Prelude to Israel

An Analysis of Zionist Diplomacy, 1897-1947

Dr. Alan R. Taylor

• Publisher: Valmy Publishing
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787205307
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

First published in 1959, this book by eminent professor of Middle Eastern studies, Alan R. Taylor, traces the Zionist endeavors to establish a Jewish state in Palestine from the founding of the Zionist movement in 1897 to the creation of Israel, with special emphasis on the diplomatic methodology involved. It ?deals specifically with the Zionist formulation of particular goals, and the implementation of policies designed to achieve these goals.

CHAPTER I — THE CREATION OF ZIONIST AIMS AND POLICY

The Beginnings of Political Zionism

The idea of Zionism has existed for centuries as a facet of Jewish and Christian thought.{1} In the former, it has been the result of an association of Judaism with the ancient kingdom of the Hebrews in Palestine. In the latter, it has existed since the Cromwellian period, when it was supposed that the coming of the Millennium, or the thousand year reign of Christ on earth, would be accompanied by a restoration of the Jews to Palestine.

As a political movement, however, Zionism is a creation of the nineteenth century. The concern of the thinkers of the past one hundred and fifty years with sociology and religion, and the creation of model states led to the alleviation of the condition of the Jews in the Diaspora{2} and the development of the idea of the restoration. At first glance, it might seem that the improvement in the status of Jewry, climaxed by the recognition of its emancipation by Bismarck in 1871,{3} should have led to a solution of the Jewish Question in the Diaspora and an assimilation of Jews into the Gentile societies where they were born.

However, two barriers to this possibility began to emerge. Among the Jews themselves, there was a certain resistance to the evolution of a pattern which implied the loss of their identity as a people.{4} As Nahum Goldmann has phrased it, “The object of the Jewish State has been the preservation of the Jewish people, which was imperilled by emancipation and assimilation...” In Christendom, the gradual replacement of the religious fervor of the early part of the nineteenth century with racist nationalism in the latter decades led to resistance to the assimilation of Jewry.{5}

The incident which touched off the spark of Jewish separatism and Gentile anti-Semitism was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881. The Russian authorities made the Jews the scapegoat of the assassination and encouraged the precipitation of the infamous pogroms.{6} A mass exodus of Jews from Russia and the Pale of Settlement in Poland{7} followed on the heels of this outburst of anti-Semitism. Most of the refugees resettled in Western Europe and America, but some three thousand emigrated to Palestine.{8} In 1882, these émigrés founded a colony near Jaffa called Rishon-le-Zion,{9} and the same year witnessed the establishment in Russia of a movement known as Chibbath Zion (Love of Zion).{10} The followers of Chibbath Zion organized themselves into societies—Choveve Zion (Lovers of Zion){11}—and promoted the idea of a settlement in Palestine and the revival of the Hebrew language. The first seeds of political Zionism had taken root.

The Choveve Zion societies finally achieved official recognition in 1890 under the title of Society for Support of Jewish Agriculturalists and Artisans in Palestine and Syria.{12} This organization came under the leadership of Leon Pinsker, one of the founders of Chibbath Zion, and the first to forward the idea of a Jewish National Home, though not necessarily in Palestine.{13} Opposition to this nascent political Zionism was already apparent, however, both from within and without Jewish circles. Internally, a Jewish writer who employed the pen-name of Achad Ha’am came out in opposition to political Zionism, advocating instead a spiritual revival which has come to be known as cultural Zionism.{14}Externally, the Ottoman Porte issued regulations in 1888 which forbade mass Jewish immigrations into Ottoman territory and restricted the entry of most foreign Jews into Palestine to three month pilgrimages.{15} This tended to thwart any serious colonization of Palestine by European Jews and to frustrate any hopes of the creation of a Jewish state, which never found strong backing except when proposed in connection with Palestine. The birth of organized political Zionism was thus arrested and awaited the advent of a capable midwife.

Herzl and the First Zionist Congress

The man who was to bring political Zionism into the world was Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jew educated in Vienna. Though trained in law, Herzl’s talent in writing won him the position of Paris correspondent for the Vienna newspaper, Neue Freie Presse, in which position he was serving when the Dreyfus Affair of 1894 caught the attention of Europe. The implications of anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus case led Herzl to believe that the only answer to the Jewish Question was the creation of a Jewish state. He felt that if anti-Semitism could be aroused in liberal France, it was bound to appear with greater force in other countries. Therefore, in the summer of 1895 he composed a pamphlet entitled, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State),{16} which advocated the establishment of British-sponsored Jewish colonization of Argentina or Palestine with a view to the eventual creation of a sovereign Jewish National State.

The fact that Herzl even considered Argentina as a prospective location for a Jewish state seems incongruous in the light of Zionism’s later preoccupation with Palestine. However, it should be understood that Herzl’s concern was a solution to the problem of anti-Semitism, not the fulfillment of the prophesies of traditional Judaism.{17} Thus, political Zionism was, in its early stages, an essentially secular movement, and its basic character has always remained secular. The later allusion of the Zionists to the romantic idea of the “return” was injected into the movement largely because of its emotional appeal. But this does not alter the fact that political Zionism has always been a rational rather than an ideological movement. It has sought a specific solution to a specific problem, not the glorification of an ethno-religious ideal.

The publication of Der Judenstaat in 1896 provoked both favorable and antagonistic reactions in Gentile and Jewish circles alike, Herzl felt, however, that a sizable segment of Jewry was drawn to his idea, and he began pressing for the convention of a World Congress of Zionists, an idea originally suggested by the inventor of the term “Zionism,” Nathan Birnbaum.{18} With the support of those who shared his views, Herzl succeeded in convening the First Zionist Congress at Basle in August, 1897. This Congress was to the Zionist movement what the Constitutional Convention was to the nascent United States. In the opening address Herzl outlined the purpose of the meeting: “We are here to lay the foundation stone of the house which is to shelter the Jewish nation.”{19} The program he proposed included (1) the promotion of an organized, large scale Jewish colonization of Palestine, (2) the acquisition of an internationally recognized legal right to colonize Palestine, and (3) the formation of a permanent organization to unite all Jews in the cause of Zionism.{20}

This formula, though expressed in different terms and with varying specifications during the following sixty years, has remained the essential foundation of Zionist policy. The three problems that faced political Zionism before the State of Israel was established were the actual entry of sufficient numbers of J...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I - THE CREATION OF ZIONIST AIMS AND POLICY
• CHAPTER II - THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
• CHAPTER III - THE MANDATE
• CHAPTER IV - THE GROWTH OF POLITICAL ZIONISM
• CHAPTER V - ZIONIST STRATEGY IN THE 1930’s
• CHAPTER VI - THE REORIENTATION OF POLITICAL ZIONISM
• CHAPTER VII - WARTIME ZIONIST DIPLOMACY IN BRITAIN AND PALESTINE
• CHAPTER VIII - THE ZIONIST SEARCH FOR AMERICAN SUPPORT
• CHAPTER IX - THE MAKING OF MODERN ISRAEL
• EPILOGUE - THE REMAINING TASK FOR POLITICAL ZIONISM
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER