On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 11:21:37 -0800 joanna <123hop at comcast.net> writes:
>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >> In Image & Reality, Norman Finkelstein argues that Zionism was a
> >> nationalist response to the reactionary European nationalisms of
> the
> >> 19th cenutry that declared the Jews to be inorganic outsiders.
> >
> It's not just Finkelstein. If you actually read the history of
> Zionism,
> if you actually read Herzel -- I have -- it's pretty clearly the
> case.
One of the interesting things about Herzl were his friendships that he enjoyed with certain anti-Semitic leaders and agitators.
Ernst Pawel in his political biography of Herzl, *The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl*, (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989). noted that while in France, Herzl often visited the homes of the financial supporters of the anti-Semitic
"La Libre Parole", a weekly that was dedicated "to the defense of Catholic France against atheists, republicans, Free Masons and Jews" and which according to Pawel was "financed in part by extortion- even a number of wealthy Jews were said to have bought immunity from attacks..." (pp. 163-164). Indeed, according to Pawel, Herzl had first met Drumont in the home of another anti-Semite, Alphonse Daudet. As Pawel put it, "Jew-baiting French intellectuals have always reserved the right to make exceptions in individual cases; Herzl, who for his part displayed a similar selective affinity for anti-Semites, passed the test and became a regular visitor to Daudet's literary salon." (p. 164).
No doubt, as a journalist who was assigned by his employers to write about events in Paris including the rise of a vocal anti-Semitic movement in France, during the early 1890s, it was a part of Herzl's job to make contact with people like Drumont and Daudet who were among the leading anti-Semitic publicists and agitators of that time. Nevertheless, he, as Pawel made clear, did feel a strange sort of affinity to these people, who seem to have been quite willing to take him into their confidence, and who would later return the favor by supporting his goal of establishing a Jewish state, which would presumably help eliminate Jews from Europe.
Pawel wrote that Herzl "found himself captivated" by these men and their ideas:
"La France Juive [of Edouard Drumont] struck him as a brilliant performance and -- much like [Eugen] Dühring's notorious Jewish Question ten years later -- it aroused powerful and contradictory emotions ... On June 12, 1895, while in the midst of working on Der Judenstaat, [Herzl] noted in his diary, "much of my current conceptual freedom I owe to Drumont, because he is an artist." The compliment seems extravagant, but Drumont repaid it the following year with a glowing review of Herzl's book in La Parole Libre."
This seems a bit strange considering that Herzl always maintained that he had become a Zionist in reaction to the court martial, on trumped up charges, of Captain Dreyfus, who was of Jewish background. The court martial of Dreyfus which was itself motivated at least in part by anti-Semitism was soon accompanied by violent agitation against Jews, cheerleaded by such folk as Eduoard Drumont and Alphonse Daudet. Herzl always insisted that it was the unjust conviction of Dreyfus that convinced him that Jewish emancipation in Europe could never succeed in enabling Jews there to live freely as equals with Gentiles, so that instead Jewish survival required the creation of a Jewish state. However, apparently Drumont was able to agree with Herzl concerning the desirability of a Jewish state. After all, anything to get the Jews out of Europe. It is also interesting to note that while the unjust court martial and conviction of Captain Dreyfus made such an impression on Herzl as to persuade him of the necessity of a Zionist movement, the later subsequent vindication of Dreyfus, who was eventually freed from Devil's Island, returned to France, with his army rank restored to him, did not make as strong an impression on Herzl. The vindication of Dreyfus came from the emergence of a movement that included intellectuals (i.e. Emile Zola, Anatole France), liberals, Socialists, trade unionists etc. who united to defeat the clericalists, monarchists, militarists, and other reactionaries who were united in supporting the verdict against Captain Dreyfus, and who had made little secret of their hostility towards Jews in general. Those people were defeated, and basically condemned to the political wilderness in France,
until WW II, when the Nazis, brought those people or their political descendents back into power with the Vichy regime.
And Herzl also managed to win the support of other anti-Semites in addition to Drumont and Daudet. Herzl's book also received a favorable review in the "Westungarischer Grenzbote", an anti-Semitic journal which was published in Bratislava by Ivan von Simonyi, a member of the Hungarian Diet. He praised both the book and its author. And indeed, he even went so far as to pay Herzl a personal visit. Pawel quoted from Herzl's diary:
"My weird follower, the Bratislava anti-Semite Ivan von Simonyi came to see me. A hypermercurial, hyperloquacious sexagenerian with an uncanny sympathy for the Jews. Swings back and forth between perfectly rational talk and utter nonsense, believes in the blood libel and at the same time comes up with the most sensible modern ideas. Loves me (D, 3/30/96)." p.267
Later too, Herzl attempted to cultivate support from V. K. Plehve, the anti-Semitic Russian interior minister, at a time when the Russian government, of which Plehve was a part of, was fomenting pogroms against the Jews. And indeed, that proved to be one of the most controversial moves that Herzl ever made, since many of the Zionists in Russia condemned him from consorting with the official that had been behind some of the bloodiest pogroms in Russia. And yet apparently, Herzl was quite convinced that he could do business with Plehve who as Pawel noted in his book, struck Herzl as being very knowledgeable concerning the Jewish situation and in conversations with Herzl expressed sympathy, with you guessed it, Zionism.
What was behind all of these attempts by Herzl and other Zionists at forging alliance with anti-Semites was their acceptance of certain shared assumptions. For both Zionists and anti-Semites, the Jews constituted a separate nation. Attempts to resolve the so-called Jewish question through emancipation and assimilation were doomed to failure since Jews and Gentiles had antagonistic interests, making it forever impossible for Jews and Gentiles to live together as equals. Jews could never hope to be accepted as "real" Frenchmen, Britons or Germans. They would be forever aliens in the Diaspora, even in countries where they had lived for centuries. Herzl and other Zionists attempted to appeal to anti-Semites on the basis of these shared assumptions, and by offering anti-Semites the prospect of a Europe that would be free of Jews.