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BRENNER : <strong>ZIONISM</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>AGE</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>DICTATORS</strong><br />
’Grist to the Mills of Nazi Propaganda’<br />
If, without further facts, anyone were told that the early Zionists were racists,<br />
it would be automatic to assume this to be a part of the colonialist aspects of<br />
Zionism in Palestine. In reality this is not so ;<br />
[25] blut Zionism would have evolved even if Palestine were to have been<br />
completely empty. Enthusiasm for blut und boden were part of Zionism before the<br />
first modern Zionist ever left Europe.<br />
Race Zionism was a curious offshoot of racial anti-Semitism. True, these<br />
Zionists argued, the Jews were a pure race, certainly purer than, say, the Germans<br />
who, as even the pan-Germanics conceded, had a huge admixture of Slavic blood.<br />
But to these Zionists, even their racial purity could not overcome the one flaw in<br />
Jewish existence : they did not have their own Jewish boden. If the Teutonic racists<br />
could see themselves as ubermenchen (supermen), these Hebrew racists did not see<br />
the Jews in that light ; rather, it was the reverse. They believed that because they<br />
lacked their own boden the Jews were untermenchen and therefore, for their<br />
‘hosts’, little more than leeches : the world pest.<br />
If one believes in the validity of racial exclusiveness, it is difficult to object to<br />
anyone else, s racism. If one believes further that it is impossible for any people to<br />
be healthy except in their own homeland, then one cannot object to anyone else<br />
excluding ’aliens’ from their territory. In fact the average Zionist never thought of<br />
himself as leaving civilised Europe for the wilds of Palestine. In life it is obvious that<br />
Zionist blut und boden provided an excellent rationale for not fighting anti-<br />
Semitism on its home ground. It was not the fault of the anti-Semites, it was because<br />
of the Jews’ own misfortune of being in exile. The Zionists could tearfully argue that<br />
the loss of Palestine was the root cause of anti-Semitism and the regaining of<br />
Palestine was the only solution to the Jewish question. Everything else could only be<br />
palliative or futile.<br />
Walter Laqueur, the doyen of Zionist historians, has asked in his book, A<br />
History of Zionism, if Zionist insistence on the naturalness of anti-Semitism was not<br />
just ’grist to the mill of Nazi propaganda’. 50 It certainly was. Laqueur’s question can<br />
best be answered with another question : is it difficult to understand the gullible<br />
reader of a Nazi newspaper, who concluded that what was said by the Nazis, and<br />
agreed to by the Zionists — Jews — had to be right ?<br />
There would be worse : any Jewish movement that prattled on about the<br />
naturalness of anti-Semitism would, just as ’naturally’, seek to come to terms with<br />
the Nazis when they came to power.<br />
50 Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism, p. 500.<br />
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