I wouldn’t have thought that I could dislike Theodor Herzl even more until tonight. Quoting Faris Yahya Glubb’s Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, pages 9–11:

The founder of the political Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, was aware of the philosophical common ground between Zionism and anti‐Semitism when he wrote: “The governments of all countries scourged by anti‐Semitism will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want.”¹ Herzl “frequently asserted, in all innocence, that anti‐Semites would be the Jews’ best friends and anti‐Semitic governments their best allies. But this faith in anti‐Semites expressed very eloquently and even touchingly how close his own state of mind was to that of his hostile environment and how intimately he did belong to the ‘alien’ world…

“Anti‐Semitism was an overwhelming force and the Jews would have either to make use of it or be swallowed up by it. In his own words, anti‐Semitism was the ‘propelling force’ responsible for all Jewish suffering since the destruction of the Temple and it would continue to make the Jews suffer until they learned how to use it for their own advantage. In expert hands this ‘propelling force’ would prove the most salutory factor in Jewish life; it would be used in the same way that boiling water is used to produce steam power.”²

Herzl was a man who practised what he preached. The methods he used in his diplomatic efforts to further the Zionist cause accorded with the principles he proclaimed. This is strongly illustrated by the approaches he made to Czarist Russia, which at the beginning of this century was the power that applied the most fanatical and cruel anti‐Jewish policies of massacre, expulsion and discrimination.

Although Herzl never achieved his dream of an audience with the Czar, he did hold talks with the Czarist Interior Minister Wenzel von Plehve, who was responsible for implementing anti‐Jewish measures and organised massacres like the Kishinev pogrom, in which 45 Jews were killed.

Plehve “was brutal enough to admit that he had no objections to getting rid of as many Jews as possible; in fact, he would become a ‘sympathetic’ supporter of Zionism. Herzl then proposed that Plehve should write him a letter that he would present before the Zionist Congress, to the effect that the Zionist movement could count on the Russian Government’s ‘moral and material assistance’. Plehve’s letter became Herzl’s most treasured asset. He carried it around everywhere; he showed it to the Pope. The murderer of his people had shaken hands with him, talked to him politely. Was that not wonderful? For Plehve, for the Kaiser, for the whole crowd of blackguards and reactionaries who ruled Europe, Herzl had a favourite promise: Zionism would dissolve all revolutionary and socialist elements among the Jews.”³

In 1903, the founder of the Zionist movement was received in St. Petersburg by another anti‐Semitic leader, the Czar’s Finance Minister Count Witte, who also favoured the Zionist plan to remove the Jews from Europe. Witte told Herzl: “If it were possible to drown six or seven million Jews in the Black Sea, I would be perfectly happy to do so, but it is not possible, so we must let them live. But we encourage the Jews to emigrate: we kick them out.”⁴

The most important foundations laid by Herzl for Zionism’s future successes were anti‐Semitic circles in Britain. A substantial number of Russian Jewish refugees from Czarist pogroms chose Britain rather than Palestine as their refuge, thus disappointing Zionist hopes. But the Zionists found that a number of extreme right‐wing politicians in Britain were only too willing to stir up a vicious campaign aimed at denying these unfortunate refugees the right of asylum.

Herzl gave these right‐wingers his blessing and encouragement. In his evidence to the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, which investigated the question in 1902 and 1903, Herzl called for the stream of migration to be diverted away from Britain. He thus agreed with the racist Arnold White, one of the leading theorists of the campaign to ban Jews from Britain.⁵

Another leader of this campaign with whom Herzl made friendly contact was [Neville Chamberlain’s father] Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain. In a speech in Limehouse, London, in December 1904, Chamberlain attacked the policy of allowing Jewish immigration to Britain, at the same time endorsing the Zionist idea of a Jewish state and warmly praising Herzl.⁶

The most important British anti‐Semite of that age, in terms of his eventual services to Zionism, was the fanatical Jew‐baiter Lord Arthur Balfour [the Balfour Declaration’s namesake]. In a parliamentary debate on the immigration issue, Balfour made a speech in which he put forward a case for anti‐Semitism that is all too familiar. He declared: “It would not be to the advantage of the civilisation of the country that there should be an immense body of persons who, by their own action, remained a people apart, and not merely held a religion differing from the vast majority of their fellow‐countrymen, but only intermarried among themselves.”⁷

Herzl was able to declare with satisfaction that “anti‐Semitism has grown and continues to grow, and so do I.”⁸

(Emphasis added.)

How can any Zionist claim to love Jews when Zionists continue to consecrate this ethnonationalist who proudly associated with such antisemitic filth? Zionists should be the last ones to accuse others of antisemitism!

Few Zionists today may explicitly defend antisemitism, but they’re still happy to suggest that Jews move to a bellicose and hazardous neocolony in the Middle East as an answer to discrimination. As an anti‐Zionist, I have a better suggestion, this one for my fellow gentiles: let’s show Jews compassion and don’t tell them to move thousands of miles away to a hellhole that treats them like cannon fodder!