It may seem incongruous that after a month during which such major events occurred as: the turnover of “full sovereignty” to Iraq, the Senate’s report on the “intelligence” failure leading up to the Iraq invasion, the 9/11 Commission’s report and the Democratic convention in Boston, that I should instead devote an essay to happenings, which transpired more than a hundred years ago. But as will become apparent, all of the past month’s events are to some extent related to thoughts hatched in Vienna during the end of the nineteenth and beginning twentieth century. Events were set in motion at that time, which will affect not only us but our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I have put full sovereignty and intelligence in the previous paragraph in quotation marks because they represent typical examples of the misuse of language that was discussed extensively in The Moses Legacy. The secret services of various countries around the world do not produce intelligence, they produce information. It would have taken intelligence to sift facts from fancy, but that quality was sorely lacking in our leadership. Full sovereignty is, of course, another euphemism for what has happened in Iraq.The name of the person Dr. Allawi  reports to is Negroponte and the U.S. wouldn’t be building its largest embassy in Baghdad if it didn’t have the intention to retain its influence over Iraqis regardless whether they like it or not.

Now what has all of this to do with a Viennese journalist who was hungry for fame as a playwright? And why does he have to be remembered at this particular time?  It just so happens that this July was the one hundredth anniversary of Herzl’s death and a Symposium was held at Vienna’s City Hall to commemorate the event. I have a certain affinity with Dr. Herzl (he had a law degree from the University of Vienna) because 1904 was not only the year he died but also when my mother was born and my grandfather opened his first leather goods store in the Währingerstrasse, a few blocks from Haizingergasse 29 where Herzl used to live.

Herzl, whose parents had come from Hungary, was deeply perturbed about his Jewishness and the anti-Semitic sentiments he encountered at the university as well as elsewhere. Initially he thought that the cure for anti-Semitism would be complete assimilation. But try as he might he found out that there was no escaping from being regarded as a Jew by others. This fact of life subsequently led him to the opposite extreme by embracing nascent Jewish nationalism and over a period of about eight years he became its most fervent apostle. He traveled from one end of Europe to the other to drum up support from the ruling circles of the day for his intent to solve the Jewish question, as it was called, by an organized mass exodus of European Jews to the land of their ancestors. From rich assimilated Jews he wanted money for his project; from Germany and England he wanted guarantees that the Jewish state he envisioned would not only be accepted but also politically protected; from Russia he wanted exit visas for the millions of the “huddled masses” that were to be the backbone of the emerging country, and from Turkey’s Sultan he wanted to buy the land.

With the assimilated rich Jews he struck out immediately. They obviously saw no reason to give up the privileged positions they had finally attained, even in spite of anti-Semitism. In addition they regarded the idea that Jews are a nation rather than merely a religion as highly dangerous and grist for the mill of anti-Semites. The Sultan was equally adamant. As mentioned in the September 2003 issue (For the goyim they sing) he let Herzl know that the land his ancestors had fought for and conquered with their blood, was not for sale and that the Jews should keep their money.

Anybody else might have given up when it became apparent within the first year of  trying that persevering with this dream would not gain one fame only notoriety, and might actually bring harm to oneself as well as others, but Herzl soldiered on. When no money was forthcoming he convened the first International Zionist Congress in Basel. In Munich, where he had really wanted to hold it, the local Jews told him that he and his ideas were not welcome so the venue had to be changed to the more hospitable climate of Switzerland, where there were hardly any Jews and no Jewish problem. The Congress resolved that the Jewish people needed a Heimstätte in Palestine and its creation was the goal of political Zionism. I am saying political Zionism to mark the contrast with religious Zionism, because religious Jews, as individuals, were always allowed to live and die in the Holy Land if they so desired. The word Heimstätte, a term which is only partially translatable into homeland, was chosen because the word state would have lead to political repercussions the Congress wanted to avoid. “National home” became also the official term in the Balfour declaration of 1917, although everybody knew that a state was really meant rather than a place where Jews would live on ancient soil under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. Living as Jews with Jewish customs was already possible in the Pale of settlement in Russia but there were, of course, intermittent pogroms and those Jews from the Pale who wanted to escape from its restrictive environment and enter Holy Mother Russia proper did not find a warm welcome there. These were the sentiments Herzl banked on.

But the idea of political Zionism did not originate with Herzl. He had several fore-runners although he claimed to have been unaware of them. One of the most interesting ones was Moses Hess who published in 1862 a treatise Rome and Jerusalem. A study in Jewish Nationalism. The book was inspired by the emergence of European nationalism and for Hess Rome was the symbol for the unification of Italy Garibaldi was engaged in. If the Italians could get their state why not the Jews? seemed to have been the thinking. There are several points in the book which deserve to be quoted because they reflect how the idea of Jewish nationalism was to be sold first to Jews and then to the Gentile world. Hess wrote:

“Fortified by its racial instinct and by its cultural and historical mission to unite all humanity in the name of the Eternal Creator, this people [the Jews] has conserved its nationality, in the form of its religion and united both inseparably with the memories of its ancestral land. No modern people, struggling for its own fatherland, can deny the right of the Jewish people to its former land, without at the same time undermining the justice of its own strivings. …

The great teachers of the knowledge of God were always Jews. Our people not only created the noblest religion of the ancient world, a religion which is destined to become the common property of the entire civilized world, but continued to develop it, keeping pace wit the progress of the human spirit. And this mission will remain with the Jews until the end of days …
The Jewish race is one of the primary races of mankind that has retained its integrity, in spite of continual change of its climatic environment, and the Jewish type has conserved its purity through the centuries. …

The pious Jew is above all a Jewish patriot. The ‘new Jew,’ who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality, is not only a deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his race and even to his family….

In reality, Judaism as a nationality has a natural basis which cannot be set aside by mere conversion to another faith, as is the case in other religions. …  “

When one reads these words not from a Jewish point of view but that of a German of the second half of the nineteenth century it is understandable that they would raise eyebrows among the educated and create anger and hate in the mob. Let us summarize what we have been told here. In contrast to Count Gobineau’s books, published in the previous decade, which had extolled the virtues of the Aryan race as the main bearers of culture, Hess had asserted that it was the Jews who had been the major benefactors of the world. Classical Greece and Rome, which had found a renaissance in German culture was not the inspiration of the Western world but Judaism. Furthermore, not only are Jews primarily a race rather than a religion but their religion nevertheless is destined to become the one acknowledged as the true one throughout the world. The assertion that a pious Jew is a traitor to his people if he does not accept membership in the Jewish nation also had to immediately raise questions about loyalty to the countries Jews were citizens of. When one is aware of this aspect of Jewish literature it should come as no surprise that the Nazis took these Jews at their word and regarded race as the determining factor in legislating who is a Jew.

But Hess, Pinsker, Birnbaum, and others who wrote in this vein during the last half of the nineteenth century were ignored until Herzl came along and energized the masses. While Birbaum’s pamphlet Die Nationale Wiedergeburt des jüdischen Volkes in seinem Lande, als Mittel zur Loesung der Judenfrage (the national rebirth of the Jewish people in its country as a solution to the Jewish question), published in 1893, had no resonance - Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (1897), saying essentially the same all the others had previously said, did make an impact. The difference was that while the others had been content to publish their thoughts, Herzl created an organization and relentlessly pursued his course to the detriment of his health as well as his personal and his parents’ finances. He was scrupulously honest and it was this reputation, as well as his position with the Neue Freie Presse, which inspired trust and gained him access to high political circles. This particular newspaper was the equivalent of The New York Times or the Washington Post and as such respected throughout the world

As mentioned above, before Herzl became what one may call a professional Zionist he wrote plays. While still in Paris as foreign correspondent for his newspaper he wrote in 1894 during 17 hectic days and nights what was to be his last play, Das Ghetto. The play, which has been renamed Das Neue Ghetto (the new ghetto), is of considerable interest in the current context because it was Herzl’s first attempt to tackle the Jewish question publicly. The action of the four act drama took place in contemporary Vienna. The protagonist, Dr. Jakob Samuel, is an honest, just married young Jewish lawyer, who devotes himself to progressive social causes and defends the less fortunate in court. He is obviously modeled on Herzl’s view of himself. His major antagonist, Rittmeister von Schramm, is an aristocratic cavalry officer who had insulted Samuel on two occasions. Once for a minor altercation but when he accused Samuel of cowardice and for having been responsible for his financial ruin Samuel lost his temper and slapped him on the cheek. This insult required satisfaction obtainable only by a duel in which Samuel got killed. Herzl used this condensed plot to highlight the Viennese Jewish scene of the day. Samuel’s best friend, Dr. Wurzlechner, is a Christian of impeccable character, who as Samuel states had been his model how to conduct himself in upper class society, took leave of him before going into politics because after Samuel’s marriage he had become too involved with his Jewish family. By maintaining their close friendship Wurzlechner would be seen by his political enemies as a friend and lackey of Jews (Judenknecht), which would have been harmful to his career. While Samuel’s parents were honest, middle income, hard working God-fearing people, the family he had married into represented Jewish upper class wealth with money as their main concern. Hermine, Samuel’s wife who called him Jacques instead of Jakob, was also more concerned with clothes and jewelry, which Jakob couldn’t afford to buy her, than her husband’s work. In addition there is a Mr. Wasserstein, the quintessential parody of the Jewish venture capitalist who is obsequious when down on his luck but arrogant once he had made money again on the stock market.

What has all this to do with the ghetto and the events of the first decade of the twenty first century? The ghetto resides in Samuel’s mind. He knows that the external walls of the medieval ghetto have disappeared but in spite of emancipation Jews are still segregated, although not quite so overtly any more. As he sees it there are two barriers. One is external as represented by anti-Semitism but the other is internal and resides within the minds of Jews themselves. The external barrier can be removed by working with well-meaning Gentiles but the internal can only be overcome by Jews themselves. The play ends when the mortally wounded Jakob floating in and out of consciousness, surrounded by his family and Wurzlechner, who had been his adjutant at the duel,  murmurs;

 “Mother forgive me this pain … (kisses his father’s hand) You will understand father! You are a man! ... (With stronger voice) Jews, my brothers, one will only let you live again - when you … Why do you hold me - so tight? (murmurs) I want – out! …  (With very strong voice) Out – Out from the ghetto!”

The drama is, therefore, both the end of one phase and a prologue for the final phase of his life. He would bring the Jews to the Promised Land, cost what it might, thereby ending anti-Semitism and earn the gratitude of the world.

But this dream had a fatal flaw it ignored reality on two counts. One was the Jewish people themselves whom he saw as an idealistic brotherhood who would follow his call towards a better future and the other that he regarded Palestine as an empty land. He also assumed that the few Arabs who did live there would welcome the Jews as bringers of modern civilization and accompanying prosperity. Jews were to be the colonizers, the Western bulwark against Asiatic hordes and at the same time providing the gateway for the West, especially England, to India. The notion that nationalism might not be limited to Jews but could also affect Arabs, Herzl was not willing to entertain.

He did create a Jewish state but its present condition is a far cry from his imagination in 1902 when, in his novel Altneuland, he foresaw a prosperous state in which the deserts bloom as a result of technologic marvels and most importantly where Jews and Arabs live in peace and harmony together. In the conclusion of this novel, people recount their good fortune after the funeral of one of their revered elders who had passed on in peace.

“In this mood Friedrich Lőwenberg raised a question which each one answered in his own manner. The question was: ‘we see here a new, a truly happy way of cooperation among people – who is responsible for this?’

The old Littwak said: ‘Distress’ [Die Not. The word could also be translated as necessity or grief].

Steineck, the architect, said: ‘The reunited people.’

Kingscourt said: ‘The new means of transportation.’

Dr. Marcus said: ‘Science’ [Das Wissen. It could also be translated as knowledge].

Joe Levy said: ‘The will’.

Professor Steineck said: ‘Nature’s forces.’

The British pastor Hopkins said: ‘Mutual tolerance.’

Reschid Bey said; ‘Self-confidence.’

David Littwak said: ‘Love and suffering.’

But the old rabbi raised himself solemnly to his feet and said: ‘God!’’

It is noteworthy that Herzl put “mutual tolerance” into the mouth of the Christian rather than the Arab who stressed “self-confidence.” It is obvious that this hoped for state of affairs did not arrive and if Herzl were to return today he would be appalled at what he had wrought and say, like Wilhelm II at the end of WWI, “das habe ich nicht gewollt” (I did not intend this). Herzl’s goal was to “have a state, not according to the European model, but a community joined on a voluntary basis with mutual cooperation.” A state of this type does not exist anywhere in this world. Although Herzl didn’t mention it, the idea behind the creation of the United States of America might have come closest to it. But as we all know our country is also sorely rent apart with conflicting interests.

Three and a half years ago when the Bush administration arrived I was still hopeful that a solution to the perennial problems of the state of Israel could be achieved with America acting as the impartial arbiter between Arab and Jewish claims. This is why I wrote Whither Zionism? and sent it to the powers who control our lives. It was not of no avail. Today we in the U.S., the Israelis, and other countries around the world are worse off than in February 2001.

Even in Israel the Jews have not escaped from the Ghetto, as Herzl thought they would. They continue to live now not only in their mental ghetto, but are actually in the process of building a physical one by the creation of a wall to separate themselves from Arabs. This wall is regarded as essential for the security of the country. Although it defies international law some writers like Mr. Zuckerman, editor of U.S. News and World Report, supports it with articles like “Good fences make good neighbors.” If Israel were to build its ghetto wall within the pre-1967 war borders nobody would object. But if Mr. Zuckerman’s neighbor were to build a wall which takes in part of Mr. Zuckerman’s backyard he would surely take the neighbor to court. This is the problem in a nutshell. As long as Jewish writers and politicians see only expected benefits for the members of Jacob’s tribe and ignore the legitimate aspirations of others, the Jewish people and their benefactors are condemned to dislike, hatred and ostracism.

Why has America, which was admired four years ago, sunk so low in the eyes of the world? The true answer, which no one wants to admit to, is our unconditional support for Israel’s policies. It is this support in addition to a quest for oil and a personal vendetta of President Bush against Saddam Hussein which has driven us into the Iraq war. Now we are stuck with a failed dream, just like the Israelis, and are hated for it.

What I am writing now will never be admitted to by the Bush administration even if it were re-elected because it would offend their “base.” But the Democrats can’t say it either, at least during the election campaign, because they would be tarred and feathered as anti-Semites. This is America’s dilemma and this is what Herzl’s followers did to us. It was the neoconservatives in the defense department who hatched the Iraq strategy on the model of Herzl’s dream: we will bring culture to a civilization which actually preceded ours by millennia and our soldiers will be welcomed with open arms by happy Iraqis. As mentioned in the essay on “The Neocons’ Leviathan” (April 2003) the foreign policy of the Bush administration did not originate from its legitimate source, the State Department, but from the Defense Department’s ex-Marxists. They first wrote for incoming Prime Minister Netanyahu a document “Defense of the Realm” and subsequently they simply exchanged the word Israel for United States of America. They were the ones who brought us “angst” and as long as our main friend is a pariah nation we cannot succeed.

Senator Kerry gave an excellent acceptance speech and there was no “angst” during the convention. All of the participants brimmed with optimism for a bright future and great expectations. But for those to be translated into reality senator Kerry, if he were to be elected, would need the same courage he has shown on the battlefield at his desk in the Oval Office. He would have to recognize the existence of “the Jewish brain,” as ben-Gurion has called it, and deal with it in a constructive manner. This would include a full disclosure of the sources which led the British, the Russians and Americans to believe in Saddam’s weapons of mass destructions. The Senate’s report did not address this question and Americans are led to believe that the Mossad, the best spy agency in the Middle East if not the world, had no role. As mentioned in “The Niger Forgery” (August 2003) I don’t know whether or not it did, but to hide behind “sources” only feeds conspiracy theories and these are anathema to a well functioning informed democracy. Indeed, much is at stake in the November elections and it is a sad fact of life that the most important issues cannot be publicly discussed at this time.