View source for Zionism versus Bolshevism - A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People - February 8, 1920 by Winston Churchill

{{Web citation
|web link=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zionism_versus_Bolshevism
|title=Zionism versus Bolshevism - A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People
|author=Winston Churchill
|source=Illustrated Sunday Herald (London) Wikisource
|date=February 8, 1920
|wmdsays=Originally published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald (London) in 1920 this essay has been oft misquoted and abused by antisemites to imply that Churchill harboured animosity toward Jews (antisemitism).
|extract=Full essay reproduced here
==ZIONISM versus BOLSHEVISM ==
===A STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE===
::::By the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill.

Caption of accompanying photograph: “Mr. Churchill inspecting his old regiment, the 4th
Hussars, at Aldershot last week”

SOME people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can
doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most
formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared
in the world.

Disraeli, the Jew, and Leader of the
Conservative Party, who was always true to his race and proud of
his origin, said on a well-known occasion: “The Lord deals with
the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.” Certainly when
we look at the miserable state of Russia, where of all countries
in the world the Jews were the most cruelly treated, and
contrast it with the fortunes of our own country, which seems to
have been so providentially preserved amid the awful perils of
these times, we must admit that nothing that has since happened
in the history of the world has falsified the truth of
Disraeli’s confident assertion.

===Good and Bad Jews.===

The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in
the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the
Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly
or more terribly exemplified. We owe to the Jews in the
Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were
entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably
the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the
fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that
system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck
of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilisation.

And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the
present time be in the actual process of producing another
system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity
was benevolent, which, if not arrested, would shatter
irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It
would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of
Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and
that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the
supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.

==="National" Jews.===

There can be no greater mistake than to attribute to each
individual a recognisable share in the qualities which make up
the national character. There are all sorts of men – good, bad
and, for the most part, indifferent – in every country, and in
every race. Nothing is more wrong than to deny to an individual,
on account of race or origin, his right to be judged on his
personal merits and conduct. In a people of peculiar genius like
the Jews, contrasts are more vivid, the extremes are more widely
separated, the resulting consequences are more decisive.

At the present fateful period there are three main lines of
political conception among the Jews, two of which are helpful
and hopeful in a very high degree to humanity, and the third
absolutely destructive.

First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country
throughout the world, identify themselves with that country,
enter into its national life, and, while adhering faithfully to
their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest
sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in
England would say, “I am an Englishman practising the Jewish
faith.” This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest
degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great
struggle the influence of what may be called the “National Jews”
in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the
Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most
distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others
winning the Victoria Cross for valour.

The National Russian Jews, in spite of the disabilities under
which they have suffered, have managed to play an honourable and
useful part in the national life even of Russia. As bankers and
industrialists they have strenuously promoted the development of
Russia’s economic resources and they were foremost in the
creation of those remarkable organisations, the Russian
Co-operative Societies. In politics their support has been
given, for the most part, to liberal and progressive movements,
and they have been among the staunchest upholders of friendship
with France and Great Britain.

===International Jews.===

In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise
the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this
sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy
populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of
their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of
their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual
hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not
new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx,
and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa
Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this
world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for
the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested
development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality,
has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs.
Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in
the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring
of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and
now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the
underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have
gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have
become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous
empire.

===Terrorist Jews.===

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation
of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian
Revolution by these international and for the most part
atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably
outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the
majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the
principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish
leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his
nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians
like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power
of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel
(Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek – all Jews. In the Soviet
institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing.
And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the
system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for
Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some
notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained
by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun
ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in
Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been
allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German
people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews
every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries,
the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in
the population is astonishing.

==="Protector of the Jews."===

Needless to say, the most intense passions of revenge have been
excited in the breasts of the Russian people. Wherever General
Denikin’s authority could reach, protection was always accorded
to the Jewish population, and strenuous efforts were made by his
officers to prevent reprisals and to punish those guilty of
them. So much was this the case that the Petlurist propaganda
against General Denikin denounced him as the Protector of the
Jews. The Misses Healy, nieces of Mr. Tim Healy, in relating
their personal experiences in Kieff, have declared that to their
knowledge on more than one occasion officers who committed
offences against Jews were reduced to the ranks and sent out of
the city to the front. But the hordes of brigands by whom the
whole vast expanse of the Russian Empire is becoming infested do
not hesitate to gratify their lust for blood and for revenge at
the expense of the innocent Jewish population whenever an
opportunity occurs. The brigand Makhno, the hordes of Petlura
and of Gregorieff, who signalised their every success by the
most brutal massacres, everywhere found among the
half-stupefied, half-infuriated population an eager response to
anti-Semitism in its worst and foulest forms.

The fact that in many cases Jewish interests and Jewish places
of worship are excepted by the Bolsheviks from their universal
hostility has tended more and more to associate the Jewish race
in Russia with the villainies which are now being perpetrated.
This is an injustice on millions of helpless people, most of
whom are themselves sufferers from the revolutionary regime. It
becomes, therefore, specially important to foster and develop
any strongly-marked Jewish movement which leads directly away
from these fatal associations. And it is here that Zionism has
such a deep significance for the whole world at the present
time.

===A Home for the Jews.===

Zionism offers the third sphere to the political conceptions of
the Jewish race. In violent contrast to international communism,
it presents to the Jew a national idea of a commanding
character. It has fallen to the British Government, as the
result of the conquest of Palestine, to have the opportunity and
the responsibility of securing for the Jewish race all over the
world a home and a centre of national life. The statesmanship
and historic sense of Mr. Balfour were prompt to seize this
opportunity. Declarations have been made which have irrevocably
decided the policy of Great Britain. The fiery energies of Dr.
Weissmann, the leader, for practical purposes, of the Zionist
project, backed by many of the most prominent British Jews, and
supported by the full authority of Lord Allenby, are all
directed to achieving the success of this inspiring movement.

Of course, Palestine is far too small to accommodate more than a
fraction of the Jewish race, nor do the majority of national
Jews wish to go there. But if, as may well happen, there should
be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a
Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown, which
might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event would
have occurred in the history of the world which would, from
every point of view, be beneficial, and would be especially in
harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.

Zionism has already become a factor in the political convulsions
of Russia, as a powerful competing influence in Bolshevik
circles with the international communistic system. Nothing could
be more significant than the fury with which Trotsky has
attacked the Zionists generally, and Dr. Weissmann in
particular. The cruel penetration of his mind leaves him in no
doubt that his schemes of a world-wide communistic State under
Jewish domination are directly thwarted and hindered by this new
ideal, which directs the energies and the hopes of Jews in every
land towards a simpler, a truer, and a far more attainable goal.
The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and
Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of
the Jewish people.

===Duty of Loyal Jews.===

It is particularly important in these circumstances that the
national Jews in every country who are loyal to the land of
their adoption should come forward on every occasion, as many of
them in England have already done, and take a prominent part in
every measure for combating the Bolshevik conspiracy. In this
way they will be able to vindicate the honour of the Jewish name
and make it clear to all the world that the Bolshevik movement
is not a Jewish movement, but is repudiated vehemently by the
great mass of the Jewish race.

But a negative resistance to Bolshevism in any field is not
enough. Positive and practicable alternatives are needed in the
moral as well as in the social sphere; and in building up with
the utmost possible rapidity a Jewish national centre in
Palestine which may become not only a refuge to the oppressed
from the unhappy lands of Central Europe, but which will also be
a symbol of Jewish unity and the temple of Jewish glory, a task
is presented on which many blessings rest.

Illustrated Sunday Herald (London), February 8, 1920, pg. 5
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