Jewry Must About Face!

This is the last of a series of six articles, presented in the belief that the viewpoint of the younger American Jew, with his roots in this country, is of vital interest at this time.

VI

The question of Zionism will loom hard on any Jewish horizon. Our attitude as a group, just as it must be nonpolitical, must be neither pro—nor anti-Zionist. It has room in its membership for people of all shades of Zionist opinion, as well as those who are bitterly opposed to Zionism.

However, surveying Zionism in much the same manner as Jewish rights are surveyed anywhere else in the world, we must take the attitude that what is ours shall not be taken away from us. Certainly England, by written promise, dedicated herself to the support of this proposition and at the same time the promise was made meant the establishment of a Jewish country. This was at a time when Jews were being bitterly persecuted in Russia and England evidently sought to win the support and sympathy of Jews in the neutral countries, who felt that a haven of refuge should be created for the hard pressed, victimized Jews of Eastern Europe. This support she gained and it was of material advantage to her during the World War.

Since that time, dealing with weak leaders and realizing that as an effective unit the Jews are a joke, apathetic and disunited, England felt quite free to disavow her word and to quibble on the terms of the agreement. All she was to gain by this action was the possible placating of a group of savage and fanatic Arabs.

Not only did she not aid Jewish emigration to Palestine as she clearly promised to do, but she deliberately sabotaged the Jewish endeavor in every conceivable manner.

Contrary to the mandate, she first sliced off two-thirds of Palestine to create Trans-Jordania, a papier-mache country which Jews aren’t even allowed to enter, though this prohibition does not apply to non-Jews and though residents of Trans-Jordania are free to enter into Palestine.

She has reduced immigration to the pitiful maximum of 14,000 a year at a time when the Jews of Europe are being mercilessly assaulted, when their need of a haven is the greatest. At the same time, she allows Bedouin Arabs to cross the borders without restraint, and to take advantage of the fine labor of the pauperized Jews of pogrom countries.

ALLOWS RICH TO ENTER

She magnificently allows wealthy Jews to enter Palestine, but it must be pointed out that it was the intention of the mandate to provide a haven above all for Jews who came as working men, as tillers of the soil.

In considering this situation we must first of all recognize that it has been promised to us. We must next of all consider that Palestine is very necessary to the Jews. It could provide Jewry with a seat on the League of Nations, where its word could be heard officially. Zionists exist to whom it is the land of dreams. It is a haven of refuge for persecuted Jews, who once uprooted, as they are in Germany, have no other place to go to mend their shattered lives.

From all of these viewpoints a united Jewry cannot agree to England’s contemptible tactics in attempting to ruin the Jewish enterprise which has been so dearly paid for in blood, suffering and sacrifice. It is our duty to see that this word is kept.

ENGLAND VULNERABLE

England is a small, highly industrialized nation and highly vulnerable. Even her experience with the Irish, whom she similarly mistreated over a considerable period, proves that. The determined hatred of Irishmen for England the world over, finally forced the British to yield.

If a united Jewry had it pointed out to them continuously that England, with all its hypocritical sympathy, was a more dangerous foe of Jewry than Germany, since she is deliberately sabotaging the only effort which will enable the ruined and terrorized Jews of mideastern Europe to escape the hell they are in, a condition might eventuate which would cause English politicians to change their attitude.

Immediate notice, therefore, should be served upon them that, if they adhere to their contract, a Jewish Palestine would like nothing better than to be a free and integral portion of the British Empire. England would have a loyal and devoted State bordering the highly strategic Suez Canal. If they did not adhere to their word, a united Jewry can be made to understand the condition and to hate England with single-minded bitterness, much as the Irish did.

CAN GET WIDE SUPPORT

In all countries priests, ministers and pastors of all denominations can be interested in the defense of the Jewish adventure in Palestine, as indeed a great many are now. It is, incidentally, part of the Protestant credo that the millennium will only be reached when Palestine once more becomes Jewish and the decided sympathy of a large body of Protestants can be subsequently cultivated and gained.

We should point out to the world that of all people the Jew, with his natural inclination towards personal independence, is the most natural anti-Communist. Only where the Jew is broken and in despair, willing to turn towards anything which will rescue him from chaos, will he turn like many of the Russian Jews under the Czar, to a radical philosophy. The Jews in Palestine, if left to their own artifices, will develop into a sober, industrious people, a bulwark against international disorder.

It will be argued that there is not room for the persecuted Jews of Europe in Palestine. The reply will have to be that whether there is or not we should not yield a jot of what is ours.

A VIRILE PEOPLE

Moreover, the Jews are basically a virile, conquering people. Pacifism is only a passing phase with Jewry. Once established in Palestine the Jew will seize the great, mighty desert that lays just outside its borders to make room for his tortured brothers in the Diaspora. There is room in this vast desert, needing only energy to make it fertile, for all the Jews in existence and still leave space for ten times as many Arabs as there are. A virile nation will certainly not allow an arbitrary Mandate boundary to box them in, and in this respect can be relied on to settle their own problems.

This new nation might even become a haven for the persecuted Christian refugees of Europe, who will certainly experience the tortures under the Romans if the rising Nazi tide establishes itself everywhere, so it need no longer be afraid of the opinion of Christian nations. Christianity is, after all, the child of Judea and a Jewish nation, built on the Jewish traditions, could not allow these refugees from pagan torture to perish.

No one who is even half an observer can avoid realizing that our young Jews are being taught to be self-seeking and contentious. Individual ambition has become our Mammon. The old fierce, proud soul of Judah has become a distorted, unrecognizable thing.

History will again teach the cold lesson which it has unfailingly taught in the past, that a loss of faithfulness, devotion and the spirit of individual sacrifice constitutes an actual degeneration. Its fingers clutching us as a group will finally clutch us each individually; the unfortunates of Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania and Algeria can bear mute testimony to this.

Our realism is not realism at all as history is proving once more. It is simply a mad seeking of individual shibboleths and a courting of destruction.

As an undisciplined mob with no hegemony of spirit, no factor of unity save the suppressive devices of our enemies- we are a pitiful, uninspiring lot. If Jewry is interested in even the most elementary axioms, it will stop cringing and wailing. It will become pridefully aware that the principal condition to happiness and survival is an inherent strength and binding force of its own.

WILL HATE SELF

Otherwise outer coercion must finally reduce its soul to abject bitterness. Churning desperately for relief from unbearable persecution Jewry will turn half its detestation upon its mother for bringing it into the world. Hateful and pitiful, it will hate itself. Its emotions shattered, our people will be flung far from the path of world destiny. Its broken soul will grovel in the future annals of mankind until deserted one by one by its spiritually-maimed sons, it will deservedly perish.

This is the swift harsh coming of tomorrow, senility and death unless we justify our right to live. The world’s frontiers are shrinking. There is no longer room for the weak and timid to hide. Unless we reach back again into the Jewish way of life, becoming once more strong, vital, disciplined and haughty, fate will spew us into oblivion.

Men of fiber and courage would not dare leave this formidable prospect to their unfortunate children. Pridefully they will take up the challenge for the future determined that the coming generations at least shall not be stricken with the disease of this one. From their bold, eager eyes will gleam the determination that their children will be care-free and happy, proud in the love for that which the past has handed them.

Resolutely we must go forward as men, in a world where weaklings can ask for nothing but the miserable right to die.

The End