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Developments in the Middle East, which threaten to draw all mankind into the catastrophe of another world war, the "great historical cataclysm" of which Alexander Solzhenitsyn warns, make it more urgently necessary than ever to explore Zionism as one of the major forces shaping the history of our century.
Description
In the handling of a subject so complex and multi-faceted, the method used in this book is to present a series of separate studies, each of which it is hoped will contribute something to a deep and comprehensive understanding of the long troubled relationship of Jew and gentile. The word "Zionist" is preferred in the book's title as representing a much altered 20th century Jewish presence in which the appetites of global power-politics have almost entirely superseded religion as the main source for the motivation of Jewish unity and exclusiveness. The clearest distinction must be drawn between Judaism as a personal monotheistic religion - by none more clearly expounded than the Jewish savant Moses Maimonides, and in our time men like Moshe Menuhin - and Judaism as a rampant modem nationalism, the political and military executive arm of great financial power. It is also necessary to distinguish between a monotheistic personal faith capable of making converts, as Judaism once did, and an exclusivist group spirit that prescribes a dual code of moral conduct - the cause of so much hostility encountered by the Jewish people down the ages.
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