[A-List] Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Gabriel Kolko

ZNet Commentary (June 02 2007)


One of the many quirks of the nineteenth century's intellectual heritage
was the great intensification of nationalism and - to quote one expert -
the creation of "nation-ness", the consequences of which have varied
dramatically all the way from the negligible to the crucial (as in the
case of Israel) to war and peace in a vast strategic region.  There was,
of course, often a basis for various nationalisms to build upon, but the
essentially artificial function of forming nations from very little or
nothing was common.

Wars were the most conducive to this enterprise, and the emergence of
what was termed socialism after 1914 - which had a crucial nationalist
basis in such places as China and Vietnam - was due to the fact that
foreign invasions greatly magnified nationalism's ability to build on
ephemeral foundations to merge socialism and patriotism.  For a vital
component of nationalism, often its sole one, was a hatred of foreigners
- "others" - giving it largely a negative function rather than an
assertion of distinctive values and traits essential to a unique entity.
 Myths, often far-fetched and irrational, were built. Zionism is the
focus of this discussion but it was scarcely alone. {1}

Vienna was surely the most intellectually creative place in the world at
the end of the 19th century. Economics, art, philosophy, political
theories on the Right as well as Left, psychoanalysis - Vienna gave
birth or influenced most of them. Ideas had to be very original to be
noticed, and most were.  We must understand the unique and rare
innovative environment in which Theodore Herzl, an assimilated Hungarian
Jew who became the founder of Zionism, functioned.  For a time he was
also a German nationalist and went through phases admiring Richard
Wagner and Martin Luther.  Herzl was many things, including a very
efficient organizer, but he was also very conservative and feared that
Jews without a state - especially those in Russia - would become
revolutionaries.

A state based on religion rather than the will of all of its inhabitants
was at the end of the 19th century not only a medieval notion but also a
very eccentric idea, one Herzl concocted in the rarified environment of
cafes where ideas were produced with scant regard for reality.  It was
also full of countless contradictions, based not merely on the conflicts
between theological dogmas and democracy but also vast cultural
differences among Jews, all of which were to appear later.

Europe's Jews have precious little in common, and their mores and
languages are very distinct.  But the gap between Jews from Europe and
those from the Arab world was far, far greater. Moreover, there were
many radically different kinds of Zionism within a small movement,
ranging from the religiously motivated to Marxists who wanted to cease
being Jews altogether and, as Ber Borochov would have it, become
"normal". In the end, all that was to unite Israel was a military ethic
premised on a hatred of those "others" around them - and it was to
become a warrior-state, a virtual Sparta dominated by its army.
Initially, at least, Herzl had the fate of Russian and East European
Jews in mind; the outcome was very different.

Zionism was original but at the turn of the century it's following was
close to non-existent. An important exception was the interest of Lord
Rothschild. Moreover, from its inception Zionism was symbiotic on Great
Powers - principally Great Britain - that saw it as a way of spreading
their colonial ambitions to the Middle East. As early as 1902 Herzl met
with Joseph Chamberlain, then British Colonial Secretary, to further
Zionist claims in the region bordering Egypt, and the following year he
hired David Lloyd George - later to become prime minister - to handle
the Zionist case. {2}

Herzl also unsuccessfully asked the sultan of the Ottoman Empire if he
might obtain Palestine, after which he advocated establishing a state in
Uganda - although his followers much preferred the Holy Land.  Only the
principle of a Jewish State, anywhere, appealed to him - but mainly for
Jews in the Russian Empire. Herzl was only the first in the Zionist
tradition of advocating a state for others; he was never in favor of all
Jews moving there. Chaim Weizmann wrote Herzl in 1903 that the large
majority of the young Jews in Russia were anti-Zionist because they were
revolutionaries - which only reinforced Herzl's convictions. In 1913
British Intelligence estimated that perhaps one percent of the Jews had
Zionist affiliations, a figure that rose in the Russian Pale - which
contained about six million Jews - as the war became longer.

It was scarcely an accident that in November 1917 Lord Arthur Balfour
was to make Britain's historic endorsement of a Jewish homeland in their
newly mandated territory of Palestine in a letter to Rothschild.  Some
of these Englishmen also shared the Biblical view that it was the
destiny of Jews to return to their ancient soil.  Others thought that
this gesture would help keep Russia in the war, and that nefarious Jews
had the influence to do so.  Most saw a Jewish state as a means of
consolidating British power in the vast Islamic region. {3}


Jewish Migration: Many Promised Lands

Migration has been one of the universal phenomena of world history since
time immemorial, and we know a great deal about its causes and motives.
People migrate mainly out of necessity, generally economic, and they
choose from existing options. They very rarely go someplace for the
"blessings of liberty", or ideology; if they do such variable factors as
economic deprivation or changes in laws should not exist. But in the
case of Palestine and Zionism, Jews behaved like people everywhere and
at most times.

It is a Zionist myth that there were many Jews who wished to go to a
primitive hot, dusty place and did so.  They did not - and all of the
available numbers prove this conclusively.  After the Bolshevik
Revolution of October 1917 the Pale was abolished and a very large
number of the Jews in it moved to Russia's cities; many of them saw the
Bolsheviks as liberators and filled the ranks of the revolution at every
level. {4}  If they emigrated, and here the numbers are very important,
it was not - if they had a choice - to Palestine.

>From 1890 to 1924 about two million of the twenty million immigrants to
the United States were Jews - overwhelmingly from East Europe.  Other
nations in the Western Hemisphere also attracted about a million Jews
during this period, to which we must add Jewish migration to South
Africa, Australia, West Europe, and the like.  This does not mean that
Jews were not "Zionists" but they had no intention whatsoever of
embarking on Aliyah - of going to Palestine themselves. As Herzl
believed, it was a project for others.

Jews in the Diaspora, like most ethnic groups, banded together in
numerous organizations and nostalgia - and confusion - soon overwhelmed
them. Organized Zionism grew in the US as it had not in East Europe -
but it demanded only money, thereby ultimately making Israel viable.

In 1893 there were an estimated 10,000 Jews in Palestine, 61,000 in
1920, and 122,000 in 1925. All of these figures are only the
best-informed estimates; there were censuses in 1922 and 1931 only, and
even the 1922 numbers are contested.  But the general trend is beyond
doubt and very clear.  For every Jew who went to Palestine from 1890 to
1924, at least 27 went to the Western Hemisphere alone. Relatively, the
Zionist project was the utopian dream of a tiny minority and it would
have failed save for two factors, the Holocaust and the much-overlooked
fact that in 1924 the US passed a new immigration law based on quotas
using the nationalities distribution in the 1890 census as a basis,
effectively cutting off migration from East and South Europe to a mere
trickle of what it had been.

In 1924, Jewish population in Palestine increased 5.9 percent but in
1925 - the first year the American law went into effect -  it leaped 28
percent, and 23 percent in 1926. This was still a small minority of the
Jews who left Europe but this sudden spurt was directly related to
American policy.  From 1927 to 1932 it never grew more than 5.3 percent
annually and in 1927 it was a mere 2.5 percent. Very few Jews went to
Palestine, and a small proportion of them were ideologically motivated;
the vast majority migrated elsewhere.

The British had always been in favor of Jewish migration and after 1933
it grew greatly - Jews were six percent of the Palestinian population in
1912 but 29 percent in 1935 -  but now it was increasingly composed of
Jews from Germany rather than Poland. These Jews had to get out of
Germany, where the Zionist movement had always been very weak, and they
were scarcely ideological zealots. Had there been open migration to the
US they would have gone there. Arab riots after 1935 compelled the
British to reduce the inflow and in 1939 they adopted a White Paper
enforcing strict restrictions on immigration.

What is certain is that Hitler's importance must always be set in a
larger context.  Without him there never would have been a flow of Jews
out of Germany, and very probably no state of Israel, but also crucial
was the US 1924 Immigration Act.  Migrants went to Palestine out of
necessity, in the vast majority of cases, not choice.  Both of these
factors were crucial, and to determine their relative importance is an
abstract, futile enterprise.  But without either the Zionist project of
creating a Jewish state in Palestine would have remained another exotic
Viennese concoction, never to be realized, because while the Jews in the
Diaspora were in favor of a Jewish state, virtually none living in safe
nations were ever to uproot themselves and embark on Aliyah - the return
to the ancient homeland. They had no reason to do so.

There were many promised lands and Herzl's exotic ruminations were
scarcely the inspiration for the flow of Jews out of Europe.  Israel's
existence was an unpredictable accident of history. The past century has
been full of them, everywhere. That is why the world is in such a
perilous condition.



Notes:

{1} Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1983), pages 4-6.

{2} David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman
Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (Henry Holt, 1989),
pages 272-3, 278, 317.

{3} William M Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social
History, 1848-1938 (University of California Press, 1972), pages 357-61;
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton University Press, 2004),
pages 149-52; David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, op cit, pages
272, 294.

{4}   Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century, passim.

{5}  Data on Palestine is from Population of Ottoman and Mandate
Palestine: Statistical and Demographic Considerations, 2002-05, pages 5,
6, 11 and passim. http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm


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