What was the character of the anti-Semitism that created the Zionist movement?
You have to make a separation between the explicit Tsarist anti-Semitism of the crumbling Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century, which is very intense, focused and politicised, and the more general Christian anti-Semitism in Russia. The Tsars see that their best way of hanging on to power is to whip up anti-Semitism, to blame the very large Jewish population for the ills of the peasantry which the Tsars had created. Of course there was a degree of spontaneous anti-Semitism among the peasantry and the poor – though uneven and not necessarily organised – but the important thing to understand is the Tsars organised it for explicitly political and reactionary reasons, to hang on to power. One of the biggest points the Zionists make is the Holocaust. The survivors had to go somewhere. Also, didn’t it prove the Zionist case about European anti-Semitism? The single most important factor in the creation of modern Israel is the Holocaust and its aftermath. The Israeli anti-Zionist histo
