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Zionists only belatedly embraced. As the situation for Jews became
more vicious in Germany and Poland and the world only looked on or
closed their doors against the desperate Jews, they perceived that the
only hope lay in clearing out.
In
the long run European anti-Semitism, the starting point of
classical Zionism, may indeed prove not inseparable from European
Christian civilization. Perhaps Christianity and European culture can
still change sufficiently to eliminate any remains of the old virus, thus
vitiating one impulse behind Jewish nationalism, although a more
positive starting point for that nationalism may be the perception of a
Jewish life as an alternative
to
the alienating one offered by European
civilization.
It
is possible-in the long run. Meanwhile, in the short
run, as we have learned-the Final Solution took-less than four years–
it was all over for the Polish Jews and most of the rest of Eastern
Europe. After that experience, the notion of putting aside presumedly
short-term Jewish interests for benefits in some rosy future is unthink–
able.
Yet the desperate Polish experience raises another cruel paradox.
Granting them independence, Wilson and the League forced Poland
to
sign a Minorities Treaty, guaranteeing the cultural autonomy and
rights of the Byelorussians, Ukrainians and Jews (one third of postwar
Poland consisted of ethnic minorities). The poles bitterly resented this
treaty as an imposition upon them and their national honor. Instead of
opting for a federal system, as the Czechs did successfully under
Masaryk, within a decade they had abrogated the terms of the agree–
ment. Poland's pursuit of a homogeneous nationhood and the rejec–
tion of cultural pluralism led it inevitably
to
weakness, shame and
dishonor. The old League idea was not a bad one; perhaps in our time
it is even more apparent that all nationalisms must be mediated by a
proper international regard for all minority and human rights.
The saddest irony I am led to reflect upon is that in the Jewish
homeland it appears to be impossible to allow another long-suffering
people, the Palestinian Arabs, true and complete cultural autonomy.
One knows how difficult and dangerous such a course would be, and
that previous offers of its equivalent (at independence and by early Left
Zionists) have been rejected, but Jews, in Israel and out, ought not
eliminate it from their agenda.
JULES CHAMETZKY
