How did the Zionists get their land*?

A.H. Jaffor Ullah

Before initiating any serious discussion on the present-day plight of Palestinian people whose grandfather and father had lost land to Jewish people in 1948 or before that when the modern nation of Israel was established by Great Britain with assistance from America, which became the super power in the aftermath of World War II.  Many of us do not know how Israel was formed carving land from Palestine, an entity that was under Turkish Empire before World War I.

   What is really Zionism?  Who started this movement?  What was the idea of early Zionists in respect to an independent state for Jewish people?  For some thought on that, let us examine Zionism.  Since Zionism started one hundred years or so before my birth, I have to rely on scholarly works of many writers.  I am not going to cite any specific reference; rather my write up on it may be desultorily penned.

   In 2002, America's National Public Radio (NPR) had a series of reporting on Zionism because there were some anniversary date relating to Zionism or its founder, Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist and intellectual of Jewish origin.  I jotted down some historical dates of the important meeting of the Zionists and the outcome of those important meetings that would shape up the concept of an independent Jewish state somewhere in the world.  The very idea of establishing a Jewish land near Jerusalem came way late and after the death of Theodor Herzl.  We have to know these historical facts before we start arguing whether it was all right for the world Jewry of 1930s and 40s to cry for establishing Israel in the middle of Palestinian land.  Why did they not address the issue of displacement of a huge number of local Arabs by the establishment of Israel?   

   Now let me turn to the history of Jewish nationalist movement that had its goal to creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, which the Jewish folks claimed to be their ancient homeland.  The origin of the word Israel is Hebrew word “Eretz Yisra’el” or “the Land of Israel.”  We learn from history that Zionism had its beginning in latter part of the 19th century in eastern and central Europe such as Poland, Germany, etc.  However, the concept of assimilation of world Jewry into one land is a continuation of the ancient nationalist attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Zion (one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem), which was within Palestine, a land inhibited by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Arabs.

   Since one of the basic tenets of Jewish religion is the coming of a Messiah (the deliverer) into this world to unify them and taking them closer to God, in the 16th and 17th centuries a number of “messiahs’ came forward trying to persuade Jews to “return” to Palestine.  In contrast to this view, The Haskala (Enlightenment) Movement of the late 18th century, urged Jews to assimilate into Western secular culture. Thus, we see that there were two opposing forces acting upon world Jewry in that turbulent time.  Some scholars are of the view that in the early 19th century, mostly Christian millenarians kept alive the interest in a return of the Jews to Palestine.  Despite the Haskala, Eastern European Jews did not assimilate to join the European secularist movement but instead they joined the movement to promote the settlement of Jewish farmers and artisans in Palestine.  Many a historian of Europe had opined that the Eastern European Jews did this in reaction to Tsarist pogroms and they formed the “Hovevei Ziyyon” (Lovers of Zion) Movement.

   As I mentioned earlier, the Austrian newspaperman, Theodor Herzl, gave a political turn to Zionism in later part of the nineteenth century.  Herzl regarded assimilation as most desirable but in view of widespread anti-Semitism, impossible to realize.  Therefore, he argued, if Jews were forced by external pressure to form a nation, they could lead a normal existence only through concentration in one territory.  With this view in mind, Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland, in 1897.  In this convention, Herzl and fellow Zionists drew up the Basel program of the movement, stating, “Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.”

   The Zionists chose Vienna as the center of the political movement because Mr. Herzl published the official weekly Die Welt (The World) in this city and because he was the brain behind the establishment of Israel somewhere in this world but preferably around Jerusalem.  As per historical account, the Zionist congresses met yearly until 1901 and then every two years.  The Ottoman government refused Herzl’s request for Palestinian autonomy from their Sultanate.  The Zionists however found support in Great Britain.  In 1903, the British government offered 6,000 square miles (15,500 square km) of uninhabited Uganda for Jewish settlement, but the Zionists refused; they preferred Palestine over the land in Uganda.

   The Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl, died in 1904 and the leadership moved from Vienna to Cologne, then to Berlin.  Before World War I, Zionism represented only a handful of Jews, mostly from Russia but led by Austrians and Germans. It then began its propaganda via Zionist orators and well-written pamphlets, established its own newspapers, and gave a lift to what was called a “Jewish renaissance” in letters and arts.  Many modern historians and linguists think that the development of the Modern Hebrew language largely took place during this period.  Therefore, we see that a well-orchestrated propaganda bears fruit!

   The first wave of migration of Jewish people to Palestine took place after the failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905, which lead to a wave of pogroms.  The Russian Jewish people were alarmed by this nasty development of pogroms. Thus, the first pioneer Jewish to migrate to Palestine were Jewish youth folks from far-flung provinces of Imperial Russia.  About 90,000 Jews in Palestine; 13,000 settlers lived in 43 Jewish agricultural settlements by 1914; many of them supported by the French Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild (the famous banker).  This however did not catch the attention of Arab people.  The land of Palestine was under the Sultanate of Turkey, anyway.  It should have been the headache of the Türkic Sultanate; consequently, the local Arabs did not view this mass migration of Russian Jews with an alarming eye.

   The World War I broke out in 1914 after the first wave of Jewish migration to Palestine during 1905-1914.  With the war raging through Europe, the political Zionism reasserted itself, and its leadership passed to Russian Jews living at the time in England.  Two such Zionists were Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow.  They were credited for obtaining the infamous Balfour Declaration from Great Britain (Nov. 2, 1917) as the war was winding down.  The Balfour Declaration promised British support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine.  The declaration was included in Britain's League of Nations mandate over Palestine (1922).  Thus, it is very clear that without the political backing by the British political establishment, the Zionists could not have accomplished what they did a quarter century later.

   Let us then see what did happen in the aftermath of World War I.  Powered by Belfour Declaration the Zionists started building up the Jewish urban and rural settlements in Palestine, perfecting autonomous organizations and solidifying Jewish cultural life and Hebrew education.  By March of 1925, the Jewish population in Palestine was officially estimated at 108,000, and it had risen to about 238,000 (20 percent of the population) by 1933. 

   Jewish immigration to Palestine remained however slow in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  All that would change because of the rise of Hitlerism in Europe.  More Jewish people from Europe and Russia started to pour in Palestine.  This had caused some concern among the Arab population of Palestine who rightfully thought that unless the flow of Jewish people to Palestine is stopped the land would eventually become a Jewish state.  The local Arabs then bitterly resisted Zionism and the British policy supporting it.

   The first wave of some serious Arab revolts took place during 1936–39.  This had caused some concern among the British political establishment but they devised schemes to reconcile the Arab and Zionist demands.  In the meanwhile, Hitlerism and the large-scale extermination of European Jews had alarmed the secularist Jews; many of them started seeking refuge in Palestine knowing that many Jewish people are already there forming communities and many others migrated to the United States.  These immigrants started to embrace Zionism in droves.  As tensions grew among Arabs and Zionists in the 1940s, Britain submitted the Palestine problem first to Anglo-U.S. discussion for solution and later to the United Nations, which on Nov. 29, 1947, proposed partition of the country into separate Arab and Jewish states and the internationalization of Jerusalem.  Five months after this, the State of Israel was created on May 14, 1948, which brought about the first Arab–Israeli war of 1948–49.  As the luck would have it, Israel obtained more land than had been provided by the UN resolution because of this short-lived war.  This war drove out 800,000 Arabs who became displaced persons known as Palestinian refugees.  Many of them would settle in neighboring Jordan and other parts of the Middle East. 

   We, therefore, see that 50 years after the first Zionist congress and 30 years after the Balfour Declaration, Zionism achieved its goal of establishing an independent Jewish state in Palestine.  Nevertheless, the Israelis had to pay a price for this monumental achievement.  The state of Israel had become an armed camp surrounded by hostile Arab nations and Palestinian Liberation Organizations.  To help support Israel, during the next two decades (1950s and 1960s) Zionist organizations in many countries especially in America continued to raise financial support for Israel and to encourage Jews to immigrate to the new republic.  Many orthodox Jews in Israel held this weird view that the Jews outside Israel were living in “exile” and could live a full life only in the Promised Land, Israel.

   Briefly going over the pages of history, we see that Zionism was a concept developed by a handful of Jewish intellectuals in central Europe in mid nineteenth century.  Many world events such as the Russian Revolution, the two world wars had helped the Zionists to materialize their demand for a separate homeland for world Jewry.  The political establishment of Britain is the main culprit who fueled the fire of Zionist’s desire to move Jewish people into a disputed territory.  Worst of all, the British never thought of the consequence of this mass migration of outsiders to a tiny land and had no plan for the welfare of the indigenous Palestinian people.

   I would request the forum members to discuss the plight of present day Palestinian people.  It is good to know the history of deception by the British and the selfish behavior of the Zionists but at the same time we should realize that what was done cannot be undone.  We should not blame the grandchildren of the early Jewish settlers.  They have not created this mess in Palestine.  How these two distinct groups of people can live side-by-side harmoniously and peacefully should be the concern of us at this time.  

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 Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New Orleans, USA

*Several reference materials were used to piece together the historical account of the Zionist Movement.