More on Zionism

To the honored Professor Sen. C. F. Gabba,¹

The long article that you published in the Rassegna Nazionale on the first of last April requires my response: a response that is addressed not only to you but also to those Jews who believed that what you have written about Zionism is suitable for approval in private or public form!

Before all, allow me to say that I, speaking from personal position, ask you to observe—for you seem to have doubts on this point—that I have not only endorsed, but I am effectively, from its creation until today, president of the Italian Zionist Federation, which counts in its organization 1,200 members, a little more than 50 percent of the Jewish adults who, according to the official statistics, live in Italy.²

But I return to the beginning of your article.

You say (p. 353) that you intend to reiterate your affirmations because there is widespread ignorance in Italy about what Zionistic aims truly are!

Still, notwithstanding the praises that you have publicly aimed at Il Vessillo Israelitico,³ I dare to believe that you do not have correct perceptions about Jews, about the Jewish question, and about Zionism that would be necessary for one who proposes to lift the darkness of Italian ignorance about the facts of Zionism!

And it is for this reason that I am persuaded to respond, having noticed a few errors and contradictions that are apparent in your writings on Zionism.

You speak now of Zionist propaganda in Italy, and it seems that about this propaganda you ignored the very existence of my first letter of October 19th. You cite the Judenstaat [pamphlet] of Theodor Herzl, but you forget the subsequent works of the great Apostolo, and you forget, above all, that according to Herzl himself and according to Max Nordau, in the Judenstaat there were many fantastic elements!

However, perhaps the strangest citation is that with respect to the number of Jewish Italians, you deduce from the Jewish Statistics of [Alfred] Nossig, which egregiously contradicts those supplied by the Italian census!

You say that you do not wish to occupy yourself with the conditions of Jews outside of Italy, conditions that constitute the most important cause for the development of Zionism, of its passage from the metaphysical-religious camp to the practical-social camp; instead, with your authority, you confirm all of the accusations that the Russian government and antisemites have created in an attempt . . . to justify the horrors committed in Kishinev in 1903; in 1905 in Odessa, Kiev, and in other cities and villages; and others that are being committed now. Nor do we even have the courage to treat in an article the grave question of antisemitism in Russia: but although this phenomenon that has struck a population of nearly six million is complex and presents a multiplicity of causes that one can observe in all social realities, it is no longer permissible to ignore how the Russian government has not only created, maintained, and strengthened the exclusionary laws that place Jews in a state of agonizing civil and political infirmity, but has also inspired and protected—now with the direct and indirect participation of the Cossacks and police—violence and massacres to harm Jews.

Not many weeks have passed since in the House of Commons a deputy asked for (in shame) the publication of the secret reports of English consuls on the authorities’ attitudes during the antisemitic violence from the autocratic government; not eight days have passed from then until more than fifty deputies presented the Imperial Duma with an interpolation of the participation of the police in the horrors committed in Kiev, Odessa, etc., etc.

And one hundred other testimonials besides those from Ganz and from the Alliance Israélite Universelle could be put forward against the behavior of that government, which has hoped, in terrorizing the Jewish masses with carnage, to break their passion for liberal ideas and to ward off the danger of the end of autocracy.

If you resort to anonymous pamphlets or to official or unofficial newspapers, it will not take long before we find atrocious accusations aimed at the Jews; you will undoubtedly read that these [Jews] have provoked disorder, offending the patriarchal sentiments of the population, committing acts of affront against the tsar; you will find the calumnies of many testimonials repeated before the tribunals, in the despicable simulacrum of trials, which were not done after the massacres of Kishinev; but by now, one can no longer file an appeal to similar parties for an unbiased judgment. [ . . . ]

But is it possible that Jews will resort collectively to spontaneous mutilation with the certainty of subjecting themselves to the gravest punishments?

That official and unofficial newspapers resort, for lack of anything better, to the most ridiculous lies, to explain the attitude of the government, one understands; but how could such fantastical assertions be told and repeated by impartial people?

The testimonies and speeches delivered to the Duma do matter for the hecatombs of Białystok. The Times Tribune reports:

A Polish deputy who lives in Białystok declared that the nationalities and religions there had always lived in perfect peace and friendship. He declared that yesterday’s events could not have taken place other than via conspiracy and aggression.

The deputy Aladin recalled last year’s massacre of Ekaterinoslav; he said that the government had always deplored massacres, but he never prevented or repressed them.

So exclaimed the agricultural deputy: “I have seen a handful of scoundrels plundering, burning, and murdering under the watch of police soldiers. In the Russian cities, in the Jewish factories, they worked together with the other workers and always had the best friendships; now the purported hatred of race and religion is a fiction prepared by the government for its malignant objectives.”

These opinions and declarations were confirmed by many other deputies. Deputy Rodiceff said:

The Minister of the Interior has still not responded to our interpolation regarding the discipline imposed on official persons who have been found culpable of participation in these horrible massacres. He has still not responded to our interpolation on the reasons why the police department has released a proclamation inciting the populace to kill Jews. We know very well that the police department has always been the organizer of these massacres; our nation is not only in constant danger, but it runs the risk of deteriorating in the disorder of the current government.

Russian and foreign journalists have been faithful war correspondents, documenting the valor of the Jews during the recent campaign in Manchuria; we remember Mr. D. Niemirowich, who in the most brilliant article reprinted by Die Welt (1905, no. 50) confronts the spirit of obedience among Jewish soldiers, their devotion, their heroism, with the reward that attended them upon returning home, of finding in their case a raid, their families massacred.

The Jews of Russia were charged with being in charge of the revolution that this had provoked, according to him, not as Russian citizens, but only as Jews; they took the occasion to repeat the accusation that even in other European countries, the richest Jews, the White Israelites, subsidized revolutionary newspapers and favored unbecoming popular movements.

We will not continue on this subject; the accusation of Jews of fomenting the revolution is an old weapon of antisemitism.

The participation in the Russian revolution must not be surprising, just as the struggle must not be ascribed to those who, with the flower of Russian citizenry, take part in reducing the disgraced country to barbarity; for if one of the revolutionaries falls to violence, which all of us deplore—in part a sad consequence of the particular prohibition with which the government impoverishes the Jews—this demonstration of individual impulsivity makes it difficult to regain the responsibility of the collective.

The Bund, the great Jewish Socialist Association (which—one notes—does not have any relationship with Zionism) that has led to the accusation that Jews are responsible for a Jewish revolution, owes its creation to the persistent rejection by other socialist associations, as it has recognized the necessity of the particular revindication of the Jews, who are kept in much worse condition than other subjects; apart from this and support for the abrogation of exceptional anti-Jewish laws, The Bund agenda does not differ from that of the other socialist associations.

It has become customary among friends and adversaries of Jews to affirm those Jews in Russia to be not only in a state of civil and political inferiority, but even greater moral inferiority; and if the friends attribute their condition to misery, to oppressions (made even fiercer after the laws of May 1882), the adversaries took it instead as an argument to justify the exceptional laws promulgated or maintained by the government.

I, on the other hand, do not want to appoint myself as defender, at whatever cost, of the Jews in Russia: I only desire, relying on unsuspicious testimonies, that I sell the myths that are, to their detriment, so easily formed—which offer weak or superficial people a means for justifying the behavior of Russia—of the complicit silence of Europe. In the past days, I have reread the Report of the Commissioners of Immigration upon the Causes which Incite Immigration to the United States (Washington, Government Printing Office 1892). The horrors of persecution are described with the practical laconism of the Americans: but the confrontation of the legal violence with the honest positions of the great masses of Jews is so striking that each honest soul cannot but remain shaken. I would like to translate part of the conclusion of this important work:

The numerous cases cited present salient features, representing typical specimens of the various grades of persecutions, which undoubtedly aggravate the existing famine and horrors, and are based upon personal interviews and investigations. Nearly all are corroborated, the more important ones by undeniable proof, some of it documentary in character. In presenting them, we aimed to reproduce, as far as possible, the simple language in which they were described; to avoid embellishment of facts, as they speak eloquently for themselves, and in their description to repress the feelings which often gained the mastery, as we stood face to face with the actual scenes of the misery and want surrounding these hunted human beings, and which we can never drive from memory. The chapter is by no means complete; what there is of it is regarded by us as authentic, and believed to be a convincing history of the terrible conditions which heretofore have been but partially described and largely disbelieved because of their incredible character.

Alongside the stories of impartial persons who give a vague idea of the miseries of the Jews in Russia, miseries from 1892 have grown infinitely with new laws and new massacres; I believe that, if one does not want everyone to throw themselves at violent forms of revolution, one must recognize the right to aspire to a land, where people can enjoy public and private liberties, carry out their activities, and dedicate themselves to work without the fear of finding perpetual evils inside the government or their compatriots!

Either revolution or Zionism, here are the two terms of the dilemma, and, given the character, the habits, the ancient prejudices of that population, not even revolution will bring equality of rights that are assumed under all civil nations, which brings us to conclude logically that Zionism is the only means for radically resolving the centuries-old Jewish question.