Jews, Zionism and the European Right of Blood Part III
David Kessel
February 18, 2006
Eastern and Central European Countries Are Also to Blame for The Middle Eastern Conflict.
There are numerous conferences always taking place around the Muslim world against Zionism, against American imperialism, Western "encroachment", etc. Somehow the Muslims see Zionism as an American invention, they see Zionists as Western allies, and Israel's presence- as an offshoot of America's expansion into their peace- loving and conservative domain. Today it may be so, but there are deeper causes that are almost never mentioned. Few seem to realize that Zionism started in Eastern Europe- Zhabotinsky and Hertzl and other such people were from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, not from "the West".
Moreover, many media people and politicians often mention the Holocaust as the cause of Zionism, but there is also another underlying causality that has almost never been brought up in the media. So what is it? Well, it is the refusal of Eastern and Central European countries to fully naturalize their Jews, the persecutions that the Jews suffered there, and the fact that life was simply made impossible for them on the territories of those nation-states. All those factors were what mainly encouraged the Jews to create the Zionist movement and carry out the subsequent colonization of Palestine. The Holocaust came later.
Zionism is often discussed in both the Western and the Arab media. However, I have not seen anybody in such media, including the BBC and the CNN or any other major newspaper, or an Arab-authored book or article ever discuss how the Jus Sanguinis laws basically caused Zionism to rise in Eastern/Central Europe as the only possible opposing philosophy to them. Perhaps, if we could see how such "blood laws" played such a big role in bringing all the Jews to Palestine, the people fighting the Jews could understand why they are there in the first place. Maybe, they could see that the blame should be placed not only on the Jews but on the European countries that did not accept them. Maybe, the next demonstration by Palestinian refugees should not be in front of the Embassy of Israel or the US but in front of the Russian or Polish or German or even the Ukrainian embassies. For, in many ways, it was these countries that for centuries told the Jews to go back to Palestine. Is it any wonder then, that they in the end they did just that?
It has been the German, the Polish, the Russian and Ukrainian idea that nationality is something genetic and hereditary and that it is not determined by one's place of birth, but exclusively by one's ethnic and not geographical roots. It was these nations that have taught that one's nationality can only be inherited and cannot be lost or acquired. It was them who told the Jews to get out because they did not have the right of blood to live in those countries. As a result, this strange and archaic principle of nationality effectively drove the Jews from those countries, transplanted them to Palestine, and caused the infamous Palestinian displacement as a natural effect of such a mass migration of humanity from Europe to the Middle East.
It is a much overlooked detail, a way of thinking, a concept that has been totally disregarded by even the most informed commentators, politicians and scholars. It has also been largely ignored by the American and the British media . Many of the most educated Brits and Americans do not know about the Eastern and Central European concept of "nationality by bloodline". Many mistakenly think that what the Jews suffered from in those lands was merely a religious persecution. And since not much is ever popularly discussed outside of the Holocaust as the cause of the establishment of the State of Israel, the blood laws as the origins of the present "land dispute" in the Middle East have hardly ever been brought up by anyone.
Additionally, since Jews do not form a separate ethnic group in America and are just 'Americans of Jewish faith', anti-Semitism there is just hatred against people who practice Judaism. Americans will therefore, often think that Germany and Russia and Poland must have also seen Jews as integral members of their nations but persecuted them because they were opposed to the Judaic religion. Just like in America, right? The problem was that these countries are not America so, they didn't hate the religion as much as the "nationality" of the Jews. They saw the Jews as a separate ethnic group, a separate race, a separate people that was undesirable and that had to be expelled.
In simpler terms- in Central and East European countries anti-Semitism is a racial/nationality-related thing; and the Jews were living as another race in an unwelcoming and hostile environment. Both the people and the governments there treated them as foreigners even if born and raised there, and as unfavorable "aliens". There is no such thing as a "Russian, born and raised" ."Or a Pole, born and raised". Either you are Polish or Russian by blood or you are not. The message of both the population and the officials there was for along time was this: - "We do not want this Jewish nation here. They should go back to where they came from." In such a manner, one can say that Poland, Russia and Germany and other such countries basically forced the Jews to go to Palestine and "dumped" them on the Arabs, thus effectively achieving racially pure societies in their own homelands. At the same time, Arabs were left to deal with the Jewish problem. So, while the Arabs are loudly protesting against the " American and Western conspiracy" to colonize them, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, and other such nations quietly sigh with relief as they look with smug satisfactions upon their now Jew-free, "Aryan", one-nation, one-race, lily-white countries. "Whew! No more Jews here. Let the Arabs deal with them."
Why do Arabs see Jews as a Religion and Europeans see them as a Nation(ality)?
We have probably all heard of the Jewish Kingdom of Judea and Israel, and many of us have studied the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament. If atheists, maybe we have come to know about it through Hollywood movies, TV series, etc. So, before we even get into the whole Jewish History "thing", let us see who the Jews were in those times. Say, 2000-3000 years ago. The Jews were mainly Semitic desert nomads who through various wars, ended up in Israel/Palestine. Where did they originally come from? Somewhere from the Middle East, undoubtedly. Could it be where Iraq is now? Where Saudi Arabia is now? Most Jews in Russia or Poland look like Lebanese people so shall we assume that they maybe came from the area around Lebanon and ended up in Canaan/Palestine?
In any event, they were a group of tribes similar to those which the Arabs came from. Was their origin possibly in Jordan or Syria as well? Around that area, probably, too. In those times they were called "Hebrews", meaning " from beyond the Euphrates". The Jews considered themselves a nation and, most importantly, their neighbors at that time also considered them a nation. Their language was similar to Arabic or Aramaic. They built their own kingdoms in what is now Israel/Palestine, but then they were attacked at various times by the Babylonians and then, occupied and later colonized by the Romans. Eventually, they were kicked out of the area sometime in the beginning of the 1st millennium. Later, they were dispersed all around the world. The main bulk went through Africa into Europe and this is where they settled for a long period of time. The Jews had their own national religion and their own God- Yahweh. They intermarried in the beginning with other Semitic tribes which became absorbed into their nation. But later, they did not intermarry as much anymore. Some intermarriages still took place but, as a general rule, it was not easy for anyone to marry into a Jewish family.
Many Jews went to live in Arab countries and, because racially they were similar to Arabs, and many spoke Arabic as their mother tongue, the only conspicious difference between them and the Arabs was their religion. So, to an Arab, up until today the word "Jew" means just that- a religious group. This is how the Arabs see it from their own Middle Eastern cultural and historic perspective. So, if a Jew converted to Islam, he, for all intents and purposes became indistinguishable from another Muslim Arab. He spoke Arabic, he looked like an Arab, well, he was now a Muslim Arab. This is why until today Arabs vociferously oppose any kind of concept of "nationhood" or "ethnicity" inherent in the Jewish people. "Jews are not a nation, they are a religion!" the Arabs repeat over and over again. And they are probably right as long as the Jews are on the territory of Arab countries and the Arab definition of "Arab-ness" applies.
After the Arabs broke up into all these different countries you see on the map now, they developed a legal concept of "Jinsiya"- a nationality, the Arab type of nationality, that is. Nationality to them has since then been identical to citizenship, as I have mentioned before. It means that if your family had been in some Arab kingdom for many generations and your ancestors had at some time acquired a legal status there, you would now be called "Egyptian", "Moroccan", "Syrian", "Yemeni", etc. Sometimes, you could be naturalized as a long-time resident foreigner and again you would be considered an Egyptian and an Arab if you speak Arabic well, and if you have documents from that country. If you are Jewish, you would be Jewish in religion only, as your race would be the same as that of the Arabs; and your "nationality" (read: citizenship) would be the same as that of the people around you. So a Jew in Egypt would be just as Egyptian as anyone else.
If there was any conflict or hostility against Jews by Muslims in the Arab world or anywhere else in the Islamic world, it was not because of any racial or national issues, but because of religion only. That was the only way that they could tell Jews apart from themselves.
Most Jews could generally solve the problem of such hostility against them by simply converting to Islam. Some opted to do so. An Abraham Ben Yitzhak would just have to say 'There is no God but God and Mohammed is His Prophet' and he would become a Muslim Ibrahim Ibn Yitzhak and thus join the Arab mainstream society. It would usually be that simple. Spain, having been an Arab kingdom before, but having become a Christian country later on, still retained such a "naturalization mechanism" for Jews as what the Arab countries had- the Jews (or Arabs living in Spain) simply had to convert to Christianity, and thus, they would become full nationals of the various kingdoms that Spain was composed of at that time. Some Jews opted to do so again. An Abraham Bin Yitzhak said that he now believed in Jesus Christ and thus, he became a "Jose Rodriguez" and a Spaniard. Those who did not do so, were kicked out, but at least, they were given the chance to become believers in Christ the Savior if they wanted to stay. I say, fair enough. At least there was a choice and an opportunity extended to them to become part of the Spanish society.
Up until now you see lots of Spaniards with Jewish-type faces but names such as Juan Perez or Pedro Lopez. And that is why Jews who travel to Argentina or Chile or other former Spanish countries would not look too different from many of the locals there.
France was somewhat less accepting of the Jews and did not initially see them as being French, but after the French revolution, all the Jews in France who were loyal to "la Republique" were proclaimed to be "Frenchmen". Within the French society, as well, there seemed to be a great deal of people who were of the Mediterranean stock and racial type, so a Jew in France would not stand our racially from the general population. Still many French people up until today continue to utilize the term "La Nation Juive" - "The Jewish Nation" when talking about the worldwide Jewry.
The biggest problems began when Jews moved into the Central-Eastern part of Europe. Not only they had different faces and hair and skin color from the majority of the people there, but in such countries as Germany, Poland, Russia, or whatever they were called at that time, nationality was and is generally seen in purely racial and ethnic terms. In other words, those nations, as it were, traditionally divide people into "breeds", the way dogs and cats and horses are divided into their respective breeds. So, being born in Germany does not make you a German, unless you descend from the original tribes indigenous to that place. Unless you 'look" German. To give you an analogy- if a French Poodle moves to Germany and mates with another French Poodle there, the puppies will not become German Shepherds. The only way for a person to assimilate into the ethnic mainstream in Germany, Poland, Russia, etc. is to intermarry with the indigenous population and for the children to intermarry. Once your "blood", i.e., the genetic lineage, is 75% German or Russian, or Polish, you are usually considered a full national.
So, ethnicity, race and nationality are one and same thing in those countries. Consequently, Jews who moved to these countries sometime in the Middle Ages ran into major difficulties. They could not assimilate, and ,eventually, had to leave those nations and go back to Palestine after hundreds of years of living on their territory.
There are numerous conferences always taking place around the Muslim world against Zionism, against American imperialism, Western "encroachment", etc. Somehow the Muslims see Zionism as an American invention, they see Zionists as Western allies, and Israel's presence- as an offshoot of America's expansion into their peace- loving and conservative domain. Today it may be so, but there are deeper causes that are almost never mentioned. Few seem to realize that Zionism started in Eastern Europe- Zhabotinsky and Hertzl and other such people were from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, not from "the West".
Moreover, many media people and politicians often mention the Holocaust as the cause of Zionism, but there is also another underlying causality that has almost never been brought up in the media. So what is it? Well, it is the refusal of Eastern and Central European countries to fully naturalize their Jews, the persecutions that the Jews suffered there, and the fact that life was simply made impossible for them on the territories of those nation-states. All those factors were what mainly encouraged the Jews to create the Zionist movement and carry out the subsequent colonization of Palestine. The Holocaust came later.
Zionism is often discussed in both the Western and the Arab media. However, I have not seen anybody in such media, including the BBC and the CNN or any other major newspaper, or an Arab-authored book or article ever discuss how the Jus Sanguinis laws basically caused Zionism to rise in Eastern/Central Europe as the only possible opposing philosophy to them. Perhaps, if we could see how such "blood laws" played such a big role in bringing all the Jews to Palestine, the people fighting the Jews could understand why they are there in the first place. Maybe, they could see that the blame should be placed not only on the Jews but on the European countries that did not accept them. Maybe, the next demonstration by Palestinian refugees should not be in front of the Embassy of Israel or the US but in front of the Russian or Polish or German or even the Ukrainian embassies. For, in many ways, it was these countries that for centuries told the Jews to go back to Palestine. Is it any wonder then, that they in the end they did just that?
It has been the German, the Polish, the Russian and Ukrainian idea that nationality is something genetic and hereditary and that it is not determined by one's place of birth, but exclusively by one's ethnic and not geographical roots. It was these nations that have taught that one's nationality can only be inherited and cannot be lost or acquired. It was them who told the Jews to get out because they did not have the right of blood to live in those countries. As a result, this strange and archaic principle of nationality effectively drove the Jews from those countries, transplanted them to Palestine, and caused the infamous Palestinian displacement as a natural effect of such a mass migration of humanity from Europe to the Middle East.
It is a much overlooked detail, a way of thinking, a concept that has been totally disregarded by even the most informed commentators, politicians and scholars. It has also been largely ignored by the American and the British media . Many of the most educated Brits and Americans do not know about the Eastern and Central European concept of "nationality by bloodline". Many mistakenly think that what the Jews suffered from in those lands was merely a religious persecution. And since not much is ever popularly discussed outside of the Holocaust as the cause of the establishment of the State of Israel, the blood laws as the origins of the present "land dispute" in the Middle East have hardly ever been brought up by anyone.
Additionally, since Jews do not form a separate ethnic group in America and are just 'Americans of Jewish faith', anti-Semitism there is just hatred against people who practice Judaism. Americans will therefore, often think that Germany and Russia and Poland must have also seen Jews as integral members of their nations but persecuted them because they were opposed to the Judaic religion. Just like in America, right? The problem was that these countries are not America so, they didn't hate the religion as much as the "nationality" of the Jews. They saw the Jews as a separate ethnic group, a separate race, a separate people that was undesirable and that had to be expelled.
In simpler terms- in Central and East European countries anti-Semitism is a racial/nationality-related thing; and the Jews were living as another race in an unwelcoming and hostile environment. Both the people and the governments there treated them as foreigners even if born and raised there, and as unfavorable "aliens". There is no such thing as a "Russian, born and raised" ."Or a Pole, born and raised". Either you are Polish or Russian by blood or you are not. The message of both the population and the officials there was for along time was this: - "We do not want this Jewish nation here. They should go back to where they came from." In such a manner, one can say that Poland, Russia and Germany and other such countries basically forced the Jews to go to Palestine and "dumped" them on the Arabs, thus effectively achieving racially pure societies in their own homelands. At the same time, Arabs were left to deal with the Jewish problem. So, while the Arabs are loudly protesting against the " American and Western conspiracy" to colonize them, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, and other such nations quietly sigh with relief as they look with smug satisfactions upon their now Jew-free, "Aryan", one-nation, one-race, lily-white countries. "Whew! No more Jews here. Let the Arabs deal with them."
Why do Arabs see Jews as a Religion and Europeans see them as a Nation(ality)?
We have probably all heard of the Jewish Kingdom of Judea and Israel, and many of us have studied the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament. If atheists, maybe we have come to know about it through Hollywood movies, TV series, etc. So, before we even get into the whole Jewish History "thing", let us see who the Jews were in those times. Say, 2000-3000 years ago. The Jews were mainly Semitic desert nomads who through various wars, ended up in Israel/Palestine. Where did they originally come from? Somewhere from the Middle East, undoubtedly. Could it be where Iraq is now? Where Saudi Arabia is now? Most Jews in Russia or Poland look like Lebanese people so shall we assume that they maybe came from the area around Lebanon and ended up in Canaan/Palestine?
In any event, they were a group of tribes similar to those which the Arabs came from. Was their origin possibly in Jordan or Syria as well? Around that area, probably, too. In those times they were called "Hebrews", meaning " from beyond the Euphrates". The Jews considered themselves a nation and, most importantly, their neighbors at that time also considered them a nation. Their language was similar to Arabic or Aramaic. They built their own kingdoms in what is now Israel/Palestine, but then they were attacked at various times by the Babylonians and then, occupied and later colonized by the Romans. Eventually, they were kicked out of the area sometime in the beginning of the 1st millennium. Later, they were dispersed all around the world. The main bulk went through Africa into Europe and this is where they settled for a long period of time. The Jews had their own national religion and their own God- Yahweh. They intermarried in the beginning with other Semitic tribes which became absorbed into their nation. But later, they did not intermarry as much anymore. Some intermarriages still took place but, as a general rule, it was not easy for anyone to marry into a Jewish family.
Many Jews went to live in Arab countries and, because racially they were similar to Arabs, and many spoke Arabic as their mother tongue, the only conspicious difference between them and the Arabs was their religion. So, to an Arab, up until today the word "Jew" means just that- a religious group. This is how the Arabs see it from their own Middle Eastern cultural and historic perspective. So, if a Jew converted to Islam, he, for all intents and purposes became indistinguishable from another Muslim Arab. He spoke Arabic, he looked like an Arab, well, he was now a Muslim Arab. This is why until today Arabs vociferously oppose any kind of concept of "nationhood" or "ethnicity" inherent in the Jewish people. "Jews are not a nation, they are a religion!" the Arabs repeat over and over again. And they are probably right as long as the Jews are on the territory of Arab countries and the Arab definition of "Arab-ness" applies.
After the Arabs broke up into all these different countries you see on the map now, they developed a legal concept of "Jinsiya"- a nationality, the Arab type of nationality, that is. Nationality to them has since then been identical to citizenship, as I have mentioned before. It means that if your family had been in some Arab kingdom for many generations and your ancestors had at some time acquired a legal status there, you would now be called "Egyptian", "Moroccan", "Syrian", "Yemeni", etc. Sometimes, you could be naturalized as a long-time resident foreigner and again you would be considered an Egyptian and an Arab if you speak Arabic well, and if you have documents from that country. If you are Jewish, you would be Jewish in religion only, as your race would be the same as that of the Arabs; and your "nationality" (read: citizenship) would be the same as that of the people around you. So a Jew in Egypt would be just as Egyptian as anyone else.
If there was any conflict or hostility against Jews by Muslims in the Arab world or anywhere else in the Islamic world, it was not because of any racial or national issues, but because of religion only. That was the only way that they could tell Jews apart from themselves.
Most Jews could generally solve the problem of such hostility against them by simply converting to Islam. Some opted to do so. An Abraham Ben Yitzhak would just have to say 'There is no God but God and Mohammed is His Prophet' and he would become a Muslim Ibrahim Ibn Yitzhak and thus join the Arab mainstream society. It would usually be that simple. Spain, having been an Arab kingdom before, but having become a Christian country later on, still retained such a "naturalization mechanism" for Jews as what the Arab countries had- the Jews (or Arabs living in Spain) simply had to convert to Christianity, and thus, they would become full nationals of the various kingdoms that Spain was composed of at that time. Some Jews opted to do so again. An Abraham Bin Yitzhak said that he now believed in Jesus Christ and thus, he became a "Jose Rodriguez" and a Spaniard. Those who did not do so, were kicked out, but at least, they were given the chance to become believers in Christ the Savior if they wanted to stay. I say, fair enough. At least there was a choice and an opportunity extended to them to become part of the Spanish society.
Up until now you see lots of Spaniards with Jewish-type faces but names such as Juan Perez or Pedro Lopez. And that is why Jews who travel to Argentina or Chile or other former Spanish countries would not look too different from many of the locals there.
France was somewhat less accepting of the Jews and did not initially see them as being French, but after the French revolution, all the Jews in France who were loyal to "la Republique" were proclaimed to be "Frenchmen". Within the French society, as well, there seemed to be a great deal of people who were of the Mediterranean stock and racial type, so a Jew in France would not stand our racially from the general population. Still many French people up until today continue to utilize the term "La Nation Juive" - "The Jewish Nation" when talking about the worldwide Jewry.
The biggest problems began when Jews moved into the Central-Eastern part of Europe. Not only they had different faces and hair and skin color from the majority of the people there, but in such countries as Germany, Poland, Russia, or whatever they were called at that time, nationality was and is generally seen in purely racial and ethnic terms. In other words, those nations, as it were, traditionally divide people into "breeds", the way dogs and cats and horses are divided into their respective breeds. So, being born in Germany does not make you a German, unless you descend from the original tribes indigenous to that place. Unless you 'look" German. To give you an analogy- if a French Poodle moves to Germany and mates with another French Poodle there, the puppies will not become German Shepherds. The only way for a person to assimilate into the ethnic mainstream in Germany, Poland, Russia, etc. is to intermarry with the indigenous population and for the children to intermarry. Once your "blood", i.e., the genetic lineage, is 75% German or Russian, or Polish, you are usually considered a full national.
So, ethnicity, race and nationality are one and same thing in those countries. Consequently, Jews who moved to these countries sometime in the Middle Ages ran into major difficulties. They could not assimilate, and ,eventually, had to leave those nations and go back to Palestine after hundreds of years of living on their territory.
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