by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-03-26
© 2010 Peter Belmont

RSS Recent Essays (All Topics)   •(12/23) How did we get to October 7th? •(11/23) Our Political Habits Are Ending The Human Race •(10/23) Sketch of Israel-Palestine History •(10/23) Whoever controls the discourse controls emotional reactions to reality •(08/23) Russia On Trial •(01/23) The Purpose of "Conservatism" •(10/22) The project of returning the earth to the cockroaches couldn't be in better hands! •(05/22) Abortion, The Constitution, And The Supreme Court •(03/22) The Problem of Climate Change Framing or Discourse or Understanding •(06/21) Israel-Palestine: If not apartheid, then what? Magnes had much to say about why he preferred a cultural “Jewish Home” to a “Jewish State.” His most forceful conclusion was: Moreover, a Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression is not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, is worth a great deal, even though the attempt should fail.

Zionism may have begun as a collective need for a homeland, as always described, but the decision (taken by the Zionists before the Nazis came to power) to create, with militarism and imperialism, a Jewish state in spite of the known opposition of the peaceable but very-much-present Palestinian Arabs was a casting of the die which, in the event, re-cast the character of those who opted for that course.

The Jews of Palestine stopped being modern Jews and became Greek or Roman warriors (or bronze-age warriors like Joshua), bound forever to the wheel of war and imperialism and—importantly— lawlessness, warriors unwilling ever to make peace, unwilling ever to admit to having “enough.” There was no escape for them or for the Palestinian Arabs, because the latter never disappeared and their own character never changed for the better.

They became, also, skilled manipulators, and the fifth-column trapping of the USA with its ruling class and military entirely captured—or infiltrated—by Zionist agents (AIPAC) is not what anyone would have imagined as a Jewish project in 1900.

Let us return to Judah Magnes, to his letter to Chaim Weizmann of September 7, 1929, reprinted in “Dissenter in Zion” (Arthur A. Goren, ed., p. 276). It might focus some minds. Please pardon any mistakes I made in typing these selections.

I think that the time has come when the Jewish policy as to Palestine must be very clear, and that now only one of two policies is possible. Either the logical policy outlined by Jabotinsky in a letter to the Times which came today, basing our Jewish life in Palestine on militarism and imperialism; or a pacific policy that treats as entirely secondary such things as a “Jewish State” or a Jewish majority, or even “The Jewish National Home,” and as primary the development of a Jewish spiritual, educational, moral and religious center in Palestine. The first policy has to deal primarily with politics, governments, declarations, propaganda, and bayonets, and only secondarily with the Jews, and last of all with the Arabs; whereas the pacific policy has to deal first of all with the Jews, and then with the Arabs, and only incidentally with government and all the rest.

The imperialist, military and political policy is based upon mass immigration of Jews and the creation (forcible if necessary) of a Jewish majority, no matter how much this oppresses the Arabs meanwhile, or deprives them of their rights. In this kind of policy, the end always justifies the means.

The question is, do we want to conquer Palestine now as Joshua did in his day—with fire and sword? Or do we want to take cognizance of Jewish religious development since Joshua—our Prophets, Psalmists and rabbis, and repeat the words: “Not by might, and not by violence, but by my spirit, saith the Lord.” The question is, can any country be entered, colonized, and built up pacifistically, and can we Jews do that in the Holy Land? If we can not (and I do not say that we can rise to these heights), I for my part have lost half my interest in the enterprise. If we can not even attempt this, I should much rather see this eternal people without such a “National Home,” with the wanderer’s staff in hand and forming new ghettos among the peoples of the world.

Moreover, a Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression is not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, is worth a great deal, even though the attempt should fail.

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