Theodor Herzl

I've started researching about Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jew, who is regarded as the spiritual father of Israel and a pivotal figure in the rise of Zionism. From my reading thus far, he seems to have started out believing that the integration of Jews into European society was possible but later abandoned that idea and embraced the idea of a Jewish homeland. Argentina, Uganda and the Sinai were all considered at various points but eventually Palestine was decided upon.

Theodor presided over the first Zionist Conference in (interestingly) Basel, Switzerland, in 1897 and remained president until his death in 1904 at the young age of 44. He garnered a lot of international support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine but couldn't persuade the Ottoman sultan to allow Zionists access, despite offering to help pay off the empire's debts. It has been proposed that the Zionists decided the Ottoman empire had to be dismantled because of the sultan's intransigence. Palestine was part of the Ottoman empire at that time.

Many Jews of the time were not in favour of a Jewish homeland and some are still not. On the Torah Jews website, the following points are made regarding an upcoming seminar:

There was no classroom big enough, so they rented a stadium. Masses of authentic Torah Jews are expected to fill the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum to capacity this Sunday at 4:00 PM to hear major rabbis lecture on the incompatibility of Judaism and Zionism. 

The lectures will emphasize the differences between Judaism – a religion centered around belief and adherence to the precepts of the Torah – and Zionism, a militaristic political movement designed to transform Jewish identity from religious to national, centered around a land, language, and army.

Since the state of Israel was established in 1948, Zionists have touted it as the “Jewish state,” and arrogated to it the role of representative of world Jewry. 

Opponents of Israel are silenced by Zionists with the accusation that they are “anti-Semites,” and Israel's politicians are portrayed as leaders of world Jewry. Jewish opponents of Zionism have been branded “self-hating Jews,” and Israel has employed various means to coerce and convince Jews to identify with Israel as their state. Their methods of coercion include various forms of discrimination against the Orthodox anti-Zionist lifestyle. Most recently, media has attached religious significance to the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem. 

This Sunday’s convention will be an important opportunity to hear the other side of the story, the position of Torah Jews on these subjects. Besides their opposition to the ideology of Jewish nationalism, the lecturers will also explain the traditional Orthodox Jewish view that Jews are forbidden to wage war but must live among the nations of the world in peace and with utmost loyalty, and that we must resist and fight against the draft law with all means at our disposal. 

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, noted lecturer and author on both Zionism and Judaism, says "Israel’s referring to itself as the Jewish state is a form of collective identity theft, since Jewishness is a purely religious identity, not political or national." He explains, "It is crucial for people to realise that Israel's identification as the Jewish state is a unilateral claim of Zionism. Judaism says the Jewish people are members of a religion and have no state except those in which they reside." Rabbi Shapiro will be available during the event to answer questions for the press and other interested parties.

Getting back to Theodor however, he detested Jewish bankers (Finanzjuden) and so that's a point in his favour. He was clearly an idealist and believed that the Jews and Palestians could live together in harmony. He wrote a novel called Altneuland (Old New Land) in which this sort of harmony is achieved. Regarding a possible settlement in Argentina, he displayed idealistic naïveté when he wrote:

"When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly ... It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example ... Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us" 

The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. 1 (New York: Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, 1960), pp. 88, 90 hereafter Herzl diaries.

As we now know, the private property (in Palestine) was expropriated, not gently but violently, and it continues to the present day. I think Theodor would be aghast to see how his beloved Israel has turned into a rogue state, the most violent and dangerous nation on Earth. Historically, I want to investigate to what extent the Zionists fomented the First World War and the Bolshevik revolution. It seems that they were deeply involved and if so, then again what would Theodor have thought of the millions who perished because of the machinations of a political entity that he had helped create? Perhaps he has long ago turned in his grave on Mount Herzl. Did the Finanzjuden manage to wrest control of the movement after his death and set about ensuring the destruction of the Ottoman Empire? I'm still exploring that possibility.

At a personal level, he married a woman called Julie Naschauer and they had three children: Paulina, Hans and Margaritha (Trude). Paulina died of a heroin overdose in 1930 at the age of 40. Hans committed suicide on the day of her sister's funeral at age 39. Trude died in a concentration camp in 1943. She had a son, Stephen Theodore Neumann, who was born in 1918 and who became a committed Zionist (unlike his mother or aunt and uncle). Unfortunately, he committed suicide in 1946 by jumping from the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge in Washington, D.C. It is certainly a very sad family history.

I'll make my way through Theodor Herzl's Diaries and see what I discover. I'm also making my way through the voluminous but fascinating The International Jew The World's Foremost Problem. The newspaper articles that comprise The International Jew were written in 1920 or a little later and they shed an interesting light on Jewish activity during and immediately after the war, especially their involvement in the entry of the United States into the war, the subsequent peace conference and the framing of the Balfour declaration.