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قراءة كتاب Zionism and Anti-Semitism

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Zionism and Anti-Semitism

Zionism and Anti-Semitism

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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Christians,—all their professions to the contrary notwithstanding. And it continues for several reasons. One is its long duration; it has lasted for ages and is ingrained in their feelings and ideas. What if it be shown ever so clearly that it is unjust, unreasonable, yea, even unchristian!—that will not materially change the temper of the great masses of the people. The common man is rarely swayed by the force of arguments; the power of a principle, so weighty with the thinkers, is of no consequence to him. He belongs to the material world, and to make good his place in it is the aim toward which all his energies are bent. For things spiritual he has neither time nor capacity. He is ruled by the sentiments which were implanted in him in his youth and by his immediate surroundings. All thinking must be done for him; all new ideas must be presented to him, as it were, ready made and in tangible form. He does not push himself forward, but must be led onward by hands that understand him and his ways. But in this instance, his guides are not particularly anxious to bring about a change for the better,—even if we suppose that they consider the liberation from prejudice against the Jews a betterment. They have their own theological difficulty to contend with. The Jews are still unconverted, and the missions established and maintained for the purpose of winning them over can show no better results now than in the past. The chief controversy between the Church and Israel stands to-day where it stood when it was first raised at Jerusalem eighteen centuries ago. A judicial sentence of a court at Jerusalem has grown into a pivotal point on which, as the Church declares, turns the salvation of mankind for time and eternity; and if she is right, the Jews must be wrong. Since that fatal occurrence, Christianity, in one form or another, has conquered Europe and America, and has planted outposts in almost every part of the earth, but has not been able to subdue the Jew. Every conceivable means to make him surrender has been tried, including that of the jailor and the executioner and all the horrors that lie between them,—expulsion, pillage, social degradation, impaling in ghettos, and what not—but in vain. The same policy is continued to this day as far as the present more civilized state of the Christians permits; but still in vain. So far are their persecutors from having brought the Jews to their knees, that the self-consciousness of the race, as a whole, has deepened; and their advance in general culture enables them to measure swords, intellectually, with their accusers and to give a reason for the faith that is in them.

All the conditions of this interminable conflict are against them. In numbers they are a vanishing minority, and still more weakened by their dispersion over the face of the earth, unorganized, without any ecclesiastical authority in their Church that could direct them or act in their name. Every individual Jew must face the world's hostility single-handed, and be, religiously, his own priest, his own pope. Allies he has none, advocates of his cause are few and far between. The favors of his friends are often more humiliating than the attacks of his enemies. Still he holds his own, and if for the last century or so he has carried on a reformation of his ancient rituals, he has done so from his own initiative and in his own way, which is not that into which it has been tried so long to force or to lure him. At the same time a revival of Jewish literature has taken place which not only has brought to light the long-forgotten treasures of the past, but has shown the large part the Jews have in the general progress of mankind. The ecclesia triumphant has no victory to record in this section of her battlefields, and it is not in ordinary human nature frankly to admit a defeat in such an unequal struggle. Only one had a right to expect that a Church that claims to have regenerated the human race and to have lifted the slave of his blind instincts into "the glorious liberty of the children of God" would have risen superior to the common weakness. Instead of that, almost throughout Christendom, the crusade against the Jews is being preached and the policy of repression loudly demanded.

On what ground? It is said that they dominate everywhere—in finance, in law courts, in politics, in art, in literature, in the press, in trade and manufacture. But how do they achieve this astounding feat? How do the Jews succeed in so lording it over the immense majority? By witchcraft? Is it by magic that a few bankers and brokers keep all their competitors in subjugation and handle them at their will and to their own profit? Is it by sorcery that they force their way to the universities and academies? Are they in possession of secret formulas by which they can direct the currents of trade at their will? Recently, loud complaints were raised in several of the German state parliaments that there were too many Jewish judges and lawyers in their lands, and the governments were exhorted to put an end to the scandal. No charges of incompetency or exploitation were raised against the Hebrews that "handle the law." Only it was declared that a Christian shrunk from taking an oath at the hand of a Jewish lawyer. If this be so, how is it that the people go to them in numbers that excite the envy of their non-Jewish colleagues? All the statements about the alleged power of the Jews are ridiculous exaggerations, trumped up to scare the imagination of the thoughtless, as has been proved over and over again. But even reduced to their true measure, they prove, not the possession of magic, but of soundness of mind, of unimpaired energy, and of all the other needful conditions for success, which the Jews have kept intact despite all the attempts made to crush the unbelievers into the dust. The outcry against them is their vindication; people do not fear weaklings, do not raise alarms against perils which can be pushed aside by an effort of the will. The few must own inherent sources of strength if the many resort to the coward's weapon of lies and slander. And in this instance the admission of the truth is an implied homage to the religion which the victors in the unequal struggle profess and defend. For it is indisputable that this is the source to which the formation of the Jewish mind and heart must be attributed. Let me cite, for one proof, the admission of the most persistent and most powerful oppressor of the Jews, the procurator of the Russian synod. Half the number of all Hebrews are subjects of Russia. They came under her dominion when she conquered and incorporated the Polish provinces; they are kept there under the most stringent laws, and life is made to them as burdensome as possible. "The Pale" is a gigantic ghetto where the oldest form of rabbinism prevails to this day. Yet the same fear of the superiority of the Jewish mind haunts the government; it is the alleged reason for practically closing up all the avenues of the higher education for them. Only three per cent of the total number of students are admitted to the universities and to the technical schools. But more than a hundred thousand common soldiers are drafted from the Jews into the armies and sent to all parts of the gigantic empire, kept there during the best part of their lives, without any prospect of promotion, and often going only to die in the defense of territories which, if they were civilians, they would not be permitted to enter. The Russian Torquemada, not long ago, openly declared that not a single Jew should be permitted to settle amongst the peasantry, even within the Pale, because he would be

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