ABSTRACT
The crucial role played by the re-emergence of antisemitism in the genesis of Jewish nationalism was from the outset a source of hostile criticism from Jewish adversaries of Zionism – whether orthodox, conservative, liberal, or socialist. It was argued that both antisémites and Jewish nationalists unduly stressed the ‘foreignness’ of the Jews and that Zionists were in effect encouraging the removal of Jews from their native lands. The optimism of the critics of Jewish nationalism tended, to downplay the long history of Christian antisemitism whose tenacity and ability to adapt to new circumstances was clearly demonstrated throughout the nineteenth century. The eruption of organized antisemitism in central Europe in the 1880s therefore was only the second phase of a dialectical process and itself the response to the persistence of a Jewish proto-nation. Zionism, itself, was ultimately too much an integral part of the tradition of European enlightenment and emancipation to envisage such a macabre consummation.
