The Ashkenazi Revolution

107Europe. Herzl did not adequately gauge the religious sensibilities of thesultan, which would prevent him from accepting Jewish money inexchange for granting the Jews of the Land of Israel the right to establishtheir own nation. Also, he did not adequately assess the entrenched anti-Semitism of Spanish culture in Argentina or the feelings of LatinAmericans regarding a foreign penetration in their lands or the greatersuccess of such foreigners.Yet it is very possible that these things were not Herzl’s error. It is verypossible that Herzl took into consideration all the above points but, in hisknowing the difficulty of the task before him, wished to give them the formof continuity in that they are designed to continue the activities that hadalready begun, that is to say, the activities in the Land of Israel andArgentina. If my theory is correct, then Herzl had assumed that it ispermissible to make a tactical compromise in order to advance the mainobjective. But this error of Herzl was more severe than the error I hadpreviously attributed to him. It is forbidden for a revolutionary tocompromise his principles. He must be sure to distinguish well betweenprinciple and tactic and which one is being compromised for the benefit ofthe other, the tactic or the principle.Herzl’s emphasis, that the solution to the Jewish problem can be found inthe Land of Israel or in Argentina, is a fatal compromise of principle. As aconsequence of this, Herzl veered from the kingly path of the Europeansettlement of the 19 th century and took a dubious side path. Moreover:Hand in hand with this diversion, Herzl permanently determined the humanmaterial that would be found within the walls of the Zionist Agency and thequality of the leaders who rule over it. Had he decided, from thebeginning, that the Jewish state would be established only in a completelynew land and not in the Land of Israel or in Argentina, he would haveentirely severed himself from the symbolists who advocated only for theLand of Israel, from the political group of the New Hebrew Literature, andfrom the various Jewish philanthropic movements. In such a scenario, theelite of the Ashkenazi revolutionaries would have gathered themselvesunder his banner, the great men of thought and passion, and foremost: The