AAQ said – Well, this does connect with Zionism. R Schach writes that because early Zs were ready to go to Beirut University, antisemitism had to be activated – to protect them from intermarriage. Inter alia, this means that R Schach thought that Hashem cares about Zionists …
Of course it connects with Zionism, that was part of what I said. But it has nothing to do with what the Goyim think they are angry about, it is something directed from Above. Who said Hashem doesn’t care about Zionists? They might not have cared about their end of the Covenant, but Hashem sure cared about His end, BECAUSE Yidden cannot escape our special connection to Hashem. That is exactly what the ברית is all about.
AAQ – But while the hesranos of Zionists are obvious, their achievements are also easy to see – all Jews who were saved through their efforts.
Something about the arsonist joining the fire fighters… (And even then, only partially.) The destruction had a great deal to do with assimilation and secularism, of which Zionism was a major part. (This is aside from the שלש שבועות issue, which I don’t want to go into again.) Many Gedolim said that, some out loud, some quietly, but to claim ‘we just can’t ever know’, or only with hundreds of years of hindsight, is disingenuous. Zionism wasn’t a PRACTICAL movement to save Jews. If it was, they would have been equally happy to save them by sending them anywhere they could go, by any means necessary. They infamously refused to do so. It was an IDEOLOGICAL movement to build a Judenstaat, everything else be damned. Some Frum Jews happened to have been saved by them by mistake because they knew someone who knew someone who begrudgingly gave up some ‘certificates’ earmarked for Chalutzim, to save some ‘old Rabbis from Poland’. והדברים ידועים ואכמ״ל. Please do not start another debate on the history, it has been thoroughly beaten to death.
AAQ – It may be not a surprise that Herzl that lived the modern life understood Dreyfus affair and what it implies while some rabbonim…
Herzl, at that point in his life, did not understand ANYTHING AT ALL about anything to do with Jews or Judaism. He was taken COMPLETELY by surprise, and said so himself. Emphatically so. He was shocked how viscerally the fine French gentlemen despised the thoroughly assimilated Dreyfus and the other thoroughly assimilated French Jews. Some good people explained to him that Christians don’t like Jews, because we rejected their religion. So, he came up with the brilliant idea of convincing all the Jews to convert to Christianity… He went all excited to the Bishop of Vienna, who explained to him that they already tried to do that, but it didn’t work… So then he came to the conclusion that if Jews had their own state, like the French have theirs, so then the Goyim would accept us as just another nation-state… היו לא תהיה. He went to his grave (from syphilis) still thinking that Uganda would be an ideal place for such a state… Rabbonim understand Torah, and Torah tells us EVERYTHING we need to know in order to be the עם הנבחר. Even if we die for that, we don’t die the way Herzl did ח״ו…