1911 Encyclopedia Britannica explains how Zionism "is the lineal heir" to the age-old Jewish attachment to Israel

From Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition:

ZIONISM. One of the most interesting results of the anti. Semitic agitation  has been a strong revival of the national spirit among the Jews in a political form. To this movement the name Zionism has been given. In the same way that anti-Semitism differs from the Jew-hatred of the early and middle ages, Zionism differs from previous manifestation of the Jewish national spirit.  It was originally advocated as an expedient without Messianic impulses, and its methods and proposals have remained almost harshly modern.  Nonetheless it is the lineal heir of the attachment to Zion which led the Babylonian exiles under Zerubbabel to rebuild the Temple, arid which flamed up in the heroic struggle of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes. Without this national spirit it could, indeed, never have assumed its present formidable proportions. The idea that it is a set-back of Jewish history. in the sense that it is an unnatural galvanization of hopes long since abandoned for a spiritual and cosmopolitan conception of the mission of Israel, is a controversial fiction. The consciousness of a spiritual mission exists side by side with the national idea. The great bulk of the Jewish people have throughout their history remained faithful to the dream of a restoration of their national home in Judea. Its manifestations have suffered temporary modifications under the influence of changing political conditions, and the intensity with which it has been held by individual Jews has varied according to their social circumstances, but in the main the idea has been passionately clung to. 

It is not a bad article, but as with many such articles in the early 20th century, the author simply thought it was impossible, and he gave many reasons to be confident in his analysis:

Remember, today's experts are no more competent in predicting the future (and in fact probably far less competent) than the author of this article. He thought he could see the trajectory of history clearly and Israel had no part in it. 

That doesn't take away from his analysis of how Zionism is simply a new manifestation of and ancient desire of Jews. 

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 1902, recognized that Zionism was a historic part of Judaism

From the 1902 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica:

Less than a decade after the term was coined, the writer - Lucien Wolf - recognized clearly that modern Zionism was a direct "lineal heir" to the longtime Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel since the Jewish nation's first exile.

Today's scholars find such an idea anathema, because it would mean that the Jews have a historic tie to the land, and too many modern academics want to separate Zionism from Judaism. But at the time, it was obvious to all, Jew and non-Jew. 

Wolf was an anti-Zionist himself. He lobbied against the Balfour Declaration and co-founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews.  His political opinion caused his blind spot, both in this article and his article on antisemitism in the encyclopedia, where he fervently believed that Jew-hatred was a thing of the past and the world was more enlightened - dooming Zionism to failure.

His predictions were fatally wrong. 

Yet even as the antisemitism that he confidently believed had been receding was proven to be not only resilient but far deadlier than anyone could imagine, he didn't have the honesty to admit his mistakes. 

If there were fewer Jewish anti-Zionists in England in the 1920s and 1930s, it is possible that many more Jews could have been saved from the gas chambers. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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