In one of the numbers of the Zionist organ _Die Welt_ there appeared a
good allegorical description of those Jews who remained in the National
German party in Austria even after it had united with the anti-Semites.
The allegory is of an old lady whose lover deserts her for another, and
who, after trying without success to bring him back by all the arts
which used to win him, begins to display affection for his new love,
hoping that he may take pity on her for her magnanimity.
I have a shrewd suspicion that this allegory can equally well be
applied, with a slight change, to its inventors themselves. There is an
old lady who, despairing utterly of regaining her lover by entreaties,
submission and humility, suddenly decks herself out in splendour and
begins to treat him with hatred and contempt. Her object is still to
influence him. She wants him at least to respect her in his heart of
hearts, if he can no longer love her. Whoever reads _Die Welt_
attentively and critically will not be able to avoid the impression that
the Western “Zionists” always have their eyes fixed on the non-Jewish
world, and that they, like the assimilated Jews, are aiming simply at
finding favour in the eyes of the nations: only that whereas the others
want love, the “Zionists” want respect. They are enormously pleased when
a Gentile says openly that the “Zionists” deserve respect, when a
journal prints some reference to the “Zionists” without making a joke of
them, and so forth. Nay, at the last sitting of the Congress the
President found it necessary publicly to tender special thanks to the
three Gentiles who had honoured the meeting by taking part in it,
although they were all three silent members, and there is no sign of
their having done anything. If I wished to go into small details, I
could show from various incidents that in their general conduct and
procedure these “Zionists” do not try to get close to Jewish culture and
imbibe its spirit, but that, on the contrary, they endeavour to imitate,
as Jews, the conduct and procedure of the Germans, even where they are
most foreign to the Jewish spirit, as a means of showing that Jews, too,
can live and act like all other nations. It may suffice to mention the
unpleasant incident at Vienna recently, when the young “Zionists” went
out to spread the gospel of “Zionism” with sticks and fisticuffs, in
German fashion. And the Zionist organ regarded this incident
sympathetically, and, for all its carefulness, could not conceal its
satisfaction at the success of the Zionist fist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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