Jewish Army: Pro & Con

Many Americans of good will, shocked by Nazi atrocities and hopeful of wiping anti-Semitism from the face of the earth, last week flocked to a new cause: creation of a Jewish Army.

The year-old Committee for a Jewish Army, headed by aggressive Journalist Pierre Van Paassen (Days of Our Years, That Day Alone), found more than 1,500 distinguished citizens eager to sign its plea: they ranged from Episcopalian Bishop H. P. Almon Abbott to Sculptor William Zorach. At a dinner in Manhattan last week, about 1,000 of them applauded speeches which demanded immediate formation of the Army—made up of European refugees and Jews of Palestine and the Middle East—and criticized U.S. and British official delay.

Pierre Van Paassen, no Jew but a longtime friend of Zionism, set up his committee to seek, through U.S. pressure, what Britain has thus far refused. Britain permits Jews in Palestine to enlist as individuals (20,000 have); it has set up several all-Jewish regiments. But again last week it balked at an independent Jewish Army—largely because the British must also consider the sympathies of 30,000,000 Middle Eastern Arabs.

The Committee’s arguments for a Jewish Army are that: 1) it would provide an effective and belligerent military force;* 2) by proving the military courage and heroism of Jews it would counteract antiSemitism; 3) by giving Jews a place of their own in the fighting, it would guarantee them a part in the peace. To Jews who back the Army proposal, a part in the peace means a Jewish state in Palestine: the Committee is supported by most of the 400,000 American Zionists.

The Opposition. Yet few of the non-Jewish pleaders for the Jewish Army presumably realized last week that they had taken sides in a dispute which finds Jews themselves in sharp disagreement. In Philadelphia last fortnight, a potent group of non-Zionist Jews met under sturdy, deliberate Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Philadelphia to form a new organization called the American Council for Judaism. Its credo, as stated by Rabbi Wolsey: “[We] will seek to identify and define the Jew as a member of a religious community and nothing else. . . . We are definitely opposed to a Jewish State, a Jewish flag or a Jewish Army.”

From one of the council’s members, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson of Manhattan, came a summary of the case against a Jewish Army: “I have never been able to accept the doctrine that establishing a Jewish Army or making Palestine a Jewish sovereign state would solve the Jewish problem. . . . Problems of human maladjustments are not solved at a distance or by proxy. If solved at all, they are solved in the places where they arise and by the persons most affected.

“Zionists and the pleaders for a Jewish Army indirectly play into the hands of anti-Semites by furnishing them an easy and cheap way of solving the Jewish problem. They will feel freer to discriminate against Jews by the excuse that these people have a place to go and a place where they belong. . . . The Jewish problem must be solved in conjunction with all the other global efforts of readjustment and on the same democratic principles of freedom and justice.”

* The Army Committee claims 85,000 Palestinian and 100,000 stateless Jews of military age are waiting to volunteer. But the Jerusalem Haolam, a Zionist publication, recently placed the number available in Palestine at 34,000.