Herzl Defends Zionism

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“Herzl Defends Zionism” is an article that was originally published in 1897. The subject of the article was the proposal to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Theodor Herzl , an Austro-Hungarian Jewish writer, journalist, and activist, was one of the founders of the modern Zionist movement.

He established the World Zionist Organization and wrote a book called The Jews’ State or the Jewish State to encourage Jewish emigration to Palestine. In 1897 Herzl helped to organize an international Zionist conference in Basel, Switzerland, dedicated to organizing the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

William Ewart Gladstone , the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, was one of the first non-Jewish people to express an opinion of the Zionist movement. In reply to Herzl’s questions, Gladstone wrote that he could support the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

At the time, Palestine was under Ottoman Turkish rule. The assumption of Herzl, Gladstone, and others, seems to have been that a Jewish state in Palestine would be under Turkish suzerainty.

While Gladstone was amicable to the idea of a Jewish homeland, many European Jews were not. Herzl’s Zionist proposal was condemned by many prominent Jews in England. Many rabbis opposed Zionism, declaring that Jewish scriptures stated that Jews could only return to a homeland in the Levant after the prophesied arrival of the messiah.

Despite the opposition, a small stream of Jewish immigrants moved to Palestine. Persecution of Jews in Europe, the 19th and early 20th century pogroms in the Tsarist Russian Empire, encouraged emigration to Palestine. The rise of Nazism is Germany and Europe sent a larger wave of Jewish refugees to Palestine.

Tensions between Arabs and Jews rose in Palestine as the number of Jewish immigrants rose in the 1930s and 1940s. When Britain, which had taken control of Palestine after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks, withdrew from Palestine, the Jews declared the state of Israel. Fighting soon broke out between the Jewish Israelis on one side, and Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab states, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, on the other.