But apart from that: Supposing but a small minority availed themselves
of this voluntary form of recognition, supposing only a small minority
to claim Jewish nationality as defined in the terms of the Zionist
State, there would still be the contrast between those who had thus
publicly proclaimed themselves nationals of Zion and those who hung
back. In other words, short of a general admitted maintenance of the old
fiction (of which Zionism more than any other force must accelerate the
breakdown), you must have, through Zionism, an accelerated tendency to
treating Jews throughout the world as being, whether without the New
Zionist State or within it, a separate people. And they are a separate
people, they cannot be other. My whole plea is that this truth should be
recognized and acted upon; for if it is shirked or denied it will take
its revenge. Reality always takes its revenge upon unreal pretence.
There remains in connection with Zionism another consideration which is
also of importance, though of a very different kind. Is the new Jewish
State to rely upon its own military strength and its own police--though
perhaps guaranteed (for what that may be worth) by international
agreement--or is it to be a protected State occupied, defended and
policed by the strength and fighting qualities of some other kind of
men, not Jews--Englishmen, Frenchmen or what not?
As we know, the particular solution attempted, the particular Zionism of
which the experiment is now being made in Palestine, plumps for the
_second_ solution. The protection of Jews from natives is to be
undertaken by a garrison of Englishmen. It plumps for this solution
under conditions as adverse as they well can be. The present experiment
is, as we noted at the end of the last chapter, not an independent
Jewish State, national, guaranteed, standing in its own strength; but a
_protected_ State; and that State protected by one nation: Great
Britain. The new Zion does not depend for its internal peace, for its
establishment against highly hostile forces, for the ex-propriation of
the local landowners, for the keeping of the peace between local
elements highly hostile to itself, upon Jewish soldiers and Jewish
courage. It depends upon British soldiers, British organization and
British sacrifice. Those who have promoted the Zionist experiment have
deliberately chosen the very worst moment for such a folly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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