History of Zionism

History of Zionism

History of Zionism before 1910

During the middle ages, though the racial character of the Jews was being transformed by their Ghetto seclusion, the national yearning suffered no relaxation. If it expressed itself exclusively in literature, it was not on that account undergoing a process of idealization. (Cf. Abrahams’s Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, pp. 24-25.) The truth is that it could not have expressed itself differently. There could have been no abandonment of national hopes in a practical sense, unless the prospect of entering the national life of the peoples among whom they dwelt had presented itself as an alternative. Of this there was not the remotest sign. The absence of militant Zionism during this period is to be accounted for partly by the want of conspicuous pseudo-Messiahs, and partly by the terror of persecution. Unlike the modern Greeks, the medieval Jews could expect no sympathy from their neighbours in an agitation for the recovery of their country . One may imagine what the Crusaders would have thought of an international Jewish conspiracy to recapture Jerusalem. In the 15th century the aversion from political action, even had it been possible, must have been strengthened by the fact that the Grand Signer was the only friend the Jews had in the world. The nationalist spirit of the medieval Jews is sufficiently reflected in their liturgy, and especially in the works of the poet, Jehuda Halevi. It is impossible to read his beautiful Zionide without feeling that had he lived another twenty years he would have gladly played towards the pseudo-Messiah David Alroy (circa 1160) the part that Akiba played towards Bar Cochba.

The strength of the nationalist feeling was practically tested in the 16th century, when a Jewish impostor, David Reubeni (circa 1530), and his disciple, Solomon Molcho (1501-1532), came forward as would-be liberators of their people. Throughout Spain, Italy and Turkey they were received with enthusiasm by the bulk of their brethren. In the following century the influence of the Christian Millenarians gave a fresh impulse to the national idea. Owing to the frenzy of persecution and the apocalyptic teachings of the Chiliasts, it now appeared in a more mystical form, but a practical bias was not wanting. Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657) co-operated with English Millenarians to procure the resettlement of the Jews in England as a preliminary to their national return to Palestine, and he regarded his marriage with a scion of the Davidic family of Abarbanel as justifying the hope that the new Messiah might be found among his offspring. The increasing dispersion of the Marranos or crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal through the Inquisition, and the persecution of the Jews in Poland, deepened the Jewish sense of homelessness the while the Millenarians encouraged their Zionist dreams. The Hebraic and Judeophil tendencies of the Puritan revolution in England still further stirred the prevailing unrest, and some Jewish rabbis are said to have visited England in order to ascertain by genealogical investigations whether a Davidic descent could be ascribed to Oliver Cromwell. It only wanted a leader to produce a national movement on a formidable scale. In 1666 this leader presented himself at Smyrna, in the person of a Jew named Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), who proclaimed himself the Messiah. The news spread like wildfire, and despite the opposition of some of the leading rabbis, the Jews everywhere prepared for the journey to Palestine. Not alone was this the case with the poor Jews of Lithuania and Germany, but also with well-to-do communities like those of Venice, Leghorn and Avignon, and with the great Jewish merchants and bankers of Hamburg, Amsterdam and London. Throughout Europe the nationalist excitement was intense. Even the downfall and apostasy of Sabbatai were powerless to stop it. Among the wealthier Jews it partially subsided, but the great bulk of the people refused for a whole century to be disillusionized. A Messianic frenzy seized upon them. Encouraged on the one hand by Christian Millenarians like Pierre Jurien, Oligér Pauli, and Johannes Speeth, pandered to by Sabbataic impostors like Cardoso, Bonafoux, Mordecai of Eisenstadt, Jacob Querido, Judah Chassid, Nehemiah Chayon and Jacob Franks, and maddened by fresh oppressions, they became fanaticized to the verge of demoralization.

The reaction arrived in 1778 in the shape of the Mendelssohnian movement. The growth of religious toleration, the attempted emancipation of the English Jews in 1753, and the sane Judeophilism of men like Lessing and Dohm, showed that at length the dawn of the only possible alternative to nationalism was at hand. Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) sought to prepare his brethren for their new life as citizens of the lands in which they dwelt, by emphasizing the spiritual side of Judaism and the necessity of Occidental culture. His efforts were successful. The narrow nationalist spirit everywhere yielded before the hope or the progress of local political emancipation. In 1806 the Jewish Sanhedrin convened by Napoleon virtually repudiated the nationalist tradition. The new Judaism, however, had not entirely destroyed it. It had only reconstructed it on a wider and more sober foundation. Mendelssohnian culture, by promoting the study of Jewish history, gave a fresh impulse to the racial consciousness of the Jews. The older nationalism had been founded on traditions so remote as to be almost mythical; the new race consciousness was fed by a glorious martyr history, which ran side by side with the histories of the newly adopted nationalities of the Jews, and was not unworthy of the companionship. From this race consciousness came a fresh interest in the Holy Land. It was an ideal rather than a politico-nationalist interest – a desire to preserve and cherish the great monument of the departed national glories. It took the practical form of projects for improving the circumstances of the local Jews by means of schools, and for reviving something of the old social condition of Judea by the establishment of agricultural colonies. In this work Sir Moses Montefiore, the Rothschild family, and the Alliance Israélite Universelle were conspicuous. More or less passively, however, the older nationalism still lived on – especially in lands where Jews were persecuted – and it became strengthened by the revived race consciousness and the new interest in the Holy Land. Christian Millenarians also helped to keep it alive. Lord Ashley, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury, Colonel Gawler, Mr Walter Cresson, the United States consul at Jerusalem, Mr James Finn, the British consul, Mr Laurence Oliphant and many others organized and supported schemes for the benefit of the Jews of the Holy Land on avowedly Restoration grounds. Another vivifying element was the reopening of the Eastern Question and the championship of oppressed nationalities in the East by the Western Powers. In England political writers were found to urge the re-establishment of a Jewish state under British protection as a means of assuring the overland route to India (Hollingsworth, Jews in Palestine, 1852). Lord Palmerston was not unaffected by this idea (Finn, Stirring Times, vol. i. pp. 106-112), and both Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury supported Mr Laurence Oliphant in his negotiations with the Porte for a concession which was to pave the way to an autonomous Jewish state in the Holy Land. In 1854 a London Jew attempted to float a company “for the purpose of enabling the descendants of Israel to obtain and cultivate the Land of Promise” (Hebrew Observer, 12th April). In 1876 the publication of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda gave to the Jewish nationalist spirit the strongest stimulus it had experienced since the appearance of Sabbatai Zevi.

It was not, however, until the spread of anti-Semitic doctrines through Europe made men doubt whether the Mendelssohnian denationalization of Judaism possessed the elements of permanency that the Jewish nationalist spirit reasserted itself in a practical form. As long as the anti-Semites were merely polemical, the nationalists were mute, but when in Russia their agitation took the form of massacres and spoliation, followed by legislation of medieval harshness, the nationalist remedy offered itself. In 1882 several pamphlets were published by Jews in Russia, advocating the restoration of the Jewish state. They found a powerful echo in the United States, where a young Jewish poetess, Miss Emma Lazarus, passionately championed the Zionist cause in verse not unworthy of Jehuda Halevi. But the movement did not limit itself to literature. A society, “Chovevi Zion,” was formed with the object of so extending and methodizing the establishment of agricultural colonies in Palestine as to make the eventual acquisition of the country by the Jews possible. From the beginning it was a great success, and branches, or “tents” as they were called, were established all over the world. At the same time two other great schemes for rescuing the Jewish people from oppression were brought before the public. Neither was Zionist, but both served to encourage the Zionist cause. One was due to the initiative of Mr Cazalet, a financier who was interested in the Euphrates Valley Railway project. With the assistance of Mr Laurence Oliphant he proposed that the concession from the Porte should include a band of territory two miles wide on each side of the railway, on which Jewish Refugees from Russia should be settled. Unfortunately the scheme failed. The other was Baron de Hirsch’s colossal colonization association (see Hirsch, Maurice de). This was neither political nor Zionist, but it was supported by a good many members of the “Chovevi Zion,” among them Colonel Goldsmid, on the ground that it might result in the training of a large class of Jewish yeomen who would be invaluable in the ultimate settlement of Palestine. (Interview in Daily Graphic, 10th March 1892.)

None of these projects, however, proved sufficiently inspiring to attract the great mass of Jewish nationalists. The Chovevi Zion was too timid and prosaic; the Hirsch scheme did not directly appeal to their strongest sympathies. In 1897 a striking change manifested itself. A new Zionist leader arose in the person of a Viennese journalist and playwright, Dr Theodore Herzl (1860-1904). The electoral successes of the anti-Semites in Vienna and Lower Austria in 1895 had impressed him with the belief that the Jews were unassimilable in Europe, and that the time was not far distant when they would be once more submitted to civil and political disabilities. The Hirsch scheme did not, in his view, provide a remedy, as it only transplanted the Jews from one uncongenial environment to another. He came to the conclusion that the only solution of the problem was the segregation of the Jews under autonomous political conditions. His first scheme was not essentially Zionist. He merely called for a new exodus, and was ready to accept any grant of land in any part of the world that would secure to the Jews some form of self-government. The idea was not new. In 1566 Don Joseph Nasi had proposed an autonomous settlement of Jews at Tiberias, and had obtained a grant of the city from the Sultan for the purpose. In 1652 the Dutch West India Company in Curacao, in 1654 Oliver Cromwell in Surinam, and in 1659 the French West India Company at Cayenne had attempted similar experiments. Marshal de Saxe in 1749 had projected the establishment of a Jewish kingdom in South America, of which he should be sovereign; and in 1825 Major M. M. Noah purchased Grand Island, in the river Niagara, with a view to founding upon it a Jewish state. All these projects were failures. Dr Herzl was not slow to perceive that without an impulse of real enthusiasm his scheme would share the fate of these predecessors. He accordingly resolved to identify it with the nationalist idea. His plan was set forth in a pamphlet, entitled The Jewish State, which was published in German, French and English in the spring of 1896. It explained in detail how the new exodus was to be organized and how the state was to be managed. It was to be a tribute-paying state under the suzerainty of the Sultan. It was to be settled by a chartered company and governed by an aristocratic republic, tolerant of all religious differences. The Holy Places were to be exterritorialized. The pamphlet produced a profound sensation. Dr Herzl was joined by a number of distinguished Jewish literary men, among whom were Dr Max Nordau and Mr Israel Zangwill, and promises of support and sympathy reached him from all parts of the world. The haute finance and the higher rabbinate, however, stood aloof.

The most encouraging feature in Dr Herzl’s scheme was that the Sultan of Turkey appeared favourable to it. The motive of his sympathy has not hitherto been made known. The Armenian massacres had inflamed the whole of Europe against him, and for a time the Ottoman Empire was in very serious peril. Dr Herzl’s scheme provided him, as he imagined, with a means of securing powerful friends. Through a secret emissary, the Chevalier de Newlinsky, whom he sent to London in May 1896, he offered to present the Jews a charter in Palestine provided they used their influence in the press and otherwise to solve the Armenian question on lines which he laid down. The English Jews declined these proposals, and refused to treat in any way with the persecutor of the Armenians. When, in the following July, Dr Herzl himself came to London, the Maccabaean Society, though ignorant of the negotiations with the Sultan, declined to support the scheme. None the less, it secured a large amount of popular support throughout Europe, and in 1910 Zionism had a following of over 300,000 Jews, divided into a thousand electoral districts. The English membership is about 15,000.

Between 1897 and 1910 the Zionist organization held nine international Congresses. At the first, which met at Basel, a political programme was adopted on the following terms: –

“Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine. For the attainment of this purpose the Congress considers the following means serviceable: (1) The promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists, artisans and tradesmen in Palestine. (2) The federation of all Jews into local or general groups, according to the laws of the various countries. (3) The strengthening of the Jewish feeling and consciousness. (4) Preparatory steps for the attainment of those governmental grants which are necessary to the achievement of the Zionist purpose.”

Subsequent congresses founded various institutions for the promotion of this programme, notably a People’s Bank known as the Colonial Trust, which is the financial instrument of political Zionism, a National Fund for the purchase of land in Palestine and a Palestine Commission with subsidiary societies for the study and improvement of the social and economic condition of the Jews in the Holy Land. For the purposes of these bodies about £400,000 was collected in small sums and invested. Very little practical work of any abiding value, however, was accomplished, and on the political side the career of Zionism had up to the end of 1910 proved a failure.

In May 1901 and August 1902 Dr Herzl had audiences of the Sultan Abdul Hamid, and was received with great distinction, but the negotiations led to nothing. Despairing of obtaining an immediate charter for Palestine, he turned to the British government with a view to securing a grant of territory on an autonomous basis in the vicinity of the Holy Land, which would provisionally afford a refuge and a political training-ground for persecuted Jews. His overtures met with a sympathetic reception, especially from Mr Chamberlain, then Colonial Secretary, and Earl Percy, who was Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (October 1902). At first a site for the proposed settlement was suggested in the Sinai peninsula, but owing to the waterless character of the country the project had to be abandoned. Then Mr Chamberlain, who in the interval had paid a visit to Africa, suggested the salubrious and uninhabited highlands of the East Africa Protectorate, and in 1903 the British government formally offered Dr Herzl the Nasin Gishiu plateau, 6000 sq. m. in area. No such opportunity for creating a Jewish self-governing community had presented itself since the Dispersion, and for a moment it seemed as if Zionism were really entering the field of practical politics. Unhappily it only led to bitter controversies, which nearly wrecked the whole movement. The British offer was submitted to the Sixth Congress, which assembled at Basel in August 1903. It was received with consternation and an explosion of wrath by the ultra-nationalist elements, who interpreted it as an abandonment of the Palestine idea. By his personal influence Dr Herzl succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a commission to examine the proposed territory, but its composition was largely nationalist, and in the following year the Congress gladly availed itself of certain critical passages in the report to reject the whole scheme.

Meanwhile Zionism had suffered an irreparable blow by the death of Dr Herzl (1904). He was succeeded by Mr David Wolffsohn, a banker of Cologne, but there was in truth nobody who in ability and personal dignity and magnetism could take his place. The movement was further shaken by the dissensions which followed the rejection of the East African project. Mr Israel Zangwill led an influential minority which combined with certain non-Zionist elements to found a rival organization under the name of the ITO (Jewish Territorial Organization) with a view to taking over the East African offer or to establish an autonomous place of refuge elsewhere. Thus freed from all moderating elements the Zionists hardened into an exclusively Palestinian body, and under the auspices of Mr Wolffsohn fresh negotiations were opened with the Porte. These, however, were rendered finally hopeless by the Turkish revolution, which postulated a united Ottoman nationality, and resolutely set its face against any extension of the racial and religious autonomies under which the integrity of the Empire had already severely suffered.

During 1905-1910 the Jewish national idea, for all practical purposes, was in a state of suspended animation. The recovery of the Holy Land appeared more distant than ever, while even the establishment of an independent or autonomous Jewish state elsewhere, for which the ITO was labouring, had encountered unexpected difficulties. On the rejection of the British offer by the Zionists Mr Zangwill approached the Colonial Office, but he was too late, as the reserve on the Nasin Gishiu plateau had already been officially withdrawn. The ITO then turned its attention to Cyrenaica, and an expedition to examine the country was sent out (1908), but it was not found suitable. A project for combining all the Jewish organizations in an effort to secure an adequate foothold in Mesopotamia in connexion with the scheme for the irrigation of that region was subsequently proposed by Mr Zangwill, but up to January 1911 it had not been found practicable. The ITO, however, did valuable work by organizing an Emigration Regulation Department for deflecting the stream of Jewish emigration from the overcrowded Jewry of New York to the Southern states of the American Union, where there is greater scope for employment under wholesome conditions. For this purpose a fund was formed, to which Mr Jacob Schiff contributed £100,000 and Messrs Rothschild £20,000.

Although the Zionist organization was numerically strong – indeed, the strongest popular movement Jewish history had ever known – its experience from 1897 to 1910 rendered it very doubtful whether its nationalist aspirations could, humanly speaking, ever be fulfilled. From Turkey, either absolutist or democratic, it appeared hopeless to expect any willing relaxation of the Ottoman hold on Palestine, while in the event of a dissolution of the Empire it was questionable whether Christendom – and especially the Roman and Greek Churches – would permit the Holy Land to pass to the Jews, even though the Holy Places were exterritorialized. Should these obstacles be overcome, still more formidable difficulties would await the Jewish state. The chief of these is the religious question. The state would have to be orthodox or secular. If it were orthodox it would desire to revive the whole Levitical polity, and in these circumstances it would either pass away through internal chaos or would so offend the modern political spirit that it would be soon extinguished from outside. If it were secular it would not be a Jewish state. The great bulk of its supporters would refuse to live in it, and it would ultimately be abandoned to an outlander population consisting of Hebrew Christians and Christian Millenarians.

Modern Zionism is vitiated by its erroneous premises. It is based on the idea that anti-Semitism is unconquerable, and thus the whole movement is artificial. Under the influence of religious toleration and the naturalization laws, nationalities are daily losing more of their racial character. The coming nationality will be essentially a matter of Education and economics, and this will not exclude the Jews as such. With the passing away of anti-Semitism, Jewish nationalism will disappear. If the Jewish people disappear with it, it will only be because either their religious mission in the world has been accomplished or they have proved themselves unworthy of it.

History of Zionism after 1910

The part played by anti-Semitism in the growth of the Zionist movement has often been exaggerated. Zionism is a natural, indeed an inevitable, outcome of the instinct of self-preservation, which is as strong in the Jewish people as in any other; and the conditions which threaten the continued existence of the Jewish people in modern times are not wholly referable to anti-Semitism in any of its phases. They are equally present in countries in which anti-Semitism does not exist, or, if it exists, does not seriously affect the civic, social or economic position of the Jews. In such countries – which include, broadly speaking, all the countries of the western hemisphere except those of the old Russian and Austrian Empires and Rumania – the rapid assimilation of the Jews to the prevailing modes of life and thought is accompanied by an attenuation of the tie which binds them to their people, with the result that emancipation is a more potent enemy of Jewish solidarity and of Judaism than persecution or the milder forms of anti-Semitism. It follows that from the point of view of the Jews, which of course postulates the desirability of the continued existence of the Jewish people and of Judaism, the substitution of conditions of emancipation for conditions of persecution solves one problem only by creating another. Naturally enough, this was not foreseen by Moses Mendelssohn and the other pioneers of Jewish emancipation in Europe. They took it for granted that the Jew, having emerged from the ghetto and divested himself of the external peculiarities which cut him off from European life, would still be able to maintain his religious separateness, and to carry out a specifically religious and moral mission in the modern world. But experience has shown them to have been wrong. Judaism reduced to a set of religious beliefs and practices, or to a moral code with some superstructure of ritual, has no abiding hold on the Jew. The possibility of the continued existence of the Jewish people and of Judaism stands or falls with recognition of the fact that to be a Jew means primarily to be a member of a particular ethnic group. On that basis it is possible to build attachment to Judaism as religion or as moral teaching; without that basis the Jew is powerless to withstand through successive generations the forces of an environment which is always drawing him away from his own tradition, in its religious, ethical and intellectual aspects even more than in its ceremonial aspect. Hence a reaffirmation of the national idea in Judaism is even more readily intelligible as a reaction against the results of emancipation than against persecution.

It is not surprising, therefore, that, when the case for Jewish nationalism was first presented by a Jew in a European language, it was based on the disintegrating effects of assimilation rather than on the sufferings of the unemancipated Jews. In his Rom und Jerusalem, published in 1862, Moses Hess delivered a trenchant attack on the theory of German “Reform” Judaism, showed that Judaism could not live except on the basis of the national idea, and foretold a spiritual and political rebirth of the Jewish people in Palestine. Fourteen years later Jewish Nationalism was advocated on similar lines by George Eliot in Daniel Deronda. For both writers the essential thing is that the Jewish people should have an opportunity of taking up the broken thread of its history, and of expressing its own spirit and characteristics in a form of life shaped by itself. Considerations based on anti-Semitism are secondary.

Even in Russia, for so long the home of the great masses of Jews and the very temple of governmental anti-Semitism, Zionism was not fundamentally a product of persecution or pogroms. Until well after the middle of the 19th century, the best minds of Russian Jewry saw its hope in emancipation, not in nationalism. They thought that if the Jews of Russia discarded their distinctive language and dress, modified their religious ceremonial so as to make it compatible with European life, and sent their children to Russian schools, they would be admitted to full participation in the life of their country, like the Jews of western Europe, and all would be well. A vigorous propaganda on behalf of Haskalah – “enlightenment” or “modernism” – had been carried on for some decades in the Hebrew language, which was used not because of its national associations, but because the apostles of Haskalah disdained to write in Yiddish, and no European language, was intelligible to those whom they wished to influence. Haskalah had made considerable headway against the obscurantism of those who opposed any and every change in Jewish life; and in the ‘seventies of the 19th century the liberal policy of Alexander II. seemed to promise success to its efforts to modernize Russian Jewry. But already, within the modernist movement itself, another current of thought had set in. Perez Smolenskin, one of its most gifted champions, who spent the best years of his life in Vienna, had had the opportunity of seeing at close quarters what emancipation meant for Judaism. He had seen that in practice the ideal of being “a Jew at home and a man outside” did not work. Hence he became the advocate of a Jewish nationalism based on the “triple cord” of the Land (Palestine), the Law (Torah) and the Language (Hebrew). When, in 1880, the emancipatory tendencies of Alexander II. gave place to a wave of pogroms and a policy of systematic oppression, the seed sown by Smolenskin bore fruit. While the great majority of the Russian Jews who fled from massacre naturally made for the economically developed countries of the West, where they could be readily absorbed, a few, inspired by the ideal of a national revival, found their way to Palestine, and in the face of incredible difficulties laid the foundations of Jewish agricultural colonization. Supported by the Chovevé Zion (Lovers of Zion) in Russia, and later more amply by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, of Paris, these pioneers succeeded in maintaining their footing in Palestine. They were followed by a small but steady stream of immigration, which included many vigorous and self-supporting elements. Innocent of any concern with international politics, these Palestinian settlers accepted the Turkish administration as they found it, and, thanks largely to its very indifference, were able to establish little settlements with complete internal autonomy, to live in their own way, to manage their own affairs, and, not least important, to create a system of Hebrew schools, by means of which the ancient language of the Jews was revived as the speech of the younger generation of Jews in Palestine. This new Palestinian Yishub (settlement), strengthened in the early years of the present century by a number of young men and women who went to Palestine with the ideal of working as labourers on its soil, became the basis of the political success which Zionism achieved during the World War. The historic connexion of the Jews with Palestine would not of itself have availed to secure recognition of Jewish national aspirations, had there not been this concrete evidence of the will and the ability of the Jews to rebuild Palestine and their own national life in Palestine.

Side by side with this practical colonization work, the development of Jewish nationalist theory went on in Hebrew literature. The implications of Smolenskin’s idea were worked out more thoroughly, and from a standpoint more in consonance with European thought, by Asher Ginzberg (Achad ha-Am), one of the early leaders of the Chovené Zion, who has made his own the conception of Palestine as destined to be in the immediate future the “spiritual centre” of the Jewish people – that is to say, the home of a corporate Jewish life expressing in all its aspects the true qualities of the Jew, and serving for that reason as a point of attachment and a source of spiritual influence for the Jews of all the world, who will find in their common association with the spiritual centre a new basis of unity and a new bulwark against absorption by assimilation. This conception, though by no means universally accepted as a complete statement of the philosophy of Zionism, has had a profound effect on Zionist thought for the last 30 years, and, though it designedly leaves on one side the political implications of Zionism, has contributed materially to the final shaping of the political claims of the movement.

The reaction against anti-Semitism has, however, played an important port in Zionist history. In 1882, after the terrible outbreak of pogroms in Russia, a Russian Jew, Dr. Leo Pinsker, published a striking pamphlet, in German, under the title of Auto-Emancipation, in which he argued that Judeophobia was an endemic malady among the peoples of the world, analogous to the fear of ghosts, and that the only solution of the “Jewish problem” was to be found in the establishment in some suitable territory (not necessarily Palestine) of an autonomous commonwealth of Jews. While Pinsker thus took anti-Semitism as his starting point, he yet showed a certain appreciation of the historical and psychological roots of Jewish nationalism; and when his own scheme of large scale emigration to a hypothetical Jewish territory met with no support, he was nationalist enough to throw himself into the Palestinian work of the Chovevé Zion, whose first President he became. The later and more famous brochure of Dr. Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat[1] (1896), elaborated independently a scheme similar to that of Pinsker, based entirely on the need of a refuge from anti-Semitism, and disregarding completely the inner springs of Jewish nationalism. Herzl’s argument implies throughout that all would be well if only Jews were allowed to assimilate peacefully to their surroundings; and to that extent he stood on the same ground as the assimilationist Jews of western Europe, who had for years been trying – without success – to alleviate the lot of the Jews of Russia and Rumania by bringing about diplomatic intervention with the Governments of those countries. He differed from them only in seeing the futility of their methods and the need for more radical steps. He did, however, assert the unity of the Jewish people (“we are a people, one people” ), and the emancipated Jews of western countries, fearful of anything that might seem to cast doubt on their absolute identification with the nations among which they lived, could not accept a scheme based on such promises. With few exceptions, the Jews of the west met Herzl’s appeal with indifference or hostility; it was the Chovevé Zion who rallied to his support with enthusiasm, less conscious of the difference between his philosophy and their own than of the value to their movement of his great personality, vision and influence. Thus there came about a fusion between the older Jewish nationalism, rooted in history and attached by its very nature to Palestine, and the newer so-called nationalism which demanded an autonomous territory in Palestine or elsewhere for those Jews who could not or would not assimilate to their European surroundings. The fusion was not effected without tears. At the first Zionist Congress (Basle, 1897) there was a struggle over the crucial question of the mention of Palestine in the programme of the movement. For Herzl’s scheme of rapid mass-settlement scarcely any country could have been worse adapted than Palestine, with its restricted area, its neglected soil and its importance in international politics; but the nationalist instinct of the Russian Jews won the day, and the Zionist organization tied itself down to the aim of “establishing for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.” [2] The trouble did not end there. For the Chovevé Zion the gradual building up of a Hebrew life in Palestine – Yishub Erez-Israel – was the fundamental nationalist activity. Herzl, on the other hand, deprecated any “infiltration” into Palestine so long as the conditions necessary for full autonomy were not secured. He desired the acquisition by the Jewish people still outside Palestine of a formal charter making Palestine its preserve; immigration on a large scale would follow. The failure of his efforts to secure a charter, and his premature death in 1904, ultimately gave the victory here also to the tendency represented by the Chovevé Zion. Thus Zionism emerged from the seven years of Herzl’s brilliant leadership with its pre-Herzlian philosophy and policy substantially unchanged, but with very considerable gains in organization, in prestige, and in the number and diffusion of its adherents. The movement had become world-wide; it had been recognized by the British Government (in the abortive offer of a territory in E. Africa, 1903) as representing the Jewish people; and it had become a powerful leaven in Jewish life, stimulating interest in Palestine and the revival of the Hebrew language in every Jewish community throughout the world. The Zionist organization, though it could not of itself bring about any serious political change in Palestine, was in a position to secure that, if and when the political future of Palestine became a practical question, the claims of Jewish nationalism should not go unheard.

Meanwhile it had to be content with the up-hill work of Palestinian colonization and the Education of the Jewish people in the national idea. The number of Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine grew from about 25 in 1904 to about 45 in 1914. The Hebrew school system developed rapidly, and the project of a Hebrew university in Jerusalem was definitely launched in 1913. The membership of the organization and the capital of the Jewish National Fund grew from year to year, and unorganized sympathy with the Zionist outlook and aims became more and more widely diffused.

The entry of Turkey into the World War called for a renewal of political activity on the part of the Zionist organization, as it obviously meant that the future of Palestine would before long come up for settlement. At the same time, the position of the organization was extraordinarily difficult. With adherents in all countries, both belligerent and neutral, it could not present a united front in international political questions, and the leaders of its various groups could not even take counsel together. The last biennial Zionist Congress had met in 1913; a Congress in 1915 was obviously impossible. Emergency arrangements were made to secure the existence of the organization, but for practical purposes it had to remain in suspense throughout the unexpectedly long period of hostilities. Meanwhile, the need for obtaining express recognition of Zionist claims became more pressing as a result of the British advance into Palestine in 1917. Relations with the principal Allied Governments had already been established, mainly by Dr. Ch. Weizmann and Mr. N. Sokolow, two of the Zionist leaders. As the outcome of protracted negotiations, in which Sir (then Mr.) Herbert Samuel played an important part, the British Government issued on Nov. 2 1917 the “Balfour Declaration,” stating that they “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,” and adding provisos to safeguard the rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine and the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews elsewhere. The Allied troops entered Jerusalem soon afterwards (Dec. 9 1917), and in March of the following year the Balfour Declaration had its first practical outcome in the departure for Palestine of a Zionist Commission, which was to “act as an advisory body to the British authorities in all matters relating to Jews or which may affect the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people,” and was charged with certain specific tasks in relation to the Jewish population of Palestine. The Commission remained in Palestine as the representative of the Zionist organization, and there directed such Zionist work as was possible during a period of unsettlement and restricted communications. In July 1918 it laid the foundations of the future Hebrew University on Mount Scopus.

The Turks were finally expelled from Palestine in Sept. 1918, and the Zionist policy of the British Government, which had in the meantime been endorsed by all the Allied Powers and by the President of the United States, had its logical outcome in the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of Sevres and the acceptance by Great Britain of a Mandate for Palestine on behalf of the League of Nations (San Remo, April 1920). The draft Mandate as printed in a Parliamentary White Paper (Cmd. 1176), recites in its preamble the substance of the Balfour Declaration, whereby “recognition has been given to the historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”and provides inter alia that the Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home and the development of self-governing institutions (Art. 2); shall recognize an appropriate Jewish agency (provisionally the Zionist organization,) as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the administration of Palestine in matters affecting the establishment of the Jewish national home (Art. 4); shall appoint a special Commission to study and regulate all questions and claims relating to the different religious communities (Art. 14); shall see that complete freedom of conscience is assured to all (Art. 15); and shall recognize Hebrew along with English and Arabic as an official language (Art. 22).

The frontiers of Palestine were defined in a separate convention between Great Britain and France dated Dec. 23 1920, and published in a White Paper (Cmd. 1195). In 1916, before either Government had come into close contact with Zionism, an Agreement (known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement) was made, dividing Palestine into a British and a French sphere of influence. This agreement needed revision in the light of subsequent developments, with due regard to both Arab and Zionist interests as well as to those of the two Powers concerned. The Convention of 1920 defines the frontiers of Palestine in such a way as to comply with the requirements of the historic phrase “from Dan to Beersheba,” and to include in Palestine all the modern Jewish agricultural settlements, but not to give Palestine control of the sources of water power which are held to be necessary for its full economic development. On the other hand, the Agreement provides that Palestine is to have the use of the waters of the Upper Jordan and the Yarmuk and their tributaries, after satisfaction of the territories under the French mandate.

The draft Mandate for Palestine was attacked from three sides. Certain Palestinian Arabs, professing to speak in the name of the whole Arab population, objected absolutely to its Zionist provisions. A school of Zionists more or less in the line of the original Herzlian tradition complained that the draft Mandate gave too little to the Jewish people, and that the term “National Home” was too vague, and demanded that explicit provision should be made for the development of Palestine into a “Jewish State” within a fixed period. Lastly, some British politicians and newspapers attacked the Mandate on the grounds that it would involve the British taxpayer in expense with no corresponding return, and that it was unjust to impose a Zionist policy on the Arabs of Palestine against their wishes.

Despite these criticisms, there was every sign up to the end of 1921 that the Government intended to proceed in full accord with the spirit and the letter of the Balfour Declaration. Mr. Winston Churchill, the Secretary of State for the colonies, during his visit to Palestine in April 1921, emphatically declared that the Zionist policy of the Government remained unchanged, while assuring the Arabs with equal emphasis that their rights would be fully respected. The First High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, had won the confidence of all sections of the population by his impartiality.

In 1922, the League of Nations adopted the declaration, and granted to Britain the Palestinian Mandate:

The Mandate will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home and the development of self-governing institutions, and also safeguard the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.

Weizmann’s role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the movement’s leader. He remained in that role until 1948 and then became the first President of Israel.

Jewish migration to Palestine and widespread Jewish land purchases from feudal landlords led to landlessness and fueled unrest – often led by the same landlords who sold the land.[citation needed] There were riots in 1920, 1921 and 1929, sometimes accompanied by massacres of Jews[49] The victims were usually from the non-Zionist Haredi Jewish communities in the Four Holy Cities. Britain supported Jewish immigration in principle, but in reaction to Arab violence imposed restrictions.

Growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization. The Jewish Agency for Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion increasingly dictated policy with support from American Zionists who provided funding and influence in Washington, D.C., including via the highly effective American Palestine Committee.
David Ben-Gurion proclaiming Israel’s independence beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl.

After World War II and the Holocaust, a massive wave of stateless Jews, mainly Holocaust survivors, began migrating to Palestine in small boats in defiance of British rules. The Holocaust united much of the rest of world Jewry behind the Zionist project.[50] The British either imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus (including many orphaned children) or sent them to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. This resulted in universal Jewish support for Zionism and the refusal of the U.S. Congress to grant economic aid to Britain. In addition, Zionist groups attacked the British in Palestine and, with its empire facing bankruptcy, Britain was forced to refer the issue to the newly created United Nations.

In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that western Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a UN-controlled territory, Corpus separatum, around Jerusalem. This partition plan was adopted on November 29, 1947 with UN GA Resolution 181, 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. The vote led to celebrations in the streets of Jewish cities. However, the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states rejected the UN decision, demanding a single state and removal of Jewish migrants, leading to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

On May 14, 1948, at the end of the British mandate, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, declared the creation of the State of Israel, and the same day the armies of seven Arab countries invaded Israel. The conflict led to an exodus of about 711,000 Arab Palestinians, known to Palestinians as Al Nakba (the “catastrophe”), and the exodus of 850,000 Jews from the Arab world, mostly to Israel. Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented Palestinians from returning to their homes, or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain Refugees . The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been widely, and controversially, described as having involved “ethnic cleansing”.

Since the creation of the State of Israel, the World Zionist Organization has functioned mainly as an organization dedicated to assisting and encouraging Jews to migrate to Israel. It has provided political support for Israel in other countries but plays little role in internal Israeli politics. The movement’s major success since 1948 was in providing logistical support for migrating Jews and, most importantly, in assisting Soviet Jews in their struggle with the authorities over the right to leave the USSR and to practice their religion in freedom.

Notes

1. The current translation “A Jewish State” is misleading. The prefix Juden has not the qualitative implications of “Jewish” ; the German Staat does not connote political independence so definitely as the English “State” ; and the emphasis in Judenstaat is on the first half of the compound, whereas in “Jewish State” it is inevitably on the second. “A Commonwealth of Jews” is a better rendering. This point is of some importance, because critics of Zionism have fastened on the term “Jewish State” as implying a desire to set up a State based on religious tests – than which nothing could be further from the idea of Herzl and of Zionists generally.

2.à-ffentlich-rechtlich gesicherte Heimstatte in the original German. The old translation “publicly and legally assured home” is scarcely adequate. In article (4) of the Programme as there set out, “grants” should be replaced by “consents” (Zustimmungen). Zionism has never expected or asked for a financial grant from any Government.

Further Reading

  • Moses Hess, Rom und Jerusalem, 1862 (English translation by Meyer Waxman, 1918);
  • Leo Pinsker, Auto-Emancipation, 1882 (English translation by D. S. Blondheim, 1918);
  • Theodor Herzl, Zionistische Schriften (English translation of Der Judenstaat and of his Congress Addresses published by the Federation of American Zionists, 1917);
  • Achad ha-Am, Selected Essays, translated by Leon Simon (1912);
  • Richard Gottheil, Zionism (1914);
  • Adolf Friedemann, Das Leben Theodor Herds (1914);
  • Kurt Nawratzki, Die Jüdische Colonisation Palastinas (1914);
  • Zionism and the Jewish Future, edited by H. Sacher (2nd ed. 1917: with bibliography);
  • A. M. Hyamson, Palestine: The Rebirth of an Ancient People (1917);
  • H. Sidebotham, England and Palestine (1918); Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism, 1600-1918 (2 vols. 1919: with bibliography);
  • Norman Bentwich, Palestine of the Jews (1919); Shmarya Levin, Out of Bondage (1919);
  • Leon Simon, Studies in Jewish Nationalism (1920); Zionism (Foreign Office Handbook, No. 162, 1920).
  • There is also a voluminous periodical and pamphlet literature. Zionism and the Future of Palestine by Morris Jastrow, Jr. (1919) puts the “assimilationist” case against Zionism. (L. Si.)
  • Armborst-Weihs, Kerstin: The Formation of the Jewish National Movement Through Transnational Exchange: Zionism in Europe up to the First World War, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011,
  • Beller, Steven. Herzl (2004)
  • Brenner, Michael, and Shelley Frisch. Zionism: A Brief History (2003) excerpt and text search
  • Cohen, Naomi. The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948 (2003). 304 pp.
  • Friedman, Isaiah. “Theodor Herzl: Political Activity and Achievements,”Israel Studies 2004 9(3): 46-79,
  • David Hazony, Yoram Hazony, and Michael B. Oren, eds., “New Essays on Zionism,”Shalem Press, 2007.
  • Kloke, Martin: The Development of Zionism Until the Founding of the State of Israel, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2010,
  • Laqueuer, Walter. A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel (2003) survey by a leading scholar excerpt and text search
  • Medoff, Rafael. “Recent Trends in the Historiography of American Zionism,”American Jewish History 86 (March 1998), 117-134.
  • Motyl, Alexander J. (2001). Encyclopedia of Nationalism, Volume II. Academic Press.
  • Pawel, Ernst. The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl (1992)
  • Sachar, Howard M. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (2007)
  • Shimoni, Gideon. The Zionist Ideology (1995)
  • Taub, Gadi. The Settlers and the Struggle over the Meaning of Zionism (2010, Hebrew, English)
  • Taylor, A.R., 1971, ‘Vision and intent in Zionist Thought’, in ‘The transformation of Palestine’, ed. by I. Abu-Lughod, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, USA
  • Urofsky, Melvin I. American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (1995),
  • Wigoder, Geoffrey, ed. New Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel (2nd ed. 2 vol. 1994); 1521pp

More Literature about Zionism

A Zionist bibliography has been published by the Federation of American Zionists. Besides the works already cited in the body of this article, see on the early nationalist movement Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, under the heads of the various pseudo-Messiahs and their adherents. Jewish agricultural colonies will be found discussed very fully in The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. i. pp. 240-262. For early Zionist projects see Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, No. 8, pp. 75-118; Laurence Oliphant, Land of Gilead; Mrs Oliphant, Life of Laurence Oliphant, pp. 168 et seq. The Zionist movement since 1895 is fully recorded in its official organ, Die Welt (Vienna). For proceedings of the Congresses see the Official Protocols published for each year by the society “Erez Israel” of Vienna; also Herzl, Der Baseler Congress (Vienna, 1897). On the movement generally, see Herzl’s Zionistische Schriften, edited by Dr Leon Kellner; Ten Years of Zionism (Cologne, 1007); Nordau, Zionism, its History and its Aims (London, 1905); J. de Haas, Zionism, Jewish Needs and Jewish Ideals; also articles by I. Zangwill in Cosmopolis (October 1897), Contemporary Review (October 1899) and Fortnightly Review (April 1910); Dr Gaster in Asiatic Quarterly Review (October 1897); H. Bentwitch in Nineteenth Century (October 1897), and Fortnightly Review (December 1898); Reich in Nineteenth Century (August 1897); Lucien Wolf in Jewish Quarterly Review (October 1904; “The Zionist Peril” ). On the ITO see pamphlets and leaflets published by the Jewish Territorial Organization; also the Report of the Commission on Cyrenaica (London, 1909)

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Education, League of Nations, Refugees, country.


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