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Excerpt from Among My Books M. Sokolow, almost in his own despite, is conscious of some of his embarrassments. He is plainly perplexed, for example, about the Emancipation argument. He speaks Of it on page 120, and again on page 157. On the first occasion he writes We have racked our brains in trying to discover how the establishment of a National Home in Palestine could possibly harm the Emancipation Of Jews in the world. We have failed to solve this mystery. The British Government, in their Declaration, have put to flight this fear. But when we turn to the British Government's Declaration, we find that the only sentence which refers to this argument is the following It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the rights and political statusenjoyed by Jews in any other country. We shall not measure our brain with M. Sokolow's, but we, too, have racked it in vain-to try to discover by what means the British Government proposes to guard, for all times, and in all places, the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country but Great Britain. This sentence in Mr. Balfour's letter was plainly the first that occurred to him, or to his advisers, when he wrote it. Someone said that someone should say something about a matter on which anyone could say anything and these words were employed, as words so Often are, in the hope of getting rid of a difficulty which could not be altogether ignored. The whole letter was a war-time production, as imperfectly thought out as most public utterances of that period, and no one seriously believes that any other country is committed to a policy on Jewish rights and status because of the convenient phrase which Mr. Balfour introduced into this letter. M. Sokolow, a little uneasily, comes back to this problem. On page 157, he writes There can be no Emancipation worthy of the name without a homeland. The greatest danger to Zionism, as well as to anti-zionism, is that the ideal of Zionism on the one hand and that of Emancipation on the other should be separated, and that people should come to regard as antagonistic Objects which are essentially related and complementary to one another. Here, we must admit, M. Sokolow succeeds in mystifying us. Perhaps these are the metaphysical methods, Of which, as we saw, he spoke above. But, frankly, historical truth demands a plain statement of the fact that the Emancipation struggle in this country was fought and won without a homeland, that English Jews think it worthy Of the name, and that the invention of a homeland introduces, in their belief, a bi-national idea foreign to the well-understood principles which Jews cherish and uphold. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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