Even history has its reasons that reason often fails to understand.
When news reached Rome in August 70 C.E. that Judea was conquered, the
temple burned and the Jewish people subjugated, the Roman populace
greeted it with the infamous cry, "Hierosolyma est perdita"; there
was rejoicing at the downfall and humiliation of the Jewish state.
Eighteen hundred and forty-seven years later, after the deafening
cries "Hierosolyma est perdita" were shouted in the streets of the
eternal city, an Italian army leaves Rome with Palestine again as
its objective; but this time it marches not with the object of
annihilating Judea, but, as an official message puts it--to enable the
allied powers to wrest the Holy Land from the Turks, to turn it over
eventually to the Jews, and thus to rebuild Judea. Even if there should
be little to the Roman announcement, it is not lacking a pathetic
touch; it testifies to the grim irony of history. The same Rome that
once destroyed Judea is making public its intention today to help
rebuild it. Our ancestors, who were the tragic witnesses of the cruel
destruction of Judea, would surely not think of the possibility that
after a lapse of nearly two thousand years, an army should leave Rome
for Palestine with the object of helping to reinstate the Jewish people
in the land of its forefathers; nor could anyone have foreseen that
the Rome of old, that aimed at the subjugation of small nationalities,
would be succeeded by a new Rome that pronounces its stand for
the rights and political re-establishment of small and oppressed
nationalities.
Of course, people will say that modern Rome can in no way be compared
to ancient Rome and that the two have nothing in common. However, those
who have read Montesquieu and Hegel on the deeds of ancient Rome and
those who have followed the development of modern Rome, will recognize
the close similarity between the two. As far as power and political and
strategic genius go, modern Rome, it is true, cannot be compared to its
predecessor of two thousand years ago; but if traditions, surroundings
and other sociological factors that give a people shape and form count
for anything, the Roman of today is bound to have a good deal in
common with the Roman of two thousand years ago, even if the one is not
racially the offspring of the other.
Present-day Rome has much in common with ancient Rome. The main
difference between them is, of course, this: While ancient Rome,
dominating the entire world then known to humanity, and forming the
centre of the Mediterranean civilization, was the world power of the
time, modern Rome holds neither the political position of ancient
Rome nor is it the representative and bearer of the Mediterranean
civilization. The predominance of Mediterranean civilization has gone
with the last great Doges of Venice, and modern Rome is no longer the
centre of gravitation of civilized humanity that ancient Rome was two
thousand years ago. In the course of the last millenium, the centre of
civilization has shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. It is
the Atlantic civilization that is supreme today. The whole terrible
fight that is going on today in all parts of the world is not a fight
about the Mediterranean and its supremacy, but it is a struggle for the
Atlantic and its predominance--and, in this struggle, Rome is no longer
playing a leading part.
In the course of the fight about the Mediterranean, Judea was destroyed
and the whole Semitic race nearly annihilated. The wars of Rome against
Carthage, the people of which spoke Hebrew and formed a branch of
the Aramaic family of nations, were fought with the only object of
preserving Roman supremacy in the Mediterranean. The fight for the
Atlantic, however, has already resulted in the re-establishment of
one Semitic nation--the Arab--and will probably also result in the
re-establishment of old Judea. That is where the difference between the
fight for the Mediterranean, fought by ancient Rome, and the fight for
the Atlantic, in which modern Rome participates, comes in.
The ancient Mediterranean Rome was not only imperialistic to the core,
but universalistic as well. The chief aim and plan of ancient Rome was
to subjugate the whole world, then known to humanity, with a view to
dominating it. The idea of a universal monarchy at the expense of the
independence and freedom of other nations first originated in ancient
Rome. Rome of today, which takes part in the fight for the Atlantic, is
imperialistic, although no longer striving for political universalism
and world domination; it announces that it stands today for the
preservation of the individuality of the small nations.
The prospective re-establishment of Judea, as one of the consequences
of the present war, cannot be a blind chance of fate. There is
historical logic in this development. Palestine, as a Mediterranean
country could not maintain its independence in the face of a rising
Mediterranean world power that strove to master not only the
Mediterranean but all the other parts of the globe then known to
mankind. Our sages of old found a thousand and one moral and political
reasons for the downfall of ancient Judea and for its destruction
by Rome. They ascribed the downfall of ancient Judea not only to
political, but even to moral causes and to the growth of individual
hatred and dissensions among the Jews themselves. The internal
political and moral reasons advanced by our sages for the downfall of
Judea may have contributed to the destruction, but the main reason was
the determination of Rome to master all the shores of the Mediterranean
and to dominate the entire ancient world. In the face of this fact,
even an internally solid and strong Judea would have finally succumbed
as did Carthage, which produced greater generals and gave a better
military account of itself than did Judea. The destruction of Judea was
a tragic historical necessity and could only have been avoided if Rome
had, by a miracle, suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.
Were present Rome what ancient Rome was, the centre of civilization
that strove for the mastery not only of the Mediterranean countries but
also of the entire world, the prospective re-establishment of Judea
today would have as little chance as ancient Judea of surviving or
resisting Roman aggression. The prospective re-establishment of Judea
is only possible because the centre of civilization has been shifted
from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
Why did the Jewish people suffer two thousand years under the
dispersion and why did they not try during this long period to
re-establish their political sovereignty in the land of their
ancestors? Even the best of our thinkers ascribe this national default
and political apathy to a sort of lethargy of which the Jews were
apparently the victims. To many a Jewish thinker, Ahad Ha'am not
excepted, the past two thousand years of Jewish existence appears
to be planless and one great historic confusion; but on looking
closely at developments, one will come to recognize that not because
of lethargy, but because of given historical conditions, the Jewish
people could not up to our times have attempted to re-establish their
national sovereignty in the land of their forefathers. More than a
thousand years after the downfall of western Rome, Mediterranean
civilization, though degenerated, remained supreme and was identical
with civilization at large. The chief move of its centre from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the consolidation of a new center was
accomplished only after a struggle of nearly five hundred years. So
long as Atlantic civilization was not supreme and so long as the fight
for its supremacy was not finished, the political re-establishment
of Judea, closely connected with the settlement of the solution of
questions arising out of the fight for the Atlantic and all that
there is to it--the individualization of international politics, the
preservation of the small nationalities, their political restoration,
etc.--could not be taken up and no serious attempt to re-establish the
Jewish nationality in Palestine could be made by the Jews or other
nations interested in the settlement of the Jewish question.
For these reasons, the re-establishment of Judea, as one of the
post-bellum problems, is as historically logical now as was the
downfall of Judea a historical necessity two thousand years ago.
There are no blind chances in history, nor are there stagnant moments
in history. History has its reasons, which, however, reason often fails
to understand.