Introductory Chapter to The Jews (1937) by Hilaire Belloc, part 5 of 6

Pg 46

Perhaps the two most practical considerations in connection with this department of our subject are: (1) How long the, present German drive against the Jews can last, and (2) How widespread and profound will be the inevitable reactions against it outside Germany.

If you adopt an irrational attitude you are challenging the human race. You are at the best making yourself ridiculous and at the worst making yourself impossible. Further you are buying ₤1 for 30s. You are deliberately creating difficulties for yourself which you might have avoided and which far outweigh the advantages you hope to obtain. Let any man look at his own life, if it has been at all full, and ask himself what would have happened if he had gone out of his way to make every Jew of his private acquaintance an enemy. The ultimate suffering which he would have incurred is the image of what a race or a nation may suffer if it acts on similar irrational lines. I shall be saying in another connection that the taking up of the Jewish cause in Zionism against the whole world of Islam was in our own case a gratuitous piece of folly, but it is a folly more capable of remedy and presumably of restoration than the folly on the other extreme of challenging such a permanent factor in the general construction of our civilization as is formed by the Jews.

It is not as though the Jews in Germany had acted as enemies of the German people. Jewish Communism was hostile to the German race and to the somewhat exasperated nationalism of the Reich, because Jewish Communism is opposed to all national patriotisms except that of its authors. But Jewish Communism is not identical with the Jewish race, still less with the individuals of that race. Berlin, by acting as she has done in this matter, has not made itself a rallying-point for all those who would restrict Jewish power, still less has it made itself a rallying-point for all those who would state the truth on the Jewish problem and discuss it reasonably. Berlin has not made itself a rallying-point even for anti-Communism, as it might well have done had it lucidly distinguished between the Jewish element in Communism and the Jewish race as a whole.

Pg 47

We look round and see that no one has copied the example of Berlin. Italy, which inaugurated the modern system of absolute government, has not done so. It has wisely used Jews of high talent to help it in the reconstruction of Italian affairs, and if it be said that this is because Italy was not provoked as Germany was by any great number of Jews on her territory, then what about Poland? Poland has a far larger proportion of Jews than the Reich. She has recently and with difficulty risen from the dead. She suffered horribly from the War — far more than the German Reich suffered. She might be excused indeed for losing her head over a problem which has gravely affected all nations, and particularly our own. Instead of that, she has gone to meet the Jews half-way and it has been greatly to her advantage.

Now let us turn to the third point, the present stage (and crisis) of Zionism. It is as important in its way as the other two, but it can be more briefly dealt with. It is the one most directly Jewish, though certainly not the most important. What stage has been reached in this matter and what may be the possible development ?

Pg 48

The new factor in the affair since the last edition of this book in 1928, is the Arab insurrection of 1935-6.

The word “insurrection” sounds altogether too grand for the business. It was no more than the action of a few snipers, petty raids on Jewish plantations and a regretable but not very large number of Jewish deaths; also, naturally, as the Arabs took the initiative, a certain number of Arab deaths. The thing as a whole was on quite a small scale.

The population was disarmed, as it is our necessary policy to disarm all populations subject to our rule, as the Irish were disarmed until the other day, and as millions of discontented subjects are disarmed all over the globe, whether under English, French, Italian, Russian or any other masters.

Why then was that insurrection, a thing on so very small a scale and so soon over, all important? Why did it mark a new departure? Because it illustrated the weakness of our whole position in Syria to-day, and particularly the threat which it involves. Most of what can be said on this subject has already been said in the pages of this book. All that can be added to it here is the important fact that our original policy, or rather lack of policy, has been followed up and we are now compelled to come to some decision after having characteristically postponed that decision as long as we could. So to act is the fruit of that spirit which is called by various phases and names: “compromise,” “common sense,” “we are not logical people,” “muddling through” and all the rest of the suicidal litany. There was a time when we could afford to talk rubbish, just as a rich young man in a secure home can afford to play the fool. That time has gone.

Pg 49

What Balfour had in mind when he offered Palestine to the Jews as part of the spoils in the course of the Great War, we all know. The man was an intense patriot, he understood the power of Jewish finance with which we were allied. He knew something, though not very much (and that in a confused way) of the then interwoven strands of Jewish racial feeling and German racial feeling. He was determined to put the former at the service of Great Britain, to which he was so passionately attached, and with which the Jews had worked for more than two hundred years. He of course did not understand, any more than the rest of the governing class to which he belonged, what was meant by the problem. If he blundered, one can at least say this: that the blunders of the governing class in this and other matters, are nothing to what they would have been if they had been made by those classes in England, which are so easily governed. Luckily these did not (as yet) interfere with foreign policy.*

*There are signs that this happy indifference of the English people to the measures of those who rule them is growing insecure. It was the fruit of long peace. The Great War and especially the tardy appearance of conscription changed all. Great sections of the people will now express themselves actively on some point in foreign policy where, before the war, they would have regarded themselves (rightly) as incompetent. They are so determined to avoid a new call to arms that they will actually interpose to enforce what they have been persuaded will ensure their repose. Great masses, beyond those of the suburbs, recently clamoured against and reversed our considered policy on Abyssinia, with the result that we have for the moment or forever lost the Bab-el-Mandeb, the gate of the Red Sea, and therefore the shorter road to India, which in future an enemy may control or a friend who will demand his price.


Pg 50

Anyhow, to Arthur Balfour, when he made this offer to the Jews, the whole thing seemed quite suitable. The Jews would be very glad to get Palestine, and there was nothing to stop them. The Arabs did not count. As for the old Christian feeling about the place it was a silly superstition which had no strength save with certain backward and poorer elements of continental Europe, and possibly (by the way), with the Irish — another reason for despising it. That a Jew governing Golgotha might be a source of serious irritation to important opponents could never have crossed his mind.

To-day, after these very few years, even the most obtuse of his compeers understands that Jews holding Nazareth might prove a very serious irritant indeed in quite serious centres which are still, after a fashion, Christian. (I can imagine a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Annunciation losing its temper after the pilgrims had interviewed a local Jewish authority for permission to do so: strange, but true.) Until the Germans, or rather the peculiar government of Berlin, launched its attack against the Jewish nationals of the Reich, there was no very strong drive among non-Jews in Europe for continued Jewish immigration into Palestine save in Poland. The Polish government of course was all in favour, because the more they could “run off” or “tap” the Jewish trouble in their own country and divert it into another, the better for them, seeing the enormous Jewish population with which Poland is burdened.