Although Zionism typically represents itself as the solution to
anti-Semitism, the truth is less flattering. In fact, hostility
toward Jews is indispensable to the cause of Jewish nationalism.
If anti-Semitism didn’t exist, Zionists would have to invent it.
And in many cases that is precisely what they have done.
Contrary to the widespread perception that Zionism opposes anti-
Semitism, its adherents have occasionally revealed a more
ambivalent attitude to Jew-hatred. In 1895, Theodor Herzl, the
founder of modern Zionism, prophetically wrote in his Diaries:
“Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic
countries our allies.” Even the suffering inflicted on European
Jewry by the Nazi holocaust doesn’t seem to have unduly tempered
such cynicism. In 1995, Jay Lefkowitz, an American government
official, told the New York Times Magazine: “Deep down, I
believe that a little anti-Semitism is a good thing for the
Jews— reminds them who they are.” If Zionist extremists can’t
provoke the desired level of an