ism divides
itself into three categories--ignorant; theoretic; practical. One is
reminded of Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the servant, and Geshem the
Arabian, who mocked and threatened Nehemiah when he undertook to
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

Ignorant opposition assails Zionism with arguments that are
incontrovertible, but totally irrelevant; it busies itself with
destroying claims which the Zionists have never made. A trio may be
taken as representative. It is pointed out with cogency that Palestine
is not capable of supporting the twelve million of Jews who inhabit
our world; and more conclusively, the twelve million of Jews do not
wish to go to Palestine. Briefly, the Zionists in seeking a home for
the Jew in Canaan no more expect all the Jews to congregate within
its bounds than a man who builds himself a house expects that all his
posterity will live in it. As a matter of history, more Jews after the
fall of the first Temple have lived without Palestine than within.
Only a remnant returned after the captivity; and Babylon, Alexandria,
and Rome contained a larger Jewish population than Jerusalem.
Throughout the dispersion, the majority of the Jews lived apart from
the nation center--whether that center was the Mesapotamia of Talmudic
times, the Spain of the Middle Ages, or the Poland of the early modern
period. The Zionist object is only to secure such a national center
(free from outward pressure) as a ganglion radiating Hebraic culture,
which can preserve Jewish unity and identity and inspire Jewish
culture elsewhere, precisely as the Judaea of old rendered similar
service;[43] and the modern Palestine with a soil capable of
supporting a million inhabitants without extensive irrigation amply
satisfies the Zionist purpose.

_Zionism Leaves the Status of the Jew Uninjured_

Closely allied to this argument is the claim that Zionism constitutes
an abandonment by the European Jew of his hard-earned Emancipation,
and a traitorous retreat from the position of brother and
fellow-countryman which he is now claiming in the several nations. In
sum, renationalization in the East spells de-nationalization in the
West, and the return of the Jew to the status of alien. Such a
conclusion follows as inevitably as it follows that the unification of
Germany in 1870 rendered alien the Germans of America who emigrated
here in the '40s, that the French Revolution denationalized the
refugee Huguenot population of Prussia, t