Publication of the Conjoint Committee’s statement in The Times created a firestorm. Lord Walter Rothschild picked up his copy that morning, read the offending piece, and dashed off a response. He sent it to Weizmann: “If you approve24 please go and see the Editor personally and hand it to him. I fear it is not in very good style and not as clean as I could wish.” Weizmann did better than that. Not only did he polish Rothschild’s letter, which The Times published on Monday, May 28, but in his own more formidable prose he took on the committee as well: “It may possibly be inconvenient to certain individual Jews that the Jews constitute a nationality. Whether the Jews do constitute a nationality is, however, not a matter to be decided by the convenience of this or that individual. It is strictly a question of fact.” The chief rabbi sent in a letter too: “I cannot allow your readers to remain under the misconception that the said statement represents in the least the views held either by Anglo-Jewry as a whole or by the Jewries of the Oversea Dominions.”
To Wolf, Alexander, and Montefiore, The Times had seemed a natural outlet for expression of the views of the Cousinhood. It was the newspaper of record for England’s governing class, of which they formed at least a tangential section. They may even have hoped that The Times would endorse their position, but if so they miscalculated. The same Wickham Steed who a few weeks later would warn Weizmann of Henry Morgenthau’s pending journey to Gibraltar wrote The Times leader for May 29. He endorsed the Zionist movement: “It had fired with a new ideal millions of poverty-stricken Jews … It has tended to make Jews proud of their race.” And he condemned the Conjoint Committee’s statement in Weizmann’s own words: “It may possibly be inconvenient to certain individual Jews that the Jews do constitute a nationality. The question is one of fact, not argument.”
Other newspapers took a similar line. “Does not the Jew already stamp himself as a stranger and an alien?” asked The Glasgow Herald. “Whether it be his religion or his inextinguishable pride of race or his hopes and dreams in the fulfillment of prophecy is he not now ‘a stranger and a sojourner’ in our midst? The barrier is there and whether he has once more a land of his own … or whether he remains as he is … it does not seem to us that his status would undergo visible alteration in the near future.” Even The Nation, an organ of the nonsocialist Left in which Lucien Wolf usually found comfort, failed to comfort him this time. Editors of The Nation did not actually endorse the Zionist position but nor did they completely endorse assimilation. Rather they cherished “the hope that for25 the sake of the very numerous body of Jews who are not and do not want to be assimilated and absorbed, an international regime may be possible in Palestine which would secure a cultural focus for Hebrew Nationalism.”
Within the Anglo-Jewish community itself, debate stoked by the Zionists raged fiercely. Samuel Cohen of Manchester, a provincial vice-president of the English Zionist Federation, proudly claimed to be a chief stoker. “It was26 … thanks to the interest I have taken and the energy I have displayed that the Board [of Deputies] … were bombarded with letters of protest from the Synagogues and Societies all over England,” he boasted to Weizmann. The journal Palestine, turning things upside down as only the clever Harry Sacher could, accused Wolf and his partners of being pro-German in thought if not in deed:
The ordinary non-Jew27 knows that the Jew whether he admits or denies the existence of a Jewish nation is nevertheless distinguishable and distinct from the non-Jew … He does not however deduce from that the conclusion that the Jew is unfitted to be a citizen … and when Messrs. Montefiore and Alexander express the fear that he might they are betraying what must be called a Prussian conception of the State. The Prussian idea … is that all citizens must be as nearly as possible alike in their outlook upon the world … This … as we are all beginning to see is the root cause of the war.
Leopold Greenberg, furious that Wolf had ignored his plea to keep the quarrel with Zionism within the family, as it were, wrote more ferociously still. “All that the Committee28 have achieved is to exhibit the Jewish people in its worst aspect—in a state of strife and disunion—and to injure, pro tanto, the Jewish prestige. It is a sorry result but one for which they should be quickly brought to account.” Even Israel Zangwill, who was making his way back toward the Zionist position, condemned the committee’s “manifesto” in a private letter to Wolf. Its publication had been “a grave error29 … Palestine at your price is not worth having, and is certainly nothing to be thankful for.”
On June 2, at a meeting of the council of the Anglo-Jewish Association, one of the two pillars upon which the Conjoint Committee rested, Moses Gaster mounted a Zionist attack: He moved a vote of no confidence in the AJA leaders. Gaster no longer held the chief position among Zionists—Weizmann had that now; but he delivered a stem-winder of a speech, demonstrating the histrionic skills that once had brought him to the fore. The association “had declared the Zionists30 to be faithless to their past. How dared they take their name and glory away? They were a nation … The statement which had been published would be quoted over and over again as if they intended to justify oppression … It was an irreparable blunder that such a manifesto should have been given to the world.” But, the advocates of assimilation gave as good as they got. Montefiore mocked Gaster: “The most curious thing about the Zionists was that directly the least thing was said in criticism of their acts they set up the most fearful howl and complained bitterly, as though they were a privileged body.” Sir Philip Magnus, MP, insisted that advocates of assimilation did not oppose establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine, only establishment of Jewish rule. Gaster and his friends should accept “the formula put forward by the Conjoint Committee and … endeavor to establish in Jerusalem a great center of Jewish learning and culture.” The haham saw which way the wind was blowing. He withdrew his motion.
Two weeks later, however, on June 15, at the most heavily attended assembly in its history to date, the second pillar of the Conjoint Committee, the Board of Deputies, collapsed entirely. The board had before it the following motion of censure:
That this Board having considered the views of the Conjoint Committee as promulgated in the communication published in The Times of the 24th May, 1917, expresses profound disapproval of such views and dissatisfaction at the publication thereof, and declares that the Conjoint Committee has lost the confidence of the Board and calls upon its representatives on the Conjoint Committee to resign their appointment forthwith.
One by one the censurers spoke. The statement had been “issued at an inopportune31 time,” said one. “It was disingenuous in origin, defamatory in effect, and altogether unrepresentative.” Was there so much trouble “in the community that The Times should be the mouthpiece of Anglo-Jewry while the Anglo-Jewish press had been ignored?” wondered another. A third charged that publishing in The Times had been “a case of super chutzpa.” A fourth: “If any man of honor, whether pro-Zionist or anti-Zionist, voted against a resolution of censure he did not deserve to be a member of the Board representing Anglo-Jewry.” Although most speakers focused upon the impropriety of the Conjoint Committee airing Jewish linen in public, Lord Rothschild attacked a main plank of the assimilationists’ position: “I have always thought that such a Home [a Jewish Palestine under British protection] was only meant for those people who could not or did not desire to consider themselves citizens of the country in which they lived, and I can truly say that the National Zionists have done nothing, and would never do anything, inconsistent with the status of the true British citizen of which I am proud to be one, just as proud as I am of being a Jew.”
The supporters of the Conjoint Committee, including Alexander, Magnus, and Wolf himself, ably defended their conduct and outlook, but the vote at the end went against them, 56-51. Wolf would claim that this tally showed how nearly even were the two sides. The scholar who32 has studied the event most closely points out that the vote reflected provincial jealousy of London leaders and resentment at their high-handed ways more than
support of the Zionist position per se. What mattered at the time, however, was perception, and here nuance did not apply. The officers of the board understood themselves to have been defeated and surrendered their posts. Lord Rothschild understood them to have been defeated too. “I write to tell you33 that we beat them by 56–51 and Mr. Alexander … and the rest have all resigned,” he reported to Weizmann. “I have written to Mr. Balfour asking for an interview for yourself and me for Tuesday or Wednesday and I shall be able to prove to him that the majority of Jews are in favor of Zionism.” Other leading Zionists too perceived the episode as a defeat for the advocates of assimilation. Sacher crowed, “It is a great victory.”34
With support from the Board of Deputies withdrawn, there could be no Conjoint Committee. This the Foreign Office recognized at once. “This vote35 signifies the dissolution of the Conjoint Committee,” noted Sir Ronald Graham, “and it will no longer be necessary to consult that body.”
The smashup had taken place at last. Jewish anti-Zionists had been deprived of their most powerful instrument. Weizmann could have been excused for thinking that the last Jewish obstacle to the great goal finally had been removed.
But he would have been wrong. The Conjoint Committee was dead, but Weizmann’s own colleagues remained disputatious as ever. He would have to make them realize, once and for all, that they could not do without him. And even then, before he could finally grasp the nettle and pluck the rose, he would have to overcome, too, his own growing desire to escape from their ceaseless carping by simply throwing up his hands and walking away.
British Zionists argued over at least four major issues. One we have discussed already: the question of a separate peace with Turkey, which pitted Sacher and Simon in particular against Weizmann and most of his colleagues. Another we have also glimpsed: Despite Weizmann’s wishes, the British Palestine Committee in Manchester would not wear a bridle fashioned by the Foreign Office. This issue reemerged in early May 1917, just as Lucien Wolf was nerving himself for his ill-fated showdown with Zionism. The BPC organ Palestine printed two articles condemning international control of the promised land even though its editors knew that the Foreign Office and, therefore the London Zionists, wished them to keep quiet on the subject. When he saw the articles, Weizmann hit the roof. He threatened to withhold a £500 subsidy for the journal. He accused one BPC member, Israel Sieff, of practicing mere “hobby Zionism.”
Sieff, deeply wounded, climbed down immediately: “I intend to send36 in my resignation to the B.P.C.,” he wrote to his leader. “It almost breaks my heart … [but] I dare not imperil the cause … I am desolated that it should have meant an addition to your burden of anxieties and worries.” Harry Sacher would not back down, however. “I don’t mind37 the charge of ‘indiscipline.’ It’s the kind of charge that leaves my withers unwrung.” For him the issue encapsulated the essential contradiction between his approach and Weizmann’s. The latter was “determined to tie Zionism up with the F.O. and to take anything the F.O. is graciously pleased to grant.” Weizmann had become more British than Jewish, Sacher charged. He, however, would remain independent.
The third issue dividing Weizmann’s Zionists was the proposal to create a Jewish regiment to fight in Palestine. This scheme found its fiercest proponent in a young Jewish Russian journalist who had made his way to Britain shortly after the outbreak of war, Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky. For him, the idea grew naturally from his prewar activities organizing Jewish defense leagues in Russia. At first Weizmann professed neutrality on the subject. But he grew close to Jabotinsky. After a meeting with Lloyd George in April 1917, he realized the government favored creation of a Jewish regiment too. Shortly after the meeting Weizmann came out in support.
Some British Jews saw a myriad of difficulties here. If a distinctly Jewish regiment appeared in Syria to fight the Turks, it might lead to reprisals carried out by Ottoman troops against Jewish civilians. Moreover, who in Britain would join? Most Jewish Britons of military age already served in their country’s armed forces. The prospect of combing them out and placing them in separate Jewish battalions offended the advocates of Jewish assimilation—and even many Zionists. Some twenty thousand Russian Jewish immigrants of military age, hitherto exempt from conscription, lived in the East End of London. Perhaps they could be induced to join the regiment. In fact, such men would not join any section of any army that fought on the same side as the tsar. Even after the Russian Revolution overthrew the tsar’s anti-Semitic regime, these immigrants remained unenthusiastic about the war. Should they be compelled to enlist in the regiment on pain of deportation? The government thought so, but many Jews, including many Zionists (Weizmann among them), could not stomach forcing such a choice upon them.
Men like Sacher in Manchester and Simon in London opposed the scheme for yet another reason. They thought that in advocating a Jewish regiment, Weizmann once again was sacrificing Jewish needs to British needs. Simon wrote to Nahum Sokolow: “We Zionists38 are the heirs and the keepers of the great Jewish tradition, and we are false to our trust, and show ourselves incapable of realizing its true worth if we allow ourselves to get into a frame of mind in which the rightness of our cause can be imagined to depend in any way on the success or failure of a petty military scheme—and a scheme which is in no sense our own.” Sacher and Simon thought Weizmann had been seduced by the “jingo” Jabotinsky. “Chaim Weizmann has caught39 from Jabotinsky the disease of Cadetism, that’s the long and the short of it,” Sacher wrote. When Weizmann would not disavow the regiment, Simon resigned from the Zionist Political Committee in protest.
He rejoined it, however, when Weizmann asked him to. The Zionist leader could turn upon his difficult colleagues the same charm and persuasive powers that he employed when dealing with the great and the grand. Nevertheless his leadership style often left much to be desired. He could be dictatorial. He could sweetly take the pulse of his associates and then ignore it. Here is the fourth issue bedeviling British Zionists at this critical stage in their history: the personality of Chaim Weizmann himself.
Weizmann was like a great juggler, keeping half a dozen balls in the air at once. During 1917 he courted the Foreign Office and Sykes and Balfour and Lloyd George. He courted Lord Rothschild. He confronted and vanquished Lucien Wolf and the Conjoint Committee. He kept tabs on Sokolow’s mission to France and Italy. He traveled to Gibraltar to defeat Henry Morgenthau. He was dealing simultaneously with other matters that we have not even looked at: For example, what should be his group’s relations with the representatives of international Zionism, with American and Russian Zionists, with Zionists in Palestine? He was carrying on work of national importance in the laboratory. No man engaged at such a pitch would have responded well to an unending stream of criticism from his closest friends and associates.
On August 16, 1917, the same Samuel Cohen of Manchester who claimed to have stirred up the synagogues against the Conjoint Committee wrote to Weizmann: “You act on your40 own without acquainting or consulting any of your colleagues … it is time that this state of affairs should change and be improved.” That day the EZF executive council, of which Weizmann was president, convened its regular monthly meeting. A London delegate41 made a motion censuring the president for lack of leadership on the question of the Jewish regiment: Most Jews opposed it; Weizmann would not. Something snapped, and he resigned the presidency on the spot. To Israel Sieff that night, he declared that British Zionism was bankrupt. The next day he wrote to Sokolow that he was quitting not only the EZF but also the Zionist Political Committee, which had been formed by his friends largely to ease his burden of work and to provide him with a sounding board.
Faced with the possibility of Zionism sans Chaim Weizmann, his colleagues almost unanimously beseeched him to reconsider. Even Leon Simon, one of the chief critics, did so: “I think it no less42 my right than my duty to ask you as a friend not to give up the struggle.” Thus reassured, Weizmann appeared to relent; he continued to attend meetings. But the
air had not yet sufficiently cleared. At a meeting of the Zionist Political Committee held on September 4, the question of the Jewish Regiment was aired yet again. Yet again Weizmann’s attitude came in for criticism. Yet again Weizmann declared that he could no longer tolerate such distrust. He wrote that night to Sokolow, “The atmosphere43 surrounding me is full of suspicion, envy, and [a] certain fanaticism, in the presence of which any fruitful work is impossible to me.”
Once more the confidence-restoring letters poured in, begging him to reconsider. Perhaps he would have done so in any event, or perhaps he intended merely to impress upon his colleagues his own indispensability. He wrote afterward to C. P. Scott that his threats to resign “had the effect44 of sobering them down,” as if that had been his intention all along. Or possibly an extraordinary letter from Ahad Ha’am proved decisive. This remarkable figure had remained in the background, but the letter he wrote to Weizmann on September 5, 1917, demonstrates that his voice and influence, whenever he chose to exercise them, must have been powerful, perhaps even decisive.
The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Page 41
