I'm dashing. I.e., this will be semi-coherent.
The most important political Jew of the last century and more was Theodor Herzl, who struggled against all odds to start the Zionist movement for a Jewish state, based on his shock at conditions for Jews in Europe. I'm reading his Diaries now. Herzl went to Palestine once in 1899. He couldn't wait to get out of the country. He was going chiefly to hook up with Kaiser Wilhelm while the emperor of Germany was in the Holy Land. And he did; he had an audience with the Kaiser, and intrigued with Suldan Abdul, too, the head of the Ottoman Empire.
Herzl loved the Great Game of international diplomacy. He wanted to engage, as a Jew, and he did. He marshalled Jewish money and journalistic connections to serve his ends. The Kaiser joked to him about Jews having all the money; and Herzl absorbed anti-Semitic insults with a frozen smile.
But Herzl didn't like Palestine. He saw Arab beggars everywhere. It was hot and feverish, and swampy, he wanted to get away as quickly as he could.
In a day or so I'll hook up with a mixed group of Jews and non-Jews, some Arabs too, some Christian activists. We're not playing the Great Game. We're close to the ground. Some of the group have been there a dozen times, out of a spiritual commitment to peace in the Middle East.
Myself I'm going as a journalist, a friend of Palestinians, and a Jew deeply engaged by Jewish history. Herzl's engagement with the powerful was borne of his own experience, and reaching for every tool he had at his disposal; but his method is alive today in the Israel lobby, which depends on money and elite influence. Herzl helped the Turks to persecute the Armenians in his day, and polluted the European press with anti-Armenian reporting, so as to advance his agenda; that's how little he cared about Asian human rights. And of course the coming century saw genocides of the Armenians, and later, on a larger scale, of the Jews. So Herzl was a visionary.
To move forward, Jewish history will need require the visions and creativity of a lot of Jews who are close to the ground, and working with non-Jews, and who can look at Palestinian conditions with the same compassion that Herzl brought to Jewish conditions in Europe. I feel excited that I'm participating with a mixed group in this important work, feel excited to be engaged by my community's history, and feel excited to believe that we will change American policy.
