The Life of Zion

摘要

In a way, israel owes its existencenot just to the homicidal anti-Semites of Central and Eastern Europe but to the much more gentle and genteel ones of Britain. The latter did not so much hate Jews as fear them, admire them, loathe them, and in other ways consider them to be a people apart-immensely powerful and rich, never mind their almost absolute powerless-ness and widespread poverty. It was to curry the favor of these people-a kind of madness, if there ever was one-that accounts for why Britain announced in 1917 that it favored the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people." That home would be in Palestine, an amorphous entity regrettably located in the midst of millions of puzzled and hostile Arabs. It was a decision not without some consequence.