[continued from previous message]   
      
   In the end, Pawel argues, “Paris changed Herzl, and French   
   anti-Semites undermined the ironic complacency of the Jewish would-be   
   non-Jew.” Yet Herzl was not entirely displeased with anti-Semitism. In   
   a private letter to Moritz Benedikt, written in the final days of   
   1892, he writes: “I do not consider the anti-Semitic movement   
   altogether harmful. It will inhibit the ostentatious flaunting of   
   conspicuous wealth, curb the unscrupulous behavior of Jewish   
   financiers, and contribute in many ways to the education of the Jews …   
   In that respect we seem to be in agreement.”   
      
   Herzl’s book Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), was widely   
   disparaged by the leading Jews of the day, who viewed themselves as   
   French, German, English or Austrian citizens and Jews by religion —   
   with no interest in a separate Jewish state. Anti-Semites, on the   
   other hand, eagerly greeted Herzl’s work. Herzl’s arguments, Pawel   
   points out, were “all but indistinguishable from those used by the   
   anti-Semites.” One of the first reviews appeared in the   
   Westungarischer Grenzbote, an anti-Semitic journal published in   
   Bratislava by Ivan von Simonyi, a member of the Hungarian Diet. He   
   praised both the book and Herzl, and was so carried away with his   
   enthusiasm that he paid Herzl a personal visit. Herzl wrote in his   
   diary:   
      
   My weird follower, the Bratislava anti-Semite Ivan von Simonyi came to   
   see me. A hypermercurial, hyperloquacious sexagenerian with an uncanny   
   sympathy for the Jews. Swings back and forth between perfectly   
   rational talk and utter nonsense, believes in the blood libel and at   
   the same time comes up with the most sensible modern ideas. Loves me.   
      
   After the barbaric Kishinev pogrom of April 1901, when hundreds of   
   Jews were killed or wounded, Herzl came to Russia to barter with V. K.   
   Plehve, the Russian interior minister who had incited the pogrom.   
   Herzl told Jewish cultural leader Chaim Zhitlovsky: “I have an   
   absolutely binding promise from Plehve that he will procure a charter   
   for Palestine for us in 15 years at the outside. There is one   
   condition, however, the revolutionaries must stop their struggle   
   against the Russian government.”   
      
   Zhitlovsky, incensed at Herzl for dealing with a killer of Jews, and   
   aware that Herzl had been outsmarted, persuaded him to abandon the   
   idea. Still, the Zionist leaders in Russia agreed with the government   
   that the real responsibility for the pogroms rested with the Jewish   
   Bund, a socialist group urging democratic reforms in the Czarist   
   regime. Zionists wanted Jews to remain aloof from Russian politics   
   until it was time to leave for Palestine.   
      
   The head of the secret police in Moscow, S.V. Zubatov, was sympathetic   
   to Zionism as a way to silence Jewish opponents of the repressive   
   Czarist regime. In her book The Fate of the Jews, Roberta Strauss   
   Feuerlicht reports that   
      
   Zionism appealed greatly to police chief Zubatov, as it does to all   
   anti-Semites, because it takes the Jewish problem elsewhere. Both   
   Zubatov and the Zionists wanted to destroy the Bund, Zubatov to   
   protect his country, and the Zionists to protect theirs. Zionism’s   
   success is based on a Jewish misery index; the greater the misery, the   
   greater the wish to emigrate. The last thing the Zionists wanted was   
   to improve conditions in Russia. Zionists served Zubatov as police   
   spies and subverters of the Bund …   
      
   In his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Israel Shahak points out   
   that   
      
   Close relations have always existed between Zionists and anti-Semites;   
   exactly like some of the European conservatives, the Zionists thought   
   they could ignore the “demonic” character of anti-Semitism and use the   
   anti-Semites for their own purposes … Herzl allied himself with the   
   notorious Count von Plehve, the anti-Semitic minister of Tsar Nicholas   
   II; Jabotinsky made a pact with Petlyura, the reactionary Ukrainian   
   leader whose forces massacred some 100,000 Jews in 1918-1921 … Perhaps   
   the most shocking example of this type is the delight with which   
   Zionist leaders in Germany welcomed Hitler’s rise to power, because   
   they shared his belief in the primacy of “race” and his hostility to   
   the assimilation of Jews among “Aryans.” They congratulated Hitler on   
   his triumph over the common enemy — the forces of liberalism.   
      
   ‘We Jews’   
      
   Dr. Joachim Prinz, a German Zionist rabbi who subsequently emigrated   
   to the United States, where he became vice-chairman of the World   
   Jewish Congress and a leader in the World Zionist Organization,   
   published in 1934 a book Wir Juden (“We Jews”) to celebrate Hitler’s   
   so-called German Revolution and the defeat of liberalism. He wrote:   
      
   The meaning of the German Revolution for the German nation will   
   eventually be clear to those who have created it and formed its image.   
   Its meaning for us must be set forth there: the fortunes of liberalism   
   are lost. The only form of political life which has helped Jewish   
   assimilation is sunk.   
      
   The victory of Nazism ruled out assimilation and inter-religious   
   marriage as an option for Jews. “We are not unhappy about this,” said   
   Dr. Prinz. In the fact that Jews were being forced to identify   
   themselves as Jews, he saw “the fulfillment of our desires.” Further,   
   he states,   
      
   We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of   
   belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A state built upon   
   the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honored and   
   respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind. Having   
   so declared himself, he will never be capable of faulty loyalty   
   towards a state. The state cannot want other Jews but such as declare   
   themselves as belonging to their nation…   
      
   Dr. Shahak compares Prinz’s early sympathy for Nazis with that of many   
   who have embraced the Zionist vision, not fully understanding the   
   possible implications: “Of course, Dr. Prinz, like many other early   
   sympathizers and allies of Nazism, did not realize where that movement   
   was leading …”   
      
   Zionist-Nazi Alliance Proposal   
      
   Still, as late as January 1941, the Zionist group LEHI, one of whose   
   leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, was later to become a prime minister of   
   Israel, approached the Nazis, using the name of its parent   
   organization, the Irgun (NMO). The naval attaché in the German embassy   
   in Turkey transmitted the LEHI proposal to his superiors in Germany.   
   It read in part:   
      
   It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the leading   
   statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a New Order in Europe   
   requires as a prerequisite the radical solution of the Jewish question   
   through evacuation. The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is   
   a precondition for solving the Jewish question. This can only be made   
   possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the   
   home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of   
   a Jewish state in its historic boundaries.   
      
   The LEHI proposal continues: “The NMO … is well acquainted with the   
   good will of the German Reich Government and its authorities towards   
   Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans.”   
   It goes on to state:   
      
   The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and   
   totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would   
   be in the interests of strengthening the future German position of   
   power in the Near East … The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active   
   part in the war on Germany’s side … The cooperation of the Israeli   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)