Die Welt

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No. 13 | Vienna, 30 March 1900. | Fourth Year

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Before the Majesty.

If I were the presiding Minister of State to some European sovereign, I should render to my most gracious lord the following report upon Zionism:

The Zionists, by their own assurance, strive after the creation of a legally secured home for that portion of their kinsmen which cannot or will not assimilate itself among the host peoples. To-day, after barely three years of agitation, they already dispose of a remarkable organisation, a bank, journals, local committees. Neither are they wanting in a rising generation, so that one may already say to-day that Zionism is not a passing phenomenon towards which it is not worth while to take up a position. The poetic dream of a few backward-turned spirits has already become half a reality. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of the Jewish race, are seriously weighing whether it be possible to find again, upon the old soil of home, that place where, free from pressure, every individuality might develop itself uncrippled. For the governments there arises out of this fact the necessity of examining whether the existing and undeniably strong Jewish popular movement is to be furthered or to be checked.

A direct and public declaration of position is, in my judgment, out of the question. Public support of the Zionist-minded portion of the Jews would wound and bewilder those inclined to assimilation. The Zionists themselves, by their own declaration, will exercise no manner of pressure upon those of their kinsmen who are ready for assimilation, and will not burden their new foundation with elements that are inwardly averse to the work from the outset. The European governments, again, have neither interest nor right in repelling and embittering citizens who are born in the land and who moreover expressly declare that they desire to find their salvation in this State alone. The Jewish question is, in point of law, solved by the modern constitutions, which recognise no confessional distinctions among the citizens of the State. The constitutions must not be tampered with.

But the question still remains open whether the endeavour of the Zionists may not indirectly be furthered. They would relieve Europe of a heavy burden: of that considerable portion of the Jews which either clings too closely to religious and national traditions to be able, within any foreseeable time, to merge unremarked into the surrounding population, or is too proud to suffer itself and its posterity to be for ever harried as an inconvenient intruder. There would be a means of supporting the Zionists indirectly, a means which is brought forward by themselves. If it were possible, by way of friendly diplomatic mediation, to move His Majesty the Padishah to the granting of a Charter in Palestine, the Zionist committees could begin their work of transplantation. The advantages which would accrue to the Turkish Empire from the settlement of loyal and uncommonly active subjects in Palestine and Syria require no particular exposition. It remains still to examine whether the European States have an interest in ridding themselves of their Jews who are incapable of assimilation.

For many centuries the Jews were a constituent part of the European populations, without calling forth any disturbance whatever in the functions of the national organisms. They were, so to speak, encapsulated, isolated in the Ghetto, and could accordingly not enter into the circulation of the blood. They led a life apart; and although the hatred of creeds pursued them even into their Ghetto and held them answerable even for failure of crops and for epidemic, yet there could be no serious talk of any working of the segregated Jews upon the life of the peoples. Only with the beginning of constitutional life, with the emancipation of the third estate and with freedom of movement, did there begin also the working of Jewish peculiarity upon the trade and traffic of the other peoples, and therewith at the same time a movement of defence, which took on ever more excessive forms and has already to-day led to the founding of a league — Le Grand Occident — which