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Zionism and the Future of Palestine
By Robert W. McGee*
I read an interesting book the other day
-- Zionism and the Future of Palestine. It was written by Morris
Jastrow, Jr. and published by the Macmillan Company in 1919. It
has been out of print for many years now and is almost impossible
to find. The person who lent it to me told me that there has been
a conscious effort to remove it from library bookshelves. It
deserves to be reprinted.
Jastrow traces the origins of Zionism and
discusses its three aspects -- religious, economic and political
-- which must be sharply differentiated from each other. Religious
zionism involves the belief that the Jews will return to
Palestine. Economic zionism was aimed at ameliorating the pitiful
conditions of the Jews living in countries like Russia and Romania
without citizenship rights and subject to oppression and
persecution. Political zionism had the aim of converting Palestine
into a Jewish state, which Theodore Herzl, the founder of
political zionism, claimed to be the solution to the Jewish
question.
Jastrow spends some time discussing the
origins of these three aspects of zionism, but the most
interesting part, and the part that is most likely to enrage
ardent supporters of the Jewish state, is the section on political
zionism. He spends much of the remainder of the book discussing
the fallacies and dangers of political zionism.
Reform Judaism, along with the
possibility of attaining full citizenship in the west, snapped the
ties between religion and nationality. As Jews could become
citizens of the western countries they moved to when they escaped
oppression in Eastern Europe, they were able to practice Judaism
while exercising their rights as citizens in a number of western
states. Political zionism involves a misinterpretation of the
trend of Jewish history over the last 2,000 years. Religion and
nationality were no longer inextricably bound together. Thus,
political zionism was based on a false premise, that religion and
nationality were inseparable.
Even many zionists of the time conceded
that there was no legitimate reason for having a Jewish state as
long as the Jews who lived in Palestine were guaranteed the
freedom and security of the other inhabitants of the region.
Jastrow correctly predicted that the
intertwining of religion and nationality -- political zionism --
would have negative consequences. Whereas non-Jews have only one
country and one loyalty -- Americans are American, the French are
French, etc. -- Jews are seen as having split loyalties. They are
both citizens of the country in which they live and also
supporters of the Jewish state. Thus, Jews who live outside of
Israel (occupied Palestine) are seen as being less than totally
loyal to the country where they reside. This political difference
adds to the anti-semitism that already exists, just as Jastrow
predicted.
As time passes it is becoming
increasingly clear that Britain did a great disservice to the
inhabitants of Palestine by giving away land that it did not own.
Present-day problems can be traced to this tragic violation of
property rights, coupled with the false premise of political
zionism, which Jastrow exposed in 1919.
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* Prof. Robert W. McGee is the
President of The Dumont Institute for Public Policy Research,
Dumont, NJ-USA- http://www.dumontinst.com
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