Koestler
In his memoir, Arrow in the Blue (1952), Arthur Koestler says he learned about Zionism, to which he became a devoted adherent for many years, in 1922 when he was 17 and arrived at a Viennese technical university. There he was recruited to join a Zionist fraternity called Unitas. He relates the following encounter from a night of drinking and dueling:
At some point during the unofficial part of the proceedings, Hahn and Attila, both of whom were to become my intimate friends, involved me in a political conversation. Attila started by asking what I thought of Zionism. I answered truthfully that I had never thought about it and hardly knew what the word meant. It meant, in substance, explained Attila, that the Jews had been persecuted during some twenty centuries and that there was no reason to expect they would not be persecuted in the twenty-first. To argue with anti-Semites was all the more hopeless as the Jews were in fact a sick race. They were a nation without a country, which was like being a man without a shadow; and they were socially top-heavy, with a disproportionately great number of lawyers, merchants, intellectuals, and with no farmers or peasants–which was like a pyramid standing on its top. The only cure was: return to the earth. If Jews wanted to be like other people, they must have a country like other people and a social structure like other people. That was all there was to it, and there was no other way.
This seemed so simple and obvious that I wondered why I had not thought of it myself. But then, I had never been personally victimized or bothered by anti-Semitism, and had always regarded the so-called “Jewish Question” as the same kind of boring and remote subject as Municipal Autonomy or the War of the Spanish Succession.
Koestler relates that Attila’s real name was Jacob Teller; he became a dentist in Tiberias. Hahn became a surgeon in Tel Aviv.
I just started reading Koestler (1905-1983) and understand that this is a tiny portion of his writings on Zionism. He moved to Palestine for several years, and wrote a lot on the subject. I’ll keep you posted as the story unfolds. Thanks to Theodore Sayeed.
P.S. Note that Jack Ross regularly sounds this idea: that Zionism entails self-hatred.
Hatred of non-Zionist Jewish existence, to be precise. And for the same reason, rejection of liberal society or its possibility, it involves anti-gentilism in equal measure. Zionism is simply the Jewish contribution to right-wing politics and ideology.
Tom Segev discusses this aspect of Zionism – inter alia, as common ground between Zionists and the European leaders (particularly British) whose support they sought – at the beginning of One Palestine Complete.
Koestler’s Vienna frat-pals were no different from their non-Jewish counterparts: drinking, duelling and talking about “normal” or “natural” peoples, the eroticism of native soil and the wonderfully romantic peasantry (at arms length, if you please). If ever proof were needed that Zionism is the legitimate child of European ethnic nationalism.
Arthur Koestler published a 255 page book titled “THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE” where he proved (Zionist propagandists say otherwise) that Eastern European Jews are neither Israelites nor Semites, but are instead Khazars, Mongols, and Huns. Most major newspapers and magazines reviewed the book during 1976.
BTW, the Author and his wife were found dead in their bath at their home in London shortly after the book was released in an apparent double suicide – with their elbows slit!
The Thirteenth Tribe is available free on the internet in pdf format:
http://www.solargeneral.com/library/thirteenth-tribe-arthur-koestler.pdf
The German Zionist rabbi Joachim Prinz wrote the same thing in his book ‘Wir Juden’ (We Jews), Berlin 1934. – The logic of his argument is also this: The anti-Semitic gentiles are right, therefore anti-Semitism will not go away. If anti-Semitism were built on prejudice or superstition it could fade out. But since it isn’t a prejudice it will not (as long as we are Diaspora Jews).
-“the Jews were in fact a sick race.”
One should note that Koestler – or rather his pals – use the word ‘race’ in a loose way, meaning ‘people’. And they must not mean racist anti-Semites. Because how should anti-Semitism go away once the Jews are in Palestine if it were racist anti-Semitism?