenue public-relations gimmicks, hooked up to powerful machines designed to win people, influence and money.

From 1939 to 1948, Ben Gurion was Chairman of the Zionist Executive of the Jewish Agency. From 1948 until recently—with the exception of a short interval during which Moshe Sharett (my former classmate at the Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia) served as toadying Prime Minister for the junta that surrounded “retired” Ben Gurion—Ben Gurion was Prime Minister as well as Minister of Defense. For decades prior to 1939, Ben Gurion had been an “activistic” leader in the Zionist movement as well as in the nationalist-socialist trade-union organization Histadrut.

Menachem Begin, leader of the underground terrorist Irgun, and now leader of Herut, the second largest party in the Knesset of Israel representing the Irgunist ideas and ideals, was a follower of Jabotinsky, a former violent expansionist who was a very able but rabid “Jewish” nationalist in his days (“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”). The pupil Menachem Begin, however, outdid his master Jabotinsky.

There was never any love lost between Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin. Yet they are twin brothers in their jingoism. I shall let them speak for themselves.

Ben Gurion. The following credos and pronunciamentos come from Ben Gurion’s own book The Rebirth and Destiny of Israel:

We are not blind to the fact that Palestine is no void. Some million Arabs inhabit both sides of the Jordan, and not since yesterday.⁸⁸

There are a million Arabs in Palestine who legitimately regard themselves as its children, whether we like it or not. It is also an historical fact, disagreeable as it may be to the Arabs, that Palestine, for more than 3,000 years, was and has stayed Eretz Israel for us.⁸⁹

The Arab war against us will be a long one.… They do not need to buy land and bring in Arabs from abroad. Everything is theirs but government, and it is government they are fighting for.… The Arabs already possess the land. They need neither laws nor administration to transfer it; only we do.⁹⁰

(This was written in 1938, ten years before the state of Israel was established.)

Every Englishman asks himself: Who is right? One side says: “We have been living here not for a matter of days or months, but for 1,400 years. Our fathers and forefathers are buried here. Grant us liberty to live as we please. Let us be ruled by elect representatives as you are.” These arguments he will understand because they are straightforward, because of their elemental appeal.… The other side is the Jewish people with a genealogy of 3,500 years. The Bible as its sacrosanct title-deed to Palestine, and a promise from the British Government.… It claims the “Right of Return.” … It is all very confusing. British soldiers are hazarding their lives in Palestine.⁹¹ (Said in 1938)

We are fighting not for the lives of the 400,000 Jews in Palestine, but for the hopes and the rights of a nation!⁹² (Said in 1938)

“The difficulty I shrink from speaking of: Shall we find enough Jews for the Jewish State.”⁹³ (Speech delivered on July 22, 1948, after the state of Israel was established)

Menachem Begin. The following credos and pronunciamentos come from Menachem Begin’s own book The Revolt (story of the Irgun):

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!

First and foremost, we must take the offensive. We attack the murderers.

With blood and with sweat a generation shall be raised proud and generous and strong.⁹⁴

As said before, Menachem Begin’s Irgun came out openly in 1944, while World War II was still at its fiercest, to “liberate the Fatherland” from the “occupying Power,” the British mandate power.

The Irgun under its fanatical and able leader Menachem Begin were an army of self sacrificing, fearless and defiant underground warriors who derailed trains, stole ammunition and dynamite and blew up whatever they could not carry off in stolen trucks, right under the noses of the British army guards. They kidnapped British army officers, shot or flogged them, in order to terrorize the “occupying Power”—the Mandated British Government.… Headquarters, hotels, offices, were blown up. They captured Arab villages and cities in defiance of the armed forces of the British Government.

The Irgun imposed their own system of “Income taxes” on the population. They “developed their own propaganda machine, particularly in the U.S.A. They depicted the Jews as living in their homeland in Palestine, groaning under the oppression of a foreign military occupation. The Arabs, who still formed two-thirds of the population, were hardly mentioned.”⁹⁵

Menachem Begin put it bluntly and proudly: “Throughout all the years of our uprising, we hit at the British Government’s prestige deliberately, tirelessly, unceasingly.”⁹⁶

Irgun members became heroes through their own propaganda machine in the United States. An outstanding American rabbi, Aba Hillel Silver of Cleveland—one-time aspirant to the presidency of Israel and always working behind the scenes in Washington, D.C—once said, “The Irgun will go down in history as a factor without which the State of Israel would not have come into being.”⁹⁷

It will not be amiss to quote at this juncture an article published later in Ner, the Hebrew magazine of Ihud in Jerusalem, about the two outstanding leaders of Jewry in Palestine (now Israel) and not much less in the Diaspora (outside Israel), “Not Ben Gurion and Not Begin!”:

Both want to rule. And what is the difference between them, from the point of view of war and peace?

There is something preferable about the barefaced scheming of Begin. He does not hide it. Wherever Begin goes, he calls out: I am a man of war! He is cocksure that Israel can easily defeat all the Arab States. East, and West, all at the same time. He will retreat from nothing. Give him the Government, and, as in the days of the “Liberation,” he will perform his miracles.

And what of Ben Gurion? Not less than Begin does he love war. Like Begin, it is already tens of years that he suffers from nightmares that war may come any minute, suddenly, and at the wrong moment and the wrong place. The difference is, that he cannot regard the situation in a brightful childishness as does Begin. He is a man of war in concealment. The heart does not reveal to the mouth his inner secrets. When Ben Gurion prepares himself for war, he talks of peace.

What is the difference between the two? One is a warrior overtly, the other is a warrior covertly.⁹⁸

The 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry.

With Irgun’s revolting acts of terror happening daily all over Palestine, and with the Arabs doomed to languish for a while in forced relative inaction, more and more commissions of inquiry were sent to Palestine to find out the facts. There were innumerable commissions, but the one sent in 1946—the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry—was one of the most important. Alas, their just conclusions found no sympathetic ears. Things had gone too far, too long, too deep.

The Committee held a great many hearings. Here is an account of an important hearing in Jerusalem:

In the hall of the YMCA, Judah L. Magnes stood pleading before a remarkable bi-national (Anglo-American) commission composed of six Englishmen and six Americans. It was the eighteenth body which had inquired into the administration of the Holy Land since Great Britain received the Mandate in 1920. The commission, after visiting Displaced Persons camps in Europe, came to Palestine to find out what part the Jewish National Home in Palestine could take in solving the problem of the homeless Jews uprooted by the Nazi persecutions. Magnes, nearing his 70th birthday [he had lived in Palestine 24 years and was Chancellor of the Hebrew University at the time], stood up and expounded his plan of a bi-national State to be achieved peacefully, in which Jews and Arabs should have parity of rights, parity of numbers, and parity in Government.

The atmosphere was tense. The word had gone out from the Jewish Agency for Palestine [at the head of which was Ben Gurion] which commanded the loyalty of the masses, that only one Jewish voice demanding a sovereign Jewish Palestine should be heard before the Commission. When Magnes had finished, the American Judge turned to him and said: “I am a fairly old man, and I recognize moral power when I see it. If other leaders of opinion could show a similar courage, sincerity, and wisdom, a solution of Palestine’s problems would soon be found.” The man who in his youth had been the hero of Jewish youth in America was now regarded by the youth of Palestine as an enemy of the people.⁹⁹

I have before me a transcript of the proceedings before the Committee of Inquiry containing the testimony given by Ihud. Dr. Magnes and Professor Martin Buber, both of the Hebrew University, represented Ihud. It is a 96-page report. I shall quote only the general statement of Ihud and a few words exchanged between the Committee and Dr. Magnes:

The Ihud Association stands for the union of Jews and Arabs in a bi-national Palestine, based on parity of the two peoples, and for the union of the bi-national Palestine with the neighboring [Arab] countries. This union is to be a regional union under the auspices of the United Nations organization.…

Palestine must be lifted out of the parochialism to which its tiny size might condemn it.…

We regard the historical rights of the Jews and the natural rights of the Arabs as of equal validity, and it is the task of statesmanship to find ways of adjustment between these contending claims. Neither people can get in Palestine all it wants, and both peoples will have to make concessions. The way of honorable and reasonable compromise must be sought … there being about 600,000 Jews here now, and about 1,200,000 Arabs.…

We contend that for this Holy Land, the idea of a bi-national Palestine is at least as inspiring as that of an Arab sovereign Palestine and of a Jewish sovereign Palestine.… Full cultural autonomy is combined with full allegiance to the multi-national State. National identity is safeguarded, yet there is a coalescence in a larger political framework. That it is possible is proven by Switzerland during the past 100 years. The Swiss are divided by language, religion, and culture. Nor do the religious and linguistic groups coincide in the twenty-two cantons. Yet, all these divergencies have not been obstacles to political unity.

Multi-Nationalism based on parity is a newer form of democracy, which is as important for multi-national States as the more traditional form of democracy is for uni-national States. The old way of having a major people and a minor people in a State of various nationalities is reactionary. There is no prospect of peace in a country where there is a dominant people and a subordinate people.…

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, what a boon to mankind it would be if the Jews and Arabs of Palestine were to strive together in friendship and partnership to make this Holy Land into a thriving peaceful Switzerland in the heart of this ancient highway between East and West. This would have incalculable political and spiritual influence in all the Middle East and far beyond. A Bi-National Palestine could become a beacon of peace in the world.

Dr. Aydelotte: “You, Dr. Magnes, said that you thought cooperation between Arabs and Jews was possible. You said that you thought the situation had deteriorated in recent years. I would like to ask you whether you think the setting up of political Zionism as a goal for the Jews has had the effect of preventing friendly relations between Jews and Arabs, whether that had been partially responsible for the deterioration in these relations.”

Answer: “To answer your question fully: There is no doubt that setting up the programme of the Jewish State, as the official programme of the Zionist Organization, has helped in this deterioration.”¹⁰⁰

The Committee Loses Out to Rabid “Jewish” Political Nationalism.

The serious and objective deliberations and conclusions of the Anglo-American Committee had no effect on the furtive fanatics of “Jewish” political nationalism, whose neo-Judaism called for the primitive “glory” of war, blood, “liberation” and “redemption.”

The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry had gone to work and presented its report at Lausanne, on April 20, 1946. It had come to the conclusion that Palestine could not alone meet the emigration needs of the Jewish victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution, but that the whole world shares the responsibility for them and indeed for the resettlement of all “displaced persons.” It recommended, therefore, that the two governments in association with other countries should endeavor immediately to find new homes for all such displaced persons.…

Regarding the constitutional future of Palestine, the Committee recommended (a) that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine; (b) that Palestine shall be neither a Jewish State nor an Arab State; (c) that the form of government ultimately to be established shall under International Guarantee fully protect and preserve the interests in the Hold Land of Christendom and of the Muslim and Jewish faiths.

We have reached the conclusion that the hostility between Jews and Arabs and, in particular, the determination of each to achieve domination if necessary by violence, make it almost certain that, now and for some time to come, any attempt to establish either an independent Palestinian state or independent Palestinian states, would result in civil strife such as might threaten the peace of the world. We therefore recommend that, until this hostility disappears, the Government of Palestine be continued as at present under mandate, pending the execution of a trusteeship agreement under the United Nations.…

Furthermore, we express the view that the Jewish Agency should at once resume active co-operation with the mandatory in the suppression of terrorism and of illegal immigration, and in the maintenance of law and order throughout Palestine which is essential for the good of all, including the new immigrants …

The Report made it perfectly clear that the idea of Partition had been dropped, and warned that if Partition was attempted under the prevailing circumstances it might threaten world peace. Accordingly, Palestine should be developed along the lines of a bi-national, bi-lingual State, safeguarding the rights of Arabs and Jews alike.…

The Report was published in London and Washington on April 30, 1946.…

After the British Government [the mandatory] had approved in principle the policy recommended by the British and American officials, invitations for a conference in London were sent to the Jewish Agency for Palestine and to the Palestine Arab Higher Executive and to member states of the Arab League. On September 9, 1946, the conference convened; neither the Jewish Agency nor the Palestinian Arabs accepted the invitation.… No agreement could be reached.…

The Zionist Congress at Basel … denounced the plan for provisional autonomy as unacceptable even as a basis for discussion. It reaffirmed its political program and demanded that Palestine be established as a Jewish commonwealth.… The Arabs wanted a unitary state with a permanent Arab majority.

The British Government decided it had had enough. On February 18, 1947, the Foreign Secretary announced that His Majesty’s Government had decided, as no other course was open for reconciling the conflicting points between Arabs and Jews, to submit the whole problem to the judgment of the United Nations.”¹⁰¹

Dr. Magnes Speaks Out in New York and in Jerusalem, in 1946.

In New York, Dr. Magnes addressed an important Zionist gathering on the political situation in Palestine. It was a glorious speech, but it fell on deaf ears, hostile hearts. The following paragraph gives the essence of his remarks about the insane pursuit after an exclusive Jewish State: “Jabotinsky was the prophet of the Jewish State. Jabotinsky was ostracized and condemned and excommunicated, and now we see that almost the whole Zionist movement has adopted his point of view.… He saw that the only way to get a State was through force. He said in his early writings: ‘Has it ever been known that a people would willingly give up its soil? No more would the Palestine Arabs yield their sovereignty without force.’”¹⁰²

I should add here that Jabotinsky was the father of the idea of a Greater Israel, that the east side of the Jordan River, as well as the west side, should be taken over as the Land of Israel.

In Jerusalem, in the autumn of 1946, at the opening of the academic year of the Hebrew University, Dr. Magnes spoke out again, immediately after his return from New York. In New York he had seen the play A Flag Is Born, which glorified the violent deeds of Jewish youth in Palestine. It had saddened his heart, for he could see bloodshed coming to Palestine. “The new Jewish voice speaks from the mouth of guns.… This is the new Torah from the land of Israel. But, is this the true Torah of Judaism? Is this the essence of Jewish morality? The world has been shackled to the madness of physical force. Heaven forbid that we now shackle Judaism and the people of Israel to this madness. This is pagan Judaism which has conquered large sections of that mighty dispersion and elsewhere too. We had believed in the days of romantic Zionism that Zion is to be redeemed by righteousness. All the Jews in America share the guilt …, even those not in accord with the activities of this pagan leadership, but who sit at ease with folded hands. The attempt to freeze the moral senses results in their atrophy.”¹⁰³

The United Nations and Palestine. The Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947.

The mood of Jews all over the world, aroused by the crematoriums of Germany and by the Displaced Persons camps, was not given to calm and rational thinking and judging. And, of course, the professional Jews, together with the furtive fanatic, made the most of the catastrophe. By legal and illegal means, in the most dangerous and unseaworthy vessels, many inmates of DP camps were smuggled into Palestine; and the Irgun, on its side, never for one moment stopped blasting and blighting the life of the British army in Palestine with its acts of murder, theft and harassment.

The United Nations, into whose lap the whole thing was thrown, had to do something:

Thus we come to another fateful turning point in the Palestine struggle. Until this time the struggle was confined, more or less, to the three pricipal participants, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and the British. Now it was thrown into the international arena, and the fledgling United Nations, itself struggling to find its bearings, had to cope immediately with an international problem of major proportions.

On April 28, 1947, the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations convened at Lake Success to consider Palestine. A committee was appointed to investigate the situation and report to the second regular session of the General Assembly in September, 1947.

During this period and during the following United Nations sessions, Zionist pressures were increasingly exercised.… The American public was led to believe that the Palestine underground was engaged in the same kind of struggle as the American revolutionists had waged against the very same imperialistic Power, and that the establishment of an independent Jewish commonwealth in Palestine would be one of the loftiest acts of humanitarianism.

Against this formidable barrage of unified Zionist propaganda, the dissenting voices [Dr. Magnes, and Dean Virginia Gildersleeve of Barnard College] were hardly audible.… The Arabs had almost no voice at all in the United States.… Warnings by United States diplomatic officers familiar with the Middle East were ignored by Washington.…

The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), after conducting its inquiry, was not able to present a unanimous report. A majority report proposed Partition; a minority report suggested a single State with a federal structure. The General Assembly designated an Ad Hoc Committee to consider the two suggestions. The latter held 34 meetings between September 25 and November 25, 1947. Finally a Partition scheme was presented.… According to the Partition plan, about 10,000 Jews would be left in the Arab State, but about 497,000 Arabs in the Jewish State. About 43 per cent of the area of Palestine would be assigned to the Arab State, and 56 per cent to the Jewish State, and about 1 per cent to the International area of Jerusalem. Until then the Jews had obtained by purchase about 6 per cent of the area of Palestine and constituted about one-third of its total population of l,800,000.¹⁰⁴

The Jewish State included the coastal and other fertile plains, and the irrigable lands of Tiberias and the Hula Basin. On the other hand, the proposed Arab State consisted of the arid mountainous regions and sparsely cultivable areas with little or no irrigation possibilities.¹⁰⁵

The Partition sponsors also envisaged an economic union between the Jewish and Arab States. It was not just partition, but partition with an economic union.… But, the very moment partition was resolved, this point, the major justification for the United Nations surgery, was completely disregarded.

When the Partition proposal finally came before the General Assembly, it was by no means certain whether the two thirds majority needed to carry out the decision would be found.¹⁰⁶

President Truman, James Forrestal (Secretary of Defense) and the Partition Resolution. November, 1947, and Immediately After. Forrestal Diaries’ Revelations.

Since the whole bitter truth must be told, I shall delve into the mire of the tragedy that befell the innocent victims of insane, xenophobic “Jewish” political nationalism. Let me note right here that by “innocent victims” I mean not only the Arabs of Palestine who are now exiled refugees, but also the Jews of Palestine and the supporting Jews of the Diaspora, who must one day pay for the errors of judgment and for the unfair play.

Alas, base politics, not pure justice and fairness prevailed. President Truman and Defense Secretary Forrestal played vital but conflicting roles in connection with the Partition Resolution of November, 1947. President Truman was moved in favor of the Resolution; Forrestal was emphatically against it. I shall first let the President explain his attitude, and then James Forrestal. Said President Truman:

I could foresee that under the proposed plan of the United Nations calling for an economic union of the partitioned areas, the Jews and the Arabs might eventually work side by side as neighbors.

By the fall of 1946 the situation looked “insoluble” … The Jews were making it almost impossible to do anything for them.… Top Jewish leaders in the U.S. were putting all sorts of pressure on me to commit American power and forces on behalf of Jewish aspirations in Palestine.…

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House too was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders, actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats, disturbed and annoyed me. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favorable votes in the General Assembly.

Secretary Forrestal spoke to me repeatedly about the danger that hostile Arabs might deny us access to the petroleum treasures of their countries. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, on several occasions, submitted memoranda to show that we could not afford to send more than a token force to the area.¹⁰⁷

According to the New York Times book review of Forrestal’s Diaries, “it is the most revealing public document of our time.” This document certainly reveals how gravely concerned this honest, straightforward and patriotic American was about “Palestine and its effect on American security.” He was the first Secretary of Defense in American history, and the turmoils and anxieties connected with his defense responsibilities undoubtedly played a serious part in driving him to commit suicide.

Here are some of the revealing passages in Forrestal’s Diaries covering the period of the Partition of Palestine on November 29, 1947, which led to the Declaration of Independence of Israel on May 15, 1948:

29 August, 1947. Cabinet.

Lovett [Undersecretary of State] reported … on the increasing complexities of the Palestine situation.… There was some indication of a lash-up between the Asiatic peoples and those of the Middle East on a color versus white basis. He said that while much emphasis had been placed upon the distress and commotion among the Jews, there was an equal danger of solidifying sentiment among all the Arabian and Mohammedan peoples.

29 September, 1947. Cabinet Lunch.

I asked the President whether it would not be possible to lift the Jewish Palestine question out of politics. The President said it was worth trying to do, although he obviously was skeptical.…

On November 6, 1947, [Forrestal] buttonholed J. Howard McGrath, Senator from Rhode Island and Democratic National Chairman. [Forrestal repeated his arguments that] “no group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security.” McGrath replied by saying that there were two or three pivotal States which could not be carried without the support of people who were deeply interested in the Palestine question. I said, I would rather lose these States in a national election than run the risks which I felt might develop in our handling of the Palestine question.

26 November, 1947. Lunch—Senator McGrath.

“Lunch today with Senator McGrath. Prior to it I had him read the secret report on Palestine prepared by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency].… There was a feeling among the Jews that the U.S. was not doing what it should, to solicit votes in the United Nations General Assembly, in favor of the Palestine Partition. To this [Forrestal] objected that it was precisely what the State Department wanted to avoid; that we had gone a very long way indeed in supporting Partition, and that proselytizing for votes and support would add to the already serious alienation of Arabian good-will. McGrath said that beyond this, the Jews would expect the U.S. to do its utmost to implement Partition, if it is voted by the United Nations, through force if necessary.

I said I hoped that Senator McGrath would give a lot of thought to this matter because it involved not merely the Arabs of the Middle East but also might involve the whole Moslem world with its four hundred million of people—Egypt, North Africa, India, Afghanistan.…

On Saturday, November 29, 1947, the General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, to partition Palestine into two independent States.

3 February, 1948.

I had no power to make policy but I would be derelict in my duty if I did not point out what I thought would be the consequences of any particular policy which would endanger the security of this country.… I thought it was about time that somebody would pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the United States.¹⁰⁸

President Truman describes the terrible and tragic days that followed Partition in these words:

The Jewish pressure on the White House did not diminish in the days following the Partition vote in the United Nations. Individuals and groups asked me, usually in rather quarrelsome and emotional ways, to stop the Arabs, to keep the British from supporting the Arabs, to furnish American soldiers to do this, that, and the other. I think I can say that I have kept my faith in the rightness of my policy in spite of some of the Jews. When I say “the Jews,” I mean, of course, the extreme Zionists. As the pressure mounted, I found it necessary to give instructions that I did not want to be approached by any more spokemen for the extreme Zionist cause.¹⁰⁹

At the United Nations, during the debates about Partition, Sir Muhammad Zafrulah Khan, Foreign Minister of Pakistan, for seven years a member of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and later, in 1962, President of the United Nations, warned the free world: “Remember that you may need friends tomorrow; that you may need allies in the Middle East. I beg of you not to ruin and blast your credit in these lands.”¹¹⁰

The British Relinquish the Mandate.

After refusing to vote for Partition, and fed up with the harassments and ingratitude of the Zionists in Palestine, the British resolved to wash their hands of the whole matter. “The British Government announced on December 3, 1947, that they would consider their mandate at an end as of May 15, 1948. The Arabs on the same day served notice on the world that they would defend their rights. Every day now brought reports of new violence in the Holy Land. On January 15, 1948, the Jewish Agency advised the United Nations that an international police force would be required to put Partition into effect.… But no such police force existed.”¹¹¹

The Arabs “raised serious and unanswered questions with regard to the legality and jurisdiction of the United Nations to partition countries against the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants. The Arabs warned of the grave consequences and demanded that the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice should be sought on the legal aspects of the case before the General Assembly proceeded with the Partition. The request was denied.”¹¹²

The fanatical “Jewish” political nationalists, of course, “accepted” Partition with alacrity, for the Partition plan was merely a foothold for the full realization of Eretz Israel as predatory Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin had envisioned it all along, openly and unashamedly, quoting the Bible and preparing for the bloody “redeeming” and “ingathering.” On October 2, 1947, Ben Gurion said before the Elected Assembly in Jerusalem: “I do not minimize the virtue of Statehood even within something less than all the territory of the land of Israel on either bank of the Jordan.” And a little earlier, in 1946, before the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, he said: “Our aim is not a majority. A majority will not solve our problem. The majority is only a stage, not a final one. You need it to establish the commonwealth. We still have to build a national home.”¹¹³

And the brutal but honest and frank Menachem Begin put it plainly: “The Jewish homeland, the area which covers both sides of the Jordan, is a complete historic and geographic entity. Dissection of the homeland is an unlawful act; agreement to dissection is also unlawful, and is not binding on the Jewish people. It is the duty of this generation to return to Jewish sovereignty these parts of the homeland which were torn off from it and given over to foreign rule.”¹¹⁴

The War for Palestine Begins.

Well, only the blind would not see that the Partition Resolution of the United Nations meant vicious open war between the Zionists and the Arabs of Palestine. At this point the British were primarily interested in their own orderly withdrawal.

They progressively abandoned strongpoint after strong-point and most of their administrative centers. These were to be handed over to the new administrations of the respective areas, but often, especially in disputed districts, they fell into the hands of those who got there first. Generally, but not always, the Zionists, owing to their superior intelligence service, which had its agents in the various British administrative offices, got the better of the game. It was a kind of jockeying into position for the coming showdown.

At the beginning, the Arabs had the advantage, strategically speaking, of holding all the high ground and of having control over most of the main roads except the coastal trunk road connecting Tel Aviv with Haifa.… The Jews mobilized Haganah, which remained for some time on the defensive.… The Irgun and the Stern Group now directed all of their activities against the Arabs, abiding by their ideology of ruthless retaliation and offensive action. They frequently initiated actions without the approval, or against the will, of Haganah and the Jewish Agency, but the result of their activities was highly appreciated because their goal was the same, namely, the establishment of an independent Israel. Frequently, their action eased the progress of the more conservative forces, and in many instances they not only fought side by side with Haganah, but were given special assignments by the latter.

During the actual fighting, many acts typical of guerrilla warfare were committed by both sides: On January 4, 1948, the Irgun blew up a lorry containing high explosives in a crowded thoroughfare in Jaffa; on January 5, the Semiramis hotel in Jerusalem, Arab owned, was blown up. The Arabs retaliated and blew up the Jewish owned Jerusalem Post building. On February 18, an explosion occurred in the crowded market place of Ramleh; on February 20, the Arabs retaliated with an explosion in the heart of Tel Aviv. The story could be continued endlessly; it is the sorry tale of blow and counterblow, retaliation and counter-retaliation.”¹¹⁵

The widespread fratricidal war only confirmed the predictions made during the debates on Partition at the United Nations. Everybody could now see the coming calamity. There was very little time left to do something about it.

The United Nations Fumbles Because the U.S.A. Fumbles.

On March 19, 1948, at the 271st meeting of the Security Council, the United States Delegation stated that since it had become clear that the Assembly Partition Resolution could not be implemented by peaceful means, and that the Security Council would not be prepared to implement it, the Council should recommend a temporary trusteeship for Palestine under the Trusteeship Council; further, that the Council should request the convocation of a special session of the General Assembly and, pending the meeting of the special session, should instruct the Palestine Commission to suspend its efforts to implement the Partition plan.

On March 24, 1948, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, at its meeting, informed the Council of a statement adopted March 23 by the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi (National Council) in Palestine. This declared that the Jewish people would oppose any proposal designed to prevent or postpone the establishment of a Jewish state; that they rejected the trusteeship regime for Palestine; that the Provisional Council of Government of the Jewish state should be recognized by the Palestine Commission without delay; and that upon termination of the Mandatory Administration, and not later than May 16, 1948, a provisional Jewish Government would commence to function in cooperation with the representatives of the United Nations then in Palestine.

At this critical moment the United States Government was caught fumbling! There were “misunderstandings” and a lot of embarrassing confusion between the United States Delegation at the United Nations and the State Department, on one hand, and President Truman at the White House, on the other. James G. McDonald, in his book My Mission to Israel, 1948–1951, describes the confusion in these words: “The President had not given the State Department the authority to withdraw U.S. support of Partition without his approval.… Secretary Marshall … had acted on mistaken assumption … Senator Warren Austin [Chief of the U.S. Delegation at the United Nations] announced in the Assembly that our Government had given up its support of the establishment of an independent Jewish State and suggested instead a form of Trusteeship.”¹¹⁶

Typical of the reaction in the country, however, was the following editorial, which appeared on March 22, 1948, in the San Francisco Chronicle, in a special box on its front page—something unusual:

PALESTINE AND THE WORLD CRISIS

The American move to repeal the Palestine Partition, springs from … a cold analysis of the world picture.… Viewed coldly and realistically, the new American move as to Palestine is a positive step towards avoiding hot war and increasing our chances for the successful conclusion of the cold war. Most Americans, including those who are Jews but Americans first, will be sympathetic with this position, which in its simplest terms places peace and security of the United States ahead of all other considerations.

That is the core of the editorial. It was an honest description of the feelings of the American people, not, of course, of the Zionists or the ward politicians.

The Real War, the Fait Accompli, Is Precipitated at Deir Yassin by Menachem Begin and His Irgunites on April 10, 1948: Massacre, Panic, Exile of the Arabs. Mickey Cohen, American Underworld Racketeer, Helps Begin and Irgun; Gets Medal as “Fellow Fighter for Hebrew Freedom.”

The possibility of a suspension or repeal of the Partition Resolution undoubtedly prompted Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin to join hands unofficially and coordinate and align the underground terrorists’ forces to the regular army of Haganah. The plan was now obvious: Accelerate and intensify the war with the Arabs in order to expand and occupy as much of the country as possible and get rid of as many Arabs as possible before May 15, 1948. Recall the chronicles of Joshua: “Your terror has fallen upon us, all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.…”

The pattern of the war was old, tried and tested. Not the mature Jehovah of Amos, Isaiah and Hillel was to be followed, but the primitive, immature, minor, junior, angry, revengeful, eye-for-an-eye (no, ten-eyes-for-one-eye) Jehovah of Joshua and of Menachem Begin and Ben Gurion. A goyim rein Eretz Israel was to be the answer to all of Jewish history’s evolution in martyrdom, “redemption” and political independence, on May 14, 1948, come what may:

The village Deir Yassin lies a few miles West of Jerusalem and, according to the United Nations Partition plan, which the Israelis accepted at that time—although they reject it now—belonged to the Jerusalem International Zone in which the Israelis had no jurisdiction. The inhabitants of the village had lived in an especially friendly relationship with the old Palestinian [Jewish] settlers. Although there was considerable unrest among the Palestinian Arabs at that time, and many of them had fled the country in fear of the Zionists, none of the inhabitants of Deir Yassin fled, and they were supposed to have been an example of the possibility of amicable co-existence between Arabs and Palestinian Jews. It is also important to remember that the time was five weeks before the Arab States had invaded Israel.

The Irgun and the Stern Group were assigned to look after Deir Yassin. When they ran into trouble, they asked Haganah for help. With its help the village was occupied. After the Haganah men had withdrawn, members of the Irgun and Stern Group perpetrated the most revolting atrocities: 254 Arab men, women and children were butchered in cold blood and their mutilated bodies were thrown into a well; captured Arab women and girls were brought in lorries to Jerusalem and paraded through the streets, where they were jeered and spat at. On the same day, the Irgunists called a press conference at which they pronounced the wholesale murder a “victory” in the war of conquest of Palestine and Transjordania.

Deir Yassin struck panic into the hearts of the Arab villagers, and a large scale exodus began. There had been a steady flight from Arab villages before, for several reasons; perhaps the first was due to the Arab leaders themselves, who early in the war had ordered Arabs living in villages which might become a battle zone to evacuate, in particular those situated near the “mixed” areas. This was a logical demand. There is no question that they promised them a speedy and a victorious return, a promise any nation in war makes to its people.… The Zionists made extensive use of psychological warfare, especially after Deir Yassin, to urge Arabs to quit their homes.¹¹⁷

Here is Menachem Begin’s own boastful account of the “heroic” acts at Deir Yassin:

In Jerusalem as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive.… On the 9th of April, our men, together with an FFI [Stern Group] unit captured the village of Deir Yassin. One of our tenders, carrying a loud speaker, exhorted in Arabic all women, children and aged to leave their homes and to take shelter on the slope of the hill.… Our men were compelled to fight for every house to overcome the enemy. They used large numbers of hand grenades. The civilians who disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties.…

Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. In the rest of the country Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces.… Meanwhile Haganah was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts. All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs began to flee in panic shouting: “Deir Yassin!”¹¹⁸

At the end of March, 1948, the first shipload of arms and ammunition from Czechoslovakia arrived in Palestine, which proved to be a vital factor in the turning of the tide. From then on, militarily, the Zionists never looked back. Tiberias fell on the 18th of April; on the 21st, Haganah forces began to attack Haifa. This battle raged all night and into the following morning. Then, a mortar shell struck the building where the Arab headquarters was located; the Arab commander and his staff left Haifa. Arab fighters, finding themselves leaderless, lost courage; the Zionist commander demanded the surrender of the Arab forces. The Arabs were not willing to accept the terms. Instead, they announced that the whole Arab population would abandon Haifa.…

On May 10 Safad fell after more than a week of heavy fighting. At the end of April, Haganah occupied the Katamon quarter of Jerusalem inhabited largely by German settlers, Greeks and wealthy Arabs. On April 25, the Irgun launched an attack on Jaffa [one of the purely Arab cities allocated to the Arab State in the Partition Plan] but made little headway. On April 29 they attacked again, this time with the cooperation of Haganah, and were more successful, but it took almost two weeks for their forces to effect the surrender of Jaffa on May 13, 1948.¹¹⁹

I knew Jaffa very well, every street of it and many of its orange groves, all Arab-owned. I knew one ultra-generous Arab dentist who did much for me when I was a poor, half-hungry boy, during my first Gymnasia Herzlia days in Jaffa–Tel-Aviv. On purely humanitarian grounds he fixed up a mouthful of teeth for a Jewish boy without asking a penny in return. My Arab dentist’s family, together with some sixty-five to seventy thousands other Arab citizens of Jaffa, went into exile as wretched refugees—all hardworking, honest-to-goodness merchants, scholars, workers, seamen, farmers, victims of “Jewish” political nationalists who discarded the God of the Ten Commandments.

Here is how Menachem Begin describes the brutal assault on the Arab city of Jaffa:

In the months preceding the Arab invasion, and while the five Arab States [Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan] were conducting preparations, we continued to make sallies into Arab territory. The conquest of Jaffa stands out as an event of first rate importance in the struggle for Hebrew independence early in May, on the eve of the invasion by the five Arab States. The emergency committee signed the surrender of the town. It was received by the Haganah Tel-Aviv regional commander, the town occupied jointly by Haganah and Irgun units.¹²⁰

While Irgun units were “making sallies into Arab territory,” dollars were being collected in the United States to help the “cause.” One of the outstanding collections was unique. It is a story of how a notorious racketeer from the American underworld helped the underground Irgun terrorists. Here is a gem from Dean Jennings’ “The Private Life of a Hood” (Mickey Cohen) in the Saturday Evening Post of October 11, 1958: “The second Cohen bonanza can be traced back to a spring day in 1948 when author Ben Hecht urged Mickey Cohen to help out the Irgun movement in Palestine. Mickey agreed and played host to what was perhaps the most remarkable private party in Hollywood history. The affair was held at Slapsie Maxie’s, on May 24, 1948. Total raised was $375,000. The money was sent to Palestine, and in recognition of his services, Mickey received a silver cigarette box with the inscription, ‘June 1, 1948, In Gratitude to a fellow fighter for Hebrew freedom, Mickey Cohen, from the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation.’”

And here is another gem to supplement and complement the event at Slapsie Maxie’s This one comes from Ben Hecht himself. He was the big attraction at that famous dinner, delivering the speech that Mickey Cohen invited him to address to the noble gathering. This is from Hecht’s A Child of the Century:

The underworld kicks in … The “party” was in Slapsie Maxie’s Cafe. A thousand strangers, some with battered faces, some in Society rig, came to the event. I asked Mickey who they were.… “You do not have to worry. Each and everybody here has been told exactly how much to give to the cause of the Jewish heroes. And you can rest assured there’ll be no welchers.” I addressed a thousand bookies, ex-prize fighters, gamblers, touts, and all sorts of lawless and semi-lawless characters and their womenfolks.

“You tell them,” Mickey ordered grimly, “tell them they’re a lot o’ cheap crumbs and they gotta give double.” … Mickey pointed to me and his eyes were filmed. “You heard what he said. It is for the Jews ready to knock hell out of all the bums in the world who don’t like them. Go on, tell ’em.” Mickey came to the edge of the stage and stood up and doubled the ante for the Irgun.… “You can quit crabbin’,” Mr. Howard said, mopping his face. “We raised two hundred G’s. Furthermore, we been here three hours and nobody’s taken a shot at us.”¹²¹

Ben Gurion had his own way of describing the pre-statehood “war of liberation” with the Arabs of Palestine: “Until the British left, no Jewish settlement, however remote, was entered or seized by the Arabs, while the Haganah, under severe and frequent attacks, captured many Arab position and liberated Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, and Safad. And so, on the day of destiny, that part of Arab Palestine where Haganah could operate was almost clear of Arabs.”¹²² Ingrate Ben Gurion! Not a word of credit for Menachem Begin and the Irgun warriors who did so much of the dirty work for him and his Haganah.

By May 14, when Ben Gurion’s armies captured Acre (another purely Arab stronghold that belonged to the Arab state by the Partition plan), the panicky flights of the native Arab population emptied Palestine of about 700,000 Arabs, making it possible for the new state of Israel to start out with a Jewish majority.

In his autobiography Trial and Error, Chaim Weizmann, who became the first President of Israel (an impotent figurehead whose opinions were shunned by the ruling circle of Ben Gurion and company), tells of a remark he made before UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine): “Thou Shalt Not Kill has been ingrained in us since Mount Sinai. It was inconceivable ten years ago that the Jews should break this commandment. Unfortunately they are breaking it today, and nobody deplores it more than the vast majority of the Jews. I hang my head in shame when I have to speak of this fact before you.”¹²³

Later on, when about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were made exiled refugees, Mr. Weizmann apparently did not suffer from conscientious scruples when he joined the “gang” and rejoiced with them, saying: “It was a miraculous clearing of the land; the miraculous simplification of Israel’s task.”¹²⁴

Just a few words about the poor Arabs of Palestine. I am taking the following out of a staff study, “United States Foreign Policy—Middle East,” prepared for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, June 9, 1960 (Committee Print, 86th Congress, 2d Session):

In the Arab community there was no quasi-government and few elected administrators. As a result there was little experience of training in self-rule. There was only a national sentiment, voiced through various Arab political parties which were grouped around personalities or families, rather than based on issues or tangible political and administrative organs. Nearly all functions of government in Arab areas were under the direct control and administration of British mandatory officials.… When the British administration departed some weeks later, there was no organized Arab body to manage the services of government essential for communal organization. With the breakdown of all functions of government necessary to maintain law, order and well-being—water, electricity, posts, police, education, health, sanitation, and the like—Arab morale collapsed. The community became easy prey to rumour and exaggerated atrocity stories. The psychological preparation for mass flight was complete. The hysteria fed upon the growing number of Jewish military victories. With most Arab leaders then outside the country, British officials no longer in evidence, and the disappearance of the Arab press, there remained no authoritative voice to inspire confidence among the Arab masses and to check their flight. As might be expected in such circumstances, the flight gathered momentum until it carried away nearly the whole of the Palestine Arab community.¹²⁵

The State of Israel Is Proclaimed on May 14, 1948. President Truman Is the First to Recognize the Infant State.

The “liberation” of Deir Yassin, Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, the Katamon quarter of Jerusalem, Safad, Tiberias and the rest culminated in the Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, immediately upon the ending of the British mandate. The United Nations was still discussing temporary trusteeship to avoid a bigger and bloodier war in Palestine, since the armies of the neighboring Arab states were poised outside the borders of Palestine, to come to the rescue of their brethren.

What happened? Surely President Truman did not intend to bring about the calamity that ensued. Yet why could not something drastic, compelling, have been done to stop the bloody war that brought more injustices to the Arabs of Palestine? The answer: American election politics. Here is how the New York Times editorial commentator Arthur Krock put it:

Thomas E. Dewey [who ran on the Republican ticket against Mr. Truman] and other Republican leaders attacked the Administration for fumbling and vacillation. This put the Jew-Moslem issue in the Middle East squarely into the Presidential Election of 1948, and politics took over diplomacy. When the British Mandate for Palestine expired May 14, the Security Council of the United Nations was still discussing the United States proposal for a temporary trusteeship. But, at midnight, Ben Gurion and his government proclaimed the new State of Israel, and instantly—to anticipate the demand of Dewey, or another Republican, for action—the Truman Administration recognized Israel de facto.¹²⁶

All-Out War Between the Arab World and the “Jewish” Political Nationalists Begins on May 15, 1948.

The neighboring Arab states—Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan—were naturally outraged by the adoption of the Partition plan at the United Nations, and having served notice on the world that they would defend their brethren of Palestine, and having witnessed the depredations and killings at Deir Yassin, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and other places, they entered Palestine on May 15 in the hope of helping their fellow Arabs.

With the exception of the small but well-trained Jordanian army under the English professional soldier Commander Glubb Pasha, the Arab armies put up a very poor fight. There was a lot of irresponsible, silly and boisterous talk alongside a disorganized, disunited, weak attack on an enemy who was most efficient, well organized, ruthless and determined to fight to win. The Arabs even quarreled among themselves. All in all, according to Glubb Pasha, the Arab soldiers numbered 55,700, whereas the Israelis had a unified army of 120,000 tough, experienced, fanatical men. The Arabs were defeated right and left, except Glubb Pasha’s well-trained Arab soldiers, who matched the Israelis in every encounter and held their ground.

In the distant past and in an age of religious conquests, the Arabs had been a warlike people. They had overrun the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. But now, at this early stage of their national emancipation and maturing, when the various Arab states had just emerged from submissive colonial rule, they expected their national rights to come to them on a platter by way of self-determination and the new world of the United Nations. At this stage they were just dilettantes in political and military matters, and above all in organized war. They did not even have a common Arab national flag or a common Arab national hymn. Only after their humiliating defeats at the hands of the Israelis did their enemy arouse in them a new martial spirit as well as a realization of the critical need to unite, to cooperate honestly, to grow up and mature fast.

Let us now go back to New York, and to the United Nations, and see the desperate but belated appeals and attempts that were made there to save the hopeless situation.

Dr. Magnes. Professor Einstein. Count Bernadotte, Mediator of the United Nations.

About ten days before Israel declared its independence, and before the Arab nations attacked Israel, Dr. Magnes, Chancellor of the Hebrew University, “arrived in America in a last effort to avert open warfare when the British mandate ended. On May 4, 1948, Magnes had an interview with the Secretary of State General Marshall, and at once won his confidence. Said the General: ‘It was the first talk on Palestine in which I had complete trust.’ The next day, at the instance of the General, Magnes had an interview off the record with President Truman. Magnes was battling no longer for the bi-national State, but for peace, for a truce, for a fresh effort at a settlement. His advice was one of the factors which led to the appointment of Count Bernadotte as United Nations Mediator [in Palestine].”¹²⁷

In the same spirit, Professor Einstein, a great friend and staunch supporter of Dr. Magnes, made the following appeal soon after the massacre at Deir Yassin: “We appeal to the Jews in this country and in Palestine, not to permit themselves to be driven into a mood of despair or false heroism which eventually results in suicidal measures.”¹²⁸

Though the United Nations now realized its mistake in the Partition Resolution, it was too late to reverse the march of events. But on May 14, 1948, the United Nations appointed Count Folke Bernadotte (former President of the Swedish Red Cross and member of the Swedish royal family) its mediator. The Count proceeded to Palestine without delay, and on his arrival he was shocked to see with his own eyes tens of thousands of Arab families scattered all over Palestine and the neighboring Arab countries, seeking food, shelter, and safety.

In his report to the General Assembly (Suppl. No. II A/648), he made the following statement:

The Jewish State was not born in peace as was hoped for in the resolution of the 29th of November, 1947, but rather, like many another State in history, 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 the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.… The exodus of the Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumors concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism or expulsion. 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.¹²⁹

During one of the many cease-fires that he arranged between the contending armies, Count Bernadotte, on June 28, 1948, produced a plan for a “final solution,” hoping thus to change the cease-fire into an acceptable armistice. The salient points of his plan were—

(A) That the Arab areas of Palestine be reunited to Jordan, and that Jordan, so constituted, should form a union with Israel.

(B) The Union should handle economic affairs, foreign policy, and defence for both Israel and Jordan.

(C) Subject to the instrument of Union, Jordan and Israel should each control its own internal affairs.

Attached to the proposal was an annex dealing with territorial matters, so as to give to each side a solid and homogeneous block of territory instead of the cross-overs, pockets, and corridors in the United Nation’s Plan. Thus, Jerusalem and the Negev were to be under Arab control and the whole of Galilee would go to the Israelis. Haifa was to become a free port and Lydda a free airport.

Immediately after their publication, on June 28, these proposals were rejected by Israelis and Arabs alike.¹³⁰

When the truce came to an end and warfare was resumed, the Israelis managed to capture more Arab territory. Thus Ramleh, Lydda, a large part of Western Galilee, and Nazareth became Israeli territory. Later, when hostilities were stopped again by the United Nations mediator, “the fighting line froze into the demarcation line, which has become the cause of endless trouble ever since, separating villages from their wells, fields or orchards, and in some instances even running through the main street of a village, separating fathers from sons and brothers from brothers.”¹³¹

Count Bernadotte’s report was submitted to the United Nations on September 16, 1948. Immediately it caused consternation in Israel. The triumphant Israelis, conscious of their strength, resented above all Count Bernadotte’s suggestion that part of the Negev (southern desert of Palestine) be turned over to Jordan to form a “land-bridge” between the Arab world in Palestine and the Arab world in Arabia, Egypt and North Africa in return for fertile Western Galilee, which the Israeli armies had already captured from the Arabs. The Count was denounced by all Israel.

On September 17, Count Bernadotte and his assistant Colonel Serot were assassinated in Jerusalem by men wearing the uniform of the Israeli army. “No action was taken by the Israeli authorities for twenty-four hours to apprehend the murderer. Then Ben Gurion roused himself and took action. Most of the members of the Stern Group were rounded up and many were arrested, but the assassins were never caught.”¹³²

And thus Israel got away with murder. The United Nations demanded that Israel bring the assassins to justice; the answer was that she could not find the murderers. Count Bernadotte was the first martyr in the service of United Nations reconciliation efforts in Palestine—a saint to the Arabs and, perhaps as is usually the case, an anti-Semite in the eyes of the fanatical “Jewish” political nationalists. The saddest part is that Count Bernadotte’s plan was the only answer to the Arab-Israeli war. And another thought: To this day it is almost a crime to recall the murder of Count Bernadotte because “it may be a disservice to the best interests of poor little Israel.” Forgotten is the name of the noble man who was a victim of ungrateful, land-hungry jingoists.

More cease-fires and more uneasy truces were followed by more offensives, until the Israelis managed to capture all of Galilee and the northern part of the Negev, thus enlarging Israeli-held territory by 22 per cent beyond the area originally allotted to the Jewish state by the United Nations Partition plan.

On November 16, 1948, a resolution was adopted by the United Nations calling on the contending armies to agree to an armistice. Separate armistice agreements were signed between Israel and each one of the Arab states early in 1949. Each agreement included a paragraph stating that “the Armistice Demarcation lines should not be considered as the permanent boundary between Israel and her neighbors.” It was an armistice, not a peace settlement; it was a stalemate that only increased the hatred of the Arabs against Israel and made them resolve to recover the lost homeland of the Arabs of Palestine.

Resolution 194 (III), Par. 11, of December 11, 1948, of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

As to the fate of the wretched refugees, exiled from their homes and homeland, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 (III). Paragraph 11 of it reads as follows:

Resolved that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors would be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under the principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

This resolution has since been reaffirmed annually by the General Assembly in every session. It has become an article of faith for Arabs everywhere. It has become their “golden rule of human rights,” and as such it is not negotiable. The whole world recogizes it as an inalienable right of the Arabs of Palestine. Yet, sixteen years after the Arabs’ exile, Israel ignores it all, still believing that time will provide a solution.

The Lausanne Protocol of May 12, 1949.

On December 11, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations established a Conciliation Commission that was to assume the functions formerly given to Count Bernadotte as mediator. The Conciliation Commission called on the Arab nations and Israel to assemble at Lausanne, Switzerland, where it submitted to the two parties a Protocol “which would constitute a basis of work” for future peace negotiations. To the Protocol was annexed a map on which was indicated the boundaries defined in the General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, the original Partition plan. It was to serve as a basis of discussion with the Commission.

Israel signed the Lausanne Protocol, but at the same time the Israeli delegation submitted proposals regarding the territorial questions, according to which it practically demanded that the international frontiers of the mandatory Palestine be considered the frontiers of Israel.

Why did Israel’s delegation sign the Protocol on May 12, 1949? The answer is that on May 11, Israel applied for admission to the United Nations, and she was admitted as the ink was still drying on her signature of May 12 in Lausanne. Once Israel became a full-fledged member of the United Nations, her Government revoked unilaterally the Lausanne Protocol agreement.

“Quickly, Quickly … Bring in Hundreds of Thousands of Immigrants!”

By now there were large conquered but unoccupied spaces from which the Arabs of Palestine had been evicted. And as the Arabs would never forget and never forgive the wrongs done to them until justice was done, the helmsmen of victorious Israel realized that a second round was bound to come eventually.

Menachem Begin put it bluntly in these words to the Jews of the world, whom he considered partners in his dirty business: “Quickly, quickly! Our nation has no time. Bring in hundreds of thousands of immigrants. We are now in the midst of a war for survival, and our tomorrow … depends on the quickest concentration of our nation’s exiles.”¹³³

And Ben Gurion put it this way:

A State of seven hundred, eight hundred thousand Jews cannot be the climax of a vigil kept unbroken through generations and down the patient centuries; nor could it last for long.… The Arabs too will arm themselves in the course of time; they will not always lack learning and technical skill … No! So empty a State would be little justified, for it would not change the destiny of Jewry, or fulfill our historic covenant. The duty of the State is to end Galut [exile of the Jews] at last. Perhaps our generation will not live to see a home coming from the New World, or from Russia in the Old World, but, when the war is over and the State made strong, what let or hindrance will deny us early sight of the ending of the Diaspora in Moslem lands of North Africa and the Middle East, and in Western Europe no less!¹³⁴

This was written by David Ben Gurion on August 13, 1948, while “making sallies into the Arab territory.”

And here are a few more precious and elucidating observatons by the Prime Minister of fledgling Israel: “Our defense army restored in a swift campaign more than tenfold the area won back in the three preceding generations … I add now that the State has been established in only a portion of the land of Israel. Some are hesitant as to the restoration of our historical frontiers fixed and set from the beginning of time.”¹³⁵

“Ending Galut in the Moslem lands,” but not giving up, heaven forbid, the best immigrants of them all, the American Jews—that was the real answer to the open spaces left behind by the exiled Arabs. In September, 1949, newspapers and magazines in America carried the following audacious, presumptuous and shameless threat by Ben Gurion to Jewish parents in America: “‘Even if they decline to help us, we will bring the youth to Israel,’ the Premier of the Jewish State declared. He expressed, however, the hope that ‘this will not be necessary.’”¹³⁶ This was said in an address delivered by Ben Gurion to a sycophantic delegation of members of the Histadrut of America visiting Israel.

In July, 1952, Moshe Sharett, then Foreign Minister of Israel, speaking before the annual convention of Labor Zionists of America, said that Israel must have a population of not less than four million. And he added that the truly desirable influx must come from North and South America.

Even as late as 1962, Ben Gurion and his emissaries kept to this thesis. Thus, at the opening of the golden-jubilee celebrations in Israel of Hadassah (the women’s Zionist organization of America), “Ben Gurion Cautions U.S. Jews on Ties. ‘Israel is the basis of the whole existence of the Jewish communities everywhere, especially in the United States.… The fate of Israel depends on the depth of Jewish feeling abroad, and the fate of Jewry in America and other countries depends on the existence of Israel.’ Finally, he asked that American Jews send their children and grandchildren to help Israel preserve the ‘human, moral and intellectual superiority’ that he said had enabled Israel to win her two wars against the Arab states. ‘We must have some of the best pioneering youth,’ Mr. Ben Gurion said.”¹³⁷

Before we go into the search for manpower of the state of Israel, let us take a look at the exiled Palestinian Arabs in their pitiful camps outside the borders of their homeland.

The Palestinian Arabs Now Exiled Refugees. 1948–?

“What did the world do to prevent this genocide, the vaster tragedy of six million Jews murdered during World War II? Why should there be now such excitement in the United Nations and the Western capitals about the plight of the Arab refugees?”¹³⁸ asked Weizmann the United States Ambassador to Israel. To this one noted Arab refugee, Dr. Izzat Tannous, answered: “Is it fair and just for any cause whatsoever, for a people of a particular faith, to come from the outside, from Poland, Russia, Germany, and from everywhere, and take the homes and homeland of another people of other faiths, who have done the Jews no harm?”¹³⁹

I have before me the Annual Report of the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) dated June 30, 1961. A few figures, and then a few facts about the Arabs and the properties left behind them, should help us to understand why there should now be “such excitement” about the plight of the Arab refugees.

Total Number of Refugees

Jordan

630,725

Gaza Strip

261,125

Lebanon

140,201

Syria

118,973

1,151,024

The June 30, 1964, report by the Commissioner-General, Lawrence Michelmore, of UNRWA has a “total of 1,246,585 refugees registered. Of this number, 878,901 were registered for rations aimed at feeding refugees from 1,500 to 1,600 calories a day at a cost of four cents a person.”

About 60,000 Palestinian Arabs were not registered with UNRWA because they were “self supporting,” or because they emigrated to other parts of the world. About 200,000 persons in Jordan and the Gaza sector have become destitute because they have lost their lands and their means of livelihood, but just because they still retain their homes they are not eligible to get rations from UNRWA. Think of a farmer and his family who live in their old home on the border of Israel, but whose farm is now being tilled by encroaching trespassers just behind his old home.¹⁴⁰

The UNRWA report, in alluding to the attitude of the refugees, says: “In last year’s report the Director referred once again to the attitude of the refugees, to their convictions that a grave injustice had been done to them, and to their longing to return to their old homes.… There have been no signs of any change from their collective hostility towards major development projects which, to the refugees, imply permanent resettlement away from their ancestral homes and the abandonment of their hopes of repatriation. Nor has there been any affirmative action by the Government of Israel to facilitate the implementation of the General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December, 1948, concerning repatriation and compensation.” It quotes an Arab delegate as saying: “Since they [the refugees] had their own homes, property, and villages, they did not need shelters, rations, or settlements. The relief they were receiving from the United Natons was a disgrace to the international community, but to the refugees it was a mental and spiritual anguish.”

Seized Arab Properties. The Jewish National Fund (JNF).

Abandoned Arab properties were the greatest contributions toward making Israel a viable state. “Of the 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and the beginning of 1953, 350 were on ‘absentee’ properties.… In 1954 more than one-third of Israel’s Jewish population lived on absentee property, and nearly a third of the new Jewish immigrants settled in urban areas ‘abandoned’ by Arabs. The Arabs left whole cities like Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Lydda, Ramleh, Beisan, Majdal; 388 towns and villages and large parts of 94 other cities and towns containing nearly a quarter of all buildings in Israel. Ten thousand shops, businesses and stores were left in Jewish hands; citrus groves, olive groves, etc.…”¹⁴¹

“The Israeli Custodian has been renting, buying and selling Arab property at ridiculous low prices, giving no account of his deeds and deals, and paying no return whatsoever to the destitute owners.”¹⁴²

After reading this account of the appropriations by the state of Israel of Arab lands and properties, one is shocked at the unbelievably hypocritical statements made by the greedy professional “Jewish” nationalists when they conduct their drives and appeals for the Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose original purpose was “to purchase land in Palestine [from the Arabs] to become the inalienable property of the Jewish people.” Said Moshe Sharett, one-time Prime Minister of Israel and now Chairman of the. Executive of the Jewish Agency, at a JNF meeting in London: “Unlike those countries with a long independent history, we did not obtain our national estate through dispossesson of the upper classes. We had to purchase every acre.…”¹⁴³

First, the Jewish National Fund was the land-buying agency of the World Zionist Organization. Then, after the state of Israel took possession of the land and properties of the Palestinian Arab refugees, the ever-grasping and ever-hungry Zionist machine was determined to find a new image and new function for the old Jewish National Fund. It has now become the land-reclamation arm of the World Zionist Organization. After all, the old white-and-blue JNF collection boxes in the homes of innocent Jews have been there since the days of Dr. Herzl; the machine feeds on drives; the everlasting jobholders are always there; the gullible honorary officers are well inoculated with newly coined slogans. It costs nothing to dig new quotes out of the old Bible to produce new shekels through the old relic still called the Jewish National Fund.

Originally, the United Nations approved the allocation of about 6,000 square miles of land for the state of Israel. The state now has about 8,500 square miles. The United Jewish Appeal and the Bonds for Israel drives all go to finance the settlement and development of land left by the Arab refugees exiled from Palestine. Then, annually, when their drives for funds are over, comes the Jewish National Fund with its own drives to do the very same thing. Thus “The Jewish National Fund—the land reclamation arm of the World Zionist Organization in Israel—has formulated plans for the settlement and development of 250,000 acres of wasteland in the Central Galilee region, where the core of the Arab enclave in Israel lives … $27,000,000 to start work on the 250,000 arid acres … The JNF will raise $11 million in the U.S.A.… The Israeli Government will invest $11 million more, and the Jewish Agency will supply $5 million.…” (New York Times, October 27, 1963.)

Gimmicks and “conduits” to mulct donations out of the innocent and gullible kindhearted Jewish masses.

“Palestine or Death!”

Joseph Alsop, the noted reporter-columnist, visited the Arab refugee camps some time ago. Here are excerpts from a longer report:

Imagine a landscape of the moon, the land dust brown, bone dry, hideously eroded, with hardly a growing thing in sight, and the air searing hot with the heavy heat of air far below sea level. [He visits one camp called Karamaneh and talks to one Arab refugee called Khaled Muhammad] “But, Khaled Muhammad,” one visitor asked: “Would not the people of Karamaneh accept generous payments, say, maybe $4000 per family, to help them resettle somewhere instead of continuing indefinitely with this strange death-in-life?” Khaled Muhammad has been first a smiling host, full of little attentions for his guests’ comforts, and then a polite though somewhat uninterested informant. But, at this last question, he suddenly takes fire in an almost frightening manner. “Never, Never!” he all but shouts, “will the people of Karamaneh agree to go anywhere except back to the homes in Palestine that have been stolen from them. Why should they go elsewhere? Why had Britain and America helped Israel to drive them from the land that was always theirs? What wrong had the people of Karamaneh done, to be thus dispossessed? Where was justice under heaven? Justice, Justice, all we ask is justice” is the refrain, repeated again and again with mounting bitterness.¹⁴⁴

The following is an extract from a long statement delivered by Dr. Izzat Tannous, Director of the Palestine Arab Refugee Office, New York, before the United Nations Special Political Committee, on November 30, 1959. It refers to the suggestion made by Secretary-General Hammarskjold about reintegrating the Palestinian Arab refugees into the economic life of the Near East without prejudice to Resolution 194 (III):

The Arab States and the Palestinian Arab refugees have already given their opinion on these recommendations. The offer to expend 1½-2 billion dollars by the United Nations on the reintegration of the Arab refugees in the economic life of the Near East would have been a great, benevolent act had the Palestine refugees been without homes and without lands and without a country. Rightly or wrongly, the refugees believe that this scheme of reintegration in all lands but their own is a plan carefully worked out to resettle, within ten years, all the refugees outside their homes forever.

All the assurances that may be given by the United Nations that their Right of Return will not be prejudiced, will not induce the refugees to accept the scheme … The refugees have no more faith in the United Nations.

Mr. Chairman, for eleven years the refugees have been patiently waiting to go back home as a human right and in accordance with the United Nations Resolutions. They firmly believe in that right and they dread the idea of not going back. The records of UNRWA will support me when I say that the refugees would not allow any repairs in their shattered abodes for fear that these repairs would constitute part of a reintegration scheme. It was with difficulty that we could convince them to move from their tattered tents to better huts. Is it that the refugees do not want better quarters? Surely it is not because they wish to remain in this misery in atonement of their sins nor in atonement of the sins of others. It is because they insist on going back home. “Palestine or Death!” has become their motto.¹⁴⁵

And what is the response of the Jewish people (the Rachamonim B’nai Rachamonim—compassionate ones, the children of compassionate ones—the ones who quote our Hillel, “What you don’t like, don’t do to your fellow man”) who support the predatory “Jewish” nationalists who brought about this great tragedy of our time?

Only a single honest, fearless, sincere and compassionate Jewish voice has been heard in America so far, aside from the members of the American Council for Judaism, in defense of the Arab refugees—the Jewish Newsletter of brave, unique William Zukerman (who, alas, died recently as a burnt offering in self-sacrifice, in his war to uphold traditional Jewish justice against barbaric, tribalistic “Jewish” political nationalism). Mr. Zukerman said in the Newsletter of September, 1950, and December 1, 1958:

The fact that the Arab refugees fled in panic because of real or imaginary danger is no excuse for depriving them of their homes, fields, and livelihood. No people is exempt from panic in war time; least of all the Jews. In their long wanderings, Jews have often fled from real and imaginary threats of pogroms and wars. To deprive the Arabs of their homes and property because they, like most humans, sought safety for themselves and their children, is a grave act of injustice.… It is a reversal of all moral principles upon which the Jews have based their civilization and their way of life from the days of the prophets to the present. How can a people which has for centuries led a life as a refugee and experienced all the bitter pain of exile begin its political renaissance with an act of injustice against other refugees?…

The Arabs have lost, by the emergence of the State of Israel, their homes, fields, and country which, as history has shown, can be regained. But the Jews are in mortal danger of losing their souls and status as a people of justice and mercy which was their most precious possession for centuries.…

The Christian world too, now better disposed towards the Jews than at any previous time, is not likely to forget the tragically dramatic moral paradox of our time, that Jews, the most pitiful victims of exile and oppression in history, were the first to use the same methods which had been used against them, and inflicted the tragedy of exile on other people because this helped to build more conveniently a new state. And, are true Christians ever likely to forget the spectacle of American Jews, prosperous, rich, and self-satisfied, not only not protesting against this act of brute force, but supporting it munificently, justifying and glorifying it as an act of justice and heroism?

Is all this not too great a price to pay for a State? Is it not time for Israelis, and particularly for American Jews, to return to their normal selves, after a hangover of more than twelve years, and do something about bringing their moral house in order, without waiting for the Arab States, the United Nations and the United States to do it for them?

The “modern prophet of Israel” Ben Gurion has only a cynical smile of satisfaction when he talks of the Arab refugees: “Even in the question of the Arab refugees, time is not working against us!”¹⁴⁶ The idea, of course, is that, given time, the Arabs of Palestine in their exile, growing old, will get sick and tired of waiting for their salvation, and will eventually strike a bargain with Israel by means of loans offered by “stupid” America to resettle the refugees away from their old homes and homeland.

A few days after his visit to the Arab camps, Joseph Alsop went to Jerusalem to interview Ben Gurion. Here are a few sharp observations made by Mr. Alsop:

As Ben Gurion talks … you keep thinking of Israel’s judges and Israel’s prophets in the old Bible times. Ben Gurion, the sharp, sometimes unscrupulous politician, is there too. So is Ben Gurion the leader of such ruthless single-mindedness that he was wholly ready to sacrifice the simple Arab peasantry of Palestine in order to create the Israeli State. Ben Gurion plainly finds danger invigorating, and considers that a state of siege has positive advantages.… “And, if we cannot get real peace for ten years or twenty years, we can stand it, and there will be some blessing in it, too.”¹⁴⁷

The tragic image exhibited by today’s world Jewry, when called upon to express and translate into action their proverbial and traditional humanitarian ideals toward such a calamity as has befallen the Arabs of Palestine, is an enigma, a pathology for specialists in mob psychology to go into. The metamorphosis that took place in the hearts of so many twisted and confused Jews of our time is unbelievable and pathetic. Let us take a quick look at the image, through the spectrum that ranges from the professional and fanatical nationalist Jews to the kind and philanthropic naïve American Jews of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Said Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein, Chairman of the National Committee for Labor Israel, at the annual convention of this organization (which was also the opening of their 1962 campaign for funds): “If the Arab leaders had real compassion for their fellow Arabs, they would long ago have rehabilitated them with the not inconsiderable funds paid out by the United Nations for their relief.”¹⁴⁸

The cloven-footed, pontificating Abba Eban, former Ambassador of Israel to the United States and the United Nations, “decries the policy of the Arabs, who are lacking a sense of altruism.” And at the General Assembly Special Political Committee, Abba Eban mentioned that his country asked only two conditions from the Arabs before compensating them even before a general Arab-Israeli peace settlement: “First, that the refugees remain in Arab lands and outside of Palestine. And second, that international financial help be made available to Israel to help settle the refugee claims.”¹⁴⁹

Said Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President of the American Jewish Congress in a resolution he introduced at the closing session of the group’s biennial national convention in Miami Beach on May 18, 1958: “We call upon the United States to take the lead in solving the Arab Refugee problem by pressing for the resettlement of the bulk of the refugees in the sparsely populated land of their Arab kinsmen.”

One could give dozens of similar, typically cynical, inhuman, heartless, un-Jewish Zionist attitudes toward the victims of their maniacal, predatory nationalistic deeds. But it shocks and disturbs one much more to read about the crocodile tears shed by such an old and honorable organization as the American Jewish Committee (whose members always formed the core of all truly philanthropic Jewish organizations in America) about the Arab refugees. Said Irving M. Engel, in his presidential address at the forty-ninth annual meeting in January, 1956: “We Jews know only too well the tragedy contained in the human wastelands known as refugee camps; the erosion of hope, the spread of bitterness and despair …” Then Mr. Engel pledged the Committee to an intensified search for solutions—a task requiring the joint and harmonious effort of Americans of all faiths and constituting, in Mr. Engel’s words “the greatest contribution the American Jewish Committee can make to the peace of the Middle East and of the world.”¹⁵⁰

As the whole world knows, nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done by any Jews, except the American Council for Judaism, to help solve the problems of the wretched Arab refugees exiled from their homes and homeland. Words, words—empty, insincere if not cynical words.

Why don’t the members of the AJC, who are the richest Jews in America and who form the directorships of the United Jewish Appeal and the Joint Distribution Committee, stop being the lackeys of the manipulating “Jewish” political nationalists, and stop financing directly or indirectly the militarization of aggressive Israel by relieving the Government of Israel of its economic and social obligations to its citizens, thus enabling the military junta around Ben Gurion’s Government to divert Israel’s internal funds to purchase more large-scale arms with which to terrorize its Arab neighbors? Why does the AJC not insist on first rehabilitating the Palestinian Arabs as farmers and citizens in their homeland alongside the Jewish immigrants, and thus bring peace and harmony to the Middle East and the world instead of Armageddon? Why doesn’t it insist on doing real, pure charity (philanthropy) by helping to solve the problem of the Palestinian Arab refugees, who are today the only real refugees in the world having a claim on them? The militant Zionists never were a philanthropic organization. All they want is manpower for the new “Jewish” fatherland they created. They are not looking for honest-to-goodness refugees. They create them when they do not exist.

The Ihud Association of Israel had this to say about the Palestinian Arab refugees and the Jews:

In the end we must come out publicly with the truth; that we have no moral right whatever to oppose the return of the Arab refugees to their land … that until we have begun to redeem our sin against the Arab refugee, we have no right to continue the “Ingathering of the Exiles.” We have no right to demand that American Jews leave their country to which they have become attached and settle in a land that has been stolen from others, while the owners of it are homeless and miserable.

We had no right to occupy the house of an Arab if we had not paid for it at its value. The same goes for fields, gardens, stores and workshops. We had no right to build a settlement and to realize the ideal of Zionism with other peoples’ property. To do this is robbery. I am surprised that Rabbi Herzog, and all those who speak in the name of Jewish ethics and who always quote the Ten Commandments, should consent to such a state of affairs. Political conquest cannot abolish private property.

We have raised a great deal of money and used it for various purposes. Instead of doing this, we should have brought in less immigrants and used the money to help the refugees. In the end we must speak the truth. We are faced with this choice: To listen to the voice of truth for the sake of our own good and genuine peace, or, not to listen to it, and to bring evil and misfortune upon us and the future generations.¹⁵¹

Wanted Manpower. Forced-Draft Immigration. Sixteen Years’ Scramble for Immigrants for the Created Empty Spaces of the Expanded Infant State. The “Ingathering of the Exiles” for the Next Round With the Arabs.

With “good riddance” of about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs (now over a million) and with newly acquired wide, unoccupied spaces; with all sorts of abandoned fields, vineyards, orange and olive groves, schools, hospitals, houses, stores and offices; and with the new boundaries of Israel stretching out deep into the neighboring Arab lands, far beyond the allotted areas of the Partition plan of the United Nations, there was a crying need for manpower for the state of Israel.

Ben Gurion already saw the problem of manpower in July, 1948: “One difficulty I shrink from speaking of: Shall we find enough Jews for the Jewish State?” This started the forced draft of the great “ingathering of the exiles” from legitimate sources such as the Displaced Persons camps in Germany, and from illegitimate sources such as Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, India and others where Jews had lived for thousands of years fully integrated, and were well off, if not better off than the native Gentiles with whom they got along famously.

Do you recall the early dream of Ben Gurion?—“When the war is over, what let or hindrance will deny us early sight of the ending of the Diaspora in Moslem lands, in Western Europe no less …?” From the time of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 up to 1955, only 2,013 American and Canadian Jews emigrated to Israel. About the same number came from England. Something drastic, therefore, had to be done to make Jews “ingather” on a large scale. And, as the “ingathering” required funds to finance Aliyah, housing, education, jobs, arms and so on, drives were instituted annually in America, England and everywhere, with big, well-greased machines to drive the drives. Thus there were cultural drives, religious drives, trade-union drives, medical drives, youth Aliyah drives, home-building drives, land-purchase drives (although the land in Israel was now well in the hands of the Israeli Government and there were hardly any Arabs left from whom to buy more land). Drives, drives, drives to establish a perpetually privileged, sanctified mendicants’ regime. From now on, there were two independent, parallel annual mendicants’ drives on the Jews of the world: the old orthodox Jerusalem eleemosynary institutional drives for money in the name of the God of Israel, and the new wholesale drives of the “Jewish” political nationalists in the name of the holy “Jewish homeland” Israel.

Emissaries and officials from Israel by the thousands were streaming to the Diaspora to urge, push, pull, convince, sell—to collect, collect, collect funds. Gradually, the marvelous vast network of communal Jewish charities in America was captured and the United Jewish Appeal (UJA)—a strictly philanthropic organization—was unwittingly converted into a wedded helpmate to the state of Israel.

With the state of Israel relieved of much of the burden of having to look after the normal civilian needs of her population, she could now arm to the teeth. Thus, according to the New York Times of February 28, 1962, “an allocation equivalent to $136,666,666 is provided for the Defense Ministry, whose budget in the current year was $105,000,000.” With such vast funds, Ben Gurion and his junta could keep the fair-haired boys and girls of the virile army, navy and air force in spick-and-span manner, fly “Jewish” bombers and fighters, manipulate heavy tanks, run “Jewish” submarines, and perhaps, some day, develop “Jewish” atomic weapons. Think of the glory and grandeur! Think how proud we Jews ought to be, Isaiah and Hillel to the contrary notwithstanding!

And so, while young, gifted and competent Israelis were advancing along on the scientific, social and economic fronts, thanks to the colossal help supplied by American Jews, it was the military front that advanced first and foremost, thanks to the “philanthropic” relief pouring into the “Jewish homeland.” They were going to show the world what the “new specimen of a fighting Jew” could do. The army was to assimilate all the ingathered youths into one homogeneous fighting unit. That is welfare work, is it not? Look how the timid Yemenite Jew, for instance, can handle spoon and fork and gun; look how the Diaspora boys and girls in Israel now speak modern Hebrew, dance the Horrah, sing patriotic and lovesongs exactly like the native Sabras—the elite of the Fatherland. Is it not contributing to a supreme new “Jewish” civilization, a spiritual center to regenerate and reconstruct and uplift the “materialistic Jews of the Diaspora”?

Let us now plunge into the “ingathering” business and get acquainted with the gimmicks of the ingatherers. Mr. James G. McDonald, first American Ambassador to Israel, unconsciously let the cat out of the bag in his book My Mission to Israel when he spoke about the everlasting “philanthropic rescue drives” for immigrants impressed for service to the “homeland”: … the real reason, they told me, is that Israel is underpopulated and surrounded by actual and potential enemies.… Israel must be filled up as rapidly as possible.”¹⁵²

I shall first take up just two examples of the “ingathering of victims of persecution”: one a spurious sort of “victim of persecution,” such as the Moroccan Jews; the other, genuine victims of persecution, such as the refugees who fled Hungary in 1956–57 in search of freedom. The Hungarian Jews were, of course, a small part of a large exodus of Hungarian revolutionaries and liberals who fled their homeland in November–December, 1956. Let us see what happened in each case; how manpower was force-drafted to make Israel militarily strong. Morocco will exemplify Iraq, Tunis and Egypt (before the assault on Egypt in 1956). It will also exemplify to a great extent such other unpersecuted Jews in the Communist countries as are in the same boat as their fellow Gentile citizens, for good or for bad. Hungary will represent the typical Jewish refugee who, for one reason or another, finds himself in need of a new home and homeland.

Jews of Morocco.

Here are a few authentic reports from special correspondents sent to Morocco by the New York Times to study on the spot what was going on there:

The emigration movement began in January, 1956. At that time, Zionist agents went from house to house in poor Jewish quarters warning the inhabitants of the waves of anti-Semitism that would surely follow Morrocan independence from France. (Rabat, Morocco, October 21, 1957)

Organized emigration of Jews has been outlawed for more than a year by the Moroccan Government, but a clandestine Zionist organization here has established a sort of “underground railroad” for would-be emigrants. (Rabat, Morocco, November 21, 1957)

Actually, Moroccan political independence from France helped the economic and social status of the Jews in Morocco. They are better off than ever before, and have lived in complete harmony with their fellow citizens. “The Government position is that Jews are valuable to the Moroccan economy because of their skill, energy and capital. Kadima (the Zionist organization) is regarded as a recruiting organization for emigration. The suppression of Kadima did not surprise Jewish observers in Morocco.” (Rabat, Morocco, June 18, 1957.)

A good many of the poor Moroccan Jews who were induced to emigrate from Morocco to Israel in 1957 often found themselves treated like “blackies” in “blond” Israel, and found life far from the paradise they were promised. Many returned to Morocco. “More than 3,500 Moroccan Jews out of an estimated total of 30,000 emigrants have come back to Morocco in recent months, according to responsible Jewish leaders.” (Rabat, Morocco, October, 1957.)

The Egyptian Jews in the pre-1956 war of Israel on Egypt, and the Jews of Iraq, were much better off than the Moroccan Jews. These Jews could trace their history in their native lands for millenniums. It was a crime to uproot them and to make their lives precarious by inducing them to go to Israel. They were not victims of persecution, but victims of “Jewish” political nationalism.

Hungarian Jewish Refugees, 1956–57.

And here are some authentc reports from the New York Times about the Hungarian Jewish refugees:

Jewish Refugees Loath to Go to Israel. Only 900 of 14,000 Jews Accept Invitation. Others Look to the U.S.A. Fewer than 900 of the 14,000 Jews who have fled from Hungary for the last few months have decided to resettle in Palestine. Although Israel invited all Jews to her shores soon after the start of the Hungarian uprising and to move them out of Austria within forty-eight hours just for the asking, the vast majority remained here with hopes of going to the U.S. or Canada.

Representatives of Jewish agencies, in public talks and private interviews, have failed to persuade many of the Jews to go to Israel. Thousands are willing to put up with life in the crowded camps while they await a chance to go westwards. The reaction has been the same among young and old, among orthodox and non-observant Jews. (Vienna, December 29, 1956)

The leaders of Jewish relief agencies have concluded that most Jewish refugees from Hungary had better change their minds and go to Israel if their desire to leave Europe is to be realized … They plan to present it as such to the 12,000 Jewish refugees from Hungary who have thus far refused emigration to Israel and who remain in Austria. (Vienna, January 13, 1957)

Let us now take up one “momentous,” “eventful,” “phenomenal” historic “rescue drive.”

A Rumanian “Rescue Drive” Stunt, 1959.

In September, 1945, immediately after World War II, the Earl Harrison Report to the President of the United States spoke of the mood of the Jewish refugees at that time in these words: “Palestine is definitely and pre-eminently their first choice.… It is also true, however, that there are many who wish to go to Palestine because they realize that their opportunty to be admitted into the U.S. or into other countries in the Western Hemisphere is limited, if not impossible.”¹⁵³

With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and for four years afterward, immigration was going full blast: 101,828 in 1948; 239,576 in 1949; 170,249 in 1950; 171,095 in 1951. By 1952, immigration to Israel had sunk to almost nothing from the point of view of manpower. In spite of the tremendous and expensive propaganda by the world-wide Zionist machine, the candidates for Aliyah refused to be uprooted from their homelands for the “pie in the sky” in Israel. In 1956, the propaganda machine did succeed in increasing the immigration to 56,234, but 6,028 emigrated out of Israel; and in 1957, 72,634 new immigrants were “ingathered,” but about 13,000 left Israel.

During 1958, when immigration to Israel began to dwindle again—26,636 entered Israel but 7,724 left—the machine suddenly announced that 80,000 to 100,000 new immigrants were expected to be “rescued” in the coming year, all from Rumania—in fact, the beginning of a great “exodus” from Rumania, and perhaps also from Soviet Russia, on an unprecedented scale.

Let us see what happened to this sudden great exodus.

The Rumanian exodus affair began in October, 1958. On Sunday, October 26, 1958, the New York Times carried an innocent-sounding news item from Tel-Aviv, Israel, reading: “Rumania Relents. Ban on immigration to Israel is relaxed to permit reunion of families. Most of Rumania’s 250,000 Jews want to come to Israel according to information available here.”

Other newspapers in America carried similar reports, one reading: “The Communist satellite Government [of Rumania] radically reversing previous attitude and now willing to allow unlimited emigration to Israel.” Some officials of the Jewish Agency and of the Joint Distribution Committee reported from Paris that after many months of discussion with the Israeli Government, Poland was about ready to permit Polish Jews to leave freely for Israel. And hazily you were made to believe that it was quite possible that even the Soviet Government of Russia might be included in this “reversal of policies.” Thus, on January 29, 1959, the New York Times carried a front-page news item from Tel-Aviv, quoting Ben Gurion, the Prime Minister:

Israel Hopeful of Soviet Exodus. Ben Gurion says Rumanian emigration may be signed. The Premier described the new trend in emigration policies in Eastern Europe as “the greatest miracle in current history.” He foresaw today the possibility of mass immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union. The Premier said factors underlying the emigration from Rumania might lead to the elimination of barriers against the largest concentration of Jews in the world. The allusion was to the Soviet Union where there are more than 2,000,000 Jews.… Mr. Ben Gurion said he had reasons for this optimism but was not free to explain them. He said the arrival of 250,000 Jews from Eastern Europe would strain Israel’s capacity. The Premier said he regretted that Israelis did not fully appreciate the historic significance of the change in Eastern Europe’s opposition to the emigration of the Jews, and that this generation did not appreciate the great privilege of being able to offer redemption to Jews facing annihilation.

Now, let us follow up the ballyhooed emigration that was to produce 80,000 to 100,000 new immigrants for Israel, with its deceptive propaganda campaign, the “rescue drive,” which was to produce—and did produce—hundreds of millions of dollars for the bottomless coffers of eleemosynary Israel. On November 2, 1958, the New York Times carried a report from its special correspondent in Israel, which read as follows:

Israelis Get Plea to Aid Immigrants. Unforeseen Flow From East Europe Brings First Appeal of Its Kind for Funds. Restrictions on Jewish emigration from Rumania are being lifted; there is an increase in emigration from Poland, and emigration from Hungary is expected to be resumed … Addressing members of the United Jewish Appeal “Study Mission” from the U.S. at Herzlia, Dr. Dov Joseph, treasurer of the Jewish Agency, made a new plea for more funds …

On January 9, 1959, the New York Times had a report from its Jerusalem correspondent, which read as follows:

Influx to Israel to Increase in 1959. Easier Exit From Eastern Europe Expected to Bring 80,000 Newcomers. The trickle of Jewish emigration permitted from Eastern Europe has become a small flood.…

And from Bucharest, the New York Times had the following report on January 27, 1959:

Rumania Speeds Jews’ Departure. Emigration Rate to Israel About 8,000 This Month and Is Increasing … The Rumanian Government’s decision to permit a resumption of Jewish exodus was explained on the humanitarian consideration “that familes should be reunited.”

Please note, again the Rumanian Government’s explanation of its relaxation of emigration restrictions, that “familes should be reunited.” On February 1, 1959, the New York Times had a long article from its special correspondent, Seth S. King, in Israel, which read as follows:

The Rumanian influx poses big problems for Israel. 80,000 to 100,000 immigrants are expected from Eastern Europe before the end of this year. This is a staggering number for a tiny poorly equipped country to absorb. And yet, the arrival of the Rumanians was described ths week by Premier Ben Gurion as a “blessing” … The great problem will occur a year from now when permanent employment will have to be ready for these people. To accomplish all this, Israel needs money now, and will need even more in a year ahead …”

On February 6, 1959, the New York Times published a report from Miami Beach:

Fund Crisis Cited by Jewish Appeal. Leader Sees Need Vast Sums to Help Emigration From Eastern Europe. A leader of the United Jewish Appeal said here today that the appeal was confronted with a critical need for vast funds to aid Jews now leaving Eastern European countries, particularly Rumania, for Israel.

On February 7, the New York Times report from Miami Beach read:

American Jewish leaders were urged here today to make an intensive effort in the next thirty days of informing Jewish communities of their “gigantic responsibilities” in helping Israel to absorb some 100,000 immigrants this year.

On February 8, the New York Times report from Miami Beach read:

Two Drives Started by Jewish Appeal. 100 Million Asked for Israel Immigrants and 105 Million Goal for the General Fund. About 10,000 men, women and children are streaming into Israel monthly, and indications are that this figure will be increased.… In a cabled message, Prime Minister Ben Gurion of Israel expressed the hope that American Jews would “share with us, both the great opportunity and immense challenge posed by this fateful emigration trend” … Levi Eshkol [Israel’s Finance Minister] asked Jewish communties here to “give full philanthropic priority to the needs of Israel’s new immigrants.”

On February 16, the New York Times reported:

Jews Join to Aid Israel’s Migrants. Leaders of nineteen major American organizations appealed to American Jews to give more financial support to the movement of Jews from East Europe, particularly Rumania, to Israel … Philip Klutznick, President of the B’nai B’rith, in introducing Mrs. Golde Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, said that the new immigration was a “matter of honor, a responsibility for the American Jewish community rather than for Israel.” Mrs. Meir stressed that “the Rumanian Jews belong to Israel.”

The Jewish Newsletter added this remark to the above report: “And, of course, the Presidents’ Club used its pressure to oppose the immigration of Jewish refugees to the United States or any other country than Israel.”

On February 20, the New York Times reported:

Rabbinate Backs Aid to Migrants. Leaders of the 3 Branches of Judaism Act to Speed United Jewish Appeal Fund. Dr. Nahum Goldman, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, noted the heavy migration from East European countries, especially Rumania. Speaking last night at the Towers Hotel, Mrs. Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, said that the migration of Jews to Israel presents the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity Israel has had to face since its establishment as a nation.

On February 21, the New York Times reported:

Ben Gurion Backs Immigration Aim. Says Israel Has Adequate Space to Admit 3,000,000 From Soviet Bloc Lands. The Israeli leader said that with deep sadness he saw no prospect yet that all the 3,000,000 Jews behind the Iron Curtain would come to Israel. He said Israel could absorb that number.

Suddenly, the “great exodus” from behind the Iron Curtain began to fizzle out even as rescue funds kept on flowing into the coffers of the Jewish Agency from the innocent, generous but gullible American Jews.

Let us now follow up, for a little while longer, the story of the “great exodus.” On February 22 the New York Times Moscow correspondent cabled:

Moscow Opposes Jews’ Emigration. Flow to Israel Would Alienate Arabs, Izvestia States. West Rumors Scored. Western reports that Moscow might permit some of its 3,000,000 Jews to leave for Israel, are “provocative fabrications designed to shake Arab confidence in the friendship of the Soviet Union.…” Izvestia declared that such emigration would increase the military and manpower potential of Israel against the Arab nations. The newspaper said that the thought that Moscow would tolerate such help was a “badly smelling concoction.”

On February 26, the New York Times reported:

The Rumanian Government accused Israel today of using the migration of Rumanian Jews to Israel to create bad blood between the Eastern bloc and the United Arab Republic.… It charged that “leading circles of Israel and world Zionism had been used to unleash a ‘diversionist campaign’ trumpeting abroad the crude invention that there was a ‘mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to Israel’”… It asserted that at the last public census, 146,262 persons had registered as Jews, and only a small number of these wished to emigrate to Israel.

The Jewish Newsletter of New York published, on February 23, the following report:

Vienna correspondents report that there has been a halt in the flow of immigrants from Rumania with the result that trains from Bucharest to Vienna have been practically empty for the last two weeks.… Paul Novick, editor of the New York Yiddish Communist daily “The Freiheit,” who is now in Moscow, cabled on February 8 that he spoke by telephone with the leader of the Rumanian National Jewish Committee, M. Backal, who denied that 10,000 Jews recently left Rumania. “The present migration is simply a case of Jews desiring to join their families,” Backal said and complained that “when Jews were unable to emigrate, the Rumanian Government was attacked for not letting them go. Now, that they are permitting them to do so, they are attacked for different reasons.”

The Jewish Newsletter of the same date goes on with the following precious news item:

Mr. Shimeon, Director General of the Ministry of Defense and one of Ben Gurion’s chief lieutenants, delivered an address on Rumanian immigration at the Weizmann Institute, in the course of which he said: “The greater the population of Israel, the greater will be her army. A million soldiers will safeguard the State of Israel against any Arab attack. No Arab country will dare attack Israel if her army will be a million strong.”¹⁵⁴

Though the mountain of immigrants gave birth to only a tiny little mouse of manpower for Israel, officially the debacle of the exodus was not recognized. The professional Jews had long ago prepared their speeches for the drive of drives, and the campaign for more funds went on and on. Thus, on March 3, the New York Times reported:

Rabbis’ Group Asks U.S. to Help Israel in Immigration Crisis. The head of the rabbinical Council of America appealed tonight to President Eisenhower to extend special emergency assistance to Israel to help that country absorb the heavy influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, particularly Rumania.

On March 7, the New York Times reported:

Ben Gurion Asks Help of U.S. Jews. Message to Bond Meeting [Bonds for Israel] in Florida Seeks Aid for Big Immigrant Influx in 1959. Prime Minister Ben Gurion asserted in a cabled message to 1600 American Jewish leaders that Israel’s main task was the implementation of a long-range program of economic development necessary to receive hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

On March 13, the Jewish Newsletter reported:

The End of the Rumanian Exodus. It is officially confirmed that the mass immigration of Rumanian Jews has been suspended.… Zionists still hope that this is a temporary stoppage.… The dream of the exodus of a quarter of a million Rumanian Jews and a million of other Jews from Soviet Russia and other communist countries, has come to an even earlier end than predicted by unbiased persons.

The tally of the exodus of emigrants from Rumania who arrived in Israel, according to reports published in the Zionist Jerusalem Post, came to 4,740 in January, 1959, and 1,210 in February!

“Torrents of new immigrants!” Shiploads, packed trains, planeloads, of Rumanian and East European Jews, all “going home” to the “Jewish homeland,” Israel. An emergency rescue drive, a crash campaign—noise, noise, noise. Fooling around with the gullible mass of still unsettled Jewry, and, worst of all, harming the Rumanian and Russian Jews who were sharing the fate and fortunes of their countries’ nationals with whom they must, and were probably trying their best to, become fully integrated in a fluid, fast-changing new world. To stigmatize Rumania or Soviet Russia with anti-Semitism was only doing mischief to our fellow Jews who did not need or want Israel to “solve” their fanciful “Jewish problems.”

The following will illustrate my point. The London Jewish Chronicle (a Zionist magazine but not rabid) of January 25, 1959, had a report from its correspondent in Haifa, Israel, about the Rumanian immigrants, which read as follows:

Rumanian Jews recently arrived in Israel say that Jews are almost completely integrated into the Rumanian educational system and cultural life.… Attendance at synagogues is usually good.… The arrivals are almost unanimous in their opinion that official anti-Semitism in Rumania is non-existent.

One Rabbi Protests Against the Bogus Rescue Drives: Rabbi Richard E. Singer. Rescue Drives Revealed as Rescue of “Jewish Homeland,” Not Refugees.

Only a few daring voices were raised against the scandalous duping of American Jewry by the powerful clique of professional idealists and the gullible, rich suckers who followed them, and still follow them, blindly. The American Council for Judaism, and William Zukerman of the Jewish Newsletter, exposed as much as they could; but one brave voice in a Chicago synagogue I consider the most revealing, and therefore worth recording at this point. I pay my respects here to young Rabbi Richard E. Singer of the Lakeside Congregation for Reform Judaism in Chicago, who, on February 15, 1959, braved American Jewry and delivered a strong, straight-from-the-shoulder talk about the Rumanian “exodus,” or, as he called it, the “Rumanian immigration crisis.” I read and reread the eight pages containing Rabbi Singer’s address with one wish in my mind: what a blessing it would be if the Jews of America only had a free platform from which people like Rabbi Singer could openly and widely communicate their sincere and honest thoughts, without being maligned and persecuted by the machine of the professional and fanatical Zionists for telling the truth.

Here are a few paragraphs from that remarkable address:

For the past twenty years the United Jewish Appeal has raised great sums of money from American Jews to alleviate the suffering of their coreligionists in many parts of the world. The U.J.A. has run one crash campaign after another to save lives, and American Jews responded with enthusiasm and great generosity to the description of needs and urgency of one crisis after another.

For a Jew to remain outside the philanthropic effort in those dramatic years following the Second World War was unthinkable. The overwhelming community pressure was to give, not to question the method of giving, or even the description of the needy, but to give, as one small means of assuaging personal guilt feeling centering about the theme—there, but for the grace of God, go I.…

But of late, the U.J.A. has been in trouble. In the first place, the reservoirs of needy Jews have been drying up. And the continuing crisis in Israel, its serial story of fear and danger, with the villainous Arabs always ready to pop out of the sage bush, lost its appeal. After all, you can cry just so often, and then even the most sympathetic become weary with the repeated tears. Therefore, along with the economic recession of 1958, came lessened contributions to the U.J.A. And something new was obviously needed to spice the giving in 1959. And when something new is needed, something new usually can be found. By dramatic coincidence, just at the time that the 1959 campaign began with the super-big givers in Miami Beach, a newly needy group of Jews was discovered, dramatically, behind the Iron Curtain in Rumania.…

It now becomes apparent that the Zionist dream of normalization depends on immigration, unending immigration, until the last Jew is “saved.…”

I shall not give to the U.J.A. campaign that seeks now to remove Rumanian Jews from “the land of their suffering.” First of all, I do not know the extent of their suffering. I do not know whether the experiences of Rumanian Jews are worse or better than the experiences of Rumanian Christians. If they are similar, I would advise Rumanian Jews to stay in the land of their birth and labor for that time when their position may improve. There comes a time in the life of every man when he must stop running. For him who flees from hardship and distress there is no rest anywhere. I am not convinced that the Jew in Israel is any more secure than his co-religionist in Rumania or Russia.

And I shall not give to the U.J.A. campaign for another reason … For I must ask, where does the emptying out of the Diaspora stop? Is the Jew to be permitted to live nowhere but Israel? And who sets that limitation? Who decides when a nation is to become Judenrein [clean of Jews]? A few power-mad “Jewish” nationalists in another land, far away? Am I to allow a man, or men, whose thinking is poles removed from mine, to control my destiny? I deny the corporate responsibility of the Jews to other Jews as Jews.

Why are the Rumanian Jews who want to leave that country given no option but to go to Israel? Why does not the U.J.A. give the American Jew an opportunity to bring those who wish to this country? Is our future here so bankrupt, so bleak, that the Rumanian Jews prefer to live in the Middle East to antagonize the Arabs still further? I fail to understand the policies of supposedly responsible American Jewish leadership.

To show the audacity and presumptuousness of the Zionist-Israel apparatus as it is allowed to work its way into the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of softened-up American Jewry, I shall quote here two statements made by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, Chairman of the World Zionist Organization, President of the World Jewish Congress, and, up to recently, Chairman of the Jewish Agency, and an American citizen:

American Jews must have the courage to declare openly that they have a double loyalty—to the country in which they live, and to the State of Israel. A Jew must not let himself be talked into merely being a good patriot of the country in which he lives.¹⁵⁵

American Jewry must be told the truth that the Israel emergency is permanent, at least for the remaining lifetime of his own generation, and perhaps of the younger generation.… American Jewry must accustom itself to involvement with long-range emergency, requiring permanent dynamic fund raising and other efforts.…¹⁵⁶

Thus the excuse and mask of humanitarian relief is thrown overboard. The American Jew is a partner in the effort to build up his “Jewish homeland,” with manpower, with money, with arms to fight the enemy—the Arabs. Said Meier Grossman, a member of the World Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency, who came to the United States to negotiate a settlement between the Jewish Agency and the United Jewish Appeal:

Israel is prepared for another war with the Arab states, which is in the offing. If such a war came, it would be a war not between Israel and the Arabs, but between all the 13 millions of world Jewry and 40 million Arabs. Therefore, American Jews, particularly American Zionists, must start preparing not only politically and materially but also physically to defend the Jewish State which they helped to build.¹⁵⁷

Up to now, the Meier Grossmans, the Nahum Goldmanns, the Ben Gurions and their gang have not aroused any rebellion or mass revulsion in the hearts and minds of American Jewish leaders, who seem to have become feckless putty in the hands of the Zionist professional idealists. The gang seems to feel cocksure of the partnership and loyalty of the “subjects” of the Jewish homeland in America.

Zionism Breeds Refugees. New and Perennial “Rescue” Drives.

The professional Jews know very well that the public memory endures only a short time. Three years was plenty of time for the gullible Jews of America to forget completely the irresponsible and shamelessly ballyhooed Rumanian “rescue” drive of 1959. For about three years after the fiasco of the Rumanian “exodus,” there continued to be a lull in the flow of immigrants to Israel. The coffers were, of course, well filled as a result of the drive; but Israel is like a sack with a big hole at the bottom, almost as big as the opening at the top. And besides, the military junta of Israel will always need new supplies of manpower for its secret expansion plots as well as for the coming “next round” with the Arabs, who cannot be expected to remain passive forever.

The New York Times of October 25, 1960, reported the following speech delivered by Ben Gurion to the Knesset:

Israel Faces a Grave Danger From Her Own Growing Levantine Atmosphere … In an address at the opening session of the winter term of the Knesset, the Premier said that almost 55 per cent of those who migrated to the State of Israel since its beginning, came from Africa and Asia, Jews in Islamic countries … where they lived in a society that was backward, corrupt, etc.

The “blonde” Jews of the West turned a deaf ear to the appeals of the “Jewish homeland’s” Prime Minister for immigrants from the West. In fact, emigration from Israel plagued Ben Gurion even more than immigration to Israel. “Five out of every six American and Canadian Jews who had settled in Israel have returned home; 5,000 so-called Anglo-Saxon Jews have remained in Israel out of 35,000 who immigrated.”¹⁵⁸

An editorial about the ‘demographic hemorrhage” (“Emigration From Israel”) in the London Jewish Chronicle of September 8, 1961, tells of an “announcement by the Australian authorities that over a thousand Israelis were granted Australian citizenship in recent months, and that nearly twice that number are still registered as resident aliens.… The number may not seem large at first sight, but when it is taken into account that Australia is only one country to which emigrating Israelis turn, that it is by no means easy for Israelis to get to Australia, and that the emigrants are mainly sabras or veterans with good qualifications and initiative, they loom larger.”

And, incidentally, in the ten years immediately following the establishment of the state of Israel, about 105,000 Jewish residents left the country.

As a result “the Government of Israel has made all information pertaining to immigration a state secret.… Sentences of up to 15 years’ imprisonment are to be imposed by the Israeli courts on anyone who in the future publishes information unless this information is officially authorized.”¹⁵⁹

A tragic “immigration of the dead” was inaugurated in 1960:

With mass immigration to Israel practically at a standstill, a new scheme for the mass-immigration of the dead had attracted attention in Israel. The Tel Aviv newspaper Ha’Aretz reported that Jewish undertakers in New York are negotiating with the Israeli Ministry of Religion about a scheme to bury American Jews in a special cemetery to be established in Israel. The relatives of each deceased will pay a thousand dollars for a grave and tombstone.…”¹⁶⁰

But, alas, this is only chicken feed; and the dead furnish no manpower.

In 1962, we again hear the old familiar rallying battle cry “Immigrants Place Pressure on Israel.” My old classmate of boyhood days at the Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa–Tel-Aviv, Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, trouble-shooter, fund collector, now Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, in a money-spinning appeal to Anglo-Jewry, spoke of “two streams of immigration converging on Israel.… We are once again witnessing a spectacle which cannot be described otherwise than tremendously dramatic and dramatically tremendous.… There was still a vast reservoir of Jewish manpower straining at the leash and impatient to get out from bondage towards salvation. Those who went out were hopeful of a home and were determined to settle in the Jewish homeland. Those who still remained behind were seized with a frenzy of impatience.… What we are facing today is a phenomenon in Jewish history that can only be described as the liquidation of whole Jewish communities. It is nothing less than that … We must respond to the challenge of history and we dare not miss the chance of rescuing Jews from their bondage lest we be judged by posterity for having missed yet another great opportunity.” (London Jewish Chronicle, January 19, 1962.)

This one comes from Louis Arich Pincus, Treasurer of the Jewish Agency: “‘We are now engaged in the saving of Jewish lives, and this task must take absolute priority over everything else.’… Mr. Pincus would not disclose any details about the present immigration wave, beyond stating that it came from several countries and must continue while conditions still permitted. Because publicity must be avoided, the campaign would have to be conducted in a more private, almost individual, manner.” (London Jewish Chronicle, November 24, 1961.)

Not in a “private manner” came the following screaming appeal, reported in the New York Times of December 11, 1961: “United Jewish Appeal Leaders Urge $95,000,000 Goal for ’62. The leadership of the U.J.A. yesterday proposed a 1962 goal of $95,000,000 to meet Jewish needs throughout the world, particularly to cover costs of increased immigration to Israel and other lands.… Thousands of lives depend upon our doing so.… Rabbi Friedman said $68,200,000 would go to Israel’s immigrant aid body, the Jewish Agency for Israel.… The Jewish Agency, he said, must transport, receive, and house about 265,000 persons next year.”

The appeal for funds in England spoke of “75,000 new immigrants, most of them victims of tyranny and persecution [who] will enter Israel during the coming year” (London Jewish Chronicle, January 19, 1962).

As late as December 14, 1962, the London Jewish Chronicle had a screaming headline that said: 500,000 JEWS WAITING TO ENTER ISRAEL. But there was something else that was constantly stressed in the ceaseless and profuse but incomplete publicity about the drives for funds: “The benefactors cannot be told specifically where the immigrants come from. The press censor in Israel carefully deletes any reference to the countries.” (New York Times, December 27, 1961.)

The Jewish Chronicle of May 18 and May 23, 1962, tells of “the poor response of some Jewish communities that had been uprooted, to the “Zionist emmissaries” and to “Zionist education.” While 460 Jews had come to Israel from Cuba, 4,000 Cuban Jews had emigrated to the United States. Similarly, 600 Jews from the Congo had emigrated to Belgium, but only 70 had settled in Israel.… The great majority of the Algerian Jews prefer to settle in France and only very small numbers elect to emigrate to Israel.”

As everybody knows, Cuba, the Congo and Algiers are about the only troubled areas in the world today. Are we witnessing again another “rescue drive” à la Rumania of 1959? Or are the professional Jews and their duped suckers, who in their vision see “tremendously dramatic and dramatically tremendous vast reservoirs of Jewish manpower straining at the leash and impatient … to settle in the Jewish homeland” now hopeful of some new trouble spots, and, in their “prophetic” manner foreseeing new streams of immigrants to Israel for whom the coffers of the Jewish Agency must be refilled once again? Calamity—real or imaginary—is their business.

What did the Administration of Ben Burion and company do with the money collected all over the world in the name of rescue drives?

Some Israeli Jews who feel humiliated at the sight of their “Schnorrercratic” state express their grief and sense of shame in bitter, stinging words. Let me quote here just a few typical passages from one Hebrew writer, Uri Avnery, one of whose articles appeared in the Israeli Hebrew weekly Haolam Hazeh (“This World”) on May 27, 1959, soon after the fiasco of the Rumanian “exodus”:

… In the name of a non-existing Aliyah and with the help of falsified pictures and lying statistics, these notices aim to arouse compassion in the heart of the reader. They are notices of beggars; notices which, morally, are not above the tactics of the faker who hides behind black spectacles and hangs on his neck the sign “Save A Blind Man From Starvation!”

How can we escape the shame of it? Lo, they are perpetrating this hoax in our name, in the name of “our” Administration. It is a State fraud.…

What does the Administration do with the money? We all know. It divides the money among Zionist factions, those belonging to the Coalition [Government] as well as those belonging to the Opposition. It maintains with these funds the ruling class, the factionalists, each according to its class, and the globe-trotting emissaries, at the expense of the State. It disburses the money in a thousand different ways to the rest of the citizenry, in order to keep them in a position of absolute dependence. And it supports, with the help of these revenues, scores of parasitic economic enterprises which are not self-supporting and therefore require an unending flow of funds.… In our system, the Government depends upon parties. But the parties do not depend upon the citizens. They depend upon the Schnorrer [beggar] collections streaming to them from abroad. They are exploiting these funds for the purpose of exercising their control over the citizen and extracting from him his vote and the right to speak for him.…

The people are not the deciding factor here. The deciding factor here is the “Schnorr” money collected from the outside by hook and crook.

This is not a democracy, a rule of the people. It is a Schnorrercratia, a Government maintaining itself on the strength of the contributions streaming from abroad.… Israel is like a Metropolis whose colonies are spread all over the world and are paying her financial tribute … World Jewry are subjects of the Schnorr rule in the full sense of the term. It is a Schnorrer Colonialism.¹⁶¹

Israel’s Wars of “Redemption”: Retaliatory Wars, Preventive Wars and Wars of Annexation.

Let us now go back to the Arab-Israeli wars and bring up to date the aggravating and dangerous assaults of “Jewish” political nationalism’s collective sacro egoismo.

Believing that the properly “educated” and well-inoculated Jews of the world, particularly in the United States and England, will back Ben Gurion and his garrison state up to the hilt in all their undertakings, the junta of Israel became more and more presumptuous and brazen. Together with their search for manpower and the perennial drives for funds, they began to concentrate more and more on the militarization of Israel rather than search for an honest and moral solution to their degenerate status vis-à-vis the Arabs. Martial life has became a way of life in Israel.

Not a sign of pity, sympathy or compunction ever entered into the considerations of the military junta that rules Israel. Always swaggering and aloof, it only grew irritated and incensed at the sneak attacks and border crossings of some despondent Palestinian Arabs who called themselves Fedayeen (self-sacrificing infiltrators). Who were these Fedayeen? Miserable, desperate, able-bodied, angry youth, exiled from their homes and homeland in Palestine, condemned to an unbearable, frustrated existence, unable to reconcile themselves to their wretchedness in exile, watching their homes, business places, gardens, cows and goats, and the fruits of their fields and orchards enjoyed by the Israeli invaders. Some of them, in desperation, took their lives in their hands in the early years of their exile, crossed the borders to recover something from their homes, and killed Israelis or were killed by them.

Instead of mellowing and maturing with the years, in accordance with what they once learned (before Judaism degenerated into a militant “Jewish” political nationalism) with their mothers’ milk, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet; instead of realizing that the world and the United Nations were getting sick and tired of the Israelis’ assumed status of eternally favorite golden children who could do no wrong, an inhuman, audacious policy of one hundred eyes for one eye became the attitude toward the Arabs.

It first started in the form of activist measures—punitive, retaliatory expeditions (“sorties,” they liked to call them)—by the armed forces of the state of Israel. These “successful” measures whetted the appetites of the expansionists among the “new specimen of fighting Jews” who always held the upper hand in the Government of Ben Gurion to expand their retaliatory wars into preventive wars; and later on the preventive wars graduated into wars of annexation.

Let us go into the high lights of some of these wars. The following reports are about the Qibya massacre:

QIBYA, October 14–15, 1953

On October 14, 1953, a 600 man battalion of Israeli regulars, using artillery, rifles, Sten guns, grenades and Balgalore torpedoes made a night attack on the Arab village of Qibya, a mile and a half inside Jordan territory. They shot every man, woman, and child they could find. The grisly slaughter included even the animals. They dynamited the houses, the school, and the church.¹⁶²

The village, which had a population of 2,000, buried 66 dead.

The method most commonly followed by the attackers, we were told, was to kick in the door, spray the interior of the house with machine gun fire, then finish the job by blowing the walls in with powerful explosives. The result: a waste of rubble—the universal trade mark of modern war—and the odor of death.… The Truce Supervision Organization of the United Nations, in a report made on October 16, said the attack had been made by about half a battalion of Israeli regular army, and that it was “cold-blooded murder.”

But the people of Qibya have not run away. The survivors grimly cling to their town … Qibyans would not admit that it is Israeli land, but would insist that it is their own, and they are standing by, until they can return to it. If the purpose of the attack on Qibya was to frighten these refugees into fleeing further inland as did a similar attack on Deir Yassin, early in the war, it failed.… The attack on Qibya showed that the people of Jordan do not stampede as easily as they did.

These two paragraphs and the one that follows immediately after I quote the resolution the United Nations passed soon after the Qibya assault come from a document entitled “Mission to the Middle East,” a report prepared by three editors from the United States who were sent by the American Friends of the Middle East to make an on-the-spot study of what was going on in Israel and in the neighboring Arab countries. The editors were John Cogley of the Commonweal, a Catholic magazine; Harold E. Fey of the Christian Century, a Protestant magazine; and Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of the editorial advisory board of the Jewish Newsletter. The three of them visited Qibya about one month after the massacre.

The United Nations Security Council, after getting a full report of its representatives in Jordan and Israel, and after studying the data and giving a hearing to the Israelis as well as to the Jordanians, passed the following resolution on November 24, 1953:

The United Nations Security Council finds the retaliatory action at Qibya taken by the armed forces of Israel on 14–15 October, 1953, and all such action, constitute a violation of the cease-fire provisions of the Security Council resolution of the 15 July, 1948, and are inconsistent with the parties’ obligations under the General Armistice Agreement and the Charter … expresses the strongest censure of that action which can only prejudice the chances of that peaceful settlement which both parties in accordance with the Charter are bound to seek, and calls upon Israel to take effective measures to prevent all such actions in the future.

The mission of the American Friends of the Middle East consisting of three of the most prominent and honorable clergymen in the United States, reported that they had been informed that

… immediately after the U.S.A. announced its withholding of aid to Israel after the Qibya “incident,” thousands of telegrams descended on Mr. Dulles, Secretary of State, so that in three days the Department reversed itself, and the funds were restored.… Mr. Sharett, Israel’s Foreign Minister, condemned the Qibya resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations. He felt it would encourage the Arabs in their refusal to make peace with Israel. Mr. Sharett said: “The Government of Israel regards the loss of innocent life at Qibya with profound and unreserved regret. This was a most unfortunate explosion of pent-up feelings and a tragic breakdown of restraint after the provocations of brutal attacks such as the cold-blooded murder of a mother and her two children in their sleep.”

How pathetic and bombastic is this whitewashing by an Israeli Foreign Minister of the depraved deeds done at the behest of a bloodthirsty Prime. Minister who was also the Defense Minister. What a noble and inspiring image of the “Jewish homeland”! Yet a Jewish member of Parliament in Britain, Maurice Edelman, naïvely remarked recently: “There are indeed few Jews anywhere, including anti-Zionists, who haven’t benefited from the new image of the Jew which Israel has created” (New York Times “Book Review,” October 20, 1963).

The 1954 “Lavon Affair.” U.S.A. Security Fooled Around With. Irresponsible Israeli Military Junta Plots Sabotage Bombings of U.S.A. Offices in Egypt to Create Bad Blood Between the U.S.A. and Egypt. “Disaster Security Action Without Moral Consideration,” Says Lavon, the Innocent Minister of Defense, Behind Whose Back the Plot Was Perpetrated. The 1955 “Prearranged and Planned Unprovoked Attack on Egyptian Armed Forces,” Which Forced the Arabs into the Communist Camp. Prelude to the 1956 War of Annexation on Egypt.

Immediately after the massacre of the Arabs of Qibya in 1953, the world’s expression of abhorrence at Ben Gurion and his military junta made Ben Gurion “feel tired.” He said that he suffered from “spiritual fatigue.” He resigned from both of his jobs, as Prime Minister and as Defense Minister. Moshe Sharett became Prime Minister, and Pinhas Lavon became Defense Minister. Ben Gurion “retired” to the shadowy recesses of his desert home in Sde Boker. The naïve new Prime Minister, Moshe Sharett, even dared to say in the Knesset that “the question was whether Israel stands for robbery or for law.” He hoped to settle things with the Arabs diplomatically. Ben Gurion, of course, no more retired than did the elite of his military junta, who were constantly making pilgrimages to Sde Boker. Ben Gurion was disturbed by world developments, particularly in the United States, where we were not doing what he would have us do. Ben Gurion wanted to induce the British to keep their Suez garrison in Egypt, but President Eisenhower prevailed on Great Britain to hand over the Suez Canal Zone with all its bases, airfields and military equipment to the Egyptians. Furthermore, most friendly relations with Egypt had been cultivated by Henry Byroade, the United States Ambassador, who started an American aid program for Egypt of about fifty million dollars.

Enraged and frightened at the possible consequences, the Israeli brain trust of the military junta decided on a dramatic Machiavellian plot behind the backs of Prime Minister Sharett and Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon. First, the good relations between Egypt and the United States had to be disrupted. Then, Egypt had to be subdued before she gained too much strength. Finally, the Sinai desert, the Gaza Strip and all of the Negev (south) leading to the waters of the Indian Ocean had to be wrested from Egypt.

France, still a victim of fantastic Gloire and Grandeur, was suddenly deeply involved in the suppression of a rebellion that broke out on November 1, 1954, with scores of attacks by guerrillas of Algerian Arabs on French installations. Angered at Egypt’s aid to the Arabs of Algeria, and angered also at the possibility of losing control of the Suez Canal holdings, France suddenly developed an “ostentatious friendship” for Israel. France began to pour into Israel her latest rocket weapons, which the Egyptians had never seen before.

And so, not far from Mount Sinai, where Moses had contemplated and proclaimed the Commandments: Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet, the secret military junta of Israel worked out the details of the planned campaigns of 1954, 1955 and 1956. The first job looked easy and simple: from the Paris “center” of the junta, a clever senior Israeli officer, an expert in “Jewish education for Aliyah” and an expert in the arts of spying and manufacturing incendiary bombs, was sent to Egypt to work among the Egyptian-Jewish youths, to subvert them to dynamite American establishments in order to “help” their “Jewish homeland.”

During the month of November, 1954, things worked out smoothly. American libraries, American Information Agency offices, American-owned theaters and business houses in Cairo and Alexandria were dynamited. The American Government was outraged, and thus friendly relations between America and Egypt were threatened. But in December, 1954, the whole miserable outfit of traitors—thirteen misled, subverted Egyptian Jews—were caught red-handed by the Egyptian police. The poor chaps collapsed and confessed. They even revealed the locations of their workshops and the secret receiving sets through which they received messages from abroad.

Upon arrest, the Israeli army officer who had led the gang of saboteurs committed suicide. During the trials in Egypt, in January, 1955, the marionettes of the military junta in New York screamed, “The trial in Egypt is a frame-up; it is pure anti-Semitism.” But the defendants all pleaded guilty and blamed the Israeli Paris “center.” Two of the saboteurs were condemned to death, two were given life sentences; two, fifteen years; and two, seven years. The rest were pardoned.

The world soon realized that the trial in Egypt was no frame-up. But it took six years to discover that there was a real frame-up elsewhere in connection with the “disastrous adventure” in Egypt, which took place behind the back of 1954 Defense Minister Lavon of Israel. The forged signature of Lavon on the orders issued to the secret operators in Egypt was only the beginning of the “Lavon Affair.” In official Israeli circles, rumors were quickly circulated, after a “leak,” that the orders for organizing and directing the sabotage unit had been signed by Minister of Defense Lavon. Actually, “the disastrous operation began four weeks before Mr. Lavon’s approval was asked [he, of course, refused to sign the “order”], and … the request for his sanction was meant to shift the blame” (New York Times, February 23, 1964).

Thus, for six years, Ben Gurion and his crew appeared completely clear of all blame, and Lavon, involuntarily and silently, became the official scapegoat.

Why did not Lavon protest then and there, in 1955, against this depraved conspiracy? Perhaps he was afraid that the military junta of Ben Gurion, whom he hated and who hated him, might liquidate him summarily had he dared open his mouth.

Early in February, 1955, Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, my old classmate in the Gymnasia Herzlia—spineless, gentle, scholarly and verbose—called in Lavon and demanded his resignation. At a full Cabinet meeting, Lavon turned in his resignation, shook hands with Sharett, and walked out without looking at the other members. Lavon was given back his old job as Secretary-General of Histadrut (Israel’s federation of labor). His mouth was thus sealed; but he undoubtedly must have bided his time against the day when he might reveal the real culprit.

Meanwhile, as Lavon left his office at the Ministry of Defense, Ben Gurion was rushed back from his “retirement” in Sde Boker to take over Lavon’s job. Within ten days—on February 28, 1955—he launched what the Security Council of the United Nations called “a planned and prearranged” attack on the Gaza Strip of Egypt. The “planned and prearranged” attack on the Gaza Strip, and a little later in the year on the city of Gaza, as well as other diversionary plotted assaults on the Arabs, engineered by Ben Gurion and his junta, explain why Lavon had to be removed as quickly as possible: he did not see eye to eye with the clique.

When the 1954–1955 Lavon Affair was exposed in 1960, the purpose of the February 28, 1955, assault on Egypt became clear:

Middle East diplomats see Premier Ben Gurion and his young colleagues as the elements that brought about the invasion of Egypt, in 1956. These elements are believed to be willing to fight again. The diplomats view the other faction [Lavon and his followers] as being composed of “Middle Easterners” who wanted to avoid a conflict then, and who might make concessions now towards reaching a settlement with the Arab States.… Israeli censorship treats the mishap that set off the “Lavon Affair” as a closely guarded security secret. But the Middle East diplomats said today that it involved the Israeli’s army assault on the Egyptian army’s headquarters in the Gaza Strip on February 28, 1955, using the latest Israeli weapons. The diplomats believed that Mr. Lavon’s downfall had been brought by his opposition to preparations for the Gaza assault, which took place about ten days after he left office. This attack, they said, tipped off President Gamal Abdel Nasser to what he was really up against, and was responsible for the decision to seek arms from the Soviet Union. President Nasser concluded that nothing in the way of arms then in prospect from the West, could save Egypt, and he must seek massive support elsewhere. Negotiations for arms accordingly began in April and May, 1955, and ended in September, in an agreement to barter Egyptian cotton for Soviet bloc arms. (New York Times, October 24 and 26, 1960)

This in turn threw the whole Arab and Moslem world into the arms of the Communist camp and weakened the foundations of the free world.

I shall return to the Lavon Affair a little later. For there were many developments and repercussions in the internal affairs of Israel that more than ever revealed how historic ethical and spiritual Judaism had degenerated to the lowest levels, when used and abused as handmaiden of “Jewish” political nationalism.

Gaza Shelling on September 1, 1955, and the Capture of the El Auja Triangle in the Sinai Desert, on September 21, 1955.

To throw around their weight and “teach the Arabs a lesson,” as well as to expedite the plot of taking the Sinai peninsula from Egypt the following year, a “retaliatory” assault took place on September 1, 1955, when Ben Gurion’s soldier boys chose a market day to shell Gaza. They killed forty civilians. Then, on September 21, 1955, in order to establish a focal base in or near Sinai, Ben Gurion’s army managed another “retaliatory” attack, by invading and occupying the El Auja Triangle—a demilitarized zone under the 1949 Armistice Agreement—because it was the strategic intersection of all key roads leading into the heart of the Sinai desert, on the way to the Suez Canal.

Galilee Assault, December 11, 1955.

On December 11, 1955, Ben Gurion’s army made a diversionary attack on a Syrian military post near the Sea of Galilee. On January 19, 1956, after plenty of investigations and testimony,

The Security Council of the United Nations voted condemnation of Israel’s raid on the Syrian military posts near the Sea of Galilee. The Council’s decision was taken on a Western sponsored resolution. This condemned the assault carried out on December 11, 1955, as a flagrant violation of the Palestine Armistice. The resolution also contained stern warnings to Israel that a repetition would lead to “further measures.” Although no mention was made of the indemnities sought by Syria, the text was regarded on all sides as the toughest resolution voted in the long series of Arab-Israeli quarrels. Fifty-six Syrians and six Israeli soldiers died in the Galilee attack which, Israel said, was in retaliation for persistent Syrian provocations. (New York Times, January 20, 1956)

Activists Begin to Go on a Rampage Against Arab Neighbors. United Nations Resents False Accusations Against Egypt, May, 1956.

On May 12, 1956, the New York Times published the following report from its correspondent in Jerusalem:

Dag Hammarskjold has sharply reprimanded Israel for a hasty unproved accusation against Egypt, informed sources said today. Specifically, the United Nations Secretary General was said to have found Israel off base in reporting that a Gaza Strip shooting incident last Monday had been staged by Egypt.… The Israelis had accused Egyptian soldiers of having invaded Israeli territory near Nirim. This alleged incursion formed the basis of a stern protest by Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett to Mr. Hammarskjold, apparently before United Nations observers here had a chance to investigate.

The United Nations observers found the facts quite contrary to those given to Hammarskjold by Sharett. The observers reported that Israeli forces had penetrated Egyptian controlled territory in a half track and two command cars. Reacting sharply to Mr. Sharett’s complaint, Mr. Hammarskjold advised the Israeli Government to refrain from public denunciations before all facts were known.

Activism now became the policy of the Israeli Government, and defying the United Nations, if and when necessary, became the road to final “redemption of the Promised Land,” very much as the Jabotinskys and Begins of the Irgun had demanded from the very beginning. Activism now began to advance in boldness and grandeur until all Israel became intoxicated with the virus of expansion. Soon it burst on a grand ambitious scale, in collusion with, or collaboration with, Arab-hating France and with aberrant England under Sir Anthony Eden’s old-order regime.

Already, in January, 1956, Prime Minister Eden cynically “warned that the Mid-East could spark a World War. There is plenty of dry tinder about.”

On April 26, 1956, the New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem cabled:

Zionist Congress Halts in Uproar. Dispute by Extreme Right and Left Over Preventive War Paralyzes Session. A Bitter Dispute. Menachem Begin, former terrorist and leader of “Herut,” started the uproar … He just finished a speeeh demanding preventive war and assailing the coalition government of Ben Gurion.

On October 5, 1956, the London Jewish Chronicle reported from Israel:

Mr. Begin Calls for Peace Settlement in Cairo at “Herut” Convention. Mr. Begin, the leader of the “Herut” party, said at the opening of the Party’s fourth convention held in Tel-Aviv that the day was fast approaching when the pupils of Jabotinsky would present themselves to the President of the State to form a new government.… He was addressing over 400 delegates and about 1,000 invited guests, among them were members of the Diplomatic Corps. Giving his blessing to the conference, Rabbi Nissim, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, said that “Herut” was inspired by the visions of the Prophets.…”

Undeclared War of Aggression on Egypt in Conjunction With France and England in an Attack of Occupation and Annexation, October 29, 1956.

The British and French Governments were angry with Egypt for having nationalized the Suez Canal inside her territory, in August, 1956. The chiefs of state in France and Great Britain were plotting and scheming new realignments in the Middle East, in secret negotiations with some Arab quislings in Iraq as against Egypt. The French were additionally angry, not only because so many influential rich Frenchmen had large stock holdings in the Suez Canal “gold mine,” but also because Egypt had inspired and abetted the Arabs of Algeria to fight for their independence against France.

Israel always looked to the Negev (the southern region of Palestine) as leading to the Gaza Strip, to Sinai (not only because of sacred Mount Sinai, but because she hoped she might strike oil there; Egypt now has a number of oil fields in the Sinai Peninsula), and to the Red Sea for an outlet to the Indian Ocean, Asia and Africa. Also, strategically, the Negev in the hands of the militant Israelis cuts the Arab world in two.

During September and October, 1956, in a series of diversionary cover-up moves to hide its real intentions of a blitz assault on Egypt, Israel made “reprisal” raids in the northern Arab neighbors’ territory, the biggest of which was at Qalqilya, in Jordan. United Nations observers counted forty-eight Arab dead. Soon, however, the mobilization of the Israeli army was on such a large scale that it could no longer be kept a secret. A recent revelation by President Eisenhower throws light on what took place in October, 1956. At a press conference, in answering questions asked by some reporter about the recently published memoirs of Anthony Eden, he said:

I do not like to comment on Memoirs.… As a matter of fact I’ll tell you one or two footnotes of history that might be just interesting. I made it clear that the United States was going to stand by its interpretation of United Nations policy and the Charter. And this meant that we would apply this to anybody, those that we thought our closest friends as well as those that we thought were in the other category.…

At this moment … I think it was early in October, 1956, Mr. Abba Eban, the Israeli ambassador, was going back to Israel for a short time. He came to see me. And I told him I’d hoped that he would not allow any misinterpretation of sentiment in this country to sway him, and particularly because of possible Jewish sympathy building up around the mobilization of Israel at that time. I hoped he would not allow this to sway his judgment as to what this administration would do in doing its very best to prevent any outbreak of hostilities, the settlement of international issues by force.…

And I told him that if he thought that this would have any part, an iota of influence on the election of 1956, or that it would have any influence on me, he should disabuse his mind about it.

In addition to that, both Foster Dulles and I went to great pains to show to Britain and to France what we would do under that kind of circumstances.… (New York Times, January 27, 1960)

Of course, Abba Eban’s personal opinions really counted very little, for professionally and ideologically he belonged to the gang, to the junta. But in the case of the planned war of aggression against Egypt, Ben Gurion did not even allow his own Cabinet to know what he alone decided to do, in his typical autocratic manner.

Ben Gurion himself has stated publicly that he hoodwinked his Cabinet colleagues along with the rest of the world in October, 1956, when he prepared to capture the Sinai Peninsula from the Egyptians. Until five days before the invasion, members of the Cabinet had been led to believe that the mobilization of reserves had been a precautionary measure connected with rumored Egyptian and Iraq plans to occupy the Kingdom of Jordan.… (New York Times, December 3, 1961)

Apparently, Ben Gurion also kept secret his diabolic plans to wantonly attack Egypt from his Ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban. For, upon his return to the United States, just one day before the invasion of Egypt, Abba Eban declared: “Israel will start no war!” The very next day, October 29, 1956, the press of the world reported the invasion of the Sinai Peninsula. “The 30,000 man invasion force of Israel, with tanks, jeeps, and half tracks, and under cover of French Mystere jets, lunged across the entire Sinai Peninsula, straight for the Suez Canal. On October 31, at dawn, Britain and France began their invasion of Egypt by planes, ships, paratroops and land forces, already quietly assembled in readiness on the island of Cyprus. In four days, Israel took the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula.”¹⁶³

Was it collusion, collaboration or connivance? The truth will come out one day, sooner or later. What is well known is that France redoubled her “ostentatious friendship” for Israel, which, as long as the Arab bloodbath in Algiers lasted, continued in the old martial tradition: “Your enemy’s enemy is your friend.” Washington and London always suspected a secret alliance between France and Israel. The press of the world was full of intimations about the “love affair” between France and Israel. As to Great Britain, Prime Minister Anthony Eden, weak and pathetic, was apparently egged on and dragged into the Suez “aberration” during a time he was not himself.

By now, Ben Gurion had got used to United Nations condemnations. Fanatical, daring and indomitable politician that he was, Ben Gurion was probably thinking of the “unique and great opportune moment”—the coming Presidential elections in the United States.

Some foolish or subverted Jewish voters in America must have been actually intoxicated by the slogan “Ben Gurion expects you to do your duty!”—a statement one often met with in the English-Jewish magazines. Surely, they must have argued, a candidate running for the Presidency of the United States would think twice before antagonizing the Jewish voters in New York City, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities. Consciously or unconsciously, subverted American Jews began to live ideologically in terms of the “Jewish homeland” more than in terms of the United States. The old, tragic ghetto yardstick “Is it good for the Jews?” would help them decide in their choice of a President of the United States.

The American Jewish Year Book (1958, p. 376) describes the shameless last days of October, 1956, in these words:

On October 27 and 28, 1956, President Eisenhower called on Israel, both through diplomatic channels and publicly, to refrain from any act endangering the peace. The Israeli Government replied that the mobilization was defensive in purpose.… When on October 29, the Israeli army announced that its forces had invaded the Sinai Peninsula, the news was almost as much of a surprise to the public in Israel as it was to Cairo, Egypt, or Washington. Nevertheless, with the exception of the Communists, all parties and newspapers, including those that had been warning against a preventive war, gave full support to the Government’s action.

The New York Times of November 3 reported: “Israeli patrols have reached the east bank of the Suez Canal.” On November 5, the Times reported: “Israelis are increasingly disturbed over the slowness of the British and French forces in occupying the Canal.”

The invasion of Egypt on October 29, 1956—a date that will live in infamy—was accompanied by a unilateral revocation of the Egyptian-Israeli Armistice Agreement by Israel. The Security Council of the United Nations promptly met on October 30 to examine the aggression by Israel. But the Security Council was rendered incapable of doing anything by virtue of the exercise of the veto by Britain and France—Israel’s accomplices in the war on Egypt. The matter was referred to the General Assembly, which held its first Emergency Special Session from November 1 to November 12. In a series of four resolutions, the United Nations called upon Israel to “promptly withdraw behind the Armistice Line.” A few days later, “the United Nations notes with regret that according to the communications received by the Secretary General, no Israel forces have been withdrawn. And reiterates its call to Israel to comply forthwith with the resolutions.”

In spite of the trying pre-election days in America, President Eisenhower, to his lasting honor and courage, voiced prophetic words such as mankind had not heard since the days of Woodrow Wilson: “There can be no peace without law, and there can be no 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.” (TV and radio “Report to the nation” by President Eisenhower, on October 31, 1956, carried by all newspapers on November 1, 1956.)

Think of it, a goy (Gentile) appealing to an old Bible-quoting Jew to abide by law and justice, and not resort to force. Nevertheless, the audacity, presumptuousness and gnarled morals of Ben Gurion and his junta passed all limits of tolerance. Ben Gurion’s first answer was quite astounding: “Up to the middle of the sixth century [that is, 1,400 years ago, if that be historically true] Jewish independence was maintained on the Island of Yotvat [Tiran] south of the Gulf of Elath, which was liberated yesterday by the Israeli army.… Israel terms the Gaza Strip an integral part of the nation. No force, whatever it is called, was going to make Israel evacuate Sinai! And the words of Isaiah the prophet were fulfilled.” (New York Times, November 8 and 11, 1956.)

The New York Times of October 14, 1956 (Sunday Magazine section) published a special interview its correspondent in Israel had with Ben Gurion in his office in Jerusalem, in anticipation of his seventieth birthday on October 16, two weeks before the assault on Egypt. In that article there is one observation made by the Times correspondent that is relevant here in connection with Ben Gurion’s artful tactics of leaning on and quoting the Bible. Said the correspondent: “On the corner of the Premier’s glass topped desk lie two books he always has within reach—a copy of the Old Testament, and a big, thick Biblical Concordance, to help him find passages he seeks.… Ben Gurion’s fierce attachment to the Bible sometimes seems paradoxical. He hardly speaks without quoting Biblical passages. Yet, he does not feel bound by Biblical laws.”

To return to the invasion of Egypt, things were going “wonderfully well” with the “new specimen of the fighting Jews.” On November 5, 1956, the New York Times published a cabled report from Tel-Aviv: “Israel military circles were hopeful tonight that the rout of the Egyptian army from an area four times the size of Israel during four days of fighting would revolutionize the Middle East picture and remove some of the obstacles to an Israeli Arab peace.…”

On November 12, American newspapers carried the following revealing story: “Fiery Menachem Begin, the undisputed leader of the Herut (old Irgun) Party, Israel’s second largest political body, said in an interview in Tel-Aviv on November 11, that he now sees eye to eye with the Government of Israel’s Arab policy! ‘With all my heart and soul I support this action by our Government.’ He termed ‘the invasion of Egypt by Ben Gurion’s army as legitimate self-defense by Israel. Peace, peace, peace with Egypt is the paramount goal, but I also hope that we will not sit with Gamal Abdel Nassar.’”

Hollywood and Madison Avenue techniques worked overtime to tell the story of the “renascent,” “triumphant” advancing Israeli army in Egypt. Here is a small collection of captions under the daily display of war pictures in the press of America, all of which, of course, appeared also in the New York Times:

“Col. Shlomo Goren, Chief Chaplain of the Israeli army, holds a submachine gun in one hand and a Torah in the other hand.” The picture was taken during the assault on Gaza.

“Israel’s flag on Mount Sinai. An historic moment; a group of soldiers at the ceremony of hoisting the Israeli flag on Mount Sinai.”

“Girl soldiers on night march. Israeli girl soldiers marching through the night from El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula in the course of their training.”

“Israeli soldiers wed in Egypt. Lieutenant Bezalel Rubin and his bride Cpl. Orah Miekas of the Israeli army, share cutting their wedding cake at El Arish on the Sinai Peninsula.”

“Makeshift Menorah: At an outpost on one of Israel’s frontiers, members of the army try out a home-made candle holder constructed of wood and cartridge shells as they prepare for traditional celebration of Hanukah.”

“Desert War Toll: The Israeli victory in El Arish area left this trail of destruction: Egyptian [dead] soldiers in the sand, a battered truck,” and so on.

“An Israeli soldier tries his hand aboard an Egyptian camel captured.”

“Ben Gurion chats with the troops.”

Should these not be thrilling to the new Jewish hearts? Down with Isaiah, down with Amos, with Hillel, with Dr. Magnes; down with oldfashioned Judaism! Rejoice, you Jews of the world, for your “Jewish homeland” is fast expanding!

One day in November, 1956, my wife and I entertained our hill neighbors, among whom was a charming, retired navy captain, John P. Killeen, who, not knowing our feelings about the invasion of Egypt by Israeli jingoist-expansionists, and remembering only his Sunday-school history of the Jews (according to his accepted knowledge, Jews had always lived in their old biblical Jewish homeland, and the Arabs were nothing but nomads, infiltrators and foreigners), he congratulated me most innocently on “the splendid job the Jews did in repelling the aggressive Arabs who always try to dislodge them from their Holy Land.” Then he added: “As an ex-navy man (and a good Irishman) I love to watch a good fight, particularly when the right man licks the wrong man.”

It is one thing for an innocent, kind but uninformed Christian gentleman to say “Bravo!” to the Israeli invasion of Egypt, but what shall we say of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who at a news conference in Chicago around that time declared that she ‘believed that Israel had acted in self-defense and should not be considered an aggressor.” Or a rabbi (Louis I. Newman of New York) who said: “America must aid, not hurt, the three democracies of Britain, France, and Israel” (New York Times, November 11, 1956). Or Senator Javits of New York, who rushed to visit Israel and said there, on November 21, as reported in the New York Times, that “the American people fully understand the self-defense motives which compelled Israel’s invasion of the Sinai Peninsula. ‘I feel authorized to certify that Israeli-American friendship and understanding has and will continue to grow in considerable measure as a result of the Sinai operation.’” This, after President Eisenhower had made his statement on the Sinai operation. And in Toronto, Canada, at a gathering of United States and Canadian Jewish charitable organizations, in November, 1956, “Jews Pledge Rise in Overseas Help. In a special resolution the assembly termed Israel the bulwark of democracy in the Middle East.” And the World Jewish Congress (mated to the World Zionist Organization) “acclaims attack on Egypt.…”

Of course, those who knew better and who were disinterested, fair-minded and decent, such as the United Nations and the United States Government under President Eisenhower, had quite other things to say than to acclaim Israel’s attack on Egypt. And while England and France suddenly realized that it was too late in history to make aggressive wars under any pretense, Israel, the spoiled brat of the United Nations and the world, refused and stalled for three long months to give up the annexed foreign lands grabbed during the blitz campaign.

The United States was forced to give serious consideration to recommendations of sanctions against Israel. Said President Eisenhower on February 20, 1957: Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of the United Nations’ disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal?”

On the same day, the New York Times also carried this headline story: “Israel Ruin Seen in a Dollar Ban. If the United Nations calls for sanctions, and the U.S.A. complies, Tel-Aviv would be in dire straits. A stroke of President Eisenhower’s pen could bring virtual economic ruin to Israel.”

Israel, however, would not believe what it heard or read about the reactions of our Government. Said Moshe Brilliant, New York Times correspondent in Israel, on November 24, 1956:

All in all, Israelis believe that much of the castigation directed against them in the United Nations and elsewhere has been largely for appearance’ sake. Some Knesset members said that Israel had a strong set of cards. A world war could be no less dangerous to others than to Israel, they argue.… They ask why Israel should not exploit her current nuisance value to induce the Great Powers to press Egypt and the other Arab States to negotiate peace.…”

The frustrated, fanatical “Jewish” political nationalists were suffering from a Samson complex. They were ready to bring down the pillars of the world in an apocalyptic Armageddon, together with themselves. They “just had to have” their “lollipop”—the Greater Israel, the biblical homeland, as in the days of King David and King Solomon.

Nevertheless, the commanders of the “brilliante sortie” (English-Jewish newspapers preferred to call the assault on Egypt by this French term) had to take into account the American dollars for Israel and other possible sanctions. And so, even though they did not have in their souls any “decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” they had to capitulate. With malevolence and ill humor, the Israeli soldiers were ordered to retreat very slowly, but surely.

Fred Sparks, Pulitzer Prize winner and reporter for the Scripps-Howard newspapers, who was with the retreating Israeli army, wrote:

We moved into the Sinai desert after the retreating Israelis. Of course, needless to say, the Israelis were rather slow in retreating; there was a considerable amount of haggling back and forth at the United Nations, and for a time it looked pretty disastrous, but finally they left. We saw the destruction left by the Israeli forces, which was considerable. It was rather a vindictive campaign in the Sinai. Those poor people there have very little—the few water holes were salted; the few railroad tracks had been blown up; camels were killed and cattle were destroyed. It was rather a vicious campaign in the nature of campaigns in that part of the world, and it does seem to predicate a sorry sight for tomorrow.

It cost Israel 350,000,000 Israeli pounds to finance the swashbuckling war of Ben Gurion and his junta. This, however, emptied the coffers of the Israeli treasury, making it indispensable to raise quickly new “rescue funds” for “economic, social, cultural, health” needs. The chief source, of course, as always, was America. Who, then, paid for the war on Egypt?

Another innocent Jewish party paid dearly for the reckless and irresponsible attack on Egypt—the Jews of Egypt. From time immemorial, the Jewish community in Egypt, one of the oldest in Jewish history, had prospered and lived in brotherly peace with their Arab fellow citizens. This happy lot of Jews was irresponsibly sacrificed as a burnt offering on the altar of aggressive “Jewish” political nationalism. Fifty thousand innocent Jews who lived an independent, ideal, happy and respectable life as equal citizens in Egypt, whether under Farouk or Nasser, became beggars overnight, exiled from their homeland, the first casualty in a war that was not of their making or interest.

Ben Gurion and company had little compunction about this cruel sacrifice of the Jews of Egypt. What if some 50,000 Jews had to be sacrificed? Are not the Israeli boys and girls taking their lives in their hands in the “Holy War” of expansion—no, redemption!—of the Jewish homeland? And what does it amount to if one has to sacrifice some 50,000 Egyptian Jews who are “growing fat at their fleshpots in Egypt,” as against “regaining” the Gaza Strip, Mount Sinai, the Sinai desert, with perhaps a rich strike of oil underneath the hot sands? And, besides, the Egyptian exiled refugees might even become a “national” asset; they might serve for a long time as straw for new bricks in the future campaigns for funds in America, grist for the mills of propaganda and “rescue drives.”

In conclusion, may I quote here a few words from Abba Eban, Ben Gurion’s henchman and Ambassador to the United States (who assured us the day before the war on Egypt broke out that “Israel will start no war”). In addressing the 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’” (New York Times, November 25, 1956).

What cloven-footed piety, presumptuousness and self-righteousness! The world “missed the moment in history.” The United Nations should have let the Bible-quoting Ben Gurion and his predatory junta, in company with the last remnants of international gangsterism in France and England, run the new world, the one-world, the post–World Wars nuclear world of humanity’s revolt against depraved, maniacal nationalism.

In 1964,

Professor Herman Finer, author of “Dulles Over Suez,” has produced “proof” that Mr. David Ben Gurion … paid a secret visit to France in 1956 to discuss plans for the Sinai Campaign with leading French and British officials. In a letter to Professor Finer, Mr. Christian Pineau, French Foreign Minister in 1956, wrote: “Ben Gurion definitely visited the Paris region … and spent October 22 to 24, 1956, there. He met Guy Mollet, the French Prime Minister [Socialist leader], Bourges Maunoury, French Defense Minister, myself and then Selwyn Lloyd, British Foreign Secretary in 1956. Not only did I meet Ben Gurion but I was the one who discussed with him and the English the terms of the written agreement on joint intervention, the original of which has been kept by the Israelis” (Reuter dispatch quoted in London Jewish Chronicle, May 8, 1964)

Kafr Kassim Massacre of Forty-six Innocent Israeli Arabs on the Eve of the Invasion of Egypt, October 29, 1956. The Arabs in Israel.

Please note the date, October 29, 1956, the same date as the invasion of Egypt, only several hours ahead of the sneak attack.

The Kafr Kassim massacre of the innocents reminds me automatically of the Kishenev pogrom, another historic massacre of the innocents in far-off dark Russia of 1904, when the hooligans killed forty-five innocent Jews. At Kafr Kassim, forty-six men, women and children were brutally massacred by the armed forces of the Israeli army border police, for no reason in the world except lust for murder. The whole world knew of the Kishinev pogrom the day after it happened, but weeks and weeks passed before a newspaper in Israel dared reveal the tale of horror and inhumanity. The outside world had to wait much longer to know the facts, the truth.

The story of Kafr Kassim and the assault on Egypt are directly related to each other. Kafr Kassim was a part of the reign of terror to be applied to the Arabs, exactly as Deir Yassin exposed the bestiality of the philosophy of martial “redemption.” Kafr Kassim is an Arab village inside Israel, a remnant that remained after the big exodus of Arabs into exile. It is situated close to the big Jewish settlement of Petach Tikvah. About two thousand Arabs lived in Kafr Kassim. The Arab peasants either tilled their own land, or worked for the Jews in Petach Tikvah or other Jewish settlements near their village. Most of the Kafr Kassim Arabs were members in good standing of the Histadrut (Israeli trade union) and Kupath Cholim (Health Fund).

On the eve of October 29, just a few hours prior to the sneak attack on Egypt, at 4:30 P.M. a curfew was suddenly declared by the Israeli border police to begin at 5 P.M., at Kafr Kassim. When the terrified Arabs of Kafr Kassim asked the trigger-happy Israeli soldiers about the workers in the fields and about those who worked in Petach Tikvah and did not know anything about the sudden, unexpected curfew at Kafr Kassim, they were told they “they will be taken care of.” They certainly were taken care of: forty-six men, women, and children were massacred as they returned from their work to Kafr Kassim, sadistically murdered one by one without a spark of humanity or pity. Defense Minister Ben Gurion, directly responsible for what his army did, managed to quote the Bible and even shed a few crocodile tears. Let us go into the details of this grisly story.

Although Israel is a tiny country and everybody certainly knew of the massacre at Kafr Kassim, silence reigned everywhere. On November 6, eight days after the massacre, Ben Gurion’s Government issued a statement about the “incident” in these unbelievable words:

On October 29, 1956, when the activities of the “Fedayeen” grew, a curfew was proclaimed in a number of villages on the Eastern border in order to protect the lives of the villagers. A unit of the border patrol was charged with the implementation and supervision of the curfew, and the hours were fixed from 5 P.M. to 6 P.M. The villagers in general complied with the curfew order. In a few villages, some of the inhabitants were innocently returning to their homes after curfew, and a number of them were injured. The Government appointed an Inquiry Committee to establish the circumstances of events, the degree of the responsibility of the personnel of the Border Patrol, and whether the Government should pay to the families.”

On November 15, 1956, the Council of Ihud passed a resolution and at the same time addressed a letter to the Prime Minister, the essence of which is given here:

The Council of “Ihud” heard with shame, indignation and anger of the events in the Arab village of Kafr Kassim, Taibeg, and other places where a number of inhabitants were injured and killed by members of the Frontier Force. The Council resolved to condemn these actions and to request the Government to bring without delay all those guilty to justice.… To try the offenders in public and not in camera. To pay compensation in full to the families of the victims.…

Ihud’s resolution had this to say about the war of aggression on Egypt:

The Council met at a time of great tension both at home and on the international scene, brought about by the hostilities between Israel and Egypt on the one hand, and between Egypt, and England and France on the other hand. The Council marked with sorrow and distress the sad fact that Israel had involved itself in action with Powers bent on the exploitation of backward peoples, and had thereby laid itself open to being called a tool in the hands of these Powers. England and France will leave the Near East sooner or later, either voluntarily, or under duress, but we live in the midst of it, and all our hopes are here. Reckless and adventure-seeking action is bound to bring upon us untold trouble for generations to come.

Israel’s only way out of its present position is to obey world opinion as expressed by the resolutions of the United Nations.… It is regrettable that Israel only then declared that it did not intend to keep the conquered territories after pressure was brought on her by the U.S.A. and Russia.

On December 12, 1956—six weeks after the Kafr Kassim massacre—Ben Gurion reappeared before the Knesset and quoted a mouthful from the Bible: “Kafr Kassim is an act which strikes a blow at the most sacred foundation of humanity, drawn from Israel’s Torah.… It was said in our Torah: And if a stranger sojourns with thee in your land, thou shalt not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.”

Hypocrisy ad nauseam and ad infinitum! Let us go back to Ihud’s Ner (Hebrew magazine for Jewish-Arab rapprochement.) to see how spiritual Jews (there was once also spiritual Zionism, Ahad Ha-’Amism) regard Ben Gurion’s biblical mantle cover:

Ben Gurion’s speech sounded as if delivered under compulsion. If contained within itself all the shortcomings of an insincere and hypocritical statement.… He boasted of not concealing anything from the public, but the fact is that the thing he spoke of happened on the 29th of October while the people generally learned of it only on December 12.…

The Kafr Kassim affair reflects the guilt of an out-and-out militaristic State, of the militaristic atmosphere that permeates it and penetrates the souls of old and young, of the teachers, writers, and poets.… The Kafr Kassim affair is the symptom of a rotted body politic.… The guilt lies not with the individual citizen, but with the entire national collectivity. The entire national collectivity should repent.…

Let the heads of the people and its chief rabbis confess publicly to this great sin.… Let them go to Kafr Kassim and ask the victims for forgiveness and make atonement to the orphans and widows. Then the whole nation and the whole world will know that a change of spirit has indeed come over the Israeli nation.…” (Ner, November–December, 1956, issue. Translated from the Hebrew)

To complete the tragic story of Kafr Kassim as far as Israel’s justice is concerned: it took two years for the murderers to be brought to trial and “final” judgment. Terms of seven and seventeen years were meted out to eight border policemen. “Seven of the policemen were found guilty of having killed forty-three men, women, and children ‘deliberately and without any justification.’ Lt. Gavriel Dehan, commander of the police platoon at Kafr Kassim had ordered the murder of the villagers in ‘cold blood’ and had himself shot two of the victims.” (New York Times, October 13 and 17, 1958.)

Most unbelievable is the “end” of the Commander-in-Chief of the Kafr Kassim district, Colonel Aluf Mishne Shadmi. Let the Jewish Newsletter of March 23, 1959, tell this fantastic story of justice in military Israel:

The acquittal by a military court in Israel of Colonel Aluf Mishne Shadmi of the murder of forty-seven Arab villagers on the eve of the Sinai invasion ends a tragic chapter in the history of Israel on a note of hopelessness, if not despair. Although Shadmi admitted having given the fatal order and was reprimanded by the court for “having exceeded his authority unintentionally,” he was, nevertheless, found not guilty and fined 10 prutot (2 cents) for the heinous crime. The verdict of the court was accompanied by the recommendation that “the verdict should not influence Aluf Mishne Shadmi’s status in the defense forces. The accused’s splendid record in the Haganah and defense forces should bind him for many more years to his dedicated services in the armed forces.”

Under pressure of public opinion, Col. Shadmi was placed on trial, but instead of being tried by the civil court as were his subordinates, he was tried by a military court which in effect reversed the sentence of the civil court. Thus, in a little over a decade, the State of Israel succeeded in changing the moral concepts of one of the most peace-loving people to the extent of swallowing militarism with its philosophy and placing the “honor of the army” above justice, above individual conscience, above the traditions of prophetic Judaism and above the highest moral values of mankind. This is a tragic end to a tragic incident.

Ner, in its October–November, 1958, issue, dwelling on the old Hebrew dictum “Be killed but do not kill,” said this after the mock trial of the murderers at Kafr Kassim:

We have always said that the troubles, persecutions and murders which the Jewish people suffered had taught them one thing: This shall not happen here.… Yet, the Kafr Kassim affair could not have taken place if a certain kind of atmosphere had not existed, an atmosphere of “Beat the Arabs,” which has not changed to this day. All persecutions and acts of murder are the products of a certain atmosphere. The notorious Kishinev pogrom too, in which 45 Jews were killed, would not have broken out had not a certain atmosphere of general incitement brought about by certain circles existed.

There should be a complete change of attitude, both of the Government and of the Jewish population, towards the Arab minority. The rule of oppression and discrimination against the Arab population should stop. There is only one way to atone for Kafr Kassim, and that is to abolish all harsh regulations which prepared the poisonous atmosphere that led to Kafr Kassim. The chauvinistic atmosphere which regards foreigners and non-Jews as undesirable elements should stop!

And the following quotation from Ner throws more light on the question of the Arabs in Israel:

Symptomatic of the colonialist order of things is the fact that, in matters pertaining to Arabs in Israel, no Arab has a hand in it. “Specialists,” Counselors in Arab Affairs, thousands of officials, but there is not one Arab official looking after Arab interests. Callousness, strangeness and in the end hatred … The Arab intelligentsia—teachers, lawyers, doctors, students especially—see no future possibility for development and constructive work. They despair and escape, or turn to sides where they may hope for help and redemption.… This system also poisons our own life, particularly the Jewish youth that sees in this order of things a prejudice against citizens because of their race, religion, nationality.… (My own translation from the Hebrew, issue of July–September, 1957)

A tortured soul of an Arab in Israel will, of course, put it more bluntly. The following letter addressed by an Israeli Arab to the Hebrew daily Haaretz appeared on June 5, 1958:

I call on all those who for generations have not known the taste of freedom; all those who have experienced persecution and discrimination in many lands; all those who were victims of Hitler’s crimes. It is now ten years since your Government had enforced a regime of oppression and persecution on the Arab population of Israel. For ten years we Arabs have been living under a regime of military force. We have been robbed of our freedom of movement and of our homes. Our villages are the property of the military rulers.… We are exposed to arbitrary administrative arrests.… Our school graduates can find no opportunities for work or for positions in the Government. Only the few who are ready to sell their honor and act as informers are given jobs in the Government bureaus of the State.

Oppression and ghetto life from which you as Jews have suffered for generations are now being imposed upon us in the State of Israel.

We were called hooligans and gangsters when we defended our rights and raised our voices as workers and peasants on the first of May in Nazareth and in Um-al-Fahm.

Raise your voices! Stop the hand of the oppressors! Don’t permit the Government to besmirch the name of Israel and your names as Jews by what it is doing to the Arabs! (Jewish Newsletter, June 30, 1958)

More About the Arabs in Israel.

Since 1948, over five thousand Arabs have left Israel illegally, by successfully crossing the borders in the stillness of the night, or by overcoming the Israeli border police. A good many lost their lives in this desperate effort to find an answer to their hopelessly frustrated lives in “biblical” Israel.

In September, 1961, five young Israeli Arabs were killed by Israeli border patrols as they sought to cross into the Gaza Strip held by Egypt. This aroused the ire of the Arabs in Israel:

Twelve persons were injured in rioting between Arabs and Israelis in the old city of Acre. The clash was the first serious disturbance between the Arabs and the Jews of Israel since it achieved independence. Hundreds of policemen, reinforced by squads of border policemen, swarmed into the Arab quarters with truncheons and shields and restored order quickly.… Twelve policemen were injured in demonstrations in Nazareth … when about 2,000 school boys crowded into the Square of Virgin Mary’s Well, shouting, “May Israel be destroyed,” “Long live Nasser,” and “Down with Ben Gurion and his Government of murderers.” (New York Times, September 23, 1961)

The following few quotations, pertinent to our subject—The Arabs in Israel—come from a statement submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, on November 21, 1961, by a group of Israeli citizens who represent the Central committee of The Third Force movement in Israel:

With the establishment of the State of Israel, on the 14th day of May, 1948, a Declaration of Independence was published by the newly constituted government. This declaration states inter alia: “We call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship.”

And further:

“The State of Israel will maintain complete equality of social and political rights for all its citizens, without distinction of creed, race or sex.”

It soon became apparent, and it is quite clear at present, that the above statements were insincere and deceptive.

Military Government. All Arab villagers are under military Government. No resident of an Arab village may leave his place of residence without a written permit from the Military Governor, even in order to go to look for work or for medical help. Arab children died in the arms of their mothers while waiting in the corridor of the Governor for a permit to go to see a doctor.… And the travel permit directs the traveller by what road to go, and forbids any deviation from the designated road.…

If a near-by Jewish settlement wishes to buy land from a villager, the Governor will see to it that the required land be sold, and at a “reasonable” price. The recalcitrant villager will get no permit to go to town to sell his products. The Governor will also see to it that a worker who has expressed sympathy with the anti-Zionist party should get no permit to go to look for work, and he and his family should remain unemployed and hungry.… It is the Military Governors and their henchmen who produce the miraculous phenomenon that the Party-in-Power [Ben Gurion’s party], which bears the main responsibility for the misery and distress of the Arabs in Israel, gets at elections to the Knesset about 50% of the Arab votes while only about 30% of the Jewish votes.…

Land Robberty. The great majority of the Israeli Arabs are peasants, and the chief, often only, source of their income is the land. During the Arab-Israel war in 1948, and even before it, Jewish settlers, especially the well organized “socialist” Kibbutzim, began to grab land from their Arab neighbors. The armed forces and Zionist organizations assisted them in this national enterprise. In this way many Arab villages lost most of their land and some of them were robbed of all their land, and the village was razed to the ground in order that the villagers should be unable to return. Thus was created a new kind of Arab refugee, refugees who never left their homes in Israel until they were driven out from them by Israeli land-grabbers.… This was a second-class refugee, made in Israel, this time not by unruly, but well formulated, legal robbery. There are at present about 30,000 such “Israeli refugees.” They are landless, homeless, and the life conditions of most of them are utterly miserable.… Thus, if Arab land is needed for a Jewish settlement, the necessary area is declared to be a “Security Zone,” and the Arab cultivators are not permitted to enter it.… The land, then, is not cultivated, “wasted,” and the Government takes it over and gives it to the Jewish settlers.… By this ingenious legal stratagem … not only all the land of the Arab refugees, but also about 1,250,000 dunums, more than 60% of the land of the Israeli Arabs who never left Israel, has been confiscated.

On February 11, 1962, the New York Times carried a long story about the Arabs in Israel. Here are only a few words to supplement but not repeat the above statement:

About 205,000 of the 240,000 Arabs in Israel live under military rule.… Mr. Ben Gurion and his colleagues have said that these Arabs bear watching because their strong emotional and family ties with Arabs in the neighboring countries make them a potential fifth column.… Ben Gurion, who is Defense Minister as well as Premier, is not likely to give up military government without a struggle. He deems it necessary to keep a firm hand on a minority he does not trust.

On February 21, 1962, the New York Times reported: “Israel Rejects Bid to End Military Curb on Arabs of Israel. Ben Gurion Wins His Fight in the Knesset by 4 Votes.”

That Ben Gurion had a stranglehold on the Knesset, particularly on the members of his party, is proved by the “daring” act of his successor, Mr. Levi Eshkol, who recently announced a major policy revision with regard to Arabs of Israel. Reported the London Jewish Chronicle of October 25, 1963:

In a major departure from the line of policy followed by his predecessor, Mr. Ben Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Levi Eshkol, announced … that, apart from the inhabitants of a few border villages and elements considered a security risk, Israeli Arabs could henceforth travel freely into and out of predominantly Arab districts without special permits. The relaxation of security regulations will ease the living conditions of about 180,000 Arab and Druse citizens. His announcement came during a major review of internal and external issues before the Knesset at the opening of its winter session.

The Arab Refugees Today.

I shall now touch briefly on the current state of affairs of the wretched Palestinian refugees; or, as the Arabs everywhere prefer to call them, “the population of Palestine in exile,” in their “world of mud” (as a New York Times reporter characterized their life). Here is a late report to the United Nations:

Dr. John H. Davis, who since January, 1959, has headed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, has resigned to return to the U.S. at the end of the year. In his final report as Commissioner General, Dr. Davis told the 111-member General Assembly: “The quarrel between the Arab states and Israel complicates almost every aspect of the progress in the Middle East.… The problems of the Palestine refugee remain as intractable as ever.” The Agency has registered 1,210,170 refugees, and is providing food rations to 882,074. Although the population growth has increased the total in the last 15 years, the number receiving rations has remained about the same, mainly because the agency has enabled thousands to become self-supporting.” (New York Times, October 27, 1963)

The refugees are still embittered by the conviction that a grave injustice has been done to them through the loss of their homes and homeland, to which they continue to demand their right to return. (London Jewish Chronicle, October 25, 1963)

At a recent conference of specialists in refugee work, Dr. Davis remarked that

the record of the Arab governments harboring the refugees has been “sympathetic and generous.” He attacked as a “misconception” the idea that the problem could have been settled except for the “conniving of the unprincipled Arab politicians.” The position taken by Israeli spokesmen often has been that the problem is based on the refusal of Arab countries to give permanent status to the refugees. The attitude of the Arab leaders, Dr. Davis said, is based on a refusal to accept Israel as a “permanent component” of the Middle East. He declared that this attitude was held by “virtually all of the Arab people. The root of the problem lies in the basic feelings of the Arabs and Israelis,” he added. (New York Times, January 19, 1961)

In October, 1961, Dr. Davis declared at the United Nations, categorically, that the Arab refugees had the full right to repatriation or compensation, in accordance with the United Nations resolution of 1948, which had been repeatedly reaffirmed annually. Because of this outspoken opinion, the Zionist papers dubbed Dr. Davis “the most biased pro-Arab.”

“The Arab states have contended that the lost holdings of the Palestinian refugees, together with accumulated interest, would come to twelve billion dollars,” according to the New York Times of October 17, 1961. Whether this figure is correct or “highly inflated,” the Arabs of Palestine have been robbed of their homes and their homeland, something one cannot buy with all the gold of the world when it comes to attachment and love of one’s own country. The United States has spent, so far, more than $291,000,000 in aid to the Arab refugees since 1948. It certainly has the right to demand a “fair chance” for the United Nations Arab-refugee effort. At the United Nations, therefore, on December 19, 1961, the United States submitted a proposal to intensify efforts to resolve the Palestine Arab refugee problem before anything else is done. It was approved by the General Assembly’s Special Political Committee, 74 to 1. The one “no” vote was cast by Israel. Why?

In recent years, Ben Gurion, his Foreign Affairs Minister Golda Meir and the Knesset spoke their last word about the Arab refugees.

Said Ben Gurion in the Knesset:

Israel would not agree to the repatriation of the Arab refugees. Israel categorically rejects the insidious proposal for freedom of choice for the refugees. She is convinced that this proposal is designed and calculated only to destroy Israel.… There is only one practical and fair solution for the problem of the refugees: to settle them among their own people in countries having plenty of good land and water and which are in need of additional manpower. (New York Times, October 12, 1961)

Said Golda Meir:

Anyone who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take responsibility for it, if he is interested in the State of Israel. Not everyone who talks in terms of bringing them back cares about how Israel can continue to exist with hundreds of thousands of Nasser’s emissaries in our midst. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: we shall not let this happen! (From a speech delivered before the Knesset, as reported by Ner in its September–October, 1961 issue. Ner is the organ of Ihud)

On November 8, 1961, the New York Times reported:

The Knesset Approves Stand on Refugees. The Knesset voted overwhelming approval of the Government’s stand that Arab refugees who fled should not be repatriated to the territory which has since become the State of Israel.… The motion was approved 68 to 7. In the same motion, the Knesset gave its approval to a statement by Premier Ben Gurion on October 11, in which he rejected a proposal offered in the United Nations to give the refugees a choice of repatriation or resettlement.

The special representative of the Palestine Conciliation Commission of the United Nations, Dr. Eric E. Johnson, appointed to make a thorough study of the Palestine Arabs refugees, came back in November, 1962, with a proposal that some form of plebiscite be instituted in the Arab refugee camps to ascertain their wishes. Here was a simple and direct way leading toward an honest solution. The Zionist machine, however, managed to torpedo the recommendations. The Israeli Government still wants “direct Israel-Arab negotiations.” On what basis? On Ben Gurion and Golda Meir’s “we shall not let this happen”?

On November 20, 1963, at the United Nations, “a U.S. resolution calling on the Palestine Conciliation Commission to ‘continue its efforts for the implementation of Paragraph II’ was approved, 83 to 1. Israel cast the single negative vote (New York Times, November 21, 1963).

In view of this self-centered, hardhearted, inhuman attitude toward the Palestine Arab refugees, it sounds ridiculous and insulting, as well as hopeless and futile, when we read the hypocritical statements devoid of any meaningful negotiations made by Israel’s delegate to the United Nations: “His Government was ready to consider earnestly and with humility sitting down at a conference table with Arab representatives, inside or outside the United Nations, at any time or place, publicly or privately and without any prior conditions whatsoever” (New York Times, November 13, 1959).

The Arab-Israeli War in 1962. The Denouement of the Old Lavon Affair of 1954–55 in 1960–61 Stirred and Unchained Many Israelis. It Temporarily Halted the Rampageous War of Nerves on Arab Neighbors and Caused New General Elections in Israel, the Results of Which Ben Gurion Called “A National Disaster.” But With the Aid of the Reactionary, Anachronistic Orthodox-Clericalists in a New Coalition Government, Ben Gurion Managed to Hold Onto His Old Autocratic Powers, and Returned to His “Plans Which I Have Yet to Implement.”

After the Sinai-Suez fiasco of 1956–57, England and France finally learned, at the cost of terrific sacrifices and vital prestige, that it was just too late in history for wars of aggression. However, Ben Gurion and his military junta, though they too finally had to disgorge the vast territory they occupied and annexed in Egypt, learned nothing from world resentment and repugnance. By his dilatory retreat from Egypt, Ben Gurion wanted the world to know and believe—above all, the Arabs—that “Israel won a clean victory over Egypt,” even though everybody who read the independent newspapers knew that England and France planned their mighty joint attack on Egypt at the same time Israel did. And everybody also knew that alongside the advancing Israeli armies there was a shield of sixty French Air Force jets manned by French Air Force pilots to help the Israelis in the assault on their common victim, Egypt.

Premier and Defense Minister Ben Gurion never had it in his hateful heart to feel any compunction about the abortive Sinai-Suez invasion of 1956. He and his junta clique never allowed the dormant Jewish ethical conscience to bother them. On December 28, 1960—four years after the war in Egypt—in an address before the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Ben Gurion said: “The Sinai campaign still further fortified the pride and admiration of Jewry” (New York Times, January 8, 1961).

In his letter of resignation in 1961, after the exposé of the crooked, dangerous and irresponsible Lavon Affair, Ben Gurion made the followed elucidating remark: “It is not easy for me to abandon endeavors which I consider important, and in which I have been engaged for many years, and plans which I have yet to implement” (London Jewish Chronicle, January 20, 1961).

General Ezer Weizmann, Commander-in-Chief of Israel’s air force, said in an address in London: “We are still surrounded by millions of hostile Arabs, and unless there is a radical change of policy in the Arab States, I cannot be convinced that war will definitely be prevented” (London Jewish Chronicle, February 17, 1961).

On May 26, 1961, the London Jewish Chronicle had this screaming headline: “Israel Might Have to Strike First.” This captioned a report of another speech made by another bigwig of Ben Gurion’s military junta, General Yigal Allon, to a gathering of Zionists in London: “A successful Arab invasion would not be stopped by the United Nations, and a military fait accompli would not be undone by outside intervention.… Since the Arabs regard themselves as being in a state of war with Israel … it is wiser, in case of need, to take necessary counteraction in good time, and be condemned rather than wait to be destroyed and gain the world’s sympathy.”

We shall never fully understand the frame of mind of the military junta that rules Israel—bitter, hateful, fanatical, self-assertive and determined “Promised Land redeemers”—nor can we understand the new rampageous “retaliatory” raids and wars on the Arab countries in 1962; nor, for that matter, can we understand where the unregenerate rulers of Israel and their world-wide machine are leading indoctrinated and intoxicated world Jewry, until we get a complete picture of them as revealed through their villainous activities in the Lavon Affairs—I repeat, “Affairs”—all the way from 1954 to 1961. Also we can see through the repercussions of the Lavon Affair the guidelines of a new era in Israel; for things will never again be the same, now that the salient facts have been revealed.

This is the time to bring up to date the whole story, from where it was left off earlier, when I described the “ill-fated, disastrous security adventure in Egypt” in 1954, which Pinhas Lavon, then Defense Minister, characterized later, in 1960, as “morally reprehensible and politically stupid.”

The Lavon Affair in its original manifestation is like an iceberg: the submerged part is the major part. We already know how it came to the surface in 1954–55 but was kept secret until 1960–61, when it was revealed. Its bottom, its roots, its ramifications, however, go down deep and wide, as the aggressive acts of 1954, 1955 and 1956 showed. We shall now learn how it all came to light, and then follow up the violent repercussions in Israel in 1960–61.

Well, Pinhas Lavon, booted out of his job as Defense Minister of Israel early in February, 1955, to make way for “retired” Ben Gurion to launch his unprovoked “planned and prearranged” assault on the Gaza Strip of Egypt on February 28, had to wait six long years to finally get his day in court. Upon his dismissal from the Defense Department, Lavon was given the job of heading the Histadrut (Federation of Labor) as Lo Yechratz (Don’t yelp) compensation. Under his care, Histadrut evolved from a mere trade-union federation into a sort of rival of Ben Gurion’s Government in matters of trade and industry control, social security, health and employment insurance. However, Lavon also bided his time against the day when he would expose the ways and workings of brigandage of the depraved and predatory military junta that ruled Israel.

The opportunity came in connection with a minor incident that cropped up and broke loose the fires of hell in Israel. On September 12, 1960, Israeli courts were busy trying forgery cases. The former Ambassador to Austria had forged documents against Amos Ben Gurion and got a fifteen-year sentence. During the trials one witness testified that he had seen a document to which Lavon’s signature had been forged in late 1954 “in a security mishap.” Ben Gurion promptly announced that the three-year statute of limitations prohibited the opening of the case. Lavon demanded an investigation. Every effort of Ben Gurion to stop the investigation failed, and finally his Cabinet itself ordered an investigation. After months of intensive hearings, on December 25, 1960, the Cabinet unanimously exonerated Lavon of all guilt in the “disastrous security adventure” in Egypt. Attorney General Gideon Hausner had, in the meantime, found “conclusive evidence of forgeries as well as false testimony in an earlier inquiry.” (New York Times, February 10, 1961.)

The people of Israel soon learned the bare facts about the corrupt military junta, in spite of the tight military censorship clamped down on the press. But in America, for a long time, a mysterious conspiracy of silence on the part of the general press allowed the reading public only sugar-coated bromides. Thus we read intimations about “an ill-fated disastrous security adventure and blunder in Egypt”; about a “secret operation by terrorists-saboteurs”; about a “conspiracy of subordinates in the Ministry of Defense of Israel,” and the like. The most ridiculous press-agented elucidation circulated in America concerned “the incident which involved the exposure of Israeli agents in Cairo and Alexandria which embarrassed the Government of Ben Gurion.”

At the Cabinet meeting of December 25, 1960, Ben Gurion, like a spoiled prima donna playing the innocent lamb, became enraged. He insulted his colleagues and stormed out of the room. Shameless and insolent, he laid down an ultimatum to his Mapai party (Israel’s ranking political party, to whom Ben Gurion became the “irreplaceable and indispensable man”) to remove Lavon from his job at the Histadrut. While the party struggled with the problem in January, 1961, Ben Gurion resigned in a huff, and his Government fell. At the meeting of the Mapai Central Committee, 96 members voted against and 159 voted for adoption of the resolution to remove Lavon. And, of course, Ben Gurion’s “young guards,” Dayan, Peres, Abba Eban and Josephtal, demanded Lavon’s immediate dismissal. Moshe Sharett strongly opposed the dismissal (at last he had his eyes opened, though in 1954 the military junta worked as much behind his back as behind that of his colleague Pinhas Lavon, the Defense Minister), arguing that Mapai should object to Ben Gurion’s dictating who should represent it in the Histadrut.

At the Histadrut Executive Committee meeting, later on, 46 members voted against accepting the resignation of Lavon, and 58 members (diehard followers of Ben Gurion) voted for accepting it. One member called the vote “an immoral and unjust submission to dictatorship.”

There was no mistake about the great moral victory won by Lavon in his long struggle to vindicate his name, and by democracy against an overpowering military dictatorship. Though Ben Gurion succeeded in booting Lavon out of his job at the Histadrut, he suffered the most disastrous setback of his political life. It was during the meetings of Mapai and the Histadrut that student demonstrations took place in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv against Ben Gurion and for Lavon. They carried placards reading: BEN GURION GO TO SDE BOKER. TAKE DAYAN AND PERES WITH YOU. WE DO NOT ACCEPT LEADERS WITH ELASTIC CONSCIENCES (London Jewish Chronicle, February 17, 1961). The police tore up the placards and swung their batons at the angry masses. From then on, audiences in Israeli movie houses booed news films of Ben Gurion and cheered those of Lavon. Lavon had destroyed the national father figure of Ben Gurion.

For a while, Ben Gurion tried hard to form a new coalition Government, but no one cared to play ball with him any longer. New elections had to be promulgated. Ben Gurion, the past master of electioneering, put off the day of elections about six months in order to let the public cool off and perhaps forget things, while he, in the meantime, resorted to his bag of tricks. He made skillful use of his position as Prime Minister of the caretaker Government. He enforced party regularity in order to close Mapai ranks. Then he flew off to Canada, and from there to the United States, primarily to incite his friends and soften up his enemies. The American Jewish leaders, well narcotized, came flocking to his suite in the Waldorf Towers like mortals to the oracle. Then Ben Gurion went back home to Israel to warn the voters that “unless they retained a man who believes in the deterrent power of a strong army,” as he did, “they might be slaughtered as were the Armenians in Turkey during World War I, or the Jews in Europe during World War II” (New York Times, August 15, 1961).

Nevertheless, all the parties in Israel except Mapai made the Lavon Affair the election-campaign issue. Their slogan was: “The electorate must not give power in the future to those who were involved in giving the irresponsible orders which set off the ‘security mishap’ and the ‘Lavon Affair’” (London Jewish Chronicle, August 4, 1961).

At a special session in July “the Knesset passed a resolution without opposition (but with all the Mapai members abstaining) confirming that the resignation of a Government or of a Minister does not in any way invalidate Cabinet decisions. This move reaffirmed the Government’s acceptance on December 25, 1960, of the findings of the Ministerial Committee of seven exonerating Mr. Pinhas Lavon for the ‘security mishap’ of 1954. Mr. Ben Gurion claimed that the Government’s resignation had invalidated the findings of the Ministerial Committee.” (London Jewish Chronicle, July 28, 1961.)

This shameless and brazen attempt by Ben Gurion at legalistic manipulation to get out of trouble reminds one of his earlier attempts, in September, 1960, to quash the case of Lavon versus the forgeries and false testimony by members of the junta “because the three-year statute of limitations prohibited the opening of the case.”

A correspondent of the London Jewish Chronicle stated in the August 11, 1961, issue, just prior to the elections in Israel, the following remarkable view of the state of affairs in Israel, or rather the change of affairs in Israel: “It is difficult for anyone not intimately familiar with the Israeli scene to understand how shattering the effect of the ‘Lavon Affair’ was on the population. It shook the foundations of Mapai.… Had it been possible to hold elections immediately after Ben Gurion’s resignation in January, the losses to Mapai might have been large enough to revolutionize the body politic of Israel. But several months have passed and emotions aroused to an abnormally high pitch cannot be sustained there for long.…”

In the elections on August 15, 1961, Ben Gurion’s party lost 5 of its 47 seats, and although it remained the country’s largest single party (having obtained 34.4 per cent of the votes), Ben Gurion called the vote a “national disaster” because it left the party too weak to stand alone. All of Ben Gurion’s attempts to form a new coalition Government failed. He met with constant deadlock because none of the other fourteen parties in Israel appeared eager to join with his Mapai party. Four of the most important parties demanded the appointment by the Knesset of a National Security Board to supervise the defense establishment. Pressure for greater civilian control over the armed forces grew out of the Lavon Affair.

Months of wrangling and bargaining passed without success. Ben Gurion balked at all demands by potential coalition partners for more supervision over Israel’s security affairs. Finally Ben Gurion had to drop all efforts at winning any coalition Government, and only with the aid of his astute trouble shooter and Minister of Finance, Levi Eshkol, did he manage to get back into his job. “Patiently and shrewdly, by pitting one against the other parties, raising hopes of one faction to break the resistance of another, Mr. Eshkol broke the united front and coaxed the splinter groups into relaxing their conditions” (New York Times, November 3, 1961).

Ben Gurion’s salvation and support came chiefly from the theocratic dark forces, the reactionary, anachronistic orthodox clericalists, who, unlike the prophets of ancient Israel who chastised the rulers for immoral acts, pledged their support to Ben Gurion in return for the power granted them to run the civilian and religious life of liberal, progressive Israel. Only through political horse trading with the “authoritative, authentic, infallible fundamentalists” did Ben Gurion get back his job as Prime Minister and Defense Minister. Another party that entered the coalition, the Achdut Avoda, “agreed to join the coalition when Mapai yielded to its demand for the formation of a Ministerial Committee on Defense (not a civilian National Security Board). However, contrary to the original demand, this body was to be headed by the Minister of Defense [Ben Gurion] himself.” (London Jewish Chronicle, November 3, 1961.)

From now on Ben Gurion was again free to resume “the endeavors which I consider important and in which I have been engaged for many years, and plans which I have yet to implement.” Thus, in spite of the corruption and the uninterrupted, overlong power that Ben Gurion and his Mapai party had enjoyed in Israel—all fully exposed during the Lavon Affair and the prolonged election campaign—the monolithic Ben Gurion–Mapai team was back in the saddle. Confident of the results of the machinations of Levi Eshkol, Ben Gurion could celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday on September 27, 1961, by cheerfully exclaiming that he was ready to start his next seventy-five years. (In fact, a year later, on September 27, 1962, the appetite to live and rule still persisted. Guests who were invited to celebrate his seventy-sixth birthday “spotted a book on Mr. Ben Gurion’s desk entitled Live to 180,” according to the Jewish Chronicle of October 19, 1962.) The Lavon Affair thus proved to be a false dawn.*

And ready was Ben Gurion with all the fervor and cocksureness of the rabid fanatic. The damper that the Lavon Affair had put on the fervid ambitions of Ben Gurion and his military junta for a while was discarded. The public memory did not endure long, and Israel’s “indispensable” Ben Gurion was again directing the aggressive military policy implied in his “endeavors and plans which I have yet to implement.”

It did not take long for the Arab countries around Israel to get the familiar shock treatment. On November 2, 1961, the new coalition regime was installed, and by February 2, 1962, we read:

Israel Is Believed Pushing War of Nerves as Planes Roam Over United Arab Republic. “Enemy” planes, officially unidentified but believed to be Israeli fighters, made their third deep penetration within five days into the United Arab Republic (Egypt).… They raided the Suez Canal, more than 100 miles from Israel, and drew fire from the United Arab Republic Soviet-made anti-aircraft guns.… (Los Angeles Times–Chicago Daily News Foreign Service, February 2, 1962)

Since this war of nerves was “officially unidentified,” it was not officially brought to the attention of the United Nations.

On March 16, 1962, however, there was another open war of nerves, this time against Syria. In a lightning prowling invasion of Syria, Israeli troops carried out one of its recurring “retaliatory” raids on Arab territory that took a heavy toll of human life and caused widespread destruction. Then they withdrew. Officially, Israel claimed that Syrian forces had harassed Israeli fishermen on the Sea of Galilee (now known as Lake Tiberias) below the Syrian boundary. Also, Israel charged that her attack was necessary to “destroy a fortified post in the demilitarized zone between Syria and Israel.”

Syria submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council that would have the Council condemn Israel for the wanton attack—an “act of war” of March 16, 1962. Syria charged that the attack was part of a long-range campaign to drive Syrians from the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, as well as divert the waters of the Jordan Valley to irrigate the semi-desert Negev area in the south. From time immemorial, the Syrians have been fishing in the Sea of Galilee and using the waters of the Jordan to irrigate their fields and gardens.

Interesting is the cynical attitude revealed by Israel. At the United Nations, when asked what Israel’s objectives were in attacking Syria, Mr. Comay, chief delegate of Israel at the United Nations, gave the following:

Firstly, peace with our neighbors.

Secondly, if our neighbors refuse to negotiate a settlement of all outstanding differences … we will at least insist on that freedom from attack, aggression and interference which is guaranteed to Israel under the armistice agreement.

Thirdly, we mean to proceed with the constructive development of our country, and will not acquiesce in any attempt by our neighbors to obstruct or impede any aspect of that development. (New York Times, April 4, 1962)

Another claim of Israel was that she now had exclusive fishing rights in the Sea of Galilee; and that the Syrians “lost” these rights to the Israelis when the Israelis conquered that territory. It was true, after the conquest, that all the waters of the lake lay on Israel’s side of the armistice line, though for miles Syrian territory came within about thirty-three feet of the water, and for thousands of years the Syrians had been fishing in the Sea of Galilee. So Israel then said: “No Syrian citizen has the right to fish in our waters without our consent” (New York Times, March 29, 1962).

Adlai Stevenson, chief United States representative at the United Nations, suggested calling in Major General von Horn of Sweden, Truce Supervisor of the United Nations in Palestine, in order to get first-hand information. General von Horn promptly flew to New York and categorically stated that

there was no evidence to support Israel’s charge that her attack on Syria on March 16 was necessary to destroy a fortified post, in self-defense. He found no evidence of any such post “either existing or destroyed” in the area concerned. He indicated that Israel had put more obstacles in the way of effective truce supervision than had Syria.… His organization authority had been “greatly weakened” by Israel’s refusal to accept its authority over the demilitarized zone in the southeast sector of the Sea of Galilee … that in Israel, United Nations observers had not received “freely recognized” freedom of movement. He said that “such assurances were given by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.” (New York Times, April 5, 1962)

Even before General von Horn came to New York to testify, Adlai Stevenson chastised Israel by declaring: “Whatever the facts, they do not, in our view, justify the Israeli reversion to any policy of retaliatory raids. This policy contributed to the rapid rise in tensions in the Middle East during 1955 and 1956, and it can no more be countenanced today than it was then.” (New York Times, April 3, 1962.)

After General von Horn’s testimony, the United States and Britain asked the Security Council to censure Israel severely for her raid on Syria on March 16, 1962. They introduced a draft resolution “that reaffirmed the strong Security Council action of January 19, 1956 (after the Sinai-Suez assault) condemning Israel for following a policy of reprisals against neighboring Arab countries” (New York Times, April 7, 1962).

And what was the reaction of militant Israel to the United Nations condemnation? While the Security Council condemned Israel in a 10 to 0 vote (France did not use her veto power, but abstained), the Knesset of Israel, after a three-hour debate, voted 76 to 3 to approve a resolution backing Ben Gurion, who assailed the United States on her vote in the United Nations. Ben Gurion’s long speech can be summarized in one of his sentences in which he said that he regarded the United Nations resolution “as being based on a double standard.” And, of course, as soon as Ben Gurion sneezed out his accusation of “double standard,” the Jewish press repeated his words with a Gezundheit. Even the old London Jewish Chronicle featured an editorial about the “Double Standards of the United Nations.”

Ben Gurion did not, God forbid, accuse the United Nations or the United States of anti-Semitism. But, inside his East European ghetto mentality, full of hatred for the “everlastingly persecuting goyim,” I am sure that the old small, silent voice was crying out, “Oh, these goyim! These anti-Semites!”

Surely Adlai Stevenson, and perhaps even his boss, President Kennedy (who surely must have collaborated with his principal delegate at the United Nations), were bestowed with blessings by the small silent voice “I do not care very much what the goyim are saying; I only care what they do,” Ben Gurion was quoted as having said on another occasion.

As to General von Horn, an announcement by Albert Grand, press attaché of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, asserted that the General had received an anonymous letter from Israel threatening to kill him. Mr. Grand said that the letter requested the General to leave Israel within ten days; otherwise, he would be “taken home in a coffin.” General von Horn lived at the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in the demilitarized zone and not in Israel. Mr. Grand added that this was not the first time General von Horn had received threatening letters from Israel. It will be recalled that another eminent Swede, Count Bernadotte, United Nations mediator in Palestine, was murdered by Israelis wearing the uniform of the Israelis Army after he had proposed at the United Nations a solution to the Arab-Israeli war.

Ben Gurion and his junta apparently sought safety in quick and heavy-handed reactions to any provocation, in order to discourage larger attacks by the Arabs, and convince them, at the same time, through big sneak “reprisal” attacks that Israel was immeasurably superior to them in military strength.

It is interesting to note that while the Knesset and the general press in Israel followed Ben Gurion, Ihud’s Ner, in its issue of March–April, 1962, had this to say about the attack on Syria:

Mr. Comay declared at the United Nations that “Israel had not attacked Syrian territory …” A sketch in the army magazine Bamachaneh of March 20, 1962, marks it evident, since the frontier line is clearly drawn, that the position attacked by the Israeli forces lay almost entirely within the Syrian territory, and that the trenches and dugouts certainly did … [We] deplore a warlike act that took a heavy toll of human life without achieving anything except to earn us another political defeat and to increase our isolation in the international arena.

Also interesting is the unanimous and obsequious attitude of the American Zionists in regard to the belligerent act of Ben Gurion:

The Zionist Organization of America sent out urgent memos to all Jewish leaders mobilizing an attack on the United States Government and the United Nations. Israel was made to appear the peace-loving nation which had merely defended itself against attack. The “Presidents’ Conference” of major Jewish organizations, including the non-Zionist organizations—the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the B’nai B’rith, the National Council of Jewish Women, and others—twice joined in the attack on the United States Government. Jewish Congressmen and Senators broke party lines to join in the attack. It was as though the script had been passed through a single clearinghouse with all the participants playing identical roles in different theatres. The words were the same everywhere. (From an address delivered by Leonard R. Sussman, Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism, on May 11, 1962, at the eighteenth annual conference in Chicago)

Said Ner in its January—February, 1961, issue:

Only an international revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred [for the Arabs]. It is bound to bring eventual complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and the young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable wronged 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 fruit 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 our being the “People of the Book” and the “Light of the Nations”!

The Arabs of Today.

The views of some prominent non-Jews—Arabs and non-Arabs—about the present impasse between the Arabs and the Israelis will be set forth presently. I should like to precede these with a few words about the Arab of today, which should not be out of place at this point. I lived among Arabs for many years during my boyhood days in old Palestine. Later in life, I learned to know some Arab doctors and lawyers in New York, and some Arab students who attended the University of California in Berkeley and Stanford University. In my boyhood days I met some Arab nomads—Bedouins—in Palestine, but the Arabs of Palestine were neither nomads nor savages. The Palestine Arab was an intelligent and civilized human—perhaps the most civilized among all the Arabs of the world—who was as much entitled to his independent homeland as were all other Arabs in Morocco, Tunis, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, which were fragmented into separate homelands by the scheming imperialistic powers.

The rotten and corroding heritage of subjugation and degradation under the colonial powers did not contribute to spiritual refinement of the Arab character. The heritage of corruption, personal ambition and brutal force among the Arabs of today is obvious whenever one reads of the tyrannous oligarchies, of one-party and one-man governments, of the coup d’état cliques in most Arab lands, of the scheming and plotting against one another, of kissing in the front and stabbing in the back. Law and order one observes only in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon, where stable governments should eventually lead the way toward Arab unity, toward some federated United States of Arabia from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. The 1964 Cairo meeting of all Arab governments points the guidelines. The year 1964 may be the beginning of mutual aid and a common destiny, even though many Arab leaders’ heads will tragically fly until the spiritual and truly idealistic forces take over the reins of Arab unity. Nevertheless, no one has the right to employ the time-worn yardstick of “chosen people” against any Arab people, in order to take away their homes and homeland in the name of a silent God with whom covenants are claimed at the expense of others.

We must bear in mind that only around the time of the World War I did the Arabs begin to emerge from their blighted and long dark ages, which lasted about five hundred years. But we must also remember that the West European Renaissance, in its time, had a lot to thank the Arabs for, inasmuch as their tremendous contributions helped to make it possible. The West learned a great deal from the Arabs (and the Jews who came from Arab lands) in the fields of science, mathematics, medicine, philosophy and the arts, in contacts with the Arabs in Spain and Sicily and during the period of the Crusades, when the Arab-Islamic civilization was the most advanced in the world, before the era of the Renaissance.

We must also bear in mind that if the Arabs are today still broken up physically (territorially) and spiritually, it is chiefly due to the cruel fragmentation and frustration of the Arab lands by rival West European nations, who exploited them and planned to divide and rule the Arabs for many centuries to come, as subordinate people.

In spite of all that, we must not forget that there are today thousands and thousands of great Arab scholars and scientists whose achievements are well recognized, and who are looking forward to the day when the Arabs will again form one united or federalized nation in one united land, and thus again play a worthy role in the councils and comity of the civilized nations of the world.

Reflections on the Arab-Israeli Issues by Concerned Non-Jews.

ARABS

Habib Bourguiba.

Habib Bourguiba, President of free Arab Tunisia, on his visit to the United States in the spring of 1961, spoke out frankly about Israel and the Arabs. In a speech before the United Nations Correspondents Association, President Bourguiba said that France had believed Algeria would remain French because she had held it for 130 years, but events were proving this wrong. “Israel, like France, must learn that she will not always be the stronger, and that until injustices are remedied bloodshed will continue, and Israel’s position will remain precarious” (Jewish Newsletter, May 29, 1961).

On another occasion President Bourguiba said: “The situation prevailing on Palestine territory is one which is not only domination of one people over another, but the substitution of one people by another, which is even more shocking and dangerous” (London Jewish Chronicle, May 19, 1961).

Edward Atiyah.

Edward Atiyah, in his book The Arabs, made the following remarks, which reveal the soul of the honest-thinking Arab:

The Arabs proved unworthy of their cause … For, to have a morally unassailable cause does not by itself insure victory.… The Arabs would have won the battle for Palestine had there not been something false or rotten in themselves.… This was the conclusion of the Arabs themselves. The shock of their defeat in Palestine—their greatest reverse since the loss of Spain—caused in them a new kind of awakening, and, in self-depreciation and criticism … For the first time in 35 years, the Arabs (while still feeling intensely hostile to the West, and particularly to America, now) turned away from blaming the British and the French for all their woes, and began blaming themselves.… The basic remedy was union of all Arab countries.¹⁶⁴

Atiyah’s book was written before the assault of Britain, France and Israel on Egypt in 1956, and before the Algiers rebellion began.

Dr. Fayez Sayegh.

Dr. Sayegh, former counselor to the Arab Delegations at the United Nations and later Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and other universities—one of the most remarkable speakers I ever heard in all my life—in a letter to the Jewish Newsletter of July 28, 1958, said this:

Are the wrongs committed by a people seeking to defend its rightful possessions, to be equated with the wrongs committed by others in their endeavor to acquire those possessions? There has been no scarcity of political proposals for settlement. What has been lacking is the earnest grappling with the “original sin” which generated and which has also permeated the evolution of the Palestine problem.

Sometime ago I heard this wonderful Arab scholar and speaker address the student body of San Jose State College, California. There was one remark he made that is worth repeating and repeating: “The New York Times often repeats the statement that the Arabs wish to drive the Jews out of Israel into the Mediterranean Sea. This does not correspond to the facts. We are ready to sit down with Israel at one day’s notice, if and when they are ready to deal with us on the basis of the resolutions of the United Nations.”

Dr. Izzat Tannous.

Dr. Tannous, Director of the Arab Refugee Office in New York, puts it this way: “A sinking ship sending an SOS cannot choose the ship which is to come and save it, nor will the captain ask for the identification and qualifications when the rescuer arrives.”

Gamal Abdel Nasser.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, in one of his plain talks on October 8, 1959, showed that there was “no scarcity of proposals for settlement.” He said that he

was ready to accept a United Nations commission that would implement all United Nations resolutions relating to Israel and the Arabs. This would include the 1951 Security Council resolution calling for freedom of shipping in the Suez Canal.… The United Nations resolutions include the plan to give Palestine Arab refugees the right to return to their former homes in Israel or accept compensation, the 1947 plan for Partition of Palestine, and the internationalization of Jerusalem, both of which Israel rejected.… “If Israel accepts all United Nations resolutions, we will accept the Security Council resolution of 1951. It would be unfair if only we are asked to implement the resolutions on our side while Israel does not implement those on her side.” President Nasser said that the old Palestine Conciliation Commission established in 1949 to implement United Nations resolutions might be the right board, or a new body. President Nasser reiterated that he would not permit Israeli ships to use the Suez Canal as long as the Palestine resolutions were ignored. “No one can say the Armistice Agreement has ended the state of war,” he added. “We had an armistice supposedly in force in 1956 and yet we definitely had war.” (New York Times, October 9, 1959)

Dr. Mahmoud Fawzi.

Dr. Mahmoud Fawzi, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1959, put the freedom of navigation of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal versus the “original sin” (the exiled Arabs of Palestine) before the United Nations on October 5, 1959:

“… When Mrs. Golda Meir and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd preach to us on the virtues of freedom of navigation; when they thus seem to forget the 1956 canal wrecking misadventure of the three raving musketeers, we do not even bother to wonder whether we should commiserate with them for their loss of memory. Nor would we risk the hope that they choose to remind the Assembly that the present practice regarding navigation in the Suez Canal is not new, and that the original sin is the plunder of Palestine from the Arabs.… Least of all could we expect to hear from these quarters a single word or even a faint whisper about the martyrdom of the Arabs of Palestine, about their rights, and the raw daylight robbery they have been victims of.” (New York Times, October 6, 1959)

Ahmad Shukairy.

Ahmad Shukairy, a fiery, angry Palestinian Arab refugee, a lawyer from Haifa who has a reputation for vehement oratory, is not a scholarly and serene Dr. Fayez Sayegh, nor a realistic politician like Nasser of Egypt. Shukairy represents the extremists in the Arab world, bitter to the end, who will never forget or forgive the usurpation of Arab Palestine by the Zionists (“Jewish” nationalists). He and his followers—and there are many of them in the unhappy Arab world—are irreconcilable Arab nationalists. One must take cognizance of them, even though everybody knows that the realistic Arab leaders would settle for much less, were Israel to abide by the United Nations resolutions that have been affirmed and reaffirmed year after year, ever since 1948, when Israel was established.

Shukairy once represented Syria at the United Nations. Then he was the delegate representing Saudi Arabia “as the Palestine delegate.” After “Saudi Arabia dismissed Mr. Shukairy as its delegate for ignoring directives on Yemen and other subjects, the Arab League Political Committee has selected Mr. Shukairy to lead a delegation of his own choosing to the session of the United Nations General Assembly. After the session ends in December, 1963, Mr. Shukairy is to tour the Arab states to ‘activate’ the Palestine cause” (New York Times, September 22, 1963).

In the summer of 1958, when it looked as if the world was coming close to a general conflagration in connection with the seething Arab situation in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, Shukairy said the following at the Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, on August 15:

Arab nationalism will not give up a span of territory of the Arab Fatherland, from the Atlantic to the Arabian Gulf.… All this is one Arab Fatherland.… If the Arabs are treated as peoples or nations, a set of political considerations come into play. If they are treated as one single nation, then all these considerations will have to be reversed, and reversed without mercy.…

Palestine and the people of Palestine represent the greatest catastrophe that has ever befallen upon the whole Arab nation in all its recorded history.… We must recall that Zionism is a movement of aggression … We must recall that Zionism is waging a propaganda warfare against the Arab nation.…

The West has brought about the dismemberment of the Arab Fatherland; destroyed the national life of the people of Palestine.… Having inflicted the damage, the West comes here to ask why is the Middle East disturbed. It is only natural that the state of affairs in the Middle East should be as they are. It would be humanly impossible for the Middle East not to be in this highly explosive situation.…

There must be a rushing consent to Arab aspirations before they are achieved without consent. This psycho-neurotic complex of hating President Nasser should be extracted from Western thinking. The cause is one which belongs to the whole Arab nation, and President Nasser is only a natural phase of the surge of Arab nationalism.

As regards the Palestine question, one major central fact should be borne in mind. The refugee problem, with all its gravity, is not the only aspect of the problem. The issue is one of a homeland usurped, occupied, and colonized by alien groups. Compensation of the refugees, minor a step as it is, is not a solution to the problem.

One reason, and a very important reason too, is the determination of the refugees to exercise their inherent right to go back to their homeland. Palestine is their homeland, and neither they, nor the Arab states, will ever give up their homeland for all the treasures of the world! This is the stand from which we are not prepared to retreat even in a single iota. The Arabs are determined to be lord and master of their homeland from the Atlantic to the Arabian Gulf. And this is the central issue that separates the West from the Arab nation. (New York Times, August 16, 1958)

Shukairy is now the Arab League’s co-ordinator of Palestinian activities.

King Hussein of Jordan.

Twenty-nine-year-old King Hussein of Jordan, plucky and dashing descendant of an ancient anachronistic regime, whose throne is precarious because of the frequent attempts to depose or murder him, and who depends upon the bounty dished out to him by the United States and Britain (financial and military), has learned realism the hard way.

In an interview with the West German News Agency, DPA, King Hussein said:

Arab unity, in whichever form or shape, will have to come sooner or later, if the economic and other problems that face the Arab people and threaten their survival are to be solved.… It is the logical necessity to ensure Arab survival and progress. The illogical situation is that in which the Arab world finds itself divided. The division was not of Arab making; it was imposed on the Arab people through foreign interests. This division cannot last indefinitely. Unity among the Arab people, in whichever shape or form it may take, and the sharing of their moral and material resources, will have to materialize sooner or later. (Arab News and Views, New York, August 15, 1961)

The New York Times of April 16, 1964, reported King Hussein delivering an emotional appeal in Washington, D.C., in which he urged that the United States take

a new look at its Middle East policy. At the same time the monarch advised “adherents of the Jewish faith” to make what he called a “deep soul-searching and perhaps an agonizing reappraisal of their attitude towards the whole problem of Zionism.” By doing so, King Hussein said, Jews could make “a far-reaching contribution towards solving a tragedy which threatens to engulf them and others in a senseless and ruthless calamity.” … He mentioned the problem of the million Palestine refugees … [who were] “forcibly uprooted from their homes, their properties despoiled and their means of livelihood cut off.”

In a message the King delivered to the Citizens Committee on American Policy in the Middle East, in Washington, D.C., he said among other things: “… When we talk about the Arab World, we do not talk about an alliance of states, or, for that matter, an alliance of nations, but rather about one nation which is bound inseparably together by community of language, historical traditions, customs, culture, common interests and above all by a sense of belonging to one nation.”

In his half-hour TV broadcast (“Meet the Press”), King Hussein made a deep impression on his millions of listeners.

NON-ARABS

Glubb Pasha.

Glubb Pasha is one non-Arab Gentile whose integrity is beyond question. He is no anti-Semite but is against “Jewish” nationalism. He was a straight professional soldier who trained and led the Arab forces of Jordan long before there was an Israeli state. He was always a dedicated friend of the innocent Arabs, even though King Hussein treated him, in the end, in the most brutal and ungrateful manner.

In his remarkable book A Soldier With the Arabs, Glubb Pasha makes the following remark about Israel, which is worth recalling:

In so far as Israel is concerned, to save the persecuted Jews of Europe was doubtless a noble task. But the proposition which I venture to submit is, that the Jews should not have been settled in Palestine by use of military force and against the will of the people already living in that country. That was indeed the heart of the matter. To give help to persecuted Jews, both moral and material, would have been a generous policy. Britain and America could have mediated between them and the Arabs. But, the fatal error was to use violence, and to leave a tradition of violence which Jews and Arabs alike only too readily absorbed. Neither side considers any solution to their present deadlock except violence.

The Jews, of course, reply that they do not want to be a minority in an Arab area as they for centuries have been minorities in so many other countries. They want a country where all the people will be Jews, or, if not all, then any minorities will be negligible in proportion to the Jews. They have, they claim, secured their aim in the foundation of Israel. But, have they secured it? And, for how long? Selfish violence sooner or later brings retribution, though it may be long coming.¹⁶⁵

Dr. Arnold J. Toynbee.

It took much courage and a deep sense of duty for the historian Professor Arnold Toynbee to go out on a limb and speak out openly what was in his heart about the treatment of the innocent Palestinian Arabs by the “Jewish” political nationalists. Undoubtedly he well knew in advance what the bitter, fanatical, self-centered and biased professional Zionists would say about him. Here is a historic statement made by Professor Toynbee to a group of McGill University students in Montreal, Canada, on January 31, 1961, as reported in the New York Times of February 1, 1961: “‘The treatment of the Palestinian Arabs in 1947 [and 1948] was as morally indefensible as the slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews by the Nazis.…’ In discussing the Palestine refugees question, Dr. Toynbee repeated his charge that the Arabs had been ‘robbed’ of their territory. He said that the Arabs had received cruel treatment that was inflicted in cold blood and purposefully. Though not comparable in quantity to the crimes of the Nazis, it was comparable in quality, he asserted.”

Dr. Toynbee said that he made his observations about the Jews being guilty of atrocities in order to arouse their dormant sense of morality.

The typical response of the professional Zionists was that of one rabbi, who said: “The more one reviews his [Toynbee’s] statements, the more one realizes that he is not a friend of the Jewish people, and that his desire is to do away with them” (New York Times, May 14, 1961).

Professor Toynbee has some definite ideas about “the Arab desire for unity” and the prospects of it. It is worth while quoting a few lines out of a long article he wrote about it:

Today, the Arab world is within sight of getting rid of the last vestiges of foreign rule.… It is suffering from foreign pressure; and, though French and British pressure may be relaxing, Israeli pressure is not.… The Arabs are unwilling to coerce each other. The very sense of brotherhood which makes them seek political unity also makes them hold back from trying to achieve it by force.… There is also a general incentive [for union]: The local States of Europe are now on the road to voluntary union for the first time within the last 1,100 years. It seems unlikely that this world-wide tide in human affairs is going to leave the local States of the Arab world unmoved. Each of the Arab States has assets which would benefit them all if pooled.… With tact and patience and a scrupulous forbearance from the use of force, unification may still be attained within the present generation’s lifetime.” (Arab News and Views, New York, February 1, 1962)

Senator Ralph E. Flanders.

Senator Ralph E. Flanders, scholar, engineer, lawyer, financier, economist and author, is another man of courage who dared speak his mind on the floor of the United States Senate. I read with deep interest a series of speeches Senator Flanders delivered in the Senate about Arab-Israel problems as well as about the Jews of America, as reported in the Congressional Record. He delivered three speeches in May, 1957, and fifteen speeches in May, July and August, 1958. Here is another goy who knows what he is talking about. I shall cull a few pithy passages from several of his speeches. They are of historic importance:

Arab nationalism feeds and grows on the conflict with Israel. Let us give it better food to grow on.…

Provided first in theory as a refuge for Jews displaced because of terror and persecution, Palestine long ago completed this justifiable function. But, even in this justifiable area there were involved unjustifiable procedures. The Balfour Declaration which promised the Jews a national home in Palestine was, I am sure, never conceived by the author of that declaration as establishing an arbitrary eminent domain over Arab lands, or a military and economic base which would arouse suspicion of intended expansion.

The first great evidence of misjudgement was, that the Arabs became in their turn refugees and displaced persons fleeing from lands which were theirs for centuries. These now live in misery on the borders of Israel; are supported at a low level of subsistence by contributions from the outside, and protest by their continued existence the injustice of the expropriations to which they have been subjected.

This is what the Arabs have experienced. This is what the whole Arab world knows and sees. This is their main concern; and if Russia with its successful political acumen, so much greater than ours, can present itself as a champion of justice against injustice, then Soviet influence becomes the effective political force in the whole Middle East. Until we recognize that the fear of an expanding Israel is the vital concern of the Arab nations, we will continue to lose our influence, and Western Europe’s future of freedom and prosperity will be increasingly jeopardized.

In this critical area we can do nothing without the active cooperation of Israel. If that country is to persuade the Arab world that it does not have a policy of infinite expansion, it must cease recruiting Jews from those parts of the world where they are not living in fear of oppression.… To fill up the narrow confines of their present territory with new hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are not refugees from terror, cannot fail to be considered as an evidence of imperialistic designs by the Arab nations with which Israel is surrounded.…

But the threat is more than that of ideology. Unrestricted immigration is invited into Israel. So long as that immigration is continuously invited and is unrestricted, it will in time result in a population too large to be supported naturally in the present boundaries and present resources of Israel. That it should continue a dependence on the resources of its peculiar international ties is no solution. A subsidized economy is a dangerous one. Over-population will in turn lead logically and practically toward an endeavor to take over more territory for additional living space for the teeming Jewish multitudes.

The Arabs, on the other hand, must recognize the existence of Israel as a fact, reconcile themselves to it, and learn from the remarkable results achieved by Israel in making the maximum use of its resources. As I said on the floor nearly a year ago: “Israel has a great constructive function in the Mideast. She is showing that great region what can be done with its natural resources. These are meager as measured by our abundance. But, hard work, intelligence and capital, have fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah when he said, “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.” Israel is indeed the great experiment station in the Middle East. What she can do with land and water, rock and soil, plants and flocks, is applicable to hundreds of thousands of square miles of undeveloped areas of the Arab world.…

When the immigration policies of Israel were directed toward making a home for refugees, it was proper to have those activities supported by tax-free American contributions. The present policies are not refugee policies. They are the policies inherent in the Zionist program—an ingathering of the Jews from all over the earth. Whether they are oppressed or not, whether they are needy or not, matters not, so long as they are Jews,—bring them into the new Zion no matter what injustices are perpetrated on the former owners of the land. Not one penny of tax-free American money should go into this project. In fairness to American taxpayers, the Treasury must reexamine the tax-free status of contributions to the United Jewish Appeal.

Mr. President, I am pro-Semitic; but, if they successfully persist in their present plans for an ingathering of the Jews of the world into an area too small to contain them; if they continue to ignore the injustices to the Arab landowners which are involved in their actions and policies so far; and if for the future they apply super heat to the pot already boiling in the Middle East, such a wave of anti-Semitism as the Jewish race has never faced, will sweep not only this country, but the whole world.

As a personal friend of hundreds of Jews; as an admirer and lover of the Jewish race, fully appreciative of its surpassing contributions to civilization, in commerce, in philosophy, in literature, and in arts, I beg the Jewish people that they do not destroy themselves.

Senator J. W. Fulbright.

On May 2, 1960, the New York Times reported a vigorous address of Senator J. W. Fulbright, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, in which the Senator could not help bringing in the Arab-Israeli conflict during a debate on foreign aid in the Senate. Said the Times:

The Arab-Israeli conflict was injected into the Foreign Aid bill—a $4,100,000,000 foreign aid authorization bill. By a vote of 45 to 25 the Senate adopted an amendment deploring restrictions on the use of international waterways.… On the Senate floor Mr. Fulbright delivered a bitter attack on the amendment and what he called a pro-Israel domestic political pressure group. This group, he said, is trying to whipsaw United States foreign policy for the benefit of a foreign state. “In what is probably the most delicate international situation which exists in the world today, 180,000,000 Americans find their foreign policy being whipsawed by an irresponsible maritime union and by a minority pressure group.… The principal reason the amendment was offered was not because of the overwhelming good of the United States, but because of the existence of a pressure group in the United States which seeks to inject the Arab-Israeli dispute into domestic politics.… This amendment and the recent economic coercion to prevent the loading of an Arab ship in New York are part of a pattern which I find disastrous in the functioning of our constitutional system.… Foreign policy was too important to our total national security for it to become the instrument of minorities whose lobbyists stand outside the chambers urging members to follow courses of action beneficial to special interests but with potential catastrophic consequences for the nation as a whole.”

The Impasse in the Arab-Israeli War. Israel in a Precarious State, in Dire Need of Fundamental Reconstruction.

How did Ben Gurion and his followers react to independent non-Zionist world opinion? Ben Gurion and his followers do not care what the goyim say, but they do care what they may do! What then do Ben Gurion and his followers want today? They want the status quo! All robbers plead “earnestly and with humility” for the status quo after the accomplished fact. To the victor belong the spoils … the right of conquest.…

The quest for the status quo shelves, at least for the time being, the cherished idea that “the Jordan must flow through the middle of the State of Israel.” From time to time, to this day, the quarrels among the leading members of the old nationalist military junta reveal internal disputes about “who was responsible for this 80,000 [it is 8,000, not 80,000] square-mile country’s being so small.” The New York Times of March 9, 1964, reported an interview retired Ben Gurion (some Israelis believe that he may still be planning a comeback as Premier) gave to Haboker, a Tel-Aviv daily, in which he said:

“Israeli territory might have been greater if General Moshe Dayan had been chief of staff during the war of 1948 against the Arabs in Palestine.…” General Allon who commanded several vital fronts in the 1948 war said: “When the Premier and Defense Minister Ben Gurion [who had been under strong pressure from President Truman] ordered a halt in our army’s advance, we had been on the crest of victory … from the Lutani [a Lebanese river] in the north to the Sinai desert in the southwest. A few more days of fighting would have enabled us … to liberate the entire country.”

Nevertheless, Ben Gurion made his position about the status quo quite clear when he said:

Israel’s main interest at present was the preservation of the status quo. We shall do everything in our power to maintain the status quo on the frontiers and in the neighboring countries, as far as that depends on us. If there were any breakdown in law and order, or coup d’etat in Iraq or Jordan which could result in a possible threat to Israel’s security, Israel’s reaction would have to be judged according to the situation. (New York Times, November 13, 1959)

Golda Meir, the Israeli Foreign Minister, pursued the same goal at the United Nations General Assembly. In October, 1961, she suggested “an Israel-Arab nonaggression pact. The parties to such a pact,” she said, “would undertake to respect each other’s territorial integrity and political independence, refrain from all hostile acts of a military economic or political character, settle all differences by pacific means, and cease to incite populations by inflammatory propaganda.” (London Jewish Chronicle, October 13, 1961). That is all the good peace-craving lady asks. Is she not amiable?

When in July, 1962, the Algerian Arabs attained political independence from France (who had, and may still have for a while, some secret agreements with Israel against the Arab world), Mrs. Meir had the cheek to offer prompt recognition to Arab Algeria, to offer the Arabs exchange of diplomatic representatives, and with it technical and medical aid, hoping (if that were possible) that the Algerian Arabs would ignore the “dispute” between the Arab world and Israel. Algeria, of course, rebuffed all Israeli approaches with contempt, for the entire Arab world has no “dispute” with Israel: it is still at war with Israel.

The Algerians declared:

Algeria’s attitude toward Israel was “exactly like that of the other Arab states.”… Algeria had rejected the Israeli offers … because the brother Arab people of Palestine are unable to exercise their sovereignty.… Palestine is an Arab country occupied by Israel and therefore Israel is a state we cannot recognize.” And the [Algerian] Information Minister added immediately that the attitude toward Israel had “nothing to do with the Jews of Algeria” who, he said, have exactly the same status as Moslems. He added that Jews might be expected to hold key positions in the Government.” (New York Times, July 14, 1962)

Before his last trip to the United States and Canada in June, 1961, Ben Gurion let it be known that he “expected to ask President Kennedy to propose to Premier Khrushchev that the big Powers issue a declaration recognizing the existing borders in the Middle East. He hoped to get an indication from Mr. Kennedy that the U.S. will not support the Arab States in the United Nations when the question of the Palestine refugees comes up for debate in fall.” (New York Times, May 23, 1961.)

The London Jewish Chronicle correspondent, Richard Yaffe, who traveled with Ben Gurion, mentioned that Ben Gurion “is believed to have asked the President privately, if not openly, that the American Sixth Fleet should intervene, as it did in the Lebanese crisis, if Nasser launched an attack on Israel” (London Jewish Chronicle, June 2, 1961).

There was all the evidence that the Ben Gurion policy of leaning and counting on France was rapidly approaching a dead end. The reed on which Ben Gurion was leaning so much in 1954, 1955 and 1956, in his attacks on Egypt, was beginning to bend, if not break. The ostentatious love affair between militant Israel and Arab-hating France (“My enemy’s enemy is my friend”) could not last much longer, because France was beginning to seek Arab friendship, Arab markets, Arab customers, Arab oil and Arab labor. Thus Ben Gurion began to turn to “young” Kennedy for security.

The tragic and precarious state of Israel is observed now, in late 1964, more than ever before. Prime Minister Eshkol made official trips to Washington and Paris to bolster the political patronage of Israel. (He would like to call the patronage an alliance.) Upon his return to Jerusalem, the Knesset wanted to debate “whether Israel should orientate her policy more to the United States than to France.” Eshkol called the debate a “futile argument,” and insisted that the French reed on which Israel’s future rests is good and strong. Reported the Jerusalem correspondent of the London Jewish Chronicle in the July 17, 1964, issue: “Despite the normalization of relations between France and the Arab world … [Eshkol’s] talks with General de Gaulle had ‘confirmed, consolidated and strengthened’ his views that ‘close friendship with France [was] the cornerstone of Israel’s foreign policy. I cannot overestimate the importance of France’s support for us in days of stress and her constant contribution to our independent defensive and deterrent power.’”

During the campaign for re-election in the last general elections in Israel, Mr. Ben Gurion expressed “fears that if a ‘weak Government’ ruled Israel in the period of transition in the U.S., Israel might be put under heavy pressure to make concessions—and the weak Government could not resist” (London Jewish Chronicle, January 20, 1961).

Nevertheless, there was ample evidence that a quick “drastic change” took place in President Kennedy’s realistic and mature thinking about the Middle East. The days and thoughts of young, happy-go-lucky, aspiring candidate Kennedy, who “pledged to initiate moves for Arab-Israeli peace negotiations,” were gone. President Kennedy learned an awful lot the hard way after he assumed the responsibility of directing and protecting the foreign policy of the United States. Thus, in answer to the professional Zionists and their henchmen in Congress who “scored President Kennedy for having turned his back” on pledges to promote direct peace negotiations between the Arabs and Israel, “the State Department said that before direct negotiations can become politically feasible, there first must be an attempt to resolve ‘serious differences’ that divide Israel and the Arab States … [and] that one such dispute is that relating to the fate of approximately 1,000,000 Palestine Arab refugees” (New York Times, April 14, 1962).

Already, in February, 1961, there was something ominous in the following White House announcements:

President Kennedy decided that mediation must be deferred [because] the time and the diplomatic climate are not right for an immediate White House initiative to promote a permanent peaceful solution between Israel and her Arab neighbors. (New York Times, February 26, 1961)

More ominous and revealing was an occurrence on May 11, 1961:

President Kennedy sent out a series of letters to the heads of the Arab States in the Middle East in which he told the chiefs of five Arab nations that the U.S. wanted to contribute to a solution of the Palestinian refugee problem on a basis of repatriation or compensaton for lost property. “I wish to state unequivocally that this Government’s position is anchored and will continue to be anchored in the first bed rock of support for the United Nations General Assembly recommendations concerning the refugees, and of action and impartial concern that those resolutions be implemented in a way most beneficial to the refugees.” (New York Times, June 24 and 26, 1961)

On November 20, 1963, two days before President Kennedy was assassinated, his delegation at the United Nations insisted on a United States resolution calling for continued efforts for the implementation of the historic United Nations 1948 resolution, whose key section, Paragraph II, concerns the Palestine Arab refugees’ right “to return to their homes … and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return … under the principles of international law.” The United States delegation “assured the Arabs that there was no intention to see the 1948 resolution ‘watered down or forgotten.’”

The United Nations decision shocked the obdurate and defiant jingoists in the Israeli Government. “Prime Minister Levi Eshkol summoned the U.S. Ambassador … and told him that Israel was ‘shocked’ by the pro-Arab attitude adopted by the U.S. delegation at the United Nations.” Madame Minister Golda Meir “expressed Israel’s ‘astonishment and anger’ at the attitude of the U.S. By reviving the 1948 U.N. resolution calling for repatriation of the refugees, the United States had assumed a graver responsibility.” The London Jewish Chronicle (November 22, 1963), from which the above quotations were taken, added editorially: “Israel, which has neither been consulted nor informed about the American intention, is not surprisingly questioning the good faith of the United States.”

Counting on the bad memories of the masses of mankind, the obdurate Government of Israel and its henchmen in the political Zionist world now play the role of the naïve and harmless long-established “Jewish” nation whose soil has suddenly become endangered by threats of aggression on the part of the outside neighboring Arabs. Evildoers never go back to the A of a story—the origin. They begin with M—after the evil has been done—and clamor for the “guileless” and “sacred” status quo.

Said a statement of the Israeli Government, issued on September 13, 1964, after the Cabinet held a preliminary discussion on the meetings and declarations by the thirteen Arab countries about the 1948-exiled Palestinian Arabs whose homes and homeland were taken away from them:

The world would do well not to revert to the attitude of complacency, silence and lack of concern which it once evinced toward threats of aggression and war, accompanied by political and military preparations aimed at transplanting the threats into action.… Peace-loving states in the world, the United Nations and enlightened public opinion are surely not entitled to reconcile themselves to public announcements of aggressive intent and to declarations which violate the purpose of the United Nations Charter and the accepted principles governing relations between states. (New York Times, September 14, 1964)

Who, in the name of common decency and truth, first violated the purposes of the United Nations Charter?

A Fantastic But Wonderful Dream About Peace Between Israel and the Arab World. And Back to the Impasse in the Arab-Israeli War.

With constant thoughts about the dire necessity of resolving the burning and dangerous issues between the Arab world and Israel, it is no wonder that only a dream could answer the grave world problem in the Middle East. I dreamed that I walked outside the gate of our home across the street to our mailbox, took out and unwrapped my daily New York Times and read a screaming banner headline right across the whole front page—something very unusual for the conservative Times—REVOLUTION IN ISRAEL. NEW ISRAELI DELEGATION AT U.N. SOLVES ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT.

Then came the following subheads and captions of many long reports from correspondents stationed at the United Nations in New York, in Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus, Bagdad, Washington. Here are the headlines of the various reports: Earnestly and With Humility and Compunction Israel Announces Its Absolute Readiness to Meet With Arabs to End Long War and Conclude a Lasting Fraternal Peace on Basis of United Nations Resolutions, Subject to Guarantees by United Nations. Israel Pledges Complete Demobilization and Disarmament; Offers Wide Corridor Across Negev (South) to Enable Arabs to Cross from North Africa to Arabs of the East. As Gesture of Good Will, Nasser Orders Suez Canal Opened to Israeli Shipping and Pledges Reciprocal Demobilization and Disarmament. Israeli Consular Agents, Commercial and Agricultural Attachés to Be Welcomed in All Arab Lands. Oil to Flow Directly in Planned New Pipelines From Saudi Arabia to Haifa. Israel Stoppage of Colossal Wasted Funds on Armament Foreseen. United Jewish Appeal. Calls Off Planned 1964 “Rescue Drive” for Funds as Offices of Israeli Propaganda for “Aliyah” Close Down. Jews of America Begin to Lay Down Plans to Rehabilitate Their Own American Jewish Cultural and Philanthropic Institutions. A Healthy and Normal Jewish Integration Into American Community Predicted. Disbanded Israeli Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen to Be Put to Work in New Constructive Enterprises All Over Middle East. Prosperity Envisioned. Celebration Bonfires Light Skies of Israel and Neighboring Arab Countries. Palestine Arab Refugees for First Time in Sixteen Years Rejoice at Immediate Prospects for Gradual Return to Their Old Homeland to “Live in Peace With Their Israeli Neighbors.”

“Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep?” as Keats wrote in “Ode to a Nightingale.” I woke up from my dream with a throbbing heart, sat up in bed and reached for a pad and pencil to jot down from memory the fantastic headlines from a fantastic issue of the New York Times. Alas, such good news will probably never appear in a real issue of the Times in my lifetime. But how much longer can the present boiling mess continue without catastrophe?

A tiny eleemosynary state, led by presumptuous and predatory fanatical jingoists who lack any sense of modesty and reticence, has probably already spent, directly and indirectly, hundreds of millions of charity dollars on its militant “activism,” during the sixteen years of its precarious existence. Were it not for the constant and colossal relief funds the Jews of the world are imposed upon to give to the schnorring state of Israel—economic, social, health, housing and educational aid—the state could not exist a single day on its own, since so much of its own internal revenues go to defray the costs of the tanks, guns, submarines and battle planes of its armed forces. And the arms race with the Arabs is going to mount more and more unless peace is achieved.

Even after the accomplished fact of Partition with economic union (as resolved by the United Nations in 1947), there were chances to heal the wounds and work out some sort of reconciliation. The Germans and the French, after a century of being poisoned by their militant activists and incited to hate and destroy one another, are now burying their hatchets and committing themselves to an “ever closer political union,” striving to merge and integrate their sovereignties, or establish some sort of international federation of Europe. Must the Arabs and the Jews (the children of Isaiah and Hillel) reduce one another to ashes in a mortal war, only to wake up a century later to try to work out some sort of union in the Middle East?

Who destroyed the wonderful chances for the two Semitic peoples to join hands, like brothers, in one political nationality, advancing spiritually, culturally and industrially with the rest of the progressive world? Who destroyed these chances, if not the pretending and neurotic “Jewish” political nationalists who, having learned neurotic nationalism from their oppressors in Eastern and Central Europe, concluded that they must follow in their path and “redeem” Arab Palestine, and then make it goyim rein (clear of Gentiles—Arabs), and then, if possible, make the “Jewish” flag wave from the Nile to the Euphrates?

What caused poor Israel to become a habitual mendicant, leading an eternal eleemosynary life, always schnorring (begging) for funds, if not its tragic isolation from all the other nations surrounding it in the Middle East? Why could not the Israelis and the Arabs form a sort of dual nationality like Canada and Switzerland? It is the military junta of Israel that alone bears the responsibility for the current sad state of affairs. Israel could have been, and should have been, a happy, prosperous and relaxed little country doing business with all the Arab and Moslem countries in Asia and Africa.

Living in the shadow of the H-bomb missile, people today insist on reassessing the old slogans, clichés and shibboleths of the corrupt past. People today want to divest themselves of all the hypocritical sacro egoismo of the nineteenth century’s depraved and predatory nationalism, which has destroyed the rights of man and debased them all into the “rights of chosen peoples.” The military junta of Israel is the last leftover of the perverted, hateful, self-centered political nationalism inherited from old enemies and persecutors in old Russia and Germany, and the poor Israelis cannot, it seems, shake themselves free of the junta’s parochial blood and soil.

The time has come to “throw out the rascals” of Jewish life and give a chance to new reasonable leaders in Israel, who would make all the necessary and rightful concessions to the Arabs of Palestine who are now exiled from their homes and homeland; and, with it, leave world Jewry alone to their own civilized and progressive communal life of emancipation and unalloyed integration, without frustrating them, and without subverting and degenerating universal Judaism into a depraved philosophy of militant “Jewish” political nationalism.

If only the people of Israel were mature and free enough of the frenzy of nationalism to force their self-perpetuating, inveterate Government out and choose humane, normal and peaceful representatives who would come to terms with the harsh realities, the growing power and growing tempers of the whole Arab and Moslem world. A shift of balance of power; a secret military alliance; a new lethal weapon; and then, given an atmosphere overstrained because of some border incident—a shepherd, a dam, a water pipeline, fishing rights or marsh draining, and the Ben Gurion jingoists rushing in with their garish hundred-eyes-for-one-eye surprise attacks—and a brush fire may turn into a holocaust. Palestine is the world’s most dangerous powder keg. Some day the Arabs may beat the Israelis at their own game.

On July 30, 1958, the newspapers of the world carried a statement made by the Right Honourable Earl Attlee, former Prime Minister of Britain, in the Labour Government, from 1945 to 1951: “The creation of Israel was a mistake, but Britain must not let the young nation of Israel be swept away.”

At a recent meeting in London, Mrs. Barbara Castle, M. P., “stressed the urgency of conciliation between Israel and her Arab neighbors and said that Israel would not flourish over her enemies, but only by turning them into friends” (London Jewish Chronicle, February 17, 1961).

C. L. Sulzberger, noted editorial columnist of the New York Times, writing about Israel in November, 1956, soon after the assault on Egypt, made the following remark: “Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President, sometimes shook his head in sorrow, grumbling: ‘Ben Gurion is nothing but a damned Fascist!’” (New York Times, November 14, 1956).

A Special Supplementary Study About Colonization, Population, Immigration and Emigration, and Land Ownership in Old Palestine and in Israel. Palestine According to the Partition Plan of the United Nations and Palestine as a Result of the Armistice Agreements.

This special supplementary study consists mostly of vital statistics of fundamental importance to an understanding of the grave issues between the Palestinian Arab refugees and Israel.

POLITICAL ZIONIST COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE

The political Zionists’ colonization of Palestine proceeded by the following stages:

1. Conquest of Land. Tracts of land were bought by Zionist institutions from big landowners, mostly residing outside Palestine, who under Turkish rule had acquired titles to these tracts from bribed officials, and the Arab tenants who had cultivated the land for generations had to leave it.

Often Arab peasants refused to relinquish their land and homes, and they and their women and children lay on the earth in order to prevent the new “owners” from taking possession. Then the young members of the “socialist” Kibbutz hurried to the place where it was to be established on the acquired land and, by their own efforts or with the help of the British-Jewish police, removed the “lawbreakers.” Sometimes “order” was restored only after peasants’ blood had been shed.

2. Conquest of Work. After possession of the land had been secured, a clause was inserted in the contract between the Zionist institution—the new landlord—and the fresh tenants—the Kibbutz—that no Arab should be allowed to work on that land, either as a subtenant or as a daily laborer. The slogan was: “On Jewish land and in Jewish enterprises only Jews shall be employed,” and leaders of the Histadrut (Jewish Federation of Labor) and authors and teachers picketed at the entrances of Jewish-owned groves, and heaped insults upon the “traitors to Zionism and the Jewish nation” who employed Arabs because they worked cheaper, until the Arab workers were replaced by Jews.

3. Conquest of Production and Trade. Then came the third stage: “Jews must buy only Jewish products.” An Arab greengrocer who brought his vegetables to Tel-Aviv to sell was surrounded by Zionist zealots who overturned his cart and trod upon his vegetables, while a gathering mob looked at the “national” action sympathetically. The Jewish policeman hurried away in order to see nothing. (From a report about the Arab refugees submitted by representatives of The Third Force movement in Israel (a Jewish-Arab organization) to the Special Political Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations in November, 1961.)

POPULATION OF PALESTINE, AND LATER ISRAEL, 1918–48

Year

Moslems

Jews

Christians

Others

Total

1918 (estimate)

574,000

56,000

70,000

700,000

1922 (census)

589,177

83,790

71,464

7,617

752,048

1931 (census)

759,700

174,606

88,907

10,101

1,033,314

1939 (estimate)

927,133

445,457

116,958

?

1,489,548

1944 (estimate)

1,061,277

553,600

135,547

14,098

1,764,522

Year

Arabs
(Moslems and Christians)

Jews

Others

Total

1946 (UNSCP Report)

1,293,000

608,000

35,000

1,936,000

1948 (May, 1948, prior to establishment of state of Israel)

1,380,000

700,000

35,000

2,115,000

POPULATION OF ISRAEL, 1948–63

Year End

Total

Jews

Non-Jews

1948

913,700

758,702

155,000 (estimate

1949

1,173,871

1,013,871

160,000 (estimate

1950

1,370,094

1,202,993

167,101

1951

1,577,825

1,404,392

173,433

1952

1,629,519

1,450,217

179,302

1953

1,669,417

1,483,641

185,776

1954

1,717,814

1,526,009

191,805

1955

1,789,075

1,590,519

198,556

1956

1,872,390

1,667,455

204,935

1957

1,975,954

1,762,741

213,213

1958

2,031,672

1,810,148

221,524

1959

2,088,685

1,858,841

229,844

1960

2,150,412

1,911,277

239,135

1961 (June)

2,183,200

1,939,400

243,800

1962 (June)

2,293,000

2,035,500

257,500

1963 (end)

2,430,100

2,155,500

274,600

Year

Jewish Immigration to Israel

Year

Jewish Emigration from Israel

1948

101,828

1948

  1,200

1949

239,576

1949

  7,400

1950

170,249

1950

10,000

1951

171,095

1951

10,500

1952

  24,369

1952

13,500

1953

  11,326

1953

13,000

1954

  18,370

1954

  7,500

1955

  37,478

1955

  6,400

1956

  56,234

1956

  6,028

1957

  72,634

1957

13,000

1958

  26,636

1958

  7,724

1959

  23,988

1959

  7,095

1960

  24,962

1960

  7,206

1961

  47,735

1961

not disclosed

1962

not disclosed

1962

not disclosed

1963

not disclosed

1963

not disclosed

Note: The figures given for the population of Palestine before establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 are based on data taken from Sami Hadawi’s Land Ownership in Palestine, published by the Palestine Arab Refugee Office, New York. Mr. Hadawi was chief inspector of valuation of property for the British mandate Government and chief of land taxation. I checked the figures against those given by Erich W. Bethman in his book Decisive Years in Palestine, 1918–1948, published by the American Friends of the Middle East, Inc.

The figures given for the population, immigration and emigration of Israel are taken from the Israeli Office of Information’s “Facts About Israel,” and from the American Jewish Year Books published by the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Publication Society of America.

As noticed above in the column of “Emigration,” the Government of Israel will not disclose the figures about the recent wave of emigration out of Israel. Since 1961 no official figures on emigration are given. But the following report in the New York Times of August 30, 1964, gives a good idea of what is going on there:

There are no reliable figures [about emigration] since few have emigrated overtly, apparently because the abandonment of Israel by Jews is considered contemptible. The Hebrew term for emigrants is “Yordim,” which means “descenders” [in contrast to Olim-Aliyah immigrants, which means “ascenders”].… Most emigrants have left Israel as students, tourists or even representatives of official institutions, and then quietly remained abroad. A newspaper estimated there were 60,000 to 70,000 Yordim, including nearly 10,000 “sabras” (Israeli-born) with higher education, whose expatriation is considered the most deplorable of all.

LAND OWNERSHIP IN PALESTINE

1. Land Ownership Before the British Mandate.

When British forces occupied Palestine in 1918, the Jews of Palestine, whose total number was 56,000, owned only 2 per cent of the total land area.

2. Land Ownership at End of the British Mandate in 1948.

During the thirty years of occupation of Palestine by Great Britain, the Jews purchased additional land, bringing their total holdings on termination of the mandate on May 15, 1948, to 5.67 per cent of the total land area of the country.

Area (in acres)

Percentage

Arab individually owned

3,143,693

47.79

Jewish owned

372,925

5.67

Others

35,512

0.54

State domain (registered and recorded)

3,028,625

46.00

6,580,755

100.00

3. Palestine According to United Nations Partition Plan, November, 1947.

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations, by a majority vote of one, adopted Resolution 181 (II), providing for the partition of Palestine into two independent states, one Arab and the other Jewish, linked together by an economic union. It also provided for the creation of an International Zone in Jerusalem, to include Bethlehem and the holy places in and around Jerusalem, to be administered by the United Nations.

LAND AND WATER SURFACE AREA

Area in Square Miles

Area in Acres

Percentage

“Arab State”

4,476

2,897,467

42.88

“Jewish State”

5,893

3,815,412

56.47

Jerusalem (International Zone)

68

43,876

0.65

10,435

6,756,755

100.00

LAND AREA ACCORDING TO OWNERSHIP

“Arab State”

“Jewish State”

Jerusalem (I.Z.)

Acres

Percentage

Acres

Percentage

Acres

Percentage

Arabs

2,212,075

77.69

894,456

24.24

37,165

84.70

Jews

23,885

0.84

345,964

9.38

3,074

7.01

Others

20,864

0.73

12,522

0.34

2,126

4.85

State

Domain

  590,645

  20.74

2,436,469

  66.04

   1,510

    3.44

2,847,469

100.00

3,689,411

100.00

43,875

100.00

NUMBER OF TOWNS AND VILLAGES

Arab

Jewish

Mixed

German

Total

“Arab State”

Towns

16

1

17

Villages

552

22

574

“Jewish State”

Towns

1

15

3

1

20

Villages

272

183

3

458

Jerusalem (I.Z.)

Towns

3

1

4

Villages

  17

  2

    19

Totals

Towns

20

16

4

1

41

Villages

841

207

3

 1,051

861

223

4

4

1,092

POPULATION

Jews

Arabs and Others

Total

“Arab State”

10,000

725,000

735,000

“Jewish State”

498,000

497,000

995,000

Jerusalem (I.Z.)

100,000

   105,000

   205,000

608,000

1,327,000

1,935,000

4. Palestine as a Result of the Armistice Agreements. The Armistice Agreements of 1949 declared that the “Armistice demarcation lines,” then delineated, were “dictated exclusively by military considerations” and were “not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary.” Nevertheless, factually, Israel occupied not the 56.47 per cent of Palestine but 77.40 per cent. So much of Palestine was nibbled away from the Arabs that the core of the planned “Arab State” was gone, and thus, whatever was left of it, Jordan took it over.

(The four parts of “Land Ownership in Palestine” were drawn chiefly from Sami Hadawi’s book of the same title, published by the Palestine Arab Refugee Office, New York.)

* All Bible quotations are from the Masoretic text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955).

1. New York Times, May 18, 196a

2. Jewish Chronicle (London), May 20, 1960.

3. Louis Finkelstein, The Jews (“The Biblical Period” by William Foxwell Albright) [New York: Harper & Bros., 1949], pp: 16–17.

4. Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1957), pp. 194–95.

5. Ibid., pp. 183–85.

6. Ilene Beatty, Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1957), pp. 40, 42, 48, 50, 51.

7. Joseph Jacobs, Jewish Contributions to Civilization (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1919), p. 16.

8. Ibid., pp. 16–17.

9. Ibid., p. 19.

10. Ibid., p. 14.

11. Jacob Raisin, The Haskalah Movement in Russia (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1914), p. 262.

12. Ibid., pp. 282–83.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., p. 285.

15. Ibid., pp. 280–81.

16. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (New York: Harper & Bros., 1949), pp. 17, 18, 38, 453.

17. Alex Bein, Theodor Herzl (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1945), pp. 13–14.

18. Ibid., p. 34.

19. Ibid., p. 73.

20. Marvin Lowenthal (trans.), The Diaries of Theodor Herzl (New York: Dial Press, 1956), p. 56.

21. Elmer Berger, The Jewish Dilemma (New York: Devin Adair Co., 1946), pp. 255–56.

22. Lowenthal, op. cit., p. 7.

23. Ibid., p. 11. See also Bein, op. cit., p. 127.

24. Bein, op. cit., p. 284.

25. Lowenthal, op. cit., p. 39.

26. Bein, op. cit., pp. 129–42.

27. Ibid., pp. 231–32.

28. Ibid., p. 232.

29. Ibid., p. 239.

30. Elmer Berger, “The Constitution and the Balfour Declaration,” Issues, Fall 1961, pp. 70–71.

31. Bein, op. cit., pp. 227–28.

32. Lowenthal, op. cit., p. 231.

33. Ibid., p. 124.

34. Bein, op. cit., p. 286.

35. Lowenthal, op. cit., p. 252.

36. Bein, op. cit., p. 296.

37. Ibid., pp. 281, 310.

38. Lowenthal, op. cit., p. 298.

39. Ibid., pp. 323–24.

40. Ibid., p. 171. (See also Bein, op. cit., p. 202.)

41. Ibid., p. 109.

42. Ibid., pp. 375–76. (See also Bein, op. cit., p. 413.)

43. Ibid., p. 427.

44. Bein, op. cit., p. 136

45. Jewish Chronicle (London), October 19, 1956 (as quoted from Jewish Pilgrimage by Israel Cohen).

46. Weizmann, op. cit., p. 125.

47. Ibid., pp. 125–26, 128.

48. David Ben Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954), pp. 48, 131.

49. Ibid., p. 38.

50. Ahad Ha-’Am, Igrot Ahad Ha-’Am (Jerusalem: Yavneh, 1925), VI, 216, 221, 222, 232, 233. My own translation into English from Ahad Ha-’Am’s Hebrew translation of Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation in German.

51. Richard H. Gotheil, Zionism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of of America, 1914), p. 189.

52. Hans Kohn, “Zion and the Jewish National Idea,” Menorah Journal, Autumn–Winter 1958, pp. 32–33.

53. Leon Simon, Selected Essays by Ahad Ha-’Am (translated from the Hebrew) [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1948], p. 193.

54. Ibid., pp. 102, 105, 106.

55. Weizmann, op. cit., pp. 36–37.

56. Bein, op. cit., pp. 258–59.

57. Simon, op. cit., pp. 232–34.

58. Bein, op. cit., p. 257.

59. The two Hebrew letters of Ahad Ha-’Am to the editor of Haaretz were published in 1922 (Hebrew calendar, 5th and 6th of Ellul, 5682). They were reproduced in Igrot Ahad Ha-’Am (see footnote 50), VI, 204–6, in 1925. The first paragraph I translated from the Hebrew. The second paragraph I found already translated in that extraordinary article “Zion and the Jewish National Idea” (see footnote 52), pp. 39–40.

60. Palestine Arab Refugee Office Newsletter (New York).

61. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott), p. 169. A later edition has been published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

62. Ibid., p. 229.

63. Ibid., p. 244.

64. Palestine Arab Refugee Office Newsletter (New York).

65. Kohn, op. cit., pp. 35–36.

66. John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha), A Soldier With the Arabs (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1957), p. 169.

67. Edward Atiyah, The Arabs (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1955), p. 103.

68. Antonius, op. cit., pp. 267–69.

69. Weizmann, op. cit., pp. 245–46.

70. Antonius, op. cit., pp. 305, 350.

71. The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, Selections From Speeches and Writings, ed. August Heckscher (New York: Harper & Bros., 1956). Permission to quote was graciously granted by Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.

72. Antonius, op. cit., Appendix.

73. Atiyah, op. cit., pp. 104–5.

74. Antonius, op. cit., pp. 312–13.

75. Kohn, op. cit., p. 37.

76. Weizmann, op. cit., p. 294.

77. Council News (American Council for Judaism), March–April 1958.

78. Palestine Arab Refugee Office Newsletter (New York).

79. Weizmann, op. cit., p. 151.

80. Norman Bentwich, For Zion’s Sake (a biography of Judah L. Magnes) [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1954], p. 188.

81. Weizmann, op. cit., p. 397.

82. Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), p. 263.

83. Bentwich, op. cit., pp. 248–49.

84. Ibid., p. 252.

85. Grayzel, op. cit., p. 799.

86. From an address delivered by Morris L. Ernst on April 22, 1950, at the sixth annual National Conference of the American Council for Judaism.

87. Alfred M. Lilienthal, What Price Israel (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953), p. 36.

88. Ben Gurion, op. cit., p. 35.

89. Ibid., p. 123.

90. Ibid., pp. 94–95. (Written in 1938.)

91. Ibid., p. 100. (Written August 3, 1938.)

92. Ibid., p. 104. (Written August 3, 1938.)

93. Ibid., p. 268. (From a speech delivered at the eleventh session of the Provisional State Council of Israel on July 22, 1948.)

94. Menachem Begin, The Revolt, Story of the “Irgun” (New York: Abelard Schumann Ltd., and London: W. H. Allen, 1951), Introduction and pp. 32, 263, 337. By permission of the author.

95. Glubb, op. cit., pp. 44–45.

96. Begin, op. cit., p. 52.

97. Ibid., p. 316.

98. Ner (Hebrew magazine published by Ihud in Jerusalem), September–October 1956. (My translation.)

99. Bentwich, op. cit., pp. 4–5.

100. Arab-Jewish Unity (London: Victor Golancz, 1947), 96 pp.

101. Erich W. Bethmann, Decisive Years in Palestine, 1919–1948 (American Friends of the Middle East Inc., 1957), pp. 31–34.

102. Ner, September–October 1955.

103. Bentwich, op. cit., pp. 240–42.

104. Bethmann, op. cit., pp. 34–36.

105. Izzat Tannous, Tensions and Peace in the Middle East (New York: Palestine Arab Refugee Office).

106. Bethmann, op. cit., pp. 36–37.

107. Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1956; copyright 1955 by Time Inc.). Permission to quote was graciously granted by President Truman.

108. The Forrestal Diaries, ed. Walter Millis (New York: Viking Press, 1951; copyright 1951 by New York Herald Tribune Inc.; copyright owned by Princeton University), pp. 306, 322, 344, 345, 362, 363.

109. Truman, op. cit., p. 160.

110. Alfred M. Lilienthal, There Goes the Middle East (New York: Devin Adair Co., 1957), p. 15.

111. Truman, op. cit., p. 159.

112. Aida S. Hadawi, “The Palestine Problem and the United Nations,” The Arab World, September 1959.

113. Ben Gurion, op. cit, pp. 206, 207, 210.

114. James G. McDonald, My Mission to Israel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951), p. 145.

115. Bethmann, op. cit., pp. 38–39.

116. McDonald, op. cit., p. 12.

117. Jewish Newsletter (New York), October 3, 1960. See also Bethmann op. cit., p. 40.

118. Begin, op. cit., pp. 162–65.

119. Bethmann, op. cit., p. 41.

120. Begin, op. cit., p. 348.

121. Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), pp. 611–12.

122. Ben Gurion, op. cit., pp. 530–31.

123. Weizmann, op. cit., pp. 453–54.

124. McDonald, op. cit., p. 176.

125. Staff Study of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, p. 35. The quote is taken from Don Peretz’s Israel and the Palestine Arabs, p. 7.

126. Arthur Krock in New York Times, July 17, 1958.

127. Bentwich, op. cit., pp. 299–300.

128. New York Times, April 18, 1948.

129. Izzat Tannous, Failures of the United Nations in the Palestine Tragedy (New York: Palestine Arab Refugee Office), pp. 3–4.

130. Glubb, op. cit., pp. 145, 190.

131. Bethmann, op. cit., p. 49.

132. Ibid., p. 50.

133. Begin, op. cit., pp. 276–77.

134. Ben Gurion, op. cit., pp. 276–77.

135. Ibid., pp. 414, 466.

136. Council News (American Council for Judaism), October, 1949. (It quoted the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin of September 1, 1949.)

137. New York Times, January 26, 1962.

138. McDonald, op. cit., p. 176.

139. Izzat Tannous, The Policy That Invited Soviet Russia to the Middle East, (New York: Palestine Arab Refugee Office), p. 10.

140. Izzat Tannous, Tensions and Peace in the Middle East (New York: Palestine Arab Refugee Office), p. 19.

141. Sami Hadawi, Land Ownership in Palestine (New York: Palestine Arab Refugee Office).

142. Tannous, Tensions and Peace in the Middle East, p. 20.

143. Jewish Chronicle (London), October 27, 1961.

144. Joseph Alsop in San Jose (Calif.) Mercury, June 9, 1956.

145. Palestine Arab Refugee Newsletter, December 1959, p. 10.

146. Ben Gurion, op. cit., p. 484.

147. Joseph Alsop in San Jose Mercury, June 16, 1956.

148. New York Times, November 27, 1961.

149. Ibid., November 18, 1958.

150. American Jewish Yearbook, 1958 (American Jewish Committee and Jewish Publication Society of America), p. 506.

151. Ner, December, 1955.

152. McDonald, op. cit., p. 277.

153. New York Times, September 30, 1945.

154. Jewish Newsletter (New York), February 23, 1959. Quotation from speech by Shimeon as reported in Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin of February 6, 1959.

155. Ibid., January 26, 1959. Translation from New York Yiddish Daily Forward of January 9, 1959.

156. Jewish Observer and Middle East Review (London), November 2, 1956.

157. Jewish Newsletter (New York), March 21, 1960. Quotation from an article in the New York Yiddish Journal-Day of March 1, 1960.

158. Ibid., June 29, 1959.

159. New York Times, June 8, 1959. See also Jewish Chronicle (London), June 12, 1959.

160. Jewish Newsletter (New York), October 17, 1960.

161. Haolam Hazeh (Hebrew magazine), May 27, 1959. Translation into English by the American Council for Judaism.

162. Beatty, op. cit., p. 13.

163. Ibid., pp. 19–20.

*A false dawn? Maybe not. As this book goes to press, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol is reported to have resigned over the issue of reviving the Lavon Affair scandal. Is the old fox and ultra “Jewish” nationalist Ben Gurion again scheming to come out of his “retirement” to carry out “the plans which I have yet to implement”?

The New York Times of November 8, 1964, reports from Israel that a faction of Mapai, Israel’s dominant political party, quits to back Lavon, Ben Gurion’s adversary: “Scores of members seceded today from Mapai. They included Pinhas Lavon, former Defense Minister as well as a member of the Knesset. The defectors are forming a movement called Min Hayesod (From the Roots). It will be independent of existing parties for the time being.… The decision to secede, reached by a vote of 138 to 2 in the dissident group, ended a drive by Premier Levi Eshkol to patch up the split in the party.”

They speak now of DeBenGurionization of Israel’s ruling party Mapai. The London Jewish Chronicle of November 13, 1964, reported that at the “stormiest meeting in its [Mapai’s] history, Sharett remarked, “I have no faith in his [Ben Gurion’s] pursuit of justice.”

164. Atiyah, op. cit., pp. 185–86.

165. Glubb, op. cit., p. 225.

PART TWO

The Case of the Jews and of Judaism Versus “Jewish” Political Nationalism

The New World Order As It Emerges Today. The New Day of the Free and Enlightened Individual Citizen.

During the major part of my lifetime I lived under the old order, in the old unethical uncivilized world whose international climate was corrupt, hypocritical, greedy and predatory. I do not expect to live to see the fruit of the new world order, the new one-world now slowly and painfully emerging from the long, dark past. But I can see and scent the unfolding buds and blossoms of the new fruit of life on earth: human brotherhood and international integration of civilized peoples. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new.…” At the same time, I cannot help seeing the dying days of the old world order of barbarous, predatory, “sacrosanct” and dominant political nationalism, which only slowly and doggedly yields ground to the natural, fundamental, God-given sacred rights of the universal, individual citizen. The sacredness, dignity and worth of the life of the individual citizen are more and more beginning to take the place of the old surreptitiously endowed rights of the deified and sanctified nation-state, the collective sacro egoismo, which up to now has everywhere been an end in itself, serving vested interests instead of serving the interests of the individual citizen—the ultimate sovereign of the earth.

The enlightened individual citizen today, anywhere in the civilized world, is much ahead of his Government, in the way he yearns for and practices tolerance and kindness, in his desire to live and let others live, in the give-and-take approach to all social, artistic, literary and international problems. Speak to a free and enlightened citizen anywhere about his wishes, dreams, ideals and hopes, and you will discover that political nationalism as an end in itself does not even enter into his considerations, if he is left to himself. The enlightened citizen of today knows that the political nationalism of past centuries was an artificial sacred cow on whose altar rivers of human blood and the richest assets of the earth were needlessly sacrificed to further the depraved and predatory ideals of political nationalism’s avidity for Gloire and Grandeur.

Even the ordinary man today has higher ideals than most Governments. Even the best of our Governments find it difficult to make a clean break with the past, and depart from conventional usages. The exercise of power, too, has its deleterious effect on Governments. The enlightened voting citizen must soon find a way of overcoming and controlling power politics and the lust and “fun” of power, and impose upon his Government the duty of administering but not ruling; of cooperating with all other Governments but not coercing, quarreling, threatening, or pushing around weaker and smaller nations, in order to make it possible for man to coexist, to live together happily and harmoniously and honestly with his fellow men in the shrinking world community.

The intelligent and enlightened citizen of the world today already has one foot across the threshold of the one-world. The preoccupations of the man of the world today intellectually, spiritually, esthetically, ethically and artistically are not nationalistic, but universal. International exchange in commerce and culture has cross-fertilized literature, music, drama, art and science, and the new citizen of the world looks for the good book, the fine concert artist and concert program, the best in drama, art and science, without any particular thought of, and surely without any prejudice against, the national origin of the creative artist or writer or scientist. Knowledge, music and art, like ethics and social justice, have become one common treasure house belonging to no national monopoly or “chosen people,” but to all humanity.

It is left to the historians to allocate the credits where they particularly and historically belong. People today are utterly sick of the Superior Races, Chosen Peoples, Patrimony, Missions, Gloire and Grandeur, the White Man’s Burden, Covenants with God, Promised Lands—all hypocritical assumptions and pretensions, behind which aggressive and immoral political nationalists have heretofore assaulted and exploited weaker peoples.

Right up to the very days of the era of Enlightenment, which was so recent in history, both Jews and Gentiles suffered tyranny, cruelty and injustice, as a result of general exploitation, isolation, ignorance and parochialism all over the world. The Jews became twisted and mutilated physically, spiritually and socially; but not much less twisted and mutilated were the common folk of the Gentile world, driven and exploited by their rulers—the holy empires, the holy church, the feudal lords, and, later on in modern times, the ruling circles of the nation-states. The common masses were manipulated, misguided and exploited only a bit less than the Jews. It was an age of the “divine right” of rulers at the expense of poor humanity. First, the church-state was encrusted with corruption and immorality, and then the predatory nation-states.

The Jews, pushed around, expelled here, there and everywhere, and forced to become usurers, secondhand peddlers, pawnbrokers, Hof-Juden (court Jews, as tax collectors for feudal lords and kings), segregated, self-centered, bitter and frustrated, self-opinionated and hedged in, hugging the delusion that they were superior and chosen people in their wretched bailiwicks, were only the barometer measuring the low state and backwardness of their tormentors. The tormentors—the goyim, the common masses—incited from above to persecute, murder and trifle with the Jews with complete impunity, shared little in the vested interests of the selfish, heartless, presumptuous ruling circles of that dark world. Certainly he who was taught to hate, persecute or murder was harmed and mutilated not much less than his victim. Both Jew and Gentile were victims of the old order of things. And both prayed for happier and better days to come. The same applied to the old order of organized clerical religion. To quote Felix Adler, the founding father of Ethical Culture: “For more than three thousand years men have quarrelled concerning the formulas of their faith. The earth has been drenched with blood shed in this cause, the face of day darkened with the blackness of the crimes perpetrated in its name. There have been no direr wars than religious wars, no bitterer hates than religious hates, no fiendish cruelty like religious cruelty, no baser baseness than religious baseness. It has destroyed the peace of families, turned the father against the son, the brother against the brother. And for what?”¹⁶⁶

Mankind fought and bled, to be fooled and exploited again, only to rise and fight and bleed again and again for natural rights, for ethics in Government, for common decency, for the rights of the individual, for freedom of worship. Thus the Renaissance, the Reformation and the many successive revolutions and wars—first for the benign and humane nationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which culminated in the cry for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, then the predatory wars of conquest, colonization and empire building, then the hot and cold wars against the predatory nation-states, against Nazism, Fascism and Communist colonialism. Mankind was constantly paying the bloody and costly bills of barbaric political nationalism. It is only today that one begins to visualize the coming new one-world, when Jew and Gentile will really be able to call one another brother, and together deplore the old mutual mutilations that resulted from the long, inhuman and uncivilized past.

Slowly the barriers and prejudices vanish. Only time and infinite patience can help progress. The individual citizen is slowly emerging as the supreme master of his destiny, but the revolution is far from finished. Mankind is being unchained by small degrees. The world is still in a state of flux, going forward, then backward, then forward again, but each time slightly further forward than backward. It is a joint human adventure all over the world, and those who get hurt a little more, or much more, than others must not retreat, escape or put stumbling blocks in the path to upset the march of advancing, though tired and irritable, humanity. Certainly the Jews, who were always the first to suffer, but also among the first to advance in history, should now, more than ever, stand up and be counted in the front line of those who are fighting against barbaric (“sacred”) political nationalism.

The time has come for the Jews to discard the absurd and wild prejudices of the East European ghettos against the Gentile world. Take that inveterate and pathetic prejudice against goyim—a sort of neuroticism stemming from a twisted superiority complex acquired during the long tortured and hedged-in ghetto life—“a goy bleibt a goy” (A Gentile always remains a Gentile). It has many connotations and applications. “What can you expect of a goy? He has no saychel (wisdom, sense). He has no heart. He has no Torah (Old Testament). He is dumb.” Therefore, “a goy bleibt a goy”; once a goy, always a goy. The connotations of the “goy bleibt a goy,” are deep-rooted and manifold, stretching from the ridiculous to the dangerous. Take, for instance, Ben Gurion reassuring President Eisenhower on October 28, 1956, through his Cambridge-educated, grandiloquent declaimer, Ambassador Abba Eban, in Washington, that “we will never start a war.… Israel pledges not to begin war,” and so on. Twenty-four hours later, cynically and brutally and shamelessly, Ben Gurion launched a war of aggression against Egypt, with every intent of gobbling up Sinai, Gaza and whatever else might be possible. There is where the “goy bleibt a goy” psychosis played havoc. The “clever” Jew took it for granted that the “stupid” goy Eisenhower would swallow whole hog the propaganda about the “bulwark of democracy in the Middle East,” particularly as it happened on the eve of Presidential elections in the United States.

After quoting the Bible so long, as if justice were a monopoly of “the children of the Covenant,” Ben Gurion could not imagine the goy Eisenhower proclaiming, “There can be no peace without law.… We are a people born of many peoples.… Our cultures … have been shaped by immigrants.… We judge no man by his name or inheritance but by what he does and for what he stands. There can be no second class nation before the law of the world community.…”

The time has come to remove and discard the muck that has festered around the core of Judaism, the Pinteleh Yid. The time has come to divest oneself of all archaic, uncivilized and negative minutiae and appendages, and conserve only the eternal values of pure Judaism.

I am coming to my point. The Jew of today is not the Jew of yesterday. The post–World-Wars Jews must not be ruled and led by those neurotically congealed pre–World-Wars East European ghetto leaders whose feelings and philosophy today reflect the kind of world in which they grew up and froze. These old Jewish leaders still live ideologically in 1897, the year of the First Zionist Congress and Dr. Herzl. They like that dead world, fanatically and professionally. The moment they see a goy, they still see nothing but a potential anti-Semite. Sometimes they even welcome some rare anti-Semitic manifestations as auspicious times: “It is good for business.” It can promote the schemes of “Jewish” political nationalism, if cleverly exploited.

The Jews of America, England, France, Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia, Italy, Switzerland, Australia and many other countries, particularly those who are native citizens, or those who have made full adjustments in integration and identification with the rest of the community, are different from those who insist on retaining the old diseased prejudices against the goy. Today’s Jew has a homeland, by birth or naturalization. He has neighbors, fellow citizens and fellow countrymen, irrespective of anyone’s national origin, irrespective of anyone’s different habits and ways of worshiping God. The Jew is today a normal being; or he must become one. He can and should respond normally and wholeheartedly and humbly, and above all patiently, to all local, national and international problems of his homeland, because these involve all citizens alike, the Jew not a bit less than the Gentile.

When Jews reluctantly and innocently had their physical and spiritual disabilities, when they were forced to live apart in segregated enclaves, they were a separate people, with separate economic, intellectual, spiritual and social interests. They acquired peculiar characteristics as a result of their isolation and unique, tragic life. Their disabilities tied them together even more than their religion, even as their religion extended itself beyond its natural confines to freeze them into a rigid, strict, preceptive, “protective,” but stunted and stultified life.

Today a Jew can emigrate to and settle in any country, like anyone else. He can legally and morally assume any nationality, and can positively say, as all others do, “Ubi bene ibi patria” (Wherever I am well off, there is my country). He can, and must, become not only a citizen, but also a national and a fullfledged member of the country of his adoption, as all others do. His religion and his spiritual and philosophical heritage are his private affairs, as with all others. The church (or synagogue) and the state are completely separate domains. Therefore, in this new one-world, in this nuclear age, “Jewish” political nationalism is not relevant, not positive. It is negative, archaic.

I am coming closer to my point, to why I am so disturbed by the tragic contribution of “Jewish” political nationalism. I am coming to the core of the thesis “The Case of the Jews and of Judaism Versus ‘Jewish’ Political Nationalism.”

A “Full Jewish Life” Today.

Ben Gurion has said it time and again: “I still do not believe it possible to enjoy a full Jewish life outside of Israel.” He takes it for granted that a “full Jewish life” such as he enjoys is universally desired by the Jews of the world.

The American Jewish Committee, a body of Jewish old-timers in America, mostly native Americans, also speak of a “full Jewish life,” but they qualify it thus: “A Jew can live a full and rich Jewish life as an integrated American.”¹⁶⁷

What is a “full Jewish life”? Certainly there is a chasm between Ben Gurion’s “full Jewish life” and the American Jewish Committee’s “full and rich Jewish life”; at least I hope so.

In America today the American Jewish Committee’s “full and rich Jewish life as an integrated American” presumably means that the Jew in America is free to build synagogues and worship in them according to his conception of the Jewish religion; that he is free to build, possess and maintain Jewish libraries, Jewish Centers, Jewish hospitals, Jewish Homes for the aged and orphaned, and Jewish cemeteries; and, if he chooses, he may slit the throats of cows and chickens according to the antiquated and barbaric “ritualistic slaughter of the Torah Law,” in order that his meats be Kosher.

The Jew in America is free to establish Jewish schools, Jewish colleges and Jewish universities, on the pattern of Catholic parochial schools. He is free to do this in the name of his Jewish religion and Jewish culture, as long as others pursue the same peculiar, if not divisive, ways of meeting the current educational problems of the maturing and merging American people. Fundamentally, however, all are expected to aim at harmonizing the various schools, so that they all blend into one American civilization whose joint adventure abides by and perseveres in realizing that unique American nationalism which is this country’s contribution to the advancing world. Our contribution is to amalgamate and integrate erstwhile antagonistic or hostile members of various nationalities and religions into one happy community, in which mutual trust and mutual aid (in all senses) enables them and their elected Government to strive for the one new-old idea—the individual citizen, his welfare, his pursuit of happiness, and his spiritual and universal development, as well as his full freedom as an American national. Neither the Jew, the Catholic nor the Protestant is free to pull apart, live apart, ghettoize his life, in order to be segregated from the general American community and thus be able to foster and maintain national bonds with a foreign country.

“Full Jewish life” is open to many interpretations and extensive applications. It also will vary according to whether you are an ordinary Jew, a “good” Jew or a “real” Jew. As a “real” Jew, your everyday language among other “real” Jews must not be the “alien” language, English. It must be Hebrew, spoken Hebrew, your “own” language. And the ideal state of affairs, from the point of view of the “real” Jew, is of course to live where “Jewish” soldiers, sailors, aviators, policemen and mail carriers, as well as the rest of the population, all speak Hebrew, where the flag, the currency and the whole paraphernalia of “sacred” national life are Hebrew—in Israel.

The following is comic and idiotic; its primitiveness and puerility, however, give a popular and romantic conception of the “full Jewish life” according to the formula of “Jewish” nationalism and “Jewish education for Aliyah.” I have it from the Jewish Newsletter of April 23, 1956. The Newsletter took it from the Yiddish Daily Forward, New York. “A Rhapsody of Chauvinism” is the title given to the story by the Newsletter:

Chaim Liberman writing in The Forward in February, 1956, says: “I went out in the streets of Tel-Aviv, and for the first time saw a mounted Jewish policeman. My wife was fascinated by the spectacle as myself. She walked up to the policeman and began to talk with him, and lovingly stroked his horse. As to myself, I confess that I thought I’d like to do something silly so that he would arrest me and send me to prison. I wanted to have a tangible experience of Jewish power, even if it were in the form of a Jewish prison.… Isn’t it wonderful? Our own policeman, a horse all our own.…

A dog in Israel knows more Hebrew than an American Rabbi … Even the walls speak Hebrew … As you arrive in Israel you have the impression that you have walked into a divine service. Wherever you go, wherever you are, people seem to be praying. You enter a store to buy something, and what you hear is prayers. You take a bus, and the people sitting around you are praying. A boy walks with a girl, and they pray. Children play in the street, and they pray. Why, you enter a bank, and there is a cashier bent over rolls of bank notes, praying. In the midst of all this, if you hear someone speak another language, you can barely restrain yourself from crying out: It is not permitted to talk during the divine service!

This, of course, is the real “full Jewish life” according to the “Jewish” political nationalists. Away with the old “divine service” of the Diaspora, its “narrow” pure religion, its philosophy, its evolution into universalism and world brotherhood. Pagan Judaism is the new faith and fashion, the new mode, the dernier cri. The Jews of the world are now members of a new nation-state, Israel, and the Israeli policeman and the policeman’s horse are “our own.” Furthermore, redemption’s Grandeur and Gloire demand that our “Jewish homeland” Israel must, as far as possible, recover the ancient borderlines as they once were, three thousand years ago in the days of King David and King Solomon. And as for the Arab population of Palestine, who cares?

Let us now examine the nature of American nationalism, which I extol even as I decry the old European nationalism, and its progeny “Jewish” nationalism, which is only a twisted and tragic imitation of its prototype. After considering the two different types of nationalism, we shall consider the high lights of Jewish history, to see the evolution of universal, spiritual Judaism all the way up to our time, when suddenly it was diverted, twisted, and degenerated into a pagan Judaism, “Jewish” political nationalism.

American Nationalism. Pre–World War II European Nationalism. “Jewish” Nationalism.

This glorious and unique country of ours was settled and developed into what it is today by individuals, each of whom emigrated to America to remake his life and join others in an adventure to create a new socio-national life on earth, not only in theory, but in practice. Each renounced for all time all former political affiliations, and with it all historical prejudices and animosities, so as to be better fitted to help the others integrate into one new, harmonious people. To this day, we Americans, with no exception, and with no recognition of minorities, continue to re-create our new country, as mutually pledged individuals, in order to make “the experiment intrusted in the hands of the American people” a success.

President Eisenhower put it this way: “The enduring meaning of Concord lies in the ideas that inspired the historic stand there. Concord is the symbol of certain basic convictions about the relationship of man to the State.… Those convictions were found in a firm belief in the spiritual worth of the individual. He must be free to think, to speak, and to worship according to his conscience. He must enjoy equality before the law. He must have a fair chance to develop and use his talents. The purpose of government is to serve its citizens in freedom.”¹⁶⁸

And on another occasion, at the United Nations General Assembly’s Emergency Special Session on the Middle East, President Eisenhower expressed his Americanism in these words: “We must in the end be a world community of open societies … Only thus can we exercise the full capacity God has given us to enrich the individual human beings who are our ultimate concern, our responsibility, and our strength.”¹⁶⁹

I shall here draw heavily on Professor Hans Kohn, that wonderful scholar and authority on the phenomenon of nationalism in the history of the world, for a number of observations on American and European nationalism:

The North Americans went beyond the English idea of liberty. The American Revolution was “a kind of providential confirmation of ideas long accepted but hitherto demonstrated only in books”… the birthright of mankind … the American conception of individual rights.¹⁷⁰

In its origin as a nation, the United States was the embodiment of an idea. As Professor Richard Hofstadter has put it felicitously, “It has been our fate as a nation, not to have ideologies, but be one.” The ideology was a supranational ideology, the philosophy of the eighteenth century.¹⁷¹

“A nation of men,” Emerson expressed his faith and hope, “will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired [not by a national soul but] by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” No “Chosen People” idea disfigured Emerson’s address, such as distinguished the thought of so many contemporary nationalists on the European Continent. “Nationality,” Emerson remarked in his Journal, “is often silly. Every nation believes that the Divine Providence has a sneaking kindness for it. Men count, not the mass. The important thing is a single person. The man is all … Remember that society can never be so large as one man; that the private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy than any kingdom in history”—this was Emerson’s message.¹⁷²

Another of Emerson’s friends, Amos Bronson Alcott, shared Thoreau’s enthusiasm for the individual. “Individuals are sacred,” he wrote in 1841. “The world, the State, the Church, the school, are all felons whensoever they violate the sanctity of the private heart.” What a distance separated Emerson and his friends from their contemporary Mazzini who proclaimed Nationality is sacred.¹⁷³

These immigrants were assimilated in a much deeper sense—in the sense of a spiritual transformation. They became Americans in the full sense of the word, a sense which does not include race, or ethnic origin, but is based upon loyalty to an idea; this idea expresses itself through an infinite multiplicity of voluntary associations of all kinds, due to individual and group initiative, even in fields like religion, to a degree unknown on the European Continent. [Our] emphasis on the future instead of on the past, besides the insistence on the individual, helps to create this nation. European and Asian nationalists have been accustomed to look to the past, and to try to revive its real or imagined splendor … Thomas Jefferson spoke for the American people when he wrote on August 1, 1816, “I like the dream of the future better than the history of the past.”¹⁷⁴

As a nation of many peoples and many faiths the United States could not allow its various component parts to look too much to the past which divided them and often set one against the other. It could unite them in liberty and tolerance only if the immigrants looked not back towards the innumerable defeats and victories, scars and triumphs of their ancestral history, but forward to a common future based on individual activity within the framework of the common constitution and the common American ideas.¹⁷⁵

“You have here,” Senator William E. Borah of Idaho declared in 1919, “a League of Nations composed of the great and dominant Powers of the earth, some of whom are now engaged in oppressing and decimating weak nations and innocent peoples, and, with those people, you ask me to form a permanent combination and bring this Republic down to that level of debauchery and shame?”¹⁷⁶

It was a typically American saying by Lincoln: “I do not care who my grandparents were, but only what my grandchildren will be.”¹⁷⁷

Few people realize that nationalism is quite a recent phenomenon in the history of the modern world. It

arose in Northwestern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries in the context of the age of Enlightenment, of liberalism and tolerance. At that time it was a movement for the assertion of individual liberty and the rights of the citizen against one’s government, for the freeing of the mind from the shackles of traditional authority, for an open society in contact with similar open societies. Nationalism in its beginning was a deeply humanitarian movement.… It was unthinkable that “Fatherlands” could war against each other.… After 1848, Nationalism spread to lands of entirely different traditions and social structure.… The new nationalisms … became a trend towards collective self-assertion, towards a closed society, in which the individual counted for less than the strength and authority of the national whole.… The late great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga wrote that “nationalism, the exaggerated and unjustified tendency to emphasize national interests, has produced in our time the abominable fruit of hypernationalism, the curse of this century.”¹⁷⁸

After 1848 and all the way up to World War II, the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in nationalism were replaced by emotion-laden, militant and self-centered “sacred” collective egotism, with the emphasis on Race, Cultural Superiority, Blood, Soil, Manifest Destiny, Chosen People, Redemption, and Power above all. Nationalism became predatory and depraved. “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” was the code of Pan-German political nationalism, says T. H. Tetens in The New Germany and the Old Nazis (New York: Random House, 1961, p. 108). With the advent of the new nationalism, brutalized humanity now became an appanage of the greedy crowns of Europe; and, a little later, automatons in the hands of the insane rulers of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, to be sent out by the millions to die and to kill for the “sacred” Fatherland.

It took two world wars and many revolutions and crises, with the appalling destruction of millions of innocent lives and treasure and precious assets, to shatter the old ideas of Europe’s “sacred egoistical” nationalism and turn the state and nations back to the original ideas of human and benevolent nationalism, such as we now again hear in the Western world. Only now are the representative forces in civilized Europe speaking for the common man, when they plead for “fused sovereignties” and for the voluntary sacrifice of national control of national affairs in favor of supranational control as the only answer to that barbaric spirit of superiority and domination which brought the world to the brink of complete destruction.

President Sukarno, in addressing the United States Congress, in May, 1956, spoke apologetically about nationalism, in spite of heading a new nation:

I hesitate at using the word nationalism, for I know that in many countries and in many nations, nationalism is an out-of-date political doctrine. Please remember, Mr. Speaker, that for us of Asia and Africa, nationalism is a young and progressive creed. We do not equate nationalism with chauvinism, and we do not interpret nationalism as meaning the superiority of our peoples over others. No!

A former Prime Minister of Canada, Louis St. Laurent, saw the end of the old order dominated by predatory nationalism in these words: “The era when the ‘supermen’ of Europe could govern the whole world is coming to a pretty close end.”

Constantin Caramanlis, Prime Minister of Greece, in an interview with Dorothy Thompson, in November, 1956, contrasted American nationalism with European nationalism, in connection with the last war of aggression—the joint British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in October–November, 1956:

The greatest light on the horizon at the moment is the emergence of America to her true role and destiny. Her stand on the Suez crisis was not generally anticipated. But, its firmness, consistency, and idealism awakened a new hope among all small nations. A great nation, a superb power, which seeks nothing for herself, but is ready to aid with unparalleled generosity, for no return except stability and good-will. We are in a new century and a new age. It is hard for old states and especially old empires, to adjust themselves to this fact, wholly and thoroughly. But America is herself a new nation, called to a new great role in history, which, if she but exercises it, will heal old wounds and bind the free world together beyond possibility of a break.

After serving as a Cabinet Minister in Conservative, old-order Governments, in which one Prime Minister (Churchill) “had not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire,” and another Prime Minister (Eden) had misled the great people of Britain into the aberration and disgrace of Suez, Harold Macmillan, once he rose to become the Prime Minister and new pilot of Great Britain, also rose to a new height and new maturity to say:

After the First World War, a sense of shock made many statesmen and people begin to think in terms outside the old pattern of national states and to make a move along the path to a world unity.… After the Second World War, a new attempt was made.… In the Security Council of the United Nations was to be found the germ of a world administration or Cabinet, and in the Assembly, the beginning of a world Congress or Parliament. We can no longer afford to think parochially.

This is the lesson the new and wise statesmen of Europe have learned the hard way from Woodrow Wilson’s American nationalism. Belatedly, alas, one hears of European unity, European community and even world community versus parochial nationalism of the old order.

And this brings me to the most twisted version of the old dying European nationalism—the absurd and historically anachronistic and shocking “Jewish” nationalism. It is a far cry from the bloodthirsty Jehova of Joshua to the universal, moral and peace-loving Jehova of the prophets. It is a far cry from the sale of indulgences and the autos-da-fé of the Inquisition (when anyone daring to exercise freely the faculties God gave him would be hanged on the gallows, burned at the stake or flayed alive ceremoniously) to our own time, when the Vatican’s churches opened their doors to serve as a place of refuge for the Jewish victims of Hitler. Gods have a way of maturing and growing up, so to speak, just as poor humanity, nations and governments mature and grow up and out of their past dark ages.

Alas, it is no far cry at all from the God of Joshua to the God of Ben Gurion, nor from the old predatory European nationalism to the militant nationalism of Ben Gurion. “Jewish” nationalism has become the last surviving example of the old European nationalism, which still believes in the teaching, “If the welfare of our Fatherland should require conquest, subjugation, dispossession and extermination of foreign nations, we must not be deterred by humanitarian qualms.”

How much of historical Judaism is there behind the current “Jewish” nationalism? How deep, how old, how Jewish, really, historically speaking, is the newfangled “Jewish” nationalism? What is the explanation of the tragic phenomenon of obsession and ecstasy over the deification of the “Jewish” state as an end in itself at this terribly late hour in the history of the Jewish people and in the history of the world?

Let me make myself clear at the very outset. I wish the state of Israel all the good luck in the world—along legitimate lines, of course. It needs good luck, at best. It is an accomplished fact, and, like many historical accomplished facts, you cannot, you must not, you dare not, think of undoing it. No Arab leader in his right mind would be so idiotic as to launch a life-and-death struggle with the Israelis to recover the Arab homeland by throwing the Israelis into the Mediterranean Sea. One must be a realist. The Israelis have proved their combative mettle in their offensive and defensive wars with the Arabs. I am sure that the most sanguine Arabs would agree—things being what they are today—that it is merely a question of Israel’s making honest amends to the Palestinian Arabs according to the United Nations resolutions, and under United Nations supervision, striking a tolerable solution that would permit Israelis and Arabs to live and work together for their mutual good in their joint homeland.

I have the highest respect and admiration for those Jews of old Palestine I once well knew who romantically, poetically, religiously or even nationalistically (but harmlessly) sacrificed their personal, professional and financial opportunities abroad, and with outside help and know-how established cooperative colonies and experimented in applied socialism in the land of their dreams. And I have nothing but admiration and respect for the individual workers, farmers, engineers, scientists, artists and independent writers in Israel today who, with the aid of abundant know-how and colossal contributions of money, food and material, have achieved remarkable results in colonization, irrigation, drainage, industry, shipping, art, science and technology. Needy Jewish immigrants who are real refugees from persecuting countries, and who cannot or would not, of their own free will, go anywhere else, should be helped to settle in Israel, once the Arab refugees have had the chance to return to their homes and homeland.

But it is not all a question of Israel alone, which sooner or later will have to come to terms with reality. It is a question of whether the professional and fanatical Jewish leaders, controlling the Big Machine that has captured Jewish communities all over the world and sold them the idea that Jewish people everywhere are now internationally recognized as an ethnic and political entity whose sovereign state and national homeland is Israel, will relinquish their stranglehold on the unsophisticated, uninformed, innocent Jews of the world.

I am anxious to develop my thesis, “The Case of the Jews and of Judaism versus ‘Jewish’ political nationalism.” From here on, we shall plunge into a study of the high lights of our history, past and present. We shall follow the evolution of Jewishness from the time the Jewish people renounced for good all political and territorial interests until they finally found themselves among the progressive, international forces in the evolution of poor mankind from tribes to nations to international brotherhood.

DIASPORA JEWS ALL THROUGH HISTORY FOUGHT FOR AN EVOLVING JUDAISM, AND NOT FOR AN ANACHRONISTIC “JEWISH” NATIONALISM

The Old Jewish Commonwealth Dies. A Second Commonwealth Is Established and Is Also Destroyed. The Hegemony of Judaism Goes to the Diaspora for Good. The Unprofessional Spiritual Rabbi Becomes the Adored Guide of Jewry.

There is no shred of a doubt about the course of Jewish history from the time of the Babylonian exile in 586 B.C.E. to the eventual dispersion of Jewry among the nations of the world. The course—a positive and progressive and evolutionary one—was diametrically opposed to any kind of temporal, territorial, political and nationalistic Jewish life. After the first Jewish commonwealth was destroyed in 586 B.C.E., a small fraction of the Jews exiled in Babylonia were given a chance to return to Judea and have another fling at Jewish political nationalism. Off and on, the “Second Commonwealth” continued into the second century C.E., during which time, and on a very small scale, Palestinian Jews enjoyed full or partial political independence. But it was Babylonia that became the spiritual fountainhead of world Jewry (Jewry was already scattered then in many parts of the world), even as the memories of the political state lingered for a while. The Babylonian Jews rapidly embraced the loftier standards of their old prophets and forsook the ideas and ideals of political nationalism. The content of life became more spiritual, ethical and intellectual.

Before long, Babylonia became a flourishing world center of Jewish scholarship and great spiritual advancement, the unprofessional rabbis taking the place of the professional priests. The sacrificial slaying at the altar, which benefited the exploiting priests, evolved into humble praying in the new institution, the synagogue; rituals gave way to righteousness; militancy gave way to humility; collectivism evolved into individualism; the scholar supplanted the idle “noble” pretender; the spirit supplanted the secular, political state. In short, it was the beginning of a more meaningful life. Captivity and exile, under humane conditions, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The evolution of Judaism was in the making. The philosophy of life, the purpose of life, was not going to be found any longer in political nationalism, but in individualism, in the individual’s conscience, and in his equation with the “Kingdom of Heaven.” This was something the civilized world began to discover only in modern times—the individual’s sacred life instead of the arrogated collective life, the nationalist life.

Pasternak, in his famous book Dr. Zhivago, two thousand five hundred years after the Babylonian exile, put it this way: “In the kingdom of heaven there are no nations; there are only individuals.” From the very beginning of the exile in Babylonia, it was the individual’s life that counted most. That old idea that people were suffering for the sins of their fathers—“their fathers had eaten sour grapes and their teeth were set on edge”—was reversed in Babylonia, and individual responsibility took its place. Ezekiel in Babylonia put it this way: “If one be just and wrongeth not any, he shall surely live. But, if his son walketh not in the ways of his righteous father, he shall surely die. The son shall not bear the sin of the father, nor shall the father bear the sin of the son. The soul that sinneth, it shall die!”

Away from the pomp of royalty, from militant nationalism and its political iniquities, the Jewish people entered upon a purer, finer, loftier way of life, in which individual members of the community communed directly with their God, and not by way of a fat, idle, parasitical priest, who above all was the man of the hour, symbolizing compromise and professionalism. And while some of the former Levites and former priests recalled the grand old times they had enjoyed in their Temple in Jerusalem, and were “sitting by the rivers of Babylon [and] wept when they remembered Zion,” the masses had no time for this diversion, nor had they any good reason for such reminiscing. They got down to earth soon enough, built homes, planted gardens and, before long, built great intellectual centers of learning and synagogues for prayers. They set an example, not only for the remnant of Jews in Judea, but for all the Jews who were scattered all over the world, and also, eventually, for the Christian world. “Captivity” and “exile” became only symbolic words in the prayer book. For the individual contemplating his life on earth with the universal God personally watching over him, Babylonia became a blessing in disguise.

The Babylonian exile was epochal not only for the history of the Jews, but for civilization generally. It was the first time in history that a considerable community dissociated the worship of its God from its ancestral soil.… It was the basis for the development of the whole conception of human brotherhood, and the breakdown of that prejudice which transforms love of one’s own people and country into the hatred of all others. At last the principle was established that God has no special home on earth, but that all countries and people are alike before him.¹⁷⁹

The Babylonian synagogue was gradually introduced into the towns and villages of Judea. Teachers and scribes were sent to Judea in addition to financial and material aid. A new spiritual leader began to take over in Judea as well as in Babylonia—the rabbi.

The Rabbi. The Rabbinic Revolution in the Evolution of Judaism.

The rabbi I am talking about here is not the professional rabbi we know today. If I may boldly say so: The rabbi I am going to talk about here is nearer to the prophet of old, whereas the rabbi of today, with many noble exceptions, is nearer to the priest of old, a man of the hour, a compromiser, a jobholder.

In Judea the title was Rabbi, “My Master.” In Babylonia the title was Rabh, “Master.” The rabbi or rabh was an unprofessional spiritual leader who received no remuneration for the great services he rendered. Rabbinical leadership of this sort lasted until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. No rabbi up to that time ever received any salary. “Rabbi” was the greatest title in Jewish history. Moses had this title: Moshe Rabaynooh—Moses our Rabbi, our Master, our Teacher. From the time of Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the pre-Judea days to the days of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the downfall of Jewish political nationalism, there were no rabbis. There were prophets who came out of the blue into the market place, to speak to the people in the name of God, to serve as catalytic forces, to scold and inspire, and then to disappear from the scene and go back to their herds or to gather sycamore fruit. The priests ruled the “spiritual” life of the Jewish people. Late in Jewish history, during the Second Commonwealth, there appeared some exceptional priests in Judea, such as old Mattatias Hashmonayi and his son Judah Maccabee, who fought against the Greek-Syrian (Hellenistic) overlords for religious freedom. They were brave spiritual leaders, more like the rabbis than like the priests. Their descendants, however, who ruled (mostly as puppets under the Greeks) for a while afterward, brought nothing but misery, disgrace and a final defeat to the suffering Jews under them, thanks to their corruption and opportunism.

The phenomenon of the rabbi in Jewish history is unique. The late Henry Hurwitz (Chancellor of the Menorah Association and Editor of the Menorah Journal to the day of his death in 1961—a remarkable scholar and indomitable leader of the intellectual Jewish world in America) in his Lessing J. Rosenwald lecture, “Judaism in This Nuclear Age,” delivered before the Philadelphia chapter of the American Council for Judaism on October 15, 1958, called the advent of the rabbi in the early history of the Babylonian exile “the Rabbinic revolution in the evolution of Judaism.” I shall quote here a few paragraphs from that remarkable lecture:

It was a rejection of the whole paraphernalia and personnel of idolatry-priesthoods, shamans, medicine-men, witch doctors, necromancers; and, with them, temple altars, sacrifices and holy sacraments. Henceforth, in Judaism, God was to be worshipped in spirit and through a moral way of human life. And of such a regimen of daily life—reaching into every nook and cranny of it—study, learning Torah, must be an integral part, an indispensable organic part: study of the laws and wisdom of that regimen as a very mode of prayer and worship; study night and day to learn as much as may be given to mortals to know of the mystery and majesty of God; so that the nearest Jewish equivalent to what in the general world has been called “religion” became Daat Elohim, the “Knowledge of God,” or in Spinoza’s later phrase—in direct Rabbinic tradition—Amor Dei Intellectualis, “the intellectual love of God.”

Between the Most High in Heaven and the lowliest man on earth there was to be no intermediary. A contrite heart pouring itself out in prayer would exhale a sweeter savor than the burning of the most expensive animal on the altar in the Temple according to the strictest priestly protocol.

But yet, above prayer was put learning. This conviction was expressed in its most extreme form in Talmudic times by a rabbinic dictum that “an ignorant man cannot be a pious man.” It will therefore be readily understood how it has come about that Jews in every age and in every land for the past two thousand years have laid prime stress on education.

Thus, the God of the prophets who “grew from a ferocious God of battles into a tender God of justice and love and compassion” … now, with the advent of the Rabbis who succeeded the prophets, there came a popular “religious revolution in the evolution of Judaism.”

The rabbi was a self-supporting person. Thus—

the great Hillel was a wood chopper; Shamai, a builder; Joshua Ben Chananiah, a blacksmith, while others were tailors, tanners, and even water carriers. No salaries or other form of public support were made available to Rabbis. [Later on], the medieval Rabbis in Spain supported themselves by trade; investments, money lending, or as physicians. Maimonides declared that though he knew that not all scholars would agree with him, it would be best for practitioners of Torah (The Law) not to be supported by public funds. He himself was a silent partner of his brother David, and, when his brother was drowned, Maimonides undertook the arduous profession of physician.¹⁸⁰

Remarkable also is the fact that the cross-fertilization of cultures already began to play its part in the evolution of Judaism. Athens long ago had its academies of learning—Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum. Alexandria, Egypt, a close neighbor of Palestine, was becoming a Hellenistic cultural center. Organization and codification were Greek ways of perpetuating their intellectual and spiritual heritage. The rabbis of Judea and Babylonia were going to apply these very processes to their own laws and traditions. When that quixotic Jew Johannan Ben Zakkai with a few of his disciples sneaked through the Roman lines of besiegers around Jerusalem in order to request the Commander-in-Chief of the Roman legions to permit him to establish an academy of learning at Yavneh, the village on the coast hard by Jaffa, he was following an established course of intellectual pursuit long since originated by the Greeks in old Athens.

That the Jews all over the world, except in Judea, readily surrendered themselves to the spiritual domain of the Pharisee rabbis showed that political nationalism was a dead issue with them; that it had already become an outworn, outdated ideal. The Jewish people had had sufficient taste of the temptations, abuses and fantastic exaggerations of political nationalism, and had found it wanting Like all fads or artificial persuasions, however, they first discarded it reluctantly; then philosophically, as something perhaps good enough for the goyim—the pagans and infidels. The wise and “good Jew” was now beginning to be preoccupied with a new mode of prayer and worship—an intellectual, spiritual and ethical religion which engulfed all his life under the leadership of the rabbis everywhere.

In Judea, while the rabbis were already abroad, the merchant-priests still held on stubbornly to their posts around the Temple of Jerusalem. The brave Johannan Ben Zakkai was still to come. The great Rabbi Hillel of Babylonian origin was preaching, “‘What you do not like, don’t do to your fellow man’ is the whole Law [Torah, Judaism]; all else is but its exposition.” Other rabbis, however, filled up their lifework by expounding new precepts, hundreds of minutiae in extension of the “written Torah.”

The times, however, were terrible and most trying, and the masses of Jews fell back on an old belief and hope: redemption—a miraculous redemption from their wretched life. During the days of the later prophets there already were rumblings of the idea that when man’s inhumanity to man surpasses all limits, and oppression and wars rage all around, they merely serve as portents of the coming day of redemption for all the peoples of the earth. The redeemer would be a supernatural Messiah who would relieve the Jews as well as all suffering humanity of their misery, and thereafter peace and justice would reign supreme.

The closing centuries of the Second Commonwealth, particularly around the time of Jesus of Nazareth, witnessed much misery, exploitation and confusion in little semi-independent Judea. The country was torn into many political and religious parties and movements. Only a Messiah, a supernatural solution, could bring an answer to the pitiful life of Judea. And into this bewildering life of the Judeans came Joshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, who combined the spirit of the great Rabbi Hillel with the teachings of the prophets, and like Jeremiah (“And if I say I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire, shut up in my bones, I weary myself to hold it in, but cannot”), delivered his message, come what may.

Joshua (Jesus) of Nazareth and Saul (Paul) of Tarsus.

A carpenter by profession, whose friends were fishermen, peasants and workers, near the Sea of Galilee, Joshua learned his Torah, the Prophets and the Hebrew liturgical and apocalyptic writings. He heard the great Hillel preach; also the other rabbis, opponents of Hillel. He loved his people, but would not conform to the standard answers that answered nothing. He felt a strong call to service, but he was not the indoor type of detached, pilpulistic rabbi who could find satisfaction in “solving” life’s troubles by sheer hair-splitting studies—interpretations upon interpretations of interpretations of the Bible. It was a turbulent epoch. The portents of the “inevitable coming of the Messiah” were obvious to him in the wide suffering of his people, in the corruption and injustice and oppression all around him. It was a time for miracles, according to the old credence.

One day Joshua heard and saw Johanan the Baptist call on the people to return to God and repent from their iniquities. He heard Johanan warn the people about the approaching Day of Judgment. He heard Johanan assure the people of the coming redeemer—a Messiah who would put an end to their unbearable existence. Later, Joshua learned with a broken heart that Johanan had been executed for doing what he did. Troubled by the sad state of his people, Joshua could not help listening to the still, small voice of his conscience which called on him to speak out in the name of God, as did the prophets of old. Had he not healed some sick and disturbed people? And did not the people follow him, trust him and regard him as their inspired leader? What was it in him that impelled him to leave his happy rural Galilee and go off to the big city, the capital Jerusalem, to the Temple “where God’s spirit abided”?

He went to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and immediately became consternated at what he saw and heard: wild noises of cattle traffic for sacrificial animals, and money-changers surrounding the busy altars. God’s priests were doing a land-office business in tumultuous “indulgences.” The Holy Temple was turned into a cheap bazaar. He could not stand it; so he and his disciples chased the money-changers and cattle merchants away from the Temple. The priests who worked with the Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate saw in Joshua a menace to their vested interests. The Pharisees (biggest religious sect, characterized by their strict observance of the letter of the law, rites and ceremonies, but who also instituted the first compulsory public-school system in history for all ranks of people) saw in Joshua a rebel, an unobservant Jew, a “dangerous communist.” Did he not preach that the people must give up their property because it led them to greed and sin? But did he not also speak reverently in the name of the Torah and the prophets?

The police of the priests turned Joshua over to the Roman authorities, who quickly declared him a revolutionary plotting to become King of the Jews, and off he was led, first to be flogged and then to carry his cross to be tortured and murdered. Joshua honestly and innocently believed that he was the predestined Messiah; in the face of the ominous threat to his life, he did not hesitate to believe, and assert, that he was God-sent. To his last breath he did so, and as he expired, he uttered the anguished cry: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

His followers believed in him, for he communicated faith and hope. His martyrdom was taken as proof of his innocence, piety, sincerity and divinity. His followers considered Joshua a Messiah who came, pleaded their cause, was murdered and was then resurrected. The traditional Jews, however, believed that the Messiah was yet to come, not in human form but as a supranatural being who would bring universal justice and peace to suffering humanity.

All through Jewish history, as we shall see a little later, Messiahs came and went. Some were innocent visionaries; others, deluded enthusiasts, adventurers or plain charlatans. But the masses, out of the depth of their wretched lives, longed for redemption, and often responded enthusiastically, though in the end they always paid dearly for “precipitating and hastening the end.”

Joshua lived and died a loyal, devoted, innocent and inspired Jew. Judaism was his religion. He possessed a prophetic vision. The sin he committed was to preach, in his terribly dangerous times, the same ideals and injunctions that the old prophets had preached in their trying times. Joshua questioned the significance of the hundreds of Jewish religious observances and precepts which had nothing to do with the essence of faith, and above all with the economic and social problems of the day. This, according to Joshua, was no time to play the ostrich game: to plunge into the quicksand of meticulously performing and observing the rituals of Judaism and to keep on adding to the hedges and safeguards built on top of and around the Torah. Were Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah living in the time of Joshua, they too would very likely have responded to the iniquities and ruinous order of things as Joshua did, and would very likely have met the same fate.

Saul (Paul) of Tarsus, who became the Apostle to the Pagans, only thought of spreading Judaism, as he saw it, to the rest of the world. He believed in Joshua as other people believed in Amos, Hosea, Isaiah. Saul believed that Joshua was the Redeemer, the Messiah. (Millions of people believed in the divine powers of their kings, who had not an iota of the nobility, sincerity and humanity of Joshua.) Saul, regarding the God of Israel as the God of the universe, guessed that the time was ripe to spread the word of God universally, in terms of righteousness, charity and love. The great Hillel, whose teachings remarkably resembled those of Joshua, lovingly befriended proselytes. That it took nearly two thousand years for Christianity, the offspring of pure Judaism, to manifest in real life the spirit and teachings of Joshua (Jesus) and Saul (Paul) was not their fault. The wheels of progress grind slowly—very slowly, alas.

Crude and narrow-minded is the observation of the “Jewish” political nationalist Ben Gurion about Jesus and Paul. With his single yardstick “Is it good for the Jews?” (Is it good for “Jewish” political nationalism?) in mind, he said:

Paul was perhaps the outstanding assimilationist. He transfigured the career and teachings of a most modest and simple Jew from Nazareth who had lived and died as a Jew, wrenched from his Jewish environment and past, and made of him a divine symbol. Thus did Paul found the Christian religion, and it swiftly overran Europe. He affirmed the universal human value of the Jews, but tore them out of their Jewish setting, and, in the place of national and historical Judaism established a creed professedly universal but in fact anti-Jewish.¹⁸¹

As if the people of Judea in the days of Jesus were not fed up with “Jewish” political nationalism! They were soon going to be delivered from the opportunism of the brats of the Maccabee descendants who defiled pure Judaism and Jewishness through their political nationalism: greed on one hand and sycophantic imitation of Hellenism on the other.

As I write these lines, I recall my long-forgotten childhood days, or rather nights, when my Heder and Yeshiva (elementary and higher Talmudical Hebrew schools) in Jerusalem called a complete halt to the study of the Torah and Talmud one night every winter. It must have been the birthday of Joshua of Nazareth. The Rebbeh (not “rabbi”)—the teacher—used to indulge in slighting traditional stories about the Acher (“Strange One,” “Other One”), or Yoshkeh Pandreh, as we kids were made to call the Acher, Jesus. Now, one can understand the tragic reactions of a people persecuted and martyred for nearly two thousand years in the name of Jesus, and unable therefore to place him in his proper niche in its own history during the long period of persecution. But as we now rise above political nationalism and above religious sectarianism, and as the whole world rises above the bestiality of the past dark ages, we Jews are bound to enroll Joshua of Nazareth in the Hall of Fame of our great prophets who contributed so much to the advancement of humanity. Humanity is also bound to reach higher levels of true faith, pure faith, as against the petty bickerings which created those artificial, professional sectarian differences, which in turn divided the world and turned all against the Jews, in the past.

It is true, alas, that the mills of God grind slowly. Nearly two thousand years of Christianity elapsed before the early theoretical high ideals of Jesus the Jew began to be applied in earnest. When one thinks of the carnage of the innocent and helpless Jews of Europe during the many gatherings of the assailing forces of the Crusaders on their way to Palestine to fight the Moslems; when one thinks of the Black Plague period (1348–51) that ushered in centuries of burning alive Jewish communities all over Europe because “they are the source of all evil”; when one thinks of Inquisitions and expulsions as means of despoiling the Jews and the marranos, of forced conversions and confiscations, of confessions obtained through criminals hired to testify; when one remembers that every move had first to be secured by getting a bull (papal letter or edict) and that bulls could be bought from one Pope to sanction Inquisitions and then from another to restrict Inquisitions; when one thinks how the auto-da-fé was treated everywhere as a holy pageant while the innocent victims were fiendishly tortured; when one remembers that not until 1821 was the Inquisition in Portugal officially abolished; when one can almost link all this to the Dreyfus affair in France, to the pogroms in Russia and to the exterminations in Hitler’s Germany, directly or indirectly in the name of Jesus (some members of the Church in Hitler’s Germany talked of supporting the moral renewal brought about by the Hitler Government)—one can readily understand the spirit which motivated Jews throughout their persecutions to say in their prayers, “All Jews are responsible for one another.”

Bigotry was practically a virtue; liberalism, a vice; and religious freedom was a crime to be done to death. Fifteen hundred years after the professional Jewish priests lost their jobs in the Temple where they had trafficked in indulgences, indulgences were bought and sold in Europe to atone for sins. The Christian religion was nothing but “baptized paganism” during the long period of stagnation. And, naturally, the Jewish religion reacted with its hedges and safeguards that spelled stagnation in its camp and the stultification of progressive Judaism’s higher ideals. The rabbis kept building more and more hedges to preoccupy their flocks in a world all their own: Resurrection, Existence of Angels, Divine Providence, Paradise and Hell, Reward and Punishment in the world to come, and precepts, precepts, precepts for every step in one’s life. The Christian world was preoccupied with Original Sin, Transubstantiation, Free Will, Justification by faith, Salvation, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Authority of Church Tradition, and so on.

Stagnation-producing ecclesiastical tyranny of the churches was in both religions complete, rigid and ruthless. Only, the Jewish religion consisted of bloodless hedges, while Christianity exterminated heresy and heretics; they called it “salvation” of the souls of dissenters and “free thinkers.” Heresy in those days had nothing to do with articles of faith but with rituals and theology introduced from the pagans into Christianity and then made a cardinal part of it. In those dark days a man belonged to an ecclesiastical world in which the jurisdiction of the church was supreme. A little later, political nationalism took over jurisdiction, as the church had before; or, in mutual conformity and full cooperation, church and state worked together, as in Czarist Russia.

Mutual aid, tolerance, social justice, common decency and respect for human dignity, and, above all, the rights of the individual had to wait for implementation and application to our American revolution and Constitution and our American way of life.

Judaism in Babylonia and Egypt. Saadya Gaon. Maimonides.

I got off on a tangent when telling the story of Jesus and the early rabbinic period in Jewish history. I shot beyond the mark by giving a general picture of the disabilities of the Jews all the way up to modern times as a result of the slow progress of Christianity, which the pagan peoples of Europe embraced and distorted. I must retrace my steps and go into the spiritual struggles and intellectual achievements of some of the outstanding rabbis.

As I have already mentioned, the center of gravity shifted from Judea to Babylonia before the fall of Jerusalem (70 C.E.) and Bettar (135 C.E.). “Palestine during the fifth and sixth centuries had become depopulated; the Jews were displaced by Christians, and Jewish cultural activities considerably reduced.”¹⁸² Even after the Moslems conquered Palestine and the condition of the Jews there was greatly ameliorated, never again did the Palestinian Jews regain their old position of hegemony in spiritual and intellectual pursuits among the Jews of the world, and still less in economic self-support. A new terrain was required for the newly evolved Jewishness, unencumbered by nationalistic attachments, by military and political memories. Only religious memories and episodes endured. The core of Judaism was, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit.… A kingdom not of this earth” was the goal of life of the new unpolitical Jew. Learning was the only aristocracy recognized by the rabbis and their disciples, the common folks.

The great scholastic period in Babylonia is called the Gaonic period. Gaon is Hebrew for “excellence.” The height of its achievements lasted five centuries, from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. The great academies were in Sura and Pumpedita, where the Geonim, the heads of the academies, and their thousands of scholars studied and amplified the teachings of the Bible and of the Mishnah (created and compiled by the Judean rabbis—Tannayim—from 70 to 217 C.E.) and thus produced the Babylonian Talmud in Aramaic, the vernacular of Babylonia—very much like the Hebrew language. The Talmud eventually became the backbone of Jewish scholarship, which it remains to this day, particularly of Orthodox Judaism. The Talmud not only contains all the extended rituals and laws of and commentaries and disputations on the Bible and the Mishnah, but is also a repository of all the ethics, folklore, legends, biographies and historical events from time immemorial, a superb treasure house indispensable to the serious study of the Jewish people and their contributions to civilization.

During the five centuries of the Gaonic period, only one of the heads of the academies was not a native Babylonian, Rab Saadyah Ben Joseph al Fayumi (from the Egyptian district of Fayum), 882–942, who had come to Babylonia as a recognized scholar.… Saadya was reared in Egypt. There he started his literary activity and gathered a group of pupils around him. We conclude from this that the Mohammedan conquest had greatly improved the condition of the Jews in Egypt too, and had caused a revival of spiritual activity after the oppression by the Christian church.…

The Babylonian academies, on the other hand, in spite of occasional persecutions which caused brief interruptions of their activity, carried on successfully till the middle of the eleventh century. In the 9th and 10th centuries, their ancient seats were transferred to Bagdad, the capital of the Caliphate, and from there they extended their influence over all the countries which yielded to the sword of victorious Islam, in North Africa and Spain whose Jews turned to Babylonian academies with all their legal problems.”¹⁸³

The widening of intellectual horizons which the Moslem influence ultimately brought about was typified in Saadya Gaon, who first exemplified the fruitful combination of Helleno-Arabic and Jewish culture. Jewish philology and philosophy start with him. He wrote his monumental works in Arabic. He translated nearly the whole Bible into Arabic. Arabic had by now become the vernacular of the Jewish people in the Moslem world.

The rabbis also studied languages, astronomy, mathematics and medicine, and, together with the Arab scholars of their time, translated the Greek classics into Arabic. Many of the great Greek works were translated into Hebrew and then into Latin, thus bringing the Greek classics to Europe, either from the Arabic or from the Hebrew into the Latin.

Moses ben Maimon-Maimonides (1135–1204) was born in Cordoba, the Athens of Jewish and Moslem Spain. Misfortune overtook Cordoba while Maimonides was a child. The Almohadens, a Moorish (Arab) tribe from North Africa, invaded Spain and captured Cordoba in 1148. The Almohadens, who were Unitarians of a unique sort, combined enthusiasm and fanaticism in purifying their religion, and “the Koran or the sword” was applied to Jews and Christians alike. Apostasy or exile was the only choice for Maimonides’ family, although a good many Jews chose to practice a sort of Marrano (crypto-Jewish) life, as did later the Jews of Spain under Christian persecutors.

Maimonides’ foundation of Jewish scholarship was in Cordoba, but he studied everywhere his parents took him. He wandered about—first to Fez, Morocco, but the Almohaden Arabs were there too; then to Palestine, then to Fostat, Egypt, today’s port of Cairo, where he became physician to Sultan Saladin. Believing that a rabbi must not be paid for serving his people—“The Law must not be used as a crown or a spade”—he made his living as a physician, but dedicated all his life to the study of Judaism as well as of logic, natural history, medicine, ethics and philosophy—of the Jewish religion above all. He wrote extensively in Arabic and in Hebrew. To this day his writings occupy a niche in the history of civilization, for he gave as much time and thought to the culture and knowledge of his time as to his religion—the hedges of Judaism which he helped to codify, and which served as a means of survival in the hostile world around his people.

Maimonides was so outstanding in the Jewish world that it was said, “From Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses.” The following quotation from Alexander Marx’s Essays in Jewish Biography will give us a few specific ideas about the great Maimonides, his life and his works:

The position of the Jews in Yemen had become unfavorable, and they were sorely pressed. A Messianic pretender had risen in their midst, and they asked the great leader in Egypt whether they should trust his promises.… It is to the devotion of the Yemenite Jews that we owe the preservation of the Arabic originals of many of Maimonides’ works. In an epistle [to the Yemenite Jews], Maimonides expressed himself very sharply about Mohammedanism. Its religious teachings, compared to our Torah, he says, are like a statue as compared with a living man … ‘I dwell in Fostat, and the Sultan resides in Cairo’ … He goes on to describe how he goes daily to see the Sultan, but returns late afternoon to Fostat, tired, but nevertheless plunges into his duties and writings.…

Maimonides’ large task [was] the Codification of the Jewish Law. He prepared a summary list of all precepts occurring in the Bible. The Talmudic statement that there are 613 precepts had given rise to various enumerations which did not seem acceptable to his critical mind.… His book of precepts continues with an enumeration of the 248 positive and 365 negative precepts, and their derivations from the Bible. This book was published in our time in the Arabic original from the Yemen manuscript.

To one of his favorite pupils, Joseph Ben Juda, who emigrated from Morocco on account of the persecutions there, and studied mathematics and Astronomy with Maimonides in Egypt and then went to live in Aleppo, Syria, he “enjoins his pupil to follow in his footsteps and rather be cursed than curse.…”

In his introduction to the “Guide” [Guide for the Perplexed], Maimonides says: “If I can see no other way except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools, I prefer to address myself to the one man and take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude.”¹⁸⁴

I deliberately dwelt a bit longer on the life of one of the greatest rabbis of the Middle Ages to point out this thought: that no matter how abnormal existence was during those dark ages, it allowed the wandering Jew relatively more moral and spiritual power to strive for “the Kingdom not of this earth,” and it made him potentially more fit for the coming progress of the painfully slow-awakening world, than any precarious temporal, nationalistic Jewish state, constantly struggling for survival in that crossroads of perpetual war called Palestine, could have ever done for him. Here was a great rabbi, a scientist, a physician and a philosopher, often a victim of persecution in a world of bigotry and inhumanity, accepting life without a curse.… “I was troubled by the suffering and exile which God had decreed on me, since I was driven from one end of the world to the other. Yet, perhaps, I received reward for that, since exile atones for sin.”¹⁸⁵

The Extra-Long Dark and Horrible “Middle Ages” of the Jewish People. Jews and Judaism Are Either Exterminated, or Hedged In to Survive.

While the Gentile world had darkness and light, clouds and sunshine, after the era of the Crusaders—the Renaissance, then the Reformation, then the era of Enlightenment, the American Revolution and the French Revolution—the Jewish people in Europe had little cause to relax and less to rejoice, even during the progressive periods. For the Jews, the dark era of the Middle Ages extended practically everywhere to the eighteenth century. In fact, with the defeat of the Moslem-Moorish governments in Spain (where the Jews had enjoyed an era of relaxation, prosperity and social, cultural and spiritual broadening) there commenced the darkest period in Jewish history: Inquisitions, forced conversions, interdiction of study and prayer, expulsions and dispossessions. In Western Europe it lasted to the eighteenth century, and in Eastern Europe well into the twentieth century.

The Christian world, between the external wars and internal exploitation, could sometimes rejoice in the revival of the classics, art and literature to the extent that the masses were allowed that privilege. Political liberty and individual rights were beginning to be aired, leading to intellectual, moral and social attitudes which began to challenge the old political and ecclesiastical tyrannies. The invention of printing and the discovery of America opened up new horizons. The West European Jew, however, all the way up to the eighteenth century had nothing but the wrath and hatred of the Christian world, and, in reaction, his martyrdom produced a rigidity of life that froze him into the narrow confines of his hedged-in ghetto. Life became stagnant and hopeless until a measure of emancipation came in the eighteenth century and the Jew discovered enough stamina within him to join the forces of human progress and liberalism, and thus be counted in the front lines of the awakening new world order.

During the prolonged Middle Ages of the Jew, his relation to the Gentile world was: Dinah Demalchootah Dinah—The law of the land is the law of the Jew. But the law of the land was never applied to the Jew. He was considered an outcast, almost an outlaw, hardly ever protected by the authorities. “The Jews were kept in a kind of an enclave in each of the European nations, and thus acted, both intellectually and economically, as a separate body with distinctive tendencies caused by their isolation and disabilities.”¹⁸⁶

But even the enclaves were soon denied them.

The period of the three centuries between the Renaissance and the French Revolution is distinguished in European history by the breakup of the Church empire with the fundamental principle of orthodoxy as the basis of citizenship, which was the cause of the anomalous position of the Jews in the European State system. These three centuries (1492–1781) saw the lowest conditions of the Jewish people, politically, socially, and intellectually. The expulsions of the preceding centuries had driven the Jews from the lands of Western Europe and of rising cultures and influence to those of Central and Eastern Europe—Germany, Poland and Turkey, of declining cultures.…

Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and were not allowed to return until the day of Cromwell in 1753. They were expelled from France in 1306 and were only allowed to return in small numbers in the seventeenth century. In Spain they were largely massacred in 1391, and the Marranos (converted by force into Christianity but observing Judaism in secret) remained to be driven out from Spain in 1492. They were expelled from Naples in 1541, from Bohemia in 1542, from Basel in 1543, from Austria in 1544, from Genoa in 1550, from Bavaria and Wurtemberg in 1551, from Brunswick in 1553, and from the Palatinate in 1555.… Whenever a city or a State had enough of its Jews, it banished them.¹⁸⁷

First they excluded the Jews and imposed on them a life of isolation and segregation, brutally treating them as “members of a state within a state”—a separate “nation”—then they despoiled them, and then they expelled the “foreign nation.” Where to? Where was the Jew’s country? For over a thousand years it was occupied by the Arabs, who settled in the empty country while the Jews wandered all over the world in search of peace, justice and equal rights.

With all of these incessant persecutions and expulsions, the Jews of Western Europe were innocently glad that Russia and Poland were still open to them. They did not know that they were escaping from the frying pan into the fire. Added to it,

there was neither challenge nor inspiration from the low cultural level of the general environment of the East European peoples. As a result, Jewish life retreated into the Jewish Law. Such disciplines as philosophy, poetry, history, Biblical philology and Exegesis, now all but disappeared, and soon these studies became suspect as passports to irreligion. The basic intellectual enterprise now became the legal disputations and casuistic refinements of the German-Polish Talmudists. For the vast majority of East European Jews, the traditional way of life remained all but unchanged until the beginning of the 20th century and beyond.¹⁸⁸

As we approach the eighteenth century, a breath of fresh air begins to penetrate into the smothered ghettos of Western Europe. We find the survivors rising as by a miracle to the new opportunities offered them by a more benign Christian world. East European Jews, on the other hand, continued to degenerate intellectually and spiritually as well as physically. We must therefore study each Jewry separately, since their fortunes differed so fundamentally from the time the Enlightenment came to Western Europe in the eighteenth century. Before I go into these separate studies, I should like first to dwell on two fascinating Jews: one an outstanding scholar and philosopher who well represented the enlightened and progressive West European Jews, Baruch Spinoza; the other an outstanding but benighted East European Jew, Sabbetai Zevi. Actually, Sabbetai Zevi was born not in Eastern Europe but close to it, in Turkey. But the world to which Sabbetai Zevi belonged was very much like neighboring Eastern Europe. Turkey, Russia and Poland, all three, were alike uncivilized in his days. Baruch Spinoza and Sabbetai Zevi both belonged to the same period, the seventeenth century; both were Sephardic Jews, of Portuguese-Spanish origin. The Western Jew Baruch Spinoza showed the way to the emancipation of the Jew under freedom, decency and enlightenment. The Eastern Jew Sabbetai Zevi showed the way to decadence, degeneration and nationalistic Messianism which could only originate in hopelessly dark and segregated ghettos.

It should be a helpful comparative study. It should help us to understand better today’s struggle between the normal, healthy, emancipated and integrated Jews of the Western free world, and the self-segregating, self-ghettoizing “Jewish” political nationalists as represented by the angry, sensitive, resentful, vindictive East European–minded Jews, some of whom may even be in the West for the second or third generation but who retain their ghetto mentality even with their Bachelor and Doctor degrees from American universities.

Baruch Spinoza, the Jewish Universalist (1632–77).

In the seventeenth, century in Europe, the united states of the Netherlands and its people were among the first who broke with medieval life to lead the way to a new Europe.

They were a republic, and therefore had no dynastic connections with any of the ruling creeds. Their first stad-holder was by conviction and experience the first princely advocate of genuine toleration.… The whole basis of the Dutch commonwealth was economic.… It was not therefore surprising that as soon as the Batavian republic was firmly established, a colony of Spanish Jews settled in Amsterdam in 1593, and soon proved their value as citizens by their participation in the higher finance of the republic, owing to their family relations with the Marranos spread throughout the Spanish and Portuguese dominions.¹⁸⁹

The Marranos of Spain and Portugal, desperately in need of a way to avoid the Inquisition and to return to the faith of their fathers, used Holland as a new way station on their road to freedom after 1492.… Around the year 1600, the Dutch permitted the Marranos to observe Judaism.… The Dutch have recognized that general prosperity demanded the free and unhampered activity of every able human being.¹⁹⁰

In this tolerant Christian community, and in spite of the rigid and dominant Orthodox Jewish life and the typical rabbinic Jewish education he received in Amsterdam, Baruch Spinoza, the son and grandson of Portuguese Marranos, caught the spirit of the Renaissance outside the Jewish environment. He found himself to be an individualist and independent thinker who was unable to conform to the life of the organized traditional religion of his own church, or of the Christian church. He could not conform to the orthodox theology, supernaturalism and traditional authority. He believed in freedom of thought and freedom of speech. The tendency to revolt against mere tradition and authority was very much in the air since the Renaissance. Spinoza left the Jewish community and associated himself freely with free-thinking Gentile scholars. Successful in business at an early age, he came under the awakening influence of the liberal revolutionary spirit of the new era of Enlightenment. His ideas and associations loomed as a threat to the stolid Jewish orthodox leaders; so they excommunicated him according to the rites of the rabbinate. This he did not mind, for in Holland one could live without having to belong to any church or religious group. He abandoned his profitable commercial life and made a living by grinding lenses, and spent his leisure time writing on ethics and philosophy. He “wrote a book on Judaism, or rather about religion, which the Christians liked as little as did the Jews. He denied that the Jewish laws had any divine origin, and asserted that they were meant to strengthen Jewish solidarity and had, in fact, succeeded in preserving the Jewish people.”¹⁹¹ “Spinoza’s Tractus Theologico-Politicus contained the first contention that the State, as such, had no concern with the private opinions on religion or other subjects of its citizens. The book aroused much scandal owing to its free thought on theological topics, and thereby attracted the more attention to its plea for toleration.”¹⁹²

Spinoza thus became the daring theoretical defender of republicanism, democratic liberalism and humanistic ethics. He was the first modern individualistic Jew who began to breath in the new spirit of freedom alongside his Gentile fellow citizens. Spinoza of course remained a Jew, except for the excommunication imposed on him by benighted Orthodox rabbis on the ground of heresy.

Incidentally, in 1927, Dr. Klauzner, the noted Hebrew scholar and author, member of the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, on the occasion of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of Spinoza’s death, lifted the ban and formally pronounced the release of Baruch Spinoza from the excommunication “‘Baruch Spinoza, our brother art thou! I declare thee free!’ Dr. Klauzner stated in lifting the ban.”¹⁹³

The absurd excommunication was lifted from one whose name will long shine in Jewish history, long after the world will have forgotten those fanatical Orthodox rabbis who tried to stem the march of progress, freedom and human brotherhood.

Sabbetai Zevi, the Jewish Apocalyptic Nationalist, the False Messiah (1627–76).

How different was the other Sephardic Jew, Sabbetai Zevi! Here was a fanatical and professional Jew, a degenerate “nationalistic” Messiah, as compared with the individualistic progressive Jew—tolerant, patient, understanding, and advancing with the times alongside his civilized Gentile fellow citizens.

Sabbetai Zevi was born and brought up in Turkey, a backward country, very much like Russia, Poland, Palestine and Egypt in those days. A full description of Sabbetai Zevi will not only help us to understand the desperate state of the Jews of his time and their emotional reactions to their persecutions, but it should also help us to understand similar periods in Jewish history all the way to our own times. Messianism always went with insufferable persecutions and the prolongation of disabilities. It always revived and precipitated an unhealthy and abnormal “Jewish” nationalism which always ended in disillusion and disaster. New Messiahs appeared on the scene every time the cup of sufferance was overflowing. Finally, the biggest of them all appeared; and the results were disastrous.

Because the story of Sabbetai Zevi is so fascinating and elucidating, I shall allow myself to give the reader a goodly part of the story of this Jewish mystic, or charlatan, as described by Solomon Grayzel in his wonderful book A History of the Jews.

On the 9th of Ab of the year 1626, in the city of Smyrna (Turkey) a son was born to a family of Spanish-Jewish origin, and he was named Sabbetai Zevi. The date is significant, for, according to an ancient legend, the Messiah’s birth is connected with the date of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The child was given the usual Jewish education. He had an exceptionally keen and receptive mind; but, on emerging from boyhood, he found less interest in Talmudic study and more in the Zohar and its cabalistic commentaries.… He was handsome and he was a born leader. Before long, a group of young men crowded about him and he secretly initiated them into the mysteries of the Cabala.… He considered his thoughts too deep and his life too pure for marriage.…

Cabalists among the Jews had calculated that the Messianic year would be 1648; Christians (Millenarianists) had fixed the year 1666. All the misfortunes which came upon Central and Eastern Europe in that period served as so much proof that the Messianic era was approaching, since the Messiah’s arrival was to be preceded by war and pestilence.… Men’s minds were prepared for something unusual. Ready to be deluded, they fell victims to the most deluded among them.…

Finally, when the year 1648 came, he boldly took the step which he had long been plotting and which was to mark him as being on terms of unusual familiarity with God. Standing before the Torah in the synagogue, Sabbetai Zevi pronounced the name of God as it is written, not as it is always spoken by Jews.… Shocked by the blasphemy, the leaders of the Smyrna community excommunicated him.… Sabbetai Zevi lost no opportunity to advance his cause. In the presence of learned men and cabalists in Salonika (Turkey) he suddenly produced a marriage canopy and a scroll of the Torah, and went through a marriage ceremony with the Torah as his bride.… Again his audience was more shocked than impressed, and Sabbetai Zevi was forced to wander further.…

In Cairo he finally found an environment fitted for his purpose. The wealthy Raphael Joseph Chelebi supported in his home a number of pious followers of the teachings of the Ari [Isaac Luria (1534–72), of German ancestry. He settled in Safed, Palestine, and was a mystic cabalist who believed in transmigration of souls. His name was abbreviated to ARI by using the initials of the words ha-Ashkenazi Rabbi Isaac (the German “Rabbi Isaac”)]. Sabbetai Zevi found a place among them and soon showed his personal and cabalistic superiority over them all. When Chelebi sent a mission to Jerusalem for the purpose of distributing charity, he picked Sabbetai Zevi. To the starving mystics of the Holy City, he appeared literally a divine messenger.…

At the same time, another bold, dramatic stroke spread the news of the Messiah’s revelation. For several years the Jews of Europe had been hearing the story of a girl named Sarah, whose parents had been murdered by the Chmelnitzki barbarians. She related that subsequently, her dead father had kidnapped her from the nunnery where she was being brought up, and had told her that she was destined to be the bride of the Messiah.… It was not surprising that Sabbetai Zevi, hearing of her, should invite Sarah to become his wife. The wedding was celebrated with great pomp at the home of Chelebi.…

Sabbetai Zevi now entered upon his real activity. As the news spread among the downtrodden, helpless, miracle-hungry Jews of Europe, it was greeted with a frenzy of enthusiasm. At last the age of misery was coming to an end. People danced in boundless joy. Many practical men of affairs hastily disposed of their possessions and laid in supplies for the journey to Palestine which they believed the Messiah would soon order them to undertake. One after another, even Talmudists and former opponents of Sabbetai Zevi joined the ranks of his followers.… The Christians of Europe stood by watching in wonder, by no means sure that it was all a delusion. After all, their own mystics had predicted Messianic revelations for the year 1666.…

As the fateful year approached, Sabbetai Zevi was compelled to take action. He announced that he was going to Constantinople where at the mere sight of him, the Sultan would give up his throne, and Sabbetai Zevi would become King of Kings.… When his ship, crowded with his followers, arrived at the Turkish port, Sabbetai Zevi was arrested and placed in a fortress at Abydus.… The visit to the Sultan would come later, Sabbetai Zevi announced. In the meantime he held regular court in the fortress within which he was free to move about.… Jews from Europe, Asia and Africa arrived in crowds to pay homage to the Messiah Sabbetai Zevi. His prophets issued commands and proclamations to the Jews all over the world.

Sabbetai Zevi was finally taken before the Sultan. The end came quickly. Challenged to prove his boast or suffer the death penalty, the would-be Messiah abandoned all his claims and promises, and, accepting a petty post in the Sultan’s court, even consented to become Mohammedan.… The event was a stunning blow to those Jews who had put all their faith and hope in the promise of miraculous deliverance. Not only were their hopes disappointed, but the one who had aroused them had gone over to another religion.… With his conversion, Sabbetai Zevi disappeared from the scene of Jewish life.¹⁹⁴

Sabbetai Zevi disappeared, but not the Messianic visionaries and the Messianic charlatans or megalomaniacs, for superhuman suffering and hopelessness lasted for another couple of centuries. And the state of misery was such that if Sabbetai Zevi turned out to be a false Messiah, there had to come, and God had to send, a true Messiah, in a glorious apocalyptic redemption and deliverance of Israel in Palestine, so as to comfort the faithful and the suffering and reconcile with God’s righteousness—a redress for all the iniquities done to them in the long past.

At this point, please recall the embarrassing scene between Dr. Herzl and the young King of Italy, when the King injected into their conversation the subject of Sabbetai Zevi. The young King apparently could not divest himself of the thoughts aroused in his mind by his mystic visitor, for he persistently dwelt on Sabbetai Zevi, the Messianic-apocalyptic nationalistic “redeemer.” The King asked Dr. Herzl whether the Jews still looked for a Messiah to redeem them; Dr. Herzl replied that while the university graduates and the intelligentsia did not look for a Messiah, the masses of orthodox Jews still did. He added that when he visited Palestine, he avoided riding on a white donkey or horse, lest the people associate him with the Messiah, who, according to legend, would appear on a white donkey. On another occasion Dr. Herzl related how unsafe he felt while in Palestine, on Turkish soil. There actually was a secret-service man of the Sultan’s shadowing Dr. Herzl everywhere in Palestine, with an arrest warrant in his pocket in case he behaved presumptuously. “Dr. Herzl was constantly thinking of the fate of Sabbetai Zevi with whom he was often compared.”¹⁹⁵

The East European Ghetto Life. “A Full Jewish Life.” Hedges and Safeguards. Orthodox Judaism. The 613 Precepts in Action.

This is the logical point for us to take a good look at the ghetto life of the Russian-Polish Jews in Eastern Europe, where the majority of the Jewish people had gathered and lived ever since the expulsions in the West began in the fourteenth century. The ghettos had not changed one iota from the fourteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Medieval life prevailed all around them, and alongside the backwardness of the Gentile world in Eastern Europe, there soon started a Slavic version of persecutions which could vie in bestiality with the worst of Western Europe in earlier centuries.

In my childhood days I had a good taste of that sort of life in a ghetto of Russia, where I was born and reared—a taste that continued for a number of years in old Jerusalem. I shall try to bring out the high lights of “spiritual” and “cultural” life in the ghetto, if only to point out the contrast between the segregated and isolated life of the East European Jews right up to World War I, and the life of the Western Jews who two hundred years earlier had suddenly seen the light of civilization with the advent of the Enlightenment and revolution. The two hundred years of civilization and progress and humanism between these two Jewish worlds must always be remembered when one tries today to understand the East European Jew’s mentality, his nationalistic predilections and fanaticism and his pathetic old yardstick, “Is it good for the Jews?” There are, of course, plenty of East European Jews (I am one of them) who threw themselves into the Western world heart and soul and who, by their very way of life, are genuine free-world citizens. They bridged the gap from the ghetto to the new one-world inside one generation. On the other hand, there are a good many native American Jews who still live ideologically in the ghetto spirit of their fathers and grandfathers. Some of these lost souls even possess Ph.D. degrees from American universities. And the advent of East European “Jewish” political nationalism has made things even harder for them.

Let us get acquainted with some of the hedges and safeguards, some of the 613 precepts, 248 of which, you may recall, are positive, and 365 of which are negative. My childhood and boyhood days were full of them.

From the moment of waking up in the early morning to the moment of going off to sleep at night, and from one’s early childhood to one’s last breath, not a day of the year, with some variations on holy days and holidays, feasts and fast days, could pass without some one hundred and twenty benedictions to God, for this, that and the other. The prayer wheels spun endlessly.

When you woke up and washed your hands, you blessed God; and you blessed God upon drinking something hot or cold. You then went straight to the synagogue for your Shacharit (morning prayers), and you blessed God plenty. Then you blessed God before breakfast, with longer prayers and blessings immediately after it. If you were lucky to eat some fruit in between breakfast and luncheon, you blessed God. You blessed God before and after luncheon; long benedictions after the meals. Toward twilight you went to the synagogue to pray Minchah (late-afternoon prayers), and after sunset you again joined the Minyan (requiring at least ten adults past the age of thirteen) in the synagogue for Maariv (evening prayers). You blessed God before and after your evening meal, and you prayed Kriat Schmah just before going off to sleep. Each time you washed your hands, you blessed God. One was supposed to wash one’s hands many times during the day—thank goodness.

On the Sabbath, and on holy days and fast days, liturgy took much of your day in the synagogue. On Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) you spent the whole day in the synagogue, and not much less during the two days of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashonoh).

The meats that you ate had to be slaughtered ritually by hand by an ordained Shochet (slaughterer) who had learned the fine art of slaughtering by hand with his Chaliff (sharp knife, like a razor) and who knew all the rituals, blessings and tests that went with his sacred profession. Kosher meats brought from the butchers (not all meats were kosher; the best of steak meats were good only for Gentiles) had to be soaked, then salted—one for half an hour, the other for an hour. May God forgive me for no longer remembering exactly how long to soak and how long to salt in the process of preparing a kosher meal; I used to help my grandmother in Jerusalem many times in this ritual. Milk dishes must not, God forbid, be mixed up with meat dishes. There had to be in each Jewish home two sets of dishes and pots all the way through.

Saturday afternoons, after you had napped (you were a king for the day), you went back to the synagogue ahead of Minchah, to listen to the Magid (preacher and storyteller). That was entertainment de luxe. You learned to sing the Friday-night Sabbath songs, and the Saturday-night Metzoeh Malkah (exit of the Queen) songs. You learned to sing as you read the weekly portion of the Torah and the Prophets—the Teeshah-B’Av (ninth of the month of Av) lamentations—heartbreaking melodies; the Simchas Torah melodies; the Slichos melodies; chants for this and that prayer or recitation.

When the eight days of Passover arrived, on the eve of it you had to clean your home inside out of all leavened bread (Chometz) crumbs, boil all your silver, pots, pans and dishes, and put in an eight days’ supply of unleavened bread (Matzos). On the first night of Passover, or rather the first and second nights of Passover, you celebrated the feast of the Seder—commemorating the exodus from Egypt—with the Hagadah ceremonies at table, with the four glasses of wine, the Schmoorim Matzo, the bitter herbs, and the “Four Questions.”

When Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles) came, we had another eight days of holiday and rituals. Days before Succoth, you built a Succah (hut), be it ever so humble, with plenty of green branches and a thatched roof, but with lots of open slits in between the branches, so you could see the stars. In the Succah you ate your meals, and if at all possible, you slept in it. The long special prayers for Succoth were not complete unless you had chosen the best of an Ethrog (citron), a Lulav (palm branch), Hadass (myrtle) and Arabos (willows). These went with special rituals and blessings.

And when Yom Kippur came—on the eve of it—you had, first of all, to atone for all your sins with a fowl (a sort of scapegoat ceremony) at home. Males took roosters; females, hens. A pregnant woman took both a rooster and a hen. You tied the legs of the fowl and lifted it over your head, turned it around and said three times: “This is my change, this is my redemption, this rooster [or hen] is going to be killed and I shall be admitted and allowed a long, happy and peaceful life.” I remember the Shochet who used to come to our home, watching the necessary preliminary “indulgence” ceremonies and the incidents that often happened in connection with handling the nervous fowls. He slaughtered them one by one as prayers commingled with the screeching of the poor chickens and we all felt as pure newborn babes. Schloggen Kaporess (knocking off atonements) we called the ceremony in Yiddish, and what fun it was for the children! I remember the serious “business” of making my Arbah Kanfott Tzitzis—a four-cornered pull-over with four tassels properly intertwined according the codified law—just sol I used to spend hours to make my own Arbah Kanfott complete with the Tzitzis. I had several of them, so that when one had to go to the wash, another took its place. And I must not fail to remember my Tfillim (phylacteries) for weekday morning prayers. The phylacteries contained some of the most sacred writings, which a Scribe prepared on tiny pieces of parchment inserted into the compartments of skin. To the two phylacteries were attached long strips of kosher leather: one phylactery was worn on the head and the other on the left arm, the leather strip being rolled around the arm and ending on the fingers, just so; so you became a “good Jew,” doing things just right. I was born left-handed, and there arose the great problem as to which arm was to bear the phylactery. To cut short a serious family problem, I was forced to write with my right hand, and thus I became right-handed, and thus I was allowed the privilege of using the right hand to wind the phylactery around the left hand.

On the Sabbath you did not lay the Tfillim. On the Sabbath you were not allowed to work. You were forbidden to cook your meals. You were forbidden to put out your lights. There was, however, a Sabbath goy who came around on the Sabbath night, to put out lights. He used to make his rounds from one Jewish home to another to render this difficult work—putting out lights.

Women did not go to Heder and did not know the Bible in Hebrew. But they learned to read and write in Yiddish—the vernacular jargon, which consisted chiefly of deformed German, mixed with Hebrew expressions. The women, in the synagogue’s women’s gallery, had the translation of the Bible with its commentaries all in one special book written expressly for them—the Tzenoh Ooorenoh—and I well remember the books of my grandmother and my mother being soaked in tears that ran down their faces while in an ad lib manner they told all of their woes to their personal Almighty God in addition to reading their texts.

Mourners’ prayers, marriage prayers, circumcision prayers, services for the redemption of the first-born, benediction on kindling the Sabbath and festival candles, Kiddusch, Kaddisch, Habdalah, Taschlich, Chanukah, Purim and dozens of other special events completed the precepts—the hedges and safeguards for a “full Jewish life.” The most fascinating and inspiring “prayers” prescribed for synagogue reading were the “Ethics of Our Fathers,” or “Chapters of our Fathers.” One chapter of the six to be read on each Sabbath, from the Sabbath after Passover to the Sabbath before Rosh Hashonoh—a six-month period. These glorious and immortal teachings of wisdom and ethics date from the time when there was no ghetto with its overflowingly “full Jewish life.” And all these precepts and frozen liturgies spelled Orthodox Jewish life—“authoritative, authentic, infallible fundamentalism.” Here is how one Orthodox rabbi put it: “On the ladder of the Torah’s 613 precepts, we can all, as plain Jews, ascend to heaven and reach out to the throne of the Almighty.… Through the practice of His precepts the Jewish people has been revealing itself to God and to the world.…”

The “Jewish” political nationalists of today, who actually lived the stifled life described until the early part of the twentieth century, but who practically emptied the shell of its orthodox “full Jewish life” after they left the ghettos of Russia and Poland, used the newly acquired depraved West European militant nationalism to fill up the old empty shell with new content, with “sacred” doctrinaire political nationalism. Today, after having “redeemed” the “Jewish homeland,” they are codifying a new sort of nationalistic Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) to take the place of the orthodox book of precepts, with a new “full Jewish life,” full of nationalistic minutae, rites and rituals, songs, ceremonies and holidays, all synthesized into a new “spiritual center” and “fountain-head” for world Jewry—Israel. And in return for that “service,” those of us who are not vouchsafed the privilege of living in the “Jewish homeland” and must live in “exile” in the Diaspora, or who would not be “ingathered” according to the accommodating “Law of Return,” must eternally support the “chosen,” the “elite” people of Eretz Israel, our “joint homeland.” Back to the old Issachar-Zebulun agreements: We uphold the homeland and you work abroad to support us.

The West European and American Jews: The “Assimilationists”—Normal Jews Who Live in and Advance With Their Time and Integrate Normally As All Others Do But Who Are in Danger of Being Overwhelmed by the East European Jewish Philosophy of Segregation and “Jewish” Political Nationalism.

Let us see what happened to the Jews of the West in recent centuries before the newfangled parochial but aggressive and infiltrating “Jewish” nationalism appeared on the scene to threaten and undo all that had been developing historically in the new free world. Let us see what the so-called assimilationists of the West have done in the past and intend to do in the future.

The new ideas and principles first enunciated and applied in the New World carried their influence to resurgent Europe of the eighteenth century. The Jews were among the first to feel the stirrings of the inauguration of a new era in civilization. The echoes of the American Declaration of Independence and of the American Constitution came louder and louder across the Atlantic: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

These new ideas rang around the world and gave fresh impetus to the long-suppressed spirit of rebellion against the dark forces of the past that exploited the masses of humanity and set them against one another. This spirit was particularly strong in France, where revolution broke out in 1789. In the new cardinal rights of the individual there was implied a new conception of citizenship and nationality as demonstrated in the United States of America: a man emigrates from his homeland to a new country, and with that renounces his old nationality, pledges allegiance to the new country and takes an oath to be loyal to it and abide by its laws. He thus becomes a naturalized citizen, a national of a new nation, equal in all rights and duties to all his fellow citizens. “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people” was something new in history, since with it the individual citizen took over the “divine rights” formerly usurped by self-appointed and self-perpetuating hereditary rulers. “Slowly the idea grew of a citizenship apart from participation in the rites of the national church.… The process of emancipation was a protracted one and was not gained without doughty struggles of the spirit carried on exclusively by the Liberals of Europe.”¹⁹⁶

“For the Jews of Western Europe, the Middle Ages came to an end with the force of an earthquake in the closing decade of the 18th century. The French Revolution symbolized the triumph of the new order for Western man. As the new ideas of the enlightenment percolated into the Jewish communities of Germany and France, first into the upper economic strata, then in the lower, the authority of the Jewish tradition was gradually undermined. The emancipation of the Jews brought them political citizenship, enlarged economic opportunities, and new cultural influences. At the same time it effectively destroyed the hegemony and cohesiveness of the organized Jewish community.”¹⁹⁷

“When fully emancipated, Jews no longer acted in the European world of ideas collectively, but as individuals, often choosing opposite ideals, and in most cases, applying the talents thus let free to objects apart from the general political or religious movements of the time.”¹⁹⁸

This brings me to the “terrible assimilationists”—actually great Jewish leaders who lived in and advanced with their time, and helped their people to break up the old anachronistic hedges and safeguards, thus opening the way, by example and dedication, to preserving only the positive essential spiritual values but discarding the dross and the impedimenta of ghetto life with its redundance of vestigial and effete rites, rituals and precepts. And with it there had to go that “full Jewish life” for which, thank goodness, there was no longer any sane and sound need or desire, if the Jews were to become civilized members of a new world that looked to the future and not to the past. Nor was there any room for “Jewish” political nationalism—paranoid nationalism—in the lives of those who saw the historic cornerstone of a new world order for all humanity through honest integration into civilized citizenship.

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86).

The first and foremost Jewish leader in Western Europe who fearlessly opened the horizons wide for his people was Moses Mendelssohn.

Just on the eve of the French Revolution, the rationalism of the age made its appearance in Judaism with the remarkable personality of Moses Mendelssohn. By showing himself the intellectual equal of the highest German minds of his time, he prepared the way for his fellow-Jews to acquire the open career; and, by breaking down their prejudices against adopting European culture with which during the preceding two centuries Jews had failed to keep up owing to their forced migrations, increased persecutions and social isolation, he enabled them to take advantage of the opportunities which were about to be offered them.¹⁹⁹

Born in Dessau, Germany, son of a Torah scribe, Moses studied the Bible and the Talmud like all other Jewish children; but he also studied Maimonides. Though a poor and hungry student, later in Berlin, he managed, often on nothing but scanty portions of dry bread, to live and to acquire a knowledge of German and other European languages, and with it a deep study of the philosophy of the best thinkers of the past.

Through his active and intimate friendship with the German writer Lessing (“the first free-thinking man in Germany”) he learned to live with and become integrated into the German community of intellectuals long before he was granted free and full citizenship. The ruling powers were not yet ready for this abrupt progressive step. This, however, did not bother him. He well understood that it was not a personal problem but a social problem of evolution that required infinite patience and plenty of time. He believed in the healthy instinct of the people and looked for their eventual triumph in freedom and enlightenment. Only full emancipation and enlightenment of the Gentile masses could bring a real change in their attitude toward Jews and thus allow evolution to cure and eradicate prejudices more than a thousand years old.

Moses Mendelssohn dedicated his life to helping his own people. He felt that freedom, emancipation and citizenship, though for the time being shared in only a small degree by his fellow Jews with their Gentile fellow citizens, were nevertheless a joint adventure in which each party had to do its very best, play its part to the utmost, irrespective of how slowly the other party sometimes moved because of its own limitations and frustrations. He saw in the mental ghetto inhabited by the Jews, in their segregation and isolation, the obstacle to their eventual full freedom and equality of opportunity.

Mendelssohn translated the Pentateuch into German, and, to make it simpler and easier, he published his German translation of the Bible with Hebrew letters alongside the German-lettered text. Together with friends whom he interested in the aid of his people, Mendelssohn also wrote in simple, classical Hebrew (not embellished with flowery circumlocutions) a commentary on the Bible. He published a journal in Hebrew that he called Hameasseff (“The Collector,” or “Gatherer”), which served as a sort of newsletter and cultural dispenser of collected news of the world for his Hebrew-reading public. He sponsored a Hebrew school where German and manual training were also taught.

Mendelssohn’s bold and constructive acts resulted in a veritable renaissance in Jewish life; but the vested interests of “official” Jewry—narrow-minded fanatics who would never budge from their rigid; stolid and conventional hedged-in life—saw in Mendelssohn a revolutionary, a heretic. Jews were forbidden under penalty of excommunication to use his translation of the Bible in German.

While Mendelssohn was a loyal and religious Jew, he nevertheless believed in freedom of conscience. Undeterred by his Jewish communal persecutors and obstructionists, he demanded that the powers of the rabbis be clipped so that the people could adjust in their new-won initial freedom. In that new life there was no more room for an exclusively Talmudist education, or for a parasitic career. The Talmud, with all of its wealth of historical knowledge and antiquated codes of behavior, could hereafter be of real interest only to students of law, history, religion or Hebrew literature. The moth-eaten “woolens” that kept the people warm in their dark and dank homes in the ghetto had to be discarded, or, at least, the holes had to be repaired with new cloth, new wool.

Mendelssohn’s fearless critical analysis of everything prepared the Jews of his time for all the many adjustments that were bound to come in their social, economic and religious life. Not only did German Jews take notice and follow in large numbers the ways that Mendelssohn proposed, but nearby France, and even the ghettos of Russia and Poland in Eastern Europe heard reverberations of Mendelssohn’s teachings and doings. The restricted and surreptitious Haskalah (“Enlightenment”) movement in the ghettos of Russia and Poland started, in fact, as a result of the influence that came across the borders from Germany.

Here is a brief statement made by Mendelssohn in March, 1782, in his preface to the translation of a book by a seventeenth-century author. The preface tells much about Mendelssohn’s philosophy; he entitled it “The Salvation of the Jew”: “Alas, my brethren, you have felt the oppressive yoke of intolerance only too severely. All the nations of the earth seem hitherto to have been deluded by the idea that religion can be maintained by an iron hand. You, perhaps, have suffered yourself to be mashed into thinking the same. Oh, my brethren, follow the examples of love as you have till now followed that of hatred.”²⁰⁰

Moses Mendelssohn could not foresee the tragedies that were in store for his people, and, for that matter, for the entire world in the twentieth century during the reign of Hitler and his gangs. There was nothing the Jew in Germany could do but play his part honorably—integrate, love and not hate; be a good citizen, a good national of his adopted country; and worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. His conscience told him to follow the teachings of prophetic Judaism, to love his fellow men as himself. It was easy and simple to remain a Jew according to his religion and philosophy of life. He could remain a Jew in complete compatibility with his German nationality.

On the other hand, the unyielding dark forces of fanatical, dogmatic, self-centered and self-deluded Orthodox clericalism contributed much more toward the total abandonment of Judaism than Mendelssohn’s appeals and exhortations about readjustments and reappraisals. The obscurantists would not allow the Jews of Germany to follow the only rational solution that the new life in the world, and evolution, permitted. Many of the plain folks found themselves against a wall, unable to harmonize the Orthodox “full Jewish life” with modern, civilized living. They recoiled, dropped out completely from the Jewish community and renounced all affiliations with it. Thus Mendelssohn’s son Abraham, as a protest against the obscurantism of the Jewish Orthodox bigots, had his son Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (the immortal composer) and his other children baptized as Lutheran Christians. There is a story about Abraham Mendelssohn’s saying: “I am the son of my father and the father of my son but I am nobody.…” Even to be the father of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy took more than some “nobody.” Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdys are no accidents; it takes extra-fine parents to raise such sons.

Isaac Berr.

Just as Moses Mendelssohn was the emancipator of German Jewry, so Isaac Berr was one of the earliest Jewish emancipators in the new revolutionary France.

On September 28, 1791, the Jews of France found themselves full-fledged citizens, with rights and obligations equal to all other Frenchmen. Freedom of worship was recognized. It meant that Jews could continue as Jews in their religion and philosophy of life. In the French National Assembly, one liberal deputy, Count Clermont Tounerre, stood up and solemnly made this fundamental assertion: “To the individual Jew everything, to the Jews as a nation nothing!” This just about tells the whole story of the status of the Jew, not only in revolutionary France of those days but in all modern and free democracies of our world today.

In an open letter to the Jews of France, Isaac Berr made the following declarations immediately after French citizenship had been granted them:

At length the day has arrived on which the veil is torn asunder which covered us with humiliation. We have at last obtained the rights of which we have been deprived for eighteen centuries.… This nation asks no thanks, except that we show ourselves worthy citizens.… The name of active citizen which we have just obtained is without doubt the most precious title a man can possess in a free empire. But, this title alone is not sufficient; we should possess also the necessary qualifications to fulfill the duties annexed to it. We know ourselves how very deficient we are in that respect.… God forbid that I should mean anything derogatory to our professed religion.… But, I cannot too often repeat to you how absolutely necessary it is for us to divest ourselves entirely of that narrow spirit of corporation and congregation in all civil and political matters not immediately connected with our spiritual laws. In these things, we must absolutely appear simply as individuals, as Frenchmen, guided only by a true patriotism and by the general good of the nation. We must avail ourselves of the resources offered to us by sending our children to share the advantages of national education in public schools.… By means of that union in schools, our children, like those of our fellow-citizens, will remark from their tender youth that neither opinions nor differences of religion are a bar to fraternal love; and that everyone naturally embracing the religion of his father, all may, in fulfilling their religious duties, fulfill also that of citizenship.²⁰¹

In France, as in Germany, the Bible was translated into the national language. Jews began to discard their Yiddish and their segregation. Emancipation and integration began to flame in Jewish life all over France.

The Napoleonic Era and the Reactionary Period That Followed. Gabriel Riesser.

When Napoleon took over the government of revolutionary France and carried the new ideas of the revolution with him wherever he fanned out, ghetto walls were shattered and the Jews declared free by the “Liberator.” His principle of “Carrière ouverte aux talents” (“Careers are open to talents”) was the keynote of his regime. Any talented Jew was given a chance to work for and serve his country. The country-state was not going to follow the example of the church-state, for all countrymen were equal. But could Napoleon trust the Jews, who were so prejudiced until now, as full-fledged citizens? On July 26, 1806, more than one hundred outstanding Jews from France, Germany and Italy gathered in Paris to take counsel and answer some of the questions Napoleon posed to them. Among the questions was this one: “Did the French Jews regard France as their country and Frenchmen as their brothers?… In an enthusiastic affirmation the assembly said that Jews considered France their country and Frenchmen their brothers.… The problem of intermarriage presented a delicate situation. It was finally answered that Judaism allowed such marriages. The rabbis, however, were opposed, just as the Catholic priests were opposed to intermarriage.… In all particulars Napoleon was satisfied with the answers he received. It was announced that ‘His Majesty guaranteed to you the free practice of your religion and the full enjoyment of your political rights.’”²⁰²

The Jews of France easily adjusted to their new life because they did not suffer then from the virus called “Jewish” political nationalism. They happily and gratefully became full-fledged citizens and nationals of France even while clinging to the religion of their forefathers without hindrance. With the freedom of worship that French Jewry enjoyed were also recognized all kindred institutions that the times allowed to be considered as related to it, as a part of it.

Napoleon’s attitude toward Jews was copied, more or less, in other countries of Western Europe, and with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the standard of Napoleon to treat citizens all alike, irrespective of their faith, became universal in the West.

The Jews threw off with avidity most of the shackles which prevented their joining in general European culture, and Jewish parents of means immediately began giving their sons, and what is more, their daughters, the secular education which would adapt them to the careers which now seemed to be open to them as publicists, lawyers, and civil servants. When the reaction came under the Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria and Prussia, in Paris, on September 26, 1815) with its attempt to revive the Church-State and the closed career of prerogative, Jews everywhere in Western Europe joined the liberal forces from whose triumph alone they could hope for a dispersal of the clouds which once more obscured the sun of liberty in which they had basked for a few short years. Jews soon ranked among the intellectual leaders of continental liberalism, and from 1815 to 1848 exercised an appreciable influence on the course of public opinion.²⁰³

Absolutism and revolution had their seesaw contests in a long-drawn-out century of advancing and backsliding humanity in Western Europe. Theoretical revolutionary “utopianism” as enunciated in the declarations of the various revolutions required time, experience, education and perseverance in the face of the many defeats and retreats imposed by the old reactionary forces each time they won the upper hand. The period of Enlightenment was still young, while the reactionary dark powers of the past were well entrenched and diabolically clever and hypocritical. The “assimilationist” Jews were realists; they understood what was happening, and never lost faith in the ultimate triumph of justice in an advancing civilization. They fully realized that the fate of the Jew was inseparably linked to the universal progress made by the forces of liberalism and enlightenment. They believed, therefore, in exercising infinite patience and forbearance, knowing that they had a difficult, delicate and serious part to play in the new world order.

Thus Gabriel Riesser, a great scholar and lawyer who became a victim of the sad and sudden reactionary period after Napoleon’s defeat, and in spite of disillusion, frustration and personal disabilities, gathered enough courage to openly attack the German rulers, on one side, and the Jews of his time who lost courage and embraced Christianity as an easy way out of their dilemma and disappointments, on the other. In his attack on the German rulers, he said: “‘The State is bound to grant rights and freedom to all its inhabitants regardless of their birth or religious beliefs, who were willing to assume, or who were actually performing all their duties as citizens.… Jews could not be denied their claims of German citizenship; they had no other Fatherland; they knew no other loyalty.’ He rejected the pretext that their religious observances were symbols of a different nationality.”²⁰⁴

Adolphe Crémieux (1796–1880).

It will be worth our while to go a bit longer into the life of and the role played by Adolphe Crémieux, a great French Jew. Crémieux faced and solved the raw fresh problems first encountered by integrated Jews in Western Europe. With clean hands and a clean heart, with great talents and extraordinary courage, he tackled the problems of the day in a straightforward manner, and won the respect and adoration of all France, as well as of his fellow Jews.

Adolphe Crémieux was born into freedom and imbued with the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. “He had a deep attachment to the cause of Napoleon, a vague love of liberty, a hatred for fanaticism, and an ardent desire to champion the cause of the oppressed.”²⁰⁵ He lived through the period of reaction and the restoration of the Bourbons, the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and all the other revolutions and wars of France which took place until the day of his death in 1880. He was Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government of 1848, and in the Government of National Defense of 1870.

During the years of Restoration of the Bourbons, the Jews suffered a setback, but so did the Protestants of France.

Every Mayor, every judge, every teacher professing the Protestant faith was discharged. The press of the day reports that in 1815, Protestant children were expelled from the Public Schools of Nimes. These same Protestants, who composed only a third of the total population of the Department of Gard, paid one half of the total taxes. When the government of Louis XVIII declared a forced loan, the Protestants were required to contribute 600,000 francs, the Catholics only 140,000. The Jews received the same treatment as the Protestants. The loan was paid at Nimes by 147 Protestants, 17 Jews, and 10 Catholics.… Hospitals of Nimes had separate waiting rooms for Protestants and Catholics.…²⁰⁶

Crémieux’s fiery and straightforward character was revealed when he took the oath of admittance to the bar. The president of the court said to him: “Mr. Crémieux, will you take the oath of ‘More Judaico’”? [Please see Footnote No. 207 about More Judaico.] Crémieux was greatly offended: “Am I in a synagogue?” he exclaimed. “No, I am in an audience chamber. Am I in Jerusalem, in Palestine? No, I am in Nimes, France. Am I only a Jew? No, I am a French citizen. Therefore, I take the oath of a Jewish French citizen.” The decision was made in his favor.

It was quite natural that Crémieux should have wished to do everything possible to abolish the “More Judaico” forever, and the occasion presented itself in the year 1827. A case involving this problem came before the court of Nimes in June and August. He spoke during both hearings: “I have the law; I have the text; I have its spirit; I have the charter; I have my rights; I demand it; I want it, and I want it in its entirety. I am a citizen just as well as you, I am French. You have adopted me; the contract is irrevocable; it imposes duties upon me; I fulfill them; it grants me rights, I shall have them. There is no power on earth which has the right to ask me to account for my religion. My conscience belongs to me as does yours to you.… With what do you reproach the Jews? With the vices your persecutions gave them, which have been obliterated since the dignity of man has been restored them. Anxious to distinguish themselves by their good conduct, they challenge all for the honor of being the best Frenchmen. They feel that they have great duties to fulfill in return for a great benefit.… I was born French. Allow me to be proud of this splendid title, and to demand all the rights it implies. Yes, you have permitted me this pride, and these rights, and what you have done for me, you shall do for all French Jews.… Gentlemen, grant forty thousand citizens a right that is vainly denied them.”²⁰⁸

Crémieux won this battle for the cause of the Jews. The royal court of Nimes gave him victory in rejecting the oath “More Judaico.” Nevertheless, a few months later, the tribunal of Uzes required this oath of a Jew. Crémieux undertook the case, and again we hear him plead for his people: “We were oppressed for eighteen hundred years,” he said. “Is this any reason why we should be worth less than our oppressors?” The court reversed the decision of the bench of Uzes and confirmed its previous opinion on the oath “More Judaico.” “Such rulings mark an epoch in the history of the progress of human reason,” declared the “Gazette des Tribunaux.”²⁰⁹

On another occasion when Crémieux was defending a Jew, the public prosecutor declared, “Finally, what doubt could remain in your minds? The accused is nothing but a Jewish peddler.” “What have I heard?” shouted Crémieux, interrupting the prosecutor. “In these precincts where equality is sovereign, the attorney who represents the law and the king dares invoke the religion of the accused as an argument to support a crumbling accusation, and it is with a contempt made clear by gesture as well as by word that the name ‘Jew’ is uttered, as if in the eyes of all reasonable men as well as in the eyes of God, a Jew is worth less than a Christian, as if a French Jew is worth less than a French Christian, and it does not occur to him that this insult strikes the lawyer as well as the accused, both of whom profess the same faith.”

On still another occasion when defending another Jew client who was in the money lending business, Crémieux generalized the case and tried to refute the accusations brought against his client because he was a Jew. “Gentlemen, where are we? And in what century do we live? Those times of darkness and barbarism lasted only too long.… The Christian peoples indulged with relish in what they called legitimate vengeance. They allowed the humbled Jews neither the right to own property, nor to engage in industry, or in agriculture. The sweat fell upon land which could never belong to them. In their despair and humiliation they were left with but one resource, money lending.… But reason and philosophy finally triumphed.… The Jews received political and civil rights.… Tell me, gentlemen, tell me if they were unworthy of these rights.… Cast your eyes over this France … See the Jews rushing into all honorable careers gaining distinction for all the qualities which make good citizens. Oh! They feel that they are your equals, they wish to be your rivals. Therefore, let the name of the Jewish nation no more be mentioned in these precincts as though one may regard the Jews as a nation since they have had the good fortune to be absorbed into the great family of the French people.”²¹⁰

Although at one time in his life Crémieux found it necessary to retire from Jewish communal activities (after his children renounced Judaism in 1845), it was not long before he found himself again in the very thick of Jewish affairs. “The political reactions which swept France in 1849, the coming of the Second Empire which brought reactionary elements to power, accelerated the movement which finally resulted in the ‘Alliance Israélite Universelle.’ According to Article I of the society’s statutes, its aim was: (1) To work everywhere for the emancipation and spiritual progress of the Jews. (2) To lend effective aid to those who suffer because they are Jews. (3) To encourage all publications likely to lead to this result.… In 1863, Crémieux was elected President. He remained at the head of the Alliance (save for a brief interlude in 1867) till his death in 1880.”²¹¹

On December 15, 1875, the National Assembly of France elected Crémieux Senator for life, at that time the highest distinction a public figure could receive in France.

Reform Judaism Moves From Germany to America.

This is the logical moment to stop for a while to dwell on the movement of Reform Judaism. Inspired by Moses Mendelssohn, some Jews in Germany determined to purify Judaism of some of its anachronistic ways of worshipping God and introduce some decorum and meaning into their synagogues. The reforms consisted of such things as praying in the vernacular; having organ music and chorus singing in connection with the services; having joint services for men and women; and eliminating from the prayer book such sayings as “Make us go up right to our land,” and “Bring near our scattered ones and our dispersed ones from the ends of the earth.” The Jewish religion had to adjust itself to the progress of civilization, to the new rights acquired by Jews as civilians and nationals, and to the new era of Enlightenment.

The entrenched powers of the hedged-in clericalists would not hear of any changes. Refore Judaism found it difficult to make substantial progress in Germany. And so, like the Christian liberals, many Jews left Germany for the United States of America in search of freedom. Like their Christian fellow citizens, they renounced their former affiliations with Germany and through naturalization became citizens and nationals of the United States. Here, where freedom of worship was an old established practice, Reform Judaism thrived from the very beginning. The German Jews formed the core of the first Jewish settlers in America. They paved the way for a wholehearted, complete and unqualified integration of the Jew with all other full-fledged citizens, and worshiped God in their synagogues along the lines they enjoyed as modern people.

Rabbi Isaac M. Wise (1819–1900).

Reform Judaism in America was largely the creation of the dynamic leadership of an immigrant rabbi from Bohemia. From the moment of his arrival in America in 1846, his influence made itself felt. In 1854 he was appointed rabbi at Cincinnati, where after nineteen years he founded in 1873 the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and two years later, in 1875, he established the Hebrew Union College.

Rabbi Wise compiled a new prayer book for the Reform synagogue, and above all he took a strong stand against political Zionism from its inception. The Jew was to be a Jew by his religion only. Outside of the synagogue he was to be fully integrated, exactly like the Christians. Wise saw in “Jewish” nationalism the chief internal obstacle to emancipation. “In 1897, upon the close of the first Zionist Congress, Isaac M. Wise spoke his mind on Dr. Herzl and Zionism in no mincing words: ‘The false Messiahs who appeared from time to time among the dispersed and suffering remnants of Judah, had no religious purpose in view; all of them were political demagogues, or patriotic fantasts, with as much religious zeal as was deemed requisite to agitate the Jewish mind and to win the good will of the masses and its leaders for the proposed political end which was the restoration of the Jewish nationality and the conquest of Palestine. All of them failed miserably, and left behind them plenty of misery for their thoughtless followers. And yet, with that warning of history before them, the party of men called Zionists, and the admirers of Dr. Herzl’s Judenstadt, propose to do the same over in our days.… We cannot afford to let it go out into the world that we are in sympathy with a cause which we know will ultimately result in harm to the Jews even in this country.… We denounce the whole question of a Jewish State as foreign to the spirit of the modern Jew of this land who looks upon America as his Palestine and whose interests are centered here.’”²¹²

Rabbi Wise was not an assimilationist, any more than Moses Mendelssohn, Isaac Berr, Gabriel Riesser and Adolph Crémieux before him, or similar Jews after him. He just could not be a “Jewish” nationalist and, at the same time, be an honestly integrated American national like the Gentiles, who in their turn renounced all former nationalistic and political affiliations in order to become full-fledged members of this new nation.

Professor Morris R. Cohen (1880–1947), a Fully and Happily Integrated American Jew.

Professor Morris R. Cohen was a man after my own heart. He was the best example of the East European Jew who early in his life here became a fully integrated American Jew. In fact, he was ideally integrated, as few Western Jews ever achieved it knowledgeably and deliberately. Therefore, the reader must bear this in mind: when I use the words “East European” or “West European” Jew, I mean only the philosophy of life for which each one stands.

Professor Cohen, ardent citizen of the United States, “always fighting injustice, hypocrisy, cant and sham,” and an outstanding professor of philosophy—“the lodestar to American philosophers”—in such American universities and colleges as Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University, the University of Chicago and City College of the City of New York, was born in Minsk, Russia, in 1880, and was brought to the United States when he was twelve years old. He lived a “full Jewish life” until he “was in a position to order his own life.” His education began with a classical Jewish education. He studied the Bible and the Talmud, and he even managed to read secular Yiddish and Hebrew literature such as Mendeleh Mocher Sfforim and Sholem Aleichem. In the United States he went through the regular public school, high school and college. He arrived early at his own philosophy of life. He became an American, a grateful, loyal, happy American, fully adjusted to the new country, even as he was always interested in, and devoted much of his time and energy to, Jewish causes in America.

Morris R. Cohen worked out his own problems and thus brought harmony into his whole life. There is no use paraphrasing his ideas and ideals when one can quote the source; I shall let Professor Cohen speak for himself. First about his attitude toward a “full Jewish life” as exhorted by Orthodox Judaism, then about liberalism, America, the Jewish state and Zionism:

In my youthful rejection of Orthodox Jewish observances, I did not feel that I was cutting myself off from religion. I knew that the rejection of ritual is itself deeply rooted in Hebraic tradition. I could not forget that the Hebrew prophets, from Amos to Jeremiah, the founders of spiritual monotheism, all made Jahveh despise the ritual with which Israel believed it served him. Says the God of Amos—and his command is repeated by Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah:

I hate, I despite your feast days

And will not delight in the day of your solemn assemblies

Put thou away from me the noise of thy songs—

But let justice run down as waters,

And righteousness as a mighty stream. (Amos)

And what doth the Lord require of thee

But to do justice and to love mercy,

And to walk humbly with thy God. (Micah)

If I was a heretic, at least I felt that I was erring in good company. As with ritual, so I felt with creed; the essence of religion, it seemed to me, was not in the words uttered with the lips, but rather in the faith which shows itself in our mortal life. There have been many attempts by rabbis … to formulate a concept of Judaism that may free the orthodox creed from its incrustations of superstition. But these efforts to rationalize other historic faiths have not impressed me. I do not believe that there is any such thing as Judaism as an abstract doctrine—which is what an ism is—upon which all Jews can agree. I have heard many definitions of Judaism and they all seem hollow. 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. I have never believed that the Jews, as a people, have to justify their existence. Jews exist because they are human beings, and human beings have a right to exist. I do not know of any religious doctrine which I share with any large number of my fellow-Jews, and certainy there is no political or economic doctrine which unites all Jews. I have always been a Jew because I was born and brought up in a Jewish family. When in 1899 I was in a position to order my own life, I ceased to observe the traditional Jewish code of ritual practices.”²¹³

There is no future for the Jews of this country that is not bound up with the fortunes of liberal democracy.… It was this liberal faith that broke the gates of ghettos and welcomed me and millions of immigrant boys like me, to share in the life of America.… We are not forced, as many Jewish communities in Europe were forced to, to look to Palestine for freedom.… We are not a homeless people. We helped to 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. The dynamic principle of American Jewish life is to be neither in the wiping out of special gifts, nor in a withdrawal to the desert, but rather in the fruitful bringing together of Jewish and non-Jewish cultural values in the common enterprises of liberal democracy.”²¹⁴

I am still disturbed by the concept of a Jewish State. Is a Jewish State a racial state, based on mystic ideas of ‘Blood and Soil’? Will a non-Jewish inhabitant have equal rights in such a State? Will it be possible for a non-Jew to hold office? Will a Moslem, for example, find no legal obstacle to becoming President of the republic? If Jews are permitted to immigrate, will Arabs be excluded from immigration on equal terms? Certainly I could never bring myself to support efforts to establish a Jewish State which would not be in accord with the democratic principles of separation of Church and State, and equality of civil, religious and economic rights to all inhabitants regardless of race and creed.”²¹⁵

Professor Cohen had some very definite and categorical opinions about “Jewish” political nationalism. The following are extracts from his pamphlet “Tribalism or Liberalism.” Originally it was a chapter in a book The Faith of a Liberal (Henry Holt and Co.); later on, in 1946, it was issued by the American Council for Judaism. It contains a postscript added by Professor Cohen shortly before he died:

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 virtues, idealism, etc. are the characteristic qualities of its spirit. Only in Palestine can this spirit find root, and only in the Hebrew language its adequate expressions.

The scientific adequacy of the ethnologic, historic and philosophic evidence by which all this is supported, would be beneath contempt were we not dealing with widespread beliefs of a pathetic intensity, and with a cause to which no human heart can deny some sympathy. Nevertheless, these beliefs are radically false and profoundly inimical to liberal or humanistic civilization. History, and Jewish history especially, shows that the claim to purity of race on the part of any civilized people is entirely mythical. It is generally put forth by sacerdotal and other exploiting groups, and when extensively followed, leads to narrowness and sometimes to degeneracy. No great civilization was ever achieved except by a mixed people freely borrowing from others in religion, language, laws and manners. The Jews were such people when they produced the bulk of Biblical literature, and they certainly increased their contribution to civilization when they left Palestine and mixed with other peoples.

The fact, however, is that the American ideal of freedom is just what the Zionists most fear. At bottom they have no confidence that with complete toleration and full freedom, Judaism can hold its own in the open field.

Zionists always speak of themselves as idealists, and regard the great majority of Jews who refuse to be moved by their appeal, as materialists. The word “idealism” covers a multitude of sins, and one of these is a disinclination to look actual difficult problems in the face, and a tendency to take refuge instead, in arbitrary dreams.… The supposition that the Jews of Palestine will necessarily be on a higher spiritual plane and serve as an inspiration to Jews throughout the Diaspora, is like the argument that an independent Liberia will elevate the position of Negroes elsewhere. Indeed, there are few arguments for Palestine that do not find their parallel on behalf of Liberia.…

Enlightenment is a painfully slow process, as painful as the winning of our daily bread from the soil. Hence our frail humanity is always ready to listen to some romantic get-rich-quick scheme to attain a heaven-on-earth, where all of us can live happily forever afterwards. A favorite device of this kind is the attempt to revive a supposed glorious past. But, even if the history of Palestine were glorious—which the reader of the Book of Kings or Josephus can see was hardly the case, the glory of Palestine is as nothing to the possible glory of America!

Tribalism is a creed that leads to grief and massacre, whether it bears the label of Zionism, Aryanism, Anglo-Saxon America or Pan Islam!

Dr. Judah L. Magnes (1877–1948).

Dr. Magnes was a contemporary of Professor Cohen. The logical sequence of dwelling on Dr. Magnes at this point, immediately after Professor Cohen, is particularly helpful to my thesis.

It took a long time for Dr. Magnes to reach the “position to order his own life.” Unlike Professor Cohen, this wonderful, noble, sincere idealist, while wielding great powers over the masses of Jews in New York, over his congregation in New York and over the Kehillah (“community”) during a period of nearly two decades, did not fully mature for a very long time. But when he did mature at about the age of forty-five, the prophet inside him came out in all his glory.

Judas Magnes was born in San Francisco in 1877. He was raised in free America by his Russian-Polish Hassidic immigrant parents, who were among the first Eastern Jews to go to the Pacific coast. Most of the other Jews came from Germany. There was a tradition of a “full Jewish life” in Magnes’ family, brought along from East Europe. They were all Hassidim for many generations, but they combined with their religious mysticism also the temporal redemption hopes of the newfangled “Jewish” nationalism that had its start around that time.

While attending American schools, Magnes also attended Hebrew school. Later, when he went to Cincinnati to study for the rabbinate at the Reform Hebrew Union College of Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, he also attended the University of Cincinnati. “His father preserved in the home, in California, a love of Judaism and the Jews, glimmerings of the love of Zion and the Hebrew Hassidic songs of his boyhood which he would sing together with the airs of Italian operas. Americanization was the chief urge of the immigrants in the land of liberty, and in the spacious sunny atmosphere of California it was irresistible.… But, David Magnes [father of Judah] was not one of those who proclaimed and believed that ‘America is our Zion.’ He kept his reverence for Jewish learning, an interest in Jewish lore and love for the ‘land of Israel.’”²¹⁶

Young Judah stressed his Jewishness even a bit more than his father did. His parents had named him Julian Leon. When young Julian grew up, he did not like it. He “Judaized” himself and changed the Roman Julian to his grandfather’s Judah. Judah always wanted to combine the spirit of integration and emancipation, such as Rabbi Wise preached in Cincinnati, with the dyed-in-the-wool “full Jewish life” in which his father brought him up, and in accordance with the East European influences exerted upon him during his student days in Germany. He became a victim of conflicting influences that long retarded his emergence into complete spiritual independence.

Magnes possessed overpowering oratorical gifts. He was a handsome personality, refined and dignified. He was fully conscious of his gifts. He knew that he could move mountains with his musical voice and power of persuasion. A friend recorded the impression of his vibrant voice: “The shading from prophet-like admonition at one end of the scale to the most gracious friendliness at the other; the moving cadence, the understanding of the rhythms and climax, the command of the music that stirs men’s spirits.…” These gifts together with his financial independence (he married into the Louis Marshall family) enabled him to make sudden bold moves in life and face the world fearlessly and independently. Yet, even as he wielded great powers, won adherents and collected huge sums of money for welfare funds, Magnes’ voice was for a long time the voice of others. He suffered from a surfeit of gods, mentors and heroes, all of whom he worshiped, though some of them were contradictory to one another. Not until he was past forty did he begin to stand wholly on his own feet and emancipate and assert his own great soul—and what a great, noble and distilled soul emerged!

Years before organized political Zionism appeared in the Jewish world, in 1895 (before Dr. Herzl appeared in the firmament of Jewry), when Magnes was only a student at the Cincinnati Hebrew Union College, an East European Hebrew-Yiddish speaker, Rabbi Hirsch Masliansky, addressed the student body in Hebrew and raved about “Jews working on their own soil in Eretz Israel.” Magnes was so deeply moved that he wrote an article for the Reform journal with the caption: “Palestine or Death,” an exaggerated, extravagant, hollow outcry for 1895. Recall the heartbreaking outcry of the Palestinian Arab refugees, exiled from their homes and homeland, who also declared “Palestine or Death!” on very substantial ground.

When I came to America in 1913, Rabbi Masliansky was still alive but an elderly, declining Magid (preacher and storyteller) who still used to stir the hearts of the Yiddish-speaking crowds who flocked to hear him at the Jewish Educational Alliance on East Broadway, in the heart of the New York “ghetto.” The old folks, who had recently emigrated to America from Russia and Poland, adored the talks of the dear old chap. His pious, sincere, religious and spiritual exhortations lifted them to higher spheres above their drab lives in the sweatshops of New York. But you rarely met there an American-born young man.

Immediately after Masliansky, Dr. Herzl came into the life of young Magnes. The magic of the “Messiah” overpowered him across the Atlantic. And when Magnes went to Germany to study in Berlin, he came under the strong influence of the East European students who were Herzl’s ardent followers. Magnes wrote home to his parents: “There is one thing which I want to preserve throughout my life, the feeling that is surging in me now, that the Jews and their affairs have greater value for me than any other thing in the world.”²¹⁷

In 1904, the year Magnes came to New York to serve in a Reform temple in Brooklyn (it was also the year Dr. Herzl died), Magnes wrote: “‘Were I able to work for my people as our Master Herzl worked for it.…’ To this period belong Magnes’ passions for a Jewish State … ‘Here (in Palestine) at least, the Jews will be a majority and not as everywhere else a minority.’ He had no inhibitions as yet about a Jewish majority.”²¹⁸

Even as Dr. Magnes became chief rabbi of the “Cathedral of Reform Judaism,” Temple Emanu-El in New York—the richest congregation in the world, of Jacob Schiff, the Warburgs, the Guggenheims, the Lewisohns and the Untermeyers, where emancipation, integration and anti-Zionism were the ABC of their tenets as Jews—he, at the very same time, became Honorary Secretary of the Federation of American Zionists (from 1905 to 1908). He lorded it over the temple with his unique powers of oratory, with his charming personality, but he also shocked his congregation from time to time until they just could not take it any more. It took five years, however, for this shotgun marriage to be dissolved.

Soon Dr. Magnes fell under the spell of Professor Schechter, the great Hebrew scholar from Cambridge University who came over to America to be the President of the Conservative (not Reform) Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Professor Schechter proclaimed the doctrine of “Catholic Israel” which caught the fancy of Magnes and turned him into a Conservative religionist, with a craving for the old liturgy, theoretically close to the complex of Orthodox Judaism and “Jewish” nationalism.

At the same time Magnes also fell under the spell of Ahad Ha-’Am, the leader of spiritual Zionism who was the bitterest and most implacable opponent of Dr. Herzl’s political Zionism. Magnes, who was then a slave of phrases and clichés, wrote to Ahad Ha-’Am that he “wanted to spread the idea of a national religion and a religious nationalism.” He received the following reply to the advice he sought from Ahad Ha-’Am: “Judaism is fundamentally national, and all efforts of the Reformers to separate Jewish religion from its national element have had no result, except to ruin both the nationalism and the religion.”²¹⁹ Ahad Ha-’Am still lived in the spiritual isolation that dominated the ghettos of Eastern Europe. The old medieval spirit of despair and escapism nurtured a heaven of a Chosen People, a separate race, a national status for the “world-wide Jewish people,” and the Christian world forced the persecuted Jews to act as if they chose to remain forever an alien nationality inside their borders. Magnes arrived on the scene when the age and vogue of European nationalism raged as the center of man’s life on earth. Even the finest and noblest of minds inside that atmosphere could not see that sanctimonious nationalism was on its way out of history by sheer evolution and suicide.

I must give a few examples to illustrate Dr. Magnes’ love for catch phrases in those youthful, exalted and triumphant days: “We must save the Jews for Judaism and Judaism for the Jews”; “Zionism is the conception of the Jews as a people with a national past, a national present, and a national future.” These phrases, and others like them, belonged to the chapter of his life when he was a satellite of others, when he could burst out with “Palestine or Death!”

Magnes fell under the spell of the great Hebrew poet Bialik; under the spell of the Quakers; under the spell of Gandhi; until he became spellbound under his own power, his inner great soul and his own independent convictions, much later on.

In 1905, Magnes marched at the head of tens of thousands of Jews in New York in a long procession of protest against the pogroms in Russia, and collected funds for self-defense of the brave fighters in the Russian ghettos. In 1908 he took a leading part in organizing a fraternal Order of the Sons of Zion in which he could meet the right “cronies,” an element in whose midst he could really feel at home. A year later, following the example of Ahad Ha-’Am (who in search of a breeding center for spiritual Jewish leaders in Russia gathered around himself about one hundred and fifty intellectual men whom he named B’nai Moshe (“Sons of Moses”), Magnes organized his own Ahva (“Brotherhood”) in New York, restricted to twenty-five members, each of whom had to be an adherent of “national Judaism.”

Under the influence of his mentor Professor Schechter, Magnes accepted the position of Conservative rabbi in a synagogue, in 1911, without organ and with more Hebrew prayers, and so on. But it was all futile, for his heart was not with the rich uptown Jews, nor with the emancipated and integrated Jews, but with the poor downtown Jews—those who lived a “full Jewish life,” ideologically speaking. Thus he wrote: “How grateful must I be for the comfort of being part of the Jewish people.… I am part of them, they speak to me. They are in me, they urge me on, they comfort, strengthen and inspire me, their mystic eyes, their bent backs, and their indestructible influence upon the world …” Something fundamentally atavistic and mystic compelled him to search for an affinity in the Jewish masses—the East European Jewish masses above all. There was nothing Messianic in his make-up. He just kept on searching for an inner peace, but tragically could not find it in America.

He went to Palestine, first in 1907 and then again in 1912. On his second trip he took along his wife; Nathan Straus, the noted philanthropist, was with him too. Magnes lost his heart to Palestine. He discovered within him a great desire to settle in Palestine and to “live a full harmonious life” there. He even fell in love with a spot in Jerusalem that he was going to acquire some day for a Hebrew university. The Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa–Tel-Aviv, which he visited on both occasions, fascinated him. A good many of its teachers (my teachers—I was there when he visited the Gymnasia) were his former fellow students in German universities. They were political Zionists, and he by now was a spiritual Zionist (an Ahad Ha-’Amist); but they were all Jewish nationalists. The Gymnasia teachers must have pointed out to Dr. Magnes the need for a Hebrew university, for when the next year, 1913, arrived, we, the first graduates, had to be scattered all over the world in search of a higher education.

While visiting Palestine in 1912, Magnes must also have learned that the Arabs of Palestine constituted the predominant majority of the population, and that there were secret societies of Arab nationalists in Palestine and Syria. Soon, with the coming of the World War I, there began the crystallization and harmonization of ideals in Magnes the prophetic Jew! You witnessed Magnes’ pacifism and war resistance in America; the prominent part he took in organizing the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to help the victims of war in Eastern Europe; his unhappiness about “imperialism’s iniquitous gift to the Jewish people, the Balfour Declaration, which ought not to have been accepted.” The inane clichés and catch phrases now took their place in the limbo of forgotten things; and doubts, new thoughts about humanity’s future and justice began to grip his heart and mind. Political nationalism, above all, disturbed him. Magnes did not like the unholy alliance between Great Britain, France and Czarist Russia. He did not like the hypocrisy of their palaver, their war aims, their machinations at the Peace Conference. In America, Magnes worked together with such men as Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, both Socialist candidates for the Presidency of the United States; Roger Baldwin, a director of the Civil Liberties Union; Scott Nearing, Socialist Chairman of the People’s Council for Democracy and Peace; Morris Hilquit, trade-union leader and lawyer (the only other Jew in the movement); Oswald Garrison Villard, owner and editor of the Nation and the New York Evening Post; and John Hayes Holmes, pastor of the Community Church. Magnes addressed mass meetings up and down the country, defying arrest and molestation. He resigned from the Zionist Organization in 1915. He still served the Kehillah and the Joint Distribution Committee. The spirit and high hopes of Woodrow Wilson did not allay his fears. He was still in search of harmony for his soul while the inner conflicts began to resolve themselves.

Magnes “solved” his inner conflicts through this twisted and tragic dialectic: “After you have rooted yourself in your nation, you can overcome nationalism, not before.” This he said soon after his arrival in Palestine, in 1922, where he was going to find peace and harmony for his restless soul. Before long you heard him say this: “The main ally of the Jewish people … were neither the European nations, nor the United States of America, but the Arab people. To win them over to the idea of rebuilding the Jewish homeland must be the supreme object.” Soon, however, he matured, and you hear these words: “I have left the desire for the new shining, secular nationalism. I want the international, the human.”²²⁰

Magnes threw himself heart and soul into the building of a Hebrew university. For ten years he held his peace, giving all his energy and time and talent to organize, sustain and collect funds for his cherished university. He engaged outside professors and received students. He dedicated his life to it, and was Chancellor of the University from 1925 to 1935 and its President to the day of his death in 1948. Remarkable was the attitude of the official leaders of political Zionism toward the Hebrew University: “For the next ten years, the University was his child on which he lavished his love and affection. Those years were the romantic period. During the years he was Chancellor, the Zionist bodies made scarcely a contribution. They reckoned that the ‘Non-Zionists’ who were concerned about Jewish culture and a spiritual center in Palestine, should be the main providers, and Magnes would conjure the money from their pockets by the magic of his tongue.”²²¹

My son Yehudi and I will never forget an accidental meeting on an overland train trip from Portland, Oregon, to Chicago, in the spring of 1930 or 1931, during one of Magnes’ visits to the United States to collect money for his Hebrew University. For three nights and two days we talked about the Hebrew University and the political Zionists. We met in the diner of the Pullman train even before the train departed in the evening from Portland, and we fell in love with the man. I, of course, knew Dr. Magnes quite well, for in 1913 he had given me my first job in New York, and then in 1918, again, he introduced me to my new employers in San Francisco, the Jewish Educational Society.

I was anxious for my son to learn to know Dr. Magnes, and on several occasions Yehudi sat in on our chats. Dr. Magnes was tired from his long trips in America, but this long uninterrupted trip we had together was a sort of rest cure for him, except insofar as I might have exhausted him in long discussions about Palestine, the Arabs (there were massacres of Jews and riots all over Palestine in 1929) and the political Zionists. Dr. Magnes was full of hopes for his University in Jerusalem, but he was bitter at the “political nationalists who will one day turn Palestine into a shambles.” He did not realize that he would soon become the greatest burnt offering on the altar of “Jewish” nationalism—he, together with all the ideals and ideas that stood for spiritual, ethical and universal Judaism.

Writing about “Jewish” political nationalism and the rights of the Arabs of Palestine, Magnes asked:

Will the Jews here [Palestine] in their efforts to create a political organism become devotees of brute force and militarism as were some of the late Hashmoneans? We seem to have thought of everything except the Arabs.… If we have a just cause, so have they. If promises were made to us, so were they made to the Arabs. If we love the land and have a historical connection with it, so too the Arabs.… If we wish to live in this living space, we must live with the Arabs, try to make peace with them.… We stand over against the great Arab democracies as interlopers.… We must look for an entente cordiale. Not upon the basis of force and power, but upon that of human solidarity and understanding.… 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.²²²

Dr. Magnes still sought “spiritual nationality” in the “Jewish nationalism of Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. In one of his early letters to his wife, Magnes wrote most innocently, and perhaps for the last time in that innocent spirit: “I want to battle for the coming of the new world primarily, but by no means exclusively, through the medium of the Jewish people.”²²³

The riots and counter riots in Palestine opened Magnes’ eyes to the inevitable, coming internecine war in Palestine. He became terribly disturbed. He discussed the problem with many Jews and Arabs who were equally disturbed by the grisly events. Because of his attempts to bring peace between the Jews and the Arabs, the militant “Jewish” political nationalists began to regard him as their enemy and eventually they poisoned the youth of Palestine against him. Already in 1926 there was organized under Magnes’ influence the Brit Shalom (“League of Peace”) to foster Arab-Jewish understanding. Professor Hans Kohn, the noted historian, who was then in Palestine, was a member of this movement. The program of the League was an eventual binational self-governing community in Palestine.

Later, in 1936, the British Government sent out its Royal Commission to inquire about the troubles and unrest in Palestine. The Commission made a sort of recommendation for the partition of Palestine into two states. Magnes came out against it and convinced the mandate Government that that would only bring a bloody war. He pleaded in favor of a binational state. “If that spurious Jewish State that is being offered comes into being, I, for one, should take off my coat and do my small share towards averting the catastrophe which I fear for it. But I am opposed to this State because it would mean war with the Arabs; and this evil I will not deliberately choose.”²²⁴

The “Jewish” political nationalists did not like Magnes. They hated him. “No cup of hemlock was handed to Magnes, but his life hereafter was effectively poisoned. Withering criticism was heaped upon him. He was isolated, freezed off, and even among those who remained faithful to him, none would go to the length of sharing his opinions.”²²⁵

The dyed-in-the-wool “Jewish” political nationalists called Magnes “the Reform rabbi who came here to preach at us.” Others called him the “assimilationist Jew”—all this while Magnes was the father of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and stayed as its President to his dying day, having given his lifeblood to it and to the heritage of pure Judaism which was degenerating into political Zionism.

Magnes still called himself a nationalist Jew—a minority of one in a queer Jewish nationalism. “Jewish nationalism is a part of me, and I am part of it. I love this tiny land, its color, its historic and natural background, the Hebrew tongue, the new villages. What a thrilling thing it is to see Jews here who really feel at home. ‘My soil, my land, my people, my language’ … I sympathize with Arab nationalism as I sympathize with every freedom-seeking endeavor.… But my sympathy with the Arabs is closer than with others, because they are nearer to me.… I sometimes think that, if I were not concerned with the Jews, I should want to dedicate a part of myself to the Arabs, to help them find their feet, their culture, their independence.”²²⁶

The rest of the tragedy of Magnes is well known: he died in New York in October, 1948, of a broken heart, after pleading with President Truman, with Secretary of State General Marshall and at the United Nations for peace between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Remarkable and symbolic is the fact that Magnes’ last written words before he died were written on behalf of the Palestinian Arab refugees. In the last article published in his lifetime (Commentary, October, 1948) Magnes wrote: “It is unfortunate that the very men who could point to the tragedy of Jewish Displaced Persons as the chief argument for mass immigration into Palestine, should now be ready, as far as the world knows, to help create an additional category of displaced persons in the Holy Land—the Palestine Arabs.”

Magnes appealed to the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to help the Arab refugees. They ignored his letters because they fell under the spell of the “Jewish” political nationalists who considered Magnes a visionary, or, perhaps more correctly, a traitor. Magnes, who once created, or helped much to create, the JDC, resigned and wrote “Why I Resigned From the JDC”:

I have received no answers to my letters to the Chairman dated August 19 and September 2, 1948, perhaps because the Chairman was out of town.… Whatever the reason, it is all too clear that there is within the “Joint” no feeling of urgency about the Arab refugees question. This forces me to resign my post as Chairman of the Middle East Committee of the “Joint.” How can I continue to be officially connected with the welfare organization that can so easily dismiss such a great and urgent welfare problem? The “Joint” has failed to avail itself of an opportunity to become a factor of the first magnitude in bringing peace to the war-torn Holy Land. This could have been an opportunity to extend the helping hand of a Jewish brother to thousands in distress—in the very same way in which the “Joint” used to enlist the aid of others in helping Jews in distress. In many ways, this could have been the most glorious chapter in the glorious history of the “Joint.”²²⁷

Ten years after Magnes’ death, torrents of empty words finally came out from one of the powerful and rich sources of American Jewish charities:

The Union of American Hebrew Congregations appealed yesterday [December 4, 1958] to American Jews to work with other religious groups in giving moral and financial support toward solving the Arab refugee problem.… The appeal was made by the Union’s Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism in a pamphlet entitled As Driven Sands. The Arab Refugees. The Union represents 565 Reform congregations with a membership of more than 1,000,000.… The pamphlet noted that “Israel, the Arab nations, and the world community, owe much to Arab refugees; they are the tragic victims of a changing world.… We who are a part of the world community, Jews and non-Jews alike, must support such a fund, if and when it is established.… Israel’s moral obligations will only be met when the refugees receive adequate financial compensation for the losses they have suffered.…”²²⁸

This is the same sort of lip service I quoted in Part One of this book, coming in 1956 from the President of the most powerful and richest Jews of the American Jewish Committee, Irving M. Engel, about the Palestine Arab refugees. Words, words, words; so much sand thrown in the eyes of the uninformed public. Palaver! “Tragic victims of a changing world” … Who changed the world of the Arabs of Palestine—a million happy, proud Arabs who were established, prosperous, healthy, self-respecting farmers, workers, business people and professional people, all suddenly turned into exiled filthy, desperate, hungry, idle beggars? “Receive adequate financial compensation for the losses” … And what about their homeland as well as their homes and their properties? What about their political rights as well as their economic and financial rights in their homeland? “Jews and non-Jews alike must support such a fund, if and when it is established” … Must non-Jews and all American taxpayers forever support the exiled Arab refugees who are victims of the greedy, self-centered “Jewish homelanders”? And should the American Government forever make grants and gifts to the state of Israel alongside the annual “rescue drives,” so as to relieve the Israeli Government of doing by its citizens what each government in the world does, so that it can use its own internal tax receipts to maintain big armies, navies, air forces, submarines and all the known and unknown shining paraphernalia of deadly armaments? Who degenerated universal and spiritual Judaism and tore it away from its humane moorings and made it hard-hearted and self-centered so that it became insensitive to the despairing cries of people who were the kindest in history to persecuted Jews? Who and what made the most generous and normally integrated American Jew into a “Jewish” nationalist or a “Jewish” national?

Magnes saw the tragedy. What he failed to see was this: while he was always searching and never finding spiritual nationalism in Palestine, the whole world was finding a lot of spiritual nationalism in his native land, America. America and the Jews of America badly needed a leader like Magnes to help inspire, encourage and guide, and to fight for the very things that Magnes fought for so hopelessly in jingoist Palestine. The Jews of America, ever since the Biltmore Program of 1942 began ravishing our Jewish communities, dividing loyalties by means of a schizophrenic militant “Jewish” political nationalism, needed a Dr. Magnes here to face the pathological and fanatical East European Ben Gurions, Begins and Nahum Goldmanns, and not there in Palestine, where they went berserk in their jingoism. American, English, French, Dutch, Italian Jews had no Jewish problem; there was only a refugee problem: first, Jewish victims of Nazism and then Arab victims of “Jewish” nationalism. Jewish history might have been quite different had Magnes spent the years 1922 to 1948 in America, and not in Palestine. Alas, Magnes, with all his true Western and universal outlook and philosophy, had the Achilles heel of East European ghetto “Jewish” nationalism implanted in him early in his life, and he could never divest himself of it. We must all remember that East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Whoever tries to compromise West with East is bound to end up badly. I of course refer here only to Western Jewish outlook versus East European ghetto outlook.

Professor Albert Einstein (1879–1955).

Professor Einstein had a heart as big as his intellectual genius. His life was so full and constructive that he was in no need of searching for a “full Jewish life” in order to be humanly happy. He drank from the world sources of science, art, literature and philosophy, and was fully ready for world citizenship. An atmosphere of free democracy such as in the United States suited him perfectly. But the plight of his people and the old positive cultural and philosophical bonds with Judaism kept him attached to and interested in Jewish affairs. He was honest and honorable to the core. But he was kind, soft and a terribly agreeable fellow, easily pushed around by aggressive schemers who would use and abuse his great name. Above all, he was a lovable human being and a pacifist who could not and would not hurt anybody. I am very familiar with this type of great man. I know one very well—Yehudi Menuhin. Out of a desire and an ideal for peace and inspired by sheer goodness and kindness, a man like this will unwittingly give right and left of himself, to the good cause and to the bad cause, to the positive and to the negative, always trusting, and never suspecting that some takers are professional takers, and that you may actually contribute toward their delinquency when you give your money or your name, or both, for them to use. Often the spiritual contributions to delinquency are even more harmful than the financial.

With the above introduction, may I explain why I am listing Professor Einstein among the so-called assimilationists, though by now, I am sure, the normal reader will undoubtedly consider the list a place of honor for any intelligent and conscientious Jew of our time. Professor Einstein assuredly belonged to the camp of the emancipated and adjusted Jews. He assuredly did not belong to the camp of the Orthodox Jews. He assuredly did not belong to the camp of the “Jewish” political nationalists. Like all other emancipated and integrated Jews, he was an outspoken Jew who stood up to be counted when the question of defending the human rights of his people arose anywhere.

Now that he is dead, you will read all sorts of stories, even “quotations” cleverly supplemented and edited about his identification with Zionism, with Israel, and what not. But in 1938, and up to 1948, he was younger and stronger and more independent of importunators. Like Dr. Magnes, his great friend, he obviously felt a good deal of sympathy for a theoretical “spiritual Zionism,” a cultural Zionism, for a nonmilitant and nonaggressive Jewish homeland in Palestine, in collaboration with the native Arabs. He was in sympathy with the agricultural cooperatives and the intellectual life of the Jews in Palestine. He was grateful for the haven that Palestine provided for the fleeing German Jews, before the World War II broke out.

In 1938, when Arabs of Palestine rebelled against the British mandate Government because of the continuous stream of German Jews to Palestine, Professor Einstein thought that Arab nationalism was an “exaggerated nationalism,” but that Jewish nationalism was merely “spiritual.” The underground Irgun of Menachem Begin was not yet functioning, and Havlagah (“self-restraint”) as preached by Dr. Magnes was practiced to a great extent under the protection of the British mandatory. Professor Einstein wrote in 1938: “To be a Jew, after all, means first of all to acknowledge and follow in practice those fundamentals in humaneness laid down in the Bible, fundamentals without which no sound and happy community of men can exist.… Judaism owes a great debt of gratitude to Zionism. The Zionist movement has revived among Jews the sense of community. It has performed productive work surpassing all the expectations anyone could entertain. The productive work in Palestine … has saved a large number of our brethren from direst need.”²²⁹ Nearly three hundred thousand German Jews entered Palestine in quest of a safe haven during the years 1932–39. Professor Einstein saw only the haven, the refuge, the humanitarian and cultural work done in Palestine.

When, however, Professor Einstein learned about the nationalistic issues and the bloody wars in the making, and when he learned about the proposed “solution” by one of the British Royal Commissions of partitioning Palestine into two states, he fully agreed with Dr. Magnes about a joint binational state of Arabs and Jews:

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 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 our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without 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 spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should, after all, compel us to assume this burden, let us bear it with tact and patience.”²³⁰

Alfred Lilienthal, author of the book What Price Israel, tells of an interview he had with Professor Einstein about some censoring (deletions) made in a message that Professor Einstein sent to the children of Palestine in which he stressed “the necessity to curb a kind of nationalism which has arisen in Israel, if only to permit a friendly and fruitful co-existence with the Arabs.” Mr. Lilienthal adds, “Dr. Einstein told me that, strangely enough, he had never favored the creation of the State of Israel.”²³¹

And in his other book Here Goes the Middle East, Mr. Lilienthal says this: “Professor Einstein’s last statement about the State of Israel has been made in an interview with Dorothy Schiff, violently pro-Israel publisher of the New York Post. This is how Miss Schiff quoted the scientist: ‘We had great hopes for Israel at first. We thought that it might be better than other nations. But, it is no better!”²³²

The American Council for Judaism (ACJ). A Summary of Its Historic Forerunners and Its Immediate Background, Its Raison d’être in the New World Order, Its Tenets and Their Exposition, Its Creators and Leaders. Who Is Responsible for the “Vanishing American Jew”?

This is the logical point for me to stop and dwell, and dwell adequately, on what is to me the outstanding, worthiest and most dignified Jewish organization in America interested in the status of the Jew and of Judaism in the world—the American Council for Judaism (ACJ). It is “the organization of the most terrible assimilationists, self haters and Mayoffisnicks [flatterers of Gentiles who have no self-respect]”—according to Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Nahum Goldmann and their toadies. In a little while we shall see what sort of assimilationists the members of the ACJ are, and who are the defenders of Judaism and normal Jewish interests—they, or the fanatical and professional “Jewish” nationalists.

May I say first that I know well a good many of the founders, officers and members of this remarkable Jewish organization. A number of years ago (in 1945) I gladly joined the ACJ as an active member after I carefully studied its literature and after I had had the pleasure of meeting some representative members. I am not a synagogue Jew. The synagogue has been profaned for me by the professional “Jewish” nationalists with their incessant propaganda appeals and everlasting “schnorring.” Surely God has left the synagogue because of its un-Jewish atmosphere—the bazaar atmosphere, the money-changers trafficking in smelly burnt offerings for the “needs” of the “Jewish homeland.”

ACJ members form a notable group of brave American Jews; especially those who joined the organization in its early years, in the face of violent character assassination, slander, intimidation and economic boycott on the part of the irresponsible and noisy “Jewish” nationalists. They stood up exactly as their forerunners did, ever since the days of Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Isaac Berr, Gabriel Riesser, Adolphe Crémieux, Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, Professor Morris Cohen and the group of representative American Jews who in March, 1919, openly declared to President Woodrow Wilson their ideas about Judaism versus world-wide “Jewish” nationalism in the new age of full emancipation and integration.

Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is that anything the ACJ has said and done in the twenty-one years of its existence, and anything it is saying and doing today, cannot surpass in logic, clarity, vigor, appeal and conviction the utterances and doings of its remarkable historic forerunners. In fact, special credit is due the early forerunners of the ACJ for their vision and fortitude. For while they pleaded the cause of integration very early in modern times, freedom and full equal rights were more in anticipation than in practice, more on trust than in reality. They necessarily allowed time and patience for the painfully slow progress in the evolution of human relations. The ACJ, on the other hand, appeared on the scene of history in 1943, when freedom and equal civil and political rights for the Jews were everywhere established, except in the camps of the losing Nazi-Fascist predatory nationalists. In 1943, only the weak and the lame could be blind to their rights and obligations as integrated citizens in the free Western world.

When Moses Mendelssohn pleaded with the Jews of Germany and demanded the dissolution of the old medieval concept of self-segregation, the Jews who had suffered for eighteen hundred years refused to believe that the goyim could change their inveterate ill-feeling toward them. The “Jewish nationalism” of the ghetto dwellers was nothing but a preoccupation with collective religious, ethical, cultural and scholastic Judaism, and with a relief-dream of a mystic-Messianic apocalyptic redemption as a ray of hope during the long dark and hopeless days of persecution and pogroms. The solidly miserable past weighed heavily on their consciences and convictions. Mendelssohn had plenty of vision and fortitude.

When Isaac Berr in 1791, in France, unequivocally declared that “at length the day has arrived on which the veil is torn asunder which covered us with humiliation.… We have at last obtained the rights of which we have been deprived for eighteen centuries.… But, I cannot too often repeat to you how absolutely necessary it is for us to divest ourselves entirely of that narrow spirit of corporation and congregation in all civil and political matters not immediately connected with our spiritual laws. In these things, we must absolutely appear simply as individuals, as Frenchmen, guided only by a true patriotism by the general good of the nation …,” it was the outcry of a man who trusted on faith the march of progress and human brotherhood, justice and civilization.

Isaac Berr understood and trusted the public declarations of the liberal nobleman Clermont Tonnere (who helped formulate the principles of the new French republic) when he said: “To the individual Jew everything, to the Jews as a nation nothing.… The so-called medieval laws of the ‘Jewish Nation’ ought not find support in law. It must not be permitted that Jews should form a separate political organism or estate within the State. Let each of them separately become a citizen. But, it will be said that that is not what they want. Very well, then, let them so openly declare, and it will become imperative that we expel them.… To demand of the National Assembly that it should under existing [new] conditions sanction Jewish ‘privileges’ while at the same time grant Jews the right of active citizenship is too much. In France there can be only Frenchmen.”²³³

Ahad Ha-’Am, the father of spiritual Zionism (originally a perfectly constructive and ethical movement, and completely harmless politically and internationally), had vision and fortitude when, immediately after Dr. Herzl’s fascinating and fetching palaver and gimmicks at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, in 1897, he declared: “The salvation of Israel will come through prophets, not through diplomats.… In Basel, yesterday, I sat lonely among my brothers, like a mourner at a wedding.… This new enthusiasm is an artificial one, and the result of treacherous hopes will be despair.… There is only one objective which we can actually approach, and that is the moral objective.…”

Judge Julian Mack, even as President of the early American Zionists (he and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis were philanthropic spiritual Zionists) at the annual convention of the American Zionists in 1921, in Cleveland, had vision and fortitude when, facing the “Jewish” nationalists on the subject of “Diaspora Nationalism,” he spoke out for himself and Justice Brandeis in the following words: “No political ties bind together the Jews of the world.… In the U.S.A. and in the countries of Western Europe there are no group-nationality political rights.…”

The decade following the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration was dull, trying and exasperating for the “Jewish” nationalists, in spite of the boisterous slogan that “Palestine will be as Jewish as England is English.” Jews declined to go to Palestine, their “Jewish homeland.” Chaim Weizmann went scurrying to Rumania in search of Jewish manpower and confessed to the Rumanian Jews that “we Jews got the Balfour Declaration quite unexpectedly.… The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air.… [He trembled lest the British Government would call on him one day and ask]: ‘Tell us what is this Zionist organization; where are your Zionists?’”

The leaders of Zionism were shepherds without flocks. Then God sent Hitler, who began persecuting Jews in Germany even before World War II broke out in 1939. German Jews began to pour into Palestine; several hundred thousand of them came before the outbreak of war. Then came the war and with it the slaughter of millions of Jews in Germany, Poland, Russia, in all occupied Europe. Only a small remnant remained alive in the DP camps, not enough to add substantially to the manpower wanted to wrest Palestine from the resident Arabs. When World War II was over, the Russian and Polish Jews suddenly found themselves behind an Iron Curtain, but they were readjusting themselves to the new regime and becoming integrated into the new Russian world as much as Stalin would allow. American and English and other Western Jews were, of course, fully emancipated and on the road to full integration.

But the sympathy of the world for the stunned and heartsick Jewish people was at its zenith. Practically anything was to be had for the asking, and the leaders of “Jewish” nationalism did not miss their unique opportunity. World-wide “Jewish nationalism” was the answer to all of their past dreams and present efforts. If the Jewish people would only become an ethnic and political entity whose national homeland is Palestine (the coming Israel), be made to feel that way, and have it all internationally recognized—that could produce manpower, money and perpetual support for the “sovereign state of the Jewish nation.”

The last thing on earth that interested the Zionist leaders was humanitarian work, saving victims and refugees. Victims and refugees were “good for business,” a good means to an end—“Jewish” political nationalism. 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.…” One bold Zionist leader put it this way: “Zionism is not a refugee movement, but a movement to rebuild the Jewish State for the Jewish Nation in the land of Israel.”

The “plausible” argument offered the heartbroken and depressed Jews of the West when they learned of the German crematoriums was that the slaughter of the Jewish people proved that the trust of the Jews in the decency, morality and sense of common humanity of the Christian world was misplaced. If the torch-bearers of the Western world, the Germans, who gave the world so much of philosophy, literature, art and music, could by the tens of thousands become bloody executioners of innocent Jews, what hope was there for Jews anywhere? “Jewish homelessness,” therefore, was an established “Jewish problem,” and the “ingathering of the exiled” was the only answer; come what may, cost what may.

The bitter conclusion—actually the sweet dream and hope ever since Moses Hess, Pinsker, Herzl, Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin—was that now was the time to proclaim that the Jews of the world, wherever they were and no matter what their legal citizenship and nationality, were members of a transnational ethnic and political entity whose homeland in Palestine had to become as soon as possible the sovereign state of the Jewish nation.

This, in sum, is the complete story of the background of the assault of “Jewish” nationalism on the normal integration of the Jews of the free world, particularly in America. It brings matters up to the end of World War II, although the assault actually started in 1942, in the middle of the war, when the catastrophe of the Jews under the German policy of sadistic extermination was only half accomplished.

With a defiant, angry and determined approach, purporting to solve the “Jewish problem of homelessness” while the Christian world was beginning to suffer a collective guilt-penitence for its stained heritage of bestiality toward the Jewish people, there descended upon New York, in May, 1942, all the leading Zionists from Europe and America, six hundred delegates, to hold a sort of extraordinary World Zionist Congress. Chaim Weizmann, President of the Jewish Agency, Ben Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency, and Nahum Goldmann, member of the Agency Executive, met with all the leading Zionists of the United States, chief of whom was Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland. The meeting took place in the new Biltmore Hotel from May 6 to May 11, 1942.

The big word of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was: “The clear purpose of Zionism was, and is, to give the Jewish people the status of a nation.” Exhorted and inspired by Ben Gurion, the Biltmore Conference produced the Biltmore Program, the chief points of which were that Palestine must become a Jewish commonwealth and that a Jewish military force must be formed to fight under its own flag. Plank VIII of the Program read: “The new world order cannot be established on foundations of peace, justice and equality unless the problem of Jewish homelessness is finally solved. The Conference urges that the gates of Palestine be opened; that the Jewish Agency be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with the necessary authority of upbuilding the country, including the development of its unoccupied and uncultivated lands, and that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated into the structure of the new democratic world.”²³⁴ Britain, the mandatory power, was to retain nominal sovereignty, but only until the Jewish State took over the country completely.

Thus the principal issue with Great Britain, about lifting the barriers against Jewish immigration into Palestine, was relegated to secondary importance. Anti-Zionists, non-Zionists and Zionists all agreed on this issue or quarrel with Britain. But the stakes of the Zionists were much higher—the Jewish sovereign state and the world-wide Jewish nation’s “ingathering.”

The Biltmore Program was a triumph for the Revisionists (later called the underground Irgun Z’vai Leumi, and now the Herut party) who until that time were the pariahs and hotheads of the Zionist movement. Ben Gurion and Rabbi Silver, at the Biltmore Conference, paralyzed the sense of proportion and sense of sanity of embittered Jewry, and for a while it looked as if all Jewry had gone back to the despondent mentality and mood of the old ghettos.

In Palestine the militant nationalists went altogether berserk as a result of the Biltmore Program. Moshe Smilansky, an old Zionist settler in Palestine, a man who made an enormous contribution to the constructive development of his country, described as follows the nationalistic paroxysm that occurred in Palestine:

… The prospect of the moral curse that rests upon every miniature state frightens me even more than the economic curse. We are still, thank God, very far from a state. But ever since we promulgated one in the platform adopted at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, a certain royal atmosphere has begun to impose itself upon life in the Yishuv [Jewish settlements in Palestine].

The first in the Zionist camp to proclaim the state as a fundamental tenet were the Revisionists—they who until the Biltmore days were, rightly, like pariahs in the Zionist movement. Formerly only the Revisionist youth were brought up in the spirit of chauvinism and militarism, which crass ignorance and short-sightedness considered “nationalism.” Today, however, most of our youth are brought up in this spirit. The most reliable sign of the presence of this sort of “education” is the fact that our youth have learned to think mechanically. Some invisible “unknown,” some “instructor” or “head” pushes a secret button and, lo!—the young man’s brains begin to spin.

The Hagana was a pure creation in the beginning, clean of purpose and pure of motive. But the promulgation of a “state” and the preparations that led to it have turned the Hagana’s dish upside down, putting that organization in the same rank as the murderers of the Irgun Z’vai Leumi and the Stern Group.

Since the Biltmore days, freedom of thought and speech have been banned. Scribes have turned into ‘shofars’ [horns] trumpeting the slogans dictated from above.

Anyone that dares to have an opinion of his own is considered a traitor. Writers of any independence have been forced to remain dumb.…”²³⁵

Please recall the organizing of Ihud in Palestine by men like Dr. Judah Magnes, Professor Buber, Professor Simon, Moshe Smilansky, Dr. Shereshevsky, “Reb Binyomin” and many others, in reaction to the Biltmore Program. Ihud stood, and stands, for “Jewish-Arab rapprochement,” for peace and brotherhood in Palestine.

In America the reaction to the Biltmore Program was instantaneous and stormy. Though among the rabbis and lay Jews not many were left who could “keep their nerves and their heads,” the few who remained independent declared war on the big Zionist machine that was established to crush any opposition to militant “Jewish” nationalism. The birth pangs of the American Council for Judaism belong to 1942–43. It was a lusty but unpopular Jewish baby born right after the Biltmore Conference, and its cries of growing pains in the coming years, though they went to heaven, were drowned in the tumult issuing from all media of communication, from synagogues and drawing rooms. For the Zionists, since the days of Dr. Herzl, always knew how precious “noise” is. Recall Dr. Herzl’s entry in his diary: “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.… Men must put noise to use.…”

Officially, the American Council for Judaism was born on August 31, 1943, when its historic “Statement of Views” was released to the entire press of America. Unofficially, it began to function at a conference of Reform rabbis in Atlantic City in June, 1942, one month after the Biltmore Conference. While the majority of Reform rabbis (not to speak of the Orthodox and Conservative rabbis) capitulated to the propaganda of “Jewish” nationalism, ninety-two dissenting Reform rabbis met in Atlantic City to discuss the state of affairs in the Jewish world. Dr. Louis Wolsey of Philadelphia, Dr. Morris Lazaron of Baltimore and one young and enthusiastic rabbi, Dr. Elmer Berger of Flint, Michigan (later Executive Director of the ACJ, and still later, to this day, Executive Vice President of the ACJ), were the prime movers.

The rabbis first issued a Manifesto and then a Statement of Principles. I shall give here the principal points of both declarations. They both constituted the foundation for the “Statement of Views” of the ACJ, which began its preliminary organizational meetings soon after the Atlantic City conference. The declaration’s thesis was that “Jewish” nationalism is incompatible with the teachings of Judaism. The principal passage from the Manifesto read:

The day has come when we must cry “Halt.” The conditioning of American Jewry by a Jewish flag and a Jewish army and a state in Palestine and a dual citizenship in America, is more than we can accept. The secularist creed has overreached itself. We have been watching with anxiety the secularization tendencies in American-Jewish life, the absorption of large numbers in Jewish nationalistic endeavors, the intrusion of the Palestine issue as an irritating factor in intra-community relations, the persistent public expression of extremists who presume to speak for all American Jewry, the efforts to cultivate and promote the sense of psychological difference between American Jews and their fellow Americans which plays into the hands of our enemies, the unremitting efforts of certain groups to put American Jews behind programs of international political pressure, the reduction to secondary importance of the traditional religious basis of Jewish life.… We refuse any longer to be religious acrobats. We cannot pact with the untenable position in society which nationalism as a creed imposes upon us.²³⁶

And to give one of the many fine passages out of the “Statement of Principles”:

In the light of our universalistic interpretation of Jewish history and destiny, and also because of our concern for the welfare and status of the Jewish people living in other parts of the world, we are unable to subscribe to or support the political emphasis now paramount in the Zionistic program. We cannot but believe that Jewish nationalism tends to confuse our fellow-men about our place and function in society and also divert our attention from our historic role to live as a religious community wherever we may dwell.²³⁷

Yes, the day had come to cry halt, but the Zionist machine was fully prepared to drown out the still, small voice of the ninety-two Reform rabbis. Every compliant rabbi “was forcefully invited to stand up and be counted.” Eight hundred and eighteen rabbis put their signatures to another sort of manifesto. I shall not waste the time of the reader with all the hollow verbiage of the religious acrobats who said things that some of them, I hope, are ashamed of today. I shall give here only a few high lights from the long whitewashing statement of the 818 rabbis against the 92 rabbis. The gist of their long statement was that “Zionism [is] an affirmation of Judaism … Zionism is not a secularist movement.… A reply by 818 rabbis of America to a statement issued by 90 members of the Reform rabbinate charging that Zionism is incompatible with the teachings of Judaism. Released to the press on November 20, 1942”:

Zionism is not a secularist movement.… An Allied peace which will not frankly face the problem of the national homelessness of the Jewish people will leave the age old tragic status of European Jewry unchanged.…

The freedom which, we have faith, will come to all men and nations after this war, must come not only to Jews as individuals wherever they live, permitting them to share freedom on a plane of equality with all other men, but also to the Jewish people, as such, restored to its homeland, where at long last it will be a free people within a world federation of free peoples.²³⁸

Note the resemblance to the Biltmore Program. The homeland for the homeless Jewish people … “Pinsk versus Washington” all over again. Recall the stories about Justice Brandeis in London, in 1920, and of Judge Julian Mack in Cleveland, in 1921. Only, this time Pinsk included perhaps 409 (half of 818) native-American Jewish rabbis who were perfectly satisfied to regard as compatible their being nationals of the United States and at the same time nationals of that world-wide Jewish nation that was fighting for its “Jewish homeland,” to make it “a free people within a world federation of free peoples.”

The triumphant intrusion of the aggressive “Jewish” political nationalists into the normal life of the emancipated, integrated (more or less) American Jews now became the concern of not only the ninety-two rabbis who had met in Atlantic City, but, above all, of the laymen who unwittingly had allowed the self-appointed unemancipated European “Jewish” nationalists to presume to speak for world Jewry and, by means of Machtpolitik and terrific propaganda pressure, to turn the majority of American rabbis into religious acrobats and obedient satellites. “To give the Jewish people the status of a nation,” as Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver put it, now concerned every individual American Jew. Did he appoint the foreign, ghettoized Zionist leaders and their American toadies to represent him and speak for him? Did he authorize any one of them to play around and trifle with his exclusive American nationality and all it stood for?

Laymen and rabbis, anxious to defend the well-established individual rights of the American Jew, and believing that “Judaism is a religion of universal values—not a nationality, that nationality and religion are separate and distinct, that our nationality is American and our religion is Judaism, that our homeland is the U.S.A. and that we reject any concept that all Jews outside of Palestine are in exile,” organized the American Council for Judaism in April, 1943, after many months of preliminary meetings in November and December, 1942. Lessing Rosenwald of Philadelphia was elected President, and Rabbi Elmer Berger was appointed Executive Director. A little later, I shall dwell separately on a few of the persons I knew well who dedicated themselves to the serious purposes of the ACJ. Each one of them played an important role in the face of virulent campaigns of character assassination, slander and vituperation waged by the Zionist machine. At this point, however, I must give in full that fascinating and vital document—worthy of the finest and noblest in Jewish history—the “Statement of Views” released by the ACJ on August 31, 1943, and published in full or in part in most of the newspapers of the country. It gives the essence of what the so-called ACJ assimilationists believe in and want. Any Jew in his right mind should, after reading this Statement, be readily able to conclude whether he needs more of a “full Jewish life” to be a normal national of the United States, in the new world order in which we must all do our dutiful part. Here is the credo and philosophy of the ACJ as the founders saw it in 1943:

The American Council for Judaism was organized to present the views of Americans of Jewish faith on problems affecting the future of their own lives and the lives of world Jewry in the present hour of world confusion.

The Council reaffirms the historic truth that the Jews of the world share common traditions and ethical concepts which find their derivation in the same religious source. For countless generations, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” has been the universal cry that has united all Jews in trial and tribulation, in suffering, hunger and want, in despair—and in achievement. It is still the concept which distinguishes Jews as a religious group.

Racist theories and nationalistic philosophies, that have become prevalent in recent years, have caused untold suffering to the world and particularly to Jews. Long ago they became obsolete as realities in Jewish history; they remain only as a reaction to discrimination and persecution. In the former crises of Israel in ancient Palestine, the Prophets placed God and the moral law above land, race, nation, royal prerogatives and political arrangements. Now, as then, we cherish the same religious values which emphasize the dignity of man and the obligation to deal justly with him no matter what his status.

As Americans of Jewish faith we believe implicitly in the fundamentals of democracy, rooted, as they are, in moralities that transcend race and state, and endow the individual with rights for which he is answerable only to God. We are thankful to be citizens of a country and to have shared in the building of a nation conceived in a spirit which knows neither special privilege nor inferior status for any man.

For centuries Jews have considered themselves nationals of those countries in which they have lived. Whenever free to do so, they have assumed, and will again assume, full responsibilities of citizenship in accordance with the ancient Jewish command “The law of the land is the law.” Those countries in which Jews have lived have been their homes; those lands their homelands. In those nations where political action was expressed through minority groups, the Jews, following the law of the land, accepted minority status, thereby frequently gaining an improvement over previous conditions of inferior citizenship. Such East European concepts, however, have resulted in a misunderstanding, shared by Jews and non-Jews, a misunderstanding which we seek to dispel. American Jews hope that in the peace for which all of us pray, the old principle of minority rights will be supplanted by the more modern principle of equality and freedom for the individual. The interest of American Jews in the individual Jew in countries where the minority right principle prevailed is not to be confused with acceptance of this East European political concept.

As a result of the bigotry, sadism, and ambitions for world conquest of the Axis powers, millions of our coreligionists who had homes in and were nationals of other lands have been violently deported and made victims of indescribable barbarism. No other group has been so brutishly attacked and for one reason only on the false claims that there are racial barriers or nationalistic impulses that separate Jews from other men.

The plight of those Jews together with millions of oppressed fellowmen of all faiths, calls for the profoundest sympathy and the unbounded moral indignation of all free men. The restoration of these broken lives to the status and dignity of men endowed by God with inalienable rights, is one of the primary objectives of the peace to come as expressed in the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms of President Roosevelt. We believe that the Jew will rise or fall with the extension or contraction of the great liberal forces of civilization. By relying upon the broad, religious principles inherent in a democracy and implementing them wherever possible, we join our forces with those of all lovers of freedom; strengthened, in that we do not stand segregated and alone upon exclusive demands.

We ask that the United Nations secure the earliest feasible repatriation or resettlement under the best possible conditions of all peoples uprooted from their homes by the Axis powers, and that even in the face of obvious and discouraging obstacles the United Nations persevere in their efforts to provide immediate sanctuary for refugees of all faiths, political beliefs and national origins. We believe that wherever possible the forced émigrés should be repatriated in their original homelands under conditions which will enable them to live as free, upstanding individuals.

For our fellow Jews we ask only this: Equality of rights and obligations with their fellow-nationals. In our endeavors to bring relief to our stricken fellow Jews, and to help rebuild their lives on a more stable basis, we rely wholly upon the principles of freedom, justice and humanity, which are fundamental to both democracy and religion, and which have been declared as the principles which shall prevail in the better world for which the United Nations are fighting. We ally ourselves with those who believe this war will not have been fought in vain, that the mistakes of the last peace will not be duplicated.

Palestine has contributed in a tangible way to the alleviation of the present catastrophe in Jewish life by providing a refuge for a part of Europe’s persecuted Jews. We hope it will continue as one of the places for such resettlement, for it has been clearly demonstrated that practical colonizing can be done, schools and universities built, scientific agriculture extended, commerce intensified and culture developed. This is the record of achievement of eager, hardworking settlers who have been aided in their endeavors by Jews all over the world, in every walk of life and thought.

We oppose the effort to establish a National Jewish State in Palestine or anywhere else as a philosophy of defeatism, and which does not offer a practical solution of the Jewish problem. We dissent from all those related doctrines that stress the racialism, the nationalism and the theoretical homelessness of Jews. We oppose such doctrines as inimical to the welfare of Jews in Palestine, in America, or wherever Jews may dwell. We believe that the intrusion of Jewish national statehood has been a deterrent in Palestine’s ability to play an even greater role in offering a haven for the oppressed, and that without the insistence upon such statehood, Palestine would today be harboring more refugees from Nazi terror. The very insistence upon a Jewish Army has led to the raising of barriers against our unfortunate brethren. There never was a need for such an army. There has always been ample opportunity for Jews to fight side by side with those of other faiths in the arms of the United Nations.

Palestine is a part of Israel’s religious heritage, as it is a part of the heritage of two other religions of the world. We look forward to the ultimate establishment of a democratic, autonomous government in Palestine, wherein Jews, Moslems, and Christians shall be justly represented; every man enjoying equal rights and sharing equal responsibilities; a democratic government in which our fellow Jews shall be free Palestinians whose religion is Judaism, even as we are Americans whose religion is Judaism.

We invite all Jews to support our interpretation of Jewish life and destiny in keeping with the highest traditions of our faith. We believe these truths provide the basis for every program of a more hopeful future put forth by free men. To proclaim those views at this time, we believe, is to express the abiding faith, shared by a great number of our fellow Jews, that in the fruits of victory of the United Nations all, regardless of faith, will share alike. It is also, we believe, to render a service to the task of clarifying the hopes and the purposes for which this war is being fought by free men everywhere.

One must constantly bear in mind that the “Statement of Views” was proclaimed in 1943, five years before the state of Israel was established and before the wars with the Arabs of Palestine and the Arabs of the world involuntarily involved the Jews of the world as supporters, and suspected nationals, of the “Jewish homeland.” While the position and principles of the ACJ have remained consistent, the ACJ certainly recognizes now the existence of Israel as a state and believes even more strongly today that she can achieve peace with her neighbors only by “de-Zionizing” herself and her relationships with Jews the world over. “By ‘de-Zionizing’ we mean [said Clarence L. Coleman, Jr., President of the ACJ, at the Annual Conference in Chicago, on May 12, 1962] that the State of Israel and the World Zionist Organization must repudiate their claim to be the ‘sovereign authority’ over all Jews; they must stop imposing upon all Jews, involuntarily, a system of national rights in and obligations to a so-called ‘Jewish’ political unit—the State of Israel; and, most important, they must disengage the State and the Zionist apparatus from the institutions of Jews outside the State of Israel.”

To show the consistent position and principles of the ACJ, I shall give here, for the record, a part of the resolution of the 1962 Annual Conference that distinguishes between “religious” and “national” peoplehood:

There are many interpretations of Judaism. Some hold a religious “peoplehood” to be basic, emphasizing such Biblical terminology as “Children of Israel,” “people of Israel,” or “a kingdom of priests and a holy people.” We, of the American Council for Judaism, recognize this tradition of “peoplehood” in an exclusively religious and spiritual sense, and emphasize the universal values of our faith and the spiritual dignity of the individual.

The Zionist-Israel sovereignty has perverted the idea of a religious “peoplehood” into a political-national entity which it misleadingly calls “the Jewish people” and for which it claims, in international law, recognition of a legal system of national rights and responsibilities.

We emphatically deny any relationship between secular-national “Jewish peoplehood” and religious or spiritual interpretations of Judaism. The secular-national view has been used by Zionist-Israel to advance the concept that all Jews comprise a nation legally entitled to rights in, and obligations to, a specific “Jewish” state. The religious definition, for two thousand years, has symbolized commitment to a monotheistic conception of God and the universal application of moral principles to all mankind.

The nationalistic concept of “The Jewish people” is expressed and implemented in legislation, policies, action programs and public declarations of the Zionist-Israel sovereignty.

As American anti-Zionists we repudiate all such claims and actions in behalf of this “Jewish people” collectively, because our “rights and political status” are dependent exclusively upon the United States Constitution which guarantees us, and all Americans, a status solely as individuals. No foreign sovereignty, with which the United States is associated in friendly relations, may legally attempt to assign to American citizens—on the basis of their faith—an additional system of national rights and obligations.…

Like most Jews of the free world, the American Jew knows of no general “Jewish problem.” He is a normal American, like his fellow citizens. He is busy living a full American life. The ACJ, more than any other Jewish organization, represents this normal American Jew, though he hardly knows that the ACJ exists. And the truth of the matter is—“noise” to the contrary notwithstanding—the normal American Jew knows little and cares less about the ultimate purposes of the Zionist Organization of America, most of whose members are foreign-born, or are native-American Jews still in the process of getting adjusted to the American way of life in the face of the confounding and overpowering Zionist propaganda that comes in connection with the annual “rescue drives” for money and sympathy.

Whether he is one of the small group of “take-over, daring idea-men” or just one of the multitude who are “terribly” busy with the “pursuit of happiness”—with whatever passes for literature, culture, music and entertainment of this or that variety—life in these United States is for him full to the brim, and it is a definite way of life, free, individualistic—American! American Jews have “Jewish problems” no more than Protestants or Catholics have specific Protestant or Catholic problems. Nor do former nationals of other countries who became Americans have any specific problems. After all—and this is said strictly for the sake of argument—even if a theoretical and an ideally just, happy and peaceful “Jewish” state could provide American Jews with a poetic and mystic background of a “Jewish” nation-state, what would it have to do with the natural, moral, legal and exclusive loyalty of the American Jew to his one and only homeland, the United States, and to his American, individualistic way of life? Can anyone imagine that an Englishman or a Frenchman who renounced his nationality and became a naturalized American citizen would think and live in terms of his former homeland alongside his American homeland and American nationality? Can anyone imagine anything like “Jewish” political nationalism among former Englishmen or Frenchmen in this country?

The New York Times of September 2, 1962, reported about a B’nai B’rith survey which covered the life of rural Jews in the state of New York:

Regarding discrimination against Jews, Professor Peter I. Rose [a Smith College sociologist who made the survey] reported: 87 per cent said they could not think of any community organization they would not wish to join because of anti-Semitic feeling. In addition, 81 per cent said they knew of no discrimination of any kind being practiced in their communities. Professor Rose said that the rural Jew “is more a part of his community than he is apart from it!” … As for Jews in the social life of rural areas, Professor Rose said, “they are more than participants in formal community functions.… In most instances they are an integral part of the social life of their towns.…

Another generation or two, and the 87 and 81 per cent will become 99 per cent! No one can doubt it except those self-segregated and self-ghettoized victims of “Jewish” nationalism.

Will the American Jew vanish? I daresay he will vanish—not in spite of but because of “Jewish” nationalism! Remarkable is the revelation made by Look magazine of May 5, 1964. To me, its story tells volumes as to why the great majority of the Jewish college graduates today abandon their “faith” and have no objections to marrying Gentiles. Let me first quote a few passages of Look’s article, “The Vanishing American Jew,” and then dwell on the why of it.

… The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago recently queried 35,000 graduates of 135 colleges. Thirteen per cent of the Jewish students reported no religious faith whatsoever, and 60 per cent said they practiced their religion very little or not at all. Similar surveys have found Jewish observance as low as 5 per cent.

Educational Reviewer, Inc.… found that Jews had a far greater tendency to abandon their faith than either Protestants or Catholics. At Brandeis University, for example, a Jewish sponsored school with a predominantly Jewish enrollment, less than a third of the student body said they professed Judaism.… Two thirds of the Brandeis students said they had no objections to marrying a Protestant, and 40 per cent had no objections to marrying a Catholic.…

In the 1920’s and 30’s, many felt that ritual Judaism inhibited Americanism and limited their ability to come to terms with the modern world. Still, more than 90 per cent married within the faith.…”

What happened since the 1920’s and ’30’s to cause the radical change in the attitude of the American Jewish intelligentsia toward the Jewish religion and toward marrying within the faith? Why? Because Judaism as a religion has degenerated into “Jewish” nationalism in the synagogue and in all Jewish meeting places; therefore, there is a bewildering and spectacular reaction against self-segregation for Aliyah.

There are no really big “Jewish problems” in our post–World War era. And when a minor Jewish problem arises somewhere, there are plenty of philanthropic Jewish organizations, and there is the United Nations, and our own sympathetic United States Government, to look into it. The new world order will not stand for new barbarism.

Professor Morris Raphael Cohen used to tell a story about himself. He was once asked to speak to the Menorah Society on “The Jewish Problem.” He rose and said: “Gentlemen, there is no Jewish problem!” Then he sat down. After having shocked his audience into thinking, he rose again and explained why he thought that there was no such thing as a general Jewish problem. The dark ages had nothing but Jewish problems because the Jew had no civil or political rights. He belonged to an artificial state within a state, imposed upon him by the then uncivilized Christian world. There was a “Jewish problem” in Czarist Russia until the revolution redeemed the Jew as well as the Gentile from their joint degradation and misery. The Jew under Hitler had more than a “Jewish problem”: he was exterminated. There was always a Jewish problem wherever there was a problem of moral civilization, and in the long run the Gentile did not fare much better than the wretched and persecuted Jew. The new world order is sick of all “Jewish” problems and all nationalistic problems. This is the age of the individual, Jew and non-Jew. They are brothers in a new one-world. This is how the American Council for Judaism views our civilized world and the place of the Jew in it.

On the other hand, there are American Jews whom the ACJ cannot represent and cannot convince or change—the hopelessly ghettoized lost souls who have a congenital “Jewish problem.” They were born with, or were indoctrinated with, a “philosophy” that they are “in exile” and that they must have a “full Jewish life.” For them there is only one answer: Israel. The ACJ “Statement of Views,” the American way of life, emancipation and integration, the new world order, freedom and human brotherhood—to all these they are impervious. They are pathologically and pathetically “Jewish.”

I have already stated that I know a good many “native” American Jews who still live ideologically in the ghetto spirit, from which they cannot make a clean break to normalcy. Some of these lost souls even possess Ph.D. degrees and teach in American universities. For them there always exists “The Jewish Problem” because “a goy bleibt a goy.” They just cannot feel at home in America or elsewhere among goyim. These poor souls should try out a long sojourn in Israel; they may be cured, one way or another. Here is a typical case: The chap happens to be an old Hebrew-speaking friend of mine, personally most sympathetic. He is a Ph.D. He is a fine scholar. He is a professor in an American university. One day he read an article I wrote for Issues, the magazine published by the ACJ—“Open Secrets of the ‘Lavon Affair.’” He wrote to me: “… It is difficult for me to follow your line of thinking with regard to Eretz Yisroel [Israel] and its leaders. After all, there is only one homeland for our people, … the only country where a Jew is welcome by right and not by sufferance.…” And this man is an American citizen, voting in city, state and Federal elections! What has he got to do with them—or with me, for that matter? Verily, there is an abyss between him and me. I just wonder why this “good Jew” and those like him choose to languish “in exile.”

No, the ACJ can only appeal to and speak for normal American Jews, who have no spiritual hunchback and who are not attached by an umbilical cord to “Jewish” political nationalism and a fantastic “Jewish homeland.”

Before I conclude my remarks about the ACJ, I must add a few words about the “exposition of their tenets.” Not only do the officers and directors of the ACJ watch the doings and representations of the “Jewish” nationalists in America and in the world, and promptly expose and dispute their wrongdoings, but the ACJ has a positive program of activity.

Having witnessed how the old and extraordinary Jewish philanthropic organizations were subverted to work for and with the “Jewish” nationalists almost exclusively, so that a needy Jewish refugee who declined to immigrate into Israel was either refused all help or given so little as to starve him into submission and thus force him to accept their offer to bring him to Israel, the American Council for Judaism organized a purely Philanthropic Fund for strictly humanitarian purposes. Thus, such émigrés as leave Egypt, Morocco, Algiers, Rumania and so on can obtain immediate and unconditional relief, and a chance to get rehabilitated in France, the United States or elsewhere, eventually supporting themselves and becoming integrated in a free country, as individuals and not as “Jewish” nationals. The President of the ACJ Philanthropic Fund is Henry S. Moyer, a distinguished retired gentleman who dedicates his time and energy to serving this good cause.

The ACJ publishes Issues, a serious and scholarly magazine, three times a year, in winter, spring and fall, giving in each number a series of independent articles under the headline “opinion”—“Views of authorities in fields of concern to the American Council for Judaism. Their opinions do not necessarily coincide with those of the Council.” The ACJ also publishes a newsletter Brief, which appears more frequently than Issues. The Editor of both publications as well as the Publicity Director of the ACJ is Bill Gottlieb, a fine and enthusiastic man of letters. The Executive Director of the ACJ is Leonard R. Sussman, a dedicated man of great ability in writing, lecturing and running this sort of effervescent and indomitable organization.

Over and above the entire national staff and its regional directors with its Research Director Irwin Herrman, a fine scholar and writer, stands Rabbi Elmer Berger, the young-old pillar and watchdog of the ACJ from its birth to this day, always watching and studying the world of international politics, at home and abroad, always writing, lecturing and debating about it, always traveling to the Middle East and observing Middle East developments as regards Israel. Elmer Berger is Executive Vice President of the ACJ.

The President of the ACJ is Clarence L. Coleman, Jr., and the Chairman of the Board is Lessing J. Rosenwald, founder and former President.

I shall now make a few brief remarks about those individual founders, officers and members of the ACJ whom I have happened to know for a good many years, and shall begin with Rabbi Berger.

Rabbi Elmer Berger.

With all due respect for and appreciation of the presidents and chairmen, past and present, of the ACJ, Rabbi Elmer Berger (Executive Director, 1943–55, and Executive Vice President since 1955) has been the pillar and the heart of the organization from its inception; to be more exact, from its prenatal days. For he, more than anyone else, was the ACJ’s most important molder and champion, defending its ideals and battling with a steadfastness of purpose that could not be crushed by his ruthless, powerful and cunning enemies in the Zionist camp.

He is a modest, straight, refined, ever-youthful, scholarly and philosophical gentleman who gives unsparingly all he has to his organization. Of course, Rabbi Berger had wonderful backers and friends, particularly that marvelous Lessing J. Rosenwald (of whom I shall speak next), but I am sure that Mr. Rosenwald and all other founding officers and members of the ACJ will agree with me when I say that the ACJ is Rabbi Berger’s child, made in his image, for on it he lavished his time, energy and great talents.

Rabbi Berger is now only fifty-five years old. I say it with a great deal of satisfaction, and with hopes for future triumphs of the ACJ. And I say it with all commiseration for the militant Zionist slanderers who often ask: “What? Is that old fellow Berger still alive? He must be very old indeed, if he is still alive.” The “Jewish” nationalists well remember Rabbi Berger ever since the Biltmore Conference in May, 1942, for, only one month later, Elmer Berger was the spirited young participant in the lively discussions that shaped the famous Manifesto and “Statement of Principles” issued by the ninety-two Reform rabbis in Atlantic City in June, 1942, and proclaimed a declaration of war with the words: “The day has come when we must cry ‘Halt!’”

Rabbi Berger took part in private meetings at the home of Mr. Rosenwald soon after the Atlantic City conferences “to discuss the possibility of creating an organization of Jews to resist Zionist efforts to stampede both American Jews and the American Government,” to quote Mrs. Rosenwald, who was promptly inspired to join her husband in creating the ACJ. Rabbi Berger actively participated in formulating the “Statement of Views” that was released to the world in August, 1943, and thus officially started the ACJ.

Of course, I am fully aware that there were also older rabbis who were tremendously helpful in formulating the Manifesto and the “Statement of Views.” I should mention their names right here: the late Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson, Rabbi William H. Fineschriber, Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron, Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel and Rabbi Irving Reichert, among others.

The reader will rightly guess that much of what I have written and quoted about the ACJ was formulated and vindicated by Rabbi Berger. The essence of his philosophy he expressed early, soon after the creation of the ACJ. I quote his own words:

… A century and a half ago, there was hardly a Jew anywhere in the world who was a free man.… Gradually, along with all men, Jews have come to enjoy the benefits of that new and revolutionary principle of Government and of life.… The setbacks of the Jews have always been a part of the setbacks to freedom for all men.…

Those who are the self-appointed spokesmen of Jews—the “Jewish” nationalists—do not speak the language of emancipation. They demand of the world that it redeem a whole “world-wide Jewish people” politically as a group while at the same time they seek to retain a medieval control over a so-called world-wide Jewish people, and to prevent the emancipation of the individual Jew out of this ghetto of medieval entity.… They do not want Jews to be completely free in every aspect of their lives. Under the vague terminology of “a Jewish life,” these separatists seek to include as much of living as possible: they desire “Jewish Community” control of intellectual pursuits, of news released to the Press, of recreation, and of political aspirations. At every conceivable opportunity, they drive a wedge between Jewish and general interests.…”²³⁹

Jews cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot have full equality of rights and responsibilities as individuals in a world founded upon individual rights, while, at the same time, they support either aggressively, or by silence and default, a program that calls Jews an indissoluble minority and asks the world for special rights for such a group.²⁴⁰

The “Jewish” nationalists won’t relish a bit the latest of Rabbi Berger’s projects. To climax a long series of published books—The Jewish Dilemma, A Partisan History of Judaism, Who Knows Best Must Say So (a remarkable pamphlet written during one of his many trips to the Middle East, including Israel, in the form of letters addressed to Mr. Rosenwald and others of the ACJ), Judaism or “Jewish” Nationalism—pamphlets, lectures, articles, essays, reports, statements and debates, Rabbi Berger has for the past three years been preparing documentation for an appeal to the United States Government, reminding it of its obligation under the Constitution and in international law to protect the rights and political status of American Jews from the aggressions against law of the Zionist-Israel sovereignty. The legal document warns that the Zionist-Israel mechanism has made incursions into the lives of American Jews by improper legal claims, which the United States Government is obligated to repudiate for its citizens.

In his colossal new task, Rabbi Berger has had the full cooperation of W. T. Mallison, Jr., Professor of Law at George Washington University, and of Irwin Herrman, Director of Research of the ACJ, as well as of the members of the ACJ Executive Committee. To give the gist of the comprehensive study and documentation, I have culled a number of verbatim excerpts from a study by Rabbi Berger of a document of 196 pages entitled “Criminal Case No. 40/61” issued in connection with the Eichmann trial by the District Court of Jerusalem, a judicial branch of the Government of the state of Israel. I have also culled a number of extracts from the addresses delivered by Rabbi Berger and Professor Mallison at the eighteenth annual conference of the ACJ on May 10 and 11, 1962, and from a “Statement for the Record” by Rabbi Berger released to the press on July 18, 1962, as well as from other ACJ reports. The addresses and statements are fully documented and have proper references in the original copies issued by ACJ headquarters. Here is the essence of it all:

The basic legal claim to “the Jewish people” by the Zionist-Israel sovereignty has not varied from the First Zionist Congress in 1897 to the present time. It may be stated in a single sentence: Jews, wherever they are and no matter what their legal citizenship and nationality, are members of the transnational political and ethnical entity called “the Jewish people” and have legal rights in and legal obligations to the Zionist-Israel sovereignty simply by virtue of their identification as Jews.

The District Court of Jerusalem, Israel, said the following in connection with the Eichmann Trial about the “indestructible bond joining together indissolubly the State of Israel and the Jewish people”:

“The State of Israel was established and recognized as the State of the Jews” (and not only of the citizens of Israel).

“It would appear that there is hardly need for any further proof of the very obvious connection between the Jewish people and the State of Israel: This is the sovereign State of the Jewish people.

“These words are no mere rhetoric, but historic facts, which international law does not ignore.… The connection between the Jewish people and the State of Israel constitutes an integral part of the law of nations.

“The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate given by the League of Nations to Great Britain constituted international recognition of the Jewish people.

“The State of Israel, the sovereign State of the Jewish people, performs through its legislation the task of carrying into effect the right of the Jewish people to punish the criminals who killed their sons with intent to put an end to the survival of this people.

“In the light of the recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State, and in the light of the recognition of the established State by the family of nations, the connection between the Jewish people and the State of Israel constitutes an integral part of the law of nations.”

In 1952 the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) enacted legislation licensing the World Zionist Organization to perform certain services for the State of Israel inside other nations where the State of Israel could not properly act itself. In 1954 this legislation, known as The World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency for Palestine (Status) Law, was incorporated in a “Covenant” signed by the Israeli Government and the responsible leaders of the World Zionist Organization. Under this law and Covenant, the Zionist organization is legally licensed as that part of a single sovereignty to carry on with “the Jewish people” outside of Israel what the State cannot do itself.…

How can the State of Israel intervene in the domestic affairs of the Jewish communities in the Diaspora to create this unity of “the Jewish people” and still not intervene? Prime Minister Ben Gurion made it simple: “It is just there that the Zionist Organization, founded upon free will association and voluntary effort, has the occasion and ability to do what the State is neither able nor authorized to do. That is the advantage the Organization has over the State.… The State and the Movement complement each other, need each other, and it is by their joint endeavor that they can and must arouse the Jewish people to realize its dream of redemption.”

The first involuntary characteristic of “the Jewish people” is that it includes all Jews simply because they are Jews and without regard to the individual preferences of any member of the collectivity. The voluntary factor of the claimed legal connection of all Jews with the Zionist-Israel sovereignty makes no exception for the United States citizens who are Jews.…

It is clear that action by the United States Government is required to effectively reject the involuntary political and legal identification of United States citizens who are Jews, with the foreign Zionist-Israel sovereignty.…

The United States Constitutional system of individual rights and individual national attachment which is applicable to all citizens without discrimination and to all branches of the Government is fundamentally and irreconcilably inconsistent with the Zionist-Israel system of collective “rights” and obligations for “the Jewish people.”

The inclusion of all known as Jews in this body politic called “the Jewish people” is automatic and involuntary. Any known as Jews, wishing to avoid involvement in this system of Zionist-Israel national rights and obligations, must take public action themselves to repudiate it.… The single Zionist-Israel sovereignty claims and implements a set of extra-territorial national rights and obligations for Jews who are legal citizens of countries other than Israel. In the absence of governmental disclaimers, American Jews are assigned a virtual functional, second nationality.… Americans of Jewish faith have no other national rights or obligations except as equal, responsible citizens of the United States of America. They explicitly reject Zionism, which is “Jewish” nationalism, and which attempts, automatically, to invest every Jew, simply because he is a Jew, with nationalistic relationships with all other Jews and to the single sovereignty composed of the Government of the State of Israel and the Zionist Organization.

There is, therefore, a legal obligation of the United States Government to effectively safeguard the equal rights and political status of United States citizens of Jewish religious faith against the incursions of Zionist nationalism.… No other State in the world claims such rights or the ability to exact such obligations from people who are full citizens of other nations, as the Zionist-Israel sovereignty claims and exacts.

Finally, at long last, on May 7, 1964, on the occasion of the opening of the twenty-first annual conference of the American Council for Judaism, Clarence Coleman, President of the Council, made public a “historic document” in which

the State Department has declared for the first time that it recognizes no political or legal relationship between the state of Israel and American Jews. “It should be clear,” a Department spokesman said in a letter to the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, “that the Department of State does not regard the ‘Jewish people concept’ as a concept of International law.” The letter was signed by Phillips Talbot, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. (New York Times, May 8, 1964)

Lessing J. Rosenwald.

Lessing J. Rosenwald was in on the birth of the American Council for Judaism. One of the pivotal founding fathers of the ACJ, he was its first President, and is now its Chairman of the Board. I have before me a copy of an address delivered by his wife, Edith G. Rosenwald, in San Francisco, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary conference of the ACJ on May 10, 1953, in which I found a number of charming and intimate stories she told about the background and the birth of the ACJ. These stories are precious to my account of the history of the ACJ; I shall draw freely on some of them.

Late in the 1930’s, Lessing began to wonder about the use of the United Jewish Appeal [UJA] funds. He began to inquire whether or not these funds were being used for legitimate philanthropic purposes. I remember one afternoon when Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver came to our home with crates of books which were supposed to give Lessing answers to some of his questions. In his usual thorough fashion, Lessing studied and delved and asked the advice of accountants. But the effort supplied no satisfactory answers. If anything, Lessing was more confirmed than ever in his belief that, through the U.J.A., American Jews were being led to support a nationalist movement with political ambitions in a far distant country.…

We did not fully realize then that on somewhat different grounds, others were beginning to grow restive with the drift to [political] Zionism among American Jews.… [One day] Dr. Fineshriber, our Rabbi in Philadelphia, phoned Lessing and said that a group of his colleagues would like to meet with him and discuss the possibility of creating an organization of Jews to resist Zionist efforts to stampede both American Jews and the American Government.…

So the two lines converged one night in the library of our home in Jenkintown. There Dr. Morris Lazaron, Dr. Fineshriber, Rabbi Reichert and Rabbi Elmer Berger told Lessing and me the story of the Atlantic City meeting of Rabbis in 1942, the decision of some of those Rabbis to attempt to create an organization, and their realization that, to be effective, the organization would have to have the support of laymen all over the country.

Lessing was immediately interested in the proposed organization …[and] so began the really active career of the ACJ.… A tiny office was established in Philadelphia in a building owned by a good friend and early supporter of the Council, Jerry Loucheim. Rabbi Elmer Berger and a secretary were the staff. By now it was April, 1943, and I have some fairly clear memories of long sessions in Lessing’s office and of frequent meetings … as the first little group struggled to put down in black and white a statement and a platform on which the Council could stand.… There began a series of pioneering trips all over the country for Lessing and Elmer … the enlisting of responsible citizens who would permit their names to be published along with a Statement.… As I look back now on that period, it seems to me Lessing’s life was divided between ringing doorbells and writing letters.…

Finally, the “Statement of Views” was released to the press, and with it began the beastly assaults on the tender budding organization and its officers. Mrs. Rosenwald goes on with her human story:

The Statement of Views was given nearly half a page in the New York Times and wide publicity elsewhere.… [But] the pattern of abuse, misrepresentation, and debate of everything but the issues, was set.… I will not say that the unfair, personal attacks did not hurt Lessing. They were bound to. But as he talked about them in those days, I really believe he was even more hurt and shocked by the irresponsible slanders made on the early Rabbinical members of the council. Men who had served Judaism with distinction were called irreligious in attacks that were venomous and bitter.… Lessing was seriously troubled by the economic pressures brought against people who subscribed to the Council’s principles.… The pressures against the Council were so many and so vicious that often we wondered what the outcome would be.… Council spokesmen took everything that hysterical and often staged mass antagonisms had to give—and came back for more. It became clear we would not be bullied out of existence.…

It is true that the ACJ was not to be bullied out of existence, but the ruthless pressures forced half the rabbis who had sponsored the organization to withdraw from active membership only one month after it was legally incorporated. “In the first year of the existence of the ACJ, one Zionist operation to smear the Council distributed more than 1,000,000 pieces of propaganda.… Many potentially sympathetic Jews judged the Council by what its opponents said—not by what the Council said and did.” By 1946, less than a dozen rabbis remained openly loyal to the ACJ.

Mr. Rosenwald consistently contained all attacks on him and his organization. He stood his ground, evolved, deepened, solidified and crystallized his own philosophy, and backed up to the hilt his young enthusiastic Executive Director, Rabbi Elmer Berger. Lessing Rosenwald’s strong and high-principled character is wonderfully evidenced in his “Credo of an American Jew,” which he wrote for William Zukerman’s Jewish Newsletter in September, 1961. It is not only because he clears up in his credo some pertinent matters about the ACJ, but also because he explains in it his conception of his Jewishness that I must quote here a number of paragraphs from that credo, and then contrast it with the credo of Ben Gurion, thus bringing out in juxtaposition Zionism with its anachronistic self-centered “Jewish” political nationalism versus American-Jewish civilized integration and humanity.

I am an American and a Jew in either sequence, as one represents my nationality and the other my religion. I have participated in many Jewish activities as such, and likewise in many civic, state, national and international undertakings that have no particular bearing on my religion. I not only have no desire to cease being a Jew or an American, but I would refuse to change my status in regard to either.…

The amount of Jewish education I received at home and in religious school was confined, in a large degree, to the ethical concepts of Judaism.… None of us is particularly religious insofar as formal observance goes; yet all of us are keenly aware of our Jewish heritage—especially that portion of it which concerns ethical behavior. We are all keenly aware of the trials and sufferings of the great mass of our co-religionists and those of others, and have attempted to ameliorate their condition.

I have not the slightest desire to change my religion.… However, I rarely attend synagogue—not because I am opposed to the practice, but because I do not derive any inspiration from the services. Moreover, the intemperate and intolerant utterances of so many Rabbis and their lack of courage have caused me to lose faith in them as spiritual leaders. This is not intended as a universal condemnation but it applies to such an overwhelming majority that there are few Rabbis in the field who can minister to the innermost man. Likewise I have no great love of seeing the synagogues used primarily for social centers or for money-raising activities. I always thought of a synagogue as a place of worship.

One might gather from these expressions that I have left the Jewish “Community.” Not so. The Jewish “Community” has left me. In a way I can see the justice in such action; the dissenter has never been awarded any medals for popularity. So—I will continue to be a Jew, with or without the “Community.” … I am not a bitter Jew; I am a realistic one.

I have often been accused of attempting to be a 110 per cent American.” I am proud to be an American and I see no reason to apologize for saying so. This is not said in a chauvinistic sense. I am proud because, under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I have, in common with all American citizens, the opportunity to fulfill my destiny in a manner which is afforded in very few places. Here I can make myself; no one else is responsible for my success or my failure as a man. Every freedom and encouragement is given to me to develop as an individual. It matters not to what religious sect I belong or if I adhere to none at all. Having been born a Jew and desiring to remain one, I should like to conduct myself in such a manner as will bring respect to my religion and will be worthy of an American.

In no way, as the words are generally understood, do I feel a part of a “minority group.” I hate the word “minority.” The law does not consider the rights or wrongs of “minorities”; rights and responsibilities are conferred on the individual citizen.…

Anti-Semitism exists and may, in some degree, always exist. It is possible, in fact, that it is greatest among Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism is not always a “one-way street.” There is and always has been a certain anti-Semitism among Christians that is due to ignorance and lack of understanding. Yet today this attitude is of minor importance and in due course and under proper circumstances it may approach the vanishing point. The great majority of Christians today are willing to take the Jew at his “face value.” The problem is, in part at least, for the Jews to see to it that his “face value” is a favorable one. In many ways some Jews are deficient in providing a favorable climate. To the extent that they do not do so they are imposing a barrier between themselves and their opportunities for individual development as full American citizens.

What are some of these deficiencies on the part of Jews themselves? First, there is what one may moderately call “clannishness” or more immoderately call “self-ghettoization.” Is this the spirit for America today? Is such a man afraid that his “Jewishness” will suffer if he exposes himself to the company or even friendship of his non-Jewish neighbors? Is it not possible to work side by side with his fellow Americans on overall community or national projects without fear of his religious affiliation wearing thin?… The great absorption of Jews with the problems of Israel—to an almost total exclusion of interest in the difficulties encountered by the United States—is not conducive to cordial relations with their fellow citizens of other faiths.…

Now as to Israel. I believe that every one acknowledges that Israel has, in a short space of time, accomplished many great results. I have seen myself some wonderful accomplishments.… Israel has been and still is a wonderful haven for those who can and wish to go there.… But it should be borne in mind that it is not and should not be the only place for Jewish resettlement. For those who wish to emigrate to other countries than Israel every opportunity should be given and every assistance should be enlisted to make it possible for them to go to the countries of their choice. The instances where Israel has prevented such choice (and there are many) have, in my opinion, been nothing short of reprehensible.… Israel has the right to speak for and in the name of its own citizens—and its own citizens only. Unfortunately Israel has seen itself as the center of and spokesman for World Jewry. It has seen fit to intervene in Jewish problems and for Jewish citizens of sovereign states other than Israel, particularly those of the United States. This can and does affect the status of Jews adversely in other lands. This I resent as a citizen of the United States.… As previously said, I am proud of my rights and obligations to my homeland, the United States, and I will resist, to the limit of my ability, any abrogation of those rights, particularly if they are impinged upon by the word or action of a foreign power.

Do I feel any attachment or obligation to Israel? None. I have compassion for those who are suffering there and will do my best to alleviate such misery—provided I can do so without supporting political and progaganda purposes to which I am opposed. I will, to the limit of my ability, aid suffering humanity in other nations and here, at home, as well. I will not support Israel as a Jewish State per se. Much has been said about the great benefits Israel has bestowed—and they are manifold. One cannot say, however, that this is the only consideration. Counterbalancing the good, one must also take into account that almost as many Arabs have become displaced persons as the number of Jewish immigrants finding shelter. The land which was owned by these Arab displaced persons has been taken by the State of Israel without compensation thus far.

In July, 1957, the Jerusalem Post published Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s credo. It stated in part:

… Even in the free countries, the Jews of the Diaspora do not enjoy complete freedom and equality as men and as Jews.… I am a Jew first, and an Israeli only afterwards, for in my conviction the State of Israel was created for and on behalf of the whole Jewish people, though from now on the future of the Jewish people depends on the survival, growth and consolidation of the State.… There is a national unity of the Jews of the world—a unity based upon a common destiny, a great common historical heritage and common aspirations for the future.… The Law of the Return is an expression of the supreme mission of the State of Israel: the ingathering of the exiles.

Contrast this with the credo of Lessing J. Rosenwald. But my short story about Mr. Rosenwald will still be unfinished unless I add a few more paragraphs taken out of “Reflections on Our Trip to Israel.” They will complete the picture of the man as a realist as well as a man of high principles:

[In Israel] one sees the isolationism of Israel.… To them [the Israelis] Jews who are in other parts of the world and who are in difficulty, should receive no assistance other than to help them come to Israel. All else is temporizing.…

Zionism itself has many shades of meaning. To the pious, it is a deeply religious faith. To Mr. Ben Gurion, a Zionist is only one who will come to Israel and become an Israeli citizen in fact.

The Histadrut is basically a Labor organization. Practically all workers, industrial and agricultural, are members of the Histadrut. It also covers certain social features, features for its members: hospitalization, medical care, sickness benefits, old age pensions etc. Furthermore, it is a most powerful political organization, and in many aspects has control of actions of the Knesset. The anomaly here is that it is also the largest employer in Israel and has very large capital invested in the industries throughout Israel.… It is [therefore] hard to understand, in view of the above, why contributions are solicited and received by it from the United States. One cannot help but wonder why this successful Trade Union does not contribute in substantial amounts to the needs of Israel.…

Chauvinism is extreme in Israel.… But, there is a complete lack of understanding and acceptance of chauvinism in other countries. In Israel, it is beneficial and proper; elsewhere, it is sinister, baseless, and foolish.

I still believe that Zionism, a nationalist movement, is deleterious to Jewish citizens of the United States, and to the Jewish nationals of many other countries outside of Israel. I still remain a firm adherent to the American Council for Judaism and the principles upon which it was founded which it still maintains.

In dedicating his book The Jewish Dilemma to Mr. Rosenwald in 1945, Rabbi Elmer Berger wrote: “In deep and lasting appreciation and admiration of Lessing J. Rosenwald who, by providing a leadership based upon principle and courage, has pointed the way out of the dilemma that has plagued his fellow Jews and, together with those who have joined him in the fellowship of the American Council for Judaism, has set a standard for Jews in the pattern of tomorrow’s better world.” In the course of the many years since that was said, Mr. Rosenwald has proved himself to be fully worthy of the respect and admiration of his fellow members of the ACJ.

Professor Monroe E. Deutsch.

I shall conclude my limited study of the ACJ with a few words about and by Professor Monroe E. Deutsch, Provost Emeritus of the University of California in Berkley, who was a devoted member of the ACJ. Professor Deutsch was an old and close friend of my family. I consider it a great privilege to have known him quite well and to have counted him among my true friends. For decades Professor Deutsch was the inspiration of thousands of students on the campus in Berkeley—Jews and Gentiles, Americans and foreigners. He was an outstanding member of the intellectual world in the West and an outspoken Jew when the occasion called for it.

Here is the essence of an inspiring talk he gave to ACJ members in San Francisco on October 23, 1950. It remains fresh and fundamental to this day:

What are we? The answer was given by a young Jew about 2000 years ago, a young Jewish prophet: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” … We are politically Americans; we are religiously Jews.… This in turn demands that in our acts as citizens, we be Americans—and nothing else. It is a principle that should hold for every citizen of this land. An American of Irish descent has no right to make demands on our government as an Irishman. An American of German descent has no right to act as a German and seek to use our government to further German ends. We are Americans—and in a political sense must be nothing but Americans. Naturally we feel sympathy—and should feel sympathy—for those of our faith who suffer persecution in foreign lands, and those seeking to establish homes for themselves to avoid further suffering. We do right in giving them far more than sympathy.

I for one do not feel the slightest inclination to compromise our citizenship, or to leave this land. It has been good to us—very good! Had our ancestors not come here, we should have suffered from the horrors the Nazis inflicted on our co-religionists, or the pogroms of Russian rule, or the oppression and denial of freedom in lands now communistic.… It is a good land, and while we strive to make it better, let us never forget the blessings it brings and has brought us.

I am sure I should never feel at home in Israel. English is my tongue—not Hebrew. The Stars and Stripes arouse my devotion, not the blue and white of Israel’s banner.… Those who feel unhappy here, should by all means take the very first ship to Israel.…

But, with all my heart I feel indignant at those seeking to persuade young Jews who are completely satisfied here, that they have a duty to leave this land, and an obligation to dwell in Israel.…

I resent the camps that seek to inculcate devotion to Israel as a State. Our song is “The Star-Spangled Banner,” not the “Hatikvah.” Our flag is not that of Israel. And the use of both of these in gatherings of Americans implies at least a duality of national sentiment.… We have a single allegiance as citizens, and this is typified by the single flag we salute and the single national anthem we sing.… We are a new breed, not English Americans or German Americans or heaven forbid Jewish Americans. We are just Americans with all hyphens discarded.…

This is our home, the home of the children that will come after us, and their descendants. And we must not do anything by word or deed to make their lives harder, to cause them to be treated as foreigners who belong to Israel.

William Zukerman. In Memoriam.

I loved, admired and respected this wonderful Jew for his courage and integrity, and for his great intellectual talent for putting into four small pages, published biweekly, volumes of unknown facts and pithy judgments that covered the entire Jewish world. He threw the light of objective logic and fair play on each dark spot of hypocrisy, immorality or inhumanity in the cesspool of the professional idealists among the “Jewish” nationalists. He knew them all inside out.

All through my life I used to question the verity of the claims about “the indispensable man” in any walk of life. Devotees of certain statesmen, educators or industrialists used to cry out how indispensable this or that man was in the field of his endeavor. The first time in my life I truly witnessed a case of an indispensable man was upon the untimely death in 1961 of William Zukerman, editor of the extraordinary Jewish Newsletter. His wonderful Newsletter had to die with him because the “friends of the Jewish Newsletter,” with all of their good wishes, searches and ready finances, could not replace William Zukerman!

What a poor generation of Jews this era is—poor in individualism, poor in sheer honesty and courage, poor in talent and poor in sheer humanity. Fear of the “Jewish” nationalist machine and its crushing, ruthless terrorism, or of the saccharine sweetness of the synthetic honey peddled from hundreds of prostituted synagogues and gatherings at celebrated hotel dining halls, has destroyed the potential Jewish individualists. William Zukerman was one of the rare individualists—a man indispensable in Jewish life. Those who still keep their eyes and minds open will miss his sharp eye, his big heart, his dignified approach and his critical word. For “he was the gadfly in Jewish life.”

A Gentile American-Italian scholar, Benedetto Rossi, who lives not far from my home town of Los Gatos used to subscribe regularly to the Jewish Newsletter. He always looked forward to the day of its arrival, for he read it avidly. Once he said to me: “If only all the Jews in America would read this marvelous compact newsletter.” He was heartbroken to learn about the sudden death of Mr. Zukerman, and with it, the sudden death of his beloved Jewish Newsletter. To this day, my Italian friend embarrasses me with his innocent question: “Are there no Jews in existence who could take the place of Mr. Zukerman? How sad and tragic it must be for such an old and wise people as the Jews to be so poor in great men.…”

I had the great pleasure and privilege of corresponding frequently with Mr. Zukerman. What struck me as remarkable and unique was that his origin and philosophy, almost all the way up to 1948, was East European and Zionist, and how suddenly, at the age of sixty, he made a clean break with his past and turned to the new West, spiritually and philosophically. Born in Brest Litovsk, he came to the United States when he was seventeen years old. Though he managed to study hard—he attended the University of Chicago—he worked for decades as a Yiddish writer, first as correspondent of the Yiddish Daily Forward in New York, and then (from London) as correspondent of the Zionist-Orthodox New York Yiddish Morning Journal (since merged with the Yiddish Day). During the 1920’s, Mr. Zukerman served as press secretary to Chaim Weizmann when Mr. Weizmann toured the United States to sell his brand of political Zionism. He served the London Jewish Chronicle (a Zionist but not a jingoist magazine) as its staff correspondent in New York from 1948 to 1952, but in 1948—the year Israel declared herself an independent state—he already began to see the light, and started his own Jewish Newsletter, which grew with him from day to day.

William Zukerman’s organizing a dissenter’s Jewish Newsletter as a result of the spiritual upheaval that the creation of the jingoist state of Israel brought about in his heart reminded me very much of my own rebellion against the Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia philosophy of rabid “Jewish” nationalism in 1917, when the Balfour Declaration came out and I could see the death of Ahad Ha-’Am’s spiritual and ethical Zionism—the Zionism I believed in while I was a student of the Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa–Tel-Aviv. I understood Mr. Zukerman and sympathized with him, and our correspondence became warm and personal.

William Zukerman worked hard to his very last day for his Jewish Newsletter, and although later in his career as editor he no longer had to operate a mimeograph machine to issue his paper, or address and mail out the copies to subscribers, the terribly hard labors and long hours ruined his health and shortened his life.

The Zionist world maligned Mr. Zukerman and his newsletter. But this did not deter him from fighting unceasingly for the eternal lofty ideals and old heritage of Judaism. His only friends and appreciators were a number of members of the American Council for Judaism who realized what this incomparable man meant to the cause of Judaism. They made it possible for him to be released of time-consuming and energy-consuming tasks. They made it possible for him to edit his Newsletter a bit more “leisurely.” They never interfered in any way with his complete freedom, not even when he happened to disagree with some of the views of ACJ members. For they knew a great man when they saw one, whereas the blind and bitter “Jewish” nationalists would bury every fine and great Jew who dared dissent from their anachronistic totalitarian nationalism.

Henry Hurwitz. In Memoriam.

William Zukerman died in October, 1961, and Henry Hurwitz died in November, 1961. They died one month apart. William Zukerman died at the age of seventy-six, and Henry Hurwitz died at the age of seventy-five. They had one common denominator: they were both indispensable men in the true sense of the word—indispensable to the emancipated and integrated Jews of America. With Henry Hurwitz died also his Menorah Journal and the Menorah Collegium—organs of dissent so rare nowadays in Jewish life. Both men were at the height of their intellectual capacities. They were full of plans for the expansion and growth of their respective periodicals. They were full of hope in spite of personal tragedies and health problems. Death did not enter their minds when suddenly it happened.

When I was a young student at New York University (1913–17), there was one Jewish name on the lips of most of the Jewish students on the campus—Henry Hurwitz. He was identified with the Menorah Journal and the Intercollegiate Menorah Association. The Menorah movement and its distinguished journal stood “for the study and advancement of Jewish culture and ideals.” In the course of time, the Menorah Journal developed into the world’s leading independent Jewish cultural publication. With the changing intellectual climate in the colleges and universities after the World War I, and after the B’nai B’rith began to promote Hillel Foundations (the Hillel Foundations seek to promote primary loyalty to Israel as a whole) in as many American colleges and universities as possible, the time for the Menorah societies came to an end. Menorah societies could not compromise their purely intellectual and cultural purposes. The Menorah work, however, continued unabated through summer schools and faculty councils, in addition to the Menorah Journal. The Intercollegiate was broadened in 1929 into the Menorah Association.

The Menorah Journal of Henry Hurwitz always maintained its independence and its freedom of thought as an American-Jewish non-Zionist publication. Henry Hurwitz was not a man you could buy, bribe or frighten. Compromise was not a feature of his spiritual constitution. American Jewry was an end in itself—not a means to an end, to serve and support the elite of the “Jewish homeland.” In 1958, Hurwitz told a session of the American Council for Judaism that there was a need today for a “Jewish scholarship with a new perspective in the light of modern historic research.”

In 1959, Hurwitz drew together a group of scholars and writers to form the Menorah Collegium “to provide Jewish knowledge upon which an enlightened modern Jewish allegiance can be based.” He chose scholars not merely for technical competence in their own fields, but for their broad spiritual outlook and devotion to Judaism. The Collegium consisted of Professor Moses Hadas, a master in both Greek and Hebrew fields; Professor Hans Kohn of the College of the City of New York, and probably the greatest living authority on nationalism; Professor Stanley Rypins of Brooklyn College, an authority on the Bible; Professor Leo. W. Schwarz of the University of Iowa; Dr. Cecil Roth of Oxford University; Dr. J. L. Teicher of Cambridge University; and Marvin Lowenthal, historian of German Jewry and author of several books. This fine intellectual collegium was presided over by Henry Hurwitz. They were going to do research work in their respective fields. The general aim of the Collegium was to review the entire course of Jewish history and thought, and to present it afresh in the light of modern scientific findings and the spiritual needs of our time. The underlying principle was that Judaism had nothing to do with political nationalism, and that it ought to feel perfectly at home in America. The Menorah Journal was naturally to serve the Collegium as its mouthpiece.

Friends and admirers of Henry Hurwtiz were collecting a special fund to make it possible for him to carry on his lifework. But the “fundamentalist-Zionists were taking good care to cultivate the opposite”—to destroy Hurwitz and his lifework! A few months before he died, Henry Hurwitz wrote to me about his persecutors in a rather optimistic and hopeful spirit:

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 and The Menorah Journal from their beneficiary agencies. The miracle is, in a way, that Menorah is still alive. Of 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 wealthy organization to take us over. Our financial problems would then be solved. And our freedom—that is, our true life—dissolved. So 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.

Henry Hurwitz’s courage to carry on in the face of adversity became second nature. It became synonymous with serving Judaism versus becoming a satellite of the offensive “Jewish” nationalists. In the pre-Israel days, Jewish Welfare Boards were independent institutions, and, while they would not think, then, of contributing to any Zionist political causes, they always gladly supported American-Jewish cultural movements. Thus, I recall that when I was superintendent in the 1920’s of the Jewish Educational Society in San Francisco (an organization supported by the San Francisco Federation of Jewish Charities), the Menorah Journal came in for a handsome annual allowance in the appropriations allocated to American-Jewish cultural organizations. Many other Federations of Jewish Charities all over the country did the same thing. But with the conquest of the communal welfare organizations by the “Jewish” nationalists and their satellites and dupes, bigotry took over the direction of the funds. Said Henry Hurwitz in the Autumn–Winter issue, 1959, of the Menorah Journal:

This bigotry strikes beyond one old established independent organization and its magazine, which have perhaps rendered some service to Judaism in America through more than half a century. This bigotry poisons the air of Jewish communal life in America. It has corroded Jewish communal standards. It makes a cruel travesty of any “Jewish Community” in America. It tries to suppress within its own bailiwick the basic American principles of free speech and free press. It penalizes honest analysis, reasoned criticism of the words and acts of parochial leaders who control the Jewish public tax-exempt philanthropic funds, and hence have the power to enrich favorite organizations while starving others that do not bend the knees.

In Israel itself there is on the whole freedom of speech and press. But here in the United States no criticism whatever of the Israeli Government, no discussion of crucial Israeli questions worthy of the name discussion, is tolerated by the parochial leaders. Thus, they actually hinder here a rational long-view consideration of the best interests of the people of Israel themselves.

Moreover, as is well known, a very large proportion of the supposedly voluntary philanthropic donations are extracted from business and professional men on threats of punitive economic and social sanctions. This must be described as what it is—a species of terrorism. Such terrorism has become a most effective technique in large Jewish fund-raising.

The loss of William Zukerman and Henry Hurwitz in one year was an irreparable blow to the large but passive body of integrated American Jews. An honorable and rare, fine platform, an open forum, whose voices reached the intelligent and independent Jews of America (and many interested Gentiles), was suddenly silenced with the death of the Jewish Newsletter and the Menorah Journal. This terrible loss was naturally felt very deeply by the American Council for Judaism. William Zukerman and Henry Hurwitz did not work directly for the Council. Nor were they financially supported in any direct way by the Council as an organization. But a good many members of the American Council for Judaism regarded these two men and their magazines very sympathetically indeed.

The arid soil of the Jewish world today with its emphasis on militant, boisterous, depraved nationalism does not produce Zukermans and Hurwitzes. And if there is one in a big city and two in a whole country, who would care to subject his health and nervous system to the inhuman and merciless battering and slandering by the self-appointed and self-righteous professional “Jewish” nationalists?

There has been a great void in Jewish public life since the death of Zukerman and Hurwitz in 1961. The American Council for Judaism, somehow, must be instrumental in helping to fill this terrible and tragic void. There must be a new open forum for Jewish news and reviews, untainted in any way, directly or indirectly, with Zionist propaganda and bias. There must also be a mouthpiece for completely free and independent cultural writers such as the scholars who formed the Menorah Collegium. The American Council for Judaism bears a great moral duty to solve this problem. Otherwise, the other side will go on creating millions of schizophrenic Jews by default.

Ihud Association for Jewish-Arab Rapprochement. Ner, Its Hebrew Magazine in Jerusalem, Israel. Professor Martin Buber and “Reb Binyomin.”

By now we are fairly well acquainted with what Ihud in Israel stands for. We are also acquainted with its organ Ner, the Hebrew periodical published in Jerusalem. I shall mention here just two of the cofounders of Ihud in old Palestine alongside Dr. Judah L. Magnes, who inspired its organization: Martin Buber, Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and “Reb Binyomin,” long-time editor of Ner, who died in December, 1957.

I have not as yet read in the “Jewish” nationalist press that Ihud members are “assimilationists,” though Dr. Magnes was called “assimilationist” by one of the most prominent leaders of political Zionism, Schmarya Levin. I am sure, however, that in Israel Ihud members are considered self-haters, renegades and crackpots. I am also sure that tirades of abuse pour over their heads because of their sheer humanity and decency and true Jewishness.

We already have read Ihud’s representations, in 1946, before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, and other statements it made through Ner. Let me give here a crucial speech delivered by Professor Buber in New York a few years ago that touches on the essence, the core, of his opposition (also Ihud’s and, I daresay, the American Council for Judaism’s, although he did not, of course, have them in mind) to “Jewish” nationalism. He had the courage to touch on fundamentals in his public testamental address in New York before returning to Jerusalem. Here is revealed a true “old-fashioned” Jew, a real old-timer Zionist, with whom everybody, including the Arabs, could live in peace, harmony and fraternity. The Jewish Newsletter of June 2nd, 1958, gave the address in full; I give only the essence of it here:

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 [Jewish] nationalism would not go the way of all the others—beginning with a great hope and then deteriorating, decaying, becoming collective egoism, even daring, like Mussolini, to call itself a sacro egoismo, as if a collective egoism could be more sacred than the egoism of any individual.…

None of us young men of that time thought about mere survival, and no one thought about historical rights. We had to go back to Palestine in order to determine the contents and the forms of our own life, not for our own sake, but for that hope which the Prophets called Zion.…

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 representatives of Colonialism and Imperialism? This discrepancy between aims and means, between the goal and the way to achieve it, divided the Zionists into people who wanted to get from the Great Powers particular political concessions, and people, mostly young men, some of them my friends, who simply wanted to be allowed to work in Palestine together with their neighbors, for Palestine and for the future.

What was then begun in Palestine by the people called Chalutzim [pioneers] was a kind of work the like of which I do not know in history. The people who went to Palestine, went there because they could not find meaning in and fulfillment of their lives in any other place. This great work that went on by selected and devoted persons, was the work of building not a political State, but a great human collective community, with their neighbors helping them and being helped by them, and together developing a common political expression in which they and we could find fulfillment. The evolutionary collective action could not always be carried out in perfect peace with the Arabs, but in general it was based on good neighborly relations between a Jewish village and a neighboring Arab village, between Jews and their neighbors.…

Effects of Hitlerism. This organic phase of the settlement in Palestine went on till the days of Hitler. It was Hitler who brought Jewish masses to Palestine, not selected people who felt that here they must fulfill their lives and prepare the future. So, selective organic development was replaced by mass immigration and the indispensable necessity to find political force for its security.… 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 was the situation that we had to fight.…

This was the hour when my great friend, the late Judah Leib Magnes, and I and other friends felt that we must state clearly our own proposals.… We of the Ihud made two suggestions, either one of which could have led the Jews and the Arabs not only to co-existence, which was not enough in that critical hour, but to cooperation. The one was the plan for a Bi-national State; the other was a plan for Federation.… I am inclined to think that the plan which now has a future is the one for a Federation of which the State of Israel would be a member with equal rights and with a Magna Carta making its autonomous national civilization secure. This would make possible the economic development of the Near East through which the Near East could make a great and essential contribution to the future of mankind.…

Things have happened otherwise, as we know. We made the wrong political entry into Palestine through Partition, followed by the war of the Arabs against Partition and against Israel.… The question of the Arab refugees is decisive for Israel; yet, so far as I can see, there is no Israel-Arab policy at all.…”

What Professor Buber—humanitarian, philosopher, author and great Jew—said in New York in 1958 (a speech listened to by more ACJ members and friends than Zionists) is today the core of the issue against the “Jewish” nationalists, who now want to conquer and govern the Diaspora Jews, not only those in Israel. All else is an exposition of the thesis revealed by Professor Buber.

And just a few words about the brave and daring “Reb Binyomin” of Ner, the Hebrew monthly of Ihud. As editor of Ner, “Reb Binyomin” dared write and speak out as a universalist, one-world progressive, from a Jewish-prophetic point of view. And he did it in jingoist Israel! He openly stretched out his brotherly arm to the Arabs of Palestine, saying, “If we have not forgotten Israel during 2000 years, why should it be supposed that the Palestinian Arabs may be induced to forget their old homes and homeland within eight years?”

Only those who read Ner regularly, as I do—it is a pocket-size, pithy magazine—can appreciate what great and fine Jews stand behind it and Ihud. They are truly civilized Jews of whom we all can be proud. Ihud is naturally a small organization—small in numbers—but it is tremendous in quality. It may still have something to do with helping lead Israel out of its wilderness of depraved nationalism.

Nationalists and Nationalists. Normal and Healthy Integration, or “Jewell” Nationalistic Schizophrenia, in Both Western and Communist Countries.

A Negro Methodist Minister, Rev. Hamilton Boswell, interviewed by a San Francisco newspaper about the disturbing internal problems Negro leaders experience in connection with the slow realization of full emancipation and integration, remarked: “Some Negroes become Negro nationalists, demanding more, instead of less segregation!… There is no doubt that some Negro attitudes are as dangerous to the cause of equality as the prejudices of the bigots.… Growing up always means trouble.” (San Francisco News, June 25, 1956.)

This observation points out the twisted abnormalities that sometimes go with the process of integration and emancipation. On the other hand, there was the case of a 1956 Hungarian refugee who escaped from his beloved homeland and found refuge in the United States. In explaining to the New York Times his state of mind and heart a year after he had settled in his adopted country, he said: “At the very instant I left Hungary, I irrevocably ceased to be a person playing an active part in the history of Hungary.… My role now is to be a good citizen of my new country, the U.S.A.” This is the attitude of a normal, unwarped individual in the process of modern civilized integration.

The London Jewish Chronicle of March 7, 1958, described a “stormy Zionist meeting” in London at which a debate on Israel and the Diaspora took place. One of the English Jews, a Mr. Janus Cohen,

delivered an introductory talk on “The Duties of Israel to the Diaspora.” It was dangerous and unrealistic, he declared, to talk about the “liquidation of the Diaspora.” The Diaspora would remain.… His views were wholeheartedly supported by several other speakers from Britain.… The atmosphere, however, became much more lively, though not necessarily more friendly, when next, Mr. Moshe Shamir of Israel spoke on “What Can Israeli Youth Give to the Youth of the Diaspora?” The speaker delivered what amounted to a long harangue against all those Zionists who, he said, partook of the fleshpots of Europe instead of settling in Israel themselves.… Only one kind of Zionist has the right to call himself a Zionist—he who himself settles in Israel! The approach of those Zionists who only contribute money and do not themselves settle in Israel is sentimental, sometimes not too clear, and very often not too honest.… There is no other “Mitzvah” (precept) for Jews today, religious or non-religious, than Aliyah, he declared. The first commandment of Judaism today must be “Thou Shalt Return to Israel!”

“Thou Shalt Return to Israel!” has now replaced the Ten Commandments. Zionists treat any Jew who chooses to live in the Diaspora as a traitor and outcast. “Hear—Oh, Israel, Israel is our destiny, Israel is one” has become a second nationalist Shema.

Most young Israelis regard themselves as Israeli citizens only, not as Jews. They look upon Jews in general with contempt. I know of a typical case: An Israeli student at the University of California in Berkeley appeared before the treasurer of a Jewish Students Loan Society. The first standard question asked of the young Israeli was: Are you a Jew? “No! I am not a Jew, I am an Israeli!” exclaimed the elite of the “chosen people” with a disdainful air, as if to say, What have I got to do with Diaspora Jews who partake of the fleshpots of America instead of settling in Israel, the “Jewish homeland”? This, of course, is a twisted “Jewish” nationalist’s mentality.

In contrast to that pathetic and neurotic Israeli, here is a typical normally adjusted American citizen who went through, or whose parents went through, the process of modern, civilized integration into a new community, without twists and scars—Dr. George A. Lundberg, Professor of Sociology. I quote here a passage from an address by the noted Professor on “Pluralism, Integration and Assimilation in America.”

Although I was born in the U.S.A., I was reared in the culture of a foreign land, and in a church which happens also to be the State Church of the land of my ancestors. I still speak the language and enjoy many cultural bonds with that country. But, if any civil, military, or religious official of that country should ever advance the doctrine that by virtue of my past and present associations, I am in any measure committed to the national or international policies or interests of that country, I should certainly take every action possible to repudiate that claim. I believe that the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens of every cultural background and religious faith would do likewise, especially if their attention is called to the implications of a contrary view.” (The American Council for Judaism’s Council News, April 27, 1957)

In contrast, a neurotic nationalist like Ben Gurion, obsessed with the delusion of a “chosen people” complex, could allow himself to “make an appeal to Jewish parents in the U.S. to send their children to Israel for permanent settlement.… Even if they [the parents] decline to help us, we will bring the youth to Israel.” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency report as quoted in the American Council for Judaism’s Council News of August 31, 1949.)

This is an abnormal and twisted conception by an addict of “superior-race” jingoism who arrogates to himself undue “sacred rights.” This is the kind of twisted and dangerous nationalism that brought about the policy of frightfulness in old Germany that was transmitted to Hitler and his followers. Said the German nationalist General Count von Haesler in 1893: “It is necessary that our [national] civilization build its temple on mountains of corpses, on an ocean of tears, and on the death cries of men without number.” (T. H. Tetens, The New Germany and the Old Nazis [New York: Random House, 1961], p. 108.)

General von Haesler’s concept of depraved and predatory nationalism is only a few steps more neurotic than what Professor Toynbee says of nationalism: “Nationalism, German or other, has no aim beyond the narrow-hearted aim of pursuing one’s own national self-interest at the expense of the rest of the human race” (America and the World Revolution [Oxford University Press, 1962], p. 96).

Contrast vis-a-vis the deluded nationalists the elected Chief of the Zulus, Albert John Luthuli, of the Union of South Africa, who had been exiled to his farm in the sugar-growing belt of Natal. Said Luthuli on the occasion of his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo: “South Africa is a museum piece in our time, a hangover from the dark past of mankind, a relic of an age which everywhere else is dead or dying. Here the cult of race superiority is worshipped like a God.”

The civilized Zulu Chief Luthuli understands perfectly what our new one-world national integration means, as against the philosophy of rapacious “superior races” and superior “chosen peoples.”

The question of normal and natural integration of the Jews of the world into their respective adopted lands, like all other immigrants and refugees of whatever nation or race, has absolutely nothing to do with the real and imaginary issues between the Western and the Communist worlds. It transcends all ideologies as far as honest-to-goodness integration is concerned. In the Communist world, the integration of all their citizens into one community, one nation, is as pivotal and fundamental as in Western countries. Jewish leaders in the Communist countries see it all clearly. They have stated their points of view as integrated nationals of their countries on many occasions, in spite of the fact that the “Jewish” nationalists and the professional Jews do not believe them or care to understand them.

Said Orthodox Rabbi Moses Rosen, Chief Rabbi of Rumania (the first spiritual leader to be officially permitted to come from behind the Iron Curtain, on a tour sponsored by New York’s Yeshiva University), in San Francisco on December 24, 1961:

“Jews in Rumania, although living under an ideology which conflicts with their religion, nevertheless, enjoy more religious and political freedom than at any other time in recent history.… The Communist Government does require strict allegiance to the State.… The Jew in Rumania has equal rights politically.” The Rabbi added that he is a member of the Rumanian Parliament. (San Francisco Chronicle, December 25, 1961)

In the same month of December, 1961,

about 180 delegates representing some 30 communities in Poland attended the Fourth National Conference organized by the Cultural and Social Union of Jews in Poland. Welcoming the conference in the name of the Communist Government, the Deputy Minister for Home Affairs … declared that the Polish Government was determined to see to it that the free development of Jewish cultural life and institutions, including education, should go on undisturbed.… The Polish Government, he assured the delegates, would fight against every appearance of discrimination and anti-Semitism.… The main item was formulated by the chairman, Mr. Smolar, namely, the task of binding still closer the life and activities of the Jewish minority in the country with Socialist Poland … to increase the social consciousness of the Jewish man and woman, and strengthen their effort and contribution to the building of the new Poland.” (London Jewish Chronicle, December 15, 1961)

At an exhibition in Paris of the revolt of the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis, in November, 1961, a reception was tendered in honor of General David Dragunski of the Soviet Union. The General spoke at the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr, and at a press conference, as a Jew to Jews:

“There are hundreds of Jewish generals and admirals in the Soviet Union.… Jews in Russia prefer to read Russian, just as Jews in France read more French literature and newspapers than Yiddish.… All Jews living outside Israel were doomed to assimilate—and this applied both to the East and the West. This was an unavoidable and natural development.” Of immigration to Israel, the General said: “If a referendum were held among Jews of the Soviet Union there would hardly be a hundred old persons, still living in the past, who would express a wish to leave. The younger ones—engineers, doctors, and others—have no intention nor cause to emigrate. But, should there be someone wishing to leave, he will not be held back. For us, the Soviet Union, where every inch of earth has drunk our blood, is our homeland. And, incidentally, why do the Jews of France, Belgium, America, and other Western countries not go to Israel? Just as they have no inclination to exchange Paris for Haifa, or some other town in Israel, so Soviet Jews have no wish whatsoever to leave Moscow or Leningrad for some kibbutz in Israel.… We have a brotherly sympathy for the nation of Israel which we do not confuse with Mr. Ben Gurion.” (London Jewish Chronicle, December 1, 1961)

In face of the above, how ridiculous and spurious was Ben Gurion’s renewed empty propaganda talk about “preparations” in Israel for the day “when the gates of the Soviet Union are opened … and we shall witness the coming of a stream of hundreds of thousands of Jews who for many years have been confined and cut off from world Jewry and denied Jewish education.” (London Jewish Chronicle, November 2, 1962.)

The statement made by General Dragunski is well confirmed by the fact that in July, 1962, Benjamin E. Dymshitz, a Jewish engineer in Soviet Russia, was appointed to the key post of Chairman of the State Planning Committee of Soviet Russia. He was also named Deputy Premier to the Supreme Soviet, the national parliament. This is the old liberal principle and philosophy of emancipation that goes with integration: “Carrière ouverte aux talents.” But—loyal talents.

The New York Times of November 25, 1962 quoted the Moscow News (English-language weekly) as saying: “Conditions for the Jewish religion are the same as for the [Greek] Orthodox, Moslem and Catholic faiths.” It also said: “7,500 Jews were elected deputies to local Government bodies last year.”

The London Jewish Chronicle of December 20, 1962, reported that “of the 132 people so far nominated by a special Soviet committee to receive the Lenin Prize in 1963, 74 are Soviet Jews.”

There is one thing common to Soviet Russia and the Western world—they are both resolved to do away entirely with all the relics of ethnic political minorities that professional idealists and fanatics prolong artificially under one banner or another. Integration, which alone leads to human brotherhood, is a universal idea today. Political segregation by minorities is condemned. Thus the New York Times of January 19, 1963, reported from Moscow:

Russians Engulf Ethnic Enclaves. Jewish and Other Minority Units Losing Identity … Newly published census figures show that many ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union now make up only a small percentage of the population in autonomous areas that have been set aside for them.…

A volume of statistics on the 1959 population discloses in particular that 14,000 Jews account for only 8.8 per cent of the total population of the so-called Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan, established in eastern Siberia 30 years ago.… In several other autonomous regions and republics indigenous groups account for only 10 to 20 per cent of the population, with Russians usually making up the majority.… Ethnic mixing in recent decades apparently is the basis of predictions that nations will draw still closer together and that complete unity will be achieved.…

The New York Times of August 1, 1964, published a report from its United Nations correspondent at Geneva, saying:

Soviet Is Accused by Israel in United Nations. Israel told the United Nations that the Soviet Union was making a “systematic attempt” to dispossess its Jews of their “religious, cultural and linguistic heritage.” … V. N. Bendryshev of the Soviet Union interrupted the Israeli delegate to protest against what he called the “slanderous” attack on his country.

The rabbis of the United States (with a few noble exceptions), always the satellites of the Zionist-Israel machine, practically declared war on Soviet Russia:

Prayer Day Is Set for Soviet Jews. Rosh ha-Shanah (1964)—Marking the Jewish New Year 5725—Talks Here to Stress “Tragic” Plight. The New York Board of Rabbis designated the first day of Rosh ha-Shanah as a special Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Jews living in the Soviet Union. Rabbi Max Schenk, president of the board, also appealed to the leaders of other faiths “to raise their voices to protest the discrimination practiced against Jews and Judaism in the Soviet Union!” In a proclamation, the board also called on Jews to inaugurate the entire year of 5725 as a year of remembrance and dedication to the alleviation of the plight of three million Jews in the Soviet Union. (New York Times, August 20, 1964)

All this does not jibe with the simultaneous propaganda emanating from Jerusalem that “Israel bids for better Soviet ties”; that Prime Minister Levi Eshkol is “making every endeavor to find a path of understanding” to the Soviet.

It must, therefore, be infuriating and dangerously insulting to the Soviet Government and people when rabid and irresponsible “Jewish” nationalists in Israel and their puppets in the United States play with dynamite by belligerently confounding the general drive in Soviet Russia against all religions (“religion is the opium of the people”)—right or wrong—or against segregated ethnic nationalism with anti-Semitic drives against Jews exclusively; and when they brand as anti-Semitism charges against speculators in gold and foreign currency who happen to be Jews; or charges that Israeli diplomats in Moscow used synogagues to spread “Zionist-Nationalist literature that is alien to the minds and hearts of the Soviet populace” and to collect espionage information. Anti-Semitism denotes persecution and discrimination, denial of human rights. General Dragunski’s remarks certainly disprove such irresponsible accusations. Thus:

Mr. Georgi M. Korniyenko, Counselor of the Soviet Embassy, listed figures to challenge reports in American newspapers that anti-Semitism was on the rise in the Soviet Union.… There are 2,268,000 Jews in the Soviet Union, comprising 1.1 per cent of the population. He asserted that 3.2 per cent of all undergraduates in institutions of higher education were Jews.… Jews make up 15.7 per cent of writers and journalists, 10.4 per cent of jurists and 7 per cent of art workers (actors, artists, musicians, sculptors).…

As to “the presence of a large number of Jews in a series of speculation trials that began in the summer of 1961, [while it] is interpreted in some circles as Government inspired anti-Semitic discrimination, most of the trials have taken place in large Jewish population centers, and most observers here [in Moscow] believe the involvement of Jews reflects their traditional occupations in trade and business rather than selective bias.” (New York Times, October 11, 1962)

And as to the charges that Israeli diplomats in Moscow were using synagogues to spread Zionist literature, and so on, let us read what Jewish leaders in the Soviet Union had to say about it. Again I draw on the reports of the New York Times and of the London Jewish Chronicle.

The New York Times of February 23, 1962 reported that

the chief rabbi of Moscow and a dozen lay leaders were imploring the congregation in a synagogue meeting to avoid contacts with Israeli diplomats.… The speakers exhorted the congregation to treat the synagogue as a house of worship and not as a club. “The synagogue is not being used for the purpose for which it was intended” was the keynote at the meeting, called to discuss an article published in Trud, the Soviet labor union newspaper. The article charged that Israeli diplomats were using synagogues “to meet with people they needed, to give instructions and orders, to receive espionage and slanderous information.”

The next day, in a moderately furnished office on busy Kirov street Aaron Vergelis, editor of “Sovietish Heimland,” spoke confidently of the future of his six-month-old Yiddish literary magazine.… Mr. Vergelis laughed off suggestions that there might be a resurgence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.… Unfortunately, there are Jews among speculators, and evidently some Jews have passed espionage information to Israelis, the editor said. “Such cases are a disgrace to Soviet Jews. But, it is not only Jews who are involved in such business. Members of other nationalities are also being accused of crimes and their trials are reported.”

In a long interview by the special correspondent of the London Jewish Chronicle, Aaron Vergelis said that “he believed that what the paper ‘Trud’ wrote was true, and by way of explanation he added in Yiddish: ‘Teierinker, m’tor azons nisht tuun’ (My dear, such things must never be done).”

Aaron Vergelis led a delegation of seventeen prominent Soviet writers, professors and academicians to the United States. He hoped to be given the opportunity to clear up the “false and slanderous” protests against Soviet treatment of Jews. American newspapers were full of inspired propaganda against Russia, which was accused of denying the Jews human rights. Newspaper headlines screamed about “The Plight of Russian Jewry.” Priests—not only rabbis—were made to protest against “Russia Persecuting Jews.” From Geneva the New York Times correspondent reported that “Israel told the United Nations today [July 5, 1963] that ‘virulent anti-Semitism’ was being promoted in the Soviet Union by Moscow’s denial of human rights to the 3,000,000 Jews on Soviet soil.” So in November, 1963, Mr. Vergelis attempted to do his part as an integrated citizen of the USSR, and as a Jew, and came to the United States to confer with fellow Jews. But the tone for the “reception” tendered Vergelis was set by the Zionist “Presidents’ Conference,” which saw to it that Vergelis was “under fire in New York” and “given a deep-freeze treatment.”

Mr. Vergelis, appearing somewhat angry at this abrupt welcome to America, said: “Of course we are aware that a campaign is being waged in America concerning the so-called Jewish question in Russia. My belief is that the common people of America are not participating in the campaign which has been arranged by anti-Soviet Jews.… As far as Jewish life in the Soviet Union is concerned, I can describe it in a single sentence—a normal life of the people in Soviet society.” (London Jewish Chronicle, November 15, 1963)

In short, Jews behind the Iron Curtain are integrated citizens of their countries. Some of them will meet to discuss their old common Jewish literary, cultural and social interests. Some, very few, go to their synagogues to pray. But the younger generation have become fully integrated. They have a stake in their country, and are no longer an alienated minority, as the Zionists would have them be. No one in the world, not even the elite of the “Jewish homeland,” has any moral or human right to try to subvert Russian Jewry into “Jewish” nationalism, any more than he has the right to do so in America.

In this light it sounded ridiculous and idiotic when a Dr. Nahum Goldmann, in speaking about Soviet Russia, said: “It does not deny Jews equal rights, but this [integrated] nationalism denies Jews the ability to live distinct Jewish lives.… The 3,000,000 Soviet Jews … hold positions as equal citizens, but are denied de facto the possibility of maintaining their Jewish character and life.” (New York Times, March 12, 1962.)

On November 22, 1963, Dr. Goldmann told the London Jewish Chronicle correspondent in New York: “The problem is not a purely religious one.… It is primarily of ‘Jewish culture’ and the recognition by the Soviet Union of the Jews as a Jewish minority with all the privileges that it entails.”

Does Dr. Goldmann really imagine that Soviet. Russia should help him establish “Jewish” nationalist Hebrew schools in order to prepare Russian Jewry for Aliyah to Israel?

Yes, “the Soviet Union does not deny Jews equal rights,” but because it would not allow inside its borders any “Zionist-nationalist literature” or “Jewish education for Aliyah,” the Zionist propaganda machine organized a violent campaign against Soviet Russia in April, 1964. Twenty-four Jewish groups—practically all Zionist organizations—met in Washington to “convey to the nation and to the world their concern over the fate of Soviet Jews.” The machine succeeded in getting as speakers Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg and Senator Jacob K. Javits, who joined hands with Dr. Joachim Prinz, President of the American Jewish Congress, which is the other side of the American Zionist organization coin. And, of course, they met with President Johnson and with Secretary of State Dean Rusk to discuss “Soviet Anti-Semitism.”

Khrushchev, when he headed the Soviet state, protested at a joint meeting of the Communist party and leading authors and artists against the “campaign of calumny directed against the Soviet Union over the situation of Russian Jewry.” He said aloud that “Jews are not oppressed in Soviet Russia; that there is no Jewish question in Soviet Russia.” Pravda, the Communist daily, printed Khrushchev’s speeches in full. Nothing doing; the noisy and irresponsible Jewish leadership, brainwashed by the “Jewish” nationalist machine, keeps on trifling with the giant bear until, incensed, he may shock them all into a tragic realization by hindsight that foolish little children should be seen but not heard all the time. Instead of patiently saying, as Khrushchev did in Cairo on May 11, 1964, that “we support the just demands of the Arab countries that Israel should implement the United Nations resolutions in Palestine” [the resolutions that provide for a choice of repatriation or financial compensation to Palestinians who lost their property or homes in the war that followed the creation of Israel in 1948], Russia may, in anger and hopelessness, let the Arabs have some real atomic weapons, and thus let the frenzied “Jewish” nationalists bring about the apocalyptic day of reckoning if they cannot have their nationalistic lollipop.

The London Jewish Chronicle of April 17, 1964, quoted an appeal “to keep ourselves as fully informed as possible about the position of the Jews in the Soviet Union” by Rev. W. W. Simpson, General Secretary of the Council of Christians and Jews, on the B.B.C. program “Christian Outlook.” “Discussing the question of anti-Semitism in Russia, Mr. Simpson said that ‘the temptation should be avoided of indulging in a campaign of hatred against the Soviet Union, which can help neither ourselves nor, much more important, the Jews.’” A lone voice in the wilderness, alas.

Ben Gurion’s Theocratic and Benighted Israel.

Today, sixteen years after its establishment, Ben Gurion’s (and for that matter, now Eshkol’s) Israel is still a theocratic and benighted state. To achieve the objectives of his political program, Ben Gurion could not allow himself to share the Government of Israel with independent and progressive Israelis who might question or oppose his authoritarian political and military philosophy. Ben Gurion found it so much easier to form coalition governments with the obscure and anachronistic clericalists. By letting them enjoy their “religious” and “spiritual” rabbinic authority and exclusive jurisdiction over the life of the liberal and progressive people of Israel, Ben Gurion got, in return, a free hand in other matters.

The Governments of Ben Gurion and Eshkol are odd shotgun marriages whose mutually repulsive bedfellows are the “ruling” party Mapai (counting 34.4 per cent of the total vote) and two out of the three vocal clericalist parties (the three clericalist parties in all make up 15.4 per cent of the total vote). Through this marriage of convenience, the clericalists have a stranglehold on Israel by means of their coercive legislation in areas of faith and conscience, and increasingly in other fields. They have sole control in matters of personal status such as marriage, divorce, burial, some aspects of inheritance, the Sabbath, kosher foods, and who is a Jew and who is not in Israel. Only the religious courts can handle such things. And if interfered with in any way, they can bring down the Government by their withdrawal any day.

The Government of Ben Gurion (and of Eshkol, for that matter) is an “impossible mixture of secular theocracy” in which problems of race purity, race supremacy, religion, obscurantism and medievalism reign supreme. But patriarch Ben Gurion traded away the liberties of the progressive Israelis in return for a free hand in his authoritarian democracy, foreign policy and “national defense.” It is a medieval alliance of temporal and “religious” powers, out of tune with our post–World Wars ideals and ideas.

There never was much love lost between Ben Gurion and his clerical mates. The National Religious party charged Ben Gurion with hating religious Jews; that while he hated political opposition, his hatred of religious Jews seemed more virulent. The medieval clericalists, having reared their heads in the “Jewish state” after retreating all along in modern times, now insist on their “authoritative, authentic, infallible fundamentalism.” They want their Schulchan Aruch (Orthodox code of laws) and the Talmud to be the law of the land. They deplore the use of West European legal systems—the “multiplicity of legal systems prevailing in Israel today, when the Bible and the Talmud offer an inexhaustible supply of a valid, meaningful body of legal principles.”

The people of Israel roar their protests, and Ben Gurion may detest the clericalists, but who cares as long as the Orthodox clericalists say amen to Ben Gurion’s political orientations—a “Jewish” military bastion that can always attack and repel its Arab neighbors while obdurately insisting on the status quo.

Ihud’s Ner described the Orthodox clericalists and the image of their “God of Israel” in the following:

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,” that is how things were until the true form of Zionism was distorted through the establishment of the State of Israel by blood and fire. Orthodox Jewry saw a great light, a blinding, deceiving light. It turned its back on all the warnings that the prophets and the sages and their successors had uttered against the way of the sword. The Rabbinate and militarism almost became one. Chaplains, “Orthodox” companies, the special prayers for the success of the parachutists—a clerical shell hardened, petrified by the loss of its ability to see that man was created in God’s image, that it was at God that the “Orthodox” soldier was aiming his lethal weapon; petrified also by the loss of its power to cogitate, to think, to seek and strive for a way of settling conflicts between peoples in ways worthy of the Jew that believes in a heavenly father who has created all men brothers.

Those “Orthodox” are the ones who most love the army; militarism, strong arm methods, the thorough blending of the thinking of Clausewitz and Moltke with the rules of the Shulchan Aruch.

The Orthodox reached the acme in ceremony at which a synagogue was dedicated in the religious Nahal Cooperative settlement.… And this is how the military correspondent of “Ha-Aretz” [daily Hebrew newspaper] describes it to us: “The little procession passes between two rows of riflemen. The Scroll of the Law [the Torah] that is destined for the synagogue is borne under a sky-blue canopy held by bayonets. A religious officer of the Nahal staff is carrying the Scroll with the chief rabbi of the army, Colonel Goren, marching on his right. The army’s chief cantor, First Lieutenant Weinberg, officiates. Inside a spacious tent, a soldier reads the weekly portion … The chief rabbi of the army escorting a Scroll of the Law under a canopy held by bayonets.” (Ner, Jerusalem, December, 1955)

Let us get a bit acquainted with the clericalists of Israel to see what the “guardians of Judaism,” the representatives of the “people of the Book” and the “light of the nations” are engrossed in, in the sixties of the twentieth century, in our post–World Wars, atomic age. Perhaps, after all, we should envy their “full Jewish life.”

Seven-year-old Yossele Schumacher was brought by his Orthodox parents from Russia to Israel in 1957. While the father was looking for a job as ladies’ tailor, and the mother sought proper housing, Yossele lived with his mother’s parents. Later, when Yossele’s parents found a home and came to ask for their little son, the grandfather, Rabbi Nahman Strakes, decided that he must “save” Yossele. He refused to release the boy, saying that if he was turned over to his father and mother, “he would not get the proper and true Orthodox Jewish education.” In fact, he sent Yossele into hiding because he felt that the parents were unfit to assure a traditional Jewish upbringing for his grandson. The mother intended to send her boy to the state religious school where the language of instruction was Hebrew, but the grandfather insisted that his grandson had to go to an ultra-Orthodox Heder, where only religious subjects were taught, and where instruction was in Yiddish “because Hebrew must not be defiled for everyday ordinary conversation and study, and must remain the language of ritual only, the ‘Lashon Hakodesh’ (the holy language).”

The boy vanished. Unscrupulous fanatics and religious zealots collaborated with the medieval grandfather, and the late Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Zvi Pessach Frank, gave his blessing to the kidnaping by issuing an injunction that it was a Mitzvah (religious precept) to help keep the mother from finding her child.

The medieval plot worked for two and a half years. Yossele was taken on a long odyssey through Israel, Switzerland, France, Britain and the United States, disguised as a girl, with his hair dyed, during the early part of the religious kidnaping. He was said to have traveled with a woman who had been converted to Orthodox Judaism from Catholicism. He was always kept in homes of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Thus Rabbi M. Soloweitsik, head of the Lucerne, Switzerland, Yeshiva was accused by Yossele’s parents of hiding the child in his home. In April, 1960, Yossele was taken to London by his uncle Shalom Strakes—a twenty-four-year-old Jewish teacher of religion. The uncle was caught by the British authorities and put in jail, but the fanatical Orthodox gang, collaborating with the plotters in Jerusalem, succeeded in shipping Yossele elsewhere before the British police could lay their hands on the child. Yossele was brought to the United States in a roundabout way, via San Francisco, and was finally discovered in the home of an Orthodox rabbi, Zanzil Gertner, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, through leads provided by the ubiquitous Israeli intelligence. Yossele was turned over to the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Yossele was taken back to Israel by his mother. The grandfather, scot-free and aggressive as ever, still visits Yossele’s home, and still importunes the parents that his grandson must attend a Heder for his “Jewish education.” The parents, this time, have their own way—the boy goes to an Orthodox state school.

This is a chapter that might better have been written in the Middle Ages. Only in Ben Gurion’s theocratic state of Israel could such an audacious and barbarous act happen in the face of a progressive and civilized population. The Knesset debated Yossele’s affair for two and a half years. The people of Israel demonstrated by carrying placards “DOWN WITH RELIGIOUS COERCION” and “PUT THE KIDNAPPERS ON TRIAL.” No use! Ben Gurion’s clericalists run the life of the people in Israel because they form a part of the Government, the coalition Government of Ben Gurion.

In 1958, one of Ben Gurion’s theocratic coalition governments went on the rocks because of a disagreement over the definition of what constituted a Jew. Ben Gurion’s definition contradicted the traditional rabbinic law. But Ben Gurion would not think of giving up for good the whole caboodle of antiquated medievalists and begin to do business with some of the liberal and civilized parties in Israel. There are at least ten political parties in Israel, and only three of them are Orthodox. Ben Gurion patched up his differences with the clericalists (Eshkol was always helpful to him in this business of making compromises with the Orthodox). The Orthodox won the argument, as they always win in any showdown in Israel.

In October, 1962, bitter bickering raged between the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Religious Affairs in Ben Gurion’s cabinet over an issue about imposing parasitical “Kashrut supervisors” on El Al airliners. (El Al is the state’s international airline.) The clericalist cabinet administrator demanded that all El Al employees be instructed in Kashrut and that violations by them be punished—that dishes and utensils had to be washed in accordance with the medieval rabbinic precepts, and never mind the electric dishwashing machines with their detergents. To the infallible fundamentalists, Schulchan Aruch was the law of the land, and of course the clericalists won again.

The “ingathering of the exiles” brought into Israel Moroccan, Polish, Iraqi, Indian and all sorts of “refugee” Jews from dozens of far-flung countries to help occupy and protect the open spaces taken away from the Arabs. While Ben Gurion himself never drew any line between one kind of Jew and another, his clericalist partners had legally much to say as to who was a full-fledged Jew, and who was not. The darker a Jew was, the more questionable was his racial fitness to be considered a real Jew, his fitness to marry anyone he fell in love with in Israel.

The Indian Jews in particular have been singled out by the clericalists. From time immemorial the Indian Jews called themselves Bene Israel (children of Israel), but before any Israeli rabbi (all rabbis in Israel draw their salaries from Ben Gurion’s theocratic Government) will issue a marriage license to one of the Bene Israel, he will insist on going into the family history as far back as possible. “In July, 1962, 800 delegates of the Bene Israel held a conference in Beersheba to express their indignation at the alleged discrimination against members of the Bene Israel Community in Israel. Some speakers referred to the rabbinical directives as ‘an attempt at spiritual murder’ and compared them with the Nuremberg laws and the Indian caste system.” The London Jewish Chronicle correspondent who reported the above medieval tales from Israel ended up saying: “Although a large section of the Israeli public was against these ‘discriminatory practices,’ which also militated against the Israeli policy of national integration, the Government could do little because it depended on the support of the National Religious Party” (London Jewish Chronicle, June 1, July 6, July 27, 1962).

Persecution of the Bene Israel in the state of Israel goes on without any letup. The London Jewish Chronicle of July 31 and August 7, 1964, reported from Jerusalem that “(some) members of the Bene Israel have been encamped outside the Jewish Agency’s offioes for more than a fortnight, five of whom are on hunger strike.… One of the placards carried by the Jerusalem ‘squatters’ says: ‘We did not persevere in our Judaism for 2,000 years to be subjected to antisemitism in our home.’”

One could write a book about the dark powers of resurgent Orthodox clericalism in Israel, and therefore also in the Diaspora. I shall touch on just a few more illustrations, in order to give a better picture of the regressive life in the “Jewish homeland,” thanks to Ben Gurion’s “necessity” to depend solely on his clericalist partners in his coalition Governments, in order to realize “the endeavors and plans which I have yet to implement.”

Closing quarters of Jerusalem to traffic during the whole day of Sabbath; stoning drivers who want or need to travel on business or to hospitals on Saturdays; barring Kohanim (any men bearing the name Cohen, and that would include Mickey Cohen as well), the ostensible scions of Aaron (brother of Moses), from entering any hospital. The Jerusalem rabbinate declared: “Kohanim would be defiled by entering a hospital building because the mortuary is part of the hospital and the religious law prohibits Kohanim from being under the same roof with deceased persons. The Hadassah–Hebrew University Medical Center met the demands of the Rabbinate and installed a double set of electrically operated doors. One set will shut automatically as the other is opened. The rabbinical authorities accepted this ‘safe’ separation of the mortuary from the hospital.” (New York Times, April 9, 1962.)

A Reform rabbi, Jerome Unger, in theocratic Israel had some strange and unbelievable experiences in trying to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles (Succoth). He searched for a place for his congregation, but all halls and resorts were made unavailable to him because the Orthodox rabbis threatened the owners with withdrawal of their vital kosher certificates. Reported Time magazine of October 26, 1962:

His congregation was relegated to a tabernacle in an empty lot and held services by the light of the worshippers’ automobiles. It took an Israeli Supreme Court ruling to assure rabbi Unger of the town hall for Simchat Torah (Rejoicing of the Law).… Israel is run by a strange partnership of agnostic secularists and letter-of-the-Talmud Orthodox rabbis.… Premier Ben Gurion’s parliamentary coalition is held together with, votes from two religious parties, and he has been unable to prevent Orthodox Judaism from becoming the State religion of a country that is 40 per cent agnostic.

Here is an example where the Jewish Agency anticipates the clericalists’ stand on Reform Judaism and plays its part. The following is a report about “The Jewish Agency Closed to Reform Converts” together with the editorial comment, in the London Jewish Chronicle of August 28, 1964:

Men or women converted to Judaism by Liberal or Reform rabbis in the Western world are not eligible for immigration assistance from the Jewish Agency. In fact, the Agency will not give such assistance to any person who is “halachically” unacceptable to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.… The Agency accepts the criteria of the Israeli Government which, in its turn, is guided by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

The Chronicle editorial comments:

… the fact remains that many who are not Jews according to halacha are Jews as far as Zionism is concerned. Should they be denied the right to assistance given by the Jewish Agency from moneys collected from world Jewry to support the secular and the “national” tasks of the Jewish State? Several million Jews now belong to Reform synagogues, about a third of all the Jews this side of the Soviet border. What would Rabbi Stephen Wise or Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver have said if one of their (Reform) converts had been denied the facilities of the Jewish Agency and rights under the Law of Return?

The Knesset spent considerable time debating heatedly the “serious question” of prohibiting pig-breeding in Israel. God forbid if an Israeli were to eat a ham sandwich, or bacon, or a pork roast. The rabbinate deliberates seriously about Mikvahs (ritual ponds of “purification”), Shechitah (ritual slaughter of animals for kosher food) and Shemoorah (wheat flour used for the unleavened flat bread for Passover Matzo). The wheat and the flour and the baking must be supervised by rabbinic inspectors during the harvesting, milling and baking. They must see to it that leavening does not occur, God forbid, either by rains, swelling of the grains or dampening of the flour, or by too much kneading.

This clerical power apparatus for a “Torah-true” state now wants the re-establishment of the ancient Sanhedrin (supreme religious law-making and law-enforcing body). Said Shlomo Goren, Senior Chaplain of the Israeli army, now Brigadier: “The modern Sanhedrin would be located in Israel. It would fill the vacuum in world Jewish life because of the present lack of an effective rabbinic authority which could issue binding orders and rulings on difficult religious matters.”

On March 18, 1964, the New York Times reporter in Jerusalem had the following extraordinary news item: “Liberals Defeated in Israeli Rabbinate Election. Old-guard ecclesiastics retained control of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel today. Rabbi Itzhak Nissim, 68 years old, was re-elected Sephardi (Oriental) Chief Rabbi. Rabbi Iser J. Unterman, who will be 78 in May, was chosen to fill the Ashkenazi (Occidental) post. A slate approved by the two new chief rabbis and sponsored by the National Religious party won nine of the 10 seats on the Supreme Rabbinical Council.” The Religious Nationalist Front (party) polled only a sixth of the vote at the last elections.

Time magazine of March 27, 1964, had this to say about the defeat of the liberals in Israel: “Religious Jews are a minority in Israel, but there are enough that the Chief Rabbis can keep hotels, restaurants, airlines and ships kosher by threatening to place them off-limits. The choice of Unterman and Nissim means that many of the religious strictures so galling to nonobservant Jews will continue.”

And what does Mr. Levi Eshkol, the present Prime Minister of Israel, have to say about his country’s subjection to the fanatical Orthodox clericalists? “Mr. Eshkol said he was against separation of the Synagogue and the State, and that he believed ‘the status quo regarding religion in Israel’s public life can continue, more or less, for many years’” (London Jewish Chronicle, July 31, 1964).

The “Jewish” Nationalist Power Apparatus and Its World-Wide Nation-Building Political and Organizational Junta, All Revolving Around the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency for Israel Complex. The Junta Dominates and Subverts American-Jewish Communal Life as Well as Jewish Communal Life All Over the World. Ethnic Self-Segregation: Withdrawal Into the Jewish Community to Concentrate on Working for and Being Influenced by the “Jewish National Homeland” Has Become the Focal Point of Jewish Life. The 1964 Communiqué About “Conquering the Free Diaspora Communities.”

“Jewish” Nationalism is administered on a world-wide scale by a professional and fanatical junta. I am tempted to call them a holy junta because they take themselves so solemnly and seriously. Actually, they are a small though vocal minority in the Jewish world. But they manage to impose their nationalistic obsessions upon the vast majority of the innocent, inarticulate and unwitting Jews of the world. And because of the unbelievable conquests of the junta, the “Jewish” nationalists are mesmerized by their own audacity and achievements. Opposition is practically nil except for what the American Council for Judaism dares expose.

Clarence L. Coleman, President of the ACJ, aptly put it this way: “‘Jewish’ Nationalism is an ideological movement which is not philanthropic but thrives on philanthropy; which is not religious but employs religious institutions for political ends; which calls itself by different names at different times, but which is always a political-national movement operating through a sovereign state and its quasi-governmental arm, the Jewish Agency—Zionist Organization.” The junta machine, directly and indirectly, subverts American Jewry into believing that all Jews possess a Zionist nationality, complete with rights in and national responsibilities to the “Jewish national home.” The junta professes to be greatly interested in Jewish education. Actually, it is “Jewish” national education for the promotion of Aliyah.

“Greetings to all the Children of Israel wherever they may be.… The year now ending was marked by a large flow of immigrants from the Diaspora,” said the late President of Israel, Itzhak Ben Zvi, in a traditional Jewish New Year message to world Jewry. Pan-Israelism is making progress; the “Jewish” nationalistic business is not doing badly.

The junta is a self-perpetuating nationalist-theocratic complex, composed chiefly of the elite of the old intelligentsia from the ghettos of Eastern Europe and the benighted medieval forces of Orthodox clericalists—all victims of the old and relentless Czarist persecutions, and all hopelessly prejudiced against, and ever suspicious of, the Gentile world. The junta apparatus has established itself powerfully inside the Diaspora. It threatens to disrupt the normal course of adjustment and integration of innocent but drugged Jewry. The junta has a vested interest in keeping the Jews of the world self-segregated. It subverts into decadent political nationalism the ethical and spiritual philosophy of evolving universal, prophetic Judaism. It brazenly claims that the Jews of the world are legally recognized as a part of the single national entity known as the “Jewish people”; that the “Jewish people” have a joint sovereign state, Israel; and that the Government of Israel has sovereign authority to speak for all the Jews of the world. Some of them like to put it this way: “Israel is the Jewish homeland, but, only about 10 per cent of the nation lives there at present.” Ben Gurion put it in his typical blunt and direct way: “Zionists in the U.S.A. are reluctant to say that they are not Americans and not part of the American homeland like other Americans” (New York Times, May 25, 1961).

A ruthless propaganda machine, consumed by an apocalyptic drive to subjugate Jewry, throws sand in the eyes of amorphous and inarticulate Jewry, to blind them, to inoculate them with “Jewish” nationalism, to sponge upon them, and to threaten, vituperate and punish anyone who dares oppose the junta and its deification of the state of Israel as the national sovereign state of the “Jewish people.”

The junta members are talented and cunning. They are not worldly-wise. But they are aggressive and determined, always reckless and daring. The word always goes out from the professional Israeli–Zionist–Jewish Agency officials to the subordinate puppets and honorary officials (I was going to say Koved-loving—honor-loving—officials), and the “ukase” must never be questioned or openly and freely debated.

Actually, the Israeli Government–Zionist–Jewish Agency machine is an establishment that runs the contemporary Jewish world locally and internationally. As far as the American scene is concerned, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin says (Canadian Jewish Chronicle, January 10, 1964) that nearly 6,000,000 people [Jews] are “kept going by a staff of about 100,000 ‘civil servants.’ This corps includes rabbis, teachers … social workers and, the largest group, administrators of executive rank.” Mrs. Rosmarin reports that the salaries of the “‘organization men’ in top command of the fund-raising and national organizations … frequently exceed that of the Vice-president of the United States … and are a carefully guarded secret.”

Leaders of Western Jewry, or independent individuals who dare oppose the intrusion of essentially foreign and un-American ideas into our American way of life, are defamed and daubed assimilationists, self-haters, renegades and Mayoffisniks (flatterers of Gentiles). The well-oiled and well-greased blatant propaganda machine “ingathers” the material savings of the innocent and ultragenerous Jews, even as it educates and softens them up for the crowning culmination of all precepts: Aliyah, going up to settle in Israel, the “Jewish homeland.”

Between the working bees in the Diaspora and the chiefs of the state of Israel, the Jewish Agency (operating arm of the World Zionist Organization), the World Jewish Congress, product of Zionist leadership and thought that plays a central role in Zionism’s struggle to mobilize world Jewry’s support (the “welfare of Israel” and the “unity of the Jewish people” are two of its fundamental constitutional purposes), and the clericalist Orthodox hierarchy in Israel and abroad, there is an array of interlocking offices and officials who lump together into a compact and complex machine that rivals any world-wide organization, political or religious.

The London Jewish Chronicle of November 8, 1963, reported from Israel that “relations between the Israeli Government and the Jewish Agency are steadily improving, according to Mr. Moshe Sharett, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive.” The two principal partners are now working well together. The entire Jewish Agency, and all of its operations through branches of the Zionist organizations in the United States and elsewhere, was chartered in 1952 by the Knesset of Israel through the so-called status law. This describes in detail how the Jewish Agency for Israel–World Zionist Organization will operate outside Israel. It has been bolstered by a covenant and legislative vote in Israel. Prime Minister Ben Gurion has described this relationship by saying that Zionism “has the occasion and ability to do what the State [of Israel] neither can nor may” in domestic affairs of countries other than Israel, though the Jewish Agency is a quasi-governmental entity. The Zionist machinery was established to implement the World Zionist–Israel decisions.

The Jewish Agency for Israel is controlled by the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem. Every United States and other Zionist organization in the world is a subsidiary and has a vote at irregularly held World Zionist Congresses (there have been twenty-five since 1897). The Congress that was held in January, 1961, called itself the Congress of Aliyah. It devoted most of its time to devising methods and appeals for promoting a large-scale emigration to Israel from all countries, especially Western countries, with emphasis on the United States. This has always been the fundamental goal of Zionism. Another basic aim is the development of a “Jewish” national consciousness and the advancement of Zionist claims to be the sovereign state of the Jewish people. Fundamental laws of the state of Israel are devoted to establishing the claim that all Jews everywhere have “inherent” nationality rights in the state of Israel and that therefore the state is the actual legislator, judiciary, and executive for the “Jewish people.”

Walter Eytan, Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry of the state of Israel in 1958, said: “It is a commonplace of our Foreign Ministry Service that every Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Israel … is Minister Plenipotentiary to the country to which he is accredited—and Envoy Extraordinary to its Jews.”

Zionist spokesmen may profess that their motivations and goals are religious and philanthropic. But all the relevant facts in the history and present structure of the Jewish Agency for Israel–World Zionist Organization clearly indicates that the machanism is politically motivated and oriented. It calls itself a “Jewish nationalist movement.” By its own definition it is invested with the responsibility of serving the national interests of the state of Israel.

Let us now get acquainted with some exemplary members of the political Zionists—from the little working bees to the leaders of the junta.

Take that little working bee, the then Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ireland, Robert Briscoe, a nationalist Jew and a nationalist Irishman, all in one. He came to the United States on a mission to soften up American Jews for the annual drive for funds. In San Francisco, at a press conference, “Briscoe adroitly reconciled his twin loyalties to Ireland and to Israel.” Normal Americans, Jews and Gentiles, who were brought up on the old American tradition of a single nationality and an exclusive loyalty to one and only one country, thought the remarks of Lord Mayor Briscoe were reprehensible and audacious. But then, Briscoe was only a satrap, a small cog in the big machine.

Or take a more authentic and even more unabashed “Jewish” nationalist, skipper Ike Aronowicz of the famous refugee ship Exodus. He too travels about in the service of the “Jewish homeland” to help collect shekels for Israel. He had been “addressing businessmen’s luncheons arranged in his honor.” Here is the way he put it in his inimitable marine lingo, in a classical interview in New York: “It is not only desirable that Jews everywhere return to Israel, but it is necessary. They will be thrown up sooner or later by every other country. They are indigestible by all but Israel” (New York Times, February 7, 1961).

Every day you read and hear about Israeli officials and agents—modern Meshoolochim (schnorrers of the old parasitical Jerusalem) roaming around the United States to soften up Jews, to preach, to appeal to the “fat and rich American Jews who enjoy the fleshpots of the Diaspora,” filling the Jews of the Diaspora with a guilty conscience, with fears, and giving them a sense of insecurity—above all, a sense of duty toward the “joint homeland” and the “rescued” refugees. What is worse, they wring the souls of the innocent American Jews by trying to make them feel as sojourners in their own land, America, the land they, together with their Gentile fellow citizens, created and keep on creating.

Now let us take the “big shots” of the Israeli Government–World Zionist—Jewish Agency Executive complex. Here are a few shots out of a powerful broadside—a daring, challenging, defying communiqué—fired at an “epochal” (“only the second such meeting ever held”) joint meeting of the Government of Israel and the Executive of the World Zionist Organization held on March 15, 1964, in Jerusalem:

Conquer the Jewish communities so as to strengthen the attachment of the Jewish communities in the Dispersion to the State of Israel as a center of their spiritual life.… The members of the Executive expressed the determination of the Zionist movement, whilst continuing to discharge its functions in the spheres of immigration, absorption and settlement on the land, as provided in the Covenant [with the Government of Israel] to concentrate and invigorate its efforts in the Diaspora in the fields of education of children, and the youth, as well as by active participation in the activities of Jewish communities and Jewish international organizations.… Enlist their effective sharing in the responsibility for the further development of the State and the safeguarding of its future; to intensify among them the consciousness of the unity of the Jewish nation [in English they prefer to use the word “people,” but in Hebrew it is always Am, nation].… Spread the knowledge of renascent Israel’s culture [“Jewish” nationalism] and awaken and cultivate the mental readiness and active desire to settle in Israel.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of Israel, the new Ben Gurion, added: “… In the Zionist movement’s new campaign to ‘conquer the communities’ of the ‘Free Diaspora,’ the Government of Israel will give every moral and political support. And, if it should happen that the Movement and the Jewish people cannot bear the material burden alone, the Government of Israel will also lend a hand here, if asked, and to the limits of its capacity.…” (All excerpts are directly from the Jerusalem Post, the voice of the Israeli Government, as quoted in the May issue of Brief of the American Council for Judaism)

As Dr. Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Zionist Organization, arrived in Israel for the “epochal” joint meeting, he announced his decision to accept Israeli citizenship, thus renouncing his United States citizenship. He apparently gave up hope of imposing a minority status on his fellow American Jews as if they still were in Poland or old Eastern Europe. Reuters World News Service on February 17, 1964, reported Goldmann as citing the United States as one country where attempts by Jewish communities to have their own cultural life and loyalties was frowned upon by the government: “The overpowering position of the State … has a tendency to deny de facto the rights of minorities to develop their own specific character, be it religious, racial, national, cultural or social. It menaces the future of the Jewish community more than brutal anti-Semitism.”

At the “epochal” joint meeting of the Government of Israel and the Executive of the World Zionist Organization, Dr. Goldmann said:

… the real problem of Jewish survival was internal and not external.… More and more Jewish communities were beginning to understand that the fight against anti-Semitism and the work of relief were no longer the top priorities in Jewish life, but that their position had been taken by the necessity for education and cultural work, and the need to see Israel through.…

Israel [also] is beginning to realize … its historical task of being the main instrument for the survival of the Jewish people … and has the duty to worry as much about the future of the Diaspora communities as it is their duty to worry about the future of Israel.… While it would be a complete distortion of Jewish history to try to eliminate the religious element in the Jewish structure … I must stress that any attempt to eliminate the other elements, to limit Jewish life and the Jewish world community to a purely religious concept, trying to make synagogue not what it ought to be … but … a kind of Jewish Church, analogous to the Protestant or Catholic ones, is a dangerous distortion of our history and of our specific character. (London Jewish Chronicle, March 20, 1964)

When any of the Zionist officials and agents speak of Jewish consciousness and Jewish identity, or when they dwell on Judaism, Jewish heritage, common bonds, common history, Jewish education and Jewish culture, there is one single end in their minds and schemes: “Jewish” political nationalism—the “Jewish national homeland” for the “Jewish people”—the Jewish nation scattered all over the world.

The levers of the big machine are, of course, in the hands of the small clique run by Ben Gurion, Levi Eshkol (successor to Ben Gurion as long as he is “retired” in Sde Boker), Nahum Goldmann, Moshe Sharett, Golda Meir, and their satellites and puppets—professional and honorary officials in the world-wide apparatus.

Dr. Nahum Goldmann.

By now we know plenty about Ben Gurion, the spirit incarnate of rabid “Jewish” nationalism. Let us now get a little better acquainted with the other leading members of the junta, and begin with Dr. Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Zionist Organization, President of the World Jewish Congress, Chairman of COJO (World Conference of Jewish Organizations), Chairman of the World Conference on Jewish Education, President of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and until recently (when he turned over the job to his friend Moshe Sharett) Chairman of Jewish Agency Executive.

All of Dr. Goldmann’s organizations are really closely identified with his World Zionist Organization, and he speaks and works in the name of whichever role fits whatever occasion.

In the spring of 1957, in an address Dr. Goldmann delivered before the ideological conference of all Zionists, held in Jerusalem, he was quoted (in the official published record of the conference) as saying:

Diaspora Jews must have the courage to proclaim and defend its relationship of partnership and responsibility vis-a-vis Israel. It has to overcome the conscious or subconscious fear of so-called double loyalty. It has to be convinced that it is fully justified in tying up its destiny with Israel’s. It has to have courage to reject the idea that Jewish communities owe loyalty only to the states where they live.

And again, on January 9, 1959, Dr. Goldmann returned to the subject of double loyalties, in even more direct terms. The Yiddish Daily Forward of New York reported Dr. Goldmann’s speech in these words:

… Dr. Goldmann challenged the Jews of America and of other countries to gather courage and declare openly that they entertain a double loyalty, one to the land in which they live, and one to Israel. Jews should not succumb to patriotic talk that they owe allegiance only to the country in which they live.… They should live not only as patriots of the countries of their domicile, but also as patriots of Israel.

Recently, Dr. Goldmann told the Zionist Actions Committee that most Jews, including Americans,

still live in exile, scattered and doomed to a minority status in all countries outside Israel.… Esteem and sincere friendship for Israel is not enough. There is no future for our people without the state.… All forms of life in the Jewish Diaspora must be bound up with the life of the State and must develop under the influence of the new culture of the State of Israel.

The immediate reaction a normal American Jew felt after reading these words was: Does Dr. Goldmann recall the oath of allegiance he took when he was granted American citizenship?—“I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any prince, potentate, state or sovereignty.…”

To understand World Zionism and its subsidiary apparatus, we must know better this genius of the interlocking machine, Dr. Goldmann. There is a long but remarkable speech he delivered in Geneva, Switzerland, on July 23, 1958, at the opening session of the gathering of the World Jewish Congress. He revealed himself and his “Jewish” nationalists in the most daring manner. Here is the speech as reported by the New York Times:

A leader of world Jewry warned today that a current decline of overt anti-Semitism might constitute a new danger to Jewish survival.… “Jews nearly everywhere are equal citizens, both politically and economically,” said Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress. “However,” Dr. Goldmann asserted, “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 internal life.… Our people know how to behave heroically in bad times,” he said, “but have not yet learned to live creatively in good times.…

“Even in the newly established States of North Africa where Jews lived for centuries without legal equality, they gained a position, and are being treated as citizens.…

“We must also reiterate that West Germany is making a serious effort to show that it has nothing in common with the barbarian anti-Semitic tendencies of the Hitler decade. The Reparation Agreement with Israel is being implemented with the utmost good will and fairness, and the indemnification legislation … represents, on the whole, a very substantial effort of the new Germany to make good materially the crimes committed against so many Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.…

“The Cold War is disastrous for our people.… Nothing is more essential and vital for Jewish survival in the Dispersion than to maintain the unity of our people.… As a people we can take no position with regard to the various elements of the conflict. As the Jewish People, and as the World Jewish Congress which tries to represent it, we are bound to an attitude of strict neutrality.…

“Our fight today is for the concept that equality for the Jewish people also covers its right to live as a community, to maintain its traditions, to have its own institutions, and to do everything to safeguard its survival as a distinct community.…

“The central problem of Jewish life is Jewish education … Jewish culture in all its aspects, and our survival as a distinct entity. There are still many of us who regard these demands as a kind of separatism, of ghettoization, as something which does not fit within the concept of a modern, fully democratic society. Nothing is more dangerous than such interpretations. Equality for Jews as for any other minority, religious or national, means equality not only as individuals and citizens, but also equality as a distinct group, with the same rights as those of the majority, to maintain its distinct entity. The effort to maintain identity and Jewish consciousness, especially among the young generation, must become the central issue in Jewish life.… The main source of strength will have to come, naturally, from Israel.”

At this point I shall give a typical outspoken reaction by a friendly but normal Gentile, who could not help commenting editorially on Dr. Goldmann’s absurd anachronistic minority nationalism, the editor of the Manchester Guardian. Said the Guardian in its editorial of August 7, 1958:

Lost Among the Gentiles … Dr. Goldmann fears that in the West, too, there is a risk of Jewry losing its character as a distinct group.… Jewish life in the Diaspora can only be protected from erosion and assimilation by a new relationship with Israel as a main source of new and permanent Jewish values for the Diaspora communities.…

Will it not involve a conflict of loyalties? Israel is now a nation-state. Its existence and achievements will undoubtedly continue to inspire Jews everywhere (and not Jews alone). Dr. Goldmann says that, so far, these sympathies have been limited to financial and purely political support. But, is it really wise to ask for more? Is it possible to work out a relationship which will give the Jewish citizen of other states a feeling of “Co-responsibility for Israel” without arousing new suspicions of outside loyalties—the very kind of suspicion which anti-Semitism is always trying to create? Sympathy and respect for Israel may be readily accepted; a prior loyalty to it will not!

You would think that this editorial might open the eyes of even a professional Jew like Dr. Goldmann to realize that he, like his fellow “Jewish” nationalists, went too far to be tolerated by the new post–World Wars Gentiles. Not on your life! The November 18, 1960, issue of the London Jewish Chronicle quoted Dr. Goldmann as saying the following to the Friends of the Zionist Federation Trust Appeal Committee: “If I have to pay for the right to be a citizen of a country by giving up my Jewish separatism, that is no equality. It is plain nonsense.… We have to continue our fight for emancipation by fighting for the right to remain distinct as a minority!”

And in the March 24, 1961, issue of the Chronicle, Dr. Goldmann is quoted as saying: “To allow people many loyalties was the essence of democracy. To demand a single loyalty was Nazism.”

It makes one highly unpopular with many Jews to draw an analogy between the words of Goldmann, Ben Gurion or Moshe Sharett and the claims of the Führers of the Third Reich that every man of original German nationality throughout the world had a perpetual obligation to the German state, and could not shed his German nationality. But the analogy is nevertheless accurate. Dr. Goldmann, officially an American citizen then, took an active part in the election campaign of 1961 in Israel. He believes that “Israel is not like other States, that as it is the center of the Jewish world, all Jews have a right to express their solidarity and partnership by participating in its affairs, and that he would not deny the people of Israel the same right in the Diaspora affairs” (London Jewish Chronicle, August 11, 1961).

To illustrate how a normally integrated Western Jew can be more than embarrassed—actually infuriated—when political Zionists expect him to think, feel and act in terms of a Zionist national, let us take the case of Ian Mikardo, a Labor M.P. and a member of the British Labor National Executive Committee, who happens to be a Jew. Ian Mikardo had come in for much criticism immediately after the invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain and France, in October–November, 1956. You will recall the “Brilliante Sortie” of Israel in conjunction with the “tragic aberration” of England and the irreconcilable anti-Arab colonialism of France of those days—all united in one aggressive war against Egypt, which only the United States and the United Nations stopped. Ian Mikardo, as a member of Parliament, naturally spoke and voted as an independent British citizen, and not, of course, as a “Jewish” political nationalist. But let us hear Mr. Mikardo himself tell his story in the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review of London, November 23, 1956:

Some of them [the critics] have been so idiotic as to suggest that a member of Parliament who is a Jew should act and vote in the interests of Jews and of Israel rather than in the interests of his constituents. Apart from the morals of this, I wonder if they have stopped to consider what would be the effects of their proposal. It is simply that no Jew would ever be elected to the House of Commons. Why on earth should a local Labor Party or a local Conservative Party in Reading, or Leicester, or Nelson, or Walsall, choose as its candidate a man who says that he will put some other interests before the interests of the people who choose him as their candidate? If the people who have this stupid point of view really mean that they don’t ever again want to see a Jew elected to the House of Commons, they should say so.

The December 10, 1956, Jewish Newsletter of New York, from which I got the above story, adds this comment: “This brings up anew the ghost of the so-called ‘Double Allegiance’ question which Zionists were always trying so passionately to dodge, hide or deny. It demonstrates once more that this question is not an invention of non-Zionists or anti-Zionists, but inherent in the Zionist ideology and cannot be suppressed particularly in times of crisis.”

In 1955, Dr. Goldmann, as head of the World Zionist Organization and as Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, together with Philip Klutznick, then head of the B’nai B’rith organization, organized the “Presidents’ Club,” which later assumed the name of the “Presidents’ Conference.” Officially, “the Presidents’ Conference is an ad hoc consultative body, composed of some presidents of the national Jewish organizations in this country which meets from time to time to discuss problems affecting Israel.” Unofficially,

the attempt was made to present it as the authorized spokesman for a United American Jewish community. The refusal of the American Jewish Committee and other influential Jewish groups to join in, frustrated the Zionist attempt to “capture” the Jewish community through the backdoor. In the beginning, the “Club” acted as an informal ad hoc body of leaders of various Jewish organizations, Zionist and non-Zionist, to be called together whenever the State of Israel was in a crisis or emergency.… Seventeen organizations joined the “Club” which soon became the most effective political lobby in behalf of Israel, operating as an American organization and working and speaking in the name of the majority of American Jews. (Jewish Newsletter, December 28, 1959)

The President of the Presidents’ Conference until recently was Label A. Katz, President of B’nai B’rith. But in October, 1961, Rabbi Irving Miller, Chairman of the American Zionist Council—coordinating body of all Zionist groups in the United States—was elected head of the Presidents’ Conference. Rabbi Miller is not only the big stick in the Zionist world, he is one of those rabbis who make the fantastic allegation “that the vast overwhelming majority of the Jewish people in the world still practice their religion in accordance with Orthodox Judaism.” (New York Times, July 30, 1961)

William Zukerman, editor of the Jewish Newsletter, said in his last written article (in the last issue of that wonderful little publication that died with him) the following words about the Presidents’ Conference: “Any pretense that the ‘Presidents’ Conference’ is not a Zionist-dominated political lobby on behalf of Israel has been irrevocably shattered by the election of Rabbi Irving Miller as its head. Rabbi Miller’s election is a final admission of Zionist failure” (Jewish Newsletter, October 16, 1961).

In the sworn testimony of some higher officials of the Zionist Jewish Agency and the United Israel Appeal before the United States Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, on May 23 and August 1, 1963, they admitted that the Presidents’ Conference received the sum of $13,027.27 toward its budget of $25,000 for administrative services, in the year ending March 31, 1961. These funds came from charity moneys collected by the United Jewish Appeal. The Jewish Agency gave these funds to the Presidents’ Conference through the American Zionist Council, using it as a conduit for propaganda to create a favorable climate in the United States for Israeli and Zionist policies.

The Presidents’ Conference apparently is not enjoying the status its controlling genius, Dr. Goldmann, hoped for. Having delusions that he has a real hold on the “Jewish people,” Dr. Goldmann now wants to form a central Jewish body that is to be named the “American Jewish Assembly” and that is to speak as “one voice for the American Jewish Community.” In fact, Dr. Goldmann now believes that the time is ripe to force the rabbis of America to emphasize “Jewish” nationalism and the “Jewish homeland,” and “Jewish culture” through “Jewish education” instead of pure religion through the synagogue. Said Dr. Goldmann in a speech delivered before the Zionist General Council in Jerusalem on May 27, 1962:

The tendency among Jews in the United States to regard themselves essentially as members of a religious denomination would lead to a “distortion of the character of the Jewish people” … He deplored the “tendency to base the whole of Jewish life and the organization of Jewish life solely on the synagogue” … The character of the Jewish people … was never only a religion or a church. It has many other elements. It is a unique people in this respect.… American Jewry must not try to become a purely religious denomination among other religious groups in America, but must maintain the conscience of being part of the Jewish people all over the world in its unique character, which is much more than a purely religious one and is becoming more and more tied up morally, emotionally and spiritually with Israel, based on the acceptance of the central position of Israel in Jewish life of today and tomorrow. (New York Times, May 28, 1962)

Two years later, the juggernaut of the Zionist Organization of America was set in motion by its President, Dr. Max Nussbaum, on the occasion of the opening of the annual convention in Washington, D.C., to “convene an American Jewish Assembly at the earliest date.”

The New York Times of October 2, 1964, reported from Washington:

The head of the Zionist Organization of America called on American Jews to establish an over-all body, cutting across doctrinaire lines, for the express purpose of coping with Jewish problems here and the world over.… Such an assembly would be empowered to establish an overall body that would embrace American Jewish secular and religious leadership, representing all religious and ideological viewpoints covering Jewish life.

What “Jewish problems here in America, and the world over”?

Where is the honest problem—except Goldmann’s, Nussbaum’s and the professional Jews’ own problem of how to foist their own brand of archaic “Chosen People” “Jewish” nationalism on perfectly happy Americans of Jewish faith—that would call for a new super-colossal over-all body of an American Jewish Assembly “empowered” (by whom? by Nahum Goldmann’s Zionist-Jewish Agency?) to speak for the independent individual American Jew who has no problem of any nature as a Jew?

And this brings us to the chef-d’oeuvre, Dr. Goldmann’s crowning “central problem of Jewish life—Jewish education.” “Neither anti-Semitism nor philanthropy is today the number one problem in Jewish life; it is Jewish education” (London Jewish Chronicle, August 7, 1964).

American Zionism has to penetrate more into the Jewish community life, cooperate closely with other Jewish organizations not only in the field of aid to Israel but in the sphere of Jewish education and youth work.… The Zionist movement must have the ambition to become the main powerhouse of American Jewish life, both by organizing American Jews and linking them to Israel. (New York Times, May 25, 1961)

In Jerusalem, at a World Conference on Jewish Education sponsored by the World Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO, a consultative body of ten major Jewish groups in all parts of the non-Communist world, of which Dr. Goldmann is Chairman and Label A. Katz, President of B’nai B’rith, is co-Chairman) Dr. Goldmann

urged the world’s Jewish communities to give the “highest priorities” to Jewish education. The most effective remedy to the process of Jewish disintegration is the development of a “real system of Jewish education culminating in Jewish all-day schools,” said Dr. Goldmann.… He challenged the “mental attitude” of those who, he said, feared that a widespread network of Jewish all-day schools would be interpreted as “an attempt at separatism” or in conflict with the “emancipation and equality of rights.” (New York Times, August 13, 1962)

That Jewish education always means “Jewish national education for Aliyah” when the heads of Zionism talk about it, the following story will illustrate. At an annual convention of the American Jewish Congress,

Justine Wise Polier, daughter of the late rabbi Stephen Wise (noted Zionist leader in his days), placed several pertinent and soul-searching questions before the delegates in Miami Beach, Florida: “Can Jews truly be citizens of America if they do not fully participate in the educational, economic, social and political life of their country? Can we both recognize the Public School as the greatest democratic institution created in this country, defend it publicly, and participate in a movement to withdraw our children from the Public Schools and send them to [“Jewish”] parochial schools? Can we make a full contribution to American life, if our work life is in the general community, and our home life and social life is entirely Jewish? Is there not some danger in concentrating on formal adherence to Jewish institutions as a safeguard against threats to survival? Will such self-isolation help our children or their children? Will it provide adequate preparation for life in a democracy?”

Dr. Goldmann rose to rare forensic heights in answering Mrs. Polier’s assertions that “Jewish all-day schools tend toward ghettoization.” Quickly, and somewhat angrily, the President of the World Jewish Congress said: “The strength of America is that she permits ghettos.” He seemed to feel that ghettoization might be the salvation of the American Jewish community, and declared that a ghetto was not a ghetto unless it was forced upon a group. (National Jewish Post and Opinion of May 23, 1958)

In an address before the executive body of the World Jewish Congress, meeting for the first time in Israel in July, 1964, Dr. Goldmann “appealed to the Soviet Union to ‘grant the Jews in Russia the right to enjoyment of the Jewish way of life.… The Soviet Government should realize that Jews throughout the world have the right to urge Russian Jewry be permitted to enjoy the Jewish way of life.’” (New York Times, July 16, 1964.)

Haman “said unto king Ahasuerus: ‘There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples …; and their laws are diverse from those of every people; … therefore it profiteth not the king to suffer them” (Esther 3:8–9). Today, Dr. Nahum Goldmann parrots the first part of Haman’s vitriolic assertion. He must be cocksure that Haman’s recommendation (“it profiteth not the king to suffer them”) could never come to pass again. Why could it not, Dr. Goldmann? Or is this exactly what you and your irresponsible fellow “Jewish” nationalists want?

Finally, just one more gem from the mouth of the leading “big shot” of the Zionist world:

Dr. Goldmann agreed with Ben Gurion that all Jews who live in the Diaspora are in exile and will eventually have to be redeemed in Israel. But, the practical transition from exile to Israel will not be effected immediately and in a hurry, as Ben Gurion wanted. It will be accomplished by a long evolutionary process. In the meantime Diaspora Zionists can help Israel economically, financially, politically and culturally, as much as, if not more than, the citizens of Israel can. For Israelis and Diaspora Jews are one people. (Jewish Newsletter, September 9, 1957)

Moshe Sharett.

My boyhood-days classmate and benchmate at the Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa–Tel-Aviv (old Palestine) from 1909 to 1913, Moshe Chertok, now Moshe Sharett, was Foreign Minister under Ben Gurion, and later, for a while, even Prime Minister of Israel, while he and other innocent folks took Ben Gurion at his word, that he had “retired” in Sde Boker for good because he was “tired.” In connection with the famous Lavon Affair, Moshe Sharett fell out of the good graces of the overpowering and autocratic Ben Gurion, who soon returned to power and relegated him to the job of “trouble-shooter” for the Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency, which are the legal partners and agents of the state of Israel. Ben Gurion always heartily disliked Moshe Sharett, as he disliked Mr. Lavon, as he disliked Dr. Goldmann, as he dislikes anyone who dares question his ultimate wisdom and authoritarian powers. Today, Sharett works directly with Dr. Goldmann, who recently yielded to Sharett one of his many jobs—Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. One of Sharett’s specialties is “Jewish education.” When Mr. Sharett talks about Jewish education, you often hear his master’s voice, Dr. Goldmann’s.

Mr. Sharett’s Jewish Agency now runs an “Operation Magic Carpet” on Israeli El Al planes to shuttle thousands of English-Jewish students to, and back from, Israel, for their “Jewish national education for Aliyah.” The “Jewish day-schools” in England and “Operation Magic Carpet” supplement one another to prepare the Jewish youth to become good Zionist nationals. Mr. Sharett’s local British-Jewish representative of the Jewish Agency is so engrossed in the business of “capturing” the teen-age youth that he “advocates that Zionists should go out into the Espresso bars to win young people to their cause.”

Mr. Sharett is a scholarly and cultured East European “Jewish” nationalist. He, more than any other member of the Zionist junta, will prove that with their unregenerated “Jewish” nationalistic mentality, it is impossible for even the best of them to really understand and respect the principles of the new Western world today. Let us read a typical talk Moshe Sharett delivered at a gala dinner at the Savoy Hotel in London, at which he collected thirty-one thousand pounds for the Zionist Federation Educational Trust, which runs the Jewish day-schools in England:

Jewish education and Hebrew culture have not survived and triumphed over all the dark forces of oppression only to go under and perish in conditions of freedom.… In the Western world, Judaism had become “a peripheral conception.” Nowhere, apart from Israel, was it sheltered; and, everywhere, except in Israel, it had been exposed to the pressures of the alien environment, after the walls of the ghettos had been pulled down by emancipation. Emancipation and the equality of rights are, of course, a great boon, but they have their reverse side. Are we to expose our children to the pressures of the outside world without strengthening their Jewish consciousness to resist the inroads? Is emancipation to be bought at the price of obliteration of one’s essential identity?

Having posed the question, Mr. Sharett also gave the answer: “A Free Society provides, or should provide, full scope for religious and cultural variety, cultural pluralism, as it is now termed. Rather than recoil from one’s distinctiveness, why not assert it in harmony with the whole environment as an elementary right to be claimed and exercised under free democracy?” Mr. Sharett suggested that “this could be achieved through Jewish day-schools which combined general studies with the background of Jewish tradition, with the vigor of modern Hebrew, and with the emotional attachment to the land of Israel, both as the hallowed country of Jewish ancestry and as the creative focus of present-day Jewish life.” (London Jewish Chronicle, October 2, 1959)

According to the London Jewish Chronicle of May 3, 1963:

There are at present nearly 9,000 children in 48 Jewish day-schools in Great Britain and Ireland. Two years ago, the number of children approached 8,000, and ten years ago, there were 4,400. The increase over the last ten years amounts to over 100 per cent. In the U.S.A. the present figure of 54,000 shows an increase of only 80 per cent over the same period.

Dr. Joseph Sagall, Executive Chairman of the Zionist Federation Educational Trust, said: “Today we have thousands of pupils; our aim is for tens of thousands.… Otherwise our children will be assimilated and we shall lose them not only to Israel but even as Jews.”

According to the London Jewish Chronicle, Israeli teachers have become a familiar figure in the Jewish day-schools. There is hardly any Jewish school of standing abroad today without its Israeli teacher or cadre of teachers. The Chronicle of March 13, 1964, reports that 188 Israeli teachers were sent to United States Jewish schools in 1963 and that many more are expected this year. These Israeli teachers were selected in Israel by the Ministry of Education and the Jewish Agency, which sponsors the project.

In the same spirit, Mr. Sharett’s “Operation Magic Carpet” brings thousands of Jewish children on Israeli El Al planes to fortify the work of the Israeli-Zionist teachers in the Diaspora day-schools. Thus the Jewish Chronicle of January 25, 1963, reports: “Youth Aliyah is planning to ‘rescue’ 5,000 children this year and take them to Israel—one thousand more than in 1962. It is devoting almost two million pounds for this task.”

Moshe Sharett, however, is not happy with the results of his “Jewish education” in America! “We have not yet succeeded in inculcating in the hearts of the majority of the Jewish people, particularly in the United States …” And to the World Zionist Congress last year he said: “In each city the Zionists should initiate the founding of Day Schools in which a Jewish child would receive a full national education in a Jewish-national atmosphere throughout the day.” The purpose: “Hebraization of the Diaspora … to capture unorganized Jewish youth” and to “make Aliyah attractive and appealing.”

On another occasion, Mr. Sharett put it this way:

“If Jews do not maintain and develop their national culture they are doomed as a national group,” Mr. Moshe Sharett, chairman of the Jewish Agency, told the 38th annual congress of the Scandinavian Jewish Youth Federation.… Mr. Sharett observed that the fact that the majority of Jews enjoyed physical freedom imperiled the preservation of Jewish [national] culture. (London Jewish Chronicle, July 5, 1963)

And on still another occasion, Mr. Sharett put it: “It is a question of using the freedom afforded by democracy to assert our [national] cultural values and to fill our lives with a new Jewish content!”

What cultural values, and what new Jewish content? ALIYAH!—emigration to the “Jewish” state, imbibing the new “Jewish” content that “the Jewish people everywhere are now internationally recognized as an ethnic and political entity whose sovereign state and national homeland is Israel.”

Is that Jewish culture and prophetic Judaism?

You can see now what I meant when I said that it is impossible for the East European self-ghettoized “Jewish” nationalists to understand the fundamental workings of the free democracies, particularly in our post–World Wars new one-world. For if you are to enjoy segregated and twisted “cultural pluralism” and an “emotional attachment to the land of Israel,” and a “full Jewish life”; if you are to be “educated” to regard Aliyah as the culmination and fulfillment of your “Jewish education” and therefore to aim at eventually “going up” to settle in Israel—what sort of bona fide citizen of the United States, England or other country are you, where integration and desegregation are fundamentals of the nationality of the new citizen?

Woodrow Wilson already saw it and stated it in no uncertain words:

You cannot become true Americans if you think of yourself in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is not worthy to live under the Stars and Stripes.

Jewish National Education via the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency–Israeli Government Apparatus.

The World Zionist Organization does not mince words any more when it comes to the precious subject of “Jewish education.” The Twenty-fifth World Zionist Congress assembled in Jerusalem in December, 1960 (which called itself “The Congress of Aliyah”), appealed to American Jews to

mobilize their best spiritual forces and material means for the consolidation, extension, and intensification of Jewish national education, based on Jewish tradition, the Hebrew language, and the personal ties with the State of Israel. The Congress considers the ingathering of the exiles [all Jews outside Israel] as a national mission towards which the education of the present generation should be oriented.… To achieve this goal, Zionist “religious education” will stress the Hebrew language, study trips to Israel, training of American teachers by Israeli instructors, expansion of all-day Jewish schools, textbooks oriented to Israel, a world organization of Jewish teachers directed from Israel, and a “World convention of Jewish education” to be held this year so that Jewish education may become the central task of Diaspora Jewry under Zionist control.

This, in a nutshell, is the Torah; all else is the exposition. The resolutions were subsequently put into motion. Thus,

The religious Zionists of America formulated a program to counteract “a critical shortage” in future leadership in the American Jewish community.… Samuel Spar, executive vice president of the Zionist group, told its annual convention that a network of leadership training would be established in Israel under the supervision of expert Israelis and American Jewish counselors. Summer institutes and camps, he explained, will make invited American Jewish youth “better acquainted with the local scene” and provide for an interchange of ideas and attitudes.… These camps will train young men and women in the spheres of “spiritual leadership, self-fulfillment and social services,” Mr. Spar told the 600 delegates. Rabbi Irving Miller, chairman of the American Zionist Council [also head of the Presidents’ Conference] stressed that only the Zionist movement could achieve “a lasting cultural and spiritual link between the Jews of the world and Israel.” (New York Times, November 10, 1961)

Rabbi Max Nussbaum, President of the Zionist Organization of America, speaking quite frankly in Israel about the goals of “Jewish” nationalism (Zionism), said: “When Herzl came upon the modern scene of our history, he enriched our vocabulary with two words: Statehood and Peoplehood.… It was important to create a Jewish State in order to preserve the unity of the Jewish nation. ‘Ein volk, ein volk.’” (Day—Jewish Journal, New York, March 29, 1963.)

In 1962, there began an American edition of Moshe Sharett’s British “Operation Magic Carpet.” The plans called for fifteen hundred United States youths to get a taste of a “real full Jewish life.” “Fifteen hundred American Jewish youngsters will spend seven weeks to a year in travel, work and study programs in Israel. They will be sponsored by the Jewish Agency in cooperation with the American Zionist Council.” (New York Times, June 17, 1962.)

The funds used by the Jewish Agency to finance the trips to and from Israel, and the indoctrination camps in Israel, were charity funds collected to “rescue refugees.” Surely it never was the purpose of the charitable American Jewish donors to subvert American Jewish youth. Mr. Philip L. Winter, Chairman of the New York Chapter of the American Council for Judaism, said:

Once in Israel, American Jewish youth are encouraged to feel that permanent immigration to Israel is the further fulfillment of that same duty [“duties” falsely associated with the religion of Judaism].… Departure for the United States, at the end of the summer, is presented as an avoiding of one’s “duty” to his religion and to Israel which, in Zionist terms, is “the sovereign state of the Jewish people.” The two-month, full-time application of Zionist-Israel ideology often has a disturbing effect on the young visitors. Many youth who return to the United States after these trips are far more disturbed than those who decide to settle permanently in Israel.… We have reports of alienation of these young people from their families.… One observer described several family splits after such two-month visits. She said a brain-washing occurs which produces “runaway marriages” and partial adoption of Israeli values in an American setting. Young people return home disturbed over whether they are fully satisfying their responsibilities as Jews if they remain in the United States; or, as Americans, if they consider seriously the values they have learned abroad.

The first world Jewish assembly devoted to the “problems” of “Jewish education” was convened in Jerusalem in August, 1962, by Dr. Goldmann and Label A. Katz, Chairman and co-Chairman of the World Conference of Jewish Organizations. This assembly was the result of the Twenty-fifth World Zionist Congress, which assembled in Jerusalem in December, 1960. Simultaneously with the plans laid out in Jerusalem about “teacher training, Jewish all-day schools, adult education, and the role of Israel in Jewish education,” Orthodox and Conservative rabbis in America began to press for more and more all-day (parochial) schools. There are already 275 all-day Jewish schools in the United States. To cap the climax:

… at the one of the closing sessions of the thirtieth general assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds (the representative body of 800 Jewish communities in the U.S. and Canada) action was taken … [to make] an intensive study of whether the increasing number of Jewish all-day schools should be supported by Jewish Welfare funds and federations.” (New York Times, November 20, 1961)

Contrast this “Jewish” educational, nationalistic parochialism with the serious debate now going on among our Catholic fellow citizens about the anachronism of parochial schools to keep Catholics apart from other religious denominations in America. Time magazine of March 20, 1964, said in reviewing the book Are Parochial Schools the Answer?, by Mary Perkins Ryan, a Catholic mother of five boys who have variously gone to public and Catholic schools:

[Mrs. Ryan] suggests that the church should go out of the school business altogether.… By the logic of the Catholic school system, children trained in it should get notably better religious formation. Mrs. Ryan thinks they do not, partly because parochial schools are anachronistic. No longer, she argues, are the Roman Catholic Church and its schools in the “state of siege” that has existed since the Reformation. No longer must Catholics be equipped with weapons of defense against Protestant teachings.

Deviously, diabolically, the “Jewish” nationalist Führers will have their way of imposing “Jewish” nationalist education on our American Jewish youth if gullible American Jews, by default, blindly follow the Ben Gurions, Goldmanns, Sharetts and their puppets, the Label Katzes and company. Real Jewish culture—the Jewish heritage, the pure Jewish religion and ethics, the Jewish progressive, liberal spirit of broad-minded universalism—all of it will degenerate into “Jewish education for Aliyah,” jingoist “Jewish” nationalism, collective sacro egoismo, the “sacred Jewish national homeland,” Israel First. All that involved and euphonic language of the professional propagandists—Jewish cultural rights, the religion of peoplehood, the peoplehood of religion, religious civilization, religious culture, ethnic religion, full Jewish life, Jewish togetherness, common spiritual destiny, religio-ethnic-transnational people—all that convoluted verbiage, means one thing: the centrality of Israel in Jewish life leading to Aliyah, controlled by the apparatus of the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency–Israeli Government complex. For the Jewish Agency of the World Zionist Organization is directed by the “status law” of the Government of Israel to “ingather the exiles” and to unify “the Jewish people” in the interests of the state of Israel and of the application of Zionist nationality to all Jews.

One Zionist legal authority, N. Feinberg, said in a treatise The Recognition of the Jewish People in International Law: “The right to the National Home is granted to the Jewish people as a whole, and not to any part of it; it is granted not to Zionists or to Jews who have settled in Palestine or who will settle there, but to all Jews wherever they may be.” (Emphasis supplied.)

In conclusion, I must make clear one thing: No one can quarrel with Catholics, Protestants and Jews in America who insist on exercising their constitutional right of freedom of worship, which implies the right to run their own religious or parochial schools of all grades, as long as the fundamental purpose of the special denominational schools stresses the element and atmosphere of pure religion alongside the general scientific and cultural studies. They thus exercise an honest constitutional privilege, even though the great majority of American citizens overwhelmingly and wisely favor the tax-supported public schools, high schools, colleges and universities. In today’s fast-growing one-world, and after the tortuously slow evolution of mankind, folks do try hard to divest themselves of all segregative and prejudicial collective philosophies of life. Culture and civilization are fast becoming universal; the best in all is becoming the heritage of each individual in every civilized country. The foundation of religion, of ethics, of social justice, is the Judeo-Christian conception of monotheism and the Ten Commandments, and the application and exposition of “Love thy fellow man as thyself.” But, evolution being a very slow process in spite of world wars and smaller wars of aggression by the “chosen” peoples; and traditions, conventions and vested interests being so strongly entrenched, time and patience must be allowed for the ultimate higher universal standards of pure faith, pure justice, pure and more humane equations among men and nations.

It is in that spirit and with that knowledge that I can perfectly understand those in our country who honestly and sincerely choose to have their children raised as good and loyal Americans via their own parochial schools, where a particular religious atmosphere predominates. One must even concede that some of the parochial schools, like some of the private secular schools, produce some wonderful students and men. Recall the words of Henry Hurwitz in the long quotation I gave in my story about the “Rabbinic Revolution in the Evolution of Judaism”: “Study, learning, must be an integral part; study of the laws and wisdom of that regimen; study day and night … so that one acquires an intellectual love of God.… For an ignorant man cannot be a pious man.”

An old-fashioned and innocent Jew today may still insist on perpetuating that old and noble tradition and philosophy of learning our forefathers instituted in their hedged-in ghettos—especially if he desires to have his son a Talmid Chochom (wise and eternal scholar). Provided his parochial Jewish school is strictly a Jewish religious school sans “Jewish” political nationalism, which follows the insane pattern of the predatory and depraved Western European old imperialist-nationalists. But if Jewish all-day schools are to indoctrinate our youth with the “Jewish education” of Dr. Nahum Goldmann and Sharett, isolate our Jewish youth into separateness so as to prepare them for Aliyah, then Jewish education assumes insidious implications, and “Judaism in a free society” simply means daring to do underhandedly what no other denomination presumes to teach; namely, double loyalties, dual citizenship. Jewish education then becomes deformed Jewish culture, prostituted Jewish religion, betrayed Jewish idealism, vicarious political Israelism.

Golda Meir, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

I have concluded all I had to say about the “Jewish” nationalist junta’s use and abuse of “Jewish education.” But I have not done with the junta. A story about the junta cannot be complete without at least mentioning and recognizing Golda Meir, Israel’s Madame Minister of Foreign Affairs. I shall only mention one exemplary performance of this Israeli lady in the field of “Jewish” nationalism.

At the end of 1959, an epidemic of swastikas broke out in the Jewish world. Swastikas were smeared on walls of synagogues and Jewish institutions in Germany, the United States, England and many other countries. Like the Spanish flu, the virus spread and ran its “normal” course until it was stopped everywhere by public opinion and the police. President Eisenhower formally expressed the indignation of the United States Government and people.

The junta of Israel took full advantage of the “wave of anti-Semitism” to make hay while the sun of publicity was shining. A lecture issued by the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Golda Meir, in the shape of a formal diplomatic note was sent out to twenty countries, among them the United States, England and Holland. The note said in part:

The Government and people of Israel are sensitive and alert to anything that affects our brethren in the lands of the Diaspora.… The nation, the Government, parliament, press and leaders of political parties, in whose countries the plague of Jew-hatred exists, should realize that it is not enough to disclaim inciters to oppression and genocide. History shows that these loathsome phenomena must be treated with all seriousness, and radically extirpated by all possible means before they develop from isolated acts of hooliganism into disasters of an entire people and for all humanity.

Think of the Governments of the United States, England, Holland and other free, civilized countries getting such an unwarranted scolding about their Jewish citizens from the everlasting, goy-hating “Jewish” nationalists. Think of the normal and naturally integrated Jewish citizens being “represented and protected” by the “Jewish homeland Israel.”

When Golda Meir was told by an Anglo-Jewish Association delegation that such notes “could be regarded as interference in the internal affairs of British Jewry,” her cynical, audacious and arrogant answer was categorical: “Israel is determined not to yield the right to speak on any Jewish subject. If there are Jews abroad who find themselves embarrassed by this attitude of Israel, let them be embarrassed” (London Jewish Chronicle, April 8, 1960).

Normally integrated Jews all over the world resented this presumptuousness on the part of the aggressive foreign Government of Israel. Nonprofessional Zionists who innocently and sincerely sympathize with the constructive work done by the citizens of Israel could not help but burst out with indignation against the pretentiousness of the ruling junta of Israel. Typical was the comment made by the strongly pro-Zionist Dutch-Jewish weekly Nieuw Israelitisch Weekblad of Amsterdam (January 22, 1960): “We are Dutch citizens, and there is for us absolutely no reason to invite the intervention of the Israeli Ambassador, nor is there any need for the Israeli Ambassador to give a hint on behalf of the Israeli Government to the Netherland Government.… As long as we, of our own free will, continue to live here and are free to express ourselves freely, there is no reason for any action by Israel on our behalf—and that, without even consulting or informing us.” (Jewish Newsletter, February 8, 1960.)

Finally, I must add this: The junta of Ben Gurion’s regime (and it is the same regime even though Ben Gurion is “really retired”), including Mrs. Meir, are by no means the most rabid and militant “Jewish” nationalists in Israel. If the second largest political party in Israel, Herut, had its way—and one day it may—it could really arouse American Jewry out of its drugged “Jewish” life. Again, just one example. You may recall that in October, 1958, two synagogues in the United States (in Atlanta and in Peoria) were bombed. Americans, except the lunatic fringe, were saddened and shocked by the incidents. Well, Herut came out with the following brotherly advice:

The bombings of the synagogues has shown that there is no other way for American Jews than Aliyah.… It is necessary for the American Zionist movement to deepen the nationalistic conscience among the six million of our brethren in the U.S. and to show them what it means to lead a free life in an independent Fatherland, as masters of their own fate and not as a minority in a foreign country. (Jewish Newsletter, November 3, 1958).

Twisted Jewish Charities. The Adulteration and Subversion of an Ancient Noble Jewish Tradition by an Alien, Fast-Obsolescent, Depraved Political “Jewish” Nationalism. Unbelievable and Scandalous Revelations Made at the May 23 and August 1, 1963, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate, Senator J. W. Fulbright, Chairman. Sworn Testimony Revealed Pursuant to Subpoenas Addressed to the Executive Vice Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., Gottlieb Hammer (a Former Registered Foreign Agent), and the Executive Director of the Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc., Isadore Hamlin (the Current Registered Foreign Agent), Showed That the Two Jewish Agencies of the World Zionist Organization in New York Used Charity Funds on an Unheard-of Scale to Buy the Services of Many “Conduit Organizations” in the U.S. for Propaganda and Lobbying, to Cultivate Friends in the Press, Radio, Television, Films, Synagogues and Universities, and Thus Influence Public Opinion in Favor of a Pro-Israel American Foreign Policy.

Let us see what the junta of “Jewish” political nationalism did to the noblest and most glorious time-honored institution in Jewry–Jewish charities. In Part I of this book, I already dwelt for a while on the “big business” of the “ingathering of the exiles” and the “rescue” and “emergency” drives for funds. The reader will recall that though the “rescue” drives did not result in streams of new immigrants from Rumania and Soviet Russia to Israel, the “special” funds collected never created any surpluses or reserve funds. Chronic deficits are the natural thing in Ben Gurion’s militant Israel. Israel is like a sack with a big hole at the bottom. So much of the internal revenues goes for military purposes—known and unknown—that the domestic structure of the country—land reclamation, housing, health, education, art and music—falls chiefly on the Jewish charities collected in the “Diaspora,” especially in the United States. On December 27, 1963, the London Jewish Chronicle correspondent in Jerusalem reported: “Third of Israel’s Budget for Defence … Nearly one-third of the record budget of 3,465 million Israeli pounds (433 million British pounds) submitted to the Knesset is earmarked for defence. The total shows an increase of 18.7 per cent over the current budget.”

The Jews of the world are slowly discovering that they have unconsciously become involuntary partners in a powerfully organized political “Jewish” nationalist vise that has one and only one purpose: to build a powerful “Jewish” state to “ingather” there all the Jews of the world! And the Government of the United States is gradually discovering that it is not for purely philanthropic purposes that the huge charitable donations go year after year to the Jewish Agency of Israel in Jerusalem; that the so-called philanthropic expenditures are for the artificial and constant Aliyah; that philanthropy is only a cloak; that the “Jewish” nationalist junta is “immersing itself in a purification pond with a reptile [non-kosher animal] in its hands” (Tovel vaysheretz b’yadoh—an old Hebrew saying).

Already in 1957–58, Senator Ralph E. Flanders said this in one of his eighteen speeches on the Senate floor about the problems in Israel:

When the immigration policies of Israel were directed toward making a home for refugees, it was proper to have those activities supported by tax-free American contributions. The present policies are not refugee policies. They are the policies inherent in the Zionist program,—an Ingathering of the Jews from all over the earth. Whether they are oppressed or not, whether they are needy or not, matters not, so long as they are Jews—bring them into the new Zion no matter what injustices are perpetrated on the former owners of the land. Not one penny of tax-free American money should go into this project. In fairness to American taxpayers, the Treasury must reexamine the tax-free status of the contributions to the United Jewish Appeal.

The tax-exempt issue was thus started about Jewish contributions that go primarily to nation- and state-building. But it takes more than one relatively still, small voice to arouse a country, what with biennial national elections and frantic drives for votes, and lobbying, and powerful public-relations services.

Actually, as early as May 10, 1954, a United States Foreign Service officer, Mr. Norman S. Paul, Regional Director of the Office of Near Eastern, South Asian and African Operations of the Department of State, testified at hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, that “the funds they [the Israelis] have received through the United Jewish Appeal, just as the funds they received through these bond drives, have made up the pool from which they meet their defense as well as other requirements” (The Mutual Security Act of 1954: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, p. 654).

In 1960, the Treasury Department in Washington questioned the tax-exempt status of the UJA after it was revealed that the UJA—World Zionist Organization—Jewish Agency complex had been using charity funds to subsidize political parties in Israel and other non-philanthropic activities in the United States. Some sort of “reorganization” had to take place to placate the tax authorities.

Clarence L. Coleman, President of the American Council for Judaism, said:

We sincerely regret that such reorganizations which have taken place within the UJA have been the result, we are told, of governmental pressure rather than the voluntary acts of a leadership fully aware of the existence of purposes and objectives of the UJA, which cannot be classified as charitable or humanitarian.… Evidence abounds that Jewish life in the U.S. increasingly moves toward greater withdrawal from the mainstream of American life despite setbacks given to Zionism.” (New York Times, May 13, 1960)

On May 14, 1960, the New York Times reported Lessing J. Rosenwald as saying:

that the Zionist movement still solidly controls the UJA and its vast funds; that about $18,000,000 of UJA money had gone to Israeli political parties since 1951; that vast sums, amounting to “millions of dollars,” had come from the UJA for such projects as promoting immigration of youth to Israel, Zionist propaganda and “cultural” programs in this country. He pointed out that the Jewish Agency had transferred its Zionist activities to the American Zionist Council (AZC) … and, since the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem still indirectly controls the New York Board, the whole arrangement becomes another paper operation intended to satisfy a legalism in Washington.

In a pamphlet Mr. Rosenwald wrote entitled The U.J.A. Funds’ Reorganization, published in 1960 by the American Council for Judaism, he said:

The Jewish Agency has also contributed at least—and probably much more than—$620,000 to the World Jewish Congress, whose president is also the top officer of the World Zionist Organization. The World Jewish Congress often attempts to give the impression of being an independent organization which is not, like the World Zionist Congress, an instrumentality of the State of Israel.

Mr. Coleman said the following in a letter addressed to the members of the ACJ, dated February–March, 1964, about the “reorganization” of the United Jewish Appeal:

… Zionist control over Jewish philanthropy continues despite solemn pledges that changes have been made. Each time the U.S. Government forces some reorganization, the chairs are rotated once again but Zionist-oriented control persists.

Things have traveled fast since the legalistic “reorganization” took place. On March 13, 1963, the New York Times reported:

The Justice Department said today it was studying whether the American Zionist Council should be required to register as a foreign agency [though] the American Zionist Council contends it is an educational and cultural organization raising money for Hebrew schools and their Jewish Centers; that its active interests are confined to this country, and that it is not an agency of Israel.

We shall soon see what were the “cultural” purposes of the “voluntary” American Zionist Council—the ward of one or another Jewish agency that serves as an organism of the Israeli Government.

On May 23 and August 1, 1963, at hearings held before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, with Senator J. W. Fulbright as Chairman, sworn testimony by Isadore Hamlin (Executive Director, Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc., a registered foreign agent) and Gottlieb Hammer (Executive Vice Chairman, Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc.; also Secretary of the United Israel Appeal, Inc., and Associate Treasurer of the Palestine Foundation Fund, now a deregistered foreign agent) brought out the fact that the American Zionist Council, before and after 1960, always served the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency as a conduit for large sums of money supplied by one Jewish agency or another, to help “cultivate” friends who would help create a “favorable image” of Israel among the “molders of public opinion in the United States.”

The AZC was not the only conduit used by the Jewish agencies in New York to cultivate friends for the Government and state of Israel. We shall know more about them all a little later.

Here is a sample of an innocent-sounding “cultural” activity of the AZC, the ward of the Jewish agencies in New York. This comes from the hearing on May 23, 1963 (p. 1243 of the booklet printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations):

CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hammer, I show you a copy of a letter dated September 4, 1958, addressed to Rabbi Irving Miller, chairman of the American Zionist Council, and signed Gottlieb Hammer, and ask you if you wrote and sent this letter.

MR. HAMMER: Yes sir; I wrote this letter.

The letter:

Rabbi Irving Miller

Chairman, American Zionist Council

342 Madison Avenue

New York, N.Y.

DEAR IRVING:

As you are aware, the Executive [Jewish Agency in Jerusalem] at its Plenary Session, decided that for the balance of this fiscal year, 80 per cent of the approved budget [of $500,000 for the AZC] will be available for the Jewish Agency’s activities.…

Cordially yours,

GOTTLIEB HAMMER

(Executive Director, Jewish Agency, Inc.)

Let us understand the full meaning of “available for the Jewish Agency’s Activities” of the American Zionist Council. After we understand this properly, we shall then also understand the other “Jewish Agency’s activities” carried out through other “conduit organizations,” as Senator Fulbright called them.

The American Zionist Council, with headquarters at 515 Park Avenue, New York, is a top-level co-ordinating body in which nine major United States Zionist groups, including Hadassah and the Zionist Organization of America, are represented. Early in 1963, when the Justice Department moved to require the AZC to register as a foreign agent, it “hastily altered some of its affairs, hoping to avoid the necessity of registration, and the clear admission that it acts not as a voluntary American organization but as the representative of a foreign nation.” It was too late for the AZC to stop the hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

An Incompatible Marriage of Convenience.

Now, before we can go into the Senate hearings (and we can only touch on the high lights of these fascinating and devastating hearings), we must try to understand the un-understandable marriage of convenience between the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency for Israel and the United Jewish Appeal. The marriage should have been an incompatible one from A to Z. Yet the parties to it somehow manage to work together like birds of a feather. May I say right here that at the bottom of this tragic marriage lies the professional Jew—a twentieth-century professional idealist with vested interests, who is highly talented and highly remunerated. Rabid, neurotic, fanatical “Jewish” nationalism, plus uninformed, amorphous honorary officers who have plenty of tax-exempt money to give away and who love and enjoy Koved (“honors”), plus the clever professional Jews, combine to make the Jews of today not so much the victims of persecution and prejudice as the victims of these manipulators of Jewish life who turn them into robots. Let us look into it.

An Appearance of Pure Philanthropy.

On December 8, 1963, the New York Times reported that “two thousand Jewish leaders were told last night that the basic objective of the United Jewish Appeal was to assure the physical survival of any Jew in the world ‘threatened by oppression or need.’ That was, they said, ‘the heart and philosophy of the appeal’s 25 years of relief and resettlement work.’”

This undoubtedly represents the true feeling of the many generous Jewish donors whose “Jewish hearts” always commanded them to give and give all through their tragic history whenever a need for help arose. On that score started the original Joint Distribution Committee in the young days of Dr. Judah L. Magnes.

The Jewish Agency–World Zionist Organization–Israeli Government Complex.

Now let us see precisely what the Jewish Agency for Israel, which receives the bulk of the funds of the philanthropic UJA, stands for.

Under the statute enacted by the Israeli Knesset on November 24, 1952, called the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency for Palestine (Status) Law, the Jewish Agency is legally established as an agent or agency of the Israeli Government. Paragraph 3 of the law says: “The World Zionist Organization, which is also the Jewish Agency for Palestine, applies itself, as in the past, to the promotion of immigration into Israel.” Paragraphs 5 and 6 expand on this agency function by adding:

5) The mission of the Ingathering of the Exiles being the central task both of the State of Israel and of the Zionist movement in our days, necessitates continued efforts of the Jewish people in the Diaspora; and therefore, the State of Israel looks forward to the participation of all Jews and Jewish bodies in the upbuilding of the State and in assisting mass immigration thereto, and recognizes the need for uniting all Jewish communities to this end.

6) The State of Israel looks forward to endeavors on the part of the World Zionist Organization to achieve this unification.

The full text of the law may be found in the Israel Government Yearbook (Government Printing Press, Jerusalem, Israel), 1953–54, p. 243.

In July, 1954, the Israeli Government and the Chairman of the Executive, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, exchanged signatures on a “covenant” that embodied and made operable the November, 1952, legislation. The continuing force and validity of this legislation and covenant—and therefore the continuing legal relationship of the Jewish Agency to the Israeli Government—is stated explicitly in the following paragraph, quoted from another enactment called Basic Principles of the Government Programme; paragraph 59 of this Knesset enactment is subtitled “Jewry and Zionist Movement” and states:

In accordance with the World Zionist Organization Status Law and the Covenant between the Government and the Zionist Executive, the Government will give its loyal support to the Zionist Movement—stressing the demand for: personal fulfillment of Zionist aims and increased voluntary financial aid; the propagation of the Hebrew language; the fostering of the pioneering movement; immigration of children and youth; the expansion of immigration and settlement and the flow of capital to Israel; the attraction of Jewish youth from all countries to obtain secondary and higher education in Israel; support for Israel in her struggle for her rights and international position; deepening of Jewish consciousness and unity among the Jews of the Diaspora, and the fight against all signs of assimilation and denial of Jewish peoplehood. (Israel Government Yearbook, 1959–60, p. 94)

It is clear, then, that in law the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency is, at the very least, an organ of the Israeli Government. It may even be, in law, a branch of the Israeli Government.

(The above study about the statutes enacted by the Israeli Knesset as regards its arrangements with the Jewish Agency of the World Zionist Organization comes from a statement made by Rabbi Elmer Berger, of the American Council for Judaism, on February 8, 1963.)

The Jewish Agency is elected by the World Zionist Organization at its World Zionist Congress, which meets about every two years. The Jewish Agency is the spearhead of the World Zionist Organization. Its headquarters are in Jerusalem, Israel.

There was always a well-organized and well-staffed Jewish Agency office at work in the United States to carry out the objectives of the World Zionist Organization. In 1944, the Jerusalem Agency established a representative office in the United States under the name of Jewish Agency for Palestine. The office registered with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In February, 1949, this office was incorporated as a membership corporation under the laws of the state of New York as the Jewish Agency, Inc., which name it changed in April, 1949, to the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc. When the 1960 “reorganization” made things too hot for the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., to do both—to administer the funds of the UJA allotted to Israel, and at the same time perform the “Jewish Agency activities” in America that a foreign agent is not expected to do—it “divested itself of all activities which had been carried on, on behalf of the Jerusalem Agency … was reorganized in order to provide a closer identification on the part of the people who raised funds with the problems of actual operations in the field, and in order to satisfy the requirements of the Internal Revenue Service with respect to domestic organizations operating overseas” (p. 1218, Hearing).

Accordingly, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., was deregistered as a foreign agent, and the activities in the United States on behalf of the Jerusalem Agency have, since April, 1960, been carried on by an organization specifically incorporated in New York for this purpose and known as the Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc. This new Jewish Agency is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act with the Department of Justice. The “Jewish Agency activities” are supposed to be “consonant with the great principle of Cultural Pluralism which is a basic foundation of the United States,” to quote the Executive Director of the new Jewish Agency–American Section, Isadore Hamlin.

We shall soon see how the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., had “divested itself of all activities which had been carried on, on behalf of the Jerusalem Agency”; and we shall soon see how the “Jewish Agency activities” of the new Jewish Agency were “consonant with the great principle of Cultural Pluralism,” as Americans interpret it, and not as foreign agents do.

Mr. Hamlin said: “The Jewish Agency–American Section is a part of the world-wide body called the Jewish Agency Executive. The Jewish Agency Executive is composed of 22 individuals, of which 6 reside in the U.S., and so the Jewish Agency-American Section is part of the world-wide organization.… The Jewish Agency was recognized by special act of the Israeli Parliament.… One member of our Executive, Mr. Eshkol, is a member of the Israeli Government.… He is Minister of Finance.” (Pp. 1308–9, Hearing.)

Chairman Fulbright asked Mr. Hammer: “Is it correct to say that before 1960, you were the agent of the Jerusalem Agency? After 1960, the Jerusalem Agency is your agent?” “That is correct, sir,” answered Mr. Hammer. (P. 1237.) We shall soon see how correct that was in practice.

We shall soon be ready to plunge into the thick of the Senate hearing. But it will help us understand things still better if we first get a picture of the United Jewish Appeal in the framework of the various and numerous remittances to Israel, so that we know exactly what part the UJA played and still plays in the upbuilding of the “Jewish homeland.”

Remittances to Israel and the “Ingathering of the Exiles.”

According to Time magazine of May 10, 1963, “American Jews have poured into Israel for the last 15 years, $568 million bonds for Israel; $1,035,000,000 through the UJA, and another $250 million in private investments that were often motivated by conscience.”

According to the New York Times of January 12, 1964, “a record sum of $69,172,050 in Israel bonds was sold last year in this country and in Western nations.… Of the total, $55,471,900 was sold in this country, $4,397,750 in Canada, $4,644,600 in Latin America, and $4,657,800 in Western Europe. Since 1951, when the first Israel bond campaign was started here, $660,794,900 in Israel bonds has been sold.”

The Times of June 3, 1964, reported that for the last sixteen years since 1948, aid to Israel from the United States Government totaled $989 million. “During the fiscal years of 1961 and 1962, United States aid to Israel totaled $172,000,000, or roughly $75 per capita” (New York Times, May 6, 1963).

From the West German Republic, Israel is to receive the sum of $821,000,000 “reparations.” Most of this sum has been paid, but there are expectations that after the indemnities are paid in full, there will come a $500,000,000 “loan” in one form or another.

Another source of money is the restitution payments to victims of Nazi persecution. Much of it goes and will go to Israel. The following is from the London Jewish Chronicle of November 22, 1963:

So far, West Germany has paid out 2,000 million pounds (about 5½ billion dollars) to victims of Nazi persecution, and will have paid out a total of 3,500 million pounds (about 10 billion dollars) by the time all claims have been settled. Amendments to the Federal Indemnification and Restitution Laws presented in draft to the West German Parliament last week, will, if adopted, increase total payments by 375 million pounds (about one billion dollars).

During the years 1948–61, the Joint Distribution Committee expended about $120,000,000 of its share of UJA funds for its program in Israel. And in the same thirteen-year period, Hadassah, the American Women’s Zionist organization, raised well over $110,000,000 for its projects in Israel. (American Jewish Year Book, 1963, p. 171.)

United Jewish Appeal (UJA) is a partnership of United Israel Appeal (UIA) and Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) for joint fund raising. Over 90 per cent of UJA income is from federations (of charity), the remainder, about $4 million, coming from hundreds of small nonfederated communities. From its inception in 1939 through 1962, UJA received contributions of about $1.435 billion.… The distribution of funds is in accordance with a formula which has remained unchanged since 1951 and is effective through 1963. This provides that, after deduction of campaign expenses and allocation to New York Association of New Americans ($817,000 in 1961), UIA is to receive 67 per cent and JDC 33 per cent of the first $55 million raised each year. Beyond $55 million, UIA is to receive 87.5 per cent and JDC 12.5 per cent. This formula was not applicable to the proceeds of “special” campaigns. (American Jewish Year Book, 1963, p. 174)

The 1964 budget of the UJA is $105 million: the regular fund calls for $69 million and a special fund for $36 million. The 1963 American Jewish Year Book puts it this way. “It is intended to provide for both new immigrants to Israel and early immigrants still requiring assistance.” As reported in the New York Times of December 8, 1963, “Rabbi Herbert Friedman, executive vice chairman of the UJA, ‘noted the renewed heavy immigration of Jews to Israel.… This had imposed a heavy financial burden on the Jewish Agency.’”

The New York correspondent of the London Jewish Chronicle put it this way in the issue of December 13, 1963: “The ‘Tidal Wave’ of immigration to Israel and the plight of Jews in 30 other countries have pushed the fund raising targets to record levels.”

Who are these immigrants? Are they really persecuted Jewish refugees who are being rescued? If so, why don’t we know something about them through the American newspapers? Or is it just plain Jewish manpower “ingathered” into Israel to build up the “Jewish homeland”? Originally, the problem of persecuted Jewish refugees in 1945–48—the problem of the victims of Nazi bestiality—“had” to remain unsolved, in order to insure the creation of the “Jewish” state in Palestine in 1948. Remember the incredible story of President Roosevelt sending his friend Morris L. Ernst on a successful mission to England to persuade the British Government to take part of the displaced persons, and then the outcry of Roosevelt: “Nothing doing on the program.… We can’t put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won’t stand for it.” Now it appears that the “problems” of the “Jewish homeland” cannot be solved unless there takes place a forced draft of Western free-world immigrants for the “ingathering of the exiles.”

If one were to believe the appeals of the local United States fund raisers, one would imagine hundreds of thousands of persecuted and homeless Jews in thirty countries waiting impatiently for the UJA–Jewish Agency machine to help them immigrate into Israel. Here is an example of the drives in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (around San Francisco), as reported by the San Francisco Examiner of February 16, 1964: “Acceptance of the $500,000 goal is our answer to the pitiful cries for help from thousands of Jews fleeing from places of danger and seeking asylum and a new life in Israel and other friendly lands, said Ben Silver, Campaign chairman.”

Not so do the brazen “Jewish” nationalists say today! They long ago abandoned any pretense of saving refugees; they have discarded the false tear-jerking slogans about refugees, and now speak of a crutch for permanent support for manpower—immigrants; and from the West, if you please. S. Z. Shragai, Jewish Agency member and Head of its Aliyah Department, said:

The Aliyah of Jews from the free world is a vital necessity for the building up and economic consolidation of Israel. We ask every Zionist and every Jew whose heart beats with Israel to realise and understand this necessity. It is important that there should be increased Aliyah from the free world, whence must come the worker, the skilled manpower, the experts and the scientists. The attention of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency is now focused on facilitating the absorption of immigrants from the free countries; everything possible is being done to provide them with adequate housing and suitable employment. (London Jewish Chronicle, December 13, 1963)

The Jewish Chronicle of March 6, 1964, said: “Israel’s ‘age of immigration’ will come to an end in three years, Mr. Yigal Allon, the Israeli Minister of Labour, has forecast.… The main accessible reservoirs of immigration are being depleted. Those Jews who stay on in North Africa, for example, are doing so because they are finding life there congenial.”

Moshe Dayan, Minister of Agriculture, wants increased Aliyah from Britain. The London Jewish Chronicle of March 13, 1964, quotes him as saying at the thirteenth annual conference of Hitachdut Olei Britannia (the Union of Immigrants From Britain to Israel): “Immigration to Israel from countries Jews were forced to leave would soon end and Israel would have to persuade Western Jews to come in large numbers.… ‘You hold the key to the problem,’ he told them.”

The Chronicle actually reported in its issue of January 31, 1964, that “more immigrants arrived in Israel in 1963 than in 1962, but the most welcome aspect was the entry of 10,000 from the developed countries last year, compared with 4,400 in 1962.” Actual figures of immigration to and emigration from Israel are not given out for political reasons.

There is a very interesting report in the Chronicle of December 13, 1963, about the “persecuted North African Jews who are refugees in France.”

A large-scale campaign launched by the Jewish Agency just over a year ago to promote the idea of emigration to Israel among the more than 110,000 North African Jewish repatriates in France has been abandoned—with much less publicity than when it was initiated. Confidential instruction from the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to its Paris office ordered the liquidation of the special department for North African emigration. In fact its activities came to a halt several months ago when, despite the publication of optimistic figures regarding the number of those interested in emigration, the six special emissaries of the Agency found themselves with nothing to do!

Clarence L. Coleman said: “The Zionist movement cynically employs the camouflage or mask of religion, philanthropy and humanitarianism, to achieve specific political ends.”

Leonard R. Sussman, Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism, said: “To be sure, the Jewish Agency also engages in refugee assistance work but the same Agency is primarily engaged in outright state-building and strictly political efforts as well. And even in the refugee assistance area there are strong political overtones because the Zionist organization is committed to ‘ingathering’ as many Jews of the world into the State of Israel as it can possibly attract.”

Once a Zionist, Always a Zionist. The American Zionist Council (AZC).

Having learned something about Israel’s finances and the part played by the UJA, and having learned about the direct covenanted relation between the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency and the state of Israel as regards the upbuilding of the “Jewish homeland,” we can now better understand the revelations of the United States Senate hearings. Necessarily, we must confine ourselves to the high lights. May I just say that in all my life, I never felt ashamed as a Jew until I read the three hundred pages covering the hearings of May 23 and August 1, 1963! I never felt more convinced of the decadence of Judaism in our time.

Let us first hear about the “Jewish Agency’s activities” of the American Zionist Council (AZC). Afterward we shall touch on the “Jewish Agency’s activities” by other “conduit organizations.”

Like good Zionists, the professional and nonprofessional Zionists of the Jewish Agencies in New York and of the American Zionist Council did exactly what the “covenant” and statutes enacted by the Israeli Knesset in regard to the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency Status Law expected them to do. This came out fully at the hearings of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate. More incomprehensible were the revelations exposed at the hearings about the “grants and subventions” and “payments to affiliated organizations” directly or through “conduits” to create Christian fronts to persuade the American people that the Christian leadership of this country supported Zionist-Israel policies; to subvert the Synagogue Council of America to play politics; to “cultivate” editors of newspapers and magazines who are supposed to be “untrammeled by sinister influences from any quarter” and “impartial without fear or favor”; to “cultivate” radio, TV, films, universities (without their knowing the source of the financing of “chairs”) to “project” a positive and favorable understanding of Israel on the American scene.

The record of the Senate Committee’s May 23 hearing shows that the Jewish Agency, from January 1, 1955, through December 31, 1962, made payments totaling $5,100,001.02 to the American Zionist Council to carry on the “Jewish Agency’s activities” in the United States. This does not include its grants and subsidies to the American Jewish Congress; to a joint fund with the Israeli Government Consulate in New York for “special public-relations purposes”; to the Presidents’ Conference for lobbying purposes in Washington; to American universities via a “Hebrew Culture Foundation” conduit; to the Jewish Telegraphic (News) Agency, which it owned and financed without any subscriber (individual or newspaper) knowing that it was not an independent news agency, but a mouthpiece for political Zionism.

There is one common denominator to all of the “Jewish Agency activities” in the United States—an effort to obscure the origin of the charity funds allotted by the Jerusalem Jewish Agency for propaganda purposes to its registered foreign agent. These huge charity funds that were returned to the United States to do “cultural” work were usually channeled through “voluntary” American organizations, and thus the Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc. (and formerly the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc.) avoided on technical grounds the necessity of itemizing the financial support given to the “affiliated organizations” in the reports due to the Justice Department.

CHAIRMAN FULBRIGHT to MR. HAMLIN: “In general, what were the purposes of these payments?”

MR. HAMLIN: “The purposes of these payments were to assist the American Zionist Council to carry out its Zionist educational and youth work, and its public informational activities” (p. 1312).

CHAIRMAN: “I show you a copy of an undated memorandum titled ‘American Zionist Council, Committee on Information and Public Relations,’ which outlines that committee’s plans for the 1962–1963 budgetary year, and ask if a copy of this memorandum appears in your files?”

MR. HAMLIN: “Yes, sir. This appeared in our files.”

The memorandum:

The Committee carries on a major part of its work through highly specialized subcommittees composed of professionals in specific areas of activity.… The Committee plans to operate in the following areas during the 1962–1963 budgetary year.

1. Magazines. Cultivation of editors. Stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines. Reprinting and distribution of favorable materials which appear in the above publications. Stimulation of articles in trade and specialized journals.…

2. TV, Radio, Films. The Department arranges for talks and interviews on Radio and TV, and servicing of film requests. It also cultivates leading personalities in these media. It encourages networks and stations to create programs revolving around Israel.

3. Christian Religious Groups. Cultivation of key religious leaders and groups. Setting up Seminars on Israel for Christian clergy. Stimulating of positive articles in the Protestant and Catholic press. Counteraction of hostile material in that press.…

4. Academic Circles. Support of the American Association for Middle East Studies.… Cultivation of leaders in the academic community. Stimulation of “Israel Day” on college campuses. Cooperation with colleges and universities in setting up of Seminars on the Middle East. Monitoring and counteraction of material in the campus press. Stimulating of articles in academic journals. Guidance to student Zionists and other Jewish students on Arab-Israel issues.… Preparation of materials for elementary and high school faculty.

5. The Daily Press. Cultivation of editors. Stimulation of positive material via syndicated writers, columnists, etc. Counteraction of hostile material. Reprinting and distribution of favorable material.

6. Books. Assistance to publishers in the promotion of worthwhile books. Distribution of books to public and college libraries.

7. Speakers. The Speakers Bureau will continue to utilize Israelis, American Christians and American Jews on academic, religious, civic, and other platforms around the country for positive presentations on Israel.

8. Liaison with organizations, both on the national and local levels, especially those with an international relations program. Special liaison with the Negro community.

9. Projects and Issues. Issuance of special material and guidance on controversial issues such as Arab refugees, Syrian-Israel relations, etc.

10. Visitors to Israel. Subsidization to individual public opinion molders to help provide them with an experience in Israel. Inter-University Committee Study Tour to Israel. Organize other tours in which public opinion molders will participate. Provide suitable arrangements in Israel for handling of American visitors.” (Pp. 1339–40)

The American Zionist Council is an organization of organizations. It is a tax-free organization. It is a “voluntary” American Jewish organization. Let us see what it did with the millions of dollars channeled through it by the Jewish Agencies in New York, in terms of budgetary allotments. Here is the budget for 1961–62, as revealed by Chairman Fulbright in the hearing of May 23, 1963:

The Information and Public Relations Department, $328,350. (It includes $53,300 for radio, television, film, periodicals; Speakers Bureau, $72,700; seminars on Israel and Middle Eastern problems, $67,000; a research and press service, $65,200.)

The Youth Department, $306,610. (It includes grants to Zionist youth movements for general activities and for their summer camps, $118,500; assistance provided for those wishing to prepare for pioneering in Israel, $17,000; American Zionist Youth activities, $87,860.)

The Organization Department, $129,133. Consists mainly of seven regional offices of the AZC.

The Herzl Foundation, $211,336. (It includes the Herzl Institute, $106,510—a center for Zionist adult education; the Herzl Press, $40,160—Zionist book publishing; Midstream, $39,660—a quarterly magazine.)

The Department of Education and Culture, $161,675. The Department of Torah Education and Culture, $75,083. Archives and Library, $67,400. Headquarters, $138,900. Fund Raising, $45,000.00—a staff will be utilized to organize independent campaigns … to interpret AZC requirements to Jewish Federations of Charities. (Pp. 1238–41)

The budget totals $1,463,487. This budget is at approximately the same expenditure level as for 1960–61, the “terminal year of Jewish Agency support.” We shall soon know what that “terminal year” meant.

The AZC was not only serving the Jewish Agency as a conduit to channel funds for the purpose of helping the “cause,” but it, in turn, created new conduits to make the distance farther away between the origin and the recipient. Thus, the AZC contributed funds to a Louis Rabinowitz Foundation, which turned it into grants to the Council for Middle Eastern Affairs, whose secretary, Dr. Benjamin Schwadran, is editor of a publication known as Middle East Affairs.

CHAIRMAN: Well, then, is the American Zionist Council merely acting as a conduit for this money?

MR. HAMLIN: Yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Is that right? And is the Rabinowitz Foundation acting as a conduit?

MR. HAMLIN: I believe so; yes, sir. We had given the Department of Justice a summary statement, and this payment was included in an item, I believe, called “allocations or grants to affiliated organizations.” (Pp. 1314–15)

To show how the Jerusalem Agency dealt directly with the American Zionist Council, the following few quotations out of long letters, accounts and dialogues will do.

The Chairman showed Mr. Hamlin a letter from the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Office of the Treasurer, Jerusalem, May 30, 1962, Dr. L. A. Pincus, to his representative in New York, Dr. L. Moyal, at the Jewish Agency—American Section. It was all about the American Zionist Council, and read in part as follows: “The matter of the AZC will come up for final decision before the Executive next Monday. Whatever that decision may be, and the details will be worked out later, will you kindly for the month of June give Mr. Bick $15,000 per week without requiring any details as to the items of expenditure.… The recommendation that is being made to the Executive, and which will probably be accepted, is as follows: $712,000 to be contributed by us; $300,000 to be raised by the American Zionist Council itself.… L A. PINCUS.” (P. 1334.)

CHAIRMAN: Is it correct to infer … that the financial arrangements for the American Zionist Council were directly with the Jerusalem Agency?

MR. HAMLIN: The Treasurer of the Jerusalem Jewish Agency, Mr. Pincus, negotiated this understanding with the AZC. Yes, sir. (P. 1705)

CHAIRMAN: Then it is quite clear, if I understand you, that the Jewish Agency Executive … uses the AZC as the conduit for the dissemination of funds in this country?

MR. HAMLIN: The AZC accepted these funds and turned them over to the Zionist groups.…

CHAIRMAN: Did not this, in effect, avoid the clear requirement that would have applied if they paid it directly, that they would have to report it under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?… You have already said it wasn’t for the Zionist Council’s purposes. It was for somebody else’s purposes and this was concealed by this method of reporting, wasn’t it?… You give it to A, and A gives it to B, and B gives it to C, and C finally uses it, but by that time nothing whatever is disclosed as to what he does with it.… There are so many different affiliated organizations with very similar names, and it is almost impossible for me to follow just what happens. (Pp. 1706–9)

Here is another example of a conduit service that the American Zionist Council rendered to its masters of the Jewish Agency for political and propaganda purposes. I. L. Kenen, a registered Congressional lobbyist in Washington, also directs an American Israel Public Affairs Committee and edits a newsletter, The Near East Report. His payment for services rendered is $38,000 annually. Said the Chairman:

[Here is] a statement that reads as follows: “No direct payments were made by the Jewish Agency—American Section, Inc., to Mr. Kenen or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. No payments were made by the Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc., to the above-named through the American Zionist Council. However, at the request of the Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc., the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., made available to the American Zionist Council for the account of the Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc., the sums listed [$38,000].” “Honestly, Mr. Hamlin, I find it extremely difficult to follow this.… I would like to ask you why did you not pay the $38,000 directly to Mr. Kenen. Why do you go through all this rigmarole?… If you can make this record clear you are a genius far beyond anyone I have ever met anywhere.… For the life of me I can’t understand why a person who received such a large subsidy from a foreign agent indirectly, because it goes through the AZC, should not have to register, whereas if he received it directly, I think you would agree he would have to register, wouldn’t he?… I have seen a number of his publications and if they aren’t completely devoted to the promotion of the same purposes as the Jewish Agency and the State of Israel, I don’t know what it is.” (Pp. 1740–41)

The following is an example of various organized Christian fronts serving the political fortunes of the state of Israel in the United States. This is about the ACPC.

CHAIRMAN: What is that “ACPC tour June 1958”?

MR. HAMMER: ACPC are initials standing for American Christian Palestine Committee, and from time to time the American Christian Palestine Committee conducted a tour to Israel and I must assume these were expenses in connection with the tour.

CHAIRMAN: Why did the Jewish Agency finance these tours? What was the purpose of them?

MR. HAMMER: … The general program of inviting people who are leaders in their particular fields of endeavor, to visit Israel to see at firsthand was always regarded by the Jewish Agency as a worthwhile project. This is being done all the time, the idea … being that if people who are influential in their own fields will visit Israel … they may write articles or make speeches or do other things which will be helpful to the general problem of assisting the Jewish Agency in the job of generating a favorable climate and good public opinion for the work we do.

CHAIRMAN: Was this expenditure reported in your reports to the Justice Department as part of your activities as a foreign agent?

MR. HAMMER: No, sir. Because this expenditure was included in the total amount which we paid to the American Zionist Council which in turn, was included in the total shown on the reports to the Justice Department under the designation of “grants to affiliated organizations.” (P. 1275)

One of the sickening and provoking silly subterfuges about American charity funds used and abused by the Jewish Agencies for political propaganda was the statement made by Mr. Hammer, “I want to re-emphasize that this money [funds supplied to the American Zionist Council] came from Latin America sources, from Canada. It did not necessarily come from—”

CHAIRMAN: Did you in the keeping of your accounts during this period—did you segregate each account in accordance with its source?

MR. HAMMER: We kept our accounts, of course … but our cash was not segregated, and when I was faced with the problem of how best to utilize whatever cash was on hand, I did not stop to say: well, this is American cash or this is borrowed cash, or this is Canadian cash or any other cash.

CHAIRMAN: It all went into the same bank account, did it not?

MR. HAMMER: Same bank account; yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN: And the bulk of it was United Jewish Appeal?

MR. HAMMER: Bulk of it was UJA obviously.

CHAIRMAN: Eighty per cent would you say, or 90 per cent?

MR. HAMMER: Oh, most substantial part of it was UJA. P. 1255)

Before we wind up the high lights about the AZC “conduit” of the Jewish Agency to go to other “conduit organizations” and non-conduit but brazen, direct subversion activities, let me take a few lines from the hearings on tax-exempt privileges of the Jewish agencies and their “affiliated organizations.”

CHAIRMAN: Were you prior to 1960 exempt from taxation under the applicable provisions of the tax code?

MR. HAMMER: The Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., was tax-exempt; yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Was the United Jewish Appeal?

MR. HAMMER: Yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN: And the United Israel Appeal?

MR. HAMMER: Yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN: And the Palestine Foundation Fund, were they all exempt from taxation?

MR. HAMMER: They were all exempt from taxation, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Does that tax-exempt status continue?

MR. HAMMER: It still continues to this day.

CHAIRMAN: Is the American Zionist Council exempt from taxation?

MR. HAMMER: I believe it is so, sir.

CHAIRMAN: And the Jewish Telegraphic Agency?

MR. HAMMER: … I do know at one time they did enjoy a tax exemption … I don’t know what their status is today. (P. 1305)

We shall soon go into the Jewish Telegraphic Agency status. But let us wind up the servile but presumptuously daring (chootzpedic, in Hebrew-Yiddish sense) “AZC Situation” as Isadore Hamlin reports to his boss Dr. Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization. In fact, the report is about both pillars of the propaganda machine of the Jewish Agency: the JTA and the AZC. The letter is dated February 5, 1963:

DEAR DR. GOLDMANN:

While I am writing, I thought I should advise you that both the U.I.A. [United Israel Appeal] and the JDC agreed to renew the J.T.A. allocation through the New York U.J.A. for the forthcoming year. Secondly, Lipsky accepted our second offer of $5000 as his retainer.

You surely received the copy of my letter to Moshe Sharett [Chairman of the Jewish Agency–Executive] about the Council [AZC] situation.… We have taken over the departments and you can imagine that we have quite a number of matters to straighten out. In the meantime, the Council has so far found no solution to its remaining problem. With best regards,

Sincerely,

ISADORE HAMLIN, Executive Director

Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc.

CHAIRMAN: What is the “Council situation” referred to in this letter?

MR. HAMLIN: The “Council situation” referred to in this letter is that as of January 22, 1963, the Council resolved not to take any more funds from the Jewish Agency–American Section. The Council then turned to the Jewish Agency–American Section, and asked us to take over certain cultural departments that they have been conducting up to that date.… They did not ask us to take over the Department of Information and Public Relations.…

CHAIRMAN: Even though they have no money for it?… Tell me why in January of this year did they resolve not to take money from the Jewish Agency?

MR. HAMLIN: In January of this year, they resolved not to take money from the Jewish Agency because a problem of their registrability under the Foreign Agents Registration Act arose, and they were advised by their attorneys to take this action, I believe. (Pp. 1363–65)

The correspondent of the London Jewish Chronicle in New York put it this way in the issue of January 3, 1964:

… Until the time of the investigation by Senator Fulbright, the American Zionist Council received its funds from the American Section of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Jerusalem. The investigation made it impossible for the AZC to accept money from the Jewish Agency unless it registered (as did the Agency) as a foreign agent. This it was unwilling to do. As the constituent organizations refused to support the AZC, its apparatus was dismantled.

Zionists, as a rule, always collect money. They take; they don’t give. The saying goes that a Zionist is he who collects money from a non-Zionist in order to send another non-Zionist to Israel.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).

Let us now leave the AZC for good and go into the other “grants and subventions to affiliated organizations.” First and foremost is the JTA. The misuse of charity funds for political propaganda by a foreign agent, and the facts about the ownership and support of the JTA by the Jewish Agency, came out for the first time only at the Senate hearings in 1963. The JTA always gave the impression of being an independent news agency. Its daily news bulletins and its long weekly feature articles filled the pages of more than eighty Anglo-Jewish and Yiddish newspapers throughout the United States. No subscriber ever knew that the JTA was not an independent news agency. Actually, it would have been called the Zionist Telegraphic Agency if it were honest.

Let us go to the Senate hearings. First, a letter from Mr. Gottlieb Hammer, who since 1960 was supposed to have “divested himself of all activities which had been carried on in behalf of the Jerusalem Agency,” to the Executive Vice Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal on April 5, 1962, about the needs of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The letter:

Mr. Henry C. Bernstein

Executive Vice Chairman

United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York

New York, N.Y.

DEAR HENRY:

In pursuance of the discussions which were held and the agreement reached concerning the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, I have been authorized by Mr. Aryeh L. Pincus, Treasurer of the Jewish Agency [Jerusalem] to ask New York UJA to pay out, on behalf of the United Israel Appeal, 67 per cent of $50,000 to the JTA for the year commencing April 1, 1962. We understand that the Joint Distribution Committee will likewise ask you to pay out, on their behalf, 33 per cent of the $50,000.

We would request that this money be paid out to JTA effective at once, at the rate of $1,750 per week. This sum was ascertained after a careful evaluation by JTA of its contemplated income from Welfare Funds and other expected income.…

Sincerely yours,

GOTTLIEB HAMMER, Secretary UIA

CHAIRMAN: Would you explain to the committee why you, as secretary of the UIA, required an authorization from the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, in order to make this request of the New York UJA?… If this were your agent and you were in control, why did you require authorization from the treasurer of the Jewish agency [Jerusalem]? (Pp. 1237–38)

CHAIRMAN: Prior to March 13, 1960, what was the relationship of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc., to the JTA?

MR. HAMMER: The Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc. held the voting shares of the JTA.…

CHAIRMAN: Did you own all the stock?

MR. HAMMER: With the exception of a few shares, I believe we held all of the voting shares.

CHAIRMAN: Did the Jewish Agency advance payments or loans to the JTA before it acquired its stock?

MR. HAMMER: Mr. Chairman, this is going back a dozen years or so, or more. To the best of my recollection I think that there were some small loans and advances made prior to the acquisition of the stock. They were made to the late Jacob Landau.

CHAIRMAN: They were substantial afterwards?

MR. HAMMER: Yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN: In about what magnitude were they annually?

MR. HAMMER: Well, as I said before, we made up the annual deficits of JTA.

CHAIRMAN: Was that large?

MR. HAMMER: That ran possibly in low six figures, possibly a hundred, $125,000 a year.…

CHAIRMAN: When you acquired the stock, did you pay for it or was that transferred to you without payment?

MR. HAMMER: It was transferred to us without payment.…

CHAIRMAN: Was the acquisition of the stock of the JTA reported to the Department of Justice.…

MR. HAMMER: I do not recall, sir.

CHAIRMAN: Was there any public notice made in any fashion that the Jewish Agency had acquired the ownership of the JTA?

MR. HAMMER: I do not recall any public notice, although the matter was generally known to the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.… (Pp. 1284–88)

CHAIRMAN: Did you report all these payments on your registration statement filed with the Department of Justice.… Did you report them as payments to the JTA?

MR. HAMLIN: … Up until about March of 1961, the details in our statements to the Justice Department did not indicate the recipients, the names of the recipients. They were bunched together under “grants and subventions.” (Pp. 1367–68)

Now a few lines about the “independent news agency.” The Chairman asked Hamlin: “I call your attention to the phrase used … in describing the JTA. You describe it as ‘this independent news agency.’ Is it correct that the Jewish Agency–American Section which held the controlling stock, and so on, is it correct to refer to it as an ‘independent news agency’?” Hamlin answered: “We owned it, but we did not control in any way at all the affairs of this Agency.” (P. 1393.) This, in spite of the Chairman’s quoting the Jewish Agency’s “purposes to assist this independent news agency to give full coverage in their news bulletins and dispatches to news developments in Israel especially relating to the work of the Jewish Agency.”

In a letter written by Eleazar Lipsky, President of the JTA, to Senator Fulbright on July 30, 1963, he tells the Senator that now, “the financial responsibility for the service is being increasingly assumed by the American Jewish federations [of Jewish charities] and welfare funds, more than 135 of which are now directly participating in its work.” Which means, of course, that the philanthropic organizations are “to assist this ‘independent’ news agency to give full coverage in their news bulletins and dispatches to news developments in Israel especially relating to the work of the Jewish Agency.” There again is the marriage of convenience between the Jewish charities and the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency.

Said Mr. Hamlin about this take-over of the JTA’s financial support by the Jewish charities—and here he lets the cat out of the bag: “… What was happening here is that the community welfare funds were not in effect taking over this financial relationship as quickly as we had hoped.… We are interested in having a clear break before the ownership was turned over because we didn’t want a situation where the JTA ownership was turned over to the board and then the JTA would have to come back to us again and ask us for money because our vital interest here was to keep this news agency alive.” (P. 1395.)

Washington, of course, well knew what the JTA stood for long before the revelations made at the Senate hearings. Thus the Daily News Bulletin of the JTA for February 7, 1963, reported that on January 28, the Department of State’s Director of Near Eastern Affairs barred Mr. Milton Friedman, “chief Washington correspondent” of the JTA, from a State Department briefing of the Palestine Arab refugees question. The reason for barring Mr. Friedman, according to the same report, was “because the briefing was only for American media.” In other words, the Department of State, which knows so much more than we do, could not see its way clear to permitting a news agent of a foreign agent to enjoy the normal rights of American correspondents.

At the Senate hearings the fact was brought out that while the directors of the JTA were all American citizens, they were all top-level Zionist leaders, and Zionists, presumably, are conscious of the covenants between the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency and the State of Israel. Therefore, in the present climate of clarification in Washington, it was believed improper and unsafe to include the JTA in a briefing restricted for security reasons to “American media.”

Well, we have reached the point where we can give only a few paragraphs to each one of the other “conduit organizations” or non-conduit organizations that helped promote “Jewish Agency activities” in America, and then we can reach our conclusions about the decadence of Judaism in our time.

The Synagogue Council of America.

The Synagogue Council of America, according to Mr. Hamlin, “consists of representatives of the three branches of Judaism in this country, reform, conservative and orthodox, and consists of representatives both of the lay bodies of those three branches of Judaism and the rabbinical bodies of those three branches of Judaism. The Synagogue Council has been receiving funds from the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency to ‘prepare and distribute educational and cultural materials in connection with the upbuilding of Israel, particularly with regard to the historic and spiritual relationship of the Jewish communities outside of Israel to the Holy Land.’” Rose L. Halprin, Acting Chairman of the Jewish Agency in New York, wrote (May 6, 1959) to Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, Executive Director of the Synagogue Council of America, as follows:

DEAR RABBI TANENBAUM:

This is in response to your letter, dated March 26, 1959, in which the Synagogue Council of America asks the Jewish Agency for a grant to help the Council prepare and distribute educational and cultural materials in connection with the upbuilding of Israel.…

We are happy to advise you that, after careful consideration by our finance committee, an allocation of $10,000 to the Council has been approved for the fiscal year April 1, 1959, to March 31, 1960.

We are very pleased to be able to assist the Synagogue Council to carry out its important work in this educational and cultural sphere.

Sincerely yours,

ROSE L. HALPRIN

Acting Chairman

Chairman Fulbright produced during the hearing a copy of an outline of “Major Areas of Program Concentration, 1959–1960” of the Commission on International Affairs, Synagogue Council of America. It included: Religious freedom of Jews in the Soviet Union, Foreign-aid legislation, World Refugee Year, World Council of Churches religious-liberty study, Disarmament and nuclear testing. The Chairman asked: “Was the subsidy received from the Jewish Agency to be applied in carrying out these activities?” Then he produced a letter of gratitude written by Rabbi Tanenbaum to Gottlieb Hammer, Executive Vice Chairman, Jewish Agency for Israel, New York (dated June 21, 1960, after the reorganization), reading:

DEAR GOTTLIEB:

For your information, I am enclosing a confidential and detailed report of the services we have been enabled to perform as a result of the generous grants … provided through your good offices.

With deepest appreciation,

RABBI MARC TANENBAUM

Executive Director

The “report” of Rabbi Tanenbaum to Mr. Hammer had this bit, among others:

Representatives from the Synagogue Council of America testified before the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees on the moral imperatives underlying our foreign aid program.… At this time, the mutual security grants to Israel were threatened with drastic reduction. During their testimony, the Synagogue Council leaders made a strong plea for continuing mutual security aid to Israel. Observers (including S. L. Kenen) regarded the effect of these testimonies as greatly beneficial to the subsequently improved reception to Israel’s request for maintaining the status quo in grants. (The quotations about the Synagogue Council of America come from the Senate hearings, pp. 1765–67)

Senator Fulbright could not help asking Mr. Hamlin: “Would you consider such an occurrence before a congressional committee an activity ‘on an educational and cultural sphere’?” He probably did not know, or think, that the officials of the Jewish Agency–World Zionist Organization and the Zionist officials of the Synagogue Council of America, as good Zionists, never forget the “covenant” concluded with the Government of Israel through the Knesset.

Dr. Nahum Goldmann’s Jewish Agency Uses Dr. Nahum Goldmann’s American Jewish Congress as a “Conduit.” A “Joint Fund” Between the Jewish Agency and the Government of Israel New York Consulate, Office of Information.

The Government of Israel and the Jewish Agency—the partners in the business of “ingathering” the Jews of the world into Israel, always dreaming about the “exodus” of the millions of integrated Russian Jews (whom they call a “Jewish minority”) to the “Jewish homeland”—have a constant ax to grind against Soviet Russia. And so, Dr. Goldmann’s Jewish Agency arranges with Dr. Goldmann’s American Jewish Congress to engage Dr. Moshe Decter to conduct a project as Director of Jewish Minorities Research. The American Jewish Congress pays Dr. Decter $12,000 annually and collects the bill from the Jewish Agency. The Israeli Government Office of Information in New York, at the Israeli Consulate, chips in with $5,000 for this project. The Joint Fund produces grist for Dr. Goldmann’s mill to grind out political propaganda against Russia so that she will “let my people go!” in an eventual exodus to Israel.

The office of the Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress, New York, writes to Mr. Hamlin of the Jewish Agency, on April 19, 1963:

You have asked me for a report of the work done by the American Jewish Congress under the grant received from the Agency for Research into the plight of the Jew behind the Iron Curtain. It is my pleasure to enclose a progress report by Dr. Moshe Decter, the director of the project.

The “progress report” tells of Decter’s reading of the Soviet press, having specialized for several years in research on the status of the Jews in the Soviet Union; examination of books, periodicals of the USSR; contacts and discussions with American and foreign scholars; dissemination of information and “documentation,” and so on.

Dr. Moshe Decter, apparently, has not been getting his fees fast enough from the American Jewish Congress; so he writes directly to the office of the Jewish Agency on July 12, 1962: “I am writing you now in the hope that by doing so I can forestall further delays and inconveniences both to the American Jewish Congress and to myself with regard to my fee payment.… As you undoubtedly know, my annual fee is $12,000 which is paid me through the mechanism of the American Jewish Congress.”

CHAIRMAN FULBRIGHT: Does the Jewish Agency–American Section alone provide all the funds for this project?

MR. HAMLIN: No, sir … The Israel Office of Information provides $5000.

CHAIRMAN: On the American Section’s registration statement these monthly payments are reported as payments to the American Jewish Congress; are they not?

MR. HAMLIN: Yes, sir; they are.

CHAIRMAN: Also the name, Dr. Moshe Decter, and the name, Jewish Minorities Research, does not appear at all on your registration statement; is that correct?

MR. HAMLIN: Yes, sir; that is correct.

CHAIRMAN: Why didn’t the Agency make the arrangement directly with Dr. Decter and report in detail the nature of this project? Here again, by using the Jewish Congress, you insulate the registrant, which is the Agency, from the project so that it never appears in your registration what the project was. (Pp. 1715–18)

The “joint funds” and the joint activities by the partners in business—the Israeli Government and the Jewish Agency—came in for review a good many times during the hearings. Thus, the Jewish Agency publishes a magazine, the Israel Digest. The subscription per copy is $1.50. The Israel Consulate (the Government of Israel) pays $10,000 to $15,000 to the Jewish Agency for mailing out copies to a list of persons furnished by the Consulate.

CHAIRMAN: Do you think any who read that know the Government of Israel paid for it?

MR. HAMLIN: They would have no way of knowing.

CHAIRMAN: Don’t you think they ought to know it?… You don’t have to answer that.

There was a “Western Hemisphere Services”—a “project of providing records to radio stations in Latin America, about 20 in number, and about 10 radio stations in the United States, that have programs in the Yiddish language … We [The Jewish Agency] prepare the materials in our office, and the records are produced physically in the Israel [Government] Office of Information.” This time the bills came from the Consulate General of Israel in New York for “services rendered”—for $10,550, the annual share of the Jewish Agency in the joint undertaking. (Pp. 1729–30.)

And there was a “Special Public Relations” fund with a “budget [that] concerned itself with the joint fund with the Israel Office of Information.” Dr. Goldmann saw to it that a special fund of $100,000 was voted at the plenary session of the Jerusalem. Jewish Agency “to restore the 15 per cent cut in the special public relations budget of Schwadron, Kenen et al; [a] reserve to be earmarked specifically for special public relations purposes, etc.”

The “Presidents’ Conference.”

And there was, of course, an allotment of funds for Dr. Goldmann’s favorite child, the “Presidents’ Conference”—$17,500 for 1960–61 and $12,500 for 1961–62.

CHAIRMAN FULBRIGHT: What is the “Presidents’ Conference”?

MR. HAMLIN: Sir, the Presidents’ Conference is an ad hoc consultative body, composed of the presidents of the national Jewish organizations in this country which meets from time to time to discuss problems affecting Israel.… There are 19 national Jewish organizations, and our president is also a member of this body, Dr. Goldmann.

[There are, of course, many more Jewish national organizations, but because they would not join in that scheme of lobbying, they were therefore nonexistent, according to Mr. Hamlin.]

CHAIRMAN: Why do you support the conference?

MR. HAMLIN: We provided administrative services.…

CHAIRMAN: These payments have been itemized in your reports to the Department of Justice?

MR. HAMLIN: No, sir; they were not. (Pp. 1756–57)

Cultivating American Universities via a Conduit—the “Hebrew Culture Foundation.”

Finally, we must touch, if only slightly, on another “Jewish Agency activity”—cultivating American colleges and universities. The Jewish Agency set up a “Hebrew Culture Foundation”; grants were made directly to this Foundation. “It has been making,” according to Mr. Hamlin, “small participating grants to American colleges and universities for the purpose of establishing chairs in the Hebrew language, or Israeli studies, or Jewish studies, or Middle East studies.…”

CHAIRMAN: Were these payments reported to the Department of Justice on your registration statement? Were these universities—was Harvard, for example, or whatever were mentioned here, Columbia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins and Wisconsin—were they aware of the source of the money which you made available to them?… Did they know that the money came from the Jewish Agency, a registered foreign agent?

MR. HAMLIN: I don’t know whether the officers [of the Hebrew Culture Foundation] stated to the universities in each instance.…

CHAIRMAN: Do you still contribute to the Center for Middle Eastern studies of Harvard University?

MR. HAMLIN: Not the Jewish Agency, but the Hebrew Culture Foundation has a committment to Harvard of $10,000 during the current year.…

CHAIRMAN: I am in no way interested in Harvard’s troubles or finances. But what we are interested in is a foreign agent contributing to Harvard and other universities here. I mean, is this customary?… I am just trying to find out if this is the procedure and was it reported, that the foreign agent is contributing to the upkeep of one of our better-known institutions. (Pp. 1758–64)

“Jubilation.”

It is remarkable that the JTA-fed Anglo-Jewish and Yiddish press of America managed to be “jubilant” over the “results” of the two hearings: no foreign agent was expelled or had to be “recalled.” The London Jewish Chronicle (a Zionist-Orthodox but independent magazine) had enough courage to report in its issue of September 20, 1963, the following from its correspondent in New York, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin:

The jubilation of the American Jews is tinged with a certain amount of unease because the hearings brought out the fact that funds administered by the Jewish Agency–American Section, Inc., and by the Jewish Agency, Inc., have not been spent entirely in accordance with the campaign slogans by means of which they were raised. A committee of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, representing over 800 Conservative rabbis, is now engaged in a careful study of the 300-page transcript recently published by the American Government Printing Office.

According to Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, the reports “are a vivid and saddening description of how some of the present international Jewish organizations operate—how they use funds, a large part of which are raised by our congregations, to establish organizations and subsidize activities which do not necessarily merit the highest priority and where contributors of these funds are not informed candidly in advance how some of these funds will be used.”

Rabbi Kelman also voiced his dissatisfaction with the manner in which the U.S.A. Jewish press covered the Fulbright hearings. There was “little objective coverage,” he said, a fact which “highlights the regrettable failure of the American Jewish community to demand and support the establishment of a national independent Jewish press which would see as its major function the creation of a well-informed Jewish public opinion.”

The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time. William Zukerman’s Memorable Diagnosis.

Well, it is time to draw our conclusions after having witnessed the degeneration of a noble sense of charity into conscienceless propaganda for depraved “Jewish” political nationalism.

How far has the decadence, the degeneration, the adulteration of Judaism gone? The fact that no revolting reaction took place in Jewish life in America immediately after the revelations at the Senate hearings; the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars of ostensible charity funds continue to pour into the Jewish Agency–World Zionist Organization for artificial “ingathering” of “refugees” and artificial nation-building; the fact that the American Zionist Council and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the most exposed of the servants of foreign agents, had the audacity to ask financial support from the Federations of Jewish Charities, and get it with more or less no compunction on the part of the governing directors—these facts prove how far the Zionists have succeeded in capturing our Jewish communities.

There was a time when self-respecting and emancipated American Jews defended their independence as Americans against the encroachments of the foreign leaders of political Zionism. But now that the Jewish communities have become wood-choppers and water-carriers for the state of Israel and they can’t lick ’em, they have joined ’em.

Extraordinary William Zukerman, in his Jewish Newsletter, had in 1960 already summarized the whole tragic history of the twisted Jewish Charities in America in the following memorable analysis; it applies even more in 1963–64:

Now that the veil of secrecy which has enveloped the activities of the UJA for many years has been lifted, facts are beginning to emerge which reveal that the present crisis of the UJA goes far deeper than the scandal of subsidizing Israel’s political parties and Zionist propaganda under the guise of philanthropy. They raise a much larger fundamental issue: the extent to which the UJA drugged the American Jewish movement. They prove convincingly that more than a mere legal and technical reorganization of the UJA is necessary now.

During the last decade, the UJA has undergone many important changes and has been subjected to ever growing criticism with the Jewish community. Chief among these was the charge that the 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 in accordance with their desires and interests, it has become primarily an agency for financing “ingatherings” (subsidized mass immigration) and other nationalistic and political policies of Israel, policies which are at times far from humanitarian, and in most instances surcharged with aggressive nationalism; some are even of a military character which contribute directly to the war tensions in the Middle East. The UJA, the critics charged, by financing without distinction all of Israel’s needs, is thus engaged primarily in advancing the nationalistic and political projects of a state, instead of the welfare of the people.…

Why does the richest and most powerful Jewish community in the world, living in one of the freest democracies of all times, where freedom of thought and expression and the general dissemination of information have reached their highest peak in history, 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? Why are such undemocratic activities as those of the UJA and of the Presidents’ Conference possible only in the U.S.A.?

To this writer, the present UJA crisis is but a symptom of a much more serious crisis of the organized 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. For years American Jews have lived in constant adoration of an image they have created and have fanatically refused to see any flaw in it. For years they have lived as a shadow of others, relegating themselves to an inferior position of fund raisers, bond salesmen, and political lobbyists working for a superior race of builders and history makers. All this has emptied Jewish Communal life of all intellectual independence and spiritual content, sapped its moral strength, withered its roots in the American soil and hastened the process of segregation which is rapidly converting American Jewry into a gilded ghetto. In short, the complete and uncritical surrender to a tribalistic nationalism has made of organized American Jews a typical ideological satellite of our time, one which clings to satellitism as a principle, glorifies it and lives by it through free choice despite the fact that they have been warned of the dangers to which this exposes them as well as all American Jews. This is the graver crisis that the UJA incident revealed. (Jewish Newsletter, February 22, March 7, April 4, 1960)

“Chiffon de Papier” and Double Talk in Action. The Ben Gurion–Eshkol “Entente Cordiale.”

In an article in the Israeli press published before the last World Zionist Congress, Sh. Z. Shragai, head of the Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency, said that “Israel needs a minimum immigration of 50,000 to 60,000 a year to satisfy the immediate demand for manpower in the growing Israeli economy and armed forces” (Jewish Newsletter, January 23, 1961).

There is no mistake about these two facts: (1) The “growing Israeli economy and armed forces” will always need not only immigrants, but charitable contributions. And (2) The moneyed class of non-Zionist Jews in America who give the big donations are mostly native-born American Jews, members of the American Jewish Committee or other such societies. These Jews are kind and charitable, but soft, gullible and inarticulate as far as their own Jewishness goes. Basically, they are good, normal Americans of Jewish faith! On the other hand, very little charity of substance comes from the pockets of the so-called Zionists in America. Zionists are mostly a vocal and noisy lot; they are usually on the receiving end as collectors and retainers, even though they run the show and handle the funds that come from the UJA for Israel.

Shrewd Ben Gurion discovered these facts early enough in his career as Prime Minister of Israel. He always preferred to deal with rich American Jews rather than with American Zionists and professional Jews. Now, before I proceed with my story about the way Ben Gurion manipulated American Jewish leaders, perhaps this is the right spot to assure my readers that I well know that Ben Gurion retired to Sde Boker in the Negev, as Prime Minister and Defense Minister of the Government of Israel, on June 16, 1963. “There is a group of people that I had full confidence in … so I stepped down” was Ben Gurion’s explanation.

Nevertheless, I shall still dwell on Israel’s Ben Gurion to the end of this book, for even now he is the major influence in Israel, and remains the active elder statesman who is ever ready to “answer to his country’s call in a national emergency.” You just do not write off a Ben Gurion from his political scene and soil even though he is seventy-six years old. When he dies at one hundred and twenty, he will die with his boots on.

According to C. L. Sulzberger of the New York Times, who visited Ben Gurion at his home in Sde Boker, “Ben Gurion is vibrantly alive … and still talks with Prime Ministerial authority” (New York Times, November 16, 1963). And according to Granger Blair, also of the Times, “the habit of command remains very much a part of the vigorous personality of Ben Gurion” (New York Times January 2, 1964).

Levi Eshkol, present Prime Minister of Israel, was for many years Ben Gurion’s right-hand man and trouble-shooter. He was also his Finance Minister. There are plenty of signs that Ben Gurion is keeping some sort of checkrein on the “new” Government of Israel, which actually consists of the same old crew that Ben Gurion had in his cabinet. There never was any revolution in the political life of Israel as regards change of Governments. Once before, Ben Gurion “retired” to Sde Boker, but Sde Boker soon became the seat of a shadow Government that ran the state of Israel instead of official Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and official Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon. After fourteen months of “retirement,” Ben Gurion emerged openly as official Minister of Defense “under” Moshe Sharett, and before long he was also Prime Minister. The plots that were brewing against Sinai and Egypt were ready for action, and the war on Egypt in 1956 erupted with no one knowing anything about it, except the secret ruling junta.

Today, Ben Gurion is certainly not engrossed in the noble activities he said were “dear to his heart”—studies in philosophy and biblical history. When he is not engaged in writing articles for American newspapers and magazines, he is constantly in conferences with a steady stream of visitors “who come to consult Israel’s elder statesman.” Who are they? What are they consulting him about? Perhaps one day he will kick out Eshkol, as he did Moshe Sharett, if Eshkol dares not follow in his footsteps. And there are plenty of emergencies and crises ahead for poor Israel.

When Levi Eshkol took over the Premiership of Israel, there was talk about “revising the policy towards the Arabs and taking a fresh look and re-examining our situation in many vital respects.” And it is true that, for the first time in a decade, Israel has sought recourse in the Security Council of the United Nations after the latest Syrian-Israeli border incidents, instead of resorting to retaliation and frightfulness as a policy. But perhaps even Ben Gurion learned belatedly that his depraved policy of frightfulness had backfired, and that it was too late in history to pursue the classical methods he learned from the European jingoists. Then what is to be done? Perhaps, after all, try to carry out paragraph 11 of the United Nations Resolution 194 (III) of 1948 the United Nations that created the state of Israel and gave it its legality in 1948.

Well, nothing of the sort seems to enter the minds of Ben Gurion’s satellites. We read, for example, in recent days that “Eshkol’s Government is going right ahead with the diversion of the waters of Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) and the Jordan.” That of course means a head-on collision, and an eventual hot war instead of the sixteen-year-old cold war of hatred and revenge.

Therefore, Eshkol and Ben Gurion being twin brothers, I might as well take the original copy when I continue to discuss the original sin of political Zionism. Eshkol, apparently, will always look to Ben Gurion for guidance. So back to Ben Gurion and the American Jewish leaders, and to the “chiffon de papier,” scraps of paper.

Now, in the early days, soon after the establishment of the state of Israel, when Ben Gurion really thought that he was the unquestionable and indispensable leader of world Jewry, when “Ben Gurion expects you to do your duty” was the word of God, his logorrhea knew no limits. Some of Ben Gurion’s brazen and presumptuous words embarrassed the guileless big donors in America. Pilgrimages were then made to “His Highness,” the Prime Minister of the “Jewish homeland,” and pleas were made that he kindly abstain from reflecting on the loyalties of American Jews. Private diplomacy was instituted. Thus, in 1950, Mr. Ben Gurion condescended to make a “solemn promise” to Jacob Blaustein of Baltimore (American industrialist and Honorary President of the American Jewish Committee) that “his country represented and spoke only in behalf of its own citizens and not for the Jews in other countries.” At that time, Mr. Ben Gurion said that “the Jews of the U.S., as a community and as individuals, have only one political attachment and that is to the United States; they owe no political allegiance to Israel” (New York Times, May 1, 1961).

Since 1950, Ben Gurion has breached his “solemn promise” and treated it like a “chiffon de papier” on many occasions, culminating in the now famous remark he made to the Twenty-fifth World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on December 28, 1960, that “Jews who live outside Israel are Godless and violate the precepts of Judaism every day they remain away from Israel.” Or as he said elsewhere: “A Jew is a Jew first; his allegiance to the State of his abode is the allegiance of a stranger living in a host country.”

In 1961, the good and gullible Jacob Blaustein again tried private diplomacy with Ben Gurion, again going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to see him. Again

Mr. Blaustein signed a joint declaration saying that American Jews owed no political allegiance to Israel and that Israel could not presume to speak in the name of Jews who were citizens of any other country. At the close of the fifty-fourth annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee, in New York, on April 30, 1961, Mr. Blaustein made public the above statement and told the meeting that he had achieved a “strong official reaffirmation” by Mr. Ben Gurion of their 1950 understanding on Israel-American relations as well as an expression of intent to avoid future violations. (New York Times, May 1, 1961)

That was on April 30, 1961. But on May 17, 1961, the agreement was breached again and Ben Gurion sang another tune: “Jews are not Americans and not part of the American people and the American homeland,” according to the version of the London Jewish Chronicle of May 26, 1961. And according to the New York Times reporter in Jerusalem, “Premier Ben Gurion talked bluntly in the Knesset about Jews in the U.S. who call themselves Zionists: ‘They are reluctant to say that they are not Americans and not part of the American homeland like any other Americans.’”

Coming in June, 1961, to the United States (via the back door, Canada) to mend his political fences before the new elections in Israel in mid-August, Ben Gurion “held fast to his views that Zionism means nothing less than ‘Aliyah’ (immigration to Israel) when he addressed the American Zionist Council, the representative body of all Zionist groups in the U.S.” All this did not prevent American Jewish organizations from paying homage to the Prime Minister of the “Jewish homeland” and making pilgrimages to the Waldorf Towers in New York, where he stayed. Ben Gurion addressed the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, composed of leaders of eighteen major American Jewish groups and headed by Label A. Katz, President of B’nai B’rith. Ben Gurion stressed “Jewish unity.” We all well know by now what “Jewish unity” means—the centrality of Israel, joint partnership in the national “Jewish homeland.”

The New York Times ran a picture of Premier Ben Gurion and Dr. Nahum Goldmann sitting together as close friends at the American Zionist Council meeting. Standing behind them was Label A. Katz. Five days later, on June 5, 1961, at Kiamesha Lake, New York, Mr. Katz, addressing the 109th annual convention of B’nai B’rith, “endorsed the recent appeal of Premier Ben Gurion of Israel for cooperative action among American Jews.… Such unified action among diverse groups in the American Jewish community could ‘effectively strengthen the cultural growth of Jews here and abroad and deepen the spiritual and cultural relationship between American Jews and Israelis.’” (New York Times, June 6, 1961.)

“Cultural growth”! How these “Jewish” nationalists hide their jingoist “Jewish” nationalism behind the mask of “culture” and that God-sent phrase, “cultural pluralism.” We shall go into it soon, for a while.

When one observes the degrading obsequiousness in leaders of American Jewry, one is amazed more at their lack of character and responsibility than at Ben Gurion’s presumptuousness and audacity. For Ben Gurion is Ben Gurion; he never knew or understood our American ideals, our American hopes and dreams, and the place of the individual in the new nation. Speaking on the twentieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, on April 21, 1963, in Israel, “Mr. Ben Gurion said that Diaspora Jews were hiding their heads in the sand if they did not recognize that they were still in a perilous position today. Nothing had changed for Jews outside Israel, said Mr. Ben Gurion, since [the Zionist author Leon] Pinsker defined their position more than 80 years ago: “Our homeland is a foreign country, our unity is dispersion, our solidarity is produced by general hostility, our weapon submission, our defence flight. In the eyes of the living, the Jew is regarded as one dead; the citizen regards him as a foreigner; the resident as a wanderer; the rich regard us as beggars and the poor as rich exploiters; the patriot regards us as lacking a homeland, and all look upon us as a hated competitor.’” (See the New York Herald Tribune of April 22, 1963, and the London Jewish Chronicle of April 26, 1963.)

The MacIver Report.

This is the logical moment to recall the famous MacIver Report. It went to the heart of the question of the Jew’s place in America. Although it appeared in May, 1951 (when the Zionists were still afraid to come our into the open as did Dr. Nahum Goldmann in 1959 when he said that “American Jews must have the courage to declare openly that they have a double loyalty, to the country in which they live and to the State of Israel”), the study of Professor Emeritus Robert Morrison MacIver throws a good light upon the status of the Jew in America today under the influence of “Jewish” political nationalism hiding behind the mask of “cultural pluralism.”

Professor MacIver was Lieber Professor of Political Philosophy and Sociology at Columbia University from 1929 to 1950. He was then engaged by the Jewish National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC) to make a study and report his findings to them. In 1951 the Jewish communities of America were still sufficiently independent to be disturbed by the trends created by “Jewish” nationalism (Zionism). They wanted to know what was what.

I shall fall back on a scholarly summary of the MacIver Report prepared by Moses Lasky of the American Council for Judaism, entitled “An Analysis of the MacIver Report.”

The MacIver Report is a weighty document of 135 pages. Local Jewish Welfare Funds supplied the finances for Dr. MacIver’s study, said to have been $25,000. It was issued in May, 1951, for private circulation, but this privacy was soon lost, and the Report has since been a center of controversy.…

The key to Dr. MacIver’s philosophy may be found in a passage tucked away in the middle of the first half. Referring to the stated credo of the American Jewish Committee that “A Jew can live a full and rich Jewish life as an integrated American,” Dr. MacIver says: “But this statement requires spelling out.…”

In the first place, what does it mean? Suppose we substitute another word in place of “Jewish.” We would then read, for example, “A Frenchman in America can live a full and rich French life as an integrated American.” A Frenchman in America, a Pole, an Englishman, a Chinese. The statement would not be very meaningful, and might easily be resented. But, if we said instead: “A Roman Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Lutheran, can live and so forth,” then the expression would be acceptable, since all religions have equal rights and none involves any limitations on American citizenship.

The ambiguity of the statement cited is that the term “Jewish” is unique in that it refers to a people and to a faith.… In this sense, also, the expression “A Jewish life” has endless variations. In short, it has to be spelled out, especially to show its relations to the life of the inclusive community.

An important aspect of the Jewish situation is that the “Jewish people” are most notably identified with a religion, one that imposes somewhat elaborate sets of usages, rituals, and Holy Days. No other faith of the Western world is identified with a single people. But in the United States, a country of equality of religions, differences in religion “as such” cannot be regarded as an explanation of anti-Jewish prejudice. Religion does play a part but only when other grounds of difference stem from it.

The other set of differences “are those that do not stem from the practices of religion itself. The historical situation of the Jewish people, dispossessed of a homeland and dispersed among the nations of the world, bred conditions that in complex ways stimulated reactions of prejudice.”

Insulation. Dr. MacIver suggests that the two common ways of dealing with the problem are of no avail, or even do positive harm. The two are in fact aspects of the same thing. One way is to ignore the grounds of misunderstanding: “There is a kind of insulation that is nourished by past exclusion and tends to perpetuate it. The other way is not merely to ignore the fact that insulation breeds prejudice, but to act in manners that affirmatively induce insulation, and to glory in it.” Dr. MacIver’s words are worth quoting at length. It might even be healthy to memorize them.…

The other undesirable way to present the distinctiveness of the Jewish faith and the Jewish culture is to set it in a kind of insulation as something apart, something walled around, that has to be defended from enemies on all sides. This may not be the intention of certain representatives of the matter, but it is often the impression they convey. It is implicit in the attitudes of some Jewish sub-groups, and sometimes inculcated in the education of the young.…

Dr. MacIver pays his respects to the “Cultural Pluralists” and “Cultural Pluralism.” These are useful terms when properly employed. But they have been counterfeited like “democracy” in the communist lexicon.…

“The insulationist position,” says Dr. MacIver, “is seen also in certain claims for ‘Cultural Pluralism.’ It is said in this connection, for example, that the United States is a ‘Multinational’ union, that it is ‘culturally’ federal.… Such claims and statements can be misleading and prejudicial, unless they are carefully guarded. They might suggest that the Jewish people are an enclave in the larger community, that they are a community by themselves. No other group openly makes a similar claim.”

Jewish Unity. Dr. MacIver recognizes “the right to be different,” but he adds: “This right assumes the presence of Common Good, of an inclusive common interest, in which all the differences share, and to which they may all contribute. This basis, in other words, is not a mere live-and-let-live. There must be much more. There must be Community before differences can be welcomed, or even admitted at all. Community does not consist of a set of distinctive enclaves, self-contained, self-fulfilling. If that is what the ambiguous expression ‘Cultural Pluralism’ means, then it must be rejected as a ground for any rights whatever.”

U.S. Is Different. Dr. MacIver recognizes, as everyone does, that when “Jewish groups lived a precarious and alien existence under intolerant regimes, it was natural and unavoidable that they should be turned inwards, in a counter exclusiveness, clinging with all the more fervor to their own ways and to their own folk.” But here, in the United States, where Jewish existence is neither precarious nor alien, the tendency to separateness becomes doubly injurious, even though it seems to avoid the risks of exposure to misunderstanding and prejudice.

Separateness. Dr. MacIver then warns against the danger of “needless separatist organization.” Community relations suffer “when any ethnic group sets up a whole series of such group organizations of its own. If a group emphasizes its separateness in these days, it encourages the members of other groups to think of it as withdrawn and lacking in community sentiment. It tends to make these others, the large majority, think of them as an alien element.… We conclude that for the development of community relations between Jews and non-Jews, separate organizations for causes that Jews share with others, should be discouraged wherever an inclusive organization is, or can be made, reasonably available for the same objective.”

On May 8, 1964, Dr. MacIver (now President of the New School for Social Research, in New York) appeared as guest speaker at the twenty-first annual conference of the American Council for Judaism, in New York, and on this occasion he reaffirmed the fundamentals of his historic Report of 1951. One paragraph of his thesis, as reported by the New York Times of May 9, 1964, tells the story: “American Jews are partly responsible for what he called their continuing alienation from the rest of American society. Part of the problem, he said, arises from ‘the distinctiveness of the Jewish culture and the conditions this imposes on certain forms of social intercourse.’”

On May 18, 1964, the New York Times published a Letter to the Editor from John Slawson, Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee, in which this Jewish leader criticized Dr. MacIver by saying: “Dr. MacIver has given voice to many misconceptions about the causes of what he calls the continuing alienation of Jews from the rest of American society. He has located one of the sources of ‘alienation’ in ‘the distinctiveness of Jewish culture’ which supposedly hampers the integration of Jews into society as a whole.… By now, the pluralistic nature of American society is fully established.…”

Neither of the two—Dr. MacIver and the Executive Vice President of AJC—dared to spell out the true meaning of “Jewish culture” or even Jewish religion today! Why not spell it out and tell the truth that today in America, Jewish culture, and even Jewish religion, has degenerated into “Jewish” nationalism, and that Jewish philanthropists, Jewish schools, Jewish segregated activities, have been all subverted (with few noble exceptions) into serving primarily Jewish education for Aliyah and the upbuilding of the “Jewish homeland” through forced-draft immigration and the strengthening of Israel—political Israel—as the center of Jewish life. “Jewish culture” (not spiritual and ethical Judaism) thus covers many sins, and definitely hampers the integration of the Jew into American society.

The “Wind of Change.” Hopeful Signs of Jewish Self-Assertion Against Rabid “Jewish” Nationalism. Young Intellectuals Voice Dissent.

Since the days of the Biltmore Conference and the Biltmore Program in May, 1942, the spellbinding and overpowering of the Jewish masses by the “Jewish” nationalists has played havoc with the normal processes of integration among American Jews. The same thing has happened with the English Jews. But, in recent years, the very process of brainwashing and indoctrination has aroused some of the intelligent Jews into defiance and rebellion. Spiritual, physical and economic self-preservation also played their parts. Thus we see some of the selfsame duped Jews begin to wake up and even become infuriated when forced to listen again and again to the same old clichés and slogans.

Are my observations sheer wishful thinking, or does my abiding faith cause me to believe that a two-thousand-year-old spiritual Diaspora is resuming its age-old fight against an ephemeral, depraved, secular “Jewish” political nationalism? Whatever it is, I definitely see signs of at least a breeze of change, if not a tide of change. And the mild “wind of change” is ruffling the smooth-running, powerful, crunching machine of the archaic but arrogant “Jewish” nationalists of our time. There are stirrings that bespeak a new line of independent thinking, and a rebellion against the “establishment” of the Zionist junta. Pinhas Lavon, in 1960, started something momentous when he exposed the rottenness of his “gang.” Chairman of the Commission on Intergroup Relations in New York City, Stanley H. Lowell, who is Vice President of the American Jewish Congress (Dr. Nahum Goldmann’s own Zionist-oriented Jewish Congress), dared tell Ben Gurion at a recent symposium (they called it “dialogue”) in Jerusalem on the relationship between the American Jewish community and Israel: “You aren’t the only answer to Jewish living, Jewish creativity, and Jewish survival.” Another symposium presented by Commentary (a magazine published by the American Jewish Committee) in April, 1961, on the subject of “Jewishness and the Younger Intellectuals,” and a similar symposium conducted in England, also testify that the new “wind of change” is stirring up the Jewish world and bringing some fresh air into the stale, stagnant and lifeless atmosphere of sheepishness in New York, London and Jerusalem.

By now we know plenty about the Lavon Affair. Let us, therefore, touch briefly on the unexpected and unplanned dispute that broke out in Jerusalem in June, 1962, between the “Jewish” nationalists and a number of “infuriated” American Jews during the “dialogue” arranged by the American Jewish Congress, which had five hundred participants from each side. The rabid Zionists of the American Jewish Congress undoubtedly regarded the trip to Israel as another sort of “Operation Magic Carpet” for adults. The outcome, however, was disastrous for the wild “Jewish” nationalists.

After Ben Gurion delivered one of his typical patriarchal speeches, in which he repeated for the hundredth time his familiar credos that the only things that can save Judaism in the United States are personal ties with Israel (Aliyah), Hebrew education (“Jewish national” education) and a belief in the Messianic vision of national redemption, and that the subtraction of nationalism from Jewishness left nothing,

the young American Jewish leaders told Israeli officials bluntly “not to equate Judaism with nationality.” It was here that Stanley H. Lowell, a New York Jewish attorney in his 40’s, rose to tell Ben Gurion, “You aren’t the only answer to Jewish living, Jewish creativity, and Jewish survival.” He agreed … that nationality groups would assimilate rapidly in the United States, but, he said, this would not affect the Jewish situation. Mr. Lowell said that the argument of Mr. Ben Gurion and others was “specious.” They set up a straw man—nationality groups—and knock him down. He asked if they would predict that no religious groups would remain in America in fifty years. Mr. Lowell said that he spoke for most American Jews of his generation in rejecting the premise that they are Jews by nationality. He said that “Israeli leadership rendered a tremendous disservice by urging the immigration of Americans as a group. This generation and the next generation and the generations to come shall and will remain part and parcel of the great American experience of democracy!” he declared. (New York Times, June 15, 1962)

Please note this: Stanley Lowell is not the Vice President of the American Council for Judaism, but the Vice President of the Zionist American Jewish Congress, affiliated with Dr. Nahum Goldmann’s World Jewish Congress.

And there were other young independent American Jews who spoke up at the “dialogue”; a good many of them, in fact. One of them, Leo Pfeffer, General Counsel of the American Jewish Congress, in answer

to Mr. Ben Gurion’s angry declaration that he did not care what the “Goyim” (Gentiles) said about Israel’s political and military action, declared: “I hope that the time will come when no nation will be so sovereign as not to have to justify itself before the world.” [And Professor Ernest Simon, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (a member of Ihud),] took the issue one stage further: “The vital questions on which world Jewry should express itself are Israel’s peaceful development, its moral character.… Not always is what we do good for peace; nor are all our deeds morally justified.… We are not a Light To The Nations.” Professor Simon was bothered about “the Arabs and our treatment of them,” he said, suggesting that Jews paid lip service to the proper treatment of minorities when they themselves were a minority, but failed to put their high-sounding words into practice when for the first time they were in a position to do so.… Professor Simon told the Americans: “You are a progressive people in your own country, but you are very lenient to what is not progressive in ours.” They could not live in a spurious patriotism, he told them. What was needed from world Jewry was a critical identification. (London Jewish Chronicle, June 22, 1962)

That was not all that Professor Simon said in the last sentence. The reporter of the Chronicle did not let us read the full sentence about “world Jewry’s critical identification.” The New York Times reporter gave the full sentence: “The Professor, a critic of the Ben Gurion Government said: ‘There should be more critical identification in the relationship of American Jews to Israel.’ He said, ‘The Your Country Right or Wrong attitude is morally dangerous and obnoxious.’”

At the symposium presented by Commentary on “Jewishness and the Young Intellectuals,” one could again feel the “wind of change.” The Jewish Newsletter of May 15 and June 12, 1961, had brief but pithy articles by Professor Hans Kohn and William Zukerman, from which I shall give a few quotations:

Thirty-one young men and women answered the questions with remarkable honesty and intelligence [and] were attacked by the nationalistic Jewish press as “alienated Jews,” “self-hating Jews,” “Jews who are neither intellectuals nor Jews,” “ignorant Jews” who are not competent to voice an opinion on Jewish problems because they have no “Jewish education,” and they are unrepresentative of American Jews because there were no Zionists nor rabbis among them.

[The young intellectuals, however, spoke out openly and strongly, and] there was a common denominator in their points of view.… On the whole, they rejected chauvinism, provincialism, traditionalism.… They emphasized that nationalism is either a matter of the past or of no interest to them personally; that their concern is much more for universal justice and human brotherhood than for any parochial group.… These young Americans continue the struggle for human emancipation which so many of their Jewish elders in all Western countries have fought for since the Enlightenment freed and emancipated the Jews.”

To cite a few examples of the young American Jewish intellectuals:

“The generation that has matured since the end of the Second World War has found it possible as never before to identify itself completely with the [integrated] secular pluralistic culture that surrounds us; and we have done so gladly.”

Another one wrote: “One of the greatest periods of Jewish creativity was begun by Jews who have been emancipated from the life and mentality of the Ghetto by the Napoleonic reforms. Not Orthodox Judaism but Western civilization was the intellectual source of this genius. The Jewish mentality fused splendidly and indefinably with Western science.”

Still another wrote: “All my political beliefs are linked to the fortunes of this country, and all my cultural allegiances are rooted sentimentally and nostalgically in the traditions of the West.”

Mr. Zukerman pointed out that a similar symposium was conducted by the London Jewish Chronicle in November and December, 1959. It interviewed “young Jewish writers and playwrights in England who had made a name for themselves in contemporary English literature. The writers were asked approximately the same questions that ‘Commentary’ asked of the young Americans. The replies were remarkably like those of the Americans.”

The Eichmann Trial and “Jewish” Nationalism.

My story of the decadence of Judaism in our time will not be complete until I express my views and the views of others like me about the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. It is crucial to the thesis of my book. For, fundamentally, Ben Gurion, the architect of the Eichmann trial in Israel, wanted to exploit it to serve his “Jewish” political ends.

No one will dispute that the demoniac and sadistic cannibal Adolf Eichmann, plus the bigger and smaller Eichmanns still at large in Germany and in hiding elsewhere, should have been brought to justice. But that they should all have been apprehended and subjected to a nonpolitical and dispassionate tribunal, in order to expose to the German people themselves their utter depravity during the Hitler era, and thus have mankind, civilization and international law profit by it—that was torpedoed by the tribalistic and politically narrow-minded “Jewish” nationalist Ben Gurion and his junta. Justice, after all, is fundamentally a qualitative matter of concern to humanity, and the Jews are a part of humanity, pace Ben Gurion. While the insane Nazis poured out much of their bestial venom of hatred on the Jews, the old philosophy of Pan-Germanism on which Hitler based his “final solution” of world dominance was to annihilate everyone who got in their way. Thus, for example, it was reported from Poland that mass graves discovered in 1958 near Zagan and Swietoszow in Western Poland contained the bodies of inmates of Nazi prisoner-of-war camps—of tens of thousands of victims who died of famine, cold, inhuman living conditions and treatment. They were identified as British, French, Belgian, Italian, Yugoslav, Polish and Russian.

Since, however, the Jews were the principal victims of the depraved Nazi Germans, “the role of the Jews,” according to Professor Martin Buber, “should have been that of accuser and not that of judge. The Eichmann trial cast Israel in the role of both accuser and judge.”

The cynical politician Ben Gurion, in return for the bonanza of German cash indemnities—“reparations” already paid Israel and still going strong—gave complete moral absolution to the German people. “Nazi Germany no longer exists. The children should not be made to suffer for the sins of their fathers.” What Ben Gurion wanted was this: to establish Israel’s right to act on behalf of the “Jewish people,” whether citizens of the state of Israel or not. In a formal letter to President Frondizi of Argentina, Ben Gurion said: “Eichmann must stand trial before the Jewish people [and] such a trial can take place only in Israel”—“the only sovereign authority in Jewry,” as Ben Gurion put it elsewhere.

Dr. Yossal Rogat, a specialist in international law who made a serious study of the Eichmann trial and wrote “The Eichmann Trial and the Rule of Law” (as a contribution to “Discussion of the Free Society Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,” financed by the Fund for the Republic, Inc.) said:

The trial of Adolf Eichmann should have been held before an international tribunal.… The entire basic environment of an international trial, and therefore its general quality and legality, would have been superior.… Israel’s decision to try Eichmann for crimes against the Jews, rather than having an international dispassionate tribunal try him for crimes against human beings, is precisely the kind of decision that retards efforts to apply the rule of law to the international community.… Israel, after preparing its case against Eichmann, should have requested the world to establish an international tribunal to pass judgment.

Tribalistic passions and vengeance and, above all, political exploitation, dictated to Ben Gurion that he should stage the Eichmann trial in Israel rather than before an international court of justice. To begin with, it led to initial Israeli lawlessness. The sending down from Israel to Argentina, in an Israeli El Al plane, of Israeli cloak-and-dagger “volunteer” bullies to kidnap Eichmann and spirit him out of Argentina, chain him to a bed and forcibly bring him to Israel; the cynical and deceitful whitewashing of the violation of international law by making Eichmann sign a dictated “voluntary” declaration that he desired to stand trial only in Israel—these already revealed a primitive and sly approach to the world issue of criminally insane and irresponsible Nazi Germany versus humanity. The whole of the old Kaiser’s Pan-German philosophy together with Hitler’s Germany should have been brought to trial in the new Germany, or at an international court of justice in connection with the trial of the mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, who carried out sadistically but “patriotically” that depraved doctrine of insane nationalism, Deutschland über alles. Here was a veritable collective guilt resting heavily on the entire German people, old and young, which no billions of “reparations” payments to Israel could whitewash or absolve. For, had Germany won the war, the whole German nation might have gone cannibalistic for decades, if not for centuries, as a result of their mental and moral derangement. Hitler’s Third Reich was devised to last a thousand years … and the Germans were not far from winning the war.

The whole world, particularly the Christian world, should have had a calm, serene and undisturbed chance to learn fully the whole tragedy, the whole lesson, resulting from insane political nationalism as well as from anti-Semitism.

And as to anti-Semitism, Israel stirred up a hornet’s nest with the Eichmann trial. It has reanimated anti-Semitism all over the world, after Dr. Nahum Goldmann began to worry about its disappearance. Was that, too, diabolically planned? To quote Mr. Sussman of the American Council for Judaism: “The Zionist movement wants to picture Jews constantly in trouble. It is bad for fund-raising and bad for immigration to Israel if Jews are not in trouble. But ‘trouble’ must be of a particular kind. It must be ‘Jewish’ trouble. It must fit the Zionist pattern of inevitable anti-Semitism just as surely as the ‘inevitable’ class war fits classic Marxism.”

The Eichmann trial and execution in Israel has resuscitated dormant and dying anti-Semitism all over the world. A spontaneous epidemic of real, virulent anti-Semitism suddenly broke out almost everywhere, particularly in Argentina. “The wave of anti-Semitic outbursts in Argentina erupted last spring, apparently triggered by the execution of Adolf Eichmann, who was abducted from Argentina by Israeli agents.… Youth shouting Nazi anti-Semitic slogans have beaten Jewish men and women.” (New York Times, August 10 and September 16, 1962.)

The Argentine Jews, for decades living in a happy, prosperous and integrated community, suddenly became alarmed. “‘Expressing our collective indignation and alarm, we request immediate punitive and preventive action against Nazi-Fascist gangs which, by going unpunished, offend human dignity, are destroying democracy and hopelessly damaging Argentine prestige’” [was a part of the text of a] “cable sent by D.A.I.A., the representative body of Argentina’s 400,000 Jews, to President Guido of Argentina.” (London Jewish Chronicle, June 29, 1962.)

And then, of course, came the logical (hoped-for?) next step: “Argentine Jews Turn to Israel. Many Planning Emigration. With proper Zionist organization, and given continuation of the existing circumstances, there is no doubt that Argentine anti-Semitism could have one positive consequence: an influx of highly capable human material into Israel.… The Jewish Agency and the Israeli Government were working out plans for the smooth economic integration of Argentine Jews into the Israeli economy.” (London Jewish Chronicle, July 20, 1962.)

About 1,000 Argentine Jews emigrated to Israel during 1962, which is about double the number who went to Israel the previous year. And “in the first five monhts of 1963, 3,000 Jews left Argentina to settle in Israel. The total for the year is expected to reach 5,000 to 6,000.” (London Jewish Chronicle, June 14, 1963.)

“Jews Terrorized in Uruguay.” “Bomb Blasts Synagogue in Chicago.” “Swastikas Painted on Synagogues in Many Lands.” “A Jewish immigrant couple in San Francisco were given the mental torture by twelve youths from better families through ceaseless threatening anti-Semitic telephone calls. By the time the youths were arrested and indicted, the health of the couple was shattered, the windows of their home and car were smashed, and the sidewalk in front of their home was daubed ‘If Eichmann dies, so will you.’” In London, Nazi sympathizers plotted to kidnap Arthur Lurie, Ambassador from Israel, to trade him for the release of Eichmann. Also in London, fifty feet of the Embankment wall was daubed with the words: “Hang the Jews, Not Eichmann.” Right in my own beautiful and humane Los Gatos, in its outlying suburbs, were found some revitalized anti-Semites who threatened an innocent Jewish family by telephone that they would be exterminated if they did not sign a petition to free Eichmann. The home of the Jewish family was stoned by a carload of teen-agers, and the family car was smeared with “Down With the Jews.”

I could produce pages and pages of similar examples in many parts of the world, or inside the United States and England, to show the sudden brutalization of dormant bullies in an otherwise fast-evolving Christian world. But here is the other side of the coin, the “positive side” of the Eichmann trial in Israel, according to the “Jewish” nationalists (Zionists): “David Horowitz, Governor of the Bank of Israel, emphasized that the resurgence of anti-Semitism in some parts of the world was responsible for the immigration into Israel. Mr. Horowitz sounded his warning here [in Washington, on September 21, 1962] before 550 American and Canadian Jewish leaders. Jewish communities in the United States were told today that Israel would not be able to accept the current heavy influx of immigration unless she received intensified financial support for economic development.” (New York Times, September 22, 1962.)

Who brought about this sudden new wave of anti-Semitism? Who awakened the sleeping dogs? Who contributed to the delinquency of the neo-Nazis? And speaking of “sleeping old dogs”—not to be outdone by the aroused, ill-bred Christian bullies, Israeli jingoistic bullies in Jerusalem proved that there are no monopolies in primitive hatred. New York Times correspondent Lawrence Fellows in Jerusalem reported: “The Eichmann trial has stirred up a fringe of bad feeling towards Christians.… Mobs of Jewish fanatics hurled stones at the ‘Church of Christ’; the boisterous crowds blocked the front and back gates of the compound chanting: ‘Eichmann, Eichmann.’” The same correspondent said: “The trial was intended partly as an invocation to young Israelis to look back to their heritage of suffering, and study the history of an anti-Semitism they never experienced themselves. It was a way for the adults to impress upon the children that they belonged to a nation of Jews invisibly tied to the Jewish people all over the world.” (New York Times, June 25, 1961.)

Dr. Yosal Rogat said in “The Eichmann Trial and the Rule of Law”:

It was of fundamental importance to Ben Gurion to demonstrate … that the Jews, too, now had a strong state, not least of all because the trial suggested that the Jews should not expect to be protected by others; that they could rely only on Israel. The prosecution attempted not only to tell the world what it did to the Jews, but also to tell the Jews what the world did to them. It strongly stressed the hostility, or at best indifference, of the Gentile world, suggesting that Jews could find relative security only by banding together in Israel. Only a trial by an Israeli court could have pursued these objectives.

By trying Eichmann, and thus stressing crimes against Jews, instead of, or at least in addition to, crimes against humanity, as a whole, Israel also took for granted its leadership of world Jewry and its right to speak for all Jews. And it simultaneously said, even to the most emancipated Diaspora Jews, “We’re doing this for you, and in your name. You will be regarded as involved in the trial. You have to think about and take up a position about your Jewishness.”

The United Nations correspondent of the London Jewish Chronicle reported: “Mr. Michael Comay, Israel’s Permanent Representative here, drew for members of the Third [Social] Committee a picture of anti-Jewish discrimination which leaped across frontiers and defied political systems, and which, in girdling the world, included neo-Nazi manifestations in a host of countries. In so doing the Israeli delegate, for the first time, proclaimed his country’s acceptance of responsibility for defending the fate of Soviet Jewry—and, indeed, of threatened Jewry everywhere.” (London Jewish Chronicle, November 2, 1962.)

Incidentally, little was ever mentioned at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem of the thousands of self-sacrificing Christians in Hitler’s occupied Europe who risked or lost their lives in the process of saving or hiding Jews. A spirit of anti-Christianity spreads out of Zion in our time, instead of “Love thy fellow man as thyself,” which also came out of Zion, some three thousand years ago, from prophetic nonpolitical Judaism.

Had Eichmann been legally extradited from Argentina (and that could have been brought about easily) to be tried by an international court of justice, or by a strictly German court of justice, the dormant anti-Semites could have been unobtrusively forced to learn something new about their cursed lives as haters. And the German people as a whole would have been vouchsafed a genuine opportunity for regeneration.

Professor Martin Buber said after the execution of Eichmann in Israel:

“The act of taking Eichmann’s life may have served to expiate the guilt felt by many young persons in Germany as a result of the actions of their elders in the years the Nazis were in power.

“With that guilty conscience, these young persons in Germany were beginning to feel a resurgence of humanism.

“Without that conscience … an obstacle will have been removed from the growth of anti-human tendencies in them, and of anti-human forces that exist throughout the world, with neither conscience nor any real regard for humanity.… Israel’s role should have been that of accuser, and not of judge.” (New York Times, June 2, 1962)

The whole German nation, after the process of degeneration and degradation in the Hitler era (“Close your hearts to pity! Act brutally … The stronger man is right!”—HITLER, August 22, 1939), badly needed an Eichmann trial in Germany. For Auschwitz and the many other extermination camps where six million Jews (aside from many non-Jews) were exterminated, could not have functioned but for the tens of thousands of Germans who voluntarily served their heinous big and little Führers.

Fritz Bauer, the present Frankfurt Chief Prosecutor, actually readied a trial for Eichmann in Germany before he was kidnaped by the Israelis in Buenos Aires. He was thus cheated out of his chance of letting the German people witness the gruesome details of the prosecution in their own country, and in their own homes. That is why the Germans today call the trial of the two Eichmann aides, SS Lt. Col. Hermann Krumey and his legal adviser SS Capt. Otto Hunsche, their Eichmann trial. Krumey and Hunsche helped Eichmann round up more than 400,000 Jews in Hungary in May and June, 1944, and delivered them to the Auschwitz death camp.

Here, at these trials in Frankfurt, Germany, the entire German nation could see, hear and read how the Nazi overlord of a Polish ghetto taught his teen-aged son to shoot to kill by using defenseless Jews for target practice; how Nazi guards could not sleep well at night unless they had beaten some Jews to death during the day. Here the German nation learned how the Nazi killers at the extermination camps received money awards and special rations of liquor and cigarettes for the mass slaughter of prisoners; how medical orderlies killed sick prisoners with injections of carbolic acid. Here a judge had a heart seizure on hearing the testimony, and women jurors, spectators and journalists burst into tears. And as a result of the honest, efficient war-crime trials, German children of the generation that participated in the Third Reich cannibalism are beginning to demand explanations from their fathers … Thus we read in the New York Times of July 12, 1964, that “the trial of ex-Nazis in Germany has a wide impact.… The over-all effect of their testimony has emphasized the dependence of Hitler and his agents of extermination on the cooperation of countless average citizens.”

The parochialism, tribalism and jingoism of contemporary “Jewish” nationalism, spawned and nursed by Ben Gurion and his junta, are one of the great tragedies of the Jews and of Judaism of our time. Here is where the real degeneration played havoc with an age-old civilized and ethical and universal people.

Eichmann told a frightening and edifying story about his encounter with “Jewish” nationalism and with “Jewish” nationalists in two articles in Life magazine of November 28 and December 5, 1960. He well knew some of the “Jewish” nationalists, for he had worked intimately with some of the “fanatical Zionists” during the war. He had also read a good deal of the political Zionists’ literature. Eichmann said that he was not an anti-Semite; that he had no wish to harm the individual Jew personally, but that “he was politically opposed to the Jews as a nation.” Here is the essence of the philosophy of depraved, jingoist political nationalism: you shed the modest and simple human garment and don the garment of the Superior Race, the superior nation—the sacred collective egoism—and you thus become “politically opposed” to the “lower races,” “lower nations,” and you thus assume the “right” to a policy of frightfulness, a religion of hatred, to rob, torture, rape, exile and murder millions of innocent Jews, though you personally do not hate any individual Jew.

On a smaller scale, Pan-Israel political nationalism (like the maniacal and predatory Pan-Germanism, and the good old West European political nationalism that it began to emulate ever since Dr. Herzl envisioned it and the Balfour Declaration launched it in a period of insane nationalism) is based on being “politically opposed” to Arab nationalism and the Arabs of Palestine, who were in the way of the big apocalyptic “ingathering,” “redemption” and “return to the Promised Land by the chosen people.” Thus the children of Isaiah, Amos and Hillel, by means of a neo-Judaism and moral acrobatics, now come closer to the unholy political Gloire and Grandeur of the Kaiser, Hitler and Eichmann than to the humane and eternal ethics of our forefathers; and Judaism degenerates into “Jewish” political nationalism.

In the Life story, Eichmann spoke of the “very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders who were fighting what might be their last battle.” He told of

Dr. Rudolph Kastner, authorized representative of the Zionist movement … an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He [Kastner] agreed to help keep the Jews [in the camps] from resisting deportation—and even keep order in the collection camps—if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000 to 20,000—in the end there may have been more—was not too high for me.… Kastner never came to me fearful of the Gestapo strong men. We negotiated entirely as equals.… While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigarette after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.… Dr. Kastner’s main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel.… I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand to achieve his political goal.… He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society.… As I told Kastner: ‘We, too, are idealists, and we, too, had to sacrifice our own blood before we came to power.’”

Eichmann’s and Hitler’s ideological theorists Theodor Fritsch, K. E. Wolff, F. Rose, G. Feder, F. Muller and others delved deeply into the literature of the political Zionists, and quoted them to prove that Jews are unassimilable, and “indigestible.” Each one of these Nazi eulogists quoted in particular one noted Zionist author, lecturer and theorist, Dr. Jakob Klatzkin (1882–1948), who published his “Jewish” nationalistic views in Berlin in 1921 in a book entitled Krisis und Entscheidung. To quote Leonard Sussman, Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism (who, by the way, gave me the following excerpt from Dr. Klatzkin’s book): “Klatzkin, after he left Germany, continued his role as a Zionist ideologist and spent the remainder of his life mixing with the top level Zionists of his day, and providing a philosophical underpinning for them. He should certainly be counted among the most influential, intellectual Zionists of the past thirty years.”

Here is the core of the philosophy of Zionist Klatzkin of which the Nazi eulogists made wide use. It is unbelievable, but it is factual:

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. There is a wide gap between you and us, so wide that no bridge can be laid across. Your spirit is alien to us; your myths, legends, habits, customs, traditions and national heritage, your religious and national shrines, your Sundays and holidays … They are all alien to us. The history of your triumphs and defeats, your war songs and battle hymns, your heroes and their mighty deeds, your national ambitions and aspirations, they are all alien to us. The boundaries of your lands cannot restrict our movements, and your border clashes are not of our concern. Far over and above the frontiers and boundaries of your land stands our Jewish unity.… Whosoever calls the foreign land a Fatherland is a traitor to the Jewish people.… Jewish heroes in foreign wars mean nothing to us. The Jewish people has no reason to decorate them with medals; they are not Jewish heroes.… A loyal Jew can never be other than a Jewish patriot.… We recognize a national unity of Diaspora Jews, no matter in which land they may reside. Therefore, no boundaries can restrain us in pursuing our own Jewish policy.… The Jewish religion is rich in “hedges” which keeps our community intact from foreign influences.… In contrast to other religions, ours is not a collection of dogmas and tenets [Ideenlehre] but a Code of Laws [Gesetzeslehre], and thus by keeping and practicing these laws we have demonstrated our right of self-determination, that is, being governed by our own laws in everyday life. We have lost our State, but not the Constitution; we have kept and preserved the latter one as a “portable State” which, in fact, enables us to enjoy a sort of national autonomy in the Diaspora.… The secret of a two thousand year old extra-territorial, Jewish reality is the secret of the Jewish religion.… It kept us bound to one another in unity, segregated just for ourselves; even in dispersion it kept us as a nation within a nation; as a State within a State.… We were never just a religious community.… A strong wall, erected by ourselves, separated us from the host-nation, and behind that wall, there existed the Jewish State in miniature.… The gap is much too great between Israel and the other peoples.… Not the slightest feeling of belonging to German nationality can be found in the Jewish consciousness.… We have even judaized their language, too; it is fittingly called ‘Yiddish.’ … We can only live freely among peoples who have not yet reached their national maturity; therefore, well lose our overseas colonies when America reaches that stage, and its people will come out of the “Melting Pot” as a national unity.

One must not forget that this was written when the Jews of Germany were enjoying full civic and political rights in a democratic Germany, and were free to integrate fully even while clinging to their Jewish religion.

Author Ben Hecht, who once was the prime mover in the United States in helping the terrorists of the Irgun Z’vai Leumi in mandated Palestine to create the state of Israel, reversed himself in his book Perfidy (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1961).

In it he states that all the top officials of the Jewish Agency (later they became the officials of the Israeli Government) were thoroughly aware of the impending slaughter of more than a million Jews in Hungary and Poland during the worst period of the Hitler holocaust. The Jewish officials were told in specific detail by Kastner as well as by others in the underground inside the German Empire, that (1) it would be possible to save these Jews by barter deal; (2) information provided to the “Jewish leaders” of the exact location of crematoria should have been relayed to the British and Americans for bombing purposes; and (3) failing either of the first two actions, the “Jewish leaders” inside and outside of German-occupied territory could easily have given the one million doomed Jews the information about what was planned for them so that they could have resisted or even dashed for freedom. Most of the one million were apparently less than a few miles from the Rumanian border and were guarded by a pitifully small armed force so that in any uprising a major percentage might well have escaped. However, the information was never given and the million individuals went blithely to their deaths, accepting the story prepared by the Nazis and relayed by the “Jewish leaders” who knew better.… When you consider that most Israelis knew about Kastner and his link to Israeli officialdom … then you begin to recognize another reason for Ben Gurion’s insistence that the Eichmann trial be held in Israel. This trial was saying in effect, “You see, here is your devil—he did it.”

“What would have happened to the Jews of Europe had these leaders raised their authoritative voices in their behalf?… Would an unselfish, passionate demand for the lives of the six million Jews by the official Jewish leaders have awakened the hearts of England and the U.S.? I do not know. I answer only out of my faith in humans.…” (From an analysis of Perfidy by Leonard Sussman, American Council for Judaism.)

May I give here a few typical press comments on the Eichmann trial before I conclude this book.

The Boston Herald: “It is impossible to accept Ben Gurion’s contention that Israel has jurisdiction over Eichmann because it is ‘the only sovereign authority in Jewry.’ By this token, all anti-Semitic crimes perpetrated in the United States would cease to be the responsibility of our own law enforcement officials and become those of Israel’s Volunteers.’” The Chicago Daily News: “There is a further question whether the Government of Israel, sovereign over a particular area and over a population owing that Government a definite allegiance, is qualified to take criminal jurisdiction over injustices to Jews anywhere in the world.” The Washington Post: “Israel appears to be claiming a right to deal with Eichmann on the ground that his offenses were committed against Jews. But although there are a great many Jews in Israel, the Israeli Government has no authority to speak for Jews elsewhere, or to act in the name of some imaginary Jewish ethnic entity. In attempting to do so, it could do grave disservice to Jews of other nationalities.”

Conclusion.

That peripatetic and wise reporter James Morris, of the Manchester Guardian, writing from Israel on “The Significance of Jewishness” during the Eichmann trial, went to the heart of the new self-engendered “Jewish” nationalist problem: Israel cannot be Israel without Greatness …

… Israel’s advent has caused much suffering to others, as Professor Toynbee has recently reminded the world, but most of us, I expect, will now accept its right to survive as a smallish but talented Levantine republic, providing a home for those Jews who choose to go to live there. Most of the younger Israelis do indeed feel like ordinary citizens of such an ordinary State. They have discarded the metaphysics of Jewishness for the earthy pride of Israel.… They do not feel like Jews.…

This is not what the Zionists want.… Their determination is to recall these happy people to the ancestral ghetto. They must not be allowed to forget, to stroll away down the paths of normalcy out of the awful magnificence of their heritage.… The emergence of a second Lebanon is scarcely a fit conclusion to so many centuries of dark splendor.

But, if Israel has greater pretensions, then she courts another holocaust. If the Israelis are not satisfied with the status of a haven and a minor Power, if they insist upon persuading new immigrants (refugees apart) into Israel, if the militarism that is part of the Israeli atmosphere gains control of the place, then one day they must go to war against the Arabs—either in self defence or in search of lebensraum. There is no room in Israel, within its present frontiers, either for delusions of grandeur or for a universal “In-gathering” of the Diaspora. A refuge Israel can safely be, pace the Arabs; a bridgehead, the world cannot sensibly allow. (Manchester Guardian, May 4, 1961)

Professor Toynbee, too, went to the heart of the problem when, at the annual meeting of the American Council for Judaism in May, 1961, in Philadelphia, he said:

Zionism and anti-Semitism are expressions of an identical point of view. The assumption underlying both ideologies is that it is impossible for Jews and non-Jews to grow together into a single community, and that therefore a physical separation is the only practical way out. The watchword of anti-Semitism is “Back to medieval apartheid”; the watchword of Zionism is “Back to the medieval ghetto.” All the far-flung ghettos in the world are to be gathered into one patch of soil in Palestine to create a single consolidated ghetto there.” (New York Times, May 7, 1961)

The fanatical and professional “Jewish” political nationalists have bedeviled American and other Jews of the Diaspora with a surfeit of deliberate confusion and propaganda. They “don the garb of the sacred while seeking support for the profane.” There is a terrible contradiction, an incompatibility, between the kind of emancipated and integrated life we American Jews wish to enjoy among our Christian fellow citizens and neighbors and the kind of anachronistic segregated life the “Jewish” nationalists are trying to foist upon us, which would make us strangers in our own homeland here, transients on our way to the “Jewish homeland.” This country of ours is not a special preserve for hunters from Israel to come to, to convert and subvert us into “Jewish” nationalists.

We emancipated and integrated American Jews like to “languish in the Diaspora” because in this way we can retain only the positive and the essential parts of our unique old civilization, and discard to the rubbish heap, as others do, all the foreign political allegiances as well as all the negative and archaic hedges and safeguards that kept us segregated in the dark medieval world we lived in until recent modern times. We like to share with our fellow citizens the creative work of the “continued revolution” in America. “When the American Jew rejects ‘Jewish’ political nationalism in America, he does so in the belief that there is a deathless bond between him and his non-Jewish neighbor. It is a bond of mutual devotion to decency, kindness, and brotherhood. The bond of obligation works both ways” (Rabbi Morris Lazaron).

Maimonides, Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Bialik, Sholem Aleichem, Mendeleh Mocher Sfforim, Ahad Ha-’Am, Freud, Einstein, Rickover, Oppenheimer, Yehudi Menuhin—to mention at random just a few great Jews through the ages—were born, raised and educated in the “benighted Diaspora.” Even the great Hillel was born, raised and educated in “exile,” in Babylonia, and later in his life went to teach in old Judea.

Some of us even like to be somewhat “peculiar,” so long as we are normal and honest in conscientiously playing 100 per cent our rightful and dutiful parts as integrated American citizens. Our ethical and spiritual philosophy of life, our pure evolutionary religion, and a three-thousand-year-old Jewish literature in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Yiddish and other languages of the world, in the original and in translation—our whole spiritual heritage, minus the debris and the impedimenta that progress and evolution necessitate discarding—will serve as our contribution to our integrated America, as others make their noble contributions, so that we can all enrich and influence each other’s lives, without segregated enclaves, without hedges and safeguards, and without superiority complexes.

We want nothing of the temporal, political, territorial or nationalistic in our “togetherness” as Jews. We shed all that ethnic Jewishness two thousand years ago when through suffering and experience we began to mature early as a people in our old history—far ahead of most other nations. We paid dearly for the advancement, wisdom and ethics of our civilized forefathers. Let us be what we should be historically: progressive universalists; and let us not retrograde into the sump from which most of the people of the world today try so hard to emerge.

Those, however, who cannot make the indispensable adjustment in the new post–World Wars nuclear age, and who feel that they must withdraw from the general community in America and live apart as “Jewish” nationals—let them be honest enough with themselves and withdraw completely by going to live in Israel. Above all, they must leave us alone as integrated Americans.

I have made my position witheringly clear. The time is immutably coming when we will have to face the awful question the “Jewish” nationalists have imposed upon us: Are we American nationals, or Israeli nationals? We cannot and will not be both!

I can hear some ask naïvely or bitterly: Is it nice to wash dirty linen in public? Well, shall we wait helplessly until a catastrophe overtakes us here, when a few of us might have the hollow satisfaction of saying: “I told you so”? It will be much too late then. Must one contribute to the delinquency of presumptuous, fanatical and retrograde professional Jews who are running away with themselves? Must one be blind and join the complacent and silent Jews who help the destructive forces by sheer default?

The time has come to air and publicly expose this uncalled-for, self-engendered “Jewish problem” that is being recklessly foisted upon us by “Jewish” nationalists of the Old World. They are simply exploiting the goodness and kindness, as well as the sorrows and sympathies, of innocent, ignorant but warm-hearted Jews who feel that but for the grace of God, they too might have been turned into lampshades and soap in the crematoriums of Hitler’s Germany. The “Jewish” nationalists now want us, American and English and other Western Jews, to become “refugees,” manpower in a greater “Jewish homeland.”

My conscience had been bothering me ever since the Balfour Declaration came out in 1917 to undo the normal course of evolution of the Jews and of Judaism. I felt then that I could no longer belong to the “gang” of which I was a dedicated member by indoctrination and brainwashing. I hope that this book will contribute to healthier and more independent thinking by innocent but misguided American and English Jews, as well as by Jews in other countries. I hope that it will also contribute to a better and more sympathetic understanding by the Gentile world of that great majority of innocent, loyal, grateful but confused Jews who now must win a new war of emancipation—an emancipation this time from their benighted fellow Jews, the “Jewish” nationalists, who have perverted and degenerated the noble heritage of universal Judaism.

166. Felix Adler, from an address delivered on May 15, 1876.

167. Moses Lasky, An Analysis of the MacIver Report (American Council for Judaism).

168. New York Times, April 21, 1956, from the text of President Eisenhower’s foreign-policy speech to newspaper editors.

169. New York Times, August 14, 1958.

170. Hans Kohn, American Nationalism (New York: Macmillan Company, 1957), p. 9.

171. Ibid., p. 13.

172. Ibid., p. 59.

173. Ibid., p. 60.

174. Ibid., p. 150.

175. Ibid., p. 151.

176. Ibid., p. 213.

177. The saying is given by Hans Kohn and quoted by Rabbi Elmer Berger in his book The Jewish Dilemma.

178. Hans Kohn, “Promise Turned Menace,” Jewish Newsletter (New York), June 4, 1956.

179. Louis Finkelstein, The Pharisees (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1946), II, 443.

180. Robert Gordis, “The Rabbi,” National Jewish Monthly (published by B’nai B’rith), July–August 1957.

181. Ben Gurion, op. cit., p. 135.

182. Grayzel, op. cit., p. 248.

183. Alexander Marx, Essays in Jewish Biography, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947), pp. 7, 39, 40.

184. Ibid., pp. 91, 94, 101, 102, 110, 111.

185. Ibid., p. 101.

186. Jacobs, op. cit., p 321.

187. Ibid., pp. 269, 280.

188. Gordis, loc. cit.

189. Jacobs, op. cit., pp. 283–84.

190. Grayzel, op. cit., pp. 491–92.

191. Ibid., p. 495.

192. Jacobs, op. cit, pp. 284–85.

193. New York Times, October 28, 1958.

194. Grayzel, op. cit., pp. 512–16.

195. Bein, op. cit., p. 306.

196. Jacobs, op. cit., pp. 21–22.

197. Gordis, loc. cit.

198. Jacobs, op. cit., p. 322.

199. Ibid., pp. 291–92.

200. Berger, op. cit., p. 183.

201. Ibid., pp. 198–99.

202. Ibid., p. 203.

203. Jacobs, op. cit., pp. 298–99.

204. Berger, op. cit., p. 222.

205. S. Posner, Adolphe Crémieux (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1940), p. 14.

206. Ibid., pp. 14, 15, 17

207. Ibid., p. 42: “The Oath More Judaico. This form of oath dates back from the Byzantine Empire. Under Charlemagne, Jews took an oath with forehead wreathed with thorns and a scroll of the Torah in their hands. The legislation of the medieval German States which served as a model for all the codes of Europe, obliged the Jew to call down upon his head all the maledictions in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the plagues of Egypt, the leprosy of Na’aman and Gehazi and the fate of Dathan and Abiram. This barbarous and superannuated form of Jewish oath was abolished in Germany thanks to the efforts of Moses Mendelssohn. In France, during the eighteenth century, the oath More Judaico was still very often required by the courts. It was suppressed by the revolution as a result of the decree of September 28, 1791 on the emancipation of the Jews. A tendency towards reinstitution appeared under Napoleon, but the courts rarely imposed it. The practice became increasingly common from the beginning of the Second Restoration, 1815.”

208. Ibid., pp. 23, 42, 43, 44, 46.

209. Ibid., pp. 46–47.

210. Ibid., pp. 40–41.

211. Ibid., pp. 183–84.

212. Berger, op. cit., pp. 239–40.

213. Morris Raphael Cohen, A Dreamer’s Journey (Boston: Beacon Press; copyright 1949 by Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.), pp. 212–14.

214. Ibid., p. 228.

215. Ibid., p. 227.

216. Bentwich, op. cit., p. 13.

217. Ibid., p. 30.

218. Ibid., p. 62.

219. Ibid., p. 48.

220. Ibid., p. 127.

221. Ibid., pp. 159–60.

222. Ibid., pp. 131, 174, 177, 178, 182, 183, 199.

223. Ibid., pp. 129–30.

224. Ibid., p. 193.

225. Ner, December, 1955.

226. Bentwich, op. cit., pp. 189–90.

227. Ner, September–October–November 1955.

228. New York Times, December 5, 1958.

229. Einstein, op. cit., p. 262.

230. Ibid., pp. 262–64.

231. Lilienthal, What Price Israel, p. 172.

232. Lilienthal, There Goes The Middle East, p. 243.

233. Elmer Berger, in Information Bulletin of American Council for Judaism, September 28, 1945.

234. Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961), p. 222.

235. Moshe Smilansky in July issue of Commentary as given by Information Bulletin of American Council for Judaism, September 15, 1946.

236. Halperin, op. cit., p. 84.

237. Ibid., p. 85.

238. Ibid., Appendix.

239. Elmer Berger, Emancipation, The Rediscovered Ideal (American Council for Judaism).

240. Berger, The Jewish Dilemma, p. 256.

PART THREE

Quo Vadis Zionist Israel?

A 1969 Postscript

It is heartbreaking to have to record that the decadence of Judaism in our time continues more than ever.

I am an integrated citizen of the United States. I am a Jew by my religion and by nothing else. Prophetic Judaism is my religion. The essence of Prophetic Judaism—universal and ethical Judaism—is: Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not covet … Love thy fellow-man as thyself … What thou dost not like to be done to thee, do not do to thy fellow-man … Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit … In the place where the repentant stands, even the completely righteous man cannot stand.

A Jew who practices, or at least tries hard to practice the above noble teachings, is my fellow Jew. A Jew who violates these evolved and civilized fundamental tenets of universal and ethical Judaism is not my fellow Jew. He is a fraud. He only uses and abuses his religion to promote “Jewish” nationalism—the new religion of so many subverted and brainwashed Jewish people. I have nothing in common with this sort of Jew. As to Zionist Israel of the present day, I prefer the truth as fearlessly told by one honest repentant Israeli, Nathan Chofshi, in reply to all the sordid and revolting propaganda, brazenly and inhumanly and hypocritically told by such tribalistic barbarians as Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Shimeon Peres, Levi Eshkol, Abba Eban and the entire lot of the military gang that runs poor misguided Israel. Said Nathan Chofshi in the Jewish Newsletter of that wonderful William Zukerman, on February 9, 1959;

“We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare slander and malign them, to besmirch their name; instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did, and trying to undo some of the evil we committed, we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them.…”

May I first humbly pay my respects to the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, Lebanon, for the honor conferred on me by offering to reprint my book, The Decadence Of Judaism In Our Time, and eventually to arrange for its translation into Arabic, French and Spanish. I must also thank the Institute for allowing me the necessary extra space required for the Postscript to the book, thus bringing up to date the events and developments that have taken place since my book was published in New York, in 1965. Many interesting books have been published since 1965 about the Middle East, the Sinai-Suez wars, the many “Little Wars” before and after the “Big Wars.” The new books, and some rare old books that were secured after years of searching for them in antiquarian book-stores and national libraries, throw a new light on the wars and issues between Israel and the Arab countries, and on some of the leading men involved, such as Count Folke Bernadotte, General Carl von Horn, General Moshe Dayan and Anthony Nutting. These books have cleared up many things that public relations and press agents have kept away from the reading world. Things have crystallized, and the essence can be distilled, so that the naked truth comes out against the pretences, prevarications and propaganda which have subverted and fooled unknowledgeable and innocent folks.

My book and I have had very trying experiences at the hands of defamers and boycotters, not to mention my publisher. Although I had my book published at my own expense, and prepaid all the possible profits the most calculating publisher could exact before I signed the agreement, he refused to give my book a second edition to meet the great demand that came as a result of my personal buying and paying for costly advertising in such newspapers as the New York Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Nation, Commentary, etc., etc., and also as a result of the Six-Day War in June 1967, which created a run on the book-stores for my book, which sold out in a few days. So it was a happy day when the Institute asked me for the right to publish a second edition of it.

I was also particularly pleased to learn that “The Institute is an independent non-profit research organization not affiliated to any government, political party, or group, devoted to a better understanding of the Palestine problem;” that it was established by a group of private citizens, and that its present Board of Trustees includes, among others, Professors C. Zurayk, S. Himadeh, F. Sarrouf and Walid Khalidi (all from the American University of Beirut), Dr. E. Rabbath of the Lebanese University, and Dr. S. Hammad, President of the Arab University of Beirut. These renowned scholars are respected all over the world, and not only in the Arab world.

I must state right here, although it sounds immodest, that upon rereading my book just before starting to write the Supplement, I found it as fresh and relevant to current history as if it had been published today, except, as I have already mentioned, for the events that have taken place since 1965, and for the new books, some of which are revelations that throw much light on the past. Therefore, there will be no repetitions or rewriting of what has been published already. But, I must bring a number of subjects up to date. They include: The Current State of Affairs of “Jewish” Nationalism, Zionist Israel, Jews and Judaism, after the Six-Day June 1967 War; Count Folke Bernadotte’s Mediation and Assassination; the “Final Solution” of the “Ingathering of the Exiles” and the “Redemption of a Greater Eretz Israel” as Planned via the Sinai-Suez Wars; the Culmination and the Full Manifestation of the Chronic, Pathological Seventy-Year-Old “Fixed Idea” of Fanatical “Jewish” Nationalism; Moshe Dayan and the Military Junta of Militant Zionist Israel; Arabs, Commandos and “Peace;” the Decadence (Degeneration) of Anti-Zionism—the American Council for Judaism since June 1967, and the Spontaneous Rebellion of its Members against its Directors’ Betrayal and Cowardice; American Political Commitments and the Winds of Change; Conclusion.

These are the highlights. My only worry is the necessarily limited space allotted to me in the face of the bulging files of new material before me.

And now to the Postscript.

The State of Affairs of “Jewish” Nationalism, Zionist Israel, Jews and Judaism, after the Six-Day June 1967 War.

On June 9, 1967, on the last day of the holocaust of the Arabs of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, the following words appeared in an editorial in the American Zionist Intermountain Jewish News, Denver, Colorado:

“The glorious fighters of Israel have made an automatic hero of every Jew in America, yea, of the world. Because of Israel’s bravery and shining courage, Jews today stand ten feet tall.”

Two years earlier, the same editor of the Intermountain Jewish News, or one of his associates, wrote the following “review” of my book:

“The Jews have a word for it, Meshoumed, one who abandons his Jewish; faith to proselyte against his own people. Moshe Menuhin has written a tract that enriches the anti-Jewish, anti-Israel propaganda arsenal of the Arabs, the Jew baiters and the anti-Zionists.”

Note, please, the synonimity given to the words anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and anti-Zionism, as if a Jew cannot be anything but a Zionist and an Israeli national, even if he happens to be an American citizen of the Jewish faith who cannot condone the deeds of conquest and expropriation done in his name, and in the name of his religion, by Zionist Israel.

Since June 5–10, 1967, a new subject of discussion has been injected into the Jewish press by the Zionist machine: “Equal equities between the Arabs and the Israelis.” You read about it and hear about it in lectures and “debates” among “non-Zionists” and “anti-Zionists.” A high official in the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism has seriously debated with me in a long series of irritating letters about the “equal equities between the Arabs and the Israelis.” I asked him this question: In a case of murder, rape, or kidnapping, is there not an “A” to the case,—a beginning? Do you allow the murderer, raper, or kidnapper to plead for his status quo (the dearest word in the Zionist vocabulary) from “M”—from the middle of the case—for his “equal equities” with his victim, though he did manage to put on extra special gentleman’s clothes and assumed the mien of pure innocence and godliness? Where is the “A” of the case? Where is the “original sin, the original crime?” Did the Arabs take away the homes and homeland in Palestine from the Israelis, or did the Israelis take away the homes and homeland from the Arabs? Where are the political equal equities between Arabs and Israelis, apart from the hypocritical quotations from the always quotable Bible? And what has happened to the Ten Commandments, the “Love thy fellow-men as thyself” etc. of the Bible?

“Equal equities” between the Arabs of Palestine, now exiled and pushed on and on away from their homes and homeland, and the newcomers, the Israelis who took possession of the properties, the crops, the animals, the homeland of these innocent people who never did any harm to the Jewish people?

“Equal equities” is sand thrown into the eyes of unknowledgeable Jews and gentiles, editors of newspapers, magazines, radio and television, who do not even realize that now, since June 1967, they are being taken for a ride by the new powerful and audacious Zionist machine. Propaganda is being fed on an unheard of scale, to cover the new conquests, the new occupations, the new injustices done to the hundreds of thousands of new refugees forced out of their homes, not to mention the over a million “old,” 1948 Palestinian refugees who fled after the Deir Yassin massacres.

Oh yes, there is one “equity” that the Israelis have a right to claim. I refer to the citizens, the humans, the Jewish victims of uprooted lives in Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, America, Britain, South Africa, brought to Israel through Aliyah—the propaganda that subverted and brainwashed nearly two million Jews to give up their homelands among the goyim (their old “enemies”) and “ingather” into the “redeemed” “Jewish Homeland”—stolen through war and conquest from the indigenous Christian and Muslim Arabs of Palestine. Great as is the harm these “Israelis” have done to the Arabs, these Jews are also victims; they are living, working, building, developing the land in Palestine, and they must have equal equities to live jointly with the Arabs either in a bi-national homeland, or separately but peacefully, fraternally, after justice has been done to the Arab refugees by common agreement, and in accordance with the, twenty times repeated resolutions of the United Nations about the rights of the refugees, and after all occupied lands have been returned to their owners, their Arab governments.

Alas, the degeneration of the Jewish people goes on; the decadence of Judaism continues to increase. Here are current symptoms and deeds that show the chronic disease—the “fixed idea” of “Jewish” nationalism. (More about the “fixed idea” a little later). It is frightening to watch the machinations of the professional idealists and the fanatics who have only one God: Lebensraum, jingoistic nationalism. The facts, at least samples of the facts, must be recorded, and let the chips fall where they may.

“Jews See New Israel.” The New York Times of February 25, 1968, reported a meeting at which “nearly 75 rabbinic and lay leaders of the three branches of Judaism—Orthodox, Conservative and Reform—gathered at Columbia University under the auspices of the Synagogue Council of America to examine the new ‘religious dimension’ of Israel. The conclusion of the speakers was that as a result of the War last spring (June, 1967) the entire history of Israel since 1948 needs a new religious interpretation. Rabbi David Polish of Beth Emet Free Synagogue in Evanston, Illinois, for instance, declared that in the wake of last June’s events, “the restoration of sovereignty to Israel stands second only to the exodus.…”

And while these professional clericalists talk of “religious dimensions” and interpretations of the significance of Israel in the “religious life” of their congregations, the London Jewish Chronicle of January 12, 1968, reports some British Jews, who had visited Israel, as saying: “More than 75 per cent—Orthodox as well as liberal—had either mixed or unfavorable opinions of religious life in Israel. Their main objection was that religion was no longer regarded necessary and was not considered as part of Jewish life.…”

At the same time, the professional clericalists in Israel, always, working in cahoots with the military junta that rules the country, have, since June 1967, turned growing Israeli chauvinism to their advantage by associating the “military victories” with the idea of “divine intervention,” and by emphasizing the role played by the various conquered towns and monuments in the Jewish religious heritage.

Eliezer Livneh, political correspondent of the Israeli daily Ha-Aretz, and one of the leading figures in the “Land of Israel Movement,” states the case for retention of the Occupied Territories in the London Jewish Chronicle of August 9, 1968:

“Now that the original hopes for face-to-face talks have faded, the emphasis is changing. Few Israelis expect real peace in the foreseeable future, and the realisation has grown that Israel’s basic objective cannot be limited to peace treaties with Arab Governments. The objective is the ingathering and settlement of the people of Israel (the Jewish people of the world) in the land of Israel.… The Israelis are wondering: Is it not dangerous forbearance to start negotiations with Arab Governments before they have expressed any repentance regarding their determination to perpetrate the crime of genocide.… Indeed, it is Arab Governments that have to pay a price for Israel’s consent to negotiate with them. The very readiness of Israel to discuss problems with such governments is more than indicative of Israel’s self-restraint.…”

Eliezer Livneh goes on to quote the Prime Minister of Israel, Eshkol, who said a mouthful. But I shall cull out just a few words: “Israel has no right to give up anything that might impede the return to Zion.…”

Israel Bond Plea Notes Peace Goal.

The new Zionist Israel machine works everywhere in the “Jewish Homeland” and in the “Diaspora” (outside Israel, where the Jews are “in exile.”) This is a report to the New York Times (March 1, 1968) from Miami Beach, Florida, where

“three thousand American and Canadian Jewish leaders were told that ‘only maximum financial support’ will enable Israel to cope with her economic difficulties and help achieve a ‘fair and lasting peace’ in the Middle East.… This year, we are expected to provide from one-half to two-thirds of the current budget of $289 million because Israel must devote about all of her resources for the primary responsibility of preserving her position for peace.…”

Shamelessly, if only to get some credit with the goyim (gentiles), it was reported in the New York Times of January 12, 1968, that the Israeli government “decided early this year to help the U.S. balance of payments in exchange for the influx of American dollars following last June’s war, by investing $200 million in US longer-term securities.…” The abandoned crops of the exiled Arabs; the oil wells in Sinai; the properties and goods left behind by the new refugees, when added to the American dollars, actually brought new wealth to “victorious” Israel, now an affluent society, whereas prior to the Six-Day War the economy was in a catastrophic condition: unemployment, terrible emigration, reduction of financial support from America, poor tourist influx. All these have changed since June 10, 1967.

The Zionist Israel Machine Openly and Audaciously at Work Now.

In Rehovot, Israel, on August 2, 1968, 30 prominent American Jewish and Israeli intellectuals animatedly debated the nettling problems affecting the relationship between the two communities. “There was wide agreement that Jews in and outside Israel remained responsible for each other’s physical safety and spiritual welfare. Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, president of the American Jewish Congress, sponsor of the annual American-Israeli dialogue, won applause when he declared: ‘American Jews and Israelis are indispensable to one another. Without Israel to make us aware of our responsibilities, we American Jews might easily become a placid element in the stream of Jewish history’…” (New York Times, August 4, 1968)

Here and elsewhere, one will find sharp and sincere dissenters, but their voices are voices in the wilderness. Thus, one American Jew challenged “the barbarism of blind loyalties.… We shall not survive unless a number of men and women free themselves from the myths of nationalism and proclaim that whereas trees do indeed have roots, human beings have legs with which to move freely among each other.…” An Israeli panelist warned against “this emphasis on power and armed might” in his own country. Israel’s greatest danger, he said, is “the arrogance stemming from a growing insularity.…” But, to mention these rare brave men, is only to show that they are the lone exceptions.

Here are the regular, the typical, the true, alas, “Jewish” nationalists who dominate Jewish communal life today everywhere. Says Shimeon Peres, the twin military junta chief with Moshe Dayan, also doing his share of propaganda and “Jewish” education: “Aliyah in the future will not be the same as in the past. Zionism must go to the universities.… Israel must become the university center of world Jewry.” Elsewhere Peres complained that “for the Arab world we have a program—Moshe Dayan’s program.… For the Jewish world, so far, we have none.…” In other words, whatever had been done until June 1967, was not enough.

Deputy Premier Allon of Israel recently announced that Prime Minister Eshkol will summon a world conference of leaders from all Jewish organizations in all countries that are allowed to attend. It will take place next January. It will deal this time with the following three subjects: immigration, Jewish education and political aid. The B’nai B’rith, worried about a shortage of aides who would give the “proper” Jewish education to further encourage Aliyah (immigration to Israel), is now out to lure Jewish youth into Jewish service jobs. They find a shortage that can cripple their “cultural” work in their Anti-Defamation League, in their Hillel Foundation. Said the New York Times of September 11, 1968: “B’nai B’rith has a campus-centered program for college-age youth at 270 schools. It is conducted by the organization’s Hillel Foundation, which maintains the largest staff of rabbis of any Jewish institution, and a professionally directed teenage youth movement with 1,650 chapters. The program is ‘desperately feeling the pinch.’ B’nai B’rith officials said 3,500 openings for trained personnel ‘are going begging’.…”

One rabbi, Richard L. Rubinstein, who serves as a B’nai B’rith Hillel director, deplored the fact that “many of the most idealistic and the brightest Jewish college students regard Israel as an alien reality of no immediate concern.…” In saying this he let the cat out of the bag, but there are ways and means of luring youth: scholarships, better salaries, and constant propaganda, subversion and brainwashing.

To solve the problem of the shortage of proper teachers for “Jewish Education,” and to set examples, patterns, of the ideal “Jewish educators,” it is reported that approximately 25 per cent of the teaching force in weekday elementary and secondary Jewish schools is comprised of Israelis sent here as commissars to do the proper “Jewish education for Aliyah.” There are now about 900 of them in the United States. They mold innocent American-Jewish youth to make them fit to live in the “Jewish Homeland” and die for it. There is a Greater Eretz Israel to defend and expand. Manpower is wanted. Says Chief Rabbi Nissim of Israel’s Sephardic Jews: “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.” This ruling was one of three hundred similar ones given by Israeli rabbis in answer to queries concerning the future of occupied territories.

The Jewish People are Sui Generis. Segregation can Help Aliyah via the Stimulation of a Little Bit of Harmless Anti-Semitism.

The big town near little Los Gatos where I live is San Jose. There are quite a good many Jews living and prospering in San Jose. They have always been law-abiding, loyal citizens, and gratefully integrated into the American community. San Jose is typical of hundreds and hundreds of Jewish communities. In recent years, and now since June, 1967, you feel the hand of Zionist Israel inspiration in favor of segregation and non-integration. The space allotted in the local newspapers to Zionist activities, Zionist organizations, or B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League, is unbelievable. Take this example as I am writing these lines. The San Jose Mercury of September 7, 1968, had this “good news” item: “Painting and yoga classes will begin at the peninsula Jewish community center in September.” I did not believe my eyes. Why in the world must Jewish people have Jewish centers of their own in order to learn how to paint or practice yoga? Are not these the inducements to isolate and insulate Jews from their Christian fellow citizens, so that the rabbi or Israeli commissar can subvert them into “Jewish” nationalism? Remember, please, the wonderful analysis in my book by Professor MacIver, who was asked and paid for making a study of Jewish segregation etc. Recall, please, these words: “(Some) ignore the fact that insulation breeds prejudice, but act in manners that affirmatively induce insulation, and glory in it.…”

The Jewish vote, being so substantial, and controlled (never mind the silly or naive statements that there is no such thing as a Jewish vote in America) by lay leaders and rabbis, who are deeply under the influence of Zionist Israel, will not permit any open or dangerous anti-Semitism in the United States at this time, although a war with Russia caused by Zionist Israel’s politics and machinations, may, God forbid, bring terrible reactions towards the segregated Jews in America. The politicians are at this moment crying for the Jewish vote during the election campaign. Humphrey wants jets for Israel, so Nixon asks—commits himself (this is how these dirty world commitments have brought America into contempt with world opinion)—that “the balance of power in the Middle East must be tipped in Israel’s favor.”

In France, where the Jewish vote does not count for much, but where the Jews—until June, 1967—were always the model of integration as citizens of their country, Jews are today beginning to pay dearly for the subversion and brainwashing of Zionist Israel. The London Jewish Chronicle of March 8, 1968, reported from Paris that: “French Jews are screened … A thorough but discreet investigation of high-ranking Jewish army officers and civil servants has been going on in France since last June … A complete file has been opened on every Jew screened. It contains the investigating officer’s opinion as to the ‘security risks’ any possible Zionist or pro-Israeli affiliations and opinions would represent.”

Charles de Gaulle is supposed to have exclaimed last summer (1967) in response to the violent domestic criticism his government provoked when it took a neutral stand over the Arab-Israeli war, “Is it possible that all of France is Jewish?” A noted French Jewish Professor at the University of Paris, Professor Maxime Rodinson of the Sorbonne, said this about de Gaulle: “From the point of view of the national interests of France, de Gaulle felt that many French Jews seemed to be conducting themselves as Israeli citizens rather than as Frenchmen of Jewish faith at the time of the Arab-Israeli war last June.”

The Culmination and Full Manifestation of the Chronic, Pathological, Seventy-Year-Old “Fixed Idea” of Fanatical “Jewish” Nationalism.

My dictionary defines a “fixed idea” as follows: “A Fixed Idea is a preconceived belief or idea, a prepossession, hence psychologically, an idea, usually delusive, which dominates the whole mental life during a prolonged period, as in certain forms of insanity.” This definition has fitted political Zionism or “Jewish” nationalism to perfection, ever since that Sunday, August 29, 1897, when Dr. Theodor Herzl, at the First Zionist World Congress in Basel, Switzerland, sold his bill of fare, his Judenstaat, to the leaders of East European persecuted ghetto Jewry, right up to the post-June 1967, “Jewish” military victory over their “enemies,” the Arabs.

I know whereof I am speaking. I was a first graduate (Class 1913) of the Gymnasia Herzlia of Jaffa-Tel Aviv—the Nursery where “Jewish” political nationalism had its rebirth after the demise of its Founding Father, Dr. Herzl. I attended the Gymnasia Herzlia from 1909 through 1913. Day and night, inside the classes and outside, I was inoculated with the “fixed idea” of “Jewish” nationalism. In all of Arab Palestine, in those days, there were only about 50,000 Jews, practically all living on alms—charity collections made in the Diaspora. Very few Jews, in those days, were farmers or artisans. Very few looked healthy and strong. The manly men I knew during the five years I attended the Gymnasia Herzlia were the Arab seamen who unloaded and reloaded the many steamers that had to stop miles beyond the high cliffs. Every Jew who lived in Palestine was first brought to land, when he arrived from Russia, Poland or Hungary, by those brave oarsmen, who got them through the narrow passage through the cliffs. Every worker on my uncle’s large vineyard in Rehovot, was an Arab. Work was done by Arabs only, with few exceptions.

Yet, the spiritual education we constantly received consisted of amanooh, artzanooh, moladtanooh—our nation, our country, our fatherland. My benchmate during my five years at the Gymnasia was Moshe Shertock, who was later to become, what it was hoped that both of us would become, a leader in the coming Jewish State. Moshe Shertock was Foreign Minister, and, for a short while, Prime Minister, of the young State of Israel. Religion was non-existent. “Jewish” nationalism was our new religion. We were made to understand, and feel, that the Jews of the world are sui generis, a “Chosen People,” who must eventually all emigrate to their “Jewish Fatherland.” There were hardly any synagogues in Jaffa-Tel Aviv. I never heard of any of my Hebrew teachers going to pray in a synagogue.

We lived in an enchanted world of myths, dreams, and aspirations. It was a hotbed of pumped and inflated excitement and synthetic idealism. To me, who was brought up in Jerusalem, before I came to the Gymnasia, in the home of my saintly and revered grandfather who believed in, and practiced ethical and universal Judaism (Orthodox but sincere), believed and practiced social justice in all his contacts with Jews and gentiles (he was a rich retired merchant who came “to die in the Holy Land,”) this preaching of hatred towards the Arabs conflicted with the Prophetic Judaism of my grandfather. On his death, I left Jerusalem to prepare myself to study at the Gymnasia, at the age of 15–16. But at the age of 20, unlike my fellow-graduates, I refused to accept the scholarships offered me by the Gymnasia to study in Europe under their supervision, and decided to go to America and support myself and be independent.

I must add here that by a strange coincidence, the Gymnasia Herzlia was established in 1904, in the very year Dr. Herzl died. But, while his structure of political cobwebs collapsed with him (he died at the age of 44 from over-excitement and strain on his megalomaniac’s heart) a few of his followers went to Jaffa (before Tel Aviv was built), rented a big house from an Arab, and established the Gymnasia Herzlia, named after their spiritual (nationalistic) leader.

(The story about my Gymnasia Herzlia years, I have culled from my next book, The Menuhins, which will be published one day.)

The traumatic experiences suffered by Jewish students among anti-Semitic Christian university students in Vienna and Berlin, by Theodor Herzl and the many Hebrew teachers at the Gymnasia Herzlia, were in time translated into a hatred of the wrong (innocent) goyim,—the Arabs of Palestine. But Herzl inherited and spread one false slogan concocted by Israel Zangwill (the English-Jewish author, who was a Zionist): A land without a people for a people without a land, and thus began the tragedy of the invasion of Arab Palestine by the “Dreamers of the Ghetto.”

Uri Avnery, an enlightened, now, a non-militant Israeli writer, notes that in his book, The Jewish State (Judenstaat), Herzl dealt with working hours, housing for workers and even the national flag, but had never one word to say about the Arabs of Palestine who had owned the land and lived in it for thirteen centuries. Incidentally—and this is a historical fact—if you remember that the Arabs were mainly the descendants of the Canaanites, then you can say that the Arabs have lived in their homeland from time immemorial.

I.F. Stone, the noted Zionist (or is he now ex-Zionist?) told in the New York Review of Books (in the course of his review of the French Les Temps Modernes, Le Conflit Israélo-Arabe) a story related by Professor Buber about the Arabs in Palestine. One day Professor Max Nordau, the great scholar and writer who collaborated with Dr. Herzl, “upon hearing for the first time that there was an Arab population in Palestine, ran to Herzl crying: ‘I did not know that; but then, we are committing an injustice.…’” In this context I.F. Stone writes: “This moral myopia makes it possible for Zionists to dwell on the 1900 years of exile in which the Jews have longed for Palestine, but dismisses as nugatory the nineteen years in which Arab refugees have also longed for it. ‘Homelessness’ is the major theme of Zionism, but this pathetic passion is denied to Arab refugees.…”

The paranoid Herzl learned from his hired aide, the erratic, mystic chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna, Rev. Hechler, that “the northern frontier of the “Jewish Homeland” is to be “the mountains facing Cappadocia (an inland district in Asia Minor); the southern frontier is to be the Suez Canal. The slogan shall be: The Palestine of David and Solomon,” and that became the “fixed idea” implanted into the minds and hearts of the persecuted and neurotic leaders of the Jewish ghettos in Eastern Europe in those dark days in world history. World wars or no world wars, the Zionists have not advanced in humanity one inch away from their “fixed idea:” grab Arab Palestine and make of it a “Jewish homeland.” In fact, it was the predatory and depraved political nationalism of the Czar’s Russians, the Kaiser’s and Hitler’s Germans, the imperialist-colonialist political nationalists of France and Great Britain who, by their subversion of the youth of Europe with their wars of conquest and blood and inhumanity, also inspired the new generation of emancipated or semi-emancipated Jews to follow their example. But, while insane political nationalist Europeans have learned their lesson the hard way, and are looking to a humane, fraternal, moral life in our post-world wars era, the “Jewish” nationalists remain as they were seventy years ago, in Herzl’s days.

The “Fixed Idea” in the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917), and in Partition (November 29, 1947).

In my book, I have thoroughly described the tricky ways the Balfour Declaration was extracted, how it Was worded, how it was interpreted afterwards to mean a Jewish State of Palestine, instead of a “homeland” in Palestine. It was a “document of perfidy” consisting of sixty-seven pilpulistic words obtained by the Zionist Organization, which spoke in the name of the Jewish people all over the world. We recall the political expediency that prompted the British Government to issue that letter to Lord Rothschild, and we recall also how, in 1927 (when there were 3,000 more emigrants from Palestine than immigrants to Palestine): Chaim Weizmann appealed to the Jews of Rumania for “manpower.” “We Jews got the Balfour Declaration quite unexpectedly.… Every day and every hour I trembled lest the British Government should call on me and ask me: Tell us what is this Zionist organization, and where are your Zionists.… The Jews were against us; we stood alone.…”

Yet, a political Zionist colonization of Palestine was established and promoted and enforced. Recall the pages in my book about “The Conquest of Land,” “The Conquest of Work,” “The Conquest of Production and Trade”.… It was the “fixed idea” of an exclusive, chauvinistic, Jewish State that filled the minds of the fanatical Zionist leaders, come what might!

Then came Partition, on November 29, 1947, the most illegal and inhuman giving away to outsiders of land that belonged to the indigenous Christian and Muslim Arab population, through political manipulation and pressure, as well as through the Christian guilt complex vis-à-vis the Jewish people,—all at the expense of the innocent Arabs. In my book, I have described in detail the unfair and inhuman distribution of land, as well as the quality of the land given to the Arabs, instead of letting them have what was theirs. The Zionists accepted Partition with alacrity; the Arabs refused it. The Arabs fought back the conquest of their homeland by the “new specimen of fighting Jews”—Irgun, Stern Gang, Haganah. They fought and killed Jews and Britishers. The militant Zionists fought and killed Arabs and Britishers. The Britishers got tired of the whole mess and decided to get out of their mandated territory. There were numerous British and Anglo-American Committees of Inquiry sent to Palestine and to the Displaced Persons camps in Europe to study the tragedy of the remnant of the Jewish victims, of whom there were hardly 150,000 left.

America could and should have opened its doors wide—and so could and should Great Britain, Canada, and all of the free world, to solve the problem of the survivors of Hitler’s holocaust. But the Zionist leaders and the professional rabbis would not allow this. Recall President Roosevelt’s words to Morris L. Ernst, “The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors there is no other place this poor Jew can go to.…”

Then came the Deir Yassin massacre of April 10, 1948, and the counter-massacre by the Arabs on Mt. Scopus on April 13. (By mixing up the dates, some Zionists say, “the terrible Deir Yassin massacre was a reaction, a response, to the terrible Mt. Scopus massacre.” A Zionist professor in an American University was teaching this “fact” until I “corrected” him on that score.) Blood was flowing all over Palestine, and refugees filled the fields and highways, unable to find any shelter, food, or protection. The fixed idea was at work.

The failure, the impossibility, to implement the Partition Resolution of 29th November, 1947, the bloodshed and the eviction of tens of thousands of happy Arab farmers, merchants, workers, and professional men, resulted in the convoking of the Second Special Session of the General Assembly ‘to consider further the future government of Palestine.’ This Special Assembly, taking into account the new situation, adopted on May, 14, 1948, the Resolution providing for a Mediator.… But, on May 15, with the British gone, the new State of Israel was proclaimed, and its troops, who had long been training in secret, rapidly occupied considerable sectors of the country. Simultaneously, the Arab States declared war, and Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi troops (all in all 21,500 Arab troops as against Israeli forces of 65,000) moved over the frontier. Israel had considerable military success, and occupied fifty per cent more territory than any international plan had previously allotted it, and the best part of a million Palestinian Arabs were in flight.

The “Fixed Idea” in the 1948 War with the Arabs. Count Folke Bernadotte: His Mediations, Peace Proposals, and Brutal Assassination, the Supreme Individual Crime of the Modern Age.

There is a considerable amount of new material, new and old books, that are now at my disposal, which I did not have while writing my book. I can incorporate only a part of the new material in this Supplement. Not until August 1968 did I succeed in buying in an antiquarian book-store in London, Count Bernadotte’s Instead of Arms and Ralph Hewins’ Count Folke Bernadotte, His Life and Work, both published in 1948–1949. And only a few days ago, did I finally succeed in borrowing from a national library the book To Jerusalem, a remarkable diary Bernadotte wrote while flying about in the Middle East, in search of Truces and Peace. Let me now give the essence of what I have learned, and thus supplement what I have already written about Count Bernadotte in my book.

On March 9, 1964, the New York Times published an interview which a reporter of the Hebrew daily Haboker in Israel had with the “retired” Ben Gurion. The essence of it was: “Israeli territory might have been greater (still) if General Moshe Dayan had been Chief of Staff during the 1948 war against the Arabs in Palestine.…” And General Allon, who commanded several vital fronts in the 1948 war, said: “When the Premier and Defense Minister Ben Gurion (who had been under strong pressure from President Truman) ordered a halt in our army’s advance, we had been on the crest of victory … from the Litani (a Lebanese river) in the north to the Sinai desert in the south-west. A few more days of fighting would have enabled us to liberate the entire country.…”

At this point may I just recall the Resolution 194 (III) Par. 11, of December 11, 1948, of the General Assembly of the United Nations, reading:

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under the principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.…

To establish a truce, to bring about peace, and above all, to help the refugees return to their homes and farms, was the purpose of Count Folke Bernadotte in Palestine. Count Bernadotte was indisputably non-political, and was moved by exclusively humanitarian ideals. Nephew of a king, he had no name to make, no titles to win. Husband of a millionairess, he was above sordid considerations of gain. He was deeply religious, and had schooled himself for years in the organization of the Swedish boy scouts. When he had won his spurs, he threw himself whole-heartedly into the perfection of the Swedish Red Cross organization. We shall dwell, a little later on his assassination at the hands of the “Stern Gang,” who were the de facto official forces of the provisional government of the newly established State of Israel. Let us go to the high lights of his work in Palestine among the Arabs and among the Israelis. This comes from his book, To Jerusalem:

“As I sat talking (to the Arab Governments) I could not help saying to myself: This man realises deep down that the Arab world cannot any longer hope for a Palestine in which there will not be an independent Jewish state.… (But, they) called my attention to the miserable conditions in which the Arab refugees were living. It was particularly the case of the refugees from Jaffa and Haifa whose plight was heart-rending.…” (page 186)

On the same page, he states:

“A talk with the President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Lebanon … confirmed my impression that the Arab Countries now realised the necessity of, even though unwillingly, recognising an independent Jewish state in Palestine.”

And on page 201, he says:

“I described my view of the situation, in the same way as I had previously in both Beirut and Amman.… The Prime Minister of Egypt realised, he said, that the Arab hope of preventing the emergence of an independent Jewish state had been crushed.…”

On pages 208–209, we read this:

“I had to have a private conversation with Mr. Moshe Shertock.… I began the discussion by saying that in my opinion the international position of the government of Israel was worse than it had been only a few weeks before. It no longer enjoyed the goodwill it had previously. The reason was, I said, that the government had expressed itself on various occasions in such a way that people could only draw the conclusion that it was well on the way towards losing its head. It seemed as though Jewish demands would never cease.… It was my definite impression—I continued—that the Jews now felt they had two enemies. The Arabs were still enemy No. 1. But I and the United Nations observers ran them a close second.… I knew from my own experience (and that of my own officers), that when they first arrived, they would be very sympathetic towards the Jewish cause; but I also knew that they would soon find themselves compelled by force of circumstances to revise their attitude.… The Israeli government had had a very great opportunity in connection with the Arab refugee question. It had missed that opportunity. It had shown nothing but hardness and obduracy towards these refugees. If instead of that it had shown a magnanimous spirit, if it had declared that the Jewish people, which itself had suffered so much, understood the feelings of the refugees and did not wish to treat them in the same way as it itself had been treated, its prestige in the world at large would have been immeasurably increased.…”

Shertock’s reply was:

“The Jewish government could under present conditions in no circumstances permit the return of the Arabs who had fled or been driven from their homes during the war.… I observed that I was surprised that the representatives of the Jewish people in particular should look at this problem from such a narrow point of view, that they should regard it purely as a political question without taking into account the humanitarian side of the matter.…

The Israeli government was getting bolder and wilder as the “fixed idea” came nearer realization. Count Bernadotte continues:

“Nothing that I could propose aroused any response; I got nowhere. It was significant to read later in the Jewish newspaper ‘Palestine Post:’ ‘Count Bernadotte has had a fruitless meeting with the Foreign Minister of Israel.’ That was evidently regarded as a great triumph for the Jews.… Their military success during the ten days war had gone to their heads.… Whatever questions came up, we were always met with the same passive resistance, and the same lack of will to cooperate.…” (pp. 199–200)

Count Bernadotte goes on:

“When Shertock and I passed on to the question of the future of Palestine, Shertock agreed 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.…”

The germ of the old chronic “fixed idea” was incubating and flourishing; the destructive (the Zionists naturally called them constructive) deeds it called for required a longer duration of the disease, and there was no cure for it, alas. The “fixed idea”—the “Ingathering of the Exiles” (ingathering of all the Jews of the world into “their” “Jewish Homeland”) became a Territorial Imperative. The evolved idea of Prophetic Judaism that “God did ‘Tsdakah’” (justice, salvation, charity) to Israel (the Jews) by dispersing them among the nations of the world and that the core of their religion was universalism, humanity, ethics above all, was discarded in favor of a new religion, newly learned from the European political nationalists,—Lebensraum, statism, expansion, and thus a Greater Eretz Israel was what the Shertocks, Ben Gurions, Moshe Dayans and the rest of the military junta of Israel insisted on, cost what may to themselves and to their victims, the Arabs of Palestine.…

All this will explain the. Big Wars (1948, 1956, 1967) and the many “Little Wars” which have taken place from 1948 to this day, wars of “Redemption” and Expansion to satisfy the demands of the “fixed idea.” The Israeli government always called them “retaliatory” wars, sometimes “preventive” wars, but underlying all the wars was this driving, irrevocable, ruthless firmness and resoluteness of the “fixed idea.”

Let us return for a while to Count Folke Bernadotte’s life and work, and then to his assassination. There is so much interesting and gripping information in Count Bernadotte’s books, To Jerusalem, and Instead of Arms, and in Ralph Hewin’s Count Folke Bernadotte, his Life and Work, that I permit myself to ask readers to try to get these books, somewhere, somehow. For, I can only give here a few of the many fascinating but tragic facts. Count Bernadotte was the first martyr in the service of the United Nations’ reconciliation efforts in bloody Palestine. Dr. Ralph Bunche, deputy Mediator, and successor, after Count Bernadotte was murdered, said: “I really loved Count Folke Bernadotte. He was the greatest man I ever met!” Yet few people know of the murder of this outstanding man, and rarely will one find a book in any library, book-store, or antiquarian store about the life of this unique humanitarian. I am writing these lines on September 23. On September 17, it was 20 years since Count Bernadotte was murdered. I have not read one word in any newspaper or magazine about this 20th anniversary.

When the Second World War broke out, the International Red Cross entrusted Count Bernadotte with the first exchange of allied and disabled enemy prisoners. Such was his integrity and indisputable impartiality that the Allies and Germans alike gave him free passage on his work of mercy. At the end of the war, on his own initiative, he rescued thousands of Jews from liquidation in German concentration camps.… Altogether Bernadotte rescued 40,000 lives, irrespective of race or creed. The new Civilian Convention, which was passed by the Seventeenth Red Cross Conference in Stockholm, was his inspiration and largely his work.

He was just returning home from Greece where he had visited the homes and camps for rebel refugee children from the fighting in Greece, where he founded a Swedish Home for 200 children and arranged for 24,000 tons of Swedish food to be distributed monthly among the needy Greeks, when he found a telegram from his fellow Scandinavian Trygve Lie, the Norwegian Secretary-General of the United Nations, asking him to serve as Mediator in Palestine. He knew that the chances were slim. He finally accepted the job because of the serious character of the problem, for it did not seem impossible that the Israeli-Arab conflict might set the world afire. He accepted it for six months, and stipulated that he should have the right to go to Stockholm for the international Red Cross Conference which he had arranged and was to preside over.

Count Bernadotte and his wife faced the fact frankly together that Mediation in Palestine would be dangerous. With her he made detailed arrangements for his funeral in the event of his sudden death, and he made his last will and testament. He flew from Stockholm, via Paris and Cairo, to Tel Aviv, where he arrived on May 24, 1948.

From the very beginning he realized that the Israelis considered him partial, and were going to treat him as an enemy. On arrival in Jerusalem, broad banners hoisted above jeeps were circulated through the streets by ‘Fighters for the Freedom of Israel’ reading: “Stockholm is yours. Jerusalem is ours. You work in vain. We are here.… So long as there is a single enemy of our cause, we shall have a bullet in the magazine for him.…” From the start, the Stern Gang let it be known that they regarded Bernadotte as their enemy.

From June 1 to 11, Bernadotte worked untiringly for a truce. The principle of the truce was that neither side should gain any military advantage thereby. The Israeli government insisted that Jewish immigration must continue. The Arabs objected. On the evening of June 9, one of Bernadotte’s staff accidentally caught him praying alone in his room. That same night, his prayers were answered. From both Arabs and Israelis he received an answer that they unconditionally accepted his armistice proposal. In Instead of Arms, he writes: “With that, however, my task was not finished. The negotiations now had to be continued in order to reach, if possible, a final peace in Palestine.…”

Alas, the truce or truces arranged by Bernadotte were not honored. The Arab governments were engaged in activities against one another, while the Israelis were steadily building up their forces. An airlift was working constantly between Czechoslovakia and Israel bringing in more arms from behind the Iron Curtain. The upper hand of the Israeli armies was shown when, in between truces, they captured Ramlah, Lydda, Nazareth, and many other Arab towns and villages.

Bernadotte was convinced that if the United Nations Security Council could make a quick and effective decision, it had a good chance of inducing both parties to adopt a more sensible attitude. So he flew to New York (Lake Success). On July 13, Bernadotte confronted the Security Council for the first time. He did not hesitate to tell the Security Council frankly that their immediate decisions would be decisive. He made seven points: (1) Both parties must be made to realize that the use of force would not be tolerated. (2) The first step must be an unequivocal order to cease fire. (3) To prevent destruction, the demilitarization of Jerusalem must be ordered, and supported by 1,000 to 2,000 United Nations guards. (4) The United Nations must be prepared to resort to Articles 41 and 42 of the Charter (sanctions) should the cease-fire be disobeyed. (5) The cease-fire could be expected to lead to an armistice and so pave the way for further mediation of a peaceful settlement. (6) Special attention should be given to urgent questions of refugees. (7) Responsibility for the next step rested exclusively upon the Security Council.

Bernadotte’s Peace Plans, as well as his recommendations to the Security Council, made him a marked man in Israel. His serious endeavors for peace caused consternation in Israel. We must now go on to the date that will live for ever in infamy, September 17, 1948, when that incredible crime was committed by militant, inhumane, insane, political nationalists who worship a State that will expand their Lebensraum, in Nazi fashion.

On September 17, at noon, Bernadotte’s peace plane, the “Whirlwind” flew to Jerusalem from Damascus. Through the blue sky above, a radio message reached him. It read: “Urgent. Inform all aircraft against landing Kalandia airport. They will be fired upon.” That was the welcome back to the United Nations Mediator. “Do you want to jump now or be fired upon with us?,” the Count with a wry smile asked one of the newspapermen attached to him. “This is an obvious attempt to frighten me. If so, someone is mistaken. I will not be frightened,” the Count added. The plane landed without incident. He continued to Ramallah, outside Jerusalem, and then proceeded to Jerusalem. As he drove around Mount Scopus, a bullet from what seemed the direction of the Hebrew University and the Jewish-held Hadassah hospital hit the running board of his car and entered the left rear wheel. He drove on. “Good Luck!,” a newsman shouted. The Count answered, “I’ll need it!.…” Then he drove in his grey United Nations car to Government House. Bernadotte and his companions were arranged thus—two United Nations cars led the way, and in the third and last car, the former Connecticut State policeman, Colonel Frank Begley, who was head of the Mediator’s Security Force, drove with another American, Commander Cox, beside him on the front seat. The French Observer, Colonel André Sérot, sat in the middle of the back seat with Folke Bernadotte to the right, and his Chief of Staff, General Aage Lundström, to the left. The first two cars carried the Red Cross flag, while the third carried the blue and white United Nations flag depicting a globe. The three vehicles had just passed a road barrier, when they were suddenly halted by four men (possibly five or six) in an Israeli army-type jeep. Two men in Israeli Army uniforms and carrying Sten guns strode along the stalled cars. As Colonel Begley afterwards stated, they were “snarling.” He got out and grappled with one of the men as he ineffectually fired a shot into the front seat of Bernadotte’s car. A second man thrust his Sten gun through a window ventilator and fired a burst at the back seat. Lundström was uninjured. Sérot, the Truce Observer loaned by the French Air Force, was killed. “Are you hurt, Folke?” asked Lundström. The Count appeared to nod. Then Lundström saw that Bernadotte’s rows of decorations were torn by bullets. But he was still alive. Begley jumped back into the car and drove to the Hadassah hospital. “There is a chance,” said a doctor after a superficial examination. But before Bernadotte could be carried inside, he was dead. The time was 5 p.m.

The murderers sent a letter to the correspondent of Agence France-Presse in Tel Aviv on September 20, expressing regret at the murder of Sérot owing to a ‘fatal mistake.’ The letter read as follows: “Although in our opinion all United Nations Observers in Palestine are members of foreign occupation forces, which have no right to be on our territory, the murder of the French Colonel Sérot was due to a fatal mistake: our men thought that the officer sitting beside Count Bernadotte was the British agent and anti-Semite, General Lundström.…”

The United Nations passed one resolution after another demanding that the Provisional Government of Israel report to the Security Council about the “cowardly act.” Finally, after two months, the Israeli government’s atrophied conscience was awakened by world consternation and indignation over the crime. The principal Stern Gangster, Nathan Friedman-Yellin and his aide, Matityahu Shmulevitz, were arrested. In December, Yellin and Shmulevitz were brought to “trial” in an Israeli court at Acre. They posed smilingly for photographers and their ‘guard’ laughed brazenly. At his “trial” in Acre Yellin whitewashed himself by delivering a harangue in which he attacked Count Bernadotte as an enemy of Israel. One of his condemnations of Bernadotte was this: “He stood in the way of Jewish absorption of the Kindgom of Transjordan as well as the whole of Palestine.…”

Murderer Nathan Friedman-Yellin was soon amnestied, and in 1950, the Israeli Government allowed the murderer to stand for election to the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) of which he became a member.

In conclusion may I say this: I have been accused of being an extremist anti-Zionist, particularly when I happen to use the words Lebensraum or “Nazi-like” when discussing the insane political nationalism of the military junta of Israel. May I therefore take a few more lines to quote here a few words out of a long Letter-to-the-Editor which appeared in the London Times on September 23, 1948, written by Rabbi Harold Rein-hart, Senior Minister of the West London Synagogue, in response to a Letter-to-the-Editor written on September 21, by Ralph Hewins, author of the book, Count Folke Bernadotte, His Life and Work:

“We are indebted to Mr. Hewins for emphasizing for us vividly the crushing magnitude of our Jewish responsibility in the face of the foul murder of Count Bernadotte, for which, as Mr. Hewins says, there is ‘no vestige of excuse’.… Only madness can explain the murder of Count Bernadotte. but, as is well known and was incontrovertibly demonstrated by the Nazis on a gigantic scale, the borderline between madness and unbridled nationalism is uncertain. Naked nationalism knows no law except necessity. Its passion for Lebensraum is beyond the spheres of reason and compassion. Bred on despair and disillusion, a naked nationalism—contrary to the whole Jewish tradition—finds some expression among Jews today.…”

The “Fixed Idea’s” War of the ‘Final Solution’—The First Sinai-Suez War of 1956.

The “fixed idea” about the State of a Greater Eretz Israel “über alles” was driving the inner clique of the military junta of Israel towards the day. And, October 29, 1956, was the day.…

Now, whatever information was available by 1965, I certainly included in my book. But, in 1966, 1967, and 1968, there appeared a number of new and important books, which revealed the naked truth about the collusion between the scheming military junta of Israel and the old political nationalists, the colonialist-imperialists of France and Great Britain who had hardly profited at all, spiritually and morally, from the bloodbaths and destruction of the two world wars. Some of the books of particular importance are the following: No End of a Lesson, the Story of Suez, by Anthony Nutting; Suez. Ten Years after, published by the BBC Third Programme Series; Diary of the Sinai Campaign, by Major General Moshe Dayan; Soldiering for Peace, by General Carl von Horn; Moshe Dayan. A Biography, by N. Lau-Lavie; Bitter Harvest. Palestine 1914–1967, and Palestine Occupied, by Sami Hadawi.

The 1956 Sinai war was not a reprisal war, nor just another war of expansion. It was planned long in advance; years in advance, as we shall soon see. It was meant to bring the final solution, final and full redemption of a greater Eretz Israel in accordance with the “fixed idea” promulgated by Herzl, Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Shimeon Peres and the smaller fry of the ruthless military junta of militant Israel.

The 1956 war of collusion with France (to begin with, and Great Britain a little later) really began in 1954. The rebellion of the Algerian Arabs, the Lavon Affair (over whose forged signature as Defense Minister of Israel, the military junta plotted the bombings of American installations, libraries, movie houses, in Egypt, in order to create bad blood between Egypt and America. Lavon declared that he was framed by Dayan and Peres), the invasion and occupation of the El Auja Triangle in Sinai and the “planned and prearranged” attack on Gaza, the strengthening of military and diplomatic ties with France, all took place in 1954–1955 when the plans for the “Final Solution” began to take shape. Shimeon Peres, whose career and that of Moshe Dayan were to be intertwined—Peres was the junior partner in Ben Gurion’s and Dayan’s triumvirate—had established excellent contacts with the French aircraft industry and met with the Government leaders.

The top three men, Ben Gurion, Dayan and Peres, decided that the “Day of Redemption” was at hand, with the aid of the imperialist armies, navies, and warplanes of France and Britain. I can give here only the highlights. Let us turn first to the machinations with France and Britain, for in 1956, Israel did not have as yet the colossal armaments she bought later, after 1956, when she was “cheated” of her “glorious victories” in 1956, by the United Nations and by President Eisenhower. If she were to advance the day of the “Final Solution” to 1956, she needed more tanks, more planes, more ammunition, and allies; and allies God sent her, for the governments of France and Britain were enemies of the Arabs, and the “enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Let us read about it in Dayan’s own Diaries, shameless entries about a depraved and predatory offensive war of collusion, and cull bits here and there from the other books.

On September 1, 1956, two months before the blitzkrieg on Egypt began, Dayan enters a report in his Diary about a meeting with his General Staff, when “a ‘most immediate’ signal from our military attaché in Paris was brought to me, with information on the Anglo-French plan to seize the Suez Canal.…” By September 21 we find Moshe Dayan, Shimeon Peres (Director General of the Ministry of Defense) driving together to Jerusalem and discussing the results of Peres’ visit to France. Peres reported about a second London Conference (September 21) where Christian Pineau, the French Foreign Minister, left the meeting gravely disappointed. It appeared that while “Anthony Eden was in favour of military action against Egypt, he encountered strong opposition even inside his own party.… On the other hand, the feeling in French Ministry of Defense circles is that the military operations against Egypt are essential and that France should launch them even if she has to act alone.”

Let us hear what the Right Honorable Anthony Nutting, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office under Prime Minister Anthony Eden, said, in opposition, about his Prime Minister:

“I felt only sadness that a Minister who had always in the past seemed such a model of integrity in public affairs, should now debase our standards of international behaviour by this disreputable maneuver.… The action which they (Israel, France, and the United Kingdom) were about to take would be a breach of the United Nations Charter, of the Tripartite Declaration, and of the agreement with Egypt which I had negotiated and signed almost exactly two years before. And on top of everything else, it would be the result of a squalid piece of collusion with Israel, which would have to be denied, even though the denial would be as transparent as glass to any thinking person.… How could we regain the trust that we had shattered and the moral leadership that we had forfeited? We, the champions of the rule of law, had applied the law of the jungle.… Mollet and his Ministers instinctively realized that with a little encouragement it should be possible to turn the current Israeli temper to French advantage.… So, the French turned to the Israelis for help in this direction.… When Eden and Lloyd (Minister of Foreign Affairs) reached Paris, they found Mollet and Pineau (France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs) in great spirits and in a very belligerent mood. So certain were they that the Israelis would shortly provide the pretext for settling the Canal issue by force.… (and serve) as the stalking horse for France and Britain.…”

And here is another revealing passage in Nutting’s book, No End of a Lesson, the Story of Suez. At one point at the meeting of Anthony Eden with his Israeli and French allies, General Challe (Deputy Chief of staff for the French Air Force who later figured prominently in the Algerian “Generals’ Plot” against President de Gaulle) was called in to speak:

“Challe then proceeded to outline what he termed a possible plan of action for Britain and France to gain physical control of the Suez Canal. The plan, as he put it, was that Israel should be invited to attack Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula and that France and Britain having given the Israeli forces enough time to seize all or most of Sinai, should then order ‘both sides’ to withdraw their forces from the Suez Canal, in order to permit the Anglo-French force to intervene and occupy the Canal on the pretext of saving it from damage by fighting. Thus, the two powers would be able to claim to be ‘separating the combatants’ and ‘extinguishing a dangerous fire’ while actually seizing control of the entire waterway and of its terminal ports, Port Said and Suez.…”

Secret discussions were meanwhile going on between Peres and Bourges Manoury, French Defense Minister, and when Moshe Dayan came into the picture,

“General Challe told the same diplomats that it was the Israeli Army Chief who had inspired them with fresh hope. ‘In contrast to the sluggishness and lack of confidence shown by the British,’ declared Challe, ‘Dayan’s clear and dynamic attitude was most striking. He knew exactly what he wanted and what it was in his power to achieve. The French drew courage from Dayan’s self-confidence, yet he frightened them with his daring approach and his conviction as to his Army’s chances of defeating the Egyptians.” (Moshe Dayan, A Biography, by N. Lau-Lavie, page 156)

As we know, Anthony Nutting resigned from his job and thus removed himself from the “sordid story,” and the war of collusion, of aggression, occupation and subjugation of Egypt was decided upon.

On September 28, Moshe Dayan enters into his Diary: “A check of our logistics material makes us more aware what paupers we are” but on October 1, he meets with the French Chief of Staff, General Ely, and Maurice Challe, and enters this into the Diary: “General Ely asked what equipment we wanted from France. I handed him a list which included 100 tanks (Super, Shermans), 300 half-track vehicles, 50 tank transporters, 300 trucks with four-wheel drive, 1,000 bazookas, and a squadron of transport planes.…”

That night Dayan and Peres flew back home very happy. The swashbuckling Dayan even enters into his Diary of October 1 that they had a good meal in Paris at Le Coq Hardi, and for coffee they moved to a Champs Elysées café where they heard “a startled voice saying in Sabra Hebrew, ‘Hey fellows, did you see who just passed? Moshe Dayan and Shimeon Peres. Must be something up, something secret, for Moshe Dayan was wearing dark glasses to avoid recognition’.…”

On October 2, Dayan calls a meeting of his General Staff to give them an “early warning,” but he would have his staff believe that they have to get ready to capture the West Bank of Jordan because of the possibility of Iraqi forces entering Jordan. Dayan orders all his officers on training courses overseas to be recalled back home. “My news that we had to prepare for battle electrified the meeting.” Soon Dayan gave his men an opportunity to exercise a nice “retaliatory” “Little War” on a grand scale, on Kalkiliah, in Jordan, on October 12. “The scale of operations was larger than any we have employed in previous reprisal engagements, and we suffered heavy losses: 18 killed, of whom eight were officers, and more than 50 wounded, fourteen of them officers. The figures we have so far of enemy losses are about a hundred killed.” The “Kill Ratio,” the darling game among hawks in Johnson’s USA and in Dayan’s Israel, was good.

Interesting is an omission in Dayan’s Diary. In his Chapter Four, On The Eve, he has no entries between October 16 and October 25. Where was Moshe Dayan during that time? It is now obvious that he did not want the public to know that Ben Gurion, the patron saint of the military junta, Peres and himself, were paying a secret visit to France to do some last minute bargaining, and to secure signed papers to confirm the collusion agreement.

On October 25, Dayan makes the following entry in his Diary: “Ben Gurion was worried about the heavy casualties we may suffer in the opening phase of the campaign, before the Anglo-French action, which we hope, will indeed take place.… He believes that as soon as we start our offensive, the Egyptian Air Force will attack Tel Aviv and Haifa with their Ilyushin bombers and cause considerable destruction to our civilian population. I do not share this apprehension. Of course, we may not be able to ‘pass between raindrops’ and emerge completely dry, but I think we can manage to avoid getting too wet. I believe that in the early phases we can give our operations the character of a reprisal action, and even though we shall have quite a strong force close to the Suez Canal, the Egyptians are not likely to recognize it as the opening of a comprehensive campaign, and will not rush to bomb civilian targets in Israel.”

On October 29, “The Day,” Dayan enters an item about a politico-military “official announcement” that must be released immediately after the paratroopers drop at Mitla (in the Sinai Desert). “This should be firm and threatening, but it must reveal nothing of our true intentions. After much drafting and redrafting, we brought to Ben Gurion for his approval the following suggested bulletin: ‘The army spokesman announces that Israeli defence forces entered and engaged fedayin units in Ras En-Nakeb and Kuntilla, and seized positions west of the Nakhl cross-roads in the vicinity of the Suez Canal. This action follows the Egyptian military assaults on Israel transport on land and sea designed to cause destruction and the denial of peaceful life to Israel’s citizens.…”

I cannot help commenting with an outcry: This is not Prophetic Judaism. This is “Jewish” Nationalism, Napalm Judaism, revolting, nauseating, tribalistic à la Joshua.

On the same day, Dayan enters the following: “I have the feeling that the entire nation is in favour of this campaign.… For all who will be taking part in this campaign, the compelling motivating factors behind it are the same as those which inspired the major efforts of the last three generations to restore Jewish nationhood in Israel.…” Here again is the manifestation of the desire to bring into realization the “fixed idea,” the “Ingathering” of all the Jews of the world into their redeemed “Jewish Homeland,” at any price, at any sacrifice, and defy the world and its United Nations, if necessary, if possible.

In my book, I have already described the holocaust and destruction accomplished by Dayan’s forces, and, of course, the forced retreat after the “glorious victory.” They protested, objected, quarrelled, but they had to do what France and Britain had to do. Recall President Eisenhower’s words—to his everlasting credit: “Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of the United Nations’s disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal? Etc.”

The New York Times of November 29, 1967, quoted a remarkable observation made by General de Gaulle in Paris about the First Sinai-Suez War, “During the Suez affair of 1956 the Israelis emerged as a warlike state determined to expand!” No one knew better than the French general staff what the military junta of Israel was after. They had horse-traded with Moshe Dayan and Shimeon Peres for years before October 29, 1956, and it was French armaments and bombers that defeated the Arab States later in June 1967.

When Moshe Dayan’s big army was finally withdrawing from their Sinai-Suez conquests, “he ordered the demobilization of all reservist units. Asking his aides to speed up the release of the reserve forces, he said, ‘This will not be the last war, and we shall again have to call up our reserve troops.…” (The Biography of Moshe Dayan p. 167)

This brings me to the BBC interview with Nasser. The BBC man asks Nasser: “You think that there might again still be an Israeli attack into Sinai?” “Yes, of course; because there is an Israeli threat continuously not only against Sinai—(but) against Syria, against Jordan, against Lebanon.…” Then, another BBC question: “Looking at international history throughout the world, if you were asked by an historian to say what was the meaning of Suez (1956) to world history in this mid-twentieth century, what would you say it was?” “Well, the meaning of Suez is that there is an end to the methods of the nineteenth century, that it was impossible to use the methods of the nineteenth century in the twentieth century.…”

Was it impossible? His own Central Intelligence Agency should have told him. Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Abba Eban said it in so many words, more or less. Said Abba Eban in an address before the Anti-Defamation League, “… 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.’” (New York Times, Nov. 25, 1956) And Ben Gurion, far from recognizing the moral bankruptcy of his militarism, said: “The Sinai campaign still further fortified the pride and admiration of Jewry.” We must also remember the old fox Ben Gurion who said a mouthful in these words: “It is not easy for me to abandon endeavors which I consider important, and in which I have been engaged for many years, and plans which I have yet to implement.…”

That myth about “the bastion of democracy in the Middle East” is sheer nonsense,—sand thrown into the eyes of unknowledgeable folks. When it came to the war of 1956 and the preparations for it, Ben Gurion himself has stated publicly that he hoodwinked his Cabinet colleagues (not to speak of the Knesset, the Parliament), and did what he thought right to do about “the plans which I have yet to implement.”

Today, again, the military junta of Israel, led by Moshe Dayan, decides what the nation as a whole should do; never mind the Knesset. The London Jewish Chronicle correspondent in Tel Aviv recently reported that “the Knesset back-benchers are becoming increasingly restive at the way they are generally ignored by ministers, and their lack of control over the executive. Dissatisfaction is strongest among the Parliamentary Israel Labor Party, many of whose members consider that they are little more than ‘rubber stamps’ for Ministers. Promises by the latter to keep the rank and file informed and to consult them from time to time have not been kept.… Israelis do not question their Government’s defence policy—this is taboo.…”

The “Fixed Idea’s” Second Sinai-Suez War of June 5–10, 1967. The Holocaust. Is the “Realization” of the “Final Solution” Durable? Can the Arabs Make Peace with Fanatics who Suffer from the Chronic Mania of a “Fixed Idea?”

The arming to the teeth since 1956, so that Israel will not need any more allies (except the Jews of the Diaspora and the propaganda machine) and the “Little Wars” all the way from 1956 to 1967, were one military exercise after another to terrorize and demoralize the Arabs in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, and soften them up for the “Final Solution.” Although the military junta in Israel failed politically in 1956 because of world opinion, the United Nations, and President Eisenhower’s strong stand against aggression, they never accepted defeat. They decided to wait and prepare themselves for a better and safer political opportunity. The year 1967 appeared to them much safer than 1956. The United Nations appeared to be terribly weak. The Arabs, as usual, were quarrelling among themselves. President Johnson of the US was more conscious of votes than of morality, and national elections were due in 1968, the following year. Early in 1967, Israel was troubled by unemployment. 96,000 people were unemployed out of a labor force of 953,000. Immigration was down. Emigration out of Israel, which had been running at an estimated 10,000 a year, exceeded immigration levels. Of the 1,700 students who finished their courses, 1,600 emigrated to seek jobs with better pay in Western countries. Engineers continued to leave. There was political unrest. The most common gripe in Israel was that if the economic recession and emigration continued, no one would be left in Israel in another 10 years but “dark Arab Jews.” In March, 1967, the Tel Aviv City Hall was stoned by rioters in protest on jobs. Israel looked for a miracle as tourism took an unexpected sharp drop. The reparations money from West Germany was fully paid up. The American Jews were not responding to appeals for funds as they did during “crisis” periods, and the American Jews were not responding to the propaganda for Aliyah,—going to settle in Israel. A war, a real big war, might help matters. And, as we shall see, it did.

The war actually began earlier, at Es Samu, on November 13, 1966. Like Deir Yassin before the big war in 1948, like the shelling of Gaza in September 1955, the capture of El Auja Triangle in the Sinai desert, and other “Small Wars,” Es Samu was a diversionary attack, a good exercise for brave soldier boys. Es Samu, a peaceful, undefended civilian village in Jordan, was attacked at dawn on November 13, 1966 by twenty Patton tanks, eighty armored half-track personnel carriers and jeeps with 4,000 Israeli troops, which rumbled across the frontier, overwhelmed an eight-man police post, swept into Es Samu, demolished 125 houses, 15 stone huts, destroyed the mosque, shops, an elementary school and a medical clinic, killed 26 Jordanians, wounded 54, and captured three Jordanian soldiers. Three tanks reduced the local mosque to rubble. It was wanton, indiscriminate murder and destruction, just to teach the Arabs a preliminary lesson about the real thing to come. And, of course, the old pretext offered was, fedayeen.

An Israeli businessman interviewed by the US News & World Report, said: “We blame Syria for the Fedayeen, then we smack Jordan. It is confusing.” Another man said: “We used a sledgehammer to swat at a fly.…” In New York, the USA, Britain, France, and the USSR vigorously condemned Israel in the Security Council for her “reprisal raid.” But, not having been deterred from further “reprisals” by United Nations sanctions and actions, Israel was perfectly happy. “We do not care what the ‘goyim’ are saying. We only care what they are doing” was the junta patron saint Ben Gurion’s motto. And the goyim would not dare do anything to us, us, us.

In May, 1967, the London Jewish Chronicle carried a big story: “Israel Prepares a Deterrent … Prime Minister Eshkol warns Syria of reprisals for terrorist attacks.… Behind Eshkol’s warning to Syria is the strong conviction now prevailing … a powerful lightning military strike.…” On April 7, there had already been one big bomber strike against Syria. But that was only a show of military capability, just a taste of what was coming.… They destroyed only six Syrian Mig fighters.… The Israeli Chief of Staff remarked that he might attack Damascus and topple the Syrian Government.… The massacre at Es Samu and the dauntless attack on Syria proved how powerful and ready Israel was for the “Final Solution.” The garrison State of Israel was ready for its next blitzkrieg-holocaust and the Redemption of the Greater Eretz Israel.

According to available up-to-date sources of information, the Israelis’ casualties during the Six-Day war were nominal when compared to the Arab casualties, 744 killed and 2,586 injured. The carnage of the Arabs came to a total of 15,665. The Jordanians suffered 6,094 killed, wounded and captured. The Egyptians suffered 10,000 soldiers and 1,500 officers killed, 5,000 soldiers and 500 officers captured, and uncounted thousands of wounded and uninjured men left to die of thirst, hunger, and heat in the vast and blazing Sinai desert. Countless refugees fled, and about 350,000 residents of Suez City and Ismailia on the Suez Canal had to be evacuated and sent westwards to protect them from future Israeli attacks. The Syrians suffered 1,743 men killed, wounded and captured. They lost 1,000 square miles of land to the Israelis, and now must care for about 110,000 more (new) Arab refugees, made homeless by the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. From occupied West Jordan there fled to East Jordan about 220,000 refugees, half of them new refugees, the other half “old” refugees from the 1948 exodus. By occupying all of the West Bank of Jordan and Gaza, Israel now controls a territory three times the size of Israel before June 1967.

To this day, hundreds of Arabs are being “persuaded” by the Israelis to depart for the East Bank of Jordan, and to discourage the Arabs from settling too soon after they cross the Jordan, constant “Little Wars” have had the effect on both sides of the Jordan valley, which an Arab poet described in the 13th century as “paradise on earth,” of making the refugees and the farmers alongside the valley to go further East, for the Party of Menachem Begin openly claims that the East of Jordan also belongs to Israel. The New York Times of September 7, 1968 reports that “The Israelis say that a majority of the 70,000 Arab farmers who tilled the land on the eastern bank of the Jordan have abandoned their villages. They return to pick their bananas and dates, but the fields are growing over.…”

Michael Adams of the Guardian (of February 1, 1968) said this about the Gaza Strip Arabs: “They believe that the only danger to security in Gaza comes from the present determined and often brutal attempts by the Israeli army to persuade the Arab refugees to leave the Gaza Strip, thus opening the way to the annexation by Israel. My observations confirm this view. I had my ups and downs during four years as a prisoner of war in Germany, but the Germans never treated me as harshly as the Israelis are treating the Arabs of the Gaza Strip.…” From 35,000 to 40,000 Gaza refugees have emigrated to Jordan since the Six-Day war, but about 200,000 still live in the Strip.

And in spite of the unanimous protests of the United Nations, Arab Jerusalem has been annexed and incorporated into Jewish Jerusalem. In January, 1968, 838 acres of Arab built-up areas were expropriated, essentially for Jewish settlement in the Arab-populated area, and a three-story structure that had been nearly completed by the Jordanians as a Government hospital became the headquarters for the Ministry of Police which moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. One can repeat many other examples of expropriation and annexation to prove that the policy of the military junta that rules Israel is to depopulate the occupied areas of local Arab citizens and to clear those areas for eventual resettlement by Jewish immigrants from abroad.

All this only leads to one conclusion, that the military junta of Israel intends to permanently alter boundaries, and requires negotiations with the Arabs merely to legalize the seizure. Is it any wonder that the Arabs refuse to negotiate?

On June 5, 1967, when the march on Suez began and the hundreds of millions of dollars were pouring in to “save poor little Israel from extermination by the Arabs,” Prime Minister Eshkol declared to the world that “Israel did not seek any territorial aggrandizement.” Since the victories of the Six-Day war, Eshkol has been singing another tune. On October 29, 1967, Associated Press carried the following story from Jerusalem:

“Prime Minister Eshkol appealed last night for mass immigration from western nations to increase the Jewish population of Israel and hinted at eventual Jewish settlement of Arab territory occupied in June.… We need more Jews here in Israel.… They were also needed ‘in places where we don’t exist today but which have biblical names …’.”

And to the Knesset, Eshkol said on October 30:

“It is the duty of the Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly to refrain from any step that will make it difficult for Israel to conduct direct negotiations with her neighbors for the achievement of an agreed peace.” (New York Times, October 31, 1967)

There is no question that the Six-Day June 1967 War has solved many problems facing the Government of Israel. There cannot be unemployment when the boys must occupy a vast conquered territory, fight day after day the “territorists” who now have elbow room and a big population to shelter, feed, and arm the commandos who are fighting and dying in a War of Liberation for their usurped Fatherland. Peace? Never a negotiated peace to legalize the seizures. But, business is good at this moment, the hazards of war and the ups and downs, as they always have throughout history, will in the end arrive at their fated decisions. Tourism is booming in Israel, they cannot build enough hotels to accommodate the visitors. The Egyptian oil wells now in the hands of the Israeli army produce more than enough oil to meet all Israel’s needs. The fund-raising campaigns right at the beginning of the Six-Day War—to be more exact, before the war began—have brought in crisis-money to a total of about $500 million, and, as a result of the infusion of foreign capital, the post-war level of foreign currency reserves in the Bank of Israel exceeds the pre-war level. At the end of August, there were $776 million,—$163 million more than in April.

The military junta of Israel are beginning to believe that the realization of the dream of the Greater Eretz Israel is almost coming true in accordance with the “fixed idea” of seventy years. Almost, for Menachem Begin of the old Irgun, and now a member of the Knesset as well as a Cabinet member, still believes that the East side of the Jordan is a part of Eretz Israel. And, the disciple of Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, surely believes what the Patron Saint of the “Jewish” nationalists has repeated ad nauseam, “I do not minimize the virtue of Statehood even within something less than all the territory of the land of Israel on either bank of the Jordan.…” Amman, the capital of Jordan is still in the hands of the “enemy,” and that is probably the next target,—Amman with all its hinterland, all the way to the Euphrates.

There is only one question. Our ancient forefathers used to preach this dictum: Toffasto meroobah, lo toffasto,—if you grabbed too much, you grabbed nothing.

The “Little Wars” in the Scheme of the Fixed Idea.

I am beginning to run out of the space so kindly allotted me by my publishers, even though I have so much to write about “the decadence of Judaism in our time.” I must confine myself from here on to briefs of some of the highlights still to be covered and brought up-to-date.

According to the records of the United Nations, the Israeli armed forces launched over forty military attacks on Arab territory between the date of the signing of the General Armistice Agreement in 1949, and April 1967. United Nations records show that at no time have any Arab States been found guilty and condemned by any organ of the United Nations for attacks by their regular military forces against territory occupied by Israelis. On the other hand, the same records show that the Israelis have been found guilty and condemned on at least 29 occasions, and that on five of these occasions they were censured by the Security Council for attacks by their regular armed forces on Arab territory.

I now intend to describe one small “little War,” as an example. It took place on February 1, 1962, during the period when General Carl von Horn was the Mediator of the United Nations in Palestine. The story here told mostly comes from that remarkable, brave, book: Soldiering for Peace, which General von Horn wrote in 1966.

“The Syrians have always aroused the ire of the Israelis. The soil in Syria near the frontier with Israel is very fertile; the sources of water for the Jordan river begin in Syria. The Demilitarized Zone at the frontier has always been a shooting and killing field between the two enemies.

The Israelis “developed a habit of irrigating and plowing in stretches of Arab-owned land nearby … Gradually, beneath the glowering eyes of the Syrians, who held the high ground overlooking the zone, the area had become a network of Israeli canals and irrigation channels edging up against and always encroaching on Arab-owned property. This deliberate poaching was bitterly resented by the Syrians.…”

The time came to give the Syrians a typical “reprisal” attack. On February 1, 1962, the village of El-Tawafiq was razed to the ground. The Arab farmers of the Lower and Upper Tawafiq used to “observe with alarm the Israeli kibbutznik (cooperative farmers) tractor-drivers as they speeded up on each turn at the eastern boundaries of their fields, making the plows swerve out, thus slowly but surely extending their previous cultivation eastwards into Arab land. This was, of course, part of a premeditated Israeli policy to edge eastward through the Demilitarized Zone.…” The Arab villages in the two Tawafiqs, which were on high ground, 1,300 meters east of the Israeli kibbutz, resented this gradual encroachment, and by destroying the Tawafiq villages, the Israelis got what they wanted, what the “fixed idea” dictated.

I have already described the case of the draft resolution Syria submitted to the United Nations Security Council, and how after General von Horn testified, Israel was condemned in a vote of 10 to 0, but, as we already know, the military junta have never cared what the goyim say. They only care when the goyim do something, and the goyim have never done anything except in the 1956 war of collusion against Egypt. Then, they retreated.

Moshe Dayan & Co.

My book revolves much around that cunning old Führer of Israel, Ben Gurion, because he managed to inveigle world Jewry over forty years. Without Ben Gurion, there could never be a military junta in Palestine, and never such narrow-minded creatures as Moshe Dayan, whose whole life is absorbed in killing, exiling, chasing, expropriating, all in the name of God, Redemption, Ingathering, the Chosen People; in the name of political nationalism—something post-world wars humanity regards with contempt, disrespect, and shame.

Here is the essence of the teachings of Ben Gurion to his disciples, above all to Moshe Dayan, his darling protégé and follower: “Israel is the country of the Jews and only of the Jews. Every Arab who lives here has the same rights as any minority citizen in any country of the world, but he must admit the fact that he lives in a Jewish country.” And to General de Gaulle he said: “We are a small people, the majority of whom do not live in their own country; but some do live there, not because they have occupied, pillaged and ravaged anything belonging to anybody else, but because we found our country abandoned, not totally depopulated but a wilderness …” Now, hear how the new, the young Ben Gurion—Moshe Dayan—puts it: “The land of Israel has to remain an entity. Nor would the Arabs be accorded Israeli nationality, but they would have the right to administer their local affairs.” These words come from the new Führer, who will very likely become the Prime Minister plus Defense Minister in 1969, exactly like his mentor Ben Gurion was. “A settlement is a ratification of reality … My plan is today’s reality in the territories. The arrangements existing today should become the permanent order in the West Bank etc.”

Moshe Dayan has many jealous enemies. So did and does Ben Gurion. Dayan will have learned from the experiences of his mentor, as well as his own, by now. This militant, bloody, warlike chieftain will rule poor little Israel, and may God have pity on the misled Israelis who could have done so much better for themselves in the long run, had their energies, talents, and bravery, gone into living and letting others live, as civilized citizens of a fraternal Palestine.

Let us learn to know Moshe Dayan, just a little bit.

Like his mentor Ben Gurion, and like his fellow members of the military junta of Israel, this gang belongs 100 percent to the old world order, to that depraved and predatory order that believes—in the name of God or the devil—that might is right, that the right of conquest is natural. They were born into that atmosphere, raised on a constant diet of insane political nationalism, and will die happily in battle, believing that the God of Joshua is still the God of Israel.

Moshe Dayan is a Sabra, that means he was born in Eretz Israel. He was born on May 4, 1915, in a Zionist colony, Degania, in old Palestine, which was a well populated Arab land, where only about 50,000 Jews lived, all in all. The overwhelming majority in the land were Arabs. The Jews lived on handouts of Chalookah (charitable distributions). The money came from collections made in the Diaspora,—foreign lands where the Jews “were in exile.” Most of the Jews were Orthodox Jews, non-workers, but a very few of the recent immigrants had settled on farms, mostly bought through charity funds, and Moshe Dayan was born on one of these farms.

When he was about thirteen or fourteen years of age, just about the time a Jewish boy becomes Bar-Mitzwa (a boy who has reached his religious majority), young Dayan joined the Zionist underground defense movement,—a force that fought the Arabs of Palestine long before Israel became a State. At 22, Dayan had a Commando training. He attended an officers school in England. In 1939, the British Mandatory authorities in Palestine sentenced Dayan to ten years’ imprisonment for his Haganah activities, but he was released after two years, and promptly joined the British Army, losing his left eye during the invasion of Syria in the Second World War. With the establishment of the State of Israel, he became commander of a jeep commando battalion. After the “War of Independence” in 1948, he was appointed by Ben Gurion, his mentor, to a series of top military commands, culminating in that of Chief of General Staff in 1953. In the general elections of 1960, Moshe Dayan was elected to the Knesset, and became Minister of Agriculture in Ben Gurion’s Cabinet. In 1965, he returned to the Knesset as head of Ben Gurion’s Minority Party, and in 1967, three days before the Six-Day War on Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Dayan was appointed Defense Minister by Prime Minister Eshkol. Today, the disciple of Ben Gurion appears to be destined to take the torch from the ‘Old Man’ and lead the Children of Israel through the precarious decade that lies ahead after the unfinished war with the Arab world which refuses to make peace with expansionist Israel unless justice and repentance prevail.

In 1966, the year before the Second Sinai-Suez War, the ‘great’ man—the swashbuckling man of war—was the guest of the American army fighting in Vietnam. He went to Vietnam to see and study the battles against the “terrorists”—guerrilla bands—the Vietcong Freedom Fighters who are resisting the interventionists. Dayan undoubtedly knew that if he overwhelmed the Arabs again—as in 1956—a real guerrilla resistance movement on a big scale was bound to arise, and he was going to learn the methods used by the American hawks. While following the American soldiers into battle, he praised the American troops and their equipment, but he told them that “they failed to tighten the noose on the Vietcong.” That is what Dayan is trying to do now—“tighten the noose” around those desperate self-sacrificing Arab commandos.

Jon Kimche, a leading Zionist (or now ex-Zionist?) Jewish writer, in his book, The Seven Fallen Pillars, after describing in detail the Deir Yassin massacre, says: “The Deir Yassin massacre was the darkest stain on the Jewish record throughout all the fighting.” Then Kimche describes other acts of terror in which Moshe Dayan played a leading, commanding role. On July 11, 1948, “Moshe Dayan with his column, drove at full speed into Lydda, shooting up the town and creating confusion and a degree of terror among the population. Its Arab population of 30,000 either fled or were herded on the road to Ramallah. The next day, Ramlah also surrendered and its Arab population suffered the same fate. Both towns were sacked by the victorious Israelis.”

Let us see whether one can find a glimmer of humanity, compassion, any Jewishness in the many categorical braggadocio-assertions of this bloody warrior. In a TV show soon after the Six-Day War, in a half hour interview on a Sunday Afternoon in America, he said the following: “There are about a million Arabs whom we don’t want, I should say, as citizens in Israel, in the Jordanian part. It is not in accord with our aims for the future … It would turn Israel into either a bi-national or an Arab-Jewish State instead of a Jewish State, and we want to have a Jewish State …” After taking away the homes and homeland of an innocent, hard-working, kindly people, to talk like this about them, only a “Jewish” Nazi could have the audacity and inhumanity to do so.

To the London Jewish Chronicle of February 9, 1968, Dayan said: “Israel’s borders must include those parts of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) which were part of the historic cradle of the Jewish nation. With the establishment of Jewish Statehood in 1948, Mr. Dayan declared, ‘We had won our soul. The present generation has the task of consolidating secure borders …’”

And here is a bunch of self-revealing public statements made by Dayan and his gang (military junta) that no Zionist press agents or public relations masters can undo: “The Arab leaders could ignore Israel’s invitation to negotiate a peace directly. But then, there will be a new map not of the Middle East but of Israel.… The Arabs know our telephone number; they can find us when they want.…”

In the old world order books on which he was brought up, the defeated nation sues for peace. The Arabs refuse to sue for peace. Dayan cannot understand it. So he exclaims bitterly: “The telephone never rang.…” and later he said: “Israel must prepare for another war with the Arabs.… We have to buy (more) weapons, we have to make our own weapons, we have to prepare airfields, we have to make our army stronger.…”

Menachem Begin, Irgun-Herut leader, fellow-Cabinet member alongside of Dayan, said this at a rally at the opening of his Party’s conference in Jerusalem in the presence of Dayan and President Shazar, “Israel must proclaim her sovereignty over the occupied areas. All partitions of the land of Israel were unlawful.” (London Jewish Chronicle, May 31, 1968)

Yigal Allon, another fellow-Cabinet member (the Labor Minister) proclaimed: “In the event of negotiations, the present cease-fire line on the river Jordan should be maintained as Israel’s permanent border.” (London Jewish Chronicle, June 14, 1968)

Major General Itzhak Rabin, the outgoing Chief of Staff, now Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, said to some three thousand leaders of Jewish communities from all over America at the annual banquet of the United Jewish Appeal, “The aggregate effort of the entire Jewish people was needed to restore and establish the Third Commonwealth. This, he said, was world Jewry’s greatest task since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E..… The Jews and Israel were partners in all their enterprises.…” (London Jewish Chronicle, December 15, 1967)

On June 28, Itzhak Rabin addressed the world famous Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, California. Here are a few audacious statements that equal those of Moshe Dayan and Menachem Begin: “Israel can beat 60 to 100 million Arabs. We have the capability and motivation to win. We do not ask outside help … (sic). After all, we did not come to Israel to fight wars … Let us talk business—do you (Arabs) want peace or not?”

Brigadier General Shlomo Goren, Chief Rabbi of the Israeli army, believes that Israel’s Independence Day should be regarded as a religious rather than a secular festival. And in New York, the President of the Yeshiva University (run by Orthodox religious American Jews) told the closing meeting of the American Jewish Committee that “The Jews appeared ready to reaffirm the concept of the chosen people.… Jews over the past 100 years tended to reject this principle in their drive to integrate into a more open society.” And at the Yeshiva University graduation ceremony, 1,500 gave Major General Itzhak Rabin an ovation, cheering for three minutes and shouting ‘Am Israel chai’,—the Jewish nation is alive. And Chief Rabbi Nissim of Israel’s Sephardic Jews says: “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.…”

“The Golan (Syria) is no less a part of ancient Israel than Hebron, and Nablus, for, did not Jephtha judge there?” (Yigal Allon) “There is no frontier more natural than the Suez Canal.” (Levi Eshkol) “If you have the Book of the Bible, and the People of the Book, then you also have the Land of the Bible—of the Judges and of the Patriarchs in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jericho and thereabouts.…” (Moshe Dayan)

Enough said. Can the Arabs, with all their desire for peace, deal with such international gangsters, “Jewish” Nazis, who are cocksure that through their public relations and press agents, they can keep on throwing sand into the eyes of humanity, and that the goyim will only say things, but do nothing? God forbid!

Arab Commandos and “Peace.”

Not a day passes now without some headline news about Arab commandos attacking and killing Israelis, or Israelis attacking and killing angry resisting Arabs. Three explosions rocked the Israeli sector of Jerusalem in a space of four hours, injuring a number of Israelis. Chanting, “To the Old City, kill them,” more than 100 Israeli youths swarmed through the narrow, twisting streets of the Arab quarter on a vengeful rampage … Terrorists lose 16 in clashes. A 19-year-old Israeli soldier is killed … Israeli forces, in pursuit, cross into Jordan again … Israeli forces enter Jordan, report killing five saboteurs … “El Fath” kills Israeli officer … Israeli, Jordanian cities shelled … 19 Arab ‘saboteurs’ detained … Fatal bombing in Tel Aviv stirs mob attack on Arabs … 1,450 Arab “terrorists” captured are now being held in Israel, according to Jerusalem security sources, with 953 captured on the West Bank and about 500 in Gaza.…

The Arabs speak of the fighting and sabotage as resistance to an occupying power. That it kills some civilians, as well as soldiers, they say is inevitable. They say that Israeli intransigence has prevented a solution through diplomacy. The guerrillas expect a long struggle. They do not see 1948 or 1956 or 1967—the years in which Arab armies were routed by Israelis—as defeats, but as reverses on the way to final victory. The Israelis are obviously following the disastrous path of their American allies in Vietnam. The fact is that their June, 1967, victory over the Arab armies generated among the Israelis an arrogance of power to an unprecedented degree. With this arrogance goes the complacency that Western public opinion will condone all Israeli atrocities against the Arabs … And Secretary General U Thant of the United Nations has openly declared and charged that Israel was thwarting his efforts to look into the humanitarian problems that have resulted from the Six-Day War last year … (New York Times, August 3, 1968)

In the issue of the U.S. News & World Report of September 30, 1968, John Law, of the staff of this noted weekly magazine, who has spent years in the Arab world, speaks of the “new and ominous note” added by Arab guerrillas, and Israel’s reaction to them. It is worth while culling out a few of his remarks:

“There is a new force that’s risen in the Arab world—what the Arabs call the ‘Palestine commandos.’ The Palestine commandos are a different breed from the old Egyptian commandos, or fedayeen, who used to carry on raids into Israel.… They are growing. There’s been quite an increase in their sabotage activities since they first started a few months ago.… The recent anti-Arab riots in Jerusalem are showing that the Israeli public is very concerned.… I have talked with some of the commando leaders in Jordan who say that one of their main objectives is to try to provoke the Israelis into attacking again, because what they would like to do is to have the Israelis spread themselves as thin as possible—take over Amman, take over Damascus.… Then, as one of them said to me, ‘we can really cause them trouble, because they can’t spread themselves that thin. We’re a bit restricted now. We don’t have too much territory to operate in, but, if they took over a larger area, we’d have all sorts of places to hit them. Arabs point out that the Israelis can beat the Arabs twelve times and lose the thirteenth time, and that’s enough.… They consider that time is on their side, and they outnumber the Israelis by 50 to 1. Eventually, if more numerous Arabs educate themselves to reach the same technological level that the Israelis have reached—even if it takes 50 years—they ought to be in a position to beat the Israelis.…”

Does the Jewish population really enjoy this sort of precarious life, and can’t they see—never mind their insane military junta leaders—that in the long run, the resolution of the Arabs to keep on resisting the Israelis, may prevail? Again, the old Hebrew adage: Toffasto meroobah lo toffasto,—if you grabbed too much, you grabbed nothing—may open the eyes of responsible and perhaps revolting Israelis. Over-achievers are their own worst enemies.

A Wind of Change about Commitments and Wars of Intervention.

Ambitious political candidates running for the Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, always make commitments to various sections of the populace to win their votes. Thus Ben Gurion recently told C.L. Sulzberger of the New York Times that shortly before his inauguration, John F. Kennedy told him: “I was elected by the Jews of New York and I would like to do something for the Jewish people.” Soon after Kennedy reached the White House, “early in 1961, he sent Myer Feldman, an ‘assistant’ to President Kennedy, secretly to Israel (to Ben Gurion) to pledge the protection of the United States Sixth Fleet. Feldman was also authorized to offer Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel. (Also), the Kennedy Administration increased to $45 million the yearly aid to Israel that the Eisenhower administration had set at $15 million. Kennedy also furnished Israel with the first advanced weapons system ever given by the U.S. to another country.” (New York Times, June 16, 1968 and the San Francisco Chronicle of June 17, 1968; both reports were based on an original report in Parade Magazine of June 16, 1968).

President John F. Kennedy was what teachers call a “late bloomer” learning more and more the hard way about any game he was playing. Before long, he realized that he had been doing an injustice to the Arab victims, and let the State Department say that “before direct negotiations can become politically feasible, there first must be an attempt to resolve ‘serious differences’ that divide Israel and the Arab States (and) that one such dispute is that relating to the fate of approximately 1,000,000 Palestine Arab refugees.” (New York Times April 14, 1962) Zionist leaders “scored the President for having turned his back on pledges etc.”

This is how election promises, irresponsible by nature, become commitments, and these “commitments,” in the public eye, thanks to public relations agents, assume the equation of legal agreements, binding the nation, as if Congress debated and passed on the pledges, promises, and American boys are sent thousands of miles away from home to fight and often die for the “commitments” made by ambitious politicians. Our current running candidates, Nixon and Humphrey, are outdoing one another in their “commitments” to Israel, and in order to get the Jewish vote, all done shamelessly, immorally, I should say unpatriotically, for personal gain, politically speaking. This must be debunked and exposed now, when Americans are vehemently protesting against the irresponsible and insane murderous wars that are nothing but the result of commitments made by politicians.

In a speech at the University of Arkansas a few months ago, Democratic Leader Senator Mike Mansfield explained very clearly how the irresponsible personal foreign policy of a President can hurt the nation. He called for a swift overhaul of U.S. foreign policy, which, he said, has hurt programs ‘vital to the inner stability of this nation.’ Senator Mansfield said: “There is a great need for national soul-searching at this critical moment in the history of the republic … As a result of ‘pactomania,’ following World War II, the United States has given to fifty nations a chit, a commitment, redeemable for some kind of military assistance in crisis …”

To return to Israel and U.S. “commitments,” said Life magazine in its April 5, 1968 issue: “We are certainly not committed to the steadily expanding Middle East Sparta that Israel seems in danger of becoming …” Said Sulzberger in the New York Times of March 29, 1968,

“If Israel remains in Sinai, Soviet calculations seem to reckon Washington doesn’t consider itself under any obligations to keep Israeli troops on the Suez Canal …” and on March 31, 1968, Sulzberger made another such observation: “Mene, mene, tekel upharsin … Israel seems to count on the United States again to scare off Russia from direct participation—but this time Israel may be wrong …”

This is the wind of change, and at least the knowledgeable world is beginning to learn the truth about the extent that “Jewish” nationalism has played havoc with an innocent people—the Arabs of Palestine—whom nobody, in the name of God or Lebensraum, had any right to rob of their homes and homeland. For America to help the military junta to run amuck and turn Israel into a Nazi State that is to control the Middle East in the name of absurd, political and personal “commitments” is irresponsible, and the nation is in open revolt against commitments anywhere. Desperately fighting what most Americans consider a losing battle for election, Humphrey, identified with his master, Johnson, who made such a mess of America thanks to his “commitments,” today, as I am typing these lines, “proposed the establishment of an international military force under United Nations command to police world’s troubled areas.” This is to win over the masses in America who are sick and tired of the tragic results of our politicians’ commitments. Of course he did not suggest that the U.N. military forces go to Palestine—Israel. That, his Zionist-Jewish supporters would not accept or like. Only an honorable, humane, non-political great man as U Thant, Secretary-General of the U.N. can speak out the truth categorically: “The world badly needs an end to the outmoded but dangerous tactic of trying to cope with the problems of the 60s by the strong-arm methods common to the 30s.”

Militant, expanding, aggressive Israel belongs to the old world order, and runs away with its fantastic and dangerous claims on the ground of “commitments” plus colossal and costly public relations agents who can whitewash any acts of expansion as defensive security needs. Just a few short examples of running away commitment-madness. “Israel’s spectacular victory (the Six-Day, June, 1967 war) accorded to the United States a vicarious triumph, only partially repaid by its precious political support in recent months.” (London Jewish Chronicle, January 5, 1968) And quoting Israel’s evening newspaper Yediot Aharonot, the same issue of the Chronicle says: Yediot Aharonot asked this week, why the United States wanted Israel to pay cash for the arms (Phantom fighter-bombers etc.) we need to save our very existence and perhaps also the existence of the U.S. as a world power …”

I wish I had more time and was allowed space to go more deeply into this tragedy of irresponsible commitments that contributes to the delinquency of the protégé versus the realistic observer who thinks in terms of humanity. I shall just wind up this chapter by quoting the wonderful international gadfly of our contemporary world, President Charles de Gaulle: “If Israel had additional jets, the only result would be an Israeli sweep on to Cairo and Damascus …” (New York Times, February 5, 1968) and, condemning Israel as the aggressor in the June, 1967 war, he said:

“In order to avoid hostilities, since May 24, 1967, France had been proposing to the three other great powers that she, jointly with the others, prohibit each of the two sides in the Middle East from starting fighting. We know that the voice of France went unheard, as Israel attacked, and in six days of fighting captured the objectives it had set itself. Now on the territories it has captured, it is organizing an occupation that cannot be carried out without oppression, repression, expulsions and resistance, which Israel, in its turn, calls terrorism …” (New York Times, November 28, 1967)

The Degeneration of the American Council for Judaism (A.C.J.) since the Six-Day War, June 5–10, 1967.

I have put off the writing of this sad chapter to the last moment, hoping against hope that a miracle might happen, and I might feel satisfied that it was all a temporary aberration, that Directors responsible to a great organization (as well as to history) would repent. Alas, it has to be “told in Gath.” I do this writing unhappily, saddened at the complete degeneration of the American Council for Judaism (A.C.J.) about which I wrote so enthusiastically in my book, and whose old Directors, Messrs. Rosenwald and Coleman, I quoted and praised when they echoed the noble ethical and universal teachings of that brave and scholarly rabbi, Dr. Elmer Berger, the founder and ideologist of the A.C.J. for 24 years. In the 25th year, he remained alone, a voice in the wilderness, chaos, confusion, of the A.C.J., and has now been fired from his position as Executive Vice President for refusing to cater to the deified sacred cow of Zionist Israel, for refusing to keep silent about the victims of Zionist Israel,—the Arabs of Palestine whose homes and homeland were taken away from them to make a “Jewish Homeland.”

For the last three months, I have dedicated all my time, thought and energy, to the cause of the survival and revival of the A.C.J. I have tried to arouse the most important members of the A.C.J. to the irresponsible conduct of the weak-kneed Directors who have betrayed the fundamental principles of the A.C.J. (As the reader of the following pages will see, it looks almost hopeless.) Protests and resignations have poured into the office of the President of the A.C.J., Richard Korn. There is a grass-root revolt against the stubborn Directors, and, unless they are forced at our annual Conference on October 18–19 to reinstate Dr. Berger in his position, and turn over the Directorship into the hands of more representative new Directors, we shall have to organize a new and true A.C.J., calling it The Anti-Zionist, or Anti-“Jewish” Nationalist, Society of America.

What a tragedy inner-fighting is. Such a waste, such an extravagant dissipation of talent and energy to try to defeat the forces of destruction and arrogance. At the finest hour in the history of the Council, and at the height of his ability and maturity, Dr. Berger was fired without the knowledge and consent of the National Advisory Board, or the membership, which consists of the most intelligent and knowledgeable Jews in America, and now, again without the knowledge and consent of the National Advisory Board and the membership,—at this critical moment—the Board of Directors, misled by four overpowering Directors, has engaged a new Executive Director whose credentials are that he was the Executive Director of the Orthodox Zionist Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America. This new man will no doubt be a ‘good servant’ who will dutifully follow the conceptions of the Council’s responsibilities as dictated by Messrs. Rosenwald, Coleman, Moyer, and Korn (RCMK).

To show the authoritarian, dictatorial and oligarchical atmosphere that now prevails at the headquarters, the most dedicated and intelligent man who has been the Public Information Director of the Council, Bill Gottlieb, was fired on October 1, two weeks before the annual conference. And here is another example of arrogance of power: A few days ago, I addressed a request to the Director of Research, George Bagrash, to send me a copy of a speech Dr. Berger delivered at an American University on “The Problems of American Policy-Makers in the Middle East.” Instead of getting the printed matter as a service rendered to regular members (and I am more than a regular member in my contributions to the cause of the Council), President Korn wrote to me:

Dear Mr. Menuhin, this is in answer to your letters of September 21st to me and of September 20th to Mr. Bagrash: Since you do not recognize the authority of the National Headquarters, the administration does not consider itself obligated to send you such material as you may request. Also it is with great temerity that any member takes it upon himself to decide what the Council must or must not do.”

(This is a masterpiece of authoritarian madness. In a little while, I shall reproduce, at least in part, the letter of September 211 addressed to Mr. Korn, to show that, while I appealed to this man to save the Council, he responded like an injured Stalin.)

As I said before, I can only give here the highlights of the important events and battles. So, let us go on to some of them. I shall give here a goodly part of an appeal I made to some 300 selected members of the entire A.C.J. membership, most of whom are on the National Advisory Board. (About 149 of them responded enthusiastically and wholeheartedly.) I shall also give some passages of two strong letters I addressed to Mr. Richard Korn, the President of. A.C.J.; a typical letter from a dedicated old member who has been with the A.C.J. for over 20 years; a typical letter from one European Anti-Zionist organization that has been following the teachings of Dr. Berger; a few passages from a number of letters from Dr. Berger to me, which I shall cherish to the end of my life, and finally a special article by Dr. Berger for my Supplement in form of a letter addressed to me, which will throw much light on our relations and equations. First, my appeal to selected members of the A.C.J.

To the Faithful and Concerned Members of The American Council for Judaism. August 28, 1968.

Please forgive this impersonal-looking long letter which is really a highly personal appeal to you. In spite of my old age of 75, I feel propelled to make this urgent appeal to you about the unexpected life and death struggle of the A.C.J. at the very height of its achievements, popularity and prestige. The sudden crisis of the A.C.J. is the result of an uncalled-for artificial and perhaps mortal blow given to it by none other than a few of its own directors who have gone back on themselves and their own fine record of a fearless stand in Jewish life.

Knowledgeable members must know that the hasty firing of Dr. Berger was engineered by three panicky and myopic Directors—Messrs. Coleman, Rosenwald and Moyer, and that it is the belief of many that our President, Mr. Korn, and the other eleven Directors, were reluctant partners to the conniving which ousted Dr. Berger. The other eighteen Directors who could not attend the meeting were not even polled to express their vote and thus be counted in such a serious decision. Mr. Korn unconsciously let the cat out of the bag when in one of his letters to me he said: “You, Mr. Menuhin, quote my statement in my letter to the entire membership, ‘the time is approaching when the Council will be able to withdraw from the scene and leave its mission to others’… what I meant by that is that the signs of the crumbling of Zionism are already apparent, that in the foreseeable future, all Americans will realize its fallacies … and that it will no longer be necessary for the Council to counteract it, since there will be nothing left to counteract.…”

Let no one believe that Mr. Korn is naive or ignorant. We all know, as he knows, that the Zionist machine of the old professional idealists among American Jews may be beginning to “crumble.” But it is beginning to crumble because the Zionist-Israel machine is taking it over a hundredfold; and this is more aggressive, more arrogant, more presumptuous, more daring in its determination to control Jewish life in America, in England, and all over the free world. Its agents and commissars (there are over eight hundred of these commissars who control Jewish education in America to prepare our children for Aliyah—emigration to our “Jewish Homeland”) segregate us from our gentile fellow citizens by conquering our Jewish communities to their “Jewish” nationalist philosophy of life; they have a special Cabinet Minister in the Zionist-Israel Government to look after their Jewish “subjects” in America etc., and see to it that they eventually become good “Jewish” nationals of the “Fatherland.” They want our exclusive loyalty, and at best they will allow us dual loyalties.

No attention must be paid by us any more to the real political Zionist beast we have been fighting for the last twenty five years, the political beast whose lair today is in Zionist Israel. Zionist Israel has become a sacred cow, and no matter how dangerous it has become to our American Jewish life, more than ever, it must not be the concern of A.C.J. from now and on. What a change in the basic principles of our A.C.J., done without the knowledge and consent of the membership, not even of the National Advisory Board. How myopic, how cowardly, and how irresponsible it is for a few men to decide for some twenty thousand members.

No wonder that each and everyone I spoke to across the continent in recent weeks insists that they have lost confidence in and respect for our National Executive Committee (N.E.C.). And now, to the heart-breaking and revolting story of the phony “resignation” of Dr. Berger, which was never a resignation.

Readers of the New York Times of July 3, 1968, read a long and misleading article about our A.C.J. which betrayed the hasty and secretive “accomplished fact” decision of the N.E.C. The headline read: “Key Anti-Zionist Resigns His Post … Mr. Clarence Coleman (Chairman of the Board of the A.C.J.) said to the New York Times, ‘Rabbi Berger has been working hard for 25 years, and he wants to retire. He submitted his resignation at a Board meeting Sunday at the Delmonico Hotel and it was accepted with regret.” To the same New York Times reporter, “Rabbi Berger termed rumors of his resignation as utterly ridiculous …”

A number of serious, independent and faithful members of the A.C.J. were shocked to read the above, though some of them already knew of a “Dump Berger” movement. Here are some answers Dr. Berger gave in response to queries from the members of the A.C.J.: “I can only say that although the months since last June, 1967, have been difficult, I did not really anticipate this kind of a conclusion” … “for the Council to abdicate its responsibilities in the Middle East situation would be the equivalent of abdicating the position it had publicly claimed to hold for all these years”… “I simply do not believe it possible to discuss the problems created by Zionism without consideration of the role which the state of Zionist-Israel plays as the dynamo of this movement”… “I am free to listen to all who have the Council and its ideals at heart, after 25 years. I am certainly not going to say I refuse to consider any reasonably responsible and hopeful plan to repair and to go on with the construction effort which was just coming into its own when the Board capitulated a year ago.…”

This should debunk the tale hypocritically given out about Dr. Berger’s “resignation.”

And here are a few typical lines from many letters received here from some of the foremost and noblest supporters of the A.C.J. for the last 25 years:

“A warped perspective has taken hold of the Board of the Council … I have very little confidence that the Board can sustain the organization …”

And this one, from one of the most substantial and wonderful adherents of the principles of the A.C.J. from its inception:

“I need hardly tell you again that I am entirely in sympathy with your view of the treatment that was given to Dr. Berger. In reality, he was the A.C.J. as far as its policies went, and the way they were carried through. Now, under the circumstances of his departure I have no sympathy with what other action the A.C.J. will take with the idea of giving it a proper burial after having mutilated the corpse. I will have no part in such a proceeding, you can be assured, and I am filled with disgust at the idea …”

Here is a sample from a member of the National Advisory Board:

“The confidence in the National Executive Committee (N.E.C.) seems to have been sadly misplaced! When the very life of the A.C.J. was at stake, it would seem that some consideration would have been given to the National Advisory Board (N.A.B.) I personally am highly indignant—for by the very use of my name on Council stationery, the impression is given that the Executive Committee had my approval for the removal of Elmer Berger from his duties. Nothing is farther from the truth!”

One is horrified to think of the irresponsible ramming through of Berger’s “resignation” in the face of the wonderful world reaction to the very things Dr. Berger did, for example, in London as the representative of the A.C.J. A scholar in London, who has been studying the issues between Zionist Israel and the Arabs, wrote to me recently:

“Rabbi Berger appeared on a special B.B.C. television programme and also addressed the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In addition, he spoke to a British parliamentary group in a special chamber of the House of Commons … The courage, sincerity, and dignity of Rabbi Berger was deeply appreciated by all those who met him …”

The sacking of Rabbi Berger is exactly what Zionist Israel has wanted ever since he began to expose the dangers of their un-Jewish un-Judaistic worship of a Greater and still Greater Eretz Israel instead of the Jewish God of mercy, ethics, humaneness and universalism. And now, to kill the A.C.J., a few domineering Directors of the A.C.J. who have lost their heads carry out the dirty mission of the Zionist Israel machine by killing off the very man who is the Council. This is an affront to the entire membership of the A.C.J.

Must we ignore the political Zionist beast’s lair which is now in Zionist Israel? Shall we join the subverted Jews, the brainwashed innocent and unknowledgeable Jews, and shed crocodile tears about “poor little Israel” while its Spartan armies occupy Egypt at the Suez Canal, some 200 miles from their own borders; occupy the West Bank of Jordan: Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem (Arab Jerusalem); occupy the Golan Heights of Syria, and keep on crying for a Greater Eretz Israel, counting on us sheep to finance and work for them until a new wave of anti-Semitism opens our eyes too late?

Now, from the standpoint of prophetic Judaism, of universal, ethical and humane Judaism—which is our civilized religion—we must condemn the injustices done to the innocent victims of “Jewish” nationalism, the Arabs of Palestine, and now the new victims in Jordan, Egypt, Syria. This does not make us pro-Arab or anti-Israel. We want to see the Israelis—who claim to be fellow-Jews and who put the burden of their sins on all Jews—behave like civilized, neighborly, decent human beings. We want them to become a Levantine State, and leave world Jewry alone.

Finally, please note this observation: It was always understood—and it was a badge of honor—that once a man or a woman joined our A.C.J., he or she must swim for quite a long time against the current of irresponsible American Zionist and Zionist Israel propaganda. He or she must not fear solitude or ostracism. He or she must help fellow-Jews not to become Nazi-like “Jewish” nationalists. It is a fight for a noble lofty ideal. It is no fault of the rest of us, if some of our good old directors were subjected to terrific pressures, by their Zionist-oriented friends, and suddenly became so panicky and weary that they cannot stand being “pariahs” any longer in their Jewish communities. But, the A.C.J. stands for our remaining “pariahs,” happy in the inner thought and knowledge that we are right and civilized, and that the followers and supporters of the irresponsible Zionists are still victims of their old chronic and archaic “fixed idea” of “Jewish” nationalism, a Jewish Nation, and a “Jewish Homeland,” and therefore are wrong and uncivilized …”

Sincerely, Moshe Menuhin

On the same date as the above letter went out to some 300 selected members of the A.C.J., I sent a letter to the President of the A.C.J., Richard Korn. It was supposed to have reached him on Dr. Berger’s very last day in his office. I shall give here only a few passages: “Mr. Korn, I am in dead earnest about the battle of confrontation between the membership and its old Directors. I still hope and wish that you ask Elmer Berger not to leave his office but stay on to do his duties. I want you to know that I shall keep on discussing the crime committed by Coleman, Rosenwald, and Moyer, with as many members of the A.C.J., and later, if necessary, with as many news media as possible, until the Council is back on the track after its derailment by its own machinists. Is there a chance that you would see the light now, not tomorrow? It would be much nicer if an immediate reconciliation is effected through your endeavors. I know how you feel, and I am sure you would shake hands with Elmer, beg his pardon for the blood-letting caused him, reinstate him as of now in his responsible position.

I know how hard it will be for you to ask C-R-M to step aside, give up directing, although they should find enough sense of obligation to help out the A.C.J. in the future as in the past. You Mr. Korn are a polished gentleman, and will know what tactics and diplomacy to use to save the A.C.J. from a shameless, disgraceful death which will ring around the world, if I can help it. I, on the other hand, am an ungentlemanly honest straight man who prefers his conscience, his principles, his beliefs, and who does not give a damn about polish, tact, sweetness in my relations with my fellowmen. I never had an enemy in my 75 years of life, but all my friends know that I am straight, severe, with myself no less than with others.

Jews regard Yom Kippur, the Day of Repentance, as the holiest day. Repentance is the noblest quality. May I express my hope that the President of the Council for Judaism may show the example of pure noble repentance, so his name goes down in history as a noble Jew who continued to fight the ignoble “Jewish” nationalists whose Zionist beast resides in Zionist Israel, where we must expose the murderers of Prophetic Judaism as well as the murderers of innocent victims of their Lebensraum religion. From now and on, we shall either be reconciled members of the A.C.J., or on two sides of a battleline. It is either Elmer Berger who is our Executive Vice President, or the C-R-M lackeys of whom we do not want to know.”

No answer came to this letter except three memos to ask me to give him (Mr. Korn) the names of the selected members with whom I had communicated.

On September 21, I wrote another—and my very last—letter to Mr. Korn. (The answer to this letter I have already given earlier in this chapter.) Again, I shall give here a few passages:

“Dear Mr. Korn, Since you did not find it necessary to answer my letter of August 28,… I took it that you have slammed the door in our faces. I say our, because now, by the hundreds are we determined to force the reinstatement of Elmer Berger as the spiritual leader of our A.C.J. and we are equally determined to demand that Messrs. Coleman, Rosenwald and Moyer retreat from active directorship and let other men, younger and stronger, direct the policy of the A.C.J. with Elmer Berger running it as he did for the last 24 years …

What makes me write to you now is a new, tragic development, that may open your eyes and cause you to take immediate action …

Something tragic, frightening, has happened in the equation carefully nurtured between the A.C.J. and the Arab world—our victims—that Jews are not Zionists, that Judaism is not Israelism, that Diaspora Jews are not nationals of Zionist Israel but are loyal citizens of their respective countries. It looks now as if everything has been shattered since Elmer Berger was forced to “resign” without the knowledge and consent of the National Advisory Board and the full membership. The alarming and tragic change of attitudes towards Jews in general and the dangers it may bring to Jews everywhere can be put at your door, Mr. Korn.

As you know, I personally have taken a stand openly on the issues between the Arab world and Zionist Israel. As you know, if you have read my book, The Decadence of Judaism In Our Time, I am not pro-Arab but I am pro-justice to the Arab victims of “Jewish” nationalism. As a result of my open stand, many Arab scholars and statesmen have been corresponding with me on a friendly basis. Lately, however, a good many of them have been writing to me, not to ask me but to tell me, that since the A.C.J. has gone morally and humanely bankrupt from a Judaistic-universal and ethical-point of view, they no longer draw lines between Jews and Zionists, Diaspora and Israel, Zionists and anti-Zionists. They are convinced that since Elmer Berger could be thrown out, there are no more honest anti-Zionists, and that the A.C.J. is in the process of becoming a copy—a poor insignificant copy—of the mighty American Jewish Committee (AJC).

I shall give you here a few quotes … What I am worried about is this: Translated into Realpolitik, many innocent Jews in whose name we talk and act, may have to pay dearly and suffer from a new wave of anti-Semitism created by “even the A.C.J. joining the Zionists”.… The June 30, 1968, firing of Elmer Berger obviously started a hornet’s nest, and this must be corrected at once.…

Here are a few quotes out of some important letters from highly important Arab leaders:

“It is not enough to try to explain that Judaism is a religion and that Zionism is a nationality.… I think that the approach ought to stress the dangers which Zionist Israel poses to the Jews outside of Israel and to the countries of which these Jews are citizens.…”

“Jews must take a stand one way or another as the Zionists themselves demand of gentiles—you are for us or against us. Why cannot the Arabs demand of Jews to declare quite openly on which side they are.… I am afraid a new attitude is building up in the Arab world today against all Jews in Israel, and when the question comes up about Jews outside, the majority say there is no longer any difference.…”

“I can imagine how one who has built the American Council for Judaism from scratch, given the greater part of his life to fight for a cause in which he believed, won for Judaism the understanding of the enemies of Israel, and helped those in Arab countries to continue in their daily lives without the persecution they suffered in other parts of the world, and then to be turned out and see the entire thing crumble, is certainly depressing. I hope something can be done to save the situation, but I am pessimistic.…”

It would be wonderful if instead of quarrelling publicly, you would announce that all of us will be happy to celebrate our 25th anniversary on October 18–19 with a revived and revitalized A.C.J., with Elmer Berger delivering the principal address on that occasion, telling the world about our fraternal reconciliation and our return to work, instead of dissipating our energies and our funds on inner fighting.

To this appeal, Mr. Korn answered that very very ungentlemanly authoritarian reply which was given earlier in this chapter.

From one of the very first members of the A.C.J. giving much of her time, energy, and financial help, come these expressions of sorrow:

“The Board of Directors of the Council usurped a great deal of authority … and forced a situation which was no longer tenable for me. They dogmatically insisted that Israel was beyond criticism since last June and I simply could not comprehend how an anti-Zionist organization of Jews could evade certain moral judgements with respect to Israel’s conduct since last year … I have no regrets for all those 25 years.… We made a notable and enduring record. I am just saddened that a few stubborn and panicky old men may have deprived the Council of its finest hour.…”

This is a very strong protest sent to Mr. Korn by the Sammlung Anti-Zionistischer Juden of Germany, a German-Jewish Council for Judaism that followed in the footsteps of Dr. Berger’s A.C.J. The head of this organization, Hans Popper, sent me a copy of his long letter to Mr. Korn, out of which I shall cull out a few passages:

“You are (now) in fact (only) entitled to call yourselves an ‘association of Jews loyal to the United States,’ but not a ‘council for Judaism’… Judaism compels us to deal openly and foremost with justice and injustice; and, of course, chiefly and mainly with the crimes against humanity committed in the name of Judaism by the Zionists against our fellow men, the Arabs. Keeping mum about this visible, audible and best known of all Jewish affairs; keeping silent about “Jewish” Nazism which makes headlines all over the world, cannot be excused with a cool reference to the fact that ‘Israel is a sovereign state and not our concern’.…

“When in one way or another the unavoidable end will be made to that gigantic Zionist crime against humanity, every Jew will have to render accounts; he will have to answer for his deeds and, believe us, also for his omissions; and your Board of Directors will be confronted with the question why have you fired that best of all Jews, that Rabbi Elmer Berger, who did his duty as a Jew by applying the standard of Jewish, truly Judaistic, justice, also and especially to the victims of an utterly perverted Zionist Judaism. Lame and tame non-identification with the state of Israel along with a denunciation of Diaspora Zionism is not enough and not adequate at a time when Zionist Nazis ravage the lands of a people which was traditionally friendly to Jews until (already before the creation of that monster state against the wish of a population settled there for over 1400 years) the Zionists turned them into enemies …

“Nevertheless, those faithful to Judaism will not abandon their profound faith and sense of duty. They will set up their own organization, if you fail them.”

(Signed, Hans Popper, Sammlung Anti-Zionistischer Juden)

Various Odd Observations by Dr. Berger about the A.C.J. Crisis.

Out of a good many intimate letters from Dr. Berger to me, and out of a number of long distance telephone chats I had with him, I am culling out here a few basic observations which will help us better understand the tragedy of the sudden eclipse and degeneration of the A.C.J. until, under one name or another, it is revitalized and returned to sanity.

“I am not at all sure that it is any longer possible to repair the damage done to the Council …”

“My biggest disappointment and disillusion with these people has been their stubborn refusal, at all times during this past year and for all the issues which have developed, to sit down in an orderly and systematic meeting, with a proper agenda, for a discussion of differences of opinion. In what is supposed to have been a substitute for such a civilized process, there have been round robin letters, bilateral telephone calls, hastily called meetings which are variously described as meetings of the Board of Directors, ad hoc meetings of miscellaneous experts all seasoned with a considerable amount of unilateral and dictatorial decisions.… There was another ad hoc meeting in Jenkintown (the home town of Lessing Rosenwald) where, as I understand it, Lessing laid down the decree that either he or I had to be out of the Council by July the first.…”

“… I have written you all of this because I have very little hope that the present powers will invite me to contribute a statement in my own behalf for distribution to either the membership or the National Advisory Board.…”

(Here I must add that even now, by October 4, 1968, the Board of Directors has not had the decency, and the respect for Dr. Berger and for the membership, to invite him to state his case, his story. It is really unbelievable and uncivilized.)

“On June 10th or 11th 1967 one of the important Directors called me to say that Israel had saved the Middle East from communism, and when I said exactly the opposite was true, he said, ‘How can you, with your knowledge of history, say such a thing.”… The Israeli victory has delivered most of the Middle East to communism—or nearly so. But the reason for this is more important than the easily ascertainable fact. The reason is because the greatest power of the free world is immobilized by “Jewish” pressure … The West has probably lost the Middle East to the Soviets because we were prevented from enforcing equity by the fear of “the Jewish vote.”… I do not see how the Council can expect credence from anyone if it deliberately elects to withdraw from the most crucial manifestation of Zionism which could precipitate a world war, and, even short of that, violent backlash against Jews, commonly called anti-Semitism. But the Directors seem to think that by edict they can cut off from memory and historic record “Jewish” culpability in one of the grave injustices of our day …”

“The role of the Council was to persuade as many people as possible (including, but not limited to, Jews) that by all the laws of morality and logic Zionism is evil … The Council is indispensable. I believe it is indispensable for the future of Jews in this country—perhaps also in Israel. I believe it is indispensable for the United States …”

“Zionism is a dynamic machine and since 1948/1949 a dynamic State, pursuing an avowed policy, sustained by duly enacted laws of nationalizing the Jewish people. They insisted on imposing Zionist nationality upon American Jews …”

“The A.C.J. is now detoured … It is operating with the arbitrarily truncated ideology which the Directors have decreed … Coleman’s idea is to have an entirely defensive organization. They want a stooge administrator for an Executive Director, and want done with ideological creativity and leadership …”

“I continue to believe that a tragic disservice has been done by a group of one-dimensional people … Coleman is freebooting with advice, predicated upon negativism, defeatism, appeasement … The present organization is a shambles … For twenty five years I have shared with them every heart beat I ever had about the Council.…”

Well; to wind up the tragic and ugly story of the sudden betrayal and fall of the A.C.J. at the very height of its world recognition, I must say that the circular letters sent out to the elite of the A.C.J. membership all over the country (about 300) and the tremendous personal correspondence and long-distance telephoning to a good many of them by Dr. Berger, myself, and a few hard-working co-workers who have joined us in this undertaking, produced many wonderful enthusiastic responses. I never thought that such knowledgeable anti-Zionist Israel convictions still existed in our subverted and brain-washed American Jewry of today.

Many busy members promised us to go to New York to attend the National Conference on October 19, at the Delmonico Hotel, and to fight it out with the Old Guard of Directors who had betrayed the fundamental ideas and ideals of the A.C.J. Many members wrote protests in no uncertain terms, to the President of the A.C.J. Many sent in their letters of resignation. Many members stopped sending in their contributions in response to constant appeals for funds by President Richard Korn. The latter and his colleagues on the Board of Directors got frightened and worried. They were worried about a possible big turn-out of the aroused Opposition, at the national conference in New York. They worried about what would or could the Administration do in case the majority at the Conference demanded the resignation of the officers who had irresponsibly fired Dr. Berger without the knowledge and consent of the National Advisory Board and the entire membership. They worried what would happen if the membership, in desperation, walked out on them and left them with an empty hall … In all the history of the A.C.J. there had never happened any such opposition and serious defiance. All this flabbergasted them and made them nervous. Mr. Korn announced several times that he would resign, and rumors and reports were circulated that Messrs. Coleman, Rosenwald and Moyer would also resign …

On top of the protests from the membership, many world renowned scholars and statesmen wrote strong protests to President Korn—Professor Arnold Toynbee, the Right Honorable Anthony Nutting, Professor Christine Harris, Professors Maxime Rodinson, Harry N. Howard, David Riesman, and many others …

A few days before the National Conference took place, I happened to come across in my readings the historic admonition Cromwell gave to the “Long Parliament’ of England, “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, Go!” I thought it was a good and timely admonition to deliver to our old Directors from the floor of the Conference. I sent the text of the admonition to one of my good lieutenants to recite it at the right moment at the Delmonico Hotel.

Alas, no such right moment came. Unexpected wheeling-dealing went on for nearly two days behind the scene. The frightened Directors suddenly became reconciliators, and through an intermediary member who was a non-militant “adviser” they carried on peace-making chats, not that they had it in their hearts or subverted minds to repent in any shape or form. The misled innocent and naive membership on both sides discovered that the old Directors had a God-sent gimmick in their hands, proxies, behind which they might crush or embrace and kiss, make reconciliation saccharine speeches and at the same time “challenge” Dr. Berger with an absurd Bill of Particulars (that he was a pro-Arab and an anti-Israel fanatic etc. etc.) which, to their shame, Dr. Berger replied with great knowledge, honesty and with righteous indignation and which were received by the whole audience with great applause and affection. The great majority of the Conference were of the Opposition, and the audience was Dr. Berger’s for the taking hold of them and guiding them out, if necessary. But, the gimmick was riding high and mighty on the prepared steamroller of the cunning and determined Administration; the proxies were used and abused to crush the life out of the innocent Opposition.

The proxy gimmick is a simple typical American corporation procedure to perpetuate oneself in power, if allowed and swallowed sugarcoated. Someone was persuaded to call on all the members of the A.C.J. to cast their proxies if they were unable to attend the Conference in New York. When my group asked me to allow them to use my name in an appeal to the membership, I agreed to it with a heavy heart. I felt that it might doom our efforts and serve the Big Machine of the Administration. The Administration had at their disposal (money was no object with these multi-millionaires) skilled masters of public relations staff, and these, undoubtedly, prepared, over the signatures of Messrs. Lessing Rosenwald, Clarence Coleman, Richard Korn, and some twenty more Big Names, the indictments of Dr. Berger—that he was unilaterally and exclusively preoccupied with pro-Arabism and anti-Israelism etc. The wording of the attractively produced appeal was “convincing, captivating.” All the ordinary and unknowledgeable members were asked to do was to sign on the dotted line, and return their signed proxies quickly to A.C.J. headquarters via a nice, prepaid airmail envelope. (There was no prepaid envelope sent by our group, and no Big Names of multi-millionaires whom the membership gratefully praised for 24 years.) It worked: the Administration got 714 proxies; the Opposition got 151.

The knowledgeable members of the A.C.J. who belonged to the Opposition went to New York to oust the old Directors and vote for a new slate of representative directors that was supposed to have been prepared by our group. (My health and age did not allow me to fly to New York, or go through tensions.) Suddenly, the Opposition was made to feel that with the majority of the proxies in the hands of the Administration, they were helpless, legally and technically, and, like good children, they were made to take their licking. The proxy affair must have been known to our group by Thursday evening, October 17, when our “Strategic Meeting” was to take place at the home of one of our sympathetic group. An intermediary took over the meeting (perhaps even with the best of intentions?) and, instead of drawing up a new slate of directors to vote on, or just walking out on the old Directors, if necessary, to organize a new Anti-Zionist Society of American Jews, reconciliation resolutions were drafted. In the morning of October 19, at the Delmonico, the audience heard many fine talks and protests against the old Directors’ betrayal, but during the luncheon hour, some serious wheeling-dealing took place to soothe the nerves of the Opposition, although, as it soon turned out, the Administration wanted no part of Dr. Berger or of the Opposition. (I also came in for some compliments, for, as one of my friends reported, he heard one of the Directors say, “Moshe Menuhin is only a trouble-maker.…”)

To obviate any dramatic walk-out or loud protests by members of the Opposition, in the afternoon, Mr. Clarence Coleman (the very Director who forced Dr. Berger to “resign” and who told the New York Times how sorry he was to see Dr. Berger resign), delivered a very “reconciliatory” saccharine speech about the greatness of Dr. Berger etc. and soon after, a Resolution (which was accepted by “both” sides during the luncheon hour, behind the scenes) was presented to the entire gathering, and that was the beginning of the end—our group was trapped. The text of the “reconciliation” resolution read: “The National Executive Committee and the Board of Directors is requested to meet with Rabbi Elmer Berger during the month of January, 1969, in an attempt to work out a mutually acceptable relationship that will be both fair and viable to both sides in contention.”

Our good, and may I say naive, Dr. Berger, hoping and believing that his old Board of Directors (who, of course, were always “such nice and gentlemanly people”) have now learned that the elite and knowledgeable membership attending the annual conference meant that the A.C.J. must again become a truly anti-Zionist organization, when asked by the New York Times reporter whether he was satisfied with the resolution, answered: “I’m satisfied that within the spirit of this resolution there is a basis for further conversations about this internal difference of opinion within the Council …” He, of course, meant well. He still trusted his old buddies.

Soon after the membership dispersed all over the country, the Old Guard Administration allowed themselves, indecently, to draft a sort of self-satisfying jubilant Report to the Membership, on October 23, which, according to our group, “in no way reflected the spirit of conciliation and healing of wounds which the Conference resolution expressed as the climate in which the proposed January talks would take place. The whole tone and context of the Administration’s draft and final letter is belittling. The policies we believe Dr. Berger symbolized in the whole tragic dispute would be barely tolerated rather than welcomed and encouraged.”

To cut short a long and tragic story, of how wise men can be fooled, some members of our group got excited and obviously forced the Administration just in the nick of time (while it was in the printers’ hands) to add an Addendum to their Report, dated October 24. The “Addendum” read: “Subsequent to the preparation of the report, we have been informed that owing to his present objections to the form and content of the said report, Rabbi Elmer Berger does not intend to enter into conversations with the National Executive Committee and the Board of Directors in January of next year.”

I, personally, was glad to read the “Addendum.” I thought that, at last, Dr. Berger realized that there exists an unbridgeable abyss between him and the subverted and brainwashed old Directors who have become Zionist-Israel oriented. But, it appears that Dr. Berger and the group representing the Opposition, (not including me, any more) who protested the wording of the “Addendum,” still harboured hopes and ideas about a reconciliation.

I could not take any more any relations or compromises with the betrayers of our organization. I lost all respect for the old Directors. I resigned, and sent in the following letter of resignation to the President of the A.C.J.:

“The President of the American Council for Judaism, 201 East 57 Street, New York, N.Y.

I want to announce to you and to your oligarchic clique who have deformed and truncated our wonderful American Council for Judaism into an empty shell, that I am resigning from it with sadness, disillusion, and contempt for you. You have destroyed the A.C.J. without even having any sense of responsibility to Judaism and to Jewish history. You have degenerated into petty stubborn office holders who do not want to know that Prophetic Judaism demands of all knowledgeable and responsible Jews to arrest today’s militaristic “Jewish” Nationalism, “Jewish” Lebensraum Nazism. The grassroots rebellion that was shown so strongly at the Conference, which I and my colleagues inspired to come to New York to throw you out, will eventually spread more and more in spite of your propaganda and misstatements, and all will then see that you were subverted into accepting “Jewish” political nationalism, Zionist Israelism!”

And now, before I go on to a short conclusion, it gives me great pleasure to share with my readers a fine letter addressed to me by Dr. Berger, written specially for this “supplement:”

“Dear Moshe,

Along with other problems, I have spent many hours of the last months bemusing myself with the strong and welcome relationship we have enjoyed over the years. Consider some of the “strange” ingredients! You come out of that deeply emotional and mystical Hassidic tradition of East European Jewry. My own descent is limited to the so-called rational tradition of the West—more particularly the Reform tradition from Germany and America. The passion for social justice of the great revolutionaries of Middle Europe is undiminished in the incredible energy with which you still speak and write about the persistent evils that dog man’s footsteps across the uncharted sands of the new history he makes every day. That passion was born and nurtured as an inevitable, humanist reaction to the official policies of committed caste systems and rigid societies of those nations of Europe which lay beyond the influence of our great liberal revolutions. You saw Zionism’s “Jewish” nationalism in the naked ugliness of one of its spawning places in Palestine, and it was the blessed openness of American society, which you first saw half a century ago (almost before I was born) when you came here as a student, which provided the opportunity to express freely that union in your spirit between the best of Judaism’s ethic and morality, on the one hand, and the great secular justice and righteousness of the democratic revolutionaries of those lands from which you came, on the other hand. I grew up, almost innocent of the suffocating, ethnically motivated nationality concepts of Eastern Europe, including Zionism. In the America of my formative years, Zionism was recognized as the anomaly it was—and is—in terms of American values. I was already an adult when this exclusivist nationality cynically began its blatant exploitation, for its then—muted—political purposes, of the tragedy of Europe’s Jews under Hitler, and of the understandable emotional reaction of America’s Jews. The result of that exploitation was a phenomenon to be reckoned with in terms of both Jewish spiritual values and the American democratic tradition.

This inventory of contrasts, almost paradoxes, in our separate histories could be extended; and yet, here we are—across all these easily identifiable differences—joined in honorable combat with the same “Jewish” nationalism which corrupts and prostitutes the one spiritual tradition we willingly accepted from such different parents; the same “Jewish” nationalism which is no less a counterfeit of the one political tradition which I so easily inherited and for which you fought in hostile environments and then happily assimilated to in this land which you adopted and which you and your children have so distinctively enriched.

I think there could hardly be more dramatic proof of what is the essence of the Jewish tradition, whether activated in the context of its religious profession or in the recognized, so-called secularisms (which I have always considered simply as “untheological” Judaism.) And in a period which you have so candidly called “the decadence of Judaism,” we are both characterized as “enemies of ‘the Jewish people,’” “pro-Arab,” “anti-Israel” and numerous other epithets which, like all political machines, Zionism uses as crowd-pleasers against any who urge men to think beyond the clichés and the thought-suffocating slogans. These epithets are part of the pitch with which this pretender to Jewish values solicits patronage in its “house” of “Jewish” nationalism. I am reminded of Jeremiah, standing at the gate of the ancient Temple, tribal Judaism’s most revered shrine, with its money-lenders, its hack-priests, its servile “Yes-ing” of the corrupt royal houses, crying in bitter, biting sarcasm, “The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord—are these?”

But this mixture of personal musing and recollection of history has a contemporary and practical aspect, too. Here we are, fifteen months after the State of Israel’s “glorious victory” in the so-called “Six-Day War,” which—as anyone who knows anything about it really knows—was really a fifty year war by 1967. (You, with brilliant insight, saw this already in 1913 in the Gymnasia Herzlia, in Jaffa-Tel Aviv,—that seed-bed of exclusivist Zionist nationality.) And peace in the Middle East, if the patterns of these fifty years obtain, is farther away than ever. This is despite the euphoric priests and prophets of 1967 who, in the “Temples of the Lord” round the world, chanted the Zionist-rehearsed “Peace! Peace!—‘When there is no peace,’ to quote Jeremiah again.

“It is harder now,” as Judah Magnes once said in Palestine to the Zionists, “to be a Jew.” To the unthinking and those without roots in the authentic Jewish tradition, it is easy to be a Zionist; and while the two were always incompatible, as Ahad Ha’am discovered, the inconsistencies and contradictions have never been clearer, nor the differences more definitely drawn. For the Zionist-nationalist is committed, as of now, to the self-defeating policy of bringing peace by the power of the sword. That “bastion of democracy” in the Middle East is now an occupation power. Its “imperial” borders are scarred everyday with fire-fights and even heavy bombardments. The occupied lands bring forth the Middle East versions of the Maquis and other varieties of resistance movements which, since the early years of the decade of the forties, under similar conditions, have struck blows for freedom across Europe, in North Africa, and Southeast Asia; and the end in the Middle East is already written in the results which are now inscribed in the history of these other areas of the revolutionary world.

No civilized man contemplates the phenomenon with enjoyment. But the half century of injustice and of cynical evasions of the moralities made the phenomenon inevitable. Even the cynics involved in the current American political campaign, confronting the violence in our own streets, now are forced to state publicly that there can be no “law and order” without justice. In the Middle East, from the days when the British, supported by the old, imperial west, gave Zionism its illegitimate political title to part of the political rights of the Arab majority in Palestine of 1917, the Palestine policy of both Zionism and its Great Power backer, whichever it happened to be at any particular time, has been either cynically or ignorantly predicated upon injustice.

I am, therefore, as I know you are, undeterred by the substantively empty epithets of “pro-Arab,” or anti-Israel” or even “anti-Jewish.” Adjectives are never facts, and from such merchants as Zionists, labels are no guarantee of contents. Without relevance to the political facts and the moral imperatives, these epithets cannot contribute to bringing the former into consistency with the latter which is the only framework within which peace is possible.

I have great sorrow for the millions of ordinary people, the free spirits, the courageous intellectuals on both sides of the present cease-fire lines. They are now, I am afraid, all unwilling pawns in the big-power game, so superficially called “the cold war.” And the danger in that entrapment reaches to the farthermost range of the big powers’ mightiest missiles, armed with atomic warheads. These great powers are dealing with the symptoms in the tortured Palestine problem; the levels of armaments to be supplied to client states on both sides; conditions under which Israel should be made to accede to the world’s judgement for withdrawal from territory conquered by force; and, above all, what political bargains can be struck, without their consent, with the fundamental, human rights of the Palestinian refugees.

In the vulgarities of political bombast, where form usually replaces substance, a great many “huckster” minds can invent a great many names to call at any who insist upon calling attention to the fundamental moralities involved in these political facts. But the “scare” names will neither destroy the moralities nor the facts; nor will they alter them. In fact, to the extent that the names distract attention from both the facts and the moralities, they are simply roadblocks to peace.

Fortunately, the epithets have not cowed you—and I do not think they will—in your pursuit of justice in this problem. If that falls out, in the context of some of the facts, on the side of responsible Arabs, no epithet of “pro-Arab” can change it. “I struggle to hold in the word of God,” to return to Jeremiah once again, “but cannot.” And Amos held a plumbline of justice to measure the Israel of his day. He could not direct where the unerring line would fall.

And so I return to my musing. Out of these widely differing backgrounds—and across all these physical miles—we have found this companionship and fraternity of spirit within a tradition which we believe has something meaningful to say about one of the world’s most tragically difficult and potentially dangerous problems. And I take strength and comfort—as I am sure you do—in the certainty that when those, who out of the most cynical political motivations, throw epithets at me are no longer remembered, the values for which we have pleaded and fought will be brought to bear in this tragedy of Palestine. Of that there cannot really be doubt if there is to be a world of law populated by civilized men. The only question, now, at this time—is whether those in power and those who influence those in power, at this fleeting moment in history, will take the initiatives for justice in peaceful ways or whether the guns will roar and the jet fighters will shriek again across the memory-rich and tortured lands of the Middle East.

I am glad to know your book will now be printed in a great, new edition and in so many languages. That is a testament to continued faith in the weapon of peace on the part of both the author and the publisher.

Sincerely,

Elmer Berger

Conclusion: “Cain, What Hast Thou Done With Thy Brother Abel?…”

It is heartbreaking to list the proofs of the continuous decadence of Judaism in our times,—prophetic, universal, ethical and humane Judaism gone amuck with “Jewish” nationalism’s rapacity for Lebensraum. And it is frightening to contemplate the possible results of the colossal whitewashing propaganda which may boomerang into new waves of anti-Semitism and even pogroms in our so-called civilized world.

No sign of repentance, regret, reconciliation, retreat from the crimes of conquest, expulsion, expropriation, occupation. The “fixed idea’s” boundaries of the Euphrates and the Nile have not yet been achieved.

Abba Eban goes to France to press Israel’s claim for delivery of the 50 Mirage jet bombers which she has ordered and paid for but which have been detained in France on instruction from the Government. The blatant courtship of the Zionist-oriented Jewish vote in America dictates that both running candidates for the Presidency, Humphrey and Nixon, demand that the Israeli junta get at once 50 Phantom bomber-fighter jets. Nixon calls Israel a “defensive” power, like America, that “has no territorial designs on other states,” and “feels that she must be helped to maintain a military superiority over the Arab states.” “The voices of the Rabbis of Israel,” says the London Jewish Chronicle (August 30, 1968) under a headline, “Rabbinic Jingoism” “have been raised in favour of unqualified permanent possession of the occupied territories.” And the rabbis of America, in an appeal to fellow rabbis of the country, to “get this message across,” dated September 28, 1968, ask—demand—that the coming emergency campaign for funds be even larger than the June, 1967 response. A rabbi turned over to me the following telegram sent to all the rabbis of America by Rabbi Irving Lehrman, Chairman, National Rabbinical Advisory Council:

“Was present today at top-level meeting of United Jewish Appeal National Cabinet in New York at which (Israel’s) Minister Pinhas Sapir spoke openly and frankly of Israel’s current military problems. After reviewing this, plus social welfare problems, it was unanimously decided absolutely mandatory for UJA to conduct another emergency campaign in 1969, in addition to the regular campaign, whose scope must be even larger than the June 1967 response. The problem is just that critical, and no one knows what the days ahead will bring. 1. Israel’s defense burden largest per capita in the world. 2. Israel has no political allies to guarantee her security. 3. Israel must pay for all arms she is permitted to buy. 4. Israel’s only deterrent to war is to become so strong that none will dare to attack. 5. Arabs have stated that their military objective is annihilation of Israel and not merely conquest. 6. All Israel’s resources are committed to her defense. We know that our responsibility as Jews is to pick up the burden of welfare and social services. We have to pay for the care of the aged, the care of the sick, the education of the young. We have to pay for the ingathering of 30,000 expected immigrants who will come next year.…”

And the erstwhile truly anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, now rapidly degenerating, but asking for funds to carry out its revised program of appeasement to Zionist Israel, assures the world that, “in resisting the propaganda of Zionism (in America) we shall not take positions on Middle East developments. Nor shall we address ourselves to the internal affairs of the state of Israel” (This comes from an appeal from Mr. Korn, President of the A.C.J. for loyalty and for membership dues, mailed out on September 27, 1968 to the big and rich donors of the A.C.J.)

All this pugnacity, preparation for more wars of expansion, and pledged active and passive cooperation with “poor little Israel” (at the Suez Canal, on the Golan Heights in Syria, and all over the West Bank of Jordan,) appears at the very time when—as the newspapers of the world are reporting, President Nasser of Egypt is appealing to President Johnson of the U.S. to put pressure on Israel to behave peacefully.

“Egypt could be expected to match an Israeli troop withdrawal by agreeing to a United Nations request to make a simultaneous but conditional declaration ending her 20 years state of war with Israel. The conditions attached to the ‘declaration of non-belligerency’ would be that Israel should co-operate in fulfilling further provisions of the Security Council in settling the Palestine refugee problem. Egypt would obey a timetable drawn up by the United Nations under which Israeli steps to implement the United Nations resolution would be matched by Egyptian measures to allow Israeli ships through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba, and agreeing in parallel with Israel to the establishment of ‘secure and recognized’ boundaries.” (San Francisco Chronicle, October 2, 1968, Times-Post Service)

What else do Israel, her rabbis, our American rabbis, and the Zionist Organization of the world want? Is it really the domination of the Middle East, and the full and everlasting realization of the “fixed idea?” Are they really insane, irresponsible about the lives of the two million Jews now living in Israel? For there cannot be any doubt that in the years to come, the Arabs, supported by the Muslims of Asia and Africa, will really become a formidable military and militaristic power, following in the footsteps of their teachers, the Israelis. Then what? It will be too late then.

Dezionize Israel!

A wise American Assistant Secretary of State, Henry A. Byroade, senior foreign policy officer of the Department of State in Washington, said the following in 1954, before the bloodbaths and devastation of the 1956 and 1967 Sinai-Suez Wars, in a formal policy declaration, which, alas, was put under the rug by the higher Government politicians in answer to Zionist pressure, and Byroade was quickly transferred from the area of the Middle East elsewhere,

“To the Israelis I say that you should come to truly look upon yourselves as a Middle Eastern State and see your own future in that context rather than as a headquarters, or nucleus, so to speak, of worldwide groupings of peoples of a particular religious faith who must have special rights within and obligations to the Israeli state. You should drop the attitude of the conqueror and the conviction that force and a policy of retaliatory killings is the only policy that your neighbors will understand. You should make your deeds correspond to your frequent utterance of the desire for peace.…” (The Department of State Publication 5469)

The Rt. Honorable Anthony Nutting put it this way:

“One day there will be peace between Arab and Israeli. But that day will not dawn until the State of Israel, as we know it today, has become a de-Westernized and a de-Zionized entity, and hence capable of absorption into the wider background of a broad Semitic confederation.” (Issues Magazine, Winter, 1966–1967)

The most moderate of all Arab statesmen, King Hussein of Jordan, put it in even simpler words:

“The Jews of Israel have a choice: the choice of living with us peacefully and eternally as they have lived in the past, or of remaining an isolated outpost in the Arab world. If for the time being, and under the influence of Zionist leadership, they want to insist on maintaining an outpost, they must then bear all the consequences resulting from this status. However, if Israel is a fact, what is its size and shape, which one does the world recognize? Israel must not only define itself geographically, but it must define itself ethnically … In conclusion, let me say that perhaps the developments in the Arab world would one day lead to the de-Zionization of Israel.…” (New York Times, November 7, 1967)

You are Alone and Exposed Now. Repent Before it is Too Late!

This is February 24, 1969. The President of the United States, Richard Nixon, has just arrived in Europe to summon the “Allies” to join him in search “for a durable peace. Before we can make progress with our opponents, it is necessary to consult with our friends.”… May a good God help him mature and grow fast, so that he can be worthy of his high office and graduate from the bloody clichés of the old world order, into a new world order where all nations are allies, friends, fellow citizens of one world order … I did not vote for him, nor for any of the candidates for the Presidency. To get votes, they all made irresponsible promises which the folks understood as commitments, binding the American people. But, Nixon is now my President, and I wish him well, and pray for his growth. He made some terrible “promises” to the Zionist Jews of America, even though they did not vote for him …

I have just completed correcting the first proofs of my 1969 Postscript to my book, and before returning it back to Beirut, I shall take advantage of this opportunity, and write a small “supplement” to bring things up-to-date. For, a lot of world-shattering events have happened since I mailed the Postscript to the Institute for Palestine Studies on November 10, 1968. Suddenly, “poor little Israel” has exposed itself, and the attitude of the entire world toward Zionist Israel has changed. The devastating attack on the civilian International Airport of Beirut, Lebanon; the attacks on Iraqi troops stationed in Jordan; the attacks on Syria (just today’s newspaper reports); the thousand eyes for one eye “retaliations” against all of the Arab neighbors, including Egypt, forebodes the coming of “the day” for the military junta of Zionist Israel, to complete the “unfinished business” of “redemption:” The Litani in Lebanon, the East of the Jordan lands including Amman, and all of Syria and Iraq on the way to the Euphrates. (They probably will accept the Suez Canal in lieu of the Nile.) The seventy-year-old “fixed idea” about a Greater Eretz Israel for the ingathered nationalized Jews of the world demands that. The “fixed idea” has never been disavowed; never repudiated so far.

Whoever considers the current issues between Zionist Israel and the Arabs as revolving around the Commandos, El Fath, this and that liberation act of fedayeen, does not realize that the acts of the so-called Arab “terrorists” are secondary matters, and that Zionist Israel’s acts of “retaliation,” are acts that have been the old and standard practice of softening up, terrorizing, pushing, driving the Arabs out of their old homes or second, or third, homes, so as to make room for the coming ingathered nationalized Jews, from America, from England, from Russia, since practically all formerly happy Arab Jews have been fully uprooted and “ingathered” through subversion.

Do the leaders of misguided Israel realize that it is just too late in history to declare the “fruits of victory” as the rights of conquest? or, will they continue their contempt for the world and for the United Nations—“Damn everybody”! “The United Nations has become the paradigm of perfidy, the epitome of hypocrisy;” “Knesset denounces U.N. Hypocrisy;” “Former Foreign Minister Mrs. Golda Meir poured fire and brimstone on the U.N.…” etc. etc. is what newspaper reporters tell us about today’s mood in Zionist Israel. They defy the whole world and have nothing but contempt for the United Nations. The result: a complete change in the attitude of the whole world after the truth, the facts, were exposed by Zionist Israel itself. Old sympathy for the “Jewish State” is giving way to considerable questioning and often sharp criticism. The “even-handedness” of the attitude of the world, including the foreign policy of the U.S. new Administration, toward the Arab victims of Zionist Israel has suddenly become a fact of life. Most of the world today is taking a dim view of Israel’s “reasoning” and propaganda. One Christian minister declared, “I have never heard of peace by retaliation …” He does not know that Zionist Israel does not yet want any peace. The “fixed idea” calls for war, and war, until Dr. Herzl’s, and Ben Gurion’s and Menachem Begin’s and Moshe Dayan’s Greater Eretz Israel is realized, come what may to the peace-loving sleepy, slow, Arabs of old Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq (Eshkol now enjoys “eternal peace”! It was not a happy “Jewish” world to live in with 1288 acts of sabotage by the Arab Freedom Fighters since the Six-Day June 1967 war.) Let them go to Saudi Arabia; let them go to the other side of the Euphrates, although a neighbor of mine, a Professor at the State College in San Jose thinks I am a fool when I say that “Your Zionist Israelis want much more than you attribute to them. They want an Israeli Empire, which will include the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Iraq etc. You don’t know your Zionist Israelis!”

While asking the government of the United States to persuade, or force, the Arab governments to talk peace terms directly with Zionist Israel,—actually to sign on the dotted line and confirm the reality of occupation and conquest—brazenly, arrogantly, openly, the ruling circles of Zionist Israel discuss what they consider unnegotiable: Arab East Jerusalem is annexed; Sharm el Sheikh in the Tiran Straits, with a land corridor linking it with Israel proper; the Golan Heights in Syria; Gaza; Jericho; Sinai; and then the Allon Plan—a string of Israeli “Nahal” or paramilitary settlements along the Jordan River cease-fire line, so that no armaments ever reach the enclaves of isolated, purely Arab populated Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Kalkilia and Hebron (although many Zionist Israelis ask: “What? Hebron for the Arabs? Are not there the graves of our forefathers? etc. etc.”)

Remember the immortal declaration of President Eisenhower (under whom Richard Nixon served for eight years as Vice President, and, according to the newspapers a few days ago, “Nixon visited ex-President Eisenhower at the Walter Reed Army Hospital, had a long chat with his former boss, and ‘Nixon received excellent advice and comment on the Mideast Policy decisions that would be made in the very near future’ soon after the 1956 First Sinai-Suez War of aggression and collusion by Israel, France, and Great Britain (the imperialist-colonialists of those days): “Should a Nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations’ disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal?”

The Second Sinai-Suez War was a replica, a repetition of the First Sinai-Suez War, when the United Nations and President Eisenhower insisted on the withdrawal of Moshe Dayan’s victorious troops. Nixon has not as yet got the courage of Eisenhower, and, strange as it may sound, the United Nations unanimous resolution of November 22, 1967 is very much the same as President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Five Point Proposal, except that he insists on what President Eisenhower insisted on in his day, after the First Sinai-Suez War of aggression and expansion: Israeli troops must first withdraw from all the occupied territories, and then, (1) a declaration of non-belligerency; (2) the recognition of the right of each country to live in peace; (3) the territorial integrity of all countries in the Middle East, including Israel, in recognized and secure borders; (4) freedom of navigation on international waterways; (5) a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.”

These terms are short of Israel’s old dreams, designs, plans,—the old chronic mania of the archaic 70-year-old “fixed idea.”

“The United States finds Nasser’s Plan ‘Positive and Encouraging,’ but Israeli sources in Washington call the Egyptian Leader’s Statements a ‘Cobweb of Half-Truths and Inconsistencies’ …” said the New York Times of February 4, 1969.

In the same issue of the New York Times, there was a screaming headline, “Israel fears she is losing public relations war.” The correspondent of The Times reported from Jerusalem:

“The complaint is that Israel appears (now) to have become the villain in the regional drama. Israelis say their actions are misunderstood … A public relations firm, Ruder and Finn of New York was hired … by the Foreign Ministry to do special jobs. Extra funds were allotted more recently to the Ministry to expand its information services abroad …” But, the daily jet napalming, the dynamiting, destroying “retaliations” inside the occupied territories and across the borderlines in answer to the acts of sabotage and terror of the Freedom Fighters—the fedayeen—self-sacrificing Arab patriots, cannot be painted over in the publicity releases and public relations as “actions that are misunderstood …”

In the light and line of his pledge to the American people in his inauguration speech: “for the first time, because the people of the world want peace and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the times are on the side of peace,” the government of President Nixon agreed on February 5 to the French proposal for four power talks on the Middle East situation, and on February 17, Nixon and Soviet Ambassador Anatol Dobrynin conferred for the first time at an hour-long meeting. “It was a very constructive meeting” reported the White House Press Secretary. But, one Max Fisher, “one of President Nixon’s principal supporters, who is President of the United Jewish Appeal also spent an hour with Mr. Nixon. Fisher discussed with the President a ‘wide range of subjects’ … the current Middle East crisis, the roles of France and the USSR, what have been termed attempts to “impose a peace upon Israel.” (The Jewish Post and Opinion, February 14, 1969)

Does that chap Fisher know what he is doing when he, by his action, encourages Zionist Israel to try to get away with murder? or, was he one of the few, rare, rich Zionist Jews selected to help the campaign drive of Republican Nixon, so that if the Zionist machine lost with Johnson’s H. Humphrey, there would still be one very rich Republican Jewish Zionist who would plead and fight for the cause of “poor little Israel” at the Suez Canal, at the Golan Heights, in all of Jerusalem, etc. etc …

The Zionist power structure is working overtime these days while the parasitical clericalists use their religious claptrap to cloak and protect the “fixed idea” of Zionism with pure “godliness” and “goodness.” Thus, at a rally in New York City at which Mayor Lindsay appeared, “Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Protestant clergymen called on the United States and the western world to provide political and military support for Israel. The mayor asserted, ‘we must demand, too, that our own Government stand up in defense of the State of Israel not by words but by maintaining the balance of power.’” (Lindsay soon after announced that he would seek to run for a second term as Mayor.) “Another speaker, Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, President of the American Jewish Congress (the other side of the coin of the Zionist World Organization) asserted that ‘we count on President Nixon to exert firm leadership against Israel’s being sold into extinction or attrition by international wheeling and dealing.’” (New York Times, February 17, 1969)

No question is ever raised about who took away the homes and homeland from whom. Who practices the “Right of Conquest” standard predatory acts of the old world order? No sign of repentance from wars of Lebensraum; “poor little Israel” is just misunderstood; its acts of brotherly love for the Arabs are just misunderstood, misjudged. Even after “Eshkol mentions the unmentionable” about Arab Jerusalem, Golan Heights, Sharm el Sheikh, Allon Plan, Sinai, Jericho, Hebron? etc. etc., and hypocritically claims (for publicity purposes and Public Relations throwing sand into the eyes of the unknowledgeable world) that, “Israel remained flexible in regard to the return of territories occupied in the war of June, 1967.” What territories?? The military junta of Israel cannot kill off or exile the thickly populated cities like Nablus, Jenin, Kalkilia, Tulkarm, Hebron etc., so these will be, or may be, allowed to become helpless Israeli subjects in their isolated enclaves, as hewers of wood and drawers of water.

There is, alas, too much of immorality, inhumanity, brutality, jingoism, about the Lebensraum religion of political Zionism. Let me rather quote the original sin, the original crime, the original incubus as it came from Theodore Herzl, the frustrated, egocentric megalomaniac, who was ignorant of Jews and Judaism, but inspired by hatred of anti-Semitism and ambitious to create a political “Jewish” state in Arab Palestine. David Triestsch, a right-hand man and adviser of Herzl, wrote to him the following on October 29, 1899, a little while after the establishment of the World Zionist Congress: “I would suggest to you to come around in time to the ‘Greater Palestine’ programme before it is too late. The Basel Programme must contain the words ‘Greater Palestine’ or ‘Palestine and its neighboring Lands’—otherwise it’s nonsense. You do not get the ten million Jews into a land of 25,000 km.” (Rabinowicz, Oskar, K.A. Jewish Cyprus Project, New York, Herzl Press, 1962, p. 17)

This is the “fixed idea” of Political Zionism. This has become a world problem, and the big powers inside the United Nations must impose and guarantee peace with justice to the Arab victims of “Jewish” nationalism, and no less to the Jewish victims of political Zionism so that the Israelis may live inside their United Nations Partition of 1947, live, and let live, in fraternity (eventually) with their Arab neighbors.

There was only one apparently decent, rational and humane (?) political leader in Zionist Israel who was ready to live in peace with the Arabs inside and outside a not-Greater Eretz Israel—ex-Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon of 1954 fame, when the early preparations for the First Sinai-Suez War in 1956 began to be made by Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan. Recall please the story in my book about the spy ring of thirteen subverted, disloyal Egyptian Jews who, under the guidance of an expert Israeli army officer, dynamited American libraries, American-owned theatres, business houses etc., and were finally caught red-handed, and confessed. Remember that it was the military junta of Israel that falsified the signature of Lavon in order to do their dastardly acts of sabotage in Egypt. Well; Pinhas Lavon is now trying to make a comeback. According to the London Jewish Chronicle of December 13, 1968,

“Pinhas Lavon, who was forced into obscurity by Mr. Ben Gurion as a result of the ‘Security Mishap’ of 1954, and the ensuing scandal involving, among others, Moshe Dayan, has made a spectacular comeback into political life … In a television interview, Mr. Lavon advocated unilateral withdrawal by Israel to borders which would best ensure her security and survival, without waiting for any peace agreement with the Arabs … The Arab population of the occupied territories numbering one million, constituted a heavy burden …”

Is it a heavy moral or material burden? Is President Eisenhower’s “Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of the United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal?” moving Lavon back to Prophetic Judaism, away from Napalm Judaism? God knows. God knows whether there are left in Israel today any non-subverted humane citizens.

It is painful to feel like calling to a great many active and passive Zionist Israelis and American Zionists, “Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother Abel?” But, “If you say ‘I will not make mention of him, nor speak out more in his name,’” then, “there is in my heart as it were a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I weary myself to hold it in, but cannot.…” (Jeremiah xx: 9)

To the Israelis I would say, return to the God of your Fathers, to Prophetic Judaism. Repudiate the religion of Napalm Judaism. Go back to the country given to you in 1947 by the United Nations at the expense of the indigent Arabs of Palestine and lead a constructive instead of a destructive life. That 1947 country is more than enough to take care of the really persecuted Jews of the world. Everybody will be glad to help them as Levantine Jews who have a State of their own.

N.B.

I would be failing in my job of bringing up to date my 1969 Supplement were I to forget to report the most recent, the current, unfinished developments in the belated reorganization of an honest Anti-Zionist platform in America.

Now, as things are currently in a state of flux and debate, I shall report the following details:

(1) Dr. Berger finally fully learned and realized at a meeting with the Old Guard on January 28, 1969—three months after the shameless annual meeting in New York, when our Opposition should have and could have outvoted the Old Guard and walked out on them, leaving them with an empty hall—that reconciliation is hopeless!

(2) The militant members who showed so much spirit and enthusiasm when they went to New York to oust the Old Board of Directors who betrayed the A.C.J. principles, have been discouraged since October 19, 1968, and their spirit is dampened. A good many were and are unhappy about the delays and waste of time when Zionist Israel should have been exposed in public and in the press for their escalation in aggression and immorality. It is a question now of how many will respond. For we must now have thousands of dedicated members, and not just a few multimillionaires who can write out big checks and thereby control the spiritual leadership of the new anti-Zionist organization.

(3) There is going on right now a battle of protest against the mysterious adoption of an inane name for our anti-Zionist organization. Without the consent of the most active and dedicated members, it appears that hastily—too hastily—a legal name was adopted—“Jewish Alternatives to Zionism Inc.” I fear it hides something. It refuses to call a spade a spade. If we are anything, we are Anti-Zionist … I offered this name, and many agreed with me that the following is the only right name. But, for some reasons, it was not adopted, nor time given to debate this point, after four months were wasted without anything constructive having been done. The name I proposed was and is:

The Anti-Zionist Society of America (or of American Jews) or Prophetic Judaism against “Jewish Nationalism”

Nevertheless because ideologically there are no differences whatsoever between me and Doctor Berger, my name may help. My best wishes and hopes go to the new Anti-Zionist Organization in spite of its unfortunate name.

INDEX

Abbas, Ferhat, 1

Adams, Michael, 527

Adler, Felix, 245

Ahad Ha-’Am, vii, 26, 54–68, 91, 189, 327, 487, 563

meeting with Dr. Herzl, 61–63

and Dr. Magnes, 313–15

Akibah, Rabbi, 12–14

Albright, Prof. William Foxwell, 6

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 253

Alexander II, Czar, 27

Alexander the Great, 16

Algerian Arabs, 178, 226–27

Aliyah, 21, 232, 343, 382, 393, 395, 408, 410, 412–13, 417, 433, 463, 470, 495, 498, 499, 525, 545, 500

Allenby, Gen., 53

Alliance Israélite Universelle, 51, 303

Allan Plan, 573, 576

Allon, Yigal, 200, 226, 499, 508, 535, 536

Alsop, Joseph, 137, 141

American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC), 441–42

American Council for Judaism (ACJ), 94–96, 139, 142, 157, 308, 325–61, 392, 415, 429, 464, 467, 470, 475, 484, 486, 493, 494, 542–554, 557, 567, 578,

and Dr. Elmer Berger, 554–66

American Council for Judaism Philanthropic Fund, 345

American Friends of the Middle East, 168

American Jewish Committee (AJC), 142–43, 248–49, 320, 536, 551

American Jewish Congress, 451–53, 469–70, 498, 576

American Zionist Council (AZC), 77, 415, 424–26, 457, 463

and 1963 Senate hearings, 435–45

Anti-Defamation League, 499, 501, 524

Anti-Semitism, 21, 37–38, 171, 356, 382, 389, 475, 500, 501, 555, 566, 576

and Eichmann trial, 473–86

Anti-Zionist Society of America, 543, 579

see also Jewish Alternatives to Zionism Inc. (JAZ),

Antonius, George, 69, 72

Argentine Jews and Eichmann trial, 475–76

Ari (ha-Ashkenazi Rabbi Isaac, a cabalist), 282

Aristotle, 264

Aronowicz, Ike (skipper of S.S. Exodus), 396

Asquith, Lord, 90

Assyrian exile, 9

Atiyah, Edward, 213

Attlee, Clement, 234

Austin, Sen. Warren, 117

Avneri, Uri, 164, 504

Aydelotte, Dr. Frank, 104

Babylonian exile, Babylonian Jews, Babylonian Talmud, 9–12, 15, 19, 56, 259–62, 264–65, 271–72

Bagrash, George, 543, 544

Baldwin, Roger, 315

Balfour Declaration, 19, 51, 53–54, 61, 65–66, 68, 71–75, 79, 84–85, 87–88, 222, 327–28, 349, 363, 481, 488, 505, 506

final text, 71

and Baron Sonnino, 72

and Churchill, 73

Balfour, Arthur James Lord, 71, 73

Bar Kochbah, Simeon, 13–14

Bauer, Fritz (prosecutor of Hitlerite murderers), 479

Beatty, Ilene, 16, 166–67

Begley, Frank, 515

Begin, Menachem, 6, 97, 114–15, 118, 121, 123, 132, 174–75, 181, 317, 321, 323, 329, 518, 527, 529, 535, 536, 573

and Ben Gurion, 98–101

and Sinai-Suez assault, 181

Beilis, Menachem, 27

Bein, Dr. Alex, 45, 62

Ben Ami, 40

Bene Israel (Indian Jews), 388–89

Ben Gurion, David, viii, 4, 6, 51–53, 94, 102, 114, 118, 123, 132–33, 140–41, 144–45, 161, 164–66, 193–95, 209–10, 225–28, 246–49, 257, 317, 321, 350, 358–59, 374, 377, 399, 409–10, 417, 420, 459–63, 469–71, 491, 508, 511, 518, 522, 524, 526, 529, 531, 532, 533, 539, 573, 577

and Rumanian “rescue drive,” 150–53, 155

and Sinai-Suez invasion, 177–78, 180–81, 184–86

and Kafr Kassim massacre, 186–89

and Arab refugees, 197–98

and Menachem Begin, 98–101

and Pinhas Lavon, 169, 171–73, 199–206

and Moshe Dayan, 531–32

and Biltmore Conference, 329–30

quoting Bible, 180, 185, 187–88

on Jesus and Paul, 268

collaboration with clericalists, 383–91

architect of Eichmann trial, 473–85

Ben Silver, 433

Berger, Rabbi Elmer, 87, 332, 335, 345–49, 353–54, 359, 429, 542, 543, 544, 545, 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 557, 578, 579

his “resignation” from the A.C.J., 546–48

his own observations on the A.C.J. crisis, 554–56

correspondence with Moshe Menuhin, 561–66

Berkowitz, Rabbi Henry, 79

Bernadotte, Count Folke, 127–31, 492, 493, 507–9, 516, 517

and Moshe Shertock, 509–11

his life and work, 512–14

his Peace Plans, 514

his assassination, 514–15

Berr, Isaac, 295–96, 305, 325, 327

Bethmann, Erich W., 106, 237

Bettar, 14–15

Bevin, Ernest, 97

Bialik, Chaim Nachman, 313, 487

Biltmore Conference, Biltmore Declaration, 94–95, 329–32, 468

Bi-national State, 94, 103–6, 127, 371

Blaustein, Jacob, 461–62

B’nai B’rith, 210, 342, 365, 463, 499, 500, 501; see also Hillel Foundation

Borah, Sen. William E., 254

Boswell, Rev. Hamilton, 372

Bourguiba, Habib, 213

Brainin, Reuven, 33

Brandeis, Louis D., 75, 84–87, 327, 334

Brandeis University, 342–43

Brilliant, Moshe (of N.Y. Times), 183

Briscoe, Robert, 396

Brit Shalom (“League of Peace”), 318

Buber, Prof. Martin, vii, 94, 103, 331, 368–71, 504

and Eichmann trial, 473–79

Bunche, Ralph, 512

Byroade, Henry, 169, 568, 569

Canaan, Canaanites, 3, 7, 16–18, 504

Caramanlis, Constantin, 256

Castle, Barbara, 234

Challe, Maurice, 520, 521

Chamberlain, Joseph, 48–49

Chananiah, Rabbi Ben, 264

Chelebi, Raphael Joseph (patron of cabalists), 282–83

Chofshi, Nathan, 491

Christianity, Christian crusaders, Christian world, Christians, 7, 16–21, 23–24, 38, 268–73, 275–80, 282–83, 302–4, 313, 339, 356, 475, 478

Churchill, Winston, 73, 90, 256

Clemenceau, Georges, 37, 55, 82

Cogley, John (of Commonweal), 167; see also Qibya

Cohen, Janus, 372

Cohen, Mickey, 118, 122, 389

Cohen, Prof. Morris R., 305–10, 325, 343

Coleman, Clarence L., 339, 346, 352, 392, 423–24, 435, 542, 543, 545, 546, 549, 550, 551, 556, 557, 558, 559

Colonization, population, immigration, emigration in old Palestine and in Israel, 235–39

Comay, Michael, 207, 210, 478

Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, 399

Crémieux, Adolphe, 299–303, 305, 325

Cox, Commander, 515

Cultural pluralism, 430, 466

Davis, Dr. John H., 196–97

Dayan, Moshe, 202–3, 226, 434, 491, 492, 493, 499, 508, 511, 529, 536, 573, 574, 577

and First Sinai-Suez War of 1956, 517–524

his life, 531–35

Debs, Eugene, 315

Decter, Dr. Moshe, 451–53

De Gaulle, Pres. Charles, 502, 520, 523, 532, 541

Dehan, Lt. Gavriel (commander at Kafr Kassim), 189; see also Kafr Kassim massacre

Deir Yassin massacre, 118–20, 125–27, 167, 186, 495, 506, 526, 534

Deutsch, Prof. Monroe E., 360–61

Dewey, Thomas E., 125

Displaced Persons camps (DP camps), 95–96, 102, 108, 144, 328, 506

Dobrynin, Anatol, 575

Dragunski, Gen. David (of USSR Army), 376–77

“Dreamers of the ghetto,” see Smolenskin, Pinsker, Sokolov, Weizmann, Herzl, Ahad Ha-’Am

Dreyfus affair, 26, 31, 34–37, 55, 270

Dulles, John Foster, 168, 177

Dymshitz, Benjamin E., 377

Earl Harrison Report, 149

Eban, Abba, 141, 177–78, 185, 202, 246, 491, 524, 566

Edelman, Maurice, 168

Eden, Sir Anthony, 175–76, 519, 520

Egyptian Jews, 184–85

Eichmann trial, 473–85

Einstein, Prof. Albert, 93, 127, 322–24, 487

Eisenhower, Pres. Dwight D., 155, 179–80, 182–83, 246, 251–52, 419, 518, 523, 525, 535, 539, 573, 574, 577

report to nation on Sinai-Suez invasion, 179–80

Ely, General, 521

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 252–53

Engel, Irving M., 142, 320

Ernst, Morris L., 96, 433, 506

Eshkol, Levi, 379, 383–84, 391, 399, 430, 491, 497, 499, 526, 528, 529, 533, 536, 573, 576

and Ben Gurion, 195, 205–6, 397, 459–61

Eytan, Walter, 395

El-Fath (or Arab Freedom Fighters), 537, 572, 573, 575

Fawzi, Dr. Mahmoud, 215

Fedayeen (Arab Commandos), 166, 187, 56, 537, 538, 572, 574

Feinberg, N., 417

Feisal (Emir, later King), 75–76

Feldman, Myer, 539

Fey, Harold E. (of Christian Century), 167; see also Qibya

Finer, Prof. Herman (Dulles Over Suez), 185

Finkelstein, Dr. Louis, 6, 96

Fineschriber, Rabbi William H., 347, 353

Fisher, Max, 575

Flanders, Sen. Ralph E., 221–24, 422

Forrestal, James, Forrestal Diaries, 110–13

Frankfurter, Felix, 75, 84, 87

Freud, Prof. Sigmund, 487

Friedman, Milton (JTA correspondent), 449

Friedman, Rabbi Herbert, 432

Friedman-Yellin, Nathan, 516

Fulbright, Sen. J. W., 224–25

and Senate hearings, 421–56

Gaonic Period, 271–72

General Armistice Agreement, 530

German Jews, 92, 97, 328

Gildersleeve, Dean Virginia, 109

Glubb Pasha (John Bagot Glubb), 126, 219–20

Goldberg, Arthur J., 382

Goldenson, Rabbi Samuel H., 347

Goldmann, Dr. Nahum, 153, 159–60, 321, 329, 382, 397–410, 416–18, 451–54, 463–64, 469–70, 475

and World Jewish Congress, 399–402

and Jewish (national) education, 407–8, 418

Goren, Shlomo (Chief Rabbi of Israeli Army), 181, 385, 391, 536

Gottlieb, Bill, 345, 543

Grayzel, Solomon, 281

Grossman, Meier (of World Zionist Executive and Jewish Agency), 159–60

Grossman, Richard, 328

Gymnasia Herzlia, 49–52, 63, 162, 171, 314–15, 363, 502, 503, 504, 563

Hadas, Moses, 365

Hadassah (Women’s Zionist Organization of America), 133, 426, 432

Hebrew University Medical Center, 389

Hadawi, Sami (Land Ownership in Palestine), 237, 239, 517

Haesler, Gen. Count von (German nationalist), 374

Haganah, 95, 97, 115–16, 120–21, 123, 331, 506

Halevi, Judah Ben Samuel, 22–24

Halprin, Rose L., 449–50

Haman, 409

Hamlin, Isadore (of Jewish Agency), at 1963 Senate hearings, 421–56

Hammarskjold, Dag, 174

Hammer, Gottlieb (of Jewish Agency), at 1963 Senate hearings, 421–56

Harris, Christine, 557

Harrison (Earl) Report, 149

Hashmonayi, Mattathias (father of Maccabees), 12, 262

Hausner, Gideon, 202

Hearings of Jewish Agency before U.S. Senate; see Senate hearings

Hearst, William Randolph, Jr., 73

Hebrew Culture Foundation, 436

Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 91, 102–3, 107, 127, 316–18

and Dr. Magnes, 316–18

Hechler, Rev. Mr. (adviser of Herzl), 44, 505

Hecht, Ben, 122, 483–84.

Hellman, I. W., 79

Herrman, Irwin, 345, 348

Herut (Israeli political party), 175, 420

Herzl, Dr. Theodor, 22, 26, 29, 31–55, 136, 247, 284, 304, 311–13, 327, 329, 332, 414, 481, 502, 503, 504, 505, 518, 573, 576

as King-Messiah, 33–34, 48

and Dreyfus affair, 235–38

and First Zionist Congress, 39–41, 61–63

meeting with Ahad Ha-’Am, 61–62

and German Kaiser, 39, 43–46

meeting with King of Italy, 49

meeting with Von Plehve, 46

and “noise” as means to political ends, 43

impressions of, 45–46

meeting with Oscar Straus, 47

his opinion of Russian-Polish Jews, 42

spiritual affinity with Gymnasia Herzlia, 50–52

Herzog, Rabbi Halevi, 143

Hess, Moses, 25–26, 36–37, 329

Hess, Moses, 25–26, 36–37, 329

Hewins, Ralph, 508, 512, 516, 517

Hillel Foundation, 365, 499, 500, 501

Hillel, Rabbi, 118, 181, 233, 264–66, 268

Hilquit, Morris, 315

Hirsch, Baron Edmond de, 29, 48, 51

Histadruth (Israeli trade-union organization), 98, 186

and Lavon Affair, 202–3

Hitler, Hitlerism, 50, 88, 95, 192, 257, 270, 328, 370, 374, 401, 475, 479, 481

Hofstadter, Prof. Richard, 252

Holmes, John Hayes, 315

Horn, Maj. Gen. Carl von, 208–9, 492, 517, 530, 531

Horowitz, David, 477

Huizinga, Johan (Dutch historian), 254

Humphrey, Hubert, 501, 540, 541, 566, 575

Hungarian (refugee) Jews, 148

Hunsche, S.S. Capt. Otto, 479

Hurwitz, Henry, 262, 364–68, 418; see also Menorah Journal, Menorah Collegium

Hussain, Ibn Ali (Hussain-McMahon correspondence), 68–70, 74–75

Hussein (king of Jordan), 218–19, 569

Ihud Association, Ihud’s Ner (Hebrew magazine), 103, 187–88, 368–71, 384–85, 471

Indemnities, reparations, restitutions from Germany, 431; see also Remittances to Israel

Inquisitions, 257, 270, 279

Irgun Zwai Leumi (“Irgun”), 100–101, 115–16, 118–23, 174, 330–31, 438, 506, 529; see also Haganah, Stern Group

Israeli Government and World Zionist Organisation-Jewish Agency

“Status Law” and “Covenant,” 350, 417, 428, 436

Israeli Consulate in New York, 436, 451

Joint Fund, 451–53

Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 107, 174, 317, 329

Jauré, Jean, 37; see also Dreyfus affair

Javits, Sen. Jacob K., 182, 382

Jefferson, Thomas, 253

Jennings, Dean, 122

Jesus (Joshua of Nazareth), 266–71

Jewish Alternatives to Zionism Inc. (JAZ), 579: see also Anti-Zionist Society of America

Jewish charities and “ingathering” to “Jewish homeland,” 144–160, 495, 497, 500, 505

twisted Jewish charities revealed in 1963 Senate hearings, 421–59

Jewish national education, Jewish education for Aliyah, 407–9, 413–19, 499, 500

Jewish day-schools, 411–12, 416, 418

Jewish Educational Society of San Francisco, 366

Jewish National Fund (JNF), 42, 135–37

“Jewish” (political) nationalism, “Jewish” nationalists, 251, 257, 259, 321–23, 328–29, 414, 417, 419, 421, 427, 491, 493, 494, 496, 501, 502–505, 511, 512, 517, 522, 525, 529, 531, 532, 549, 561, 562, 563, 566, 568, 572, 577; see also Nationalism 573, 574, 575, 577

and the Balfour Declaration, 505–7

Jewish Newsletter, 139, 250, 362–64, 491; see also Zukerman, William

Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), 436, 443–49, 455, 457

Jewish Welfare Funds (Federations of Jewish Charities), 366, 416, 446–47, 457, 464

Johanan (John) the Baptist, 266

Johnson, Dr. Eric E., 198

Johnson, Pres. Lyndon B., 382, 521, 525, 541, 568, 575

Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) [“The Joint”], 142, 150, 315, 319–20, 427, 432

Joseph, Dov, 151

Joshua, 4–5, 257

Judaism, 7, 52, 54–55, 60–61, 105, 182, 257, 259, 264, 267–69, 272, 275, 277, 307, 326, 335, 355, 365, 389, 413, 415, 418, 491, 494

Kahn, Congressman Julius, 76, 78

Kafr Kassim massacre, 186–91

Kalischer, Rabbi Zevi-Hirsch, 29

Kastner, Dr. Rudolph, 481, 484

Katz, Label A., 405, 407, 416–17, 463

Kelman, Rabbi Wolfe, 456

Kenen, I. L., 441, 451

Kennedy, Pres. John F., 227, 230, 539

Khan, Sir Muhammad Zafrulah, 113

Khrushchev, Nikita S., 227, 382

Killeen, Capt. John P. (a Gentile typically uninformed about “Jewish” nationalism), 182

Kimche, Jon, 534

King-Crane (American inquiry team), 82–83

King, Seth S. (of N.Y. Times), 151

Kishinev pogrom, 189, 191

Klatzkin, Dr. Jacob (Zionist ideologist), 482–83

Klauzner, Dr. Joseph, 280

Klutznick, Philip, 153, 404

Kohn, Prof. Hans, 63–67, 252, 318, 365, 471

Korn, Richard, 543, 544, 545, 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 557, 558, 567

and degeneration of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), 542–46

Krock, Arthur (of N.Y. Times), 125

Krumey, S. S. Lt. Col. Hermann, 479

“Land of Israel movement”, 497

Land ownership in old Palestine; see Colonization, Population, etc.

Lasky, Moses, 464

Lau-Lavie N., 517, 521

Laurent, Louis St., 256

Lausanne Protocol (May 12, 1949), 131

Lavon Affair, Pinhas Lavon, 169–73, 199–206, 409, 469, 518, 577

Law, John, 537

Lazaron, Rabbi Morris S., 167, 332, 347, 353, 487

Lehrman, Rabbi Irving, 567

Lelyveld, Rabbi Arthur J., 498, 576

Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 33

Levin, Schmarya, 87, 369

Lie, Trygve, 513

Lilienthal, Alfred, 96, 324

Lincoln, Pres. Abraham, 254

Lindsay, Mayor, 575,

Lippay (papal count, Herzl’s adviser), 47

Lipsky, Eleazar, 448

Livneh, Eliezer, 497

Lloyd George, David, 73, 82

Lloyd, Selwyn, 185, 215, 519

Loucheim, Jerry, 353

Lovett, Robert A., 111

Lowell, Stanley H., 469–70

Lowenthal, Marvin, 365

Lundberg, Prof. George A., 373

Lundström, General Aage, 515

Lurie, Arthur, 476

Luthuli, Albert John (Zulu chief), 374–75

McDonald, James G., 146

McGrath, Sen. J. Howard, 112

Maccabee, Judah, 12, 262

MacIver, Prof. Robert Morrison (MacIver Report), 464–68, 501

Mack, Judge Julian, 75, 84, 86–87, 327, 334

Macmillan, Harold, 256

Magnes, Dr. Judah L., 91, 93–94, 102–4, 107, 109, 127, 181, 310–22, 331, 368, 563

and JDC, 315, 319–20, 427

and Hebrew University, 316–18

Maimonides, Moses Ben Maimon, 264, 271, 273–75

Mallison, Prof. W. T., 348–49

Manchester Guardian editorial, “Lost Among the Gentiles,” 402

Manoury, Bourges, 185, 520

Mansfield, Mike, 540

Mapai (Israeli political party), 202–5, 384

Marshall, George Calett, 117, 127, 319

Marx, Alexander, 272–74

Marx, Karl, 487

Masliansky, Rabbi Zvi-Hirsch, 311–12

Meir, Golda, 153, 197–98, 215, 226–27, 399, 419–20, 572

Mendeleh Mocher Sfforim,” 306, 487

Mendelssohn, Moses, 292–95, 303, 305, 325–26, 487

son Abraham, 295

grandson Felix Bartholdy, 295

Menorah Journal, Menorah Society, Menorah Collegium, 63, 343, 364–68

Menuhin, Moshe, 494, 544, 545, 549, 559, 561

Menuhin, Yehudi, v, 316, 322, 487

Messiah, Messianic interpretation, Messianic intervention, 33–34, 42, 64, 67, 74, 265–68, 278, 281–84, 304, 312, 326

Mikardo, Ian, 403–4

Millenarianists, 282

Miller, Rabbi Irving, 405, 414, 425–26

Mollet, Guy, 185, 519

Montefiori, Sir Moses Haim, 24

“More Judaico,” 300–301

Morgenthau, Hon. Henry, 78

Morris, James, 81, 485–86

Moses, 4–6, 8, 16, 33–34, 170, 262

Mount Scopus counter-massacre, 507

Moyer, Henry S., 345, 543, 545, 549, 551, 557

Napoleonic Era and Jews, 297–99

Nasser, Pres. Gamal Abdel, 172, 184, 198, 215–17, 231, 523, 568, 574

National Advisory Board (N.A.B.), 543, 544, 546, 547, 555, 557

National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC), 464

National Council of Jewish Women, 210

National Executive Committee (N.E.C.), 546, 547, 559, 560

National Rabbinical Advisory Council, 567

Nationalism, American, 251; European (pre-World War II), 251

Nationalism, “Jewish” Nationalism, see “Jewish” Nationalism

Nearing, Scott, 315

Nehemiah, 11

Ner (Hebrew magazine), see Ihud

Nevlinsky (agent and adviser of Dr. Herzl), 47

Newman, Rabbi Louis I, 182

New York University, 364

Nissim, Itzhak (Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel), 175, 391, 500, 536

Nixon, Pres. Richard, 501, 540, 566, 571, 573, 574, 575, 576

Nordau, Prof. Max, 35, 504

Novick, Paul, 154

Nussbaum, Rabbi Max, 406–7, 414

Nutting, Anthony, 492, 517, 519, 520, 521, 557, 569

Ochs, Adolph S., 79

“Operation Magic Carpet,” 410, 412, 415, 469; see also Sharett

Oppenheimer, Dr. Julius Robert, 487

Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox clericalists 15, 383–91

Orthodox Zionist Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America, 543

Partition of Palestine, Partition Resolution, 106, 108–19, 127, 130, 371; see also Land Ownership

and “Jewish” political nationalism, 505–7

Passifield, Lord, 91

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovitch, 260

Paul, Norman S., 423

Paul (Saul of Tarsus), 266, 268

Peres, Shimeon, 155, 202–3, 491, 499, 518, 519, 520, 521, 522, 523

Perfidy (Ben Hecht book), 483–84

Pfeffer, Leo, 470

Pilate, Pontius, 267

Pincus, Louis A., 162, 440, 446

Pineau, Christian, 185, 519

“Pinsk Versus Washington,” 84

Pinsker, Dr. Leon, 26, 28–29, 36, 56–57, 329, 464; see also “Dreamers of the ghetto”

Plato, 264

Plehve, Wenzel von, and Dr. Herzl, 46

Polish, Rabbi David, 496

Popper, Hans, 553, 554

Precepts, the, 613, 285–89

Presidents’ Conference, Presidents’ Club, 210, 381, 404–5, 436, 454, 458, 463

Prinz, Rabbi Joachim, 142, 382

Prophets:

Amos, 118, 181, 268, 306, 565

Hosea, 268

Jeremiah, 1, 265, 268, 306, 563, 565, 578

Isaiah, 118, 181, 233, 268, 306

Micah, 306

Provisional Government of Israel, 516

Qibya massacre, 166–69

Rabin, Major General Itzhak, 535, 536

Rabinowicz, Oskar K.A., 576

“Reb Binyomin” (Joshua Radler-Feldman), 94–95, 331, 368, 371

Reichert, Rabbi Irving, 347, 353

Reinhart, Rabbi Harold, 516

Rickover, Vice Admiral Hyman G., 487

Riesman, David, 557

Riesser, Gabriel, 297–99, 305, 325

Riots in Palestine, 89–90

Rodinson, Prof. Maxime, 502, 557

Rogat, Dr. Yossal, 474

Roosevelt, Pres. Franklin D., 96, 337, 433, 506

Roosevelt, Mrs. Eleanor, 182

Rose, Prof. Peter I, 342

Rosen, Rabbi Moses, 375

Rosenwald, Lessing J., 263, 335, 346–47, 352–60, 424, 542, 543, 545, 549, 551, 555, 557, 558

Rosenwald, Edith G. (Mrs. Lessing J.), 347, 352–54

Rossi, Benedetto, 362–63

Roth, Dr. Cecil, 365

Rothschild, Baron Edmond de, 24, 29, 38–39 51

Rothschild, Walter Lord, 71, 505

Royal Institute of International Affairs, 548

Rubinstein, Rabbi Richard L., 500

Rumanian Jews, Rumanian “Exodus,” 149–59

Ruppin, Dr. Arthur, 50

Rusk, Dean, 382

Ryan, Mary Perkins (on parochial schools), 416

Rypins, Prof. Stanley, 365

Saadya Gaon, 271–72

Sagall, Dr. Joseph, 411

Saladin, Sultan, 17

Sammlung Anti-Zionistischer Juden (a German-Jewish Council for Judaism), 553, 554

Samuel, Sir Herbert, 83, 89, 91

Sapir, Pinhas, 567

Sayegh, Dr. Fayez, 214, 216

Schachtel, Rabbi Hyman Judah, 347

Schechter, Prof. Solomon, 313–14

Schenck, Rabbi Max, 378–79

Schiff, Dorothy, 324

Schwadran, Dr. Benjamin, 439, 454

Schwartz, Prof. Leo W., 365

Sde Boker, 171, 203, 399, 459–60

Seligman, Prof. Edwin R., 79

Senate hearings of 1963 on Jewish Agency activities, 421–56

Senior, Max, 78

Sérot, Col. André (assistant to Count Bernadotte), 129, 515

Severus (Roman general), 13–14

Shadmi, Col. Aluf Mishne (commander at Kafr Kassim), 189–90; see also Kafr Kassim massacre

Shamai, Rabbi, 264

Shamir, Moshe, 372–73

Sharett, Moshe (Shertock), 98, 133, 136, 162, 168–71, 174, 394, 399, 409–12, 417, 461

and “Operation Magic Carpet,” 410, 412, 415

Shazar, President, 535

Shereshevsky, Dr. S., 331

Shertock, Moshe, 503, 509, 510, 511

Shmulevitz, Matityahu, 516

“Sholem Aleichem,” 306, 487

Shragai, S. Z., 433, 459

Shukairy, Ahmad, 216–18

Silver, Rabbi Abba Hillel, 335, 352, 390

and “Irgun,” 101

and Biltmore Conference, 329–30

Simon, Prof. Ernest, 94, 331, 471

Simpson, Rev. W. W., 383

Sinai Peninsula, Mount Sinai, Sinai Desert, 173, 176, 178, 206, 508, 526, 527; see also Suez

Sinai-Suez War of 1956, 517–24, 573, 574, 577

Singer, Rabbi Richard E., 157, 159

Six-Day June 1967 War (or Second Sinai-Suez War of June 5–10, 1967), 492, 493, 494, 496, 498, 525–29, 533, 534, 537, 539, 541, 542, 563, 573, 574

Slapsie Maxie’s (Hollywood), 122

Slawson, John, 468

Sloss, Judge M. C., 79

Smilansky, Moshe, 64–65, 330–31

Smith, Sir George Adam, 77

Smolenskin, Peretz, 26, 28, 36

Sokolov, Nahum, 26, 30, 36; see also “Dreamers of the ghetto”

Sonnino, Baron, 72

Sparks, Fred (of Scrips-Howard), 184

Spinoza, Baruch, 278–80, 325, 487

Stern Group, 115, 119–20, 331; see also Haganah, Irgun

also Stern Gang, 506, 509, 513

Stevenson, Adlai, 208–9

Stone, I.F., 504

Straus, Oscar, 47

Straus, Nathan, 314

Suez (Sinai-Suez invasion), 173, 176, 178, 206, 215–16, 231, 256

Sukarno, Pres., Indonesian Republic, 255

Sulzberger, Arthur Hayes (of N.Y. Times), 96

Sulzberger, C. L. (of N.Y. Times), 234, 539, 540

Sussman, Leonard R., 210, 345, 435, 475, 484

Swedish Red Cross Organization, 509

Sykes-Picot Agreement, 70

Synagogue Council of America, 436, 449–51, 496

Talbot, Phillips, 352

Tanenbaum, Marc, 449–50

Tannous, Dr. Izzat, 134, 138, 214

Teicher, Dr. J. L., 365

Tetens, T. H., 255, 374

Third Force Movement of Jews and Arabs in Israel, 235–36

Thomas, Norman, 315

Thompson, Dorothy, 256

Thoreau, Henry David, 253

TNT gimmick and Weizmann, 71, 73–74

Tonnere, Count Clermont, 327

Toynbee, Prof. Arnold, 220–21, 485–86, 557

Triestsch, David, 576

Truman, Pres. Harry S., 110–14, 117, 125, 127, 319, 503; see also Forrestal

Unger, Rabbi Jerome, 389

United Israel Appeal (UIA), 432, 443–44

United Jewish Appeal (UJA), 142, 145, 160, 163, 353, 423–24, 427, 429–33, 443, 457–59, 535, 567, 575; see also Senate hearings

Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 210, 320

United Nations, General Assembly, Security Council, 172–73, 179, 209, 215, 507, 514, 516, 529, 530, 531, 568

Partition of Palestine, 215, 232, 507, 577

Resolution 194 (III) (Dec. 11, 1948), 130, 135, 461, 508

Resolution of Nov. 22, 1967, 574

UNSCOP, 109, 123

UNRWA, 134–35, 139

UNSPC, 138, 141, 197

Palestine Conciliation Commission, 199, 215

Unterman, Rabbi Iser J., 391

U Thant, Secretary General of U.N., 537, 541, 537

Vambery, “Uncle” (Dr. Herzl’s secret agent), 48

Vaspasian (Roman general), 13

Vergelis, Aaron, 380–81

Villard, Oswald Garrison, 315

Von Horn, Carl, 517, 530

Weinstein, Rabbi Jacob J., 141

Weiss-Rosmarin, Trude, 394, 455

Weizmann, Chaim, 26, 30–31, 50–53, 60, 84, 86, 88, 328–29, 363, 505

and TNT gimmick, 71, 73–74

and Ben Gurion, 123, 234

and Rumanian Jews, 88

and Brandeis, 84–86

Weizmann, Gen. Ezer, 200

Wilhelm, Kaiser, 39, 43–46, 475, 481

Wilson, Pres. Woodrow, 76, 79–82, 315, 326

Winter, Philip L., 415

Wise-Polier, Justine (daughter of Rabbi Stephen Wise), 408

Wise, Rabbi Isaac M., 304–5, 310, 325

Wise, Rabbi Stephen, 390

Wolsey, Dr. Louis, 332

World Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO), 399, 407

World Conference on Jewish Education, 399, 407

World Jewish Congress, 394, 424

and Dr. Goldmann, 399–402, 408, 412, 470

World Zionist Congress, 576

World Zionist Organization (WZO)-Jewish Agency, 395–97, 505, 506, 576

World Zionism, 400, 413, 417

“Status Law” and “Covenant,” 350, 417, 428, 436

and Senate hearings, 421–57

“Conduit” foundations: Hebrew Culture Foundation, 436; Herzl Foundation, 439; Louis Rabinowitz Foundation, 439

Yavneh (spiritual center), 13, 264

“Yossele” (Schumacher), 386–87

Zakkai, Rabbi Johannan Ben, 12–14, 264–65

Zangwill, Israel, 504

Zevi, Sabbetai (false Messiah), 49, 278, 281–85

Zion, 58, 369, 478, 497

Zionist Congresses (World), 429

First, 39–40, 61–62, 247, 327, 349, 502

Second, 41

Seventh, 49

Eleventh, 50–51

Twentieth, 93

Twenty-fifth (“Congress of Aliyah”), 413, 416, 462

Zionist Organization of America, 210, 426

Zola, Émile, 37, 55

Zukerman, William, 139, 157, 362–64, 367–68, 405, 456–58, 471–72, 491; see also Jewish Newsletter

Zevi, Itzhak Ben, 393

About the Author

Moshe Menuhin (1893–1983) was born in Russia to a distinguished, religious Jewish family. When they moved to Palestine, Menuhin was sent to Orthodox Jewish schools. He came to the United States in 1913 to complete his higher education at New York University. After graduating in 1917, the young Menuhin recognized his disenchantment with the developments of political Zionism and decided to remain in the United States. He settled in California with his wife and son. However, Menuhin never lost interest in Middle Eastern politics. As a conscientious Jew, he was particularly concerned about the fate of the uprooted Arab inhabitants of Palestine and the bitter dispute between the Arab countries and “Jewish” nationalists. Menuhin, along with several other prominent American Jews, helped establish Jewish Alternative to Zionism, Inc., to conduct an educational program applying Judaism’s values of justice and knowledge to the Arab–Israeli conflict.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © 1969 by Moshe Menuhin

Cover design by Andrea Worthington

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3987-1

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