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Zionism and Anti-Semitism:
A Strange Alliance Through History

Allan C. Brownfeld

It has, for many years, been a tactic of those who seek to silence
open debate and discussion of US Middle East policy to accuse critics
of Israel of oanti-Semitism.o

In a widely discussed article entitled oJAAccuseo (Commentary,
September 1983), Norman Podhoretz charged AmericaAs leading
journalists, newspapers and television networks with oanti-Semitismo
because of their reporting of the war in Lebanon and their criticism
of IsraelAs conduct. Among those so accused were Anthony Lewis of The
New York Times, Nicholas von Hoffman, Joseph Harsch of The Christian
Science Monitor, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, Mary McGrory, Richard
Cohen and Alfred Friendly of The Washington Post, and a host of
others. These individuals and their news organizations were not
criticized for bad reporting or poor journalistic standards; instead,
they were the subject of the charge of anti-Semitism.

Podhoretz declared: oa The beginning of wisdom in thinking about this
issue is to recognize that the vilification of Israel is the
phenomenon to be addressed, not the Israeli behavior that provoked it
a We are dealing here with an eruption of anti-Semitism.o

To understand Norman Podhoretz and others who have engaged in such
charges, we must recognize that the term oanti-Semitismo has undergone
major transformation. Until recently, those guilty of this offense
were widely understood to be those who irrationally disliked Jews and
Judaism. Today, however, the term is used in a far different way u one
which threatens not only free speech but also threatens to trivialize anti-Semitism itself.

Anti-Semitism has been redefined to mean anything that opposes the
policies and interests of Israel. The beginning of this redefinition
may be said to date, in part, from the 1974 publication of the book
The New Anti-Semitism by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein,
leaders of the Anti-Defamation League of BAnai BArith. The nature of
the onewo anti-Semitism, according to Forster and Epstein, is not
necessarily hostility toward Jews as Jews, or toward Judaism, but,
instead a critical attitude toward Israel and its policies.

Later, Nathan Perlmutter, when he was director of the Anti-Defamation
League, stated that, oThere has been a transformation of American
anti-Semitism in recent times. The crude anti-Jewish bigotry once so commonplace in this country is today gauche a Poll after poll
indicates that Jews are one of AmericaAs most highly regarded groups.o

aSemitically Neutral PosturesA

Perlmutter, however, refused to declare victory over such bigotry.
Instead, he redefined it. He declared:

The search for peace in the Middle East is littered with mine fields
for Jewish interests a Jewish concerns that are confronted by the
Semitically neutral postures of those who believe that if only Israel
would yield this or that, the Middle East would become tranquil and
the WestAs highway to its strategic interests and profits in the
Persian Gulf would be secure. But at what cost to IsraelAs security?
IsraelAs security, plainly said, means more to Jews today than their
standing in the opinion polls a

What Perlmutter did was to substitute the term oJewish interestso for
what are, in reality, oIsraeli interests.o By changing the terms of
the debate, he created a situation in which anyone who is critical of
Israel becomes, ipso facto, oanti-Semitic.o

The tactic of using the term oanti-Semitismo as a weapon against
dissenters is not new. Dorothy Thompson, the distinguished journalist
who was one of the earliest enemies of Nazism, found herself
criticizing the policies of Israel shortly after its creation. Despite
her valiant crusade against Hitler, she, too, was subject to the
charge of oanti-Semitism.o In a letter to The Jewish Newsletter (April
6, 1951) she wrote:

Really, I think continued emphasis should be put upon the extreme
damage to the Jewish community of branding people like myself as
anti-Semitic a The State of Israel has got to learn to live in the
same atmosphere of free criticism which every other state in the world
must endure a There are many subjects on which writers in this country
are, because of these pressures, becoming craven and mealy-mouthed.
But people donAt like to be craven and mealy-mouthed; every time one
yields to such pressure one is filled with self-contempt and this
self-contempt works itself out in a resentment of those who caused it.

A quarter-century later, columnist Carl Rowan (Washington Star, Feb.
5, 1975) reported:

When I wrote my recent column about what I perceive to be a subtle
erosion of support for Israel in this town, I was under no illusion as
to what the reaction would be. I was prepared for a barrage of letters
to me and newspapers carrying my column accusing me of being
oanti-Semitico a The mail rolling in has met my worst expectations a
This whining baseless name-calling is a certain way to turn friends
into enemies.

What few Americans understand is that there has been a long historical
alliance u from the end of the 19th century until today u between
Zionism and real anti-Semites u from those who planned pogroms in
Czarist Russia to Nazi Germany itself. The reason for the affinity
many Zionist leaders felt for anti-Semites becomes clear as this
history emerges.

Theodor Herzl

When Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, served in
Paris as a correspondent for a Vienna newspaper, he was in close
contact with the leading anti-Semites of the day. In his biography of
Herzl, The Labyrinth of Exile, Ernst Pawel reports that those who
financed and edited La Libre Parole, a weekly dedicated oto the
defense of Catholic France against atheists, republicans, Free Masons
and Jews,o invited Herzl to their homes on a regular basis.

Alluding to such conservatives and their publications, Pawel writes
that Herzl ofound himself captivatedo by these men and their ideas:

La France Juive [of Edouard Drumont] struck him as a brilliant
performance and u much like [Eugen] DnhringAs notorious Jewish
Question ten years later u it aroused powerful and contradictory
emotions a On June 12, 1895, while in the midst of working on Der
Judenstaat, [Herzl] noted in his diary, omuch of my current conceptual
freedom I owe to Drumont, because he is an artist.o The compliment
seems extravagant, but Drumont repaid it the following year with a
glowing review of HerzlAs book in La Parole Libre.

In the end, Pawel argues, oParis changed Herzl, and French
anti-Semites undermined the ironic complacency of the Jewish would-be
non-Jew.o Yet Herzl was not entirely displeased with anti-Semitism. In
a private letter to Moritz Benedikt, written in the final days of
1892, he writes: oI do not consider the anti-Semitic movement
altogether harmful. It will inhibit the ostentatious flaunting of
conspicuous wealth, curb the unscrupulous behavior of Jewish
financiers, and contribute in many ways to the education of the Jews a
In that respect we seem to be in agreement.o

HerzlAs book Der Judenstaat (oThe Jewish Stateo), was widely
disparaged by the leading Jews of the day, who viewed themselves as
French, German, English or Austrian citizens and Jews by religion u
with no interest in a separate Jewish state. Anti-Semites, on the
other hand, eagerly greeted HerzlAs work. HerzlAs arguments, Pawel
points out, were oall but indistinguishable from those used by the anti-Semites.o One of the first reviews appeared in the
Westungarischer Grenzbote, an anti-Semitic journal published in
Bratislava by Ivan von Simonyi, a member of the Hungarian Diet. He
praised both the book and Herzl, and was so carried away with his
enthusiasm that he paid Herzl a personal visit. Herzl wrote in his
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.

After the barbaric Kishinev pogrom of April 1901, when hundreds of
Jews were killed or wounded, Herzl came to Russia to barter with V. K.
Plehve, the Russian interior minister who had incited the pogrom.
Herzl told Jewish cultural leader Chaim Zhitlovsky: oI have an
absolutely binding promise from Plehve that he will procure a charter
for Palestine for us in 15 years at the outside. There is one
condition, however, the revolutionaries must stop their struggle
against the Russian government.o

Zhitlovsky, incensed at Herzl for dealing with a killer of Jews, and
aware that Herzl had been outsmarted, persuaded him to abandon the
idea. Still, the Zionist leaders in Russia agreed with the government
that the real responsibility for the pogroms rested with the Jewish
Bund, a socialist group urging democratic reforms in the Czarist
regime. Zionists wanted Jews to remain aloof from Russian politics
until it was time to leave for Palestine.

The head of the secret police in Moscow, S.V. Zubatov, was sympathetic
to Zionism as a way to silence Jewish opponents of the repressive
Czarist regime. In her book The Fate of the Jews, Roberta Strauss
Feuerlicht reports that

Zionism appealed greatly to police chief Zubatov, as it does to all anti-Semites, because it takes the Jewish problem elsewhere. Both
Zubatov and the Zionists wanted to destroy the Bund, Zubatov to
protect his country, and the Zionists to protect theirs. ZionismAs
success is based on a Jewish misery index; the greater the misery, the
greater the wish to emigrate. The last thing the Zionists wanted was
to improve conditions in Russia. Zionists served Zubatov as police
spies and subverters of the Bund a

In his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Israel Shahak points out
that

Close relations have always existed between Zionists and anti-Semites;
exactly like some of the European conservatives, the Zionists thought
they could ignore the odemonico character of anti-Semitism and use the anti-Semites for their own purposes a Herzl allied himself with the
notorious Count von Plehve, the anti-Semitic minister of Tsar Nicholas
II; Jabotinsky made a pact with Petlyura, the reactionary Ukrainian
leader whose forces massacred some 100,000 Jews in 1918-1921 a Perhaps
the most shocking example of this type is the delight with which
Zionist leaders in Germany welcomed HitlerAs rise to power, because
they shared his belief in the primacy of oraceo and his hostility to
the assimilation of Jews among oAryans.o They congratulated Hitler on
his triumph over the common enemy u the forces of liberalism.

aWe JewsA

Dr. Joachim Prinz, a German Zionist rabbi who subsequently emigrated
to the United States, where he became vice-chairman of the World
Jewish Congress and a leader in the World Zionist Organization,
published in 1934 a book Wir Juden (oWe Jewso) to celebrate HitlerAs
so-called German Revolution and the defeat of liberalism. He wrote:

The meaning of the German Revolution for the German nation will
eventually be clear to those who have created it and formed its image.
Its meaning for us must be set forth there: the fortunes of liberalism
are lost. The only form of political life which has helped Jewish
assimilation is sunk.

The victory of Nazism ruled out assimilation and inter-religious
marriage as an option for Jews. oWe are not unhappy about this,o said
Dr. Prinz. In the fact that Jews were being forced to identify
themselves as Jews, he saw othe fulfillment of our desires.o Further,
he states,

We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of
belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A state built upon
the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honored and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind. Having
so declared himself, he will never be capable of faulty loyalty
towards a state. The state cannot want other Jews but such as declare themselves as belonging to their nationa

Dr. Shahak compares PrinzAs early sympathy for Nazis with that of many
who have embraced the Zionist vision, not fully understanding the
possible implications: oOf course, Dr. Prinz, like many other early sympathizers and allies of Nazism, did not realize where that movement
was leading ao

Zionist-Nazi Alliance Proposal

Still, as late as January 1941, the Zionist group LEHI, one of whose
leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, was later to become a prime minister of
Israel, approached the Nazis, using the name of its parent
organization, the Irgun (NMO). The naval attacho in the German embassy
in Turkey transmitted the LEHI proposal to his superiors in Germany.
It read in part:

It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the leading
statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite the radical solution of the Jewish question
through evacuation. The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is
a precondition for solving the Jewish question. This can only be made
possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the
home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of
a Jewish state in its historic boundaries.

The LEHI proposal continues: oThe NMO a is well acquainted with the
good will of the German Reich Government and its authorities towards
Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans.o
It goes on to state:

The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and
totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would
be in the interests of strengthening the future German position of
power in the Near East a The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active
part in the war on GermanyAs side a The cooperation of the Israeli
freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches
of the German Reich Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate
England and defeat it.

The Nazis rejected this proposal for an alliance because, it is
reported, they considered LehiAs military power onegligible.o [For
more on this, see: M. Weber, oZionism and the Third Reicho]

Rabbi David J. Goldberg, in his book To the Promised Land: A History
of Zionist Thought, discusses the life and thought of the leader of
Zionist revisionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was the great influence
upon the life of Menachem Begin. oThe basic tenets of JabotinskyAs
political philosophy,o writes Goldberg,

are subservience to the overriding concept of the homeland: loyalty to
a charismatic leader, and the subordination of the class conflict to
national goals. It irked Jabotinsky when, over 20 years later, he was
accused of imitating Mussolini and Hitler. His irritation was
justified: he had anticipated them a Given that for Jabotinsky echoing Garibaldi othere is no value in the world higher than the nation and
the fatherland,o it is not altogether surprising that he should have recommended an alliance with an anti-Semitic Ukrainian nationalist. In
1911, in an essay entitled oSchevenkoAs Jubilee,o he had praised the
xenophobic Ukrainian poet for his nationalist spirit, despite
oexplosions of wild fury against the Poles, the Jews and other
neighbors,o and for proving that the Ukrainian soul has a otalent for independent cultural creativity, reaching into the highest and most
sublime sphere.o

In a review of the book In MemoryAs Kitchen: A Legacy From The Women
of Terezin, Lore Dickstein, writing in The New York Times Book Review,
notes that, oAnny Stern was one of the lucky ones. In 1939, after
months of hassle with the Nazi bureaucracy, the occupying German army
at her heels, she fled Czechoslovakia with her young son and emigrated
to Palestine. At the time of AnnyAs departure, Nazi policy encouraged emigration. aAre you a Zionist?A Adolf Eichmann, HitlerAs specialist
on Jewish affairs, asked her. aJa wohl,A she replied. aGood,A he said,
aI am a Zionist too. I want every Jew to leave for PalestineA.o

A aClose RelationshipA

The point has been made by many commentators that Zionism has a close relationship with Nazism. Both ideologies think of Jews in an ethnic
and nationalistic manner. In fact, Nazi theoretician Alfred Rosenberg frequently quoted from Zionist writers to prove his thesis that Jews
could not be Germans.

In his study, The Meaning of Jewish History, Rabbi Jacob Agus provides
this assessment:

In its extreme formulation, political Zionists agreed with resurgent anti-Semitism in the following propositions: 1. That the emancipation
of the Jews in Europe was a mistake. 2. That the Jews can function in
the lands of Europe only as a disruptive influence. 3. That all Jews
of the world were one ofolko in spite of their diverse political
allegiances. 4. That all Jews, unlike other peoples of Europe, were
unique and unintegratible. 5. That anti-Semitism was the natural
expression of the folk-feeling of European nations, hence,
ineradicable.

Nazi theoretician Rosenberg, who was executed as a result of his
conviction for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials, declared under
direct examination [on April 15, 1946] that he had studied the
writings of Jewish historians. He continued:

It seemed to me that after an epoch of generous emancipation in the
course of national movements of the 19th century, an important part of
the Jewish nation found its way back to its own tradition and nature,
and more and more consciously segregated itself from other nations. It
was a problem which was discussed at many international congresses,
and [Martin] Buber, in particular, one of the spiritual leaders of
European Jewry, declared that the Jews should return to the soil of
Asia, for only there could the roots of Jewish blood and Jewish
national character be found.

Long-Standing Alliance

Feyenwald, the Nazi, in 1941 reprinted the following statement by
Simon Dubnow, a Zionist historian and author:

Assimilation is common treason against the banner and ideals of the
Jewish people a One can never obecomeo a member of a national group,
such as a family, tribe or a nation. One may attain rights and
privileges of citizenship with a foreign nation, but one cannot
appropriate for himself its nationality too. To be sure the
emancipated Jew in France calls himself a Frenchman of the Jewish
faith. Would that, however, mean that he became part of the French
nation, confessing to the Jewish faith? Not at all a A Jew a even if
he happened to be born in France and still lives there, in spite of
these, he remains a member of the Jewish nation.

Zionists have repeatedly stressed u and continue to do so u that, from
their viewpoint, Jews are in oexileo outside of the oJewish state.o
Jacob Klatzkin, a leading Zionist writer, declared: oWe are simply
aliens, we are foreign people in your midst, and we emphasize, we wish
to stay that way.o This Zionist perspective has been a minority view
among Jews from the time of its formulation until today.

When the term oanti-Semitismo is casually used to silence those who
are critical of the government of Israel and its policies, it should
be noted that ZionismAs history of alliance with real anti-Semitism
has been long-standing, and this has been so precisely because Zionism
and anti-Semitism share a view of Jews which the vast majority of Jews
in the United States and elsewhere in the world have always rejected.

This rarely discussed chapter of history deserves study, for it
illuminates many truths relevant to the continuing debate, both with
regard to Middle East policy and the real nature of Jews and Judaism.

About the Author

Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of
the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for
Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of
the American Council for Judaism. This article is reprinted from the July-August 1998 issue of The Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs.
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