The New Yorker and G.K. Chesterton

Read The New Jerusalem some time. The man didn’t like Jews.

Only a superficial reading of the New Jerusalem could lead one to conclude that Chesterton didn’t like Jews.

Chesterton supported the original (what he calls “genuine”) Zionist movement; he loathed the fact that a sizable number of wealthy Jewish men, mostly living in Western nations, insinuated themselves into that movement, took control of it, then manipulated and changed it for their own financial gain:

The group standing nearest to the official is that of the Zionists;
who are supposed to have a place at least in our official policy.
Among these also I am happy to have friends; and I may venture to call
the official head of the Zionists an old friend in a matter quite remote
from Zionism. Dr. Eder, the President of the Zionist Commission,
is a man for whom I conceived a respect long ago when he protested,
as a professional physician, against the subjection of the poor
to medical interference to the destruction of all moral independence.
He criticised with great effect the proposal of legislators to kidnap
anybody else’s child whom they chose to suspect of a feeblemindedness
they were themselves too feeble-minded to define. It was defended,
very characteristically, by a combination of precedent and progress;
and we were told that it only extended the principle of the lunacy laws.
That is to say, it only extended the principle of the lunacy laws
to people whom no sane man would call lunatics. It is as if they
were to alter the terms of a quarantine law from “lepers”
to “light-haired persons”; and then say blandly that the principle
was the same. The humour and human sympathy of a Jewish doctor was
very welcome to us when we were accused of being Anti-Semites, and we
afterwards asked Dr. Eder for his own views on the Jewish problem.
We found he was then a very strong Zionist; and this was long before
he had the faintest chance of figuring as a leader of Zionism.
And this accident is important; for it stamps the sincerity of the small
group of original Zionists, who were in favour of this nationalist
ideal when all the international Jewish millionaires were against it.
To my mind the most serious point now against it is that the millionaires
are for it. But it is enough to note here the reality of the ideal
in men like Dr. Eder and Dr. Weizmann, and doubtless many others.
The only defect that need be noted, as a mere detail of portraiture,
is a certain excessive vigilance and jealousy and pertinacity in
the wrong place, which sometimes makes the genuine Zionists unpopular
with the English, who themselves suffer unpopularity for supporting them.
For though I am called an Anti-Semite, there were really periods of
official impatience when I was almost the only Pro-Semite in the company.
I went about pointing out what was really to be said for Zionism,
to people who were represented by the Arabs as the mere slaves
of the Zionists.

He also loathed his own nation’s incompetent dealings which helped further opposition to the “genuine” Zionist Movement:

I have heard it supported as an interesting experiment in Zionism.
I have heard it denounced as a craven concession to Zionism.
I think it is quite obviously a flat and violent contradiction
to Zionism. Zionism, as I have always understood it, and indeed
as I have always defended it, consists in maintaining that it
would be better for all parties if Israel had the dignity
and distinctive responsibility of a separate nation; and that
this should be effected, if possible, or so far as possible,
by giving the Jews a national home, preferably in Palestine.
But where is Sir Herbert Samuel’s national home? If it is in
Palestine he cannot go there as a representative of England.
If it is in England, he is so far a living proof that a Jew does
not need a national home in Palestine. If there is any point
in the Zionist argument at all, you have chosen precisely the wrong
man and sent him to precisely the wrong country. You have asserted
not the independence but the dependence of Israel, and yet you have
ratified the worst insinuations about the dependence of Christendom.
In reason you could not more strongly state that Palestine does not
belong to the Jews, than by sending a Jew to claim it for the English.
And yet in practice, of course, all the Anti-Semites will say he is
claiming it for the Jews. You combine all possible disadvantages
of all possible courses of action; you run all the risks of the hard
Zionist adventure, while actually denying the high Zionist ideal.
You make a Jew admit he is not a Jew but an Englishman; even while you
allow all his enemies to revile him because he is not an Englishman
but a Jew.