Boycotts of Jews Understandable Jabotinsky

The Jewish War Front, by Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Demystifying and Clarifying Pre-WWII Polish Anti-Semitism: A Leading Zionist Speaks. Boycotts of Jew Understandable

Nowadays, all forms of opposition to Jews are lumped together, simplistically treated as pathological and irrational, commonly blamed on past Christian teachings about Jews, and viewed retroactively through the lens of the Holocaust. Poles are portrayed as a primitive, intolerant people. The eminent Zionist Jabotinsky (Jabotinski), who published this book in 1940, shortly before his death, debunks all this, and provides a pre-Holocaust perspective of the Jewish situation.

RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL ANTAGONISMS AGAINST JEWS: THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE

Jabotinsky defines his terms as follows: “There are two distinct forces at work within the general phenomenon called anti-Semitism: the one a subjective repulsion, strong enough and permanent enough to become anything from a hobby to a religion; the other is an objective state of things which tends to ostracize the Jew almost independently of whether his neighbors like or dislike him. We shall call the first category `the anti-Semitism of men’ and the second ‘the anti-Semitism of things’. For a study of the former, the best field of observation is Germany; of the latter, Poland.” (p. 38).

He continues: “Germany–and in this respect Austria was one with her long before the Anschluss–has ever been the paramount workshop of modern anti-Semitism…the objection to the Jew is not religious but racial, and he must therefore be persecuted even if baptized…In no other nation was Jew-hatred as a mode of thought openly adopted by so many really prominent men…Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Duehring, Treitschke…Stoecker and Ahlward…Lueger…” (p. 43).

In contrast, Jabotinsky comments: “There is no evidence that `anti-Semitism of men’ has ever been an actual fixation in the collective Polish mind…the complete absence–as far as he is aware–of any conscious anti-Jewish movement, either in literature or in society, since the partition of Poland and approximately down to the year 1909. By this it is not suggested that there was no racial estrangement, no occasional cursing or baiting or beating of Jews; but in this peculiar position the Jew learns to distinguish between the ordinary little failures of national hospitality and such a special and deliberate phenomenon as a `movement’.” (p. 67). “Apart from the hooligan element, there was little actual hatred of Jews in Polish society.” (p. 74).

THE JEWISH ECONOMIC HEGEMONY OVER POLAND: WHY POLISH BOYCOTTS OF JEWS WERE ENTIRELY UNDERSTANDABLE

Jews, at over 3 million, comprised 10% of Poland’s population and one-third the population of major cities in towns (p. 78), eventually fuelling economic rivalry. Jabotinsky quips: “…there was no other way out: `it’s either my son or the Jew’s son, for there is only one loaf.'” (p. 74). He adds: “…in Poland, since 1905, and especially since 1920, economic positions which used to be regarded as `permitted to Jews’ began to be violently disputed. The village boy on coming to town no longer found employment at the loom, and had to try for other jobs…only to find that these jobs were filled by the half-starved Jew.” (p. 78).

The disparities in rural areas were extreme: “In Poland there were some 750,000 Jews living in the villages, where they constituted, on an average, 3.2% of the total rural population. These three quarter of a million souls, with a few exceptions, lived by shopkeeping and peddling goods to the farmers.” [Not mentioned is the fact that this situation undoubtedly fed the notion of Jews tending to avoid heavy manual labor as “goy work”.] The subsequent Polish and Ukrainian cooperative movements must be understood correctly: “…the phenomenon has little to do with any conscious will to harm the Jews qua Jews, but is rather inherent in the very nature of development. It would oust the rural shopkeeper as surely if he were an Armenian or a China-man; but he happens to be a Jew, who has nowhere to go.” (pp. 59-60).

OZON NOT FASCIST OR PRO-NAZI

The usual negative portrayal of Poland’s pre-WII post-Pilsudski leadership is not shared by Jabotinsky. He knew Colonel Jozef Beck personally, and rejected the notion that Beck was pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic. (pp. 70-74).