Antigoyism in Zion

A Cause Célèbre

As I informed you in yesterday’s cable, hearings on the cause célèbre that is stirring up all of Palestine have begun before the Grand Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.

The issue is really quite simple. It is about the judicial proceedings against Isaac Nathaniel Viermond, editor in chief of the newspaper l’Antigoyiste, accused of having slandered the head of the Jerusalem Bureau for Reports and Constructions, M. le comte d’Hélieucin.¹

This journalist, who is not without some talent, especially for invective and invention, excels in the art of distorting history for the ignorant and uneducated. He had accused M. d’Hélieucin in an aggressive press campaign of having corrupted, with the aid of a Cheuhhad—a Hebrew term meaning bribe—Admiral Yahakob di San-Torpedo, a descendant of an old family of Spanish Jews, the Palestinian naval minister.

While in our country, the masses generally align themselves with the slanderers, people in Jerusalem are particularly hostile to Viermond and to the limited, but very active role of the antigoyists, and that, for profound reasons that my letter will later make clear.

In order that your readers may understand the importance given this matter here, I must go back to the very origins of the Palestinian Jewish State.

The Zionist State

When the Jews recovered their ancestral lands some hundred years ago, they came already equipped with a uniform religion and a corresponding constitution and code.

The new law was promulgated before the assembled people on the 6th of the month of Sivan, the first day of Shavuot, anniversary of the proclamation of the Decalogue on Mount Sinai.

On this day the first article of the Constitution, a sort of Declaration of the Duties of Man, was read to those assembled.

In fact, in contrast to the dogma of the French Revolution, the neo-Jews, beginning with the philosophical principle that, at birth, man already has all his rights, did not want to proclaim a single one, in order to be more certain not to forget any. They imputed France’s decadence to the Declaration of the Rights of Man itself because in that country men were soon talking only about their rights and never about their duties.

In Palestine, the consequence of this doctrine was to transform the very spirit of political battles. Instead of proclaiming reciprocal rights, the citizens imposed duties on one another, each person claiming he had been more dutiful than his adversary.

To that we must add the proclamation of the unique dogma of equality among all men: its symbol (two equal triangles joined together to form a six-pointed star) appears on Palestinian weapons.

It is therefore not surprising that the Jews abolished all distinctions of race, religion, and belief. All foreigners had exactly the same civil and political rights as did the Jewish nationals. Civil rights were even conferred upon temporary residents. As for political rights: to acquire them, one needed only to obtain a certificate showing perfect knowledge of the laws and to profess faith in egalitarianism. Since the majority of posts were completely open and elective offices, the elected foreigner could dedicate himself to being a civil servant.

This was the work of the Zionist thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century.

The result was a great immigration of foreigners coming from all other countries. In contrast to what was happening elsewhere, Palestine received not the dregs but the elite. Indeed, the dregs of society, those who know only how to demand their rights, did not dare to live in a country where only duties matter, whereas more refined individuals, prepared for self-sacrifice, came to cultivate humanitarian expansion in a fertile field.

It must be said, of course, that they also had considerable material interests. [ . . . ]

Antigoyism. Viermond’s Origins

It was in this context that there appeared one day a man, unknown till then, called Isaac-Nathaniel Viermond, the hero of the hour, who soon acquired a suspect celebrity with the publication of a pamphlet titled “La Judée engoyisée” [Judea Taken Over by Non-Jews].

In this work full of insults addressed to the numerous Christians who had settled in Palestine, he accused them of every imaginable misdeed, he incited his fellow citizens to throw them out, and if necessary, to wipe them out. Then, thanks to his energy and fertile inventiveness, he was able to face down all rebuttals and had even managed to surround himself with a party of fanatics who were few in number, but extremely active, recruited from among those who had returned from exile.

We know that in Judea, there are some crimes punished not by imprisonment—there are none—but with temporary banishment.

Some who return from exile are repentant. But others, having elsewhere contracted forms of behavior incompatible with national customs, harbor feelings that they no longer belong here. And to hide their flaws, they always insist on principles loftier than those of our country’s most virtuous citizens, without, moreover, practicing any of them. Thus, whereas our country appreciates the prosperity that foreigners bring us, they accuse the whole nation of being anti-patriotic and make claim to an exclusive and fierce nationalism.

Viermond, their leader, is of Jewish nationality. He was born in the Dead Sea-West city of Hebron. But his father was a Christian immigrant of French origin who ended up here after a thousand trials and tribulations. His real name was not Viermond, but Dreimond. He was the son of one Édouard Dreimond who, according to newspaper accounts, must have been something like a French demagogue of the last century, a period when old France was antisemitic. This Édouard Dreimond, of old Jewish roots himself, changed his name to the French-sounding Drumont, but the etymology was German; Drei-Mond, in French, trois-lunes.² [ . . . ]

The publication of la Judée engoyisée produced an emotional reaction in Jerusalem, where feelings of universal equality implying the spirit of tolerance had been offended by that exclusivist pamphlet. As may now be understood—and it would have remained obscure without my previous explanations—the foreign element having been much appreciated, the Jews worried that the prospect of future trouble might force them out. For censorship does not exist in Palestine except in regard to pornographic literature. The laws are powerless against philosophical or historical doctrines. To the Jewish mind, on the contrary, even religious heresy is considered to be a sign of the intellectual independence and subtlety that lead to controversy, to questions of truth, to passionate and extravagant literary and philosophical jousting—sports that Jews enjoy enormously.

The resulting polemic formed a voluminous literature. But Viermond, a consummate sophist, knew exactly how to lay out a series of facts, to cite disparate sources that, though true, he used to mask incoherence with empty verbiage. He then drew false conclusions, which he simply repeated over and over again. When one tried to reason with him, he would change the subject or just fall silent. He was not deliberately hypocritical. But he sincerely believed it permissible to be hypocritical in order to attain a noble end—a nobility that he claimed for himself as sole judge.

There was no longer any end in sight. And it was with relief that the Palestinians observed the first real crime—the act of defamation committed by Viermond; they anticipated that the subsequent trial would put an end to their discomfort.