Are the Jews a Race? now appears for the first time in English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under the title Rasse and Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, already included a number of important additions and improvements, particularly the new chapter entitled Zionism After the War; for the present English version, the author has revised and brought up to date the second German edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine.
Zionism Before the War
Wherever the Jew – we mean the Eastern European Jew, still far from assimilation – may come, he is regarded as a foreigner among foreigners. He is nowhere certain even to be tolerated. The reactionary American workers, who keep out the Chinese and Japanese, who keep Negro workers out of their organisations, are equally opposed to Jewish immigration. The beginnings of such an attitude are already apparent. The Jew is secure against oppression only in a state in which he lives not as a foreigner, in a state – therefore – of his own nationality. Only in a real Jewish state will the emancipation of Judaism be possible.
This is the guiding thought of Zionism. Even among the circles of Western European Judaism, this idea has in recent years been replacing the idea of assimilation, of equality of rights within the existing states, which had until recently been dominant among the Jews. Zionism is coming more and more in conflict with this thought, for as assimilation progresses, the national Jewry loses in strength. It is therefore necessary to segregate Jews as sharply as possible from non-Jews.
Zionism meets anti-Semitism halfway in this effort, as well as in the fact that its goal is the removal of all Jews from the existing states.
The agreement between Zionism and anti-Semitism on these points is so strong, that there have even been Zionists who expected much gracious assistance in the realisation of their objects from the head of the Orthodox Russian nation, from the fountain-head of anti-Semitism all over the world, from the Czar of Russia.
Zionism is not a progressive movement, but a reactionary movement. Zionism aims not at following the line of necessary evolution, but of putting a spoke in the wheel of progress.
Zionism denies the right of self-determination of nations, instead of which it proclaims the doctrine of historical rights, which is breaking down everywhere today, even where it is supported by the greatest powers.
There is hardly any possibility that the Jews in Palestine will become more numerous than the Arabs. But every attempt made by the advancing Jewry in that country to displace the Arabs cannot fail to arouse the fighting spirit of the latter, in which opposition to the Jews the Arabs of Palestine will be more and more assured of the support of the entire Arab population of Asia Minor, in whose eyes the Jews appear as foreign rulers or as allies of the English oppressor.
It is a delusion to imagine that the Jews arriving from Europe and America will ever succeed in convincing the Arabs that Jewish rule in this country will ever redound to the advantage of the Arabs themselves.
In the early days of Zionism, people were blind to this difficulty. Little more attention was paid to the Arabs than was paid to the Indians in North America. Only occasionally is it remembered that Palestine is already an occupied country. It is then simply assumed that its former inhabitants will be pushed aside in order to make room for the incoming Jews. Ballod, for instance, discusses as follows the question of what is to be done in the way of claiming all of Palestine for Jewish colonisation:
“In the case of a mass colonisation, mere individual purchases of land from the Arab proprietors of large holdings would not be sufficient; on the other hand, in order that real-estate prices may not rise to fabulous heights, a Jewish chartered company must be given the right to expropriate land in return for adequate compensation.” [9] Ballod also says that the petty peasants, the fellahs, will not provide much trouble. In his opinion, they would “gladly leave Palestine if they should be offered opportunities elsewhere, for instance in Northern Syria or Babylonia, if the latter is to be reawakened to life by large-scale engineering operations, to obtain better conditions”. But who is to offer them these “better conditions”?
But the fact now is that England has won the war, and the Arabs have become as burdensome to England as they, once were to the Turks. The Zionists now present the reverse side of the medal and extol the Jewish colonists in Palestine as England’s allies against the Arab aspirations for independence.
In spite of all these changes, one condition remains permanent: the dependence of Jewish colonisation on the victorious European great powers, and the opposition of the colonists to the Arabs. Both are necessary results of the given economic and political conditions, and each of the two factors gives strength to the other in rapid alternation. Here we find the profoundest cause for the untenability of Zionism. Jewish colonisation in Palestine must collapse as soon as the Anglo-French hegemony over Asia Minor (including Egypt) collapses, and this is merely a question of time, perhaps of the very near future.
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