The Bible, Israel, and Antisemitism: Part 13: Dreyfus and Herzl
In the 19th century, each European nation was held together by common religion, land, ancestry, or history. The Jews couldn’t blend in on any of these points.
European nations were Christian. Jews rejected Christ and were viewed as spiritually blind, hard-hearted God-killers. They couldn’t fit in.
As they had a different history and a different ancestry and as they remained a distinct community wherever they lived—largely because Christians forced them to—they didn’t blend into any nation, being seen as having deeper connection to foreign Jews than to Christians living on the same street. They were believed to be more loyal to blood than to flag and nation. They were, it was assumed, “cosmopolitan globalists” or “internationalists”—rootless nomads wandering the earth, foreign parasites living among the Europeans.
Kept out of guilds for centuries, Jews had been left with little choice but to pursue careers legally open to them: banking, journalism, law, commerce, and academia. They were thus characterized as snobby elitists who cared only about money and influence.
All these prejudices crystallized in the Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906). In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain in the French army, was accused of spying for the Germans. What little evidence existed was flimsy and fabricated. Dreyfus was accused because he was Jewish, and though that opinion was not unanimous, much of the populace was suspicious of Jews for the reasons noted above. A prejudiced public trusted a prejudiced military court that tried, convicted, and imprisoned Dreyfus in French Guiana in 1895.
In 1896 the real spy, Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, was discovered. The French army, not wishing to be embarrassed, engaged in a cover-up. As news of the discovery of the real spy leaked out, the army retried Alfred Dreyfus in 1899 AND FOUND HIM GUILTY AGAIN, despite overwhelming proof of his innocence. The court reduced his sentence to 10 years.
Finally, in 1906, Dreyfus was fully exonerated, reinstated in the French army, and promoted.
This was FRANCE, not Nazi Germany. The Dreyfus Affair revealed how deeply distrust and hatred of the Jews were ingrained in the hearts, minds, and culture of the European nations.
The injustice of the affair convinced Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist who had covered the Dreyfus Affair, that Europe would never accept Jewish assimilation and persecution would always be their destiny. In 1896 Herzl wrote “The Jewish State”, proposing a Jewish nation as the only solution to antisemitism.
The next year Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and founded the World Zionist Organization. Herzl then began lobbying European authorities to help him establish a Jewish homeland. He focused his hopes on Palestine, but also looked at Uganda, Argentina, Cyprus, and other underpopulated areas in Africa and Asia.
Herzl died in 1904 without attaining his goal. But his World Zionist Organization eventually connected with British politicians following through on British evangelicalism’s push for a restored Israelite nation.
But that’s getting ahead of my story…
European nations were Christian. Jews rejected Christ and were viewed as spiritually blind, hard-hearted God-killers. They couldn’t fit in.
As they had a different history and a different ancestry and as they remained a distinct community wherever they lived—largely because Christians forced them to—they didn’t blend into any nation, being seen as having deeper connection to foreign Jews than to Christians living on the same street. They were believed to be more loyal to blood than to flag and nation. They were, it was assumed, “cosmopolitan globalists” or “internationalists”—rootless nomads wandering the earth, foreign parasites living among the Europeans.
Kept out of guilds for centuries, Jews had been left with little choice but to pursue careers legally open to them: banking, journalism, law, commerce, and academia. They were thus characterized as snobby elitists who cared only about money and influence.
All these prejudices crystallized in the Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906). In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain in the French army, was accused of spying for the Germans. What little evidence existed was flimsy and fabricated. Dreyfus was accused because he was Jewish, and though that opinion was not unanimous, much of the populace was suspicious of Jews for the reasons noted above. A prejudiced public trusted a prejudiced military court that tried, convicted, and imprisoned Dreyfus in French Guiana in 1895.
In 1896 the real spy, Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, was discovered. The French army, not wishing to be embarrassed, engaged in a cover-up. As news of the discovery of the real spy leaked out, the army retried Alfred Dreyfus in 1899 AND FOUND HIM GUILTY AGAIN, despite overwhelming proof of his innocence. The court reduced his sentence to 10 years.
Finally, in 1906, Dreyfus was fully exonerated, reinstated in the French army, and promoted.
This was FRANCE, not Nazi Germany. The Dreyfus Affair revealed how deeply distrust and hatred of the Jews were ingrained in the hearts, minds, and culture of the European nations.
The injustice of the affair convinced Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist who had covered the Dreyfus Affair, that Europe would never accept Jewish assimilation and persecution would always be their destiny. In 1896 Herzl wrote “The Jewish State”, proposing a Jewish nation as the only solution to antisemitism.
The next year Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and founded the World Zionist Organization. Herzl then began lobbying European authorities to help him establish a Jewish homeland. He focused his hopes on Palestine, but also looked at Uganda, Argentina, Cyprus, and other underpopulated areas in Africa and Asia.
Herzl died in 1904 without attaining his goal. But his World Zionist Organization eventually connected with British politicians following through on British evangelicalism’s push for a restored Israelite nation.
But that’s getting ahead of my story…