As an ideology and organisation Zionism made its appearance at the close of the 19th century, a period of fierce class battles of the international proletariat as the transformation of capitalism into imperialism entered its final stage.
Ostensibly Zionist ideology was concerned with the setting up of a “Jewish state,” and thus could well have appeared at first sight to be at once pathetically impotent, clerically naive and rather touching even, with its high-flown phrases of the type:
“If there is a book of books—the Bible, if there is a Biblical people, then there must be a biblical land. . . .”
It should be pointed out that these words, shedding light on one aspect of the Zionist programme, were not uttered by one of the founders of Zionism long since deceased. They come from a speech by General Moshe Dayan in which he demanded unconditional annexation of the captured Arab territories. [1]
In the works of the classics of Zionism the following themes recur frequently: colonial-territorial claims; propaganda of class peace among the Jews and their unification on racial principles in individual countries and on an international scale; contraposition of the peoples of the world to the Jews as anti-Semites; moralising about the racial purity and exclusiveness of the “chosen people”; rejection of internationalism and “theoretical” substantiation of the need to split the working-class movement; and undisguised anti-communism.* Zionism emerged as an appendage of imperialist ideology, and it should therefore not come as a surprise to anyone that the forms of this “teaching” do not correspond to its real content.
[* NOTE: It should be noted that one of the demagogic methods of defending Zionism against all attacks on Zionism as a whole is to qualify them as “anti-Semitic acts”; as for attacks on Zionist ideology in particular (since formally it purports to be concerned with the setting up of a “Jewish state”), the Zionists declare them to be “encroachments” on the right of the Israeli people to self-determination. We reject these base methods just as resolutely as we support the right of the Israeli state to exist, and the right of the Israeli people to rid themselves of the services of Zionist leaders who are jeopardising their future.]
The World Zionist Organisation was founded in August 1897 in Basle at the First International Zionist Congress. Some time afterwards the World Zionist Organisation created the Jewish Colonial Trust, an international Zionist joint-stock company.
Once organised, Zionism began its activity with a fraud. Finding this “date of birth” unsatisfactory, Zionist and pro-Zionist circles energetically disseminated (for external consumption) the myth that Zionism, “seeking to set up a Jewish state,” was as old as the world, since for thousands of years “the Jews had been nourishing the hope of returning to Palestine.” Just as much attention, by the way, is paid to the dissemination of this myth today.
“Zionism is as old as the captivity of the Jewish people, when the Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar,” [2] wrote Professor Norman Bentwich, a British Zionist who had written much about Palestine, but who preferred to live in Britain most of the time.
Howard Morley Sachar, a British Zionist historian, stresses that “Zion . . . was not just the chimera of the living dead. It was enshrined in the hearts of Jews in every part of the world.” [3]
Nahum Sokolow, a prominent Zionist ideologue, asserts that Zionism has been an “ideal of thousands of years for which the best of our nation have laboured, struggled, suffered and died. . . .” [4] He is seconded by Justice L. Brandeis, one of the oldest Zionist leaders in the USA, who writes: “Since the destruction of the Temple, nearly two thousand years ago, the longing for Palestine has been ever-present with the Jew.” [5]
These quotations have been handed down from generation to generation and referred to in research papers, encyclopaedias and academic editions.
Let us for a moment forget that in the above quotations and in a vast number of other still more categorical statements, Jews are considered as existing outside time and space, independently of the particular historical context of one or other of their communities, and that the question of classes is completely ignored. Let us return to the Zionism of 1897 and presume that it was exactly what it professed to be: a system of views, a political and financial organisation whose purpose was the establishment of a “Jewish state.”
If we allow then that this was the case, the way the Zionists posed the question of the antiquity of Zionism, the thesis that Zionism “summed up and expressed” the age-old aspirations of the Jews to return to Palestine, is striking in its absurdity. For the success of the Zionist aim of setting up a “Jewish state” in Palestine at that time, once they had the necessary sums of money at their disposal (and the Rothschild bank alone had funds enough for ten Palestines), theoretically depended on two conditions—the preparedness of a considerable proportion of the Jews to move to Palestine, and the availability of support, chiefly military, from the leading imperialist powers in the matter of colonising Palestine.
But if it was true that for centuries the Jews living in different countries wanted nothing more than to move to the barren hills of Palestine, then the thesis about the antiquity of Zionism was evidently not intended for their consumption: for in that case it would have been all one to the Jews whether Zionism had appeared in the epoch of monopoly capital or whether it already existed in the 6th century B.C. We can only presume, therefore, that the myth about the antiquity of Zionism was conceived for the benefit of the rulers of the empires that existed at the turn of the century, for the purpose of enlisting their unanimous support for the projected colonisation of Palestine and the creation of a “Jewish state” there. Yet it can hardly be imagined that the Zionist leaders, skilled both in banking and politics, were ever so naive as to believe that references to genealogy or aspirations could make imperialism go half way to meet someone else’s plans.
So, we return to the question: for whose benefit was this myth created, and why?
It is extremely important to find the correct answer, for the Zionists’ seemingly innocent claims are but a screen concealing circumstances of an exceptionally serious nature.*
[* NOTE: Let us allow that here Zionist casuists can accuse us of “primitivising” the concept of Zionism and “vulgarising” the question of its antiquity. “Zionism,” they “will assert, “is ancient not only because Jews have been nourishing the hope of returning to Palestine for thousands of years, but also because Zionism is the idea of returning to Palestine kept alive over the ages.”
Zionist theoreticians shamelessly invent a “dialectical” spiral connecting the biblical Abraham with the 19th and 20th century Zionist leaders. “It is an unbroken chain stretching from the dawn of Jewish history through all generations from Abraham to our own times,” writes Nahum Sokolow.
But this screen of words falls apart as soon as we refer to candid statements of some of the less cautious Zionist leaders of the past. “Our return to the land of our fathers as promised in the scriptures,” wrote Theodor Herzl, the founder of the World Zionist Organisation, in 1900, “. . . is . . . of the greatest contemporary political interest to those powers which are seeking something or other in Asia.”]
Norman Bentwich and many of his associates set a fairly exact date for the “appearance” of Zionism—the period of the “captivity of the Jewish people, when the Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar,” i.e., the 6th century B.C.
But if we were to follow the logic of the Zionist authors, the date of the appearance of Zionism should be moved back another two centuries to the time when Israel, part of King Solomon’s realm (the other being Judah), fell under the onslaught of King Sargon II of Assyria (8th century B.C.) and thousands of Israelites were driven off to be resettled in Assyria, a usual measure resorted to by conquerors in those times. It should be borne in mind that the Israelites were engaged mainly in agriculture or trade. Israel traded extensively with Phoenicia and Syria, and lying “on the routes to Asia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, it had also become commercial (and urban), while Judah . . . remained a land of poor and conservative shepherds.” [6]
As Nathan Ausubel asserts, Sargon II not only sold Jews as slaves in the market but also sent them “to colonise selected regions of his far-flung empire.” [7] Since back in the reign of King Solomon, his subjects and also Tyrians and Phoenicians had begun to form communities throughout the vast territory of the Near and Middle East, there are no grounds for questioning the same Ausubel who believed that after Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Judah and the migration of a considerable part of the Jews to Babylonia the latter “saw in the land of their captivity large and well-rooted Jewish communities which had been established there since the eighth century. The newcomers . . . merely swelled their numbers.” [8]
In the view of many historians the class structure in the Jewish communities in Babylonia was the same as generally obtained in the area. There were farmers, craftsmen, land-owners and petty and rich traders, and slavery was practiced.
Initially community of religion, language and way of life sufficed to preserve the cohesion of a community. But these ties were bound to weaken gradually due to influence from without—under the impact of various neighbouring cultures, and as a result of frequent intermarriage and the vigorous ousting of Hebrew by Aramaic.
There is every reason to assume that traders and moneylenders made up the influential economic class in the Babylonian Jewish communities. Many historians note this circumstance. “Recently recovered cuneiform texts,” writes Lujo Brentano, a German scholar, “show that the resettled Jews were active in commerce. They practiced moneylending which was widespread among the Babylonians and were also wealthy traders.” [9]
The wealthy section of the Babylonian Jewish communities viewed this process of assimilation with apprehension, as a threat to their power: they could not hope to exert their control so effectively in an open, and still somewhat alien, society, as within a closed community. It is thus clear why one of the first, and according to James Parkes [10] the first synagogue, should have been established in Babylon, where the selfish interests of community headmen probably more than elsewhere made them aware of the need to isolate their refractory co-religionists.
The institution of the synagogue vastly enhanced the communal nature of the observance of Jewish religious rites and gripped the Jewish communities in the vice of a still more obligatory ritual. Needless to say, the entire authority of the synagogue was used exclusively to further the interests of the wealthy minority. Naturally, the transformation of the synagogues into religious, spiritual centres of the Jewish communities was a gradual process, which, moreover, did not hinder but, on the contrary, served to further the commercial and financial operations of the community hierarchy. The appearance of the synagogue, some historians contend, indirectly stimulated the transformation of the Jewish farmers in those places where they remained into urban dwellers.
It took the Jewish communities in Babylonia a relatively short time to really put down deep roots, a fact which found its religious reflection in the summons of Jeremiah the prophet: “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them. Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters . . . and multiply ye there, and be not diminished.” [11]
In 538 B.C. Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon, in an effort to strengthen Palestine out of personal considerations, issued a proclamation permitting the Jews to return to Jerusalem. But as the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain (1917) noted, “After the proclamation issued by Cyrus, the mass of the Jewish people still remained in Babylon.” [12] This view is upheld by A. T. Olmstead, a US historian, who writes: “. . . It was scarcely to be expected that the Jews already rich would abandon fertile Babylonia for the barren hills of Judah. . . .” [13]
A very significant fact illustrating the sentiments of the Babylonians is mentioned by Salo Wittmayer Baron, a US Zionist historian. Describing a somewhat later period in the life of the Babylonian Jewish community, he writes that “the Babylonian leaders insisted that in all countries prayers must be recited ‘first for the scholars of Babylonia.'” [14]
Their large numbers and wealth enabled the Babylonian spiritual “fathers” of Judaism to assert, according to Baron, that “here [in Babylon—Y.I.] rests the chain of wisdom and prophecy, and from here [not from Jerusalem—Y.I.] the Torah radiates to the whole people.” [15]
Thus the myth about the “ever-present longing” of the Jews to return to Palestine is exploded by facts relating to the first century A.D.
Describing the same period, The Cambridge Ancient History suggests that “apart from the Judaean exiles themselves [i.e., from the Babylonian community—Y.I.], it is not improbable that by this time Jews, whether associated with their Phoenician brethren or not, were beginning to be found scattered over the known world.” [16]
The settlement of Jewish communities went on in the period of Persian domination despite the fact that the authorities were well-disposed to the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine.
Jewish traders accompanied by dependent co-religionists moved in the wake of the Persian army, settled down on captured lands and supplied the army as soldier-pedlars. [17]
The 1st century philosopher and historian Philo Judaeus wrote the following about the settlement of the Jews in the Hellenistic age: “So populous are the Jews that no one country can hold them, and, therefore, they settle in very many of the most prosperous countries in Europe and Asia, both on the islands and on the mainland.” [18]
In an effort to persuade the Jews to return to Palestine (the aims pursued by the initiators of this movement will be described further on) the Zionists deliberately played up the epoch of Roman domination and particularly the uprising in Judea (A.D. 66–73) against the tyranny of the Roman Empire, and the suppression of this uprising accompanied by the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
Hoping to plant the seeds of fervid misanthropy among the Jews, the Zionists lay particular stress on the following:
(1) the brutal suppression of the revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, as supposingly illustrating one of the links in the chain of singular sufferings of the Jews, singularly brutal repressions against them throughout recorded history.* This Zionist thesis already holds the false element of exclusiveness which is essential in counterposing Jews to non-Jews;
[* NOTE: This question will also be dealt with in detail further on.]
(2) the suppression of the uprising in Judea and the repressions which followed as being one of the most decisive facts proving the “unquestionably forcible eviction of the Jews from Palestine.”
In this connection it would not be amiss to note that in the light of the destruction of Carthage, the suppression by the Romans of the revolt of the Achaean League and the disappearance of Corinth from the face of the earth, and also the stubborn, courageous struggle of the Gauls and the Britons against the Romans, the Jewish rising was no more or less heroic and its consequences no more or less sanguinary than many other episodes in the resistance to Roman rule.
As regards the forcible eviction of the Jews from Palestine, we think Leonard Stein makes an interesting point in his description of the years immediately preceding the uprising in Judea: “Flourishing [emphasis added—Y.I.] Jewish communities had long existed in Egypt and Cyrenaica, in Syria and Mesopotamia, in Italy and Greece.” Stein goes on to point out: “The Jews were dispersed long before the collapse of the Jewish State; indeed, at the opening of the Christian Era, there are said to have been about 700,000 Jews in Palestine out of something like four millions in the Roman Empire alone.” [19]
In The Ancient World Vincent M. Scramuzza and Paul L. MacKendrick write that 40 per cent of the 500,000 population of Alexandria were Jews. [20] The two American historians mention an interesting fact: after one of the clashes between the Jewish and Greek communities in Alexandria caused by their economic and political rivalry, the Roman Emperor Claudius “ordered the Greeks to respect the liberties Augustus had guaranteed to the Jews, and he warned the Jews neither to agitate for more privileges . . . nor to encourage clandestine immigration of Palestinian Jews into Egypt.” [21]
The rise of new Jewish communities went on just as intensively in the period of the expansion of the Arab Caliphate (7th century A.D.). It is common knowledge that the sovereigns of the empires which succeeded each other in the Mediterranean region brutally oppressed and exploited all the peoples they conquered, including the Jews. But, it is an historical fact that the appearance of the Arab Caliphate brought about the revival of the old Jewish community in Baghdad that had been dragging out a miserable existence in the Hellenistic age. Historian Cecil Roth shows in his History of the Jews that this community developed into a spiritual centre of the Jews living inside and outside the Caliphate. [22]
According to the authors of The Cambridge Medieval History, this period also witnessed the intensive settlement of Jewish communities in Spain, Egypt and Mesopotamia, that is, in the most flourishing provinces of the Caliphate, and the Jews had few rivals as traders in the 9th century A.D. There is evidence of them being constantly on the move between the kingdom of the Franks and China. “Ibn Khurdadhbih, the Postmaster of the Caliphate of Baghdad, gives in his Book of the Ways (c. 847) a remarkable picture of the activities of the so-called ‘Radanite’ Jewish traders, from China to Spain, in the ninth century. . . . ‘Jew’ and ‘merchant’ are used as almost interchangeable terms.” [23]
The historical facts point to the repetition of a situation vexing for the Zionists in each successive age: the routes along which, according to their view, the “idea of returning” to Palestine should have led the Jews from Babylonian times onwards, just did not coincide with the trade routes of the Jewish communities scattered throughout the world.
As we have already noted, prior to the Middle Ages wealthy traders played the leading role in the Jewish communities and the class composition of these communities did not differ from that of society as a whole. The Jewish hierarchy was vitally concerned with preserving the communities and did so with the help of the synagogue, which had first appeared in Babylon. It should be added that in the Hellenistic age, in the period of Roman domination and throughout the existence of the Arab Caliphate, Jewish communities enjoyed full autonomy in their internal affairs since this was in the interests both of the community hierarchies and of the imperial ruling circles.
As Nathan Ausubel rightly notes, self-government was of particular benefit to the governing strata of the communities in the matter of tax collecting (this being at the same time a matter of direct interest to the imperial ruling classes—Y.I.) and also as a means of forcibly imposing their own laws and regulations in the ghetto.* [24]
[* NOTE: Ghetto, district of a city to which members of a racial, professional or religious group are or were restricted by the ruling circles in capitalist or pre-capitalist states.]
In the opinion of many bourgeois historians the Jewish communities which settled in numerous countries before the Middle Ages were commercial associations. But as we see it, this conclusion is correct only insofar as it concerns the wealthy upper crust whose activity mainly determined the character of the communities and who, by virtue of economic dependence and relative isolation, were served by all members of the community representing the most diverse classes.
We can only speak of very relative isolation of the Jewish colonies before the Middle Ages. (Those who conceived the myth about the antiquity of Zionism as an “ever-present longing” to return to Palestine tried to turn even this to their advantage and formulated a thesis about the racial purity of the Jews, their spiritual unity rising above “class prejudices” and the urge of the Jews to remain just as they are in the name of their forthcoming “return to holy Zion.”)
Two tendencies clashed in the life of the Jewish communities in those times—the natural tendency of members towards assimilation, and the deliberate policy of insularism pursued by the upper crust in order to further its class interests. With alternating success this struggle went on until the Middle Ages when the socio-economic conditions engendering unbridled religious fanaticism and (once again) the economic and political interests of the Jewish hierarchy led to the erection (for a short period) of truly insurmountable ghetto walls around the Jewish communities.
The following facts prove that the Jewish communities prior to the Middle Ages were far from closed and that Zionist inferences, such as “the purity of the Jewish race,” partly based on this notion of “insularism” hold absolutely no water.
According to Olmstead, members of the Babylonian community with time stopped using Hebrew and adopted Aramaic. [25]
Jews living outside Palestine were divided into two large language groups, one speaking Aramaic, as did the Jews in Palestine, and the other Greek. [26]
Discussing the Hellenistic age, Cecil Roth writes: “Egypt was, at this time, the greatest centre of Hellenic culture. The Jews could not fail to be influenced by this fact. They speedily relinquished the language of their fathers in favour of Greek; they universally adopted Hellenic names. . . . Imitations of, and supplements to the Bible . . . were composed in Greek . . . heavily tinged with the local philosophical conceptions.” [27]
The most influential Jewish community in Spain, that of Cordova, “adopted the dress, language and customs of the Arabs,” according to The Cambridge Medieval History. [28]
One could go on and on, but these few examples should suffice.
Philo Judaeus aptly summed up the settlement of the Jews before the Christian era as follows: “And while they hold the Holy City [Jerusalem], where stands the holy Temple of the most high God, to be their Mother-city, yet those [i.e., cities of the Diaspora] which are theirs by inheritance from their fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors . . . are in each case considered by them to be their Fatherland in which they were born and reared.” [29] This was written in the first century B.C.
* * *
Karl Marx emphasised that “Judaism has survived not in spite of, but by virtue of history” [30] (emphasis added—Y.I.).
The less subtle Jewish nationalists make no bones about dubbing Marx an anti-Semite. Their more cunning brethren are continuing their efforts to reduce Marx’s concept of “Judaism” to the term “huckstering,” that is, bourgeois huckstering practiced exclusively within the framework of capitalist epoch which Marx studied.*
[* NOTE: A question which should attract the attention of Marxist scholars is the mistranslation into some languages of the term “Judentum” used by Marx.]
Evidently these word-jugglers believe that their fraud will go unnoticed.
Let us recall what Marx wrote: “Judaism has persisted alongside of Christianity not only as a religious criticism of Christianity, not only as the embodiment of doubt in the religious parentage of Christianity, but equally because Judaism has maintained itself, and even received its supreme development, in Christian society.” [31]
But of course something can only be said to persist provided it has existed up to the moment when the question of its continued existence or disappearance arises. Consequently, the concept “Judaism” (emphatically not to be qualified simply as “bourgeois huckstering”) steps across the temporal border of capitalist society and recedes into the ages.
The term “huckstering” is so adequately defined in the German language that if necessary it can be used to characterise all the activities conducted by Phoenician, Armenian, Jewish and other traders of the pre-capitalist epoch. Marx, however, does not do this. Indeed, one of the reasons why Zionists hate Marx is the fact that apart from having a collective implication, the concept “Judaism” he introduces contains a definite, accusatory characterisation of the activity (as the most typical huckstering) of the rulers of Jewish communities, the direct bearers of Judaism.
“It must not be imagined, however,” writes Cecil Roth, “that the origin of the Jewish settlement in Europe was due entirely to the slave element. Commerce is a factor more potent, though not always more prominent, than warfare.” [32]
By the beginning of the Middle Ages Jewish settlements appeared in most European countries. It is difficult to attribute this to the persecution of the Jews, as Zionists are inclined to do, for it is known that the Ottoman Empire, which had become firmly established by that time, was hospitable to all those who were persecuted in Europe on religious grounds.
The American Zionist historian, Ben Halpern, asserts that during the Ottoman period subjects of the Sultan “moved freely in and out of Palestine from other parts of the far-flung Empire, from North Africa to the Balkans. . . . The Ottoman Empire was hospitable, moreover, to refugees from Christian Europe. But the Jewish immigrants and residents were drawn to Constantinople, Damascus, or Cairo, where economic and political conditions were far more favourable, rather than to Palestine.” [33]
Many bourgeois historians hold that trade had been replaced by moneylending as the chief economic activity of the leaders of the Jewish communities in Medieval Europe.
In the 6th century A.D. the Christian Church forbade the lending of money at interest. In the 12th century the laws prescribing punishment for moneylending became particularly severe (the Muslim Church also outlawed such financial operations). [34] “Therefore,” according to The Cambridge Medieval History “though the success of these regulations was imperfect, they nevertheless tended to throw the business of moneylending more and more into the hands of those to whom canonical prescriptions did not apply,” [35] in other words, into the hands of the Judaists.*
[* NOTE: “The just man loves money more than his own flesh. . . . Carry thy money with thee” (Sota XIIa, Baba mezia, 42a).]
Medieval laws in many countries prohibited Jews from joining trade guilds, and this too caused the hierarchy of the Jewish communities to turn to moneylending; the character of the Jewish communities, as we have said earlier, was determined by the activity of their prosperous upper crust served by numerous dependent co-religionists who had nothing to do with the activity and machinations of the ruling class.
“The principal householders, indeed, might be financiers,” says The Cambridge Medieval History. “These would represent, however, only a small proportion of the total numbers. Dependent upon them, directly or indirectly, there would necessarily be numerous subordinates—agents and clerks—to help in their business; synagogal officials to carry out divine worship; scribes to draw up their business documents and to copy out their literary or liturgical compositions; tutors for the instruction of their children; physicians to care for their sick; attendants to perform household services . . . butchers and bakers to prepare their food in accordance with ritual requirements. . . .” [36]
The socio-economic order in feudal Europe that accounted for the high degree of differentiation and seclusion of social groups within each class (not to mention classes as a whole), was mainly responsible for the strict isolation of Jewish communities and the erection of the almost insurmountable ghetto walls around them.
It should be noted that the community hierarchy did not oppose the establishment of such economic, social and physical isolation, for it provided the opportunity for “maintaining the Jewish religion and all that this religion embraced” [37] (emphasis added—Y.I.).
According to the British Zionist historian H. M. Sachar, “. . . the first Spanish and Sicilian ghettos of the early medieval era were actually requested by the Jews themselves. . . .” [38] Quoting Salo Baron, A. Lilienthal, US historian and publicist, wrote that the rabbis insisted on separatism on political and religious grounds; therefore the basic laws regulating ghetto life in Portugal were passed at the request of Jews living there.
Jewish communities in Britain, France, Germany and other European countries enjoyed the “protection” of the monarchs who had a vested interest in their existence and activity since the taxes levied on them flowed directly into the royal coffers. “The average revenue derived from the Jews in northern countries,” notes The Cambridge Medieval History, “has been reckoned at about one-twelfth of the total royal income.” [39]
Religious persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages was largely due to economic motives. T. Geilikman, a contributor to the Bolshaya Sovietskaya Entsiklopediya, makes the following observation: “Not content with levying enormous taxes on the Jews, the royal authorities did as they pleased with the promissory notes issued in their name. At the end of the reign of Henry II, for example, the property of Aaron Lincoln, one of the wealthiest Jewish bankers whom the king owed £100,000 sterling, was seized by the royal treasury together with the promissory notes and mortgage deeds on land issued in the former’s name. The attitude of the ruling classes . . . to the Jews became particularly manifest during the pogrom on the eve of the Third Crusade (1190), when the English nobility, debtors of Jewish moneylenders, burned their promissory notes.” [40]
T. Geilikman further notes that “in the 13th century Lombard competition abolished the need for Jewish capital. . . . Towards the close of the century the Church increased its opposition to the Jews and in 1290 all of them were expelled from England by a decree of Edward I.” [41]
However, the migration routes of the Jews in the Middle Ages following the persecution of the Jewish communities in Portugal, Spain, England and some other countries are rather disappointing for the Zionists. As Cecil Roth writes, while in the 8th and 9th centuries the Euphrates Valley was the centre of the Jewish religion, by the 16th century it had shifted to Poland. [42]
Though fully acquainted with these facts, the Zionists (especially in matters pertaining to the Middle Ages), nevertheless, intruded into a sphere from which orthodox rabbis in some countries, including Israel, to this day are trying to evict them. Unable to manipulate with respect to the Middle Ages such terms as “Babylonian captivity” or “the second destruction of the Temple by the Romans,” they seized upon the Messianic idea—the idea of the “arrival of the Messiah and the return of the exiled”—asserting that on the one hand this idea “is an expression of the national spirit of the Jews” and, on the other, “confirmation of their ever-present longing to return to Palestine.”
But here the theologian Manasseh Ben-Israel (1606–1657) makes the Zionists uncomfortable. Having in mind the idea of the arrival of the Messiah, he asked Cromwell to permit Jewish communities to return to England. He reasoned approximately as follows: there has been no Messiah so far; God alone knows when he will arrive, but the Holy Scripture says that before returning to the “Holy Land,” the Jews have to be scattered all over the world, something which cannot be considered as accomplished, since there are no Jews in England. [43] The Jews were then allowed to return to England.
The idea of the arrival of the Messiah, adopted from Judaism by the Christian religion and Islam (as in its time Judaism had adopted its basic concepts from Zoroastrianism), was formulated, as has been repeatedly proved, to perpetuate the class society and the system of exploitation and thus deprive the exploited of the hope of ever being able to wage a successful struggle for a better future. The Zionists, however, are endeavouring to present the idea of the arrival of the Messiah as a symbol of the intellectual and physical attachment of the Jews to Palestine, as evidence of their “ever-present longing.”
Emotional attachments—especially where millions of people living on different continents, speaking different languages and subjected to the most diverse influences are involved—are a sphere upon which we shall refrain from encroaching, as the Zionists are brazenly doing, let alone from making any categorical statements about.
As regards physical attachment to Palestine, it did exist as the facts show, but in a somewhat discouraging (for the Zionists) form: according to regulations it was necessary for adherents to the Jewish faith to own land in order to be able to engage in financial operations. Therefore, some early Babylonian teachers enacted “an ordinance (taqqanah), enabling Jewish businessmen to use for that purpose the ideal claim of each Jew to the possession of four ells of Palestinian soil” [44] (emphasis added—Y.I.). Subsequent events connected with the “Babylonian captivity” are known.
“While great world tensions . . . added new zest and immediacy to messianic speculations . . . in more quiescent periods there was less urgency in messianic appeal, and some individuals may even have begun to doubt its necessity for the preservation of the Jewish faith,” wrote Salo Baron. [45]
Let the Zionists continue their polemic over this issue with orthodox rabbis and Salo Baron.
From Poland, Jewish communities began to migrate to Russia—another disappointment for the proponents of the idea of the ever-present longing for Palestine. According to A. M. Hyamson, out of the millions of Jews in the world, “there were not more than about 5,000 Jews in Palestine in 1770.” [46] At that time the number of subjects of Jewish origin in Russia alone was many times greater.
Russian tsarism subjected the Jewish poor, as it did other national groups and peoples, to repressions and brutal exploitation. The tsarist authorities established what was known as the Jewish pale. The history of the creation of the pale is described by T. Geilikman.
“In their petition,” he writes, “Moscow merchants complain that the Jews ‘engage in retail trade in foreign commodities which they themselves bring in from abroad and sell below market prices, thus causing considerable damage and disruption to local commerce. The sale of commodities at lower prices than charged by all Russian merchants is a clear indication of smuggling and evasion of taxes.'” Moscow merchants, Geilikman continues, did not even think it necessary to mask their plea with the fig leaf of religion. On the contrary, they emphasise that they are pleading to forbid the Jews to trade, to exile those that had already settled in Moscow and to expel those that had clandestinely joined the Moscow merchants “not because of any aversion or hatred for their religion” but solely because of the material damage they are causing. They did not petition in vain: Yekaterina II conceded that “the Jews had the right to join the merchants only in Byelorussia, Yekaterinoslav Vice-regency and the Tauric Gubernia. It was this law (1796) that established the so-called Jewish pale.” [47]
But it was not long before the Polyakovs, Ginzburgs and other magnates had overcome this barrier and installed themselves in luxurious mansions in Moscow and St. Petersburg, leaving on the other side of the pale tens and subsequently hundreds of thousands of benighted and indigent working Jews.
At this juncture it is necessary to make a slight digression. We firmly believe that to assert that any given nation, nationality or national group “suffered more than anybody else in the world throughout the history of mankind” is tantamount not only to deliberate misrepresentation of the historical facts in the interests of base nationalistic aspirations, but also deliberate adoption of an inverted racialist stand, an attempt to breed overt or veiled animosity to one and all and to sow discord.
It is this course that the Zionist leaders are pursuing in their efforts to rally together in the interests of the exploiters the Polyakovs, Oppenheimers, Rothschilds and other multi-millionaires and the Jewish workers and craftsmen under the biblical panoply of “a people punished by God, yet one chosen by him” and to counterpose the Jewish working people to their non-Jewish fellows. The Zionists view the era of the Jewish pale merely as good material for unscrupulous speculation on the sufferings of the Jewish working people (which were indeed extreme in certain historical periods and in certain countries). It merely serves them as an “argument” by which they seek to prove that “the sufferings endured by any other nation are not to be compared with those endured by the world Jewish nation in all times.”
It is common knowledge that the history of wars and struggle in an antagonistic class society contains numerous descriptions of acts of brutality. Every nation preserves in its memory a succession of events characterised by violence, barbarous, bloody reprisals, calamities and privations. Therefore the professional wails of the Zionists create little impression on those who know and remember such tragic episodes as the “blinding of the Bulgars,” “sitting on bones” or the transportation to America of millions of Africans in the holds of ships, some of which belonged to Jewish traders and bankers, the forbears and class brothers of the Zionists. The lot of the Jewish toilers was as unenviable as the lot of the people among whom they lived and of which they were becoming increasingly a part through common labour and joint struggle against the oppressors.
And it was not the myths of the Zionists, but the actual state of affairs that enabled Leonard Stein, discussing the years immediately prior to the rise of Zionism, to declare that for the overwhelming majority of the Jews Palestine had “long ceased to be the Palestine of concrete reality. Of its geographical position or its physical form they knew little or nothing. They were not bound to it by ties of personal affection, not haunted by memories of its sights and sounds. . . . The return of the exiles would assuredly be a return in the most literal sense. But it would not come as the result of human effort. It would come in God’s good time with the appearance of the Messiah.” [48]
In other words, Stein repeated what Philo Judaeus maintained eighteen centuries before him, and indeed it could not be otherwise, for historical facts are extremely stubborn.
The impact of the gigantic upheavals and advances in the life of the people of the whole world that accompanied the collapse of the feudal system, the rapid development of capitalism and the growth of the proletarian class in Europe, and the French bourgeois revolution, was so powerful that it shattered the medieval walls of the Jewish ghettos.
Howard Sachar writes that although in that period “most Jewish communities still managed to maintain the integrity of their religious, educational, and judicial systems, they were, nevertheless, on the verge of bankruptcy and open class warfare” [49] (emphasis added—Y.I.).
In the age of capitalism the walls of the Jewish ghettos collapsed paving the way for the unhampered assimilation of the Jews which had been interrupted for the relatively short period of the Middle Ages.
“All over Europe,” Lenin wrote, “the decline of medievalism and the development of political liberty went hand in hand with the political emancipation of the Jews, their abandonment of Yiddish for the language of the people among whom they lived, and, in general, their undeniable progressive assimilation with the surrounding population.” [50]
Examining this period Leonard Stein states in his Zionism: “The emancipated Jews of the West could no longer regard themselves as exiles living in a world apart. They had become firmly rooted in the countries of their birth, to which they were attached, not only by political allegiance but also by the closest ties of interest and affection. . . . They had ceased to be simply Jews, and as Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, or whatever it might be, they went their several ways. They could no longer rest content with the old-world doctrines of the Exile and the Redemption, which envisaged the Jews as the scattered fragments of a homeless people.” [51]
The rapid process of emancipation mentioned by Lenin cut through all obstacles barring its way and hit hard at Judaism, the mainstay of Jewish bankers, factory-owners and traders.
Delegates to an all-national conference of representatives of Reform Judaism held in Pittsburgh in 1885 unanimously declared: “We do not expect . . . a return to Palestine.” Twelve years later the Central Conference of American Rabbis passed a resolution which stated a disapproval of any attempt to establish a Jewish state: “America is our Zion.” [52]
Still earlier, in 1818, organs were installed in the Hamburg synagogues and hymns were sung in German in keeping with Rabbi Israel Jacobson’s orders. [53] Mention of Zion had already been struck out of all prayers. “Stuttgart . . . is our Jerusalem,” [54] declared a leader of Judaism in Germany.
The polarisation of forces in the Jewish communities crumbling under the impact of developments in the new age went on at a rapid pace.
Jewish working people were among the 15,000 insurgents exiled without trial or investigation by the French authorities following the revolution of 1848. At the same time “Rothschild and Bethmann loans were extended indiscriminately to the Pope, to General Louis Eugène Cavaignac in France, who crushed worker uprisings in 1848, to Metternich in Austria.” [55]
“We [Jewish workers—Y.I.] link ourselves up with armies of Socialism. . . .” [56] This appeal was heard on May-day, 1892. And it was not just words: a steadily increasing number of Jewish workers was joining the strike movement in Europe and America. At the same time “the capitalist Jew called for police assistance to put down strikes, while the rabbi hastened to assist the police with sermons from the pulpit denouncing the troublemakers.”
While Horatio Ginzburg, one of the owners of the Lena Goldmines whose father Yevzel Ginzburg was the “king” of Russia’s drinking houses, presented gifts to the royal family in gratitude for the massacre of the “insurgent” strikers, Jewish working people living within the pale declared a strike in solidarity with the Lena workers.
Analysing the struggle of the working people in Russia against the autocracy, Lenin noted that “the Jewish emancipation movement is far broader and deeper-rooted here, thanks to the awakening of a heroic class-consciousness among the Jewish proletariat. . . .” [57]
* * *
The foregoing adequately explains the desire of the Zionists to don the robes of antiquity. But the conclusions concerning the reasons that inspired them to invent the myth about the antiquity of Zionism would be far from complete were we to overlook other, no less important developments that have a direct bearing on the matter.
Long before Theodor Herzl & Co. advanced the idea of the “establishment of a Jewish state” other voices were heard, the voices of “genuine” Zionists who were actually not only the first to propose this idea but were also the first to produce the blueprints for colonising various parts of the world with the Jews providing the manpower to shoulder the severe trials that would initially face the new settlers. It was these non-Jewish Zionists who propagandised this sort of “necessity” and searched for sufficiently influential Jews who could lend a “national” character to the idea of gathering and resettling people of Jewish origin.
The first Zionists were the ruling circles of colonial powers.
“Under the authority of the Dutch West India Company . . . in 1652,” wrote Charles P. Daly, “a tract of land . . . was granted in the island of Curaçao to Joseph Nunez da Fonseca, and others, to found a colony of Jews in that island . . . but it was not successful . . .” [58]
In 1654 England was planning to settle Jews in her colony of Surinam, and France had similar plans for Cayenne.
The first attempt to colonise Palestine by settling Jews there was made by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 out of strategic considerations. But it ended just as unsuccessfully as all the preceding attempts.
Commenting on this, Nahum Sokolow writes: “. . . but since the whole expedition [Napoleon’s offensive of Syria from Egypt—Y.I.] proved a failure, Jewish opinion—not on the principle, but on the opportunity and the means—was divided.” [59]
Shortly before Napoleon’s proposed colonisation of Palestine, an anonymous letter was published in France allegedly written by a member of the Jewish community to his friend: “The country we propose to occupy shall include [liable to such arrangements as shall be agreeable to France] Lower Egypt, with the addition of a district of country, which shall have for its limits a line running from Ptolemais . . . to the Asphaltic Lake, or Dead Sea, and from the South point of the Lake to the Red Sea.”
Further on the anonymous author gives the following reasons for the occupation of this territory: “This position, which is the most advantageous in the world, will render us, by the navigation of the Red Sea, masters of the commerce of India, Arabia and the South and East of Africa, Abyssinia, and Ethiopia, those rich countries which furnished Solomon with so much gold and ivory and so many precious stones. . . .” [60] The letter naturally proposed that this wealth be shared with France.
Even Sokolow concedes that the letter had been published “at the suggestion of those then in power in France . . .” [61]
If, however, the efforts of the French colonialists to use Jews to further their own interests in the Middle East can be viewed merely as an historical episode, the steps taken in this direction by the British ruling circles should be seen rather as the consistent implementation of a well-elaborated plan.
In 1840, the leading European colonial powers struggling for influence in the decaying Turkish Empire, raised the question of the future of Syria, then occupied by Egyptian troops. On August 17, 1840, The Times carried an article entitled “Syria—Restoration of the Jews,” which said in part: “The proposition [as far as it is known, no one had tabled such a proposition—Y.I.] to plant the Jewish people in the land of their fathers, under the protection of the five Powers, is no longer a mere matter of speculation, but of serious political consideration.”
But while The Times as a semi-official organ of the British Government had to be diplomatic and stress its concern for other colonialists, there were some circles in Britain which saw no reason to conceal their actual motives and views on this matter.
The Earl of Shaftesbury, a prominent British statesman, in a letter of September 25th, 1840, to Viscount Palmerston, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, wrote that it was essential to make Syria a British dominion. He underlined that this would require both capital and labour and that capital was “of too sensitive a nature to flow with readiness into any country where neither property nor life can be regarded as secure. . . .” In conclusion Shaftesbury made the following point: “If we consider their [i.e., the Jews’—Ed.] return in the light of a new establishment or colonisation of Palestine, we shall find it to be the cheapest and safest mode of supplying the wants of these depopulated regions.” [62]
The colonial powers’ struggle for influence in the Middle East was extremely intense in the period immediately preceding and following the construction of the Suez Canal. Characterising their fierce rivalry in that part of the world, Dr. Edward Robinson (1797–1863) wrote: “France has long since been the acknowledged protector of the Roman Catholic religion. . . . In the members of the Greek Church . . . the Russians have even warmer partisans. . . . But where are England’s partisans in any part of Turkey?” [63] England sought to secure the support of the Oriental Jews (by passing an act of protectorship over them) and to persuade the European Jews to move (under her aegis) to Palestine.
On January 25, 1853, Colonel George Gauler, former Governor of South Australia and hence an experienced colonial official, declared in Parliament: “Divine Providence has placed Syria and Egypt in the very gap between England and the most important regions of her colonial and foreign trade, India, China, the Indian Archipelago and Australia. . . . Hence the providential call upon her, to exert herself energetically for the amelioration of the condition of both of these Provinces. . . and it is now for England to set her hand to the renovation of Syria, through the only people whose energies will be extensively and permanently in the work—the real children of the soil, the sons of Israel.” [64]
It is noteworthy that in his Pastoral Letter in 1854 Dr. N. Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, in effect opposed such appeals. He wrote that the destiny of the Jews lay in the hand of the Lord who commanded “not to stir, neither to awake His love until He please. . . .” [65]
But as time went on more and more people appeared who wanted to awaken Yahweh. In 1866 Henri Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross, suggested the founding of an Eastern International Society to promote the development of Palestine “with the participation of the people of Israel.” He pointed out that “influential men in France, England, and elsewhere are favourably disposed to the scheme.” [66]
Such “collective ownership“, however, was not calculated to suit the British. Writing at the close of his political career the Earl of Shaftesbury noted in the press: “Syria then will be a place of trade pre-eminence. And who are pre-eminently the traders of the world? Will there, when the coming change has taken place, be any more congenial field for the energies of the Jew? . . . And has not England a special interest in promoting such a restoration? It would be a blow to England if either of her rivals should get hold of Syria.”
It is difficult to accept that a Christian pastor, the Reverend James Neil, could have been unaware that according to Judaistic canons it was God himself through his Messiah who was to gather all the Jews together in the shadow of Holy Mount Zion. Not at all embarrassed by this circumstance and in compliance with the interests of the English ruling circles he wrote in 1877 in his book, Palestine Re-peopled: or Scattered Israel’s Gathering, that owing to the heat, the difficulties caused by the Arabs, lack of efficient protection and the like it was doubtful whether English people could colonise Palestine as successfully as they had North America. He suggested, therefore, that the Jews be used for this purpose.
The British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith wrote in his diary that his successor Lloyd George used roughly the same logic. Describing a discussion of one of the numerous plans for gaining possession of Palestine, Asquith observed: “Curiously enough, the only other partisan of this proposal is Lloyd George, who I need not say does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of . . . ‘atheistic France.'” [67]
In the 1870s the Syrian and Palestine Colonisation Society was founded in England “to promote the colonisation of Syria and Palestine and the neighbouring countries by persons of good character, whether Christians or Jews.” [68] The time was ripe for the emergence of Zionism: the time had come when, as the early 20th century Zionist leader Max Nordau put it, if Zionism had not existed “Great Britain would have had to invent it.” [69]
As we have seen the World Zionist Organisation was founded in 1897. In 1902 the Jewish Colonial Trust was created, an international Zionist joint-stock company, which according to Nahum Sokolow “is the financial instrument of the Zionist movement, and its main object is the industrial and commercial development of Palestine and the neighbouring countries.” [70]
Commenting on these developments, he wrote: “All the great achievements of British peaceful [?] conquests encouraged the Zionist Movement with its trusts and funds. Cecil Rhodes, with only a million pounds to start with, created Rhodesia with its 750,000 square miles. The British North Borneo Company has a capital of £800,000 and dominates over 31,000 square miles. The British East African Company, which administered 200,000 square miles, began with the same amount as the Jewish Colonial Trust, namely £250,000.” [71]
At first the Jewish Colonial Trust issued shares to the sum of £2,000,000. A great deal of noise was raised around this Zionist colonial undertaking. Zionist leaders went out of their way to advertise their newly created corporation calling it “pan-national Jewish” offspring and property. But this was nothing more than ballyhoo intended for the credulous.
In the light of Nahum Sokolow’s unambiguous admissions, it is perfectly clear that Zionism did not appear as a movement, and least of all a popular movement, but as a capitalist enterprise. The shareholders in the new corporation were wealthy dealers from many countries and their salesmen were Zionist leaders. Organisationally Zionism took shape as a colonial enterprise closely connected with imperialist circles, its needs served by the international association of Zionists.
It was this state of affairs that enabled Baron Edmond de Rothschild to declare shortly before the First World War that but for him the Zionists would not have moved a step, and that at the same time without the Zionists his efforts would have been futile.
Zionism appeared as a phenomenon alien not only to the Jewish working people who were struggling together with the working class of their countries for a better future, but for the overwhelming majority of people of Jewish origin living in all parts of the world. It was this circumstance that enabled Leonard Stein to assert:
“To the emancipated Jews, who desired nothing so little as to attract unnecessary attention, he [the Zionist—Y.I.] was an enfant terrible. To the Reformers, who saw in Zionism, not a mere inconvenience, but a menace to spiritual values which they sincerely prized, he was equally obnoxious. To the ultra-Orthodox, at the opposite side of the scale, he was little better than an unbeliever engaged in a presumptuous attempt to force the hand of the Almighty.”
Nevertheless, Zionism did make its appearance. What were the basic reasons? Let us briefly formulate them here, by way of a summary of the foregoing.
1. Rivalry between Britain and France (and later Germany too, following her national consolidation) in the Middle East, which was still within the boundaries of the rickety Ottoman Empire, and the struggle for its final partitioning compelled each colonial power (well aware by the turn of the century that the days of unrestrained colonisation were over and each fresh “colonial acquisition” was likely to provoke sharp military counter-measures by its rivals) to find plausible excuses for expanding its sphere of influence.
The idea of resettling the Jews in Palestine (and, as we shall see, into any country that happened to be of immediate interest), long since nourished by British ruling circles, appeared to provide the best possible opportunity for “respectable” colonisation. (Even Bismarck, who intended to settle the Jews along the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, planned to use this idea.) Such projects, however, could not be carried out without human resources, which England for one for many years sought in vain to secure.
Consequently, the British, French and German imperialists were definitely interested in assisting the forces prepared to carry out the mutually advantageous enterprise of colonising Palestine, or, like Bismarck, other parts of the Ottoman Empire.
2. The exacerbation of the class struggle at the turn of the century forced imperialism to consolidate and support all forces that in one way or another opposed the international proletarian movement, class solidarity and the struggle of all working people.
It follows, therefore, that the rulers of all the major European states without exception were objectively interested in a phenomenon such as Zionism.
3. The process of class differentiation, the disintegration of the Jewish communities, and the desire of the Jewish working people in all countries to throw off the control of community leaders led people from the upper strata of the communities to coalesce in order to re-establish and consolidate their erstwhile hegemony in any form, and thus establish full control over the Jewish working masses.
Consequently, there were also concrete political prerequisites for the formation of the World Zionist Organisation.
In other words, Zionism arose as an attempt of the pro-Imperialist Jewish bourgeoisie to re-establish the control (now by bourgeois sections) lost by the leaders of the Jewish communities over the Jewish masses, to retard “their undeniable progressive assimilation with the surrounding population” (Lenin), to create in each country and on an international scale a political and physical reserve capable of being utilised in the interests of Zionism’s chief ally and senior partner, namely, the strongest imperialist power at a given time. This attempt found its embodiment in the Jewish Colonial Trust and the World Zionist Organisation.
Plainly the “Jewish state” slogan acquired, in the concrete conditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a purely “instrumental” nature. Zionist leaders had never viewed the creation of a “Jewish state” as an end in itself, but as a means for attaining other, bigger goals—the re-establishment of control over the Jewish people, the greatest possible enrichment for the sake of power and parasitical prosperity, and the defence and consolidation of imperialism.
The myth of the antiquity of Zionism which is being spread to this day was conceived for the purpose of concealing the actual class content of Zionism, its real aspirations and designs, erasing from the memory of people the real date of its birth and the causes that engendered its rise, and convincing the Jews in all countries that Zionism was what they had wanted all their lives, although, for some reason, they failed to realise it.
References
1. The Jerusalem Post (weekly), August 14, 1967, p. 4 (retranslated from the Russian).
2. Bentwich, N., Palestine, London, 1934, p. 60.
3. Sachar, H. M., The Course of Modern Jewish History, N.Y., 1963, p. 265.
4. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, London, Vol. I, p. xi.
5. Brandeis, Justice L., On Zionism, N.Y., 1942, pp. 24–26 (quoted: Levenberg, S., The Jews and Palestine, London, 1945, p. 42).
6. Scramuzza, V. and MacKendrick, P., The Ancient World, N.Y., 1958, p. 85.
7. Ausubel, N., The Book of Jewish Knowledge, N.Y., 1964, p. 126.
8. Ibid.
9. Brentano, L., Das Wirtschaftsleben der antiken Welt, Jena, 1929, S.80.
10. Parkes, J., End of an Exile, London, 1954, p. 92.
11. Jeremiah, 29–5, 6, 6.
12. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. II, p. 106.
13. Olmstead, A. T., History of the Persian Empire, Phoenix Books, Chicago, 1960, p. 57.
14. Baron, Salo W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., Vol. V, N.Y, 1957, p. 25.
15. Ibid.
16. The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. III, p. 407.
17. Ibid., Vol. VI, 1927, pp. 137, 143.
18. Ausubel, N., The Book of Jewish Knowledge, p. 127.
19. Stein, L. Zionism, London, 1925, p. 13.
20. Scramuzza, V. and MacKendrick, P., The Ancient World, p. 599.
21. Ibid., p. 600.
22. Roth, C., History of the Jews, N.Y., 1963, pp. 151–55.
23. The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. VII, 1932, p. 644.
24. Ausubel, N., The Book of Jewish Knowledge, p. 119.
25. Olmstead, A. T., History of the Persian Empire, p. 481.
26. The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. VI, p. 559.
27. Roth, C., History of the Jews, p. 91.
28. The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. III, p. 429.
29. Ausubel, N., The Book of Jewish Knowledge, p. 127.
30. Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 1, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1969, S. 374.
31. Ibid.
32. Roth, C., History of the Jews, p. 136.
33. Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1961, p. 105.
34. The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. II, p. 156.
35. Ibid., Vol. VII, p. 643.
36. Ibid., Vol. VII, p. 650.
37. Sachar, H. M., The Course of Modern Jewish History, p. 27.
38. Ibid., p. 29.
39. The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. VII, p. 648.
40. [Cyrillic text].
41. Ibid.
42. Roth, C., History of the Jews, p. 267 et seq.
43. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. I, p. 18.
44. Baron, Salo W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Vol. V, p. 27.
45. Ibid., p. 150.
46. Stein, L., Zionism, p. 17.
47. [Cyrillic text].
48. Stein, L., Zionism, pp. 20–21.
49. Sachar, H. M., The Course of Modern Jewish History, p. 27.
50. Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 100.
51. Stein, L., Zionism, pp. 24–25.
52. Lilienthal, A., What Price Israel, Chicago, 1953, p. 16.
53. Ausubel, N., The Book of Jewish Knowledge, p. 234.
54. Sachar, H. M., The Course of Modern Jewish History, p. 149.
55. Ibid., p. 131.
56. Ibid., p. 289.
57. Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 100–01.
58. Daly, Charles P., The Settlement of the Jews in North America, N.Y., 1893 (quoted: Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. I, p. 57).
59. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. II, p. 222.
60. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 221.
61. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 66.
62. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 230.
63. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 118.
64. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 138.
65. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 243.
66. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 259.
67. Edelman, M., Political Biography of Ben-Gurion, London, 1964, p. 55.
68. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. II, p. 273.
69. Max Nordau to His People, N.Y., 1941, p. 57.
70. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. II, p. 371.
71. Ibid., Vol. II, p. xlvii.
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