Should the Jews have their own nation and if so, should it be in Palestine? The prevailing train of thought in the 19th century among most Jewish leaders was that Jews should minimize their Jewishness and assimilate into the societies where they lived. Theodore Herzl, born in 1860 to well to do Jewish parents in Budapest, grew up holding this perspective. He studied in Vienna and became a journalist. In 1891, Herzl moved to Paris to take a job as a correspondent with an Austrian newspaper. There he was shocked to find so much antisemitism. Several events, including the Dreyfus Affair, caused him to change his views and determine that so long as antisemitism existed, assimilation was impossible. He concluded that Jews must have a country of their own and it should be in Palestine. This perspective is referred to as Zionism.
In 1897, Herzl hosted a conference in Basel, Switzerland to discuss his ideas. Over 200 Jews attended from around the world. There they founded the World Zionist Organization (WZO) with the mission “to create a publicly guaranteed homeland for the Jewish people” in Palestine. It also set up Herzl as president of the WZO. Since Palestine belonged to the Ottoman Empire (OE), Herzl went to Istanbul in hopes of convincing the Sultan to agree to such an arrangement. That was a non-starter. It was clear that so long as the (OE) existed and controlled Palestine, it would never be a homeland for the Jews.
Even so, the WZO did what they could until “the Sick Man of Europe” died. They pursued a strategy of building a homeland through persistent small-scale immigration and the founding of such bodies as the Jewish National Fund (1901—a charity that bought land for Jewish settlement) and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (1903—provided loans for Jewish businesses and farmers). Herzl and the WZO were not the first Jews to focus on making Palestine a homeland for the Jews. In the late 1870s, Jewish philanthropists such as the Montefiores and the Rothschilds responded to the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe by sponsoring agricultural settlements for Russian Jews in Palestine. This continued, on a small scale through the 1880’s and 1890’s.
When the OE joined the Central Powers at the beginning of WW I, the Zionists had a clear vision for what needed to happen: the Central Powers needed to be defeated, the British needed to control Palestine and they needed to support having it become a homeland for the Jews. Chaim Weizman was a Jewish leader who stepped to forefront to make this happen.
Weizman was a Russian born biochemist who attended the second WZO Congress in Basel in 1898. He was a brilliant scientist and an inventor. One of his most important inventions was acetone, a critical element in munitions. Weizman was also a masterful politician. Among the many important people he befriended and/or came into close association with were David Lloyd George, who was Minister of Munitions in 1915 and later Prime Minister; Arthur Balfour, a former prime minister and the foreign secretary in WWI; C.P. Scott, the editor of the influential newspaper, the Manchester Guardian; Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time; Albert Einstein, and at the end of the war, Woodrow Wilson.
Weizman transferred the manufacturing rights of acetone to a British company that was able to produce it on a mass scale. This greatly helped the Allies’ war effort. He parlayed this action into favorable considerations by British leaders for a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Weitzman was not a one man show. Jews throughout the world raised huge funds to support the Allies. They also used their political and journalistic influence to support a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
One of the most important assets of the British Empire was the Suez Canal which began near the south end of Palestine. Weizman helped convinced British leaders that Jews would make more stable and competent stewards of Palestine with its proximity to the Canal than Arabs.
The Balfour Declaration was one of the most important tangible evidences of Weizman and other Zionist leaders efforts to achieve their goal. It was a letter sent by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothchild, a leader in the Jewish community in Great Britain, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. It stated:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The British government had asked President Wilson in Sep of 1917 if he supported making the declaration. Wilson said no, the time was not ripe. When he was asked again the following month, Wilson consented provided that the caveat about not prejudicing the rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine was added. Why the change? Because American Jewish leaders, including Louis Brandeis, who Wilson had appointed to the Supreme Court and Felix Frankfurter, a future SCOTUS justice, prevailed upon Wilson to support the declaration. The Zionists had been playing the long game by forming themselves into an army of lobbyists in the US and Europe to achieve their goals. And with the victory of the Allies, and the Treaty of Versailles, nearly all their goals were achieved:
- The Ottoman Empire collapsed and lost control of Palestine.
- Great Britain took control of Palestine.
- GB’s government publicly stated it was in favor of Palestine becoming a homeland for the Jews.
There was just one problem and a big one. Palestine had not become a colony of GB where GB could do as she pleased with the conquered territory. Rather, GB was assigned by the League of Nations to serve as a Mandatory Power over specific territorial mandates of which Palestine was one. GB was obligated to set its mandate on a course to become a free and independent nation with a system of government that represented the will of its indigenous population. At the time, no more than 10% of the population was Jewish while 85% of the people in Palestine were Muslims and mainly Arabs. If things were allowed to take their natural course, Palestine would become an independent nation governed by Muslim Arabs. That is what nearly everyone, especially in the Muslim world, expected would happen.
But that was not at all what the Zionists had worked so long and so hard to bring about. Being so close, they were now more determined than ever to see Palestine become a state where Jews controlled their destiny. They would have to continue playing the long game, redoubling their efforts and investing significantly more resources if their dream was to become a reality.
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