Hello! I wrote this piece for myself earlier in 2024 when I was reading up on Israeli/Palestinian History. I have a more humorous piece planned for next week, but while I am working on that I figured people may be interested in something more academic like this. My goal was to help myself understand and formate my own opinions on a very charged topic nowadays: Zionism. Since my footnotes did not carry over I will link the original Google Doc at the bottom if you would like to access them. Hope you enjoy!
Cheers
-Lex
Introduction
The younger generations desperately need clarification on the origins of Zionism; with this paper, I aim to dispel some of the narratives and clarify what early Zionist thinkers believed. Frequently, we hear that Zionism is some evil concept that people equate with Nazism; however, this paper challenges this perception with a firsthand look at the very Zionist pioneers of the nineteenth century. A large misconception among the common populace is that Zionism manifested around the eve of the end of WWII, and it exists as a movement to displace Palestinians and maintain an ethno-fascist Jewish state. At no point does the paper intend to discount the instances of the horrific and tragic conditions the Palestinians have had to live through over the past 76 years; it merely desires to challenge the commonly held notion that Zionism is premised on the suffering of Palestinians; instead, it was and is primarily interested in the liberation of Jews.
There are three primary works referenced here when explaining early Zionist thought: Moses Hess’ Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question, Leon Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation, and Theodore Herzl’s Der Judenstaat. These three men and their works are the basis for the Zionist movement that began in the 1880s but kicked off around the second Aliyah (migration of Jews to Palestine) in the early 20th century. Notably, the former two had influences on Theodore Herzl, who is considered the father of modern Zionism.
I have broken the core of my essay into six themes of early Zionist works I identified throughout the three seminal works; it is not concerned with explaining to you the historical backgrounds of each of the authors; instead, their statements will explain how they viewed their standing and Jewish existence in the world. The six themes I have identified are: Jews are alien in European society as opposed to foreign, complicit in their suffering, destined to redeem Eretz Yisrael (the former Kingdom of Israel), to be expected to sacrifice legal emancipation in the diaspora and labor for the future Jewish state, and that the rebirth of the Jewish state will bring a mutualistic partner for the rest of the world.
For some impediments to Zionism outlined here by the authors, I will only address the prescriptions given for them if they are relevant to analyzing the themes. Some of these themes are motivating factors for Zionism, the themes of alienation and complicity, and some are integral to Zionism's success, the themes of sacrifice, labor, and redemption. The mutualism principle found in all works is held as an inevitable outcome of Zionism’s success and a motivating factor for non-Jews to assist them in their Zionist project.
Concluding will be a contemporary analysis of statements made by recent Israeli politicians (mainly Jewish) and how the birth of Israel out of these Zionist themes shaped their perception of the world and the more significant Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I propose a novel idea on why Jewish Israelis have a remarkably divergent perspective on international politics and political institutions such as the UN, and the origins can be found in the Jewish struggle and thought as far back as the nineteenth century outlined in this essay.
Alien
To begin, what do these authors mean by Jews as “aliens”? To many, especially young Americans, who hear that word, they will immediately think of the contemporary use to be a slang or derogatory term for “undocumented immigrants.” But the term “alien” when applied to Jews in the nineteenth century was, to these Jewish authors, a fate much worse than being an undocumented immigrant. In the case of the undocumented immigrants, they are still foreigners, a people with an origin, but to the Jews, they were less than foreigners; they were viewed as utterly unnatural in their existence in European society. What led to the decline of Jews to alien status, according to Pinsker in Auto-Emancipation, originates in the downfall of the Jewish country and the manifestation of the Jewish ghost.
With the loss of their country, the Jewish people lost their independence, and fell into a decay which is not compatible with existence as a whole vital organism. The state was crushed before the eyes of the nations. But after the Jewish people had ceased to exist as an actual state, as a political entity, they could nevertheless not submit to total annihilation -- they lived on spiritually as a nation. The world saw in this people the uncanny form of one of the dead walking among the living. The Ghostlike apparition of a living corpse, of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bonds of unity, no longer alive, and yet walking among the living -- this spectral form without precedence in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could but strangely affect the imagination of the nations. And if the fear of ghosts is something inborn, and has a certain justification in the psychic life of mankind, why be surprised at the effect produced by this dead but still living nation. A fear of the Jewish ghost has passed down the generations and the centuries. First a breeder of prejudice, later in conjunction with other forces we are about to discuss, it culminated in Judeophobia.
This ghost is the product of a people without a country, a should-be-dead society still walking the Earth, merely living as a “spiritual nation.” As opposed to having a homeland with which one can rally around a flag, the Jews lived through this spiritual nationalism in the diaspora, the communities across the globe Jews lived in after multiple conflicts, displacements, and exiles. The origin of the Jewish diaspora does not have a specific start date. Often, claims erroneously cite 70 AD as the beginning after the destruction of the second Temple at the hands of the Romans; this claim has been debunked by historians such as Erich S. Gruen, who noted the Jewish presence throughout parts of the Roman Empire before the siege of Jerusalem. Enough, however, on the origins of the Jewish diaspora; that topic could take up many books alone. The primary issue for Jews living in the ghostly form described above is that they were viewed as so unnatural to the rest of European society the alienation of their existence became inevitable. In a foreigner, a native person may view an enemy, but one who represents a state; in a Jew, Pinsker finds his people the beggars of humanity:
One distrusts the foreigner but does not trust the Jew. The foreigner has a claim to hospitality, which he can repay in the same coin. The Jew can make no such return; consequently he can make no claim to hospitality. He is not a guest, much less a welcome guest. He is more like a beggar; and what beggar is welcome! He is rather a refugee; and where is the refugee to whom a refuge may not be refused?
The foreigner embodies a different people’s will, with a culture, their organs, around a skeleton, their state. The Jews may have a culture, but they had a defeated state, which in many ways is worse than never having a state at all; they represent a people that should no longer be, not one that never had been. For foreigners like a German man, in Pinsker’s words, he is
proud of his Teutonism, the Slav, the Celt, not one of them admits that the Semitic Jew is his equal by birth; and even if he be ready, as a man of culture, to admit him to all civil rights, he will never quite forget that his fellow-citizen is a Jew. The legal emancipation of the Jews is the culminating achievement of our century. But legal emancipation is not social emancipation, and with the proclamation of the former the Jews are still far from being emancipated from their exceptional social position.
Pinsker hints at the proof of the Jewish ghost in his ending proclamation. Even though the Jews might gain legal rights under the law through legal emancipation, they will forever remain husks, having evaded social emancipation despite their best efforts throughout history. Social emancipation is accepting a group of people by members of society through processes like assimilation. An example of legal and social emancipation is the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the integration of Italian immigrants throughout the twentieth century, respectively. Both writers, before and after Pinsker, pointed out that despite the tireless efforts of the Jews to assimilate, they would never be free from discrimination and, therefore, never experience social emancipation. As Hess puts in Rome and Jerusalem, such a goal is pointless.
No reform of the Jewish religion, however extreme, is radical enough for the educated German Jew. But the endeavors are vain. Even conversion itself does not relieve the Jew from the enormous pressure of German Anti-Semitism. The German hates the Jewish religion less than the race; he objects less to the Jews' peculiar beliefs than to their peculiar noses. Neither reform, nor conversion, nor emancipation throw open to the Jew the gates of social life, hence their anxiety to deny their racial descent. Moleschott, in his Physiological Sketches (p. 251), tells how the son of a converted Jew used to spend hours every morning at the looking-glass, comb in hand, endeavoring to straighten his curly hair, so as to give it a more Teutonic appearance.
The contention Hess makes is that the innate qualities of the Jews make it impossible for anti-semitic Germans to accept them into society, no matter how cultured they may be. A Jew may have legal rights, but no Jew will ever have friends out of the kindness of a European’s heart. Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, concurs.
We have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so. In vain are we loyal patriots, our loyalty in some places running to extremes; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow-citizens; in vain do we strive to increase the fame of our native land in science and art, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In countries where we have lived for centuries we are still cried down as strangers, and often by those whose ancestors were not yet domiciled in the land where Jews had already had experience of suffering. The majority may decide which are the strangers; for this, as indeed every point which arises in the relations between nations, is a question of might. I do not here surrender any portion of our prescriptive right, when I make this statement merely in my own name as an individual. In the world as it now is and for an indefinite period will probably remain, might precedes right. It is useless, therefore, for us to be loyal patriots, as were the Huguenots who were forced to emigrate. If we could only be left in peace....
It is the tragedy of Jewish existence that even by people who had yet to call a land their home in which Jews had already suffered, Jews were viewed as less than. So, in the alien existence of the Jew and the impossibility of social emancipation, we find a chief motivating factor for Zionism. The desire to resurrect the Jewish state, to exercise the Jewish ghost, and to give the Jews the ability to stand on an equal footing with the Europeans and protect themselves from anti-semitism. When the Jews have their state, they will no longer be an alien but a foreigner who represents a land.
Complicity
Something quite astonishing was that, although not central to the authors' arguments for Zionism, complicity came up at critical points throughout their books when addressing roadblocks to Zionism’s potential success. Complicity, in their view, means that Jews are partially to blame for the lack of enthusiasm for the redemption of a Jewish state and are, therefore, contributing to their suffering. A significant problem with the prospect of a Zionist project is that through the course of thousands of years in exile, many Jews had become accustomed to or advocated against the need for the revival of the Jewish nation, as Pinsker put it.
the greatest impediment in the path of the Jews to an independent national existence is that they do not feel its need. Not only that, but they go so far as to deny its authenticity. In the case of a sick man, the absence of desire for food is a very serious symptom. It is not always possible to cure him of this ominous loss of appetite. And even if his appetite is restored, it is still a question whether he will be able to digest food, even though he desire it.
To him, it is twofold: not only do not enough Jews currently (1882 at the time of publishing) feel the need for the state, but should they cure the resistance to the food of Israel, the ability to accomplish such a goal will be a herculean task. Evolving from his previous concept of the Jewish ghost and the subsequent alienation of Jews, Pinsker views this phenomenon as created by Jewish enemies and maintained by Jewish “patriots.”
Our tragedy is that we can neither live nor die. We cannot die despite the blows of our enemies, and we do not wish to die by our own hand, through apostasy or self-destruction. Neither can we live; our enemies have taken care of that. We will not recommence life as a nation, live like the other peoples, thanks to those over-zealous patriots, who think it is necessary to sacrifice every claim upon independent national life to their loyalty as citizens -- which should be a matter of course. Such fanatical patriots deny their ancient national character for the sake of any other nationality, whatever it may be, of high rank or low. But they deceive no one. They do not see how glad one is to decline Jewish companionship.
Pinsker shows much more compassion for the sick men and the patriots of the Jews than Hess does, as Hess outright labels the root of the Jewish struggle against their national revival at the feet of the progressive reformers of the time. Hess believes these Jews ignorantly expected legal emancipation along with efforts to assimilate to bring about social acceptance.
These legal and religious precepts and commandments, which permeate the whole life of the Jew, are condemned and mocked at by blockheads, who have not the least conception of the patriotic significance of these precepts and who consider themselves progressive only because they have turned their back on the traditions of their people. It is the same tendency which came to the front immediately after the appearance of Mendelssohn and which caused Mendelssohn himself pain and aggravation. During the life of Mendelssohn, there emerged those "Modern Jews" who measure the degree of enlightenment and education one possesses by the amount of his disregard for Jewish customs, and who finally graduated into State service by presenting a conversion certificate as their diploma.
To Hess, the pointless attempts at assimilation of the Jews have a dual effect; not only does it exacerbate the conditions of Jews in the current middle class by increasing their presence within European society, therefore increasing anti-semitism, but it also further erodes the Jewish customs sacrificed in the efforts to assimilate. A contemporary example of this erosion is immigrants who, once living in the United States, gave up their native language as the primary tongue for their children in favor of English. While assimilation in the United States has been largely successful, for the Jews, after 2000 years of failure to Hess, it was time to move on towards the regeneration of the Jewish state. Reiterating the alien nature of the Jews in tandem with the complicity of Jews in their future demise, Hess declares them delusional.
As long as the Jew endeavors to deny his nationality, while at the same time he is unable to deny his own individual existence, as long as he is unwilling to acknowledge that he belongs to that unfortunate and persecuted people, his false position must daily become more intolerable. Wherefore the illusion? The European nations have always considered the existence of the Jews in their midst as an anomaly. We shall always remain strangers among the nations. They may tolerate us and even grant us emancipation, but they will never respect us as long as we place the principle ubi bene ibi patria [where it is good, there is the homeland] above our own great national memories.
The denial outlined here is that the progressive Jews find themselves in one in which they desire to cease as a nation at the cost of joining another while not realizing the door to that European society remains locked despite their sacrifices. The clock is running out, and Jews must no longer tolerate such a mindset and move for the revival of the Jewish nation. Herzl had a kinder approach to criticizing the progressive Jews outlined in Pinsker’s work as “practical people.” Rather than single out Jews, he broadly states these practical people are those who exist through the fallacious belief that “this is how it has always been; therefore, it is how it should always be” are a main detrimental factor to the rise of his desired Zionist movement.
A scheme such as mine is gravely imperilled if it is opposed by "practical" people. Now "practical" people are as a rule nothing more than men sunk into the groove of daily routine, unable to emerge from a narrow circle of antiquated ideas. At the same time, their adverse opinion carries great weight, and can do considerable harm to a new project, at any rate until this new thing is sufficiently strong to throw the "practical" people and their mouldy notions to the winds. In the earliest period of European railway construction some "practical" people were of the opinion that it was foolish to build certain lines "because there were not even sufficient passengers to fill the mail-coaches." They did not realize the truth—which now seems obvious to us—that travellers do not produce railways, but, conversely, railways produce travellers, the latent demand, of course, is taken for granted.
Herzl’s practical people have similarities to Pinsker’s sickly man without an appetite, as in both cases, they misbelieve the facts of their reality. The practical person sees his future not as a potential forest but simply as the tree he has always been, and the sickly man cannot even recognize that he is a tree in dire need of water. The denial of the practical and sickly men is derivative of Hess’ critique of progressive reform-oriented Jews. For Zionism to succeed and the Jewish nation to be reborn, these Authors demand the problem of complicity be solved.
Redemption
The destined redemption of the land of Israel by the Jews as a result of their divine survival comes up quite a bit throughout these works. This destined redemption motivates and creates a future national myth. I do not claim here that the survival of Jews is false, no instead that the survival of Jews leading up to the founding of the state of Israel is not predicated on a divine message to them to redeem the land of Israel. National Myths exist in all cultures, the most important being the myth of origin (shared ancestral beginning). Still, they are fictitious retellings of where a people came from or the ideal of a nation. A contemporary American example is the idea that Christopher Columbus discovered the new world, which led to the founding of America as the natural progression of humanity.
To reiterate, it is a fact that Jews survived in the diaspora for thousands of years through discrimination, wars, displacements, and violence; what these authors do is take that existence and turn it into a foundational myth for the future state of Israel. Hess does this frequently, often citing the uniqueness of the Jews in history and their attachment to the land of Israel.
The Jewish race, throughout the world, possesses the ability to acclimatize itself more than all other races.
Just as in the native land of the Jews, Palestine, there grow plants of the southern and of the northern zones, so does this people, of the temperate clime, thrive in all zones.
Here, Hess is proclaiming that Jews are attached to the soil of Palestine, so much so that it explains their survival in the diaspora. In his telling, the Jewish race is unlike all others in terms of versatility and adaptability. Falsely, he also proclaims that the Jews were the only ancient people that still existed at the time.
We observe that every modern people, every part of modern society, displays in its activity as an organ of humanity a special calling, then he must also determine the importance and function of the only ancient people which still exists to-day, as strong and vigorous as it was in days of old, namely, the people of Israel.
Hess’ descriptions are fictitious and come off quite radical, something ubiquitous in Rome and Jerusalem as he often wrote grandiosely, discussing the coming revolution of the working men. Hess himself wore influences of Marx and Hegel throughout his writing and believed that for the Jews to participate in such a revolution, they needed their state. However, Herzl phrases this national myth from a more believable origin, turning it into a rallying cry.
Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has survived such struggles and sufferings as we have gone through. Jew-baiting has merely stripped off our weaklings; the strong among us were invariably true to their race when persecution broke out against them. This attitude was most clearly apparent in the period immediately following the emancipation of the Jews. Those Jews who were advanced intellectually and materially entirely lost the feeling of belonging to their race. Wherever our political well-being has lasted for any length of time, we have assimilated with our surroundings. I think this is not discreditable.
Herzl portrays Jews as inevitable in their existence, and the Jews who the antisemites have purified through “Jew-baiting,” that is, the temptation of social assimilation and enlightenment, are merely lightening the load of the weight that the faithful Jews need to carry onward to redeem the land of Israel. He notes that Jews have existed throughout the world, maintained a presence, and turned it into something with a more significant meaning, the beginning of a national myth. Still, even Herzl was not immune to absolute descriptions of Jewish resilience.
Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has survived such struggles and sufferings as we have gone through.
Hess juxtaposes the proclaimed certainty of Jewish success to prior heroic accomplishments of the Jews, such as the return from Babylonian exile.
There are two epochs that mark the development of Jewish law: the first, after the liberation from Egypt; the second, after the return from Babylonia. The third is yet to come, with the redemption from the third exile.
Through this juxtaposition, Hess wanted to motivate his fellow Jews through the eyes of their past liberations, saying that they alone can do it as they have done before. Pinsker opted for a more rational approach when arguing in favor of why the Jews should redeem the land of Israel and restore the Jewish nation to its state:
The struggle of the Jews for national unity and independence as an established nation not only possesses the inherent justification that belongs to the struggle of every oppressed people, but it is also calculated to win the support of the people by whom we are now unwanted. This struggle must become an irresistible factor of contemporary international politics and destined for future greatness.
Pinsker believes that redemption is inevitable, but it is also entirely based on reality and is a righteous cause. Using the phrase “the struggle of every oppressed people” helps peel away the alienation of Jews from other people, as if this part is understood by all people who can empathize with the Jewish plight. Pinsker’s entire approach through Auto-Emancipation is short and to the point; he quickly explains why the Jews are in their predicament and opens a call to them to fix it with the solution of the redemption of the Jewish nation through the revival of the state of Israel.
Sacrifice & Labor
I combine here the two themes of sacrifice and labor as they go hand in hand to arrive at the goal of Zionism, which is the revival of the Jewish state. Above, I described how the myth of destined redemption is foundationally set up through all these works; a national rallying cry is only as good as the prescriptions to accomplish such a goal. All of these authors, while maybe some truly believed in the divine, knew that to achieve the destined redemption, they would have to set forth an actionable plan. Herzl goes in-depth about the institutions of the Zionist project, but the call to action is in all three of these authors asking world Jewry to sacrifice a wide range of things and labor the land to which they deem they will build the future Jewish state. Without any doubt, Hess makes it clear that the revival of the Jewish state is, above all else, quintessential for the survival of Jews.
The “new” Jew, who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality, is not only a deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his race and even to his family. If it were true that Jewish that Jewish emancipation in exile is incompatible with Jewish nationality, then it were the duty of the Jews to sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter. This point, however, may need a more elaborate explanation, but that the Jew must be above all a Jewish patriot, needs no proof to those who have received a Jewish education. Jewish patriotism is not a cloudy Germanic abstraction, which dissolves itself in discussions about being and appearance, realism and idealism, but a true, natural feeling, the tangibility and simplicity of which require no demonstration, nor can it be disposed of by a demonstration to the contrary.
Hess views the sacrifice of all former life in the diaspora, all potential benefits through legal emancipation Jews have gained, and the reformations Jews have made to assimilate as all worth giving up for Jewish nationalism. He combines such a call for necessary sacrifice with suggesting the superiority of Jewish patriotism while reiterating the certainty of its rise and future success. Patriotism is intrinsic to the Jew, and therefore, all who renounce it renounce their Judaism. The sacrifices made by Jews are followed by a call for those Jews to commit to work and manual labor to tend to the fields of the future Jewish state. Pinsker emphasizes the need for the land to be fertile and inalienable.
If we already knew where to direct our steps, were we compelled to emigrate again, we could surely make a vast step forward. We must set vigorously to work to complete the great task of self-liberation. We must use all the resources which human intellect and human experience have devised, instead of leaving our national regeneration to blind chance. The territory to be acquired must be fertile, well-situated and sufficiently extensive to allow the settlement of several millions. The land, as national property, must be inalienable. Its selection is, of course, of the first and highest importance, and must not be left to off-hand decision or to certain preconceived sympathies of individuals, as has, alas, happened lately. This land must be uniform and continuous in extent, for it lies in the very nature of our problem that we must possess as a counterpoise to our disposition one single refuge, since a number of refuges would again be equivalent to our old dispersion.
At the time of writing, Pinsker hesitated to make an immediate call because the destination of the Jewish state was unknown. Early Zionist groups like the Bilu and Hibbat Zion would enact their migration toward Palestine, but Palestine was not the inevitable destination of the Jews. Regardless of these current troubles, Pinsker wanted all efforts, capital, and intelligence to be spent on solving the problems of the Jews; no other issue was more pressing or deserved their attention. The uniformity of land is essential to Pinsker as the diasporic existence was the dilution of Jewish power by living spread throughout the world; they must live together, for only their future can be entrusted to themselves. Upon this land, Herzl described what the first migrants to the Jewish state were entrusted to do.
Our unskilled laborers, who will come at first from the great reservoirs of Russia and Rumania, must, of course, render each other assistance, in the construction of houses. They will be obliged to build with wood in the beginning, because iron will not be immediately available. Later on the original, inadequate, makeshift buildings will be replaced by superior dwellings. Our unskilled laborers will first mutually erect these shelters; and then they will earn their houses as permanent possessions by means of their work—not immediately, but after three years of good conduct. In this way we shall secure energetic and able men, and these men will be practically trained for life by three years of labor under good discipline.
Herzl favored the poor and working class as the first to establish the state's foundation through their sheer numbers; he desired these men to be rejuvenated from their poor condition and become able-bodied through their work, that redemption of the land through the people would, in turn, redeem the very people themselves. It is precisely this class of people who he claims are the future Jewish conquerors.
Will people say, again, that our enterprise is hopeless, because even if we obtained the land with supremacy over it, the poor only would go with us? It is precisely the poorest whom we need at first. Only the desperate make good conquerors.
Herzl could not have been discussing conquering people such as the Palestinians at the time of writing as, once again, the location of the future Jewish state was still undecided. The conquest is the redemption of the land and the people, the work it takes to make such an enterprise a reality. The poor who have suffered at the hands of the stereotyping and branding of Jews the most but without any of the privileges of the Jewish enlightened class will be the ones to lead the Jews into their salvation, not the elites. Notably, this adventure would be a multi-way streak, that it would not be solely the poor and working men paving the path, but they would build the foundation of the Jewish state with their own structural support as prescribed by Herzl.
The refined requirements of life introduced by our officials in good positions will create a correspondingly improved market, which will continue to better itself. The married man will send for wife and children, and the single for parents and relatives, as soon as a new home is established "over there." The Jews who emigrate to the United States always proceed in this fashion. As soon as one of them has daily bread and a roof over his head, he sends for his people; for family ties are strong among us. The Society of Jews and the Jewish Company will unite in caring for and strengthening the family still more, not only morally, but materially also. The officials will receive additional pay on marriage and on the birth of children, for we need all who are there, and all who will follow.
Herzl calls for the necessary temporary leave of a man from his family to provide for a more fantastic future. Combined with the organizations set up, they offer incentive programs for these people to allow them the room to make such sacrifices. It was essential to Herzl that his movement did not force anyone into migration but gave them a reason to desire migration.
Our beloved graves we must abandon—and I think this abandonment will cost us more than any other sacrifice. But it must be so. Economic distress, political pressure, and social obloquy have already driven us from our homes and from our graves. We Jews are even now constantly shifting from place to place, a strong current actually carrying us westward over the sea to the United States, where our presence is also not desired. And where will our presence be desired, so long as we are a homeless nation? But we shall give a home to our people. And we shall give it, not by dragging them ruthlessly out of their sustaining soil, but rather by transplanting them carefully to a better ground. Just as we wish to create new political and economic relations, so we shall preserve as sacred all of the past that is dear to our people's hearts.
As with calls from both Hess and Pinsker, their works end with a righteous plea to all Jews to rise and labor for the promised future they have laid out.
March forward, ye noble hearts! The day on which the Jewish tribes return to their fatherland will be epoch making in the history of humanity. Oh, how will the East tremble at your coming! How quickly, under the influence of labor and industry, will the enervation of the people vanish, in the land where voluptuousness, idleness and robbery have held sway for thousands of years.
The national regeneration of the Jews must be initiated by a congress of Jewish notables. No sacrifice should be too great for this enterprise which will assure our people's future, everywhere endangered.The financial execution of the undertaking does not present insurmountable difficulties. Help yourselves, and God will help you!
They reiterate that all must make sacrifices, that emancipation from their oppression will come through Jewish work, not a foreign savor. Hess, in particular, was influenced by the liberating impact labor could have on the proletariat class, but I will explain that distinction below. Pinsker states that the enlightened class should launch the Jewish project, but the call to help oneself is directed at the everyday man.
Mutualism
For lack of a better term, I have identified a theme I deem “Mutualism” throughout early Zionist literature. The concept is premised on the fact that the success of the future Jewish state is predicted to be highly beneficial for the rest of the world, not only the Jews. Repeatedly, the authors acknowledge that the Zionist project will need friends to succeed, but how do you convince the very people who hate you to help you achieve your goal? By presenting the Jews’ success not as a zero-sum game but rather a positive one, the authors attempt to leverage the interests of dominance in European and American states’ minds in their favor. There are two approaches to mutualism, appeal to class and appeal to stat/nation, taken by Hess and Herzl, respectively.
Hess identifies three spheres of maturity: the cosmic, organic, and social. Two of these three have matured fully, the cosmic at the perfection of the solar system and the organic (nature) at the beginning of humanity. The social sphere, in Hess’ view, was undergoing metamorphosis into its final form; the social sphere would fully mature once the final racial and class struggle ended, in which the concepts would cease to exist, and there would be a tremendous egalitarian end. If my explanation needs to be improved, I will put his exact quote here.
This age of maturity began, in the cosmic sphere, with the satellites or double stars and ended with the perfection of the solar systems; in the organic sphere, it began with the prehistoric period, and finally came to completion in the historic races of mankind. In the social sphere, it is not yet completed; it is at present developing its last race and class struggle, in order to bring about a reconciliation of all opposites and to establish an equilibrium between production and consumption, and finally to reach that perfected and harmonious course of life which characterizes every age of maturity.
The harmonious age is almost upon the world, and all nations are preparing to destroy labor exploitation. Hess views the theme of labor as part of the redemption of Israel, thereby destroying the workers' alienation from the profits of their labor. The alienation described in this instance is not the alien existence of the Jews (though I contend there is some overlap) but is a concept defined by Karl Marx as a separation of the worker from what they produce induced by the capitalistic exploitation of labor. The redemption of Israel through Jewish labor would be the reunification of labor because the product they create would be their future state and not an alienated world apart from themselves. However, as opposed to Marx, Hess was more concerned that Jews would not be able to participate in such a revolution unless they were able to move their nation back to such an “ancestral soil.”
The civilized nations are at present making preparations for a common exploitation of Nature. This will be carried on by means of labor based on scientific principles, all social parasites being excluded. They are preparing themselves for the new era through struggles for free national soils, by attempts at abolishing race and class rule, by endeavoring to organize an Association and by the cooperation of all the forces of production. In this Association, the antagonism between capitalistic speculation and productive labor, as well as the contrast between philosophic speculation and scientific work, will simultaneously disappear. I know well that the need of wholesome and just labor conditions, which should be based solely on the exploitation of Nature by man, is also strongly felt in Jewry. I know of the great efforts which are being exerted on the part of the Jews to train our younger generation as useful laborers. But I know also that the Jews in exile, at least the majority of them, cannot devote themselves successfully to productive labor; in the first place, because they lack the most necessary condition-an ancestral soil; and, secondly, because they cannot assimilate with the peoples among whom they live without at the same time denying their national religion and tradition.
It is this desire and belief that Jews needed a homeland to be part of maturing the social sphere of life that drove Hess, along with the rising antisemitism, to desire a redemption of the Jewish state; you can even see such scathing critiques and demands of Jews in pursuit of this goal.
The Jewish people will participate in the great historical movement of present-day humanity only when it will have its own fatherland. As long as the great Jewish masses remain in their low position, even the relatively few Jews who have surrendered their national traditions, in order to escape the fate of the Jewish people, will be more painfully affected by the position of the Jews than the masses, who feel themselves only unfortunate but not degraded. Hence, no Jew, whether orthodox or not, can conscientiously refrain from cooperating with the rest for the elevation of the entire Jewry. Every Jew, even the converted, should cling to the cause and labor for the regeneration of Israel.
So, while Hess was obsessed with appealing to the world proletariat class as a means of attaching the Jewish state to the future revolution against capital's exploitation, Herzl was much more interested in appealing to states and nations that would reap the benefits of the creation and success of a Jewish state.
After the departure of the Jews the undertakings which they have created will remain where they originally were found. And the Jewish spirit of enterprise will not even fail where people welcome it. For Jewish capitalists will be glad to invest their funds where they are familiar with surrounding conditions. And whereas Jewish money is now sent out of countries on account of existing persecutions, and is sunk in most distant foreign undertakings, it will flow back again in consequence of this peaceable solution, and will contribute to the further progress of the countries which the Jews have left.
Herzl pleads that all the Jewish progress that has helped raise the world will not cease with their absence; the Jews will simply be migrating to a new place. The world will see a temporary decline in investment, but once the Jewish state arises, such Jewish capital will flow back in much more significant progress and amount. The social relief established by Jewish migration will leave the European world with both future Jewish investment and free of social unrest caused by the presence of Jews. In pursuit of this goal, Herzl concludes with dual calls that the Jews who want such a glorious future through their labor can have it and for the world to realize how much they have to gain by supporting such a cause.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again. Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes. The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.
Herzl’s reference to the Maccabeans is again a contribution to a national myth in the sense that the modern-day Jews will rebel against oppression and redeem the land, which has been redeemed numerous times before. He finishes with a strong call that the freedom of the Jews will free the world of the Jews, and both will be better off for it. Such a rationale played into Herzl’s concept that he could wield the hatred of Jews by anti-Semites into supporting the Jews’ cause for leaving the antisemitic nations. In his eyes, the Jews did not want to live near antisemites, and the antisemites would be glad to see the Jews go, so they were perfect partners in the cause for the revival of the Jewish state.
A Thought on Contemporary Jewish Israeli Attitudes
I want to share a quick thought while reading these early Zionist works. The call is, of course, for Jews to help themselves through labor and sacrifice and migrate to a future Jewish state and build it from the ground up. Naturally, they knew they needed to convince other states to assist them, but in no case did they believe it would be anyone but Jews leading the Zionist movement. When reading contemporary Jewish Israeli politicians and scholars like Shlomo Ben-Ami, a member of the peace negotiations during the Ehud Barak Prime Ministry between 1999-2001, consider this sentiment from his latest book, Prophets Without Honor.
It is a despicable flaw of the UN system that the application of the lofty principles of universal justice should be conditioned by the global balance of power and that the world’s most notorious abusers should be allowed to posture as the guardians of human rights in UN agencies.
A whole book could be written on the rocky relationship between the United Nations and Israel, but that is for another day. When looking at the Zionist-Arab, and now Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from a Jewish point of view, for some two thousand years, Jews lived in diasporic destitution; at the turn of the twentieth century, a liberation movement began, which ultimately led to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 amidst of a civil war. The war was not fought with British or American troops, though diplomatically, the Jews had support; only weapons were purchased from Czechoslovakia; in the Jews’ view, they built the state through political savviness and defeated those that would prevent them from finally having a Jewish state.
So how must they feel about institutions like the UN coming to consistently defend the Palestinians and acting as advocates for them when for two millennia the international community and states did not help the Jews, yet the second the Jews have an opponent for territory, the community that had ignored the Jews comes to (again in the Jewish perspective) rescue of the Palestinians. It is from this perspective that I believe you find a lot of Jewish frustration with the international community. They feel they are comparatively better and deserve praise, and for two thousand years, they were left to rot. Still, the moment they finally do something about their situation, the world stops everything to help the fallout of the multiple Jewish-Arab wars over the past seventy-six years.
Consider the theme of Complicity, that the Jews felt the agency of some of their fellow Jews was being used in a way that detracted from the goal of liberation. These Jewish authors identified and knew they must take action against such obstacles, even if it meant disavowment. The same Jewish-Israeli thought that led to the birth of their state now looks at the Palestinians as being treated as a group without agency or need to take responsibility for their actions. This group does not need to disavow the worst parts of it. Jewish-Israelis, from their perspective, are probably repulsed by the infantilization of the Palestinians by the international community, when for two millennia, the utmost was required of the Jews to pull themselves out of the destitute situation they were in.
I make no judgments on these conflicts in this paper, but it is imperative to investigate the origins of Jewish-Israeli discontent with international organizations. The less seriously the state of Israel takes these institutions, the less likely it will be able to institute change in the region. Given that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, it would be a very dark hour if it lost even more of the trust in the international community.
Conclusion
I hope I provided a holistic overview of early Zionist thought and illuminated that the movement is premised on Jewish liberation, not Palestinian suffering. This clarity may not help those struggling with the past 76 years of violence; it is the unfortunate truth of history that liberation movements can have the same effect as movements with less honorable goals. Settler-colonial movements of the past two centuries often replaced, killed, and exploited populations all over the world. I do not consider the Zionist project a very clearly liberation-oriented movement, settler-colonial (in the traditional sense), though much like many other topics, that is another paper entirely. Still, there is a solid argument to make that the results of both movements are similar. So, while Zionism is absolutely based on liberation, consequences of such liberation can be and has involved suffering.
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