http://mideasttruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10881
An historical twist–to say the least… Towards the end of the 19th century, France accused an assimilated Jewish captain in the army of espionage. It was later proven that Alfred Dreyfus was innocent and shamelessly framed. Much later, after disgraced, sent to Devil’s Island, etc., he was finally exonerated.
The Dreyfus Trial became the cause celebre of the era, and the prominent writer, Emile Zola, wrote his open letter, J’Accuse (“I Accuse”), which was published in L’Aurore on January 13, 1898.
Among those covering the trial after 1894 was another assimilated Jew, Theodore Herzl, from Hungary.
While the religiously-inspired, age-old anti-Semitism of the masses was regrettable (but understandable) to such men, it was the virulent Jew-hatred which remained even after the so-called Age of Enlightenment among the educated classes which became the most troubling.
The rise to power of such folks as the anti-Semitic demagogue, Karl Lueger, in Vienna in 1895 combined with the Parisian Dreyfus Affair to convince Herzl that there was no hope left for the Jew outside of the resurrection of Israel. Herzl soon wrote Der Judenstaat–the Jewish State–in response, and while others before him wrote of such things as well (Dr. Leo Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation is especially haunting), Herzl became known as the Father of modern political Zionism as a result.