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nydus/The JewsPublic

This book examines the relationship between the Jewish people and the nations in which they reside. The author argues for the necessity of open discussion and the abandonment of concealment to address the political tensions surrounding this issue.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER IV THE GENERAL CAUSE OF FRICTION

serve Jewish interests, and, while perpetually sneering at the Jew behind his back, call him to his face by his most intimate name and make the most of his hospitality. Which of them ever knows a middle-class Jew, let alone a poor Jew? Why, most of them are actually ignorant of the fact that this mass of poor Jews exists at all! They serve the Jew when he is wealthy and only when he is wealthy. They envy him basely as a wealthy man and only as a wealthy man. They prostitute their dignity, they sell their fellow-Europeans, not from any genuine affection for the Jewish race—indeed there is no class in the community, closely intermixed with the Jews as they are, which feel the friction more than the gentry—but simply from a thirst for money, which they happen to find held in great masses by a few Jewish families.

It is most noticeable that other aspects of Jewish activity remain unused by the wealthy class, the gentry—and therefore by the State. Whether it would be wise to use them or not is another matter. At any rate, the motive for leaving them unused is the fact that they are not connected with wealth. The Jewish intelligence which might so often have served the policy of a Statesman is largely left unused. The cosmopolitan position of the Jew when it is used is used for little more than spying; and that profound force, the historical memory of the Jew, is neglected almost altogether. With this neglect goes a natural and evil result, the failure on the part of the European governing classes, especially to-day, to safeguard the community against the troubles which are bound to arise from the clashing of interests between the Jews and the people among whom they dwell.

It may sound paradoxical, but it is true, that if the Statesmen of Europe, and the hereditary families of the European nations who still take so much part in the conduct of those nations, had thought less of the Jewish money power and more of the Jews as a whole they would have benefited both parties in a very different fashion. We have seen the artificial protection of the Jews of Eastern Europe because individual

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