I'm about to do a dialogue with David Zellnik, the playwright, about our favorite character, Theodor Herzl. I read Herzl night and day. I adore him and identify with him. He was grand, ambitious, literary and honest with his readers. He wrote in his diaries on June 10, 1896 (the 5-volume edition of 1960):
Incidentally, when peace is concluded we [the Jews] shall already have a say as money-givers and achieve advantages of recognition through diplomatic channels.
The significance of this statement is that Herzl was devoted to the idea of baksheesh in politics, as you would be if you represented a tiny minority that had economic power, and he anticipated by 20 years the Balfour Declaration, the British commitment to a Jewish homeland in Palestine issued during World War I. Three years ago, I heard Marty Peretz and Niall Ferguson, at the Center for Jewish History, deny a questioner's suggestion that the Balfour Declaration flowed from this sort of influence. And Peretz would do that; for the question gets at the essential character of the Israel lobby as an exercise in anti-democratic bribery. But there is actually a strong basis in the historical record for arguing that Jewish economic power played a role in the British decision. And Herzl underlines that. As I say, his entire unflagging enterprise, built on access-journalism and fundraising and court-Jews, underscores this; and yet I would have supported him then, as an imaginative response to the scourge of anti-Semitism. (But I'll be getting to this in my dialogue with Zellnik.)
