Theodor Herzl And Zionism
One of the most important influences in the
movement that led to the creation of
the state of Israel was Jewish writer
and journalist Theodor Herzl. He was born
on May 2, 1860 in Budapest,
Hungary. Herzl studied law in Vienna, but later on
went into a literary
career. This proved a good decision, as he became a
well-known playwright and
essayist and in 1891, Hertzl was appointed Paris
correspondent for the Vienna
Neue Freie Presse (New Free Press). During the
Alfred Dreyfus affair in
1894, anti-Semitic feelings in France spread greatly.
This greatly
affected Hertzl because before that he believed that the best
solution of
anti-Semitism in Europe was the assimilation of the Jews with
the
Christian people. After the court-martial of Dreyfus, Hertzl was
certain that
the only way anti-Semitism could be solved was with the creation
of a Jewish
state. In 1896, Theodor Hertzl published a short book, Der
Judenstaat (The
Jewish State), which promoted the establishment of a
Jewish State. Although
Hertzl was not the first to suggest a Jewish
State, he was the first to call for
immediate action. Even though some
wealthy leaders, such as German emperor
William II and Sultan Abd
al-Hamid II of Turkey, were sympathetic towards the
idea of a Jewish
homeland, they were not willing to put up the money to back
such a project.
After the wealthy leaders rejected Hertzl, he called for a
Zionist
Congress in 1897, which met in Basel, Switzerland. Nearly two
hundred
delegates attended the congress. The congress founded a permanent
World Zionist
Organization that was to establish branches in every
country with a substantial
Jewish population. They also formulated the
Basel Program, which defined
Zionism’s goal as the creation "for the
Jewish people of a home in Palestine
secured by public law." Herzl now
directed his diplomacy towards Great
Britain. The British offered to help
start Jewish colonization in East Africa in
Uganda, but this nearly split
the Zionist movement in two because most Zionists
were in support of having a
Jewish homeland in Israel. This split greatly upset
Hertzl and he died a
broken man soon after in 1904. The seventh Zionist Congress
rejected the East
India Scheme. The Zionist movement worked very hard in the
20th century
to see a Jewish homeland come true. First, a British Zionist leader
received
a declaration from British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour that
approved
the establishment in Palestine of a "national home for the Jewish
people."
This provided the Zionists with the charter they had been seeking
from a
wealthy backer. Now all the Zionists had to do was get Jewish people to
move
to Israel. This was not done so easily. The new Soviet government sealed
off
the tradition source of Zionist migration, which was Russian Jewry. Also,
the
leader of American Zionism, Judge Louis Brandeis, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann,
the
man credited with obtaining the Balfour Declaration, got into an
argument
over the future of Zionism, which slowed the migration of Jews to
Israel
greatly. Despite these two critical setbacks, the Yishuv grew from
fifty
thousand to six hundred thousand people from nineteen twenty to
nineteen
forty-eight. Most of these new immigrants were refugees from Nazi
persecution in
Europe. The New Zionist party was formed in nineteen
thirty-five when a
revisionist group led by Ze-ev Vladimir Jabotinsky split
from the Zionist
movement. Jabotinsky promoted a Jewish state on both sides
of the Jordan River
and devoted his time to set up the mass evacuation of
European Jews to
Palestine. Relations between the Arabs of Palestine and
Jews immigrating there
during the nineteen twenties were not very good and
became an intractable
problem. The Palestinians did not like the Jews
overtaking their land so they
rebelled and fought the Jews. Although the
Palestinians fought against the Jews,
they were no match for the skill of the
Jewish Army, called the Hagana. On May
14, 1948, at midnight, the Jewish
state of Israel was born. Zionism had achieved
its goal of having a homeland
for the Jews in the Middle East. Although the Arab
nations have denounced
Zionism as a "tool of imperialism" and have fought
many wars with Israel on
the topic, they have been unsuccessful in breaking up
the heart of the Jewish
people, the state of Israel.