The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict

by Mitchell G. Bard, Ph. D.

  What Is Zionism?

  Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) is recognized as the founder of Zionism as a political movement, but the idea of national Jewish liberation and a return to Palestine predates his birth by 2,000 years. International support would eventually make the return to the Promised Land possible, but before that support could be garnered, the Jews had to develop a coherent ideology that could express the centrality of “the return” to the Jewish people and explain the legitimacy of their claim to Palestine. The ideology that evolved was Zionism.

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  Hieroglyphics

  The word Zionism was coined by an Austrian journalist, Nathan Birnbaum, in 1886 and is derived from the word Zion, the original name of the Jebusite stronghold in Jerusalem. Zion became a symbol for Jerusalem during the reign of King David. The goal of Zionism is the political and spiritual renewal of the Jewish people in its ancestral homeland. A Zionist is someone who supports this objective.

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  The first expression of Zionist ideology was probably formulated by a German Jew named Moses Hess (1812–1875). He believed that the “liberal, bourgeois, nationalist revolution had exhausted its historical function and brought mankind to a dead end.” Hess was convinced that anti-Semitism was an ineradicable part of the German psyche, and the only way for Jews to escape such persecution was to have an autonomous Jewish country in Palestine.

  The Zionist doctrine was refined in Leo Pinsker’s (1821–1891) book Auto-Emancipation, which he wrote during the wave of pogroms in Russia in the 1880s. (A pogrom is an organized attack on a minority group in which people are murdered and their property destroyed.) Pinsker had been a proponent of assimilation most of his life—until the pogroms shocked him into a belief that anti-Semitism is incurable. He concluded, like Hess, that the only solution was for the Jews to find a land of their own.

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  Tut Tut!

  The United Nations voted to equate Zionism with racism in a 1975 vote, and anti-Semites have consistently tried to maintain this claim. In fact, anyone can be a Zionist, regardless of race, religion, or nationality. The UN resolution was repealed in 1991.

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  The Russian pogroms were sponsored by the head of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, and they had an immediate impact on the evolution of Zionism. They led to the formulation of “practical Zionism.” The practical Zionists hoped to escape the pogroms by settling in Palestine and rebuilding the Jewish homeland. Two student organizations were formed in the early 1880s to facilitate immigration and settlement in Palestine.

  Jewish Pioneers

  The first of these organizations, started by Leo Pinsker and M. L. Lilienblum, was called Hovevei Zion, “Lovers of Zion.” In 1882, 7,000 of its members left for Palestine and established several of the earliest agricultural settlements there. In that same year, the BILU (an acronym based on a verse from Isaiah [2:5], “House of Jacob, come let us go”) organization was founded and pursued a similar immigration, policy. The settlers from these groups were part of the first aliyah, or immigration, to Palestine, which lasted from 1880 until 1900. (Aliyah literally means “to go up” a person who emigrates from Israel is said to be a yeridah, which means “to go down.”) During this aliyah, approximately 20,000 Jews settled in Palestine.

  Although for the next half-century the Arabs would claim that the Jews were forcing them out of their land because, they argued, there was not enough room for both peoples, the truth was quite the contrary. In fact, for many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and widely neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts, and malarial marshes. Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, described it as “…[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

  As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported that the area was continuing its historic decline. “The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last 40 years,” he said.

  L’Affaire Dreyfus

  The Zionist movement received its biggest boost at the end of the nineteenth century when a 33-year-old Viennese journalist named Theodor Herzl went to Paris to cover a spy scandal. Herzl had been an advocate of Jewish assimilation into European culture until the events in Paris transformed him into the motivating force behind political Zionism. The Dreyfus Affair, as the spy scandal came to be known, began in 1893 when a Jewish officer in the French army named Alfred Dreyfus was accused of passing secret French military documents to the German embassy in Paris. A year later, Dreyfus was convicted of treason and condemned to life in prison.

  In 1896, the head of French military intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel George Picquart, discovered that another French officer, Major Marie Charles Esterhazy, was the real traitor. But Picquart’s evidence was suppressed, and he was dismissed. Esterhazy was brought before a court-martial when supporters of Dreyfus produced evidence implicating him, but he was acquitted.

  The Dreyfus case aroused the French public like no other of the time. The country soon became divided into groups of “Dreyfusards” and “anti-Dreyfusards.” The former demanded a new investigation, whereas the latter considered the Dreyfusards traitors. The Jews hoped to stay out of the conflict and gave no support to either side, despite the suspicion that Dreyfus had been singled out because he was Jewish.

  Herzl was deeply affected by the conflict. He found that the demonstrations of the anti-Dreyfusards were overtly anti-Semitic; they were concerned with “getting” the Jewish “traitor.” These feelings were clearly directed not only at Dreyfus, but also at the Jewish community as a whole. This experience left Herzl with two distinct impressions: first, if the Jews were subject to slander in a country as enlightened as France, they couldn’t be safe among Gentiles anywhere. Second, Herzl saw that the Jewish community’s attempt to dissociate itself from Dreyfus was ineffective in appeasing the strong anti-Semitic fervor of the public.

  A French appeals court eventually ordered that Dreyfus receive a new trial. He was found guilty a second time, though his sentence was reduced from life to 10 years. Less than two weeks later, the new liberal French premier and president pardoned Dreyfus, and he was released. Dreyfus was later awarded the Legion of Honor medal and returned to the army, where he fought with distinction in World War I. Picquart was also reinstated and promoted. Esterhazy, who had fled to England, eventually confessed to being a German spy.

  Even though Dreyfus was eventually exonerated, Herzl, like Pinsker before him (and Max Nordau and Vladimir Jabotinsky later; see Chapter 7), came to the conclusion that anti-Semitism could not be eradicated. Moreover, his experience in France had demonstrated that Jews could not escape anti-Semitism through assimilation. Herzl then reached the logical conclusion that the only place Jews could be safe from persecution would be in their own sovereign nation. He spelled out his prescription for this nation in his book Judenstaat, “The Jewish State.”

  Herzl’s Dream

  Herzl’s “political Zionism” sought international recognition for the Jewish claim to Palestine, which he saw as the most logical location for the Jewish home. But Herzl opposed settlement in Palestine until that recognition could be obtained. This policy brought him into conflict with the practical Zionists, who believed that after the Jews were firmly entrenched on the land, they would have a better chance to win acceptance of their claims.

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  Sage Sayings

  In Basel I founded the Jewish state Maybe in 5 years, certainly in 50, everyone will realize it.

  —Theodor Herzl

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  Herzl founded the World Zionist Organization to serve as the representative of the Jewish people, with the aim of acquiring political recognition for a Jewish state in Palestine. The First Zion
ist Congress was convened in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, where the goal of Zionism was declared to be “the establishment of a home for the Jewish people secured under public law in Palestine.”

  Herzl’s diplomatic efforts to secure a Jewish home in Palestine were unsuccessful. The demands for Jewish immigration became more pressing, and Herzl recognized that something had to be done to find a home for the many Jews wishing to immigrate. Because his Zionism was primarily a reaction to anti-Semitism, it was logical for Herzl to conclude that any land that offered an escape from persecution would serve Zionism’s aims. As a result, Herzl initially considered establishing the Jewish home in Argentina, and later negotiated with the British about the possibility of settling the Jews in Uganda.

  The Uganda Proposal

  In 1903, Herzl proposed to the Sixth Zionist Congress that settlement in Uganda be considered a temporary home until Palestine became available. But the proposal received a hostile reaction from the delegates. For all his concern and political acumen, Herzl had overlooked the historical basis for Zionism. Herzl’s attachment to Palestine was more intellectual than emotional; he believed Palestine was the logical place for the Jewish home, but other Zionists, who were guided more by their hearts than their heads, maintained that it was the only place.

  Herzl’s willingness to accept a Jewish home outside Palestine is often cited by critics who wish to demonstrate that the Jewish state could have been established elsewhere. These individuals fail to acknowledge that Herzl was only willing to accept a land outside Palestine as a temporary refuge to alleviate the suffering of his people.

  The Uganda proposal was rejected by the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, a year after Herzl’s death.

  Real Zionism Is

  Along with the political and practical Zionists, there was a distinctive group of “cultural Zionists” composed of people who had become disenchanted with contemporary society. Ahad Ha’am was the leader of this movement, which concerned itself more with the quality of the Jewish settlements than the quantity of them. Ha’am and his followers, like the early Arab nationalists, recognized the importance of language to the cultural revival. The use of Hebrew for modern secular purposes, which had been a result of the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment in nineteenth-century Russia, became the cornerstone of the cultural Zionist movement.

  There were also “labor Zionists” (Poale Zion), who advocated the establishment of a socialist state; and there were “religious Zionists” (Mizrachi), who foresaw a religious state governed on the basis of traditional Jewish law. In 1911, the growing influence of the cultural and practical Zionists led the religious Zionists to leave the World Zionist Organization.

  Other splinter groups emerged within the Zionist movement. Large numbers of Jews were opposed to Zionism. Many Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism because they believed that a return to Palestine would have to be divinely inspired and could only occur after the Messiah had come. Other anti-Zionists simply felt that a Jewish homeland would not solve the problems of the Jews. A more serious objection was that the Jewish home might stimulate an increase in anti-Semitism rather than provide an escape from it.

  Room Enough for Both?

  The second aliyah lasted from 1900 to 1914 and brought about 40,000 new Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Many of the newcomers belonged to the socialist Zionist organizations and became farmers and laborers who founded the agricultural communal settlements, the kibbutzim. This influx intensified the Arab opposition to Jewish settlement.

  The Arabs feared they would be displaced, but the leaders of the Zionist movement were too preoccupied with securing international recognition for Jewish claims in Palestine to respond to the Arab concerns. Some Jews were disturbed by their leaders’ blatant disregard for the indigenous population of Palestine. The Zionist perception of Palestine as a desolate, uninhabited region fostered their neglectful attitude, but it fails to explain how they could have overlooked the fact that a Jewish home in Palestine would be surrounded by Arabs with whom they would have to relate.

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  Sage Sayings

  The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts…no orange groves, orchards, or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne] The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert The villages in this area were few and thinly populated Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.

  —Account of the Maritime Plain in 1913, quoted by the Palestine Royal Commission

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  Some efforts were undertaken to negotiate an agreement with the Arabs, and a little progress was made; but World War I intervened, and events on the ground began to shift. Over the next several decades, Jewish leaders repeatedly sought an accommodation with their neighbors, but, to this day, only Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel.

  A Letter Fulfills a Dream

  After Herzl’s death, the political leader of the Zionist movement was a Russian-born Englishman, Chaim Weizmann. He had earned the gratitude of the British government with his discovery of a method of synthesizing acetone, an essential chemical used in the munitions industry and therefore invaluable to the war effort.

  Weizmann lobbied the British to support the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. On November 2, 1917, in a letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, the British notified the Zionists that the proposals they had submitted to the cabinet were acceptable:

  His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object: It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

  In addition to rewarding Weizmann, the British government desperately needed to bring the United States into the war. The British were under the impression that American Jews had a great deal of influence on U.S. foreign policy, so the British government thought that by granting concessions to the Jews, they might induce them to use their influence to pressure the American government to enter the war.

  The British overestimated the influence of the Jews, and it is unlikely that Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild, which became known as the Balfour Declaration, had much impact on the U.S. decision to enter the war. Moreover, the British government had begun to consider the possibility of establishing a Jewish home in Palestine long before there was a need to induce the United States to enter the war.

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  Hieroglyphics

  The Balfour Declaration was a statement issued by the British government in 1917 recognizing the Jewish people’s right to a national home in the land of Israel. It was named for Lord Balfour, who signed it on Britain’s behalf.

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  Members of the British cabinet were sympathetic to the idea of the Jewish people returning to their homeland, but the recognition of the historic claims of the Jews was probably far less important in the decision-making process than Great Britain’s desire to advance its own political interests. Even though the Jews recognized that the Balfour Declaration had been made with Great Britain’s imperial interests in mind, it didn’t minimize the importance of the recognition that the Jews were entitled to the same rights to self-determination as any other nation.

  The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson and other Allied leaders. The Arab response was hostile, but the British pacified them by making pledges to them (discussed later in this chapter)—promises, it turned out, they had no intention of keeping.

  If You Build It, They Will Come

  The importance of the various Zionist factions and their influence on the modern state of Israel can be seen from their accomplishments. As a result of the efforts of the practical Zionists, Jewish immigrants increased the Jewish population from 5
5,000 to almost half a million between the two world wars. They more than tripled the community’s land holdings, and their agricultural output grew from an insignificant half a million pounds to 10 million pounds annually by the end of the 1930s.

  Meanwhile, the political Zionists negotiated the Balfour Declaration and eventually secured the creation of the Jewish state through the United Nations. To complement these secular efforts, the cultural Zionists were building an educational system and institutionalizing the use of Hebrew as the national language. (Arabic is also an official language in Israel.)

  The Arab Ambition

  The Arab world underwent a cultural evolution more than a political revolution. The Muslim conquest of the Middle East between the seventh and fifteenth centuries led to the Islamization and Arabization of the region; that is, millions of people became Muslims and adopted Arabic as their language.

  One reason nationalism did not take a stronger hold in the Arab world earlier is that nationalism—allegiance to a political entity—is largely a secular, Western concept. Islam does not allow any distinction between religion and politics. Thus, the reforms in the Arab world were usually based on differences in the interpretation of Islam, which in turn influenced the political system.

  Moreover, throughout history, Muslims had paid little attention to where they lived or who ruled over them. They were not loyal to rulers, but to the umma, the broader community of Islam. This began to change after the French Revolution, when the concept that a government represented the people rather than simply lorded over them became more popular.