Major motivations for some Jews to choose Zionism included their failure to gain civic equality with their non-Jewish neighbors, and increasing outbreaks of rampant anti-Semitism. This account of the miserable economic situation of Jews in eastern Europe was another impetus for Jews to change their economic, political, and social condition through immigration.
The Sharif of Mecca and Sir Henry McMahon, a British official in Cairo speaking for the Foreign Office, exchange letters about the current war effort against the Turks and the future political status of specific Arab lands in the Ottoman Empire. McMahon says, as he repeats in 1937, that the area of Palestine is excluded from any area to be provided to an Arab leader after World War I. The British instead allow the area of Palestine to develop as a “national home for the Jewish people.”
Britain and France secretly divide the Arab provinces of the reeling Ottoman Empire to meet their own geopolitical interests. They offer no concern for the political aspirations of indigenous populations.
Chaim Weizmann advocates for Great Britain to be Palestine’s post-WWI administrator, seeking inclusion of specific territories for its boundaries, six months before Britain issues the Balfour Declaration.
The British Foreign Ministry promises to work toward a Jewish national home in Palestine with no harm to non-Jewish populations or to Jews living elsewhere who might want to support a Jewish home.
A Zionist delegation to the Paris Peace Conference makes an effective, largely successful case for the League of Nations to incorporate a future Jewish national home into the British Mandate for Palestine.
Herbert Samuel, soon to serve as Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine and the only Jew to hold the role, notes reasons for Arab political infighting, the origins of Arab dislike of Zionism, how land sales to Jews generate Arab jealousies, Jewish educational focus and the potential of the region of Palestine to support 4 million people.
The post-WWI San Remo Conference allocates former Ottoman territories to Britain and France and recognizes Jewish self-determination in Palestine by adopting the language of the Balfour Declaration, decisions the League of Nations confirms two years later.
For more than a century, Arab and Muslim leaders have expressed hatred for Jews, Zionism and Israel, although some have pointed internally for the failures of the Palestinian Arab national movement.
With intentioned ambiguity, Britain asserts that its goal in Palestine is not to make it wholly Jewish or subordinate the Arab population. Self-determination is not promised. Britain wants to remain an umpire between the communities. Naively, it thinks it can control communal expectations and keep the peace.
International legitimacy is granted to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Rules for its establishment clearly give Jews in Palestine distinct advantages over the local Arab population.
Using published archives, press conferences, speeches and numerous interviews, this compilation of quotations traces how official American views on Zionism and Israel have evolved over a century.
Palestine’s High Commissioner Chancellor seeks to halt the Jewish National Home in favor of the Arabs. He fails to overcome the Zionist drive and Arab unwillingness to cooperate with his intentions.
Correctly observing that the vast majority of Palestinian Arab peasants were trapped in debt with interest rates between 30% and 70%, this British civil servant suggested establishing agricultural cooperatives. But neither Arab leaders nor British bureaucrats wanted to provide the funding. For the duration of the Mandate, the Palestinian peasant remained hard-working, sullen and impoverished.
Five Arab political parties sent a memorandum of protest to the British asking for a halt to Jewish immigration, a stoppage in Arab land sales to Jews,and a measure of self-determination. The British did not change their policies in these three areas. In 1939, they did severely limit Jewish land purchases and severely curtailed Jewish immigration.
After outbreak of communal violence, the British investigatory committee suggests partition of Palestine, seeking to create two states for two peoples.
Speculation again abounds whether a two state solution might be a seriously considered outcome to Palestinian-Israeli differences. A long history of its mention but not its implementation persists. Advocacy by external voices persists, but no one seems ready to make the critical political trade-offs required.
Pressure from Arab leaders in states surrounding Palestine, growing instability in the eastern Mediterranean, and a firm opposition voiced by the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Miles Lampson, caused the British to withdraw the idea of resolving the Arab-Zionist conflict with a two-state solution. Instead, heavy restrictions were imposed in 1939 on the growth of the Jewish National home. Coincidently this policy statement is issued, two days after Nazi Germany attacks Jewish, homes, businesses and synagogues, in what came to be known as Kristallnacht.
A British investigation in 1939, before the release of that year’s anti-Jewish White Paper, finds that the area of Palestine was not promised to the Sharif of Mecca during World War I as part of a caliphate.
Zionist leaders—David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann and Eliezer Kaplan—learning of the British intent to limit severely the Jewish national home’s growth. Increasingly, they are also aware of the German government’s hostilities towards European Jewry.
Over four decades, Winston Churchill’s views on Zionism and Jews varied greatly. Without knowing his long held personal beliefs or the policies he adopted while the Jewish state developed, and only reading this speech, one would not know that he was a political opportunist and certainly not a “Gentile Zionist.”
Moshe Dayan, celebrated fighter for Zionism and the state, provides detailed and gripping glimpses of how he and his cohorts fought for Zionism in Syria in the early 1940s.
In New York, urging American (Jewish) support, Ben-Gurion proclaims the eventual establishment of a Jewish state.
From the end of World War I until the June 1967 war, American Jewish attitudes toward Zionism moved from lukewarm embrace to full-throated support. The debate of American rabbis in the 1940s exemplified by this letter reflects attitudinal differences. The Holocaust, Israeli statehood and Israel’s stunning military success in June 1967 established Israel as a valued element in American Jewish identities.
