Zionism and Its Jewish "Assimilationist" Critics (1897-1948)

In spite of his Orthodox early upbringing, [Edwin Montagu] had never concerned himself actively with either Judaism or Anglo-Jewish affairs. Unlike the liberal Reformers, he was in favor of complete assimilation and totally identified with British values. In contrast to Montefiore and [Lucien Wolf], he rejected not only the concept of a "Jewish" nationality but also any justification for preserving Jewish communal institutions, religious culture, or a distinctive Jewish identity.(78) He made his views about Zionism plain in a memorandum entitled "The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government" in which he declared that the policy of His Majesty's government on Palestine was "anti-Semitic in result and will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world."(79) In his memorandum Montagu described Zionism as a "mischievous political creed," untenable by any patriotic British citizen. He pointed out that his family had been resident in Britain for generations and had no ties with Jews of any other country -- except those deriving from a common religion. He declared himself ready to disenfranchise every Zionist and even to proscribe the Zionist organization as being illegal and against the national interest. Montagu concluded that, if the Jews were granted a national home in Palestine, then it would become "the world's ghetto" and "the impetus to deprive us of the rights of British citizenship must be enormously increased." At a meeting of the War Cabinet on October 4, 1917, he argued that the civil rights of Jewish Britons like himself would be endangered by a declaration stating that Palestine was the "national home" of the Jewish people. Moreover, his own ability to negotiate with the peoples of India on behalf of the British government would be impaired if it were implied that as a Jew his real home was in Palestine.(80) Like many Jewish anti-Zionists, Wise was sympathetic to the agricultural settlements in Palestine and to the efforts of Jewish philanthropic organizations to turn Russian Jews into productive farmers. Before 1897 he considered this colonization work as a partial solution to the economic crisis facing East European Jewry. But Herzlian Zionism seemed to him not only visionary, impractical, and irresponsible -- it also threatened to undermine the status of Jews outside of Palestine. Wise emphatically condemned the idea of a Jewish state as "alien" to the American Jews who had no interests or aspirations different from their