Baron Edmond de Rothschild rejected Herzl's plan, feeling that it threatened Jews in the Diaspora.

The book argues that after centuries of various restrictions, hostilities and frequent pogroms, the Jews of Europe had been reduced to living in ghettos.

Middle-class professionals were distrusted, and the statement "don't buy from Jews" caused much anxiety among Jewish people.

This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilised countries—see, for instance, France—so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level.

It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the government to stop a further influx of Jews.

"[10] For that reason, Herzl, both in Der Judenstaat and in his political activity on behalf of Zionism, concentrated his efforts on securing official legal sanction from, as he put it, "the present masters of the land, putting itself under the protectorate of the European Powers, if they prove friendly to the plan."

Attempts to negotiate with the Ottoman authorities failed, but with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and the subsequent creation of Mandatory Palestine under the control of Britain, the Zionists gained success: Britain issued the Balfour Declaration that supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

As pointed out by Michael Stein, Herzl accurately predicted what would actually happen next: the influx of Jews into Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s did make the native Arab population feel threatened, leading to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt – which forced the British Government to announce in the White Paper of 1939 a stop to the further influx of Jews.