the greatest mischief to the Jewish
people they have deceived. To compare Zionism with the vagaries or
impostures of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, presupposes
great foolishness or great bad faith. Zionism is precisely
characterized by the complete absence of any mystical element. It
promises its adherents no miracles; on the contrary, it continually
impresses on them that their emancipation from a situation they find
intolerable can only be the result of their own work, the fruit of
their long, strenuous, and combined efforts.

People declare Zionism to be a dream, and deny that its practical
realization is possible. To objections of this category the Zionists
have a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This simple negative
criticism can be passed over. Its only real refutation is in deeds,
such as the Zionists have already performed and as they intend further
to perform.

The one point which probably forever excludes the possibility of an
understanding between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews is the question of
the Jewish nationality. Whoever maintains and believes that the Jews
are not a nation can indeed be no Zionist; he cannot join a movement
which is only justified when it is admitted that it desires to create
normal conditions of existence for a people living and suffering
under abnormal conditions. He who, on the contrary, is convinced that
the Jews are a people must necessarily become Zionist, as only the
return to their own country can save the everywhere hated, persecuted,
and oppressed Jewish nation from physical and intellectual
destruction.

Many Jews, especially those of the West, have, in their heart of
hearts, completely broken with Judaism, and they will probably soon do
so openly, and if they do not break away, their children or
grandchildren will. These desire to be entirely absorbed by their
Christian fellow-countrymen. They resent it as a great annoyance when
other Jews proclaim that they are a people apart, and desire to bring
about an unequivocal separation between themselves and the other
nations. Their great and constant fear is to be denounced as strangers
in the land of their birth, of which they are free citizens. They fear
that this will be more than ever the case, if a large section of the
Jewish people openly claim for themselves rights as an autonomous
nation, and still worse, if anywhere in the world a political and
intellectual center of Judaism should really be create