ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS

BRENNER : ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS
2
BLUT UND BODEN (BLOOD AND SOIL) : THE ROOTS
OF ZIONIST RACISM
It was anti-Semitism — alone — that generated Zionism. Herzl could not
ground his movement in anything positively Jewish. Although he sought the
support of the rabbis, he personally was not devout. He had no special concern for
Palestine, the ancient homeland ; he was quite eager to accept the Kenya Highlands,
at least on a temporary basis. He had no interest in Hebrew ; he saw his Jewish state
as a linguistic Switzerland. He had to think of race, for it was in the air ; the
Teutonic anti-Semites were talking of the Jews as a race, but he soon discarded the
doctrine, and gave a paradoxical discussion with Israel Zangwill, one of his earliest
adherents, as the instance for his rejection. He portrayed the Anglo-Jewish writer
as :
of the long-nosed Negro type, with wooly deep-black hair… He maintains,
however, the racial point of view — something I can’t accept, for I have merely to
look at him and at myself. All I say is : we are an historical unit, one nation with
anthropological diversities. 36
Unconcerned with religion, he even proposed that an atheist, the then worldfamous
author, Max Nordau, should succeed him as the WZO’s President. Again, the
disciple was less liberal than the master. Nordau was married to a Christian, and
was afraid that his wife would be resented by the Orthodox among the ranks. 37 He
was already married when he converted to Zionism and, despite his own Gentile
wife, he soon became a confirmed Jewish racist. On 21 December 1903 he gave an
interview to Eduard Drumont’s rabid anti-Semitic newspaper, La Libre Parole, in
which he said that Zionism wasn’t a question of religion, but exclusively of race, and
there is no one with whom I am in greater agreement on this point than M.
Drumont’. 38
Although only one national branch of the WZO (the Dutch Federation in 1913)
ever went to the trouble of trying formally to exclude Jews living in mixed
36 Marvin Lowenthal (ed.), The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 78.
37 Amos Elon, Herzl, p. 255.
38 Desmond Stewart, Theodor Herzl, p. 322.
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