History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

another crucial piece to the jigsaw of the Zionist state. For if Turkish rule were removed from Palestine, among other places, there might be nothing to prevent a Jewish national home from moving into the vacuum. The notion that Jews would benefit from a German defeat in the fearful conflict now beginning would have struck most of them, at the time, as absurd. The mortal enemy of the Jews was Tsarist Russia, which the German army was now trying to tear to pieces. In London’s East End, Jews were reluctant to volunteer to fight the Germans for this very reason. Everyone associated Jewish cultural leadership with Germany. Except for the pacifists of the far left, all the leading German-speaking Jewish intellectuals, led by Max Liebermann, signed a petition supporting Germany’s war aims–Einstein was almost the only one who refused.