The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
Patriotism is not merely dying for the nation. It is dying
with the nation. It is regarding the fatherland not merely
as a real resting-place like an inn, but as a final resting-place,
like a house or even a grave. Even the most Jingo of the Jews
do not feel like this about their adopted country; and I doubt
if the most intelligent of the Jews would pretend that they did.
Even if we can bring ourselves to believe that Disraeli lived
for England, we cannot think that he would have died with her.
If England had sunk in the Atlantic he would not have sunk with her,
but easily floated over to America to stand for the Presidency.
Even if we are profoundly convinced that Mr. Beit or Mr. Eckstein
had patriotic tears in his eyes when he obtained a gold concession
from Queen Victoria, we cannot believe that in her absence he would
have refused a similar concession from the German Emperor.
When the Jew in France or in England says he is a good patriot
he only means that he is a good citizen, and he would put it
more truly if he said he was a good exile. Sometimes indeed
he is an abominably bad citizen, and a most exasperating and
execrable exile, but I am not talking of that side of the case.
I am assuming that a man like Disraeli did really make a romance
of England, that a man like Dernburg did really make a romance
of Germany, and it is still true that though it was a romance,
they would not have allowed it to be a tragedy. They would have
seen that the story had a happy ending, especially for themselves.
These Jews would not have died with any Christian nation.
But the Jews did die with Jerusalem. That is the first and
last great truth in Zionism. Jerusalem was destroyed and Jews
were destroyed with it, men who cared no longer to live because
the city of their faith had fallen. It may be questioned whether
all the Zionists have all the sublime insanity of the Zealots.
But at least it is not nonsense to suggest that the Zionists
might feel like this about Zion. It is nonsense to suggest
that they would ever feel like this about Dublin or Moscow.
And so far at least the truth both in Semitism and Anti-Semitism
is included in Zionism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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