The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
For what may be criticised here as Anti-Semitism is only the negative
side of Zionism. For the sake of convenience I have begun by stating
it in terms of the universal popular impression which some call
a popular prejudice. But such a truth of differentiation is equally
true on both its different sides. Suppose somebody proposes to mix up
England and America, under some absurd name like the Anglo-Saxon Empire.
One man may say, "Why should the jolly English inns and villages
be swamped by these priggish provincial Yankees?" Another may say,
"Why should the real democracy of a young country be tied to your
snobbish old squirarchy?" But both these views are only versions
of the same view of a great American: "God never made one people
good enough to rule another."
The primary point about Zionism is that, whether it is right or wrong,
it does offer a real and reasonable answer both to Anti-Semitism
and to the charge of Anti-Semitism. The usual phrases about
religious persecution and racial hatred are not reasonable answers,
or answers at all. These Jews do not deny that they are Jews;
they do not deny that Jews may be unpopular; they do not deny that there
may be other than superstitious reasons for their unpopularity.
They are not obliged to maintain that when a Piccadilly dandy talks
about being in the hands of the Jews he is moved by the theological
fanaticism that prevails in Piccadilly; or that when a silly youth on
Derby Day says he was done by a dirty Jew, he is merely conforming to that
Christian orthodoxy which is one of the strict traditions of the Turf.
They are not, like some other Jews, forced to pay so extravagant
a compliment to the Christian religion as to suppose it the ruling
motive of half the discontented talk in clubs and public-houses,
of nearly every business man who suspects a foreign financier,
or nearly every working man who grumbles against the local
pawn-broker. Religious mania, unfortunately, is not so common.
The Zionists do not need to deny any of these things;
what they offer is not a denial but a diagnosis and a remedy.
Whether their diagnosis is correct, whether their remedy
is practicable, we will try to consider later, with something
like a fair summary of what is to be said on both sides.
But their theory, on the face of it, is perfectly reasonable.
It is the theory that any abnormal qualities in the Jews are due
to the abnormal position of the Jews. They are traders rather
than producers because they have no land of their own from
which to produce, and they are cosmopolitans rather than patriots
because they have no country of their own for which to be patriotic.
They can no more become farmers while they are vagrant than they
could have built the Temple of Solomon while they were building
the Pyramids of Egypt. They can no more feel the full stream
of nationalism while they wander in the desert of nomadism than
they could bathe in the waters of Jordan while they were weeping
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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