AntiSemitism Can Be Rational Nordau Weinbaum

A Marriage of Convenience, by Laurence Weinbaum. 1993

Anti-Semitism Can Be Rational. The Endek and Zionist Agreement on the Fact of Jewish Overpopulation of Pre-WWII Poland, and Joint Efforts to Solve It. Polish Ambassador Lipski Never Endorsed the Holocaust!

The author touches on Jewish life in Poland. Although he does not use the term Litvaks (Litwaks), he alludes to them when he notes that the Jews of Wilno (Vilnius) were the least Polonized, were affected by a lingering Russian influence, and were ones whose models tended to be Russian revolutionaries rather than Zionists. (p. 243).

POLISH AMBASSADOR LIPSKI NEVER ENDORSED ANY FORM OF PERSECUTION OF JEWS

Poland’s ambassador to Nazi Germany, Jozef Lipski, has often been misquoted, by Polonophobes, in his statement that Poles should build a monument to Hitler were he to solve the Jewish problem. (p. 169). Lipski is slanderously accused of endorsing the Holocaust. Nothing could be further from the truth! In actuality, back in 1938, the extermination of Europe’s Jews was not even imagined. Lipski and Hitler were referring to a proposed mass emigration of Jews to the colonies–little different from what Jabotinsky and other Zionists had been working on all along! For details, read on…

ANTI-SEMITISM IS NOT NECESSARILY SOMETHING PRIMITIVE OR IRRATIONAL

Nowadays, anti-Semitism is customarily dismissed as the scapegoating of Jews, and mystified as “the world’s greatest hatred”. Not quite.

Instead of picturing the likes of Endek antagonism towards Jews as something terrible, the Zionist Max Nordau, in 1900, saw it as a hallmark of a nation’s newfound development and national consciousness–one whose growing hostility towards Jewish particularism and economic dominance was a natural consequence of this development. (p. 15). Michal Glazer, a Polish Jew, noted that the poverty and unemployment of Poles and Romanians made it all the more untenable that they would continue to tolerate right-or-wrong Jewish economic dominance. (p. 18). Later, Jabotinsky showed unusual insight in understanding the true–economic–causes of Polish anti-Semitism. See the Peczkis review of: The Jewish war front.

ENDEKS AND ZIONISTS AGREE: POLAND HAS FAR TOO MANY JEWS

That Poland was overpopulated with Jews was a position hardly limited to Endeks and Revisionist Zionists. Icaak (Yitzhak) Gruenbaum had declared, as early as 1927, that “‘there are one million more Jews in Poland than she can possibly accommodate'”. (p. 90). Arie Tartakower suggested that there were 1,200,000 Jews in Poland whose position was economically untenable, and 100,000-120,000 of them should emigrate annually. (p. 165).

The Zionism-in-a-hurry ideas of the Revisionist Jabotinsky were hardly new. In 1920, Polish Jew Max Nordau had advocated a mass emigration, within a 6 month period, of 600,000 Jews to Palestine. (p. 211).

THE MASS EMIGRATION OF POLAND’S JEWS WAS EMINENTLY REALISTIC

Jabotinsky suggested that 60,000 to 70,000 Polish Jews emigrate to Palestine annually over a ten year period. (p. 67). Was this realistic? Yes! Note that in 1949, the new State of Israel absorbed 240,000 Jewish immigrants. (p. 277).

NOT ALL A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE: GENUINE ASPECTS OF THE ENDEK-ZIONIST ALLIANCE

Partly true to the title, Weinbaum sees the post-Pilsudski Polish government’s alliance with the Revisionists as an effort to get many Polish Jews to leave Poland. However, he does recognize that some Poles genuinely wished the Jews success in forming their own state. (pp. 10-13).

The Poles gave arms to Revisionists for use in Palestine, and provided military training for its leaders. Abraham Stern of Irgun was a leading go-between between Jews and Poles in this regard. (p. 127).

The Poles, for their part, (and contrary to the notion that Poles necessarily looked down at Jews as poor soldiers), admired the Jewish fighters. Participant Yaakov Meridor notes this admiration. (p. 149). Some Polish newspapers hailed the Jews as fighters for their own homeland. (p. 265).

Eliahu Lankin, a recipient of Polish military training, reported that this training was deeper and more effective than the training he later received from the British and the Israelis. (p. 149). The training provided by the Poles won the praise of a leading Jewish Jerusalem newspaper. (p. 145). In fact, American Zionists leader Abba Hillel Silver suggests that, were it not for the military training supplied by the Poles, the State of Israel would not have come into being! (p. 146).

Economic motives were also important in terms of the realization of the Endek-Zionist alliance. Anticipating the Polish-Israeli trade of the present, 1930’s Poland had Palestine as a significant trading partner. (pp. 103-106). LOT, in 1937, inaugurated service between Warsaw, and Lydda and Haifa. (p. 105).

THE REVISIONISTS AND FASCISM

Then and now, “fascist” is a loaded word, and a handy label for leftists to use against those they do not like. The Revisionists were attacked by their detractors as Jewish fascists. Early Italian fascism, which was not anti-Semitic, did win some admiration from the Revisionists. However, Jabotinsky had a sharp distaste for totalitarianism and fascism, and the Revisionists never went beyond the outer trappings of fascism. (pp. 32-33, 241).