Take that Kaddish prayer I’ll be saying. It refers to “Israel” three times. The Jews were called Am Yisrael, the people of Israel, centuries before we were called Jews. What’s more, when I say the prayer, I will, following tradition, be facing east – towards Jerusalem. The prayer book in my hand will be full of references to Jerusalem and indeed to Zion, expressing in a hundred poetic ways a yearning to return. This is not some new, political thing. It’s what Jews have been saying and doing for millennia. Many, many centuries before Zionism was a political movement, it was a longing – the need to end a painful exile from the Land of Israel – enshrined in the very heart of Judaism.
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The Guardian, 03/10/2026
The Zionists see nothing in the admiration which their propaganda inspires among many anti-Semites. But they must understand that their ostentatious proclamation of a Jewish nationality that cannot be content with anything but a Jewish State is merely playing into the hands of the enemies of their race.
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This is the position which The Israelite has assumed from the very beginning of this pernicious agitation. Motives should of course always be considered, but wise men have ever held a fool to be more dangerous than a deliberate evildoer, especially to those whom he seeks to serve. We therefore firmly believe that Jewish Zionism has in the few years of its existence done more harm to Israel than has Christian anti-Semitism, and that Herzl and Nordau and their misguided followers have been most efficient allies of Drumont, Stoecker, and their accomplices.
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Zionism and anti-Semitism are twin enemies of the Jews, and the former is potentially more dangerous.
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The American Israelite, reprinted in
NYT, 19/01/1902