Yivo Institute Suppresses a Jewish Hero's Anti-Zionism
Yivo's Board of Overseers, chaired by Marty Peretz, has reprinted the cover of Lucien Wolf's book The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs. And a handsome cover it is. On the back of the reprint, Yivo presumes to tell Wolf's biography. It goes on about what a scholar, reporter, and diplomat he was. It says that at Versailles in 1919, he "supported the 'western' position that the Jews were not in fact a separate nation, but should be protected as minority citizens of their respective resident countries."
This vague statement is a dishonest way of treating Wolf's actual significance in Jewish history: he was an anti-Zionist. For most of his life he fought Chaim Weizmann over the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine—although he demanded equal rights and protection for Jews who emigrated there. Wolf, writes Walter Laquer, in A History of Zionism, looked upon Judaism "as a collection of abstract religious principles, upon east European Jewry as an object of compassion and philanthropy, and upon Zionism as, at best, the empty dream of a few misguided idealists." Wolf himself wrote the entry on Zionism in the (magnificent) 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1911. (Thanks to my book-collecting mom, I have it right here.) He dismissed Zionism as an "error" by laying out his liberal belief in the modern nation state:
"Under the influence of religious toleration and the naturalization laws, nationalities are daily losing more of their religious character... With the passing away of anti-Semitism, Jewish nationalism will disappear. If the Jewish people disappear with it, it will only be because either their religious mission in the world has been accomplished, or they have proved themselves unworthy of it."
Yes, Wolf was writing before the Holocaust. But this is what this great Jew believed. Other progressives hold similar views today, including those like myself who are appalled by what a militaristic state Israel is, and by the apartheid policies that I witnessed in Hebron in the West Bank. Indeed some of Wolf's heirs have called for a binational state in Palestine.
The point here is that those who would insulate Israel from criticism, including Peretz, are misrepresenting Jewish history, in this case to stir up fears of a new antisemitism, and to bash Walt and Mearsheimer while they are at it. If you want to invoke Lucien Wolf's legacy, do so by honoring his views. And by showing that there is a tradition on the left of critiquing the implications of establishing a Jewish state. (Yivo knows better. It holds Wolf's papers. And Yivo's own curators describe Wolf's anti-Zionist efforts more honestly here.) One more wrinkle. Wolf believed that Jewish support for a Zionist state would expose Jews in western societies to the charge of dual loyalty. In essence, an issue that is raised by Walt and Mearsheimer's critique of the Israel lobby, and by the deluded war-fervor of White House neocons like Elliott Abrams, who has written that outside of Israel, Jews "are to stand apart from the nation in which they live." (This guy makes policy!) Walter Lippmann also had this concern (per Ronald Steel's bio), which is one reason he did not become a Zionist.
This is the one good thing about Gabriel Schoenfeld's (vicious) attack on Walt and Mearsheimer in the latest Commentary. Schoenfeld knows, and says, that concerns about dual loyalty were active in the minds of Jews who opposed Zionism, back when. Yivo could honor Lucien Wolf by exploring his concerns—now, when Jews need to recover their progressive tradition.
lil phil weiss is opposed to the existence of the jewish state but lacks the balls to come right out and say it. why?
he devotes all of his energy to tirades against the "jewish lobby" and insinuates that the jews have too much influence because of their "jewish money" but will not come out directly and say it.
why?
if lil phil weiss thinks he is some sort of stealth anti-semite he is sadly mistaken.
Yivo Institute Suppresses a Jewish Hero's Anti-Zionism???
They spelled out his position.
you're a mental case.
The writing is bizarre and strange, disjointed, rambling, nonsensical much of the time. ... Some cognitive problem? We are told this was written by a journalist,an editor no less, yet over and over as I read I kept asking myself: what? when? who? huh? where? huh?"
... padded with repetitions, nonevents, paragraphs full of sawdust, marginal details, purplish flights of fancy....
Jared Kushner: you spent 10 million dollars to print mish-mash of nonsense???
Weiss go masturbate to a picture of Angelina Jolie and spare the rest of us. You did not witness anything in Hebron- you are making it up from what two people told you. You are a liar, a fraud, crappy journalist and a failed author.
lil phil weiss has crawled into bed with walt and mearsheimer. their rant is used to serve his purposes, but the matter has already been addressed;
Overstating Jewish Power
Mearsheimer and Walt give too much credit to the Israeli lobby.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 27, 2006, at 1:47 PM ET
It's slightly hard to understand the fuss generated by the article on the Israeli lobby produced by the joint labors of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books. My guess is that the Harvard logo has something to do with it, but then I don't understand why the doings of that campus get so much media attention, either.
The essay itself, mostly a very average "realist" and centrist critique of the influence of Israel, contains much that is true and a little that is original. But what is original is not true and what is true is not original.
Everybody knows that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy, especially on Capitol Hill. The influence is not as total, perhaps, as that exerted by Cuban exiles over Cuba policy, but it is an impressive demonstration of strength by an ethnic minority. Almost everybody also concedes that the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe and has implicated the United States in a sordid and costly morass. I would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt and pointed up the role of Israel in supporting apartheid in South Africa, in providing arms and training for dictators in Congo and Guatemala, and helping reactionary circles in America do their dirty work
Atta boy lil Philly. Pop and I agree with that Wolf jew on one thing; we dont need a jewish state where all the christkillers can gather together and perform some sort of cabal (or Kaballah) on the world. And as for the argument that Wolfs' writings pre-dated the "holocaust", well we all know what a load of malarkey that is.
Thanks for helping us spread the word
Mel and Pop
Philip's liberties with truth are amply demonstrated in his recent posting on Niall Ferguson, whose stature as a historian and writer Philip himself will never approach. To wit, Philip, with the unwarranted self-assurance characteristic of someone with such an absurdly inflated opinion of himself, confidently assumes that Ferguson is unfamiliar with a particular historian, Yuri Slezkine, with whom he compares Ferguson unfavorably. Mind, he has already slandered Ferguson's opinions and character. Had Philip even bothered to take a cursory glance at Ferguson's latest book, "The War of the World," he would see that Slezkine is cited; mererly flipping the pages of the bibliography would have sufficed to discover this. Needless to say, even this minimum of due diligence or research is outside Philip's methodology, which typically consists in tossing indiscrimanate slurs in the direction of anyone who threatens the sanctity of his fragile worldview by challenging his pitifully and cravenly misshapen views about Israel and Jews.
Sure Wolf's views should be explored, especially how wrong he was. The fact that his predictions on the issues of the day were so wrong should call into question all of this Wolf character's writings and views.
First, according to Weiss, Wolf characterized Zionism as "the empty dream of a few misguided idealists." Boy was he wrong! Those "empty dreams" of Zionists have resulted in a powerful and advanced first world country with a strong economy that contributes technological and cultural advances of the highest order to the world.
Second, according to Weiss, Wolf predicted in 1911 that anti-Semitism was on the verge of disappearing! Twenty short years later saw the beginning of the most murderous anti-Semitic episode in history.
Wolf should only be remembered for how foolish, naive and wrong he was on the matters of his day. On each of the large Jewish questions of his day (Jewish nationalism and anti-Semitism) he was dead wrong! Perhaps the next 100 years will show how Weiss is similarly misguided when it comes to matters of Israel and Jews.
Another day and another column by little Philly Weiss on the evils of Israel, the Jewish conspiracy, horrors of Zionism. Lucien Wolf, wow there is a name out of obscurity, a British writer in the early part of the 20th century wasn't in favor of Israel, before the holocaust. STOP THE PRESSES, news scoop. I just didn't know that Lucien Wolf was a man among men, a prophet in our times. But thank God we have little Philly Weiss to show us the way. Boy Phil, what happened to you has a kid. Do you really hate yourself this much. And more importantly why does the observer give this idiot a platfom.
Another day and another column by little Philly Weiss on the evils of Israel, the Jewish conspiracy, horrors of Zionism. Lucien Wolf, wow there is a name out of obscurity, a British writer in the early part of the 20th century wasn't in favor of Israel, before the holocaust. STOP THE PRESSES, news scoop. I just didn't know that Lucien Wolf was a man among men, a prophet in our times. But thank God we have little Philly Weiss to show us the way. Boy Phil, what happened to you has a kid. Do you really hate yourself this much. And more importantly why does the observer give this idiot a platfom.
I seriously feel sorry for you Philip, but I also envy you for living in such a simple reality where everything is devided into "good" and "evil", and where you (as a member of the "evil" side) are able to surpass it all - and align with the "good".
If you read German, allow me to suggest "Der j
Let us settle, Israel is a respectable state with outstanding achievements.
The same is true for most Jews in the developed world.
Most of them live in the capital regions or in the major metropolises.
This is a huge advantage, and allows the local Jews to soak up the best education.
That is all. No special intelligence should be attributed to the individual Jews.
All Jews have studied in the universities of Berlin, Zurich, Brno, Budapest, London which have been started by CHRISTIAN scholars. The Jews have become proud participants of this scholastic enterprise.
I hope that the Zionist beginning of Israel will be extended to the friendly Arab-Palestinian-Druze-Bedouin residents, too.
That will close a disturbing chapter.
It is still criminal to be anti-Zionist.
Let us be OpenMinded. And nurture an empathy for the Israelis and the Palestinians at the same time.
Lucien Wolf:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_Wolf
Wolf was part of the Anglo-Jewish delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. He helped draft the minority treaties, which guaranteed rights for the ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority populations. The Jewish delegations to the conference were split along different ideological lines. Eastern European delegates were generally diaspora nationalists, American delegates Zionists, and the Western Europeans mostly opposed both Zionism and disaspora nationalism, wanting Jews to be integrated into the societies they live in.
I tried looling up Lucien Wolf a little because he is definitely an obscure character in Jewish history. He strikes me has being the classic definition of the "court jew" calling this guy a Jewish hero is a rach of truly epic proportions. Secondly, given the situation tha developed for the Jewish populations in Europe between the Paris confercence of 1919 and 1945 he was spectacularly and epically wrong.
Where did you find the Eliot Abrams quotation?
it's "criminal" to be opposed to the existence of the state of israel? tell that to gandhi. israel is a vestige of colonialism and nothing more. it should be wiped off the map.
Phil, you should not print remarks from these losers. These creeps won't be content until the last Israeli is dead fighting Arabs while they get fat in Great Neck. Your column attracts the most vile galut (diaspora) Jews, whose pants swell at the thought of some IDF kid fighting because they can't.
Keep fighting the good fight, Phil.
Israel needs peace not these self-hating ghetto Jews.
Mark:
Little Philly Weiss doesn't want an Israel at peace. He wants an Israel that is exterminated. He says so in every column. By the way, where do you live?
Here's the quote from Abrams--
"Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart--except in Israel--from the rest of the population." (Faith or Fear: How Jews can survive in a Christian America, 1997.)
If only Americans had been told that this is the kind of stuff in the minds of the "neocons," we would never have let them take us to war. We need to free our media, and Weiss is making a start.
By the way, in that same book Abrams also advises Jews not to date or go to school with gentiles.
It's hard to imagine anyone not a Jew saying this kind of stuff and not being instantly ostracized.
Would it be possible for the Observer to have Weiss review the new David Mamet book, "The Wicked Son"?
You seem to have touched a nerve here, Phil, judging from the hysterical squealing of the AIPAC/Israeli crowd.