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No. 19. Vienna, 13 May 1898. 2nd Year.

Zionism and its Opponents.

By Dr. Max Nordau.
(An address delivered in Berlin.)

The men whose names one is accustomed to link with the new chapter of the Zionist movement were converted to Zionism by the distress of their tribe. Scarcely one of them had personally to suffer under that distress. By their intellectual labour they had won a European, in part even a world-wide, reputation, such as might satisfy their ambition. In coming forward on behalf of their persecuted fellow-tribesmen they had much to lose and nothing to gain. Although they were conscious that they wished to work to no man's hurt, but only for the good of the Jews, they naturally prepared themselves nevertheless for battles. But they believed they would have to contend only against the frictional resistances which every idea encounters upon its embodiment in the world of matter; against the distorted judgments of the insufficiently instructed, who can be better instructed; and at most against the malignities of those enemies of the Jews who hate blindly and therefore deliberately close themselves against every understanding. It was, then, one of their great surprises that hitherto the grimly distorted countenances of enemies grinned at them only out of the midst of Jewry; that hitherto they experienced attacks only from the Jewish side, and attacks of so shamefully base a kind, with such bandits' weapons of personal abuse, calumny and delation, that they were at times literally dumbfounded, and had to reckon up for themselves the numerous examples of selfless enthusiasm and noble idealism in their own ranks in order not to be converted to the anti-Semitic doctrine of the wretchedness and baseness of the Jewish race.

We know now out of what ambushes assaults threaten us. We know now who our only enemies are, where they lie in wait, and what we have to expect of them. Knowledge of the danger is half the defence. With the wretches who have fallen upon our rear and who are meditating further cowardly designs against us, we shall settle accounts at the proper time. To-day and here I wish only to come to terms with those opponents of the Zionist movement who do not calumniate and denounce, but adduce reasons; who are of good faith, and with whom a decent and serious man may enter into a discussion without demeaning himself.

I premise a remark. In the Christian world Zionism has thus far found no adversary. There are many Christians who hold the idea of a reunion of the homeless Jews in the land of their fathers to be very difficult, some who hold it to be not at all practicable; but there is none who has declared the idea in itself to be false and reprehensible. Should anyone be so incautious as to object to me: "No wonder! The Christian world would of course be glad to be rid of us!" I should at once reply: "If the whole Christian world really has but the one wish, to see us depart, and doubts only whether its wish can be realised, then this is the strongest reason that can be adduced for the justification and the necessity of Zionism."

I repeat it: opponents on principle the Zionist idea has hitherto found only among the Jews, and we have to defend it only against Jewish attacks.

The Jews to-day divide into two camps; the one would remain Jews, the others would not. With these Jews, who are weary of their Judaism and have but the one longing, to disappear without a trace and unrecognisable among their Christian fellow-countrymen, we can quickly be done. For we concede to them without more ado that from their standpoint they are entirely in the right in rejecting Zionism. They are consistent. They desire the death of Judaism; they must therefore recognise their natural enemy in Zionism, which guarantees to Judaism a new life. But after we have in this manner acknowledged their standpoint, we say to them: "You have no right to have a voice in Zionist questions. Zionism turns not to you, who will not remain Jews, but to those who will remain Jews. It is our internal affair, which does not concern you. Out of the way of looking at things expressed in the homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto you may take an interest in our movement as in any other historical phenomenon — much as in the Norwegian-Swedish constitutional conflict or in Irish home rule; you may observe it, seek to understand it, you may study and criticise it, but always only as outsiders; to meddle in our movement is not your part. You have as little a moral right to combat us as, say, home rule in active