Reply to: Walter Block’s and Alan G. Futerman’s “How Jews Escaped Their Dismal Fate”
Walter and Alan’s article is titled “How Jews Escaped Their Dismal Fate:
Liberalism calls on them to outsource their protection to the goodwill of others. That failed time and again.”
The article begins by documenting some of the instances in which Jews have been mistreated by the surrounding population. That is pretty much all one needs to know that the article and views of Block and Futerman are misguided. So what is Jews have been mistreated and erroneously blamed for all sorts of stuff in the past. ALL human beings in the past have been mistreated relative to our modern private-property-freedom-respecting views. Slavery, unequal rights-freedoms of women, etc. Antisemitism was just one of the many unnecessary ills that were understandably going away. This was obvious to all astute thinkers. It is obvious that the freedom of all homo sapiens, and especially that of Jews, had been increasing tremendously by the time we got to the late 1800s. And this is one of the many obvious reasons why Zionism was NOT popular among Jews in the late 1800s. The rabbinical establishment in Munich, Germany, where Herzl wanted to hold the First Zionist Congress, strongly rejected the idea so the meeting was moved to Basle Switzerland(29–31st/8/1897). They told him :
“…how can one speak with people who on the one hand are fanatics regarding Jewish nationhood and, on the other hand, complain that the Austrian government required a baptismal certificate from the candidate for the position of secretary of Bukowina. If the Austrian Jews support the efforts of the Zionists, then they should not complain that they are treated by the government like foreigners and are barred from public office. *We, however, can say to our fellow countrymen with complete conviction that we comprise a separate community solely with respect to religion. Regarding nationality, we feel totally at one with our fellow Germans and therefore strive towards the realization of the spiritual and moral goals of our dear fatherland with an enthusiasm equaling theirs…*.Eighteen hundred years ago, history made its decision regarding Jewish nationhood through the dissolution of the Jewish State and the destruction of the Temple.”
This makes perfect sense. German, Polish, Russian, Spanish Jews spoke German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and for centuries their identities had evolved in those locations where their Synagogues had been built and they made real tangible contributions to the evolution of Western Civilization. Until the last couple of centuries most people had never even seen a map and their “identities” were tied, not to a nation, but to a local town or village. The cultural concept of a ‘Nation’ as we currently treat it, did not generally arise until maps, better communication, faster transportation, etc. allowed our more local-tribal ‘identities’ to be expanded to now include much larger groups. This of course has led to bigger and bigger tribalistic National and then World Wars.
During the early days of Zionism, many Jews were divided into the Zionists and anti-Zionists (“assimilationists”). Chaim Weizmann, the leading Zionist figure after Herzl’s death in 1904, lamented how “assimilated Jews” were “dead against Zionism” and identified Zionism (correctly IMHO) as “a primitive tribalism”:
”For assimilated Jews…They looked upon it…as a primitive tribalism. They felt themselves…called upon to “rescue” Judaism from Zionism…these people are dead against Zionism…Zionism is not meant for those people who have cut themselves adrift from Jewry…”
Of course! That rapidly increasing number of very well educated cosmopolitan “assimilated Jews” spread all over Europe-USA just wanted to be fellow human beings or equal world citizens free of ancient tribalisms-mysticisms-identities. Unfortunately, for very understandable reasons-factors for which nobody is to blame and are ultimately rooted in economic ignorance, like a rocket that is just about to reach orbit but runs out of fuel and comes crashing down to earth, Zionism would inadvertently pull ‘Jewish Identity’ and all of Western Civilization back to an increasingly ethnocentric identity-worldview with disastrous consequences.
Suddenly, instead of having an “identity” or culture that could spread the reality, that freedom and individual rights were increasing, we now had the evolution on an “identity” (Zionist) that would grow by doing the opposite, by amplifying, bringing attention to, and sadly at times even encouraging and welcoming antisemitism. The founder of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl himself highlighted this ideological congruence of both Zionists and anti-Semites in his foundational book “The Jewish State”(1896):
“The anti-semites will be our most steadfast friends.” “The anti-Semitic countries will be our allies” “Great exertions will hardly be necessary to spur on the movement. Anti-Semites provide the requisite impetus. They need only do what they did before, and then they will create a desire to emigrate where it did not previously exist, and strengthen it where it existed before.”
Just look out the window, these simple-minded Zionists have destroyed their own Judaism, they Zionized it, they turned it into an ideology that is thoroughly brainwashed into the idea the Jews and non-Jews can’t live together because somehow, through some unexplained-irrational phenomenon of ‘antisemitism’ , the non-Jewish homo sapiens will slaughter the homo sapiens who ‘identify as Jewish’. How absurd. The only reason we have this polarizing chaos that will once again bring about what will be the Final World War, is due to Jew-Gentile misunderstandings of which Zionism is part of. Just like many bright and well-intentioned fellow homo sapiens fooled themselves into tyranny via Communism, sadly Zionism is doing the same thing. Of course the truly great Jewish-born freemarketeers like Murray N. Rothbard and Sheldon Richman, were able to overcome whatever ‘Jewish Identity’ bias their upbringing may have given them and rightly see Zionism for the erroneous disaster that it is.
People should read-listen to Murray N. Rothbard’s ‘War Guilt In The Middle East (1967)’
‘Coming to Palestine’ by Sheldon Richman
This playlist is another good start:
And:
