What did the Dreyfus Affair have to do with the establishment of Israel?
The first trial was secret and there were rumors that Dreyfus had been railroaded, but not very substantial. However, the ceremony known as “degradation,” which was applied and was intended to humiliate people convicted of serious military crimes, was witnessed. That was where the accused or convicted was paraded around the courtyard and forced to come to a halt, and at that time a soldier approached him and ripped his service ribbons off his uniform, and then dragged his sword from its sheath and broke it into several pieces. One of the reporters who covered that event, representing a Viennese paper, was Theodor Herzl. It contributed very much to his belief that assimilation was not the answer for Jews, who had been segregated, who had been the victims of murders, blood libels, and pogroms century after century, but that they needed their own state and national ethic. Within two years of that degradation event, we had the first World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, led by Herz
