Zionist Dream Research Articles

Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Jeffrey Herf

<i>Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949</i> by Jeffrey Herf

The Nakba and the Zionist Dream of an Ethnonational State

The Nakba and the Zionist Dream of an Ethnonational State

The Rebbe and the Poet on Yom Kippur 1973

Abstract: Avot Yeshurun's poem, "The Tsaddik of Modzitz," highlights the unusual bond between two polar opposite personalities from the 1970s Tel Aviv scene: the secular poet Avot Yeshurun, and the ultraorthodox Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu Taub, the Rebbe of Modzitz, who transcended his non-Zionist circles, gaining the admiration of Israelis of all walks of life. This relationship reaches a dramatic climax on a cataclysmic day in Israel's history, Yom Kippur 1973, when the surprising outbreak of a war shook Israelis' sense of invincibility and some of their Zionist creeds. At the heart of the poem is the Rebbe's luminous personality and demeanor during the services, and their impact on the poet. In his poetry, Yeshurun had revealed a conflicted personality, unable to reconcile between the vanished old world and the new reality, between the Zionist dream of his youth and the current Israeli geopolitical and ethical dilemmas. The Rebbe represents wholeness, finding in the ancient liturgy about the animals that were led to slaughter in the Temple an opportunity to subtly communicate his grief over the human sacrifices in Jewish recent past as well as at that very moment. The Rebbe's compassionate presence and his stirring niggunim eventually comfort the troubled poet. The Rebbe's words, with which Yeshurun closes his poem, reassure the poet of the validity of the State of Israel and appear to align with the paradigm of religious Zionism, viewing Israel as an essential moment in the Jewish journey toward redemption.

A Religious Zionist Dream: Rabbi Herzog’s Vision of Israeli Law

A Religious Zionist Dream: Rabbi Herzog’s Vision of Israeli Law

The U.S. State Department's Opposition to Zionist Aspirations during the Early Cold War

Abstract In the latter half of the 1940s, senior U.S. national security officials opposed Zionist aspirations for an independent state and sought to keep the Truman administration from actively facilitating that effort. Even though President Harry Truman himself expressed strong public backing for the new state of Israel, the reality, as recognized at the time by Israel's leaders and by prominent U.S. liberal political leaders and journalists, was that the United States was less firm, less consistent, and less consequential in supporting the establishment of the state of Israel than were the Soviet Union and the Communist states of Eastern Europe, especially Czechoslovakia and Poland. The situation that existed in 1947--1948, with significant U.S. government opposition and Soviet-bloc support for Israel, is evident from declassified files of the U.S. State Department and public records of the United Nations (UN).

When colonialism and nationalism meet - but speak a different language: the case of Haifa during the British Mandate

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the convergence of British colonialism and Zionist aspirations in Mandatory Palestine. As research so far explored this topic mainly as a confluence of colonial-national interests, this paper is an attempt to look at it from another vantage point, based on the different interpretations of European Modernism and Orientalism by these two groups. The new variable is the Zionist perception of nationalism, and its ties to European Modernism, which strengthened Zionist autonomy in a way that countered British interests to some extent and strengthened Zionist advantages in Palestine over Arab society. These processes were particularly prominent in mixed cities. Haifa was central to this concept as it was free of historical or symbolic baggage. The British developed Haifa as a strategic economic centre, and as a modern space. Promoting unilateral national interests was the very opposite of the British intention for the city. Yet, they allowed and even encouraged Zionist entrepreneurs to create an autonomous national community. We contend that the British had a certain blindness to the symbolic significance that the Zionists attached to the process of urban development, not only as a Modern-European development process but as a basis for national autonomy.

Die UdSSR und der Nahe Osten: Zionismus, ägyptischer Antikolonialismus und sowjetische Außenpolitik bis 1956. by Wiebke Bachmann, Munich: Oldenburg Verlag, 2011. 223 pp. €24.80.

On 10 April 1946, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin sent a note to Prime Minister Clement Attlee in which he gave his view of what the Soviet Union was up to: “The Russians have decided upon an aggressive policy based upon militant Communism and Russian chauvinism and seem determined to stick at nothing short of war, to obtain their objectives. At the present time Russia's aggressive policy is clearly directed to challenging this country everywhere” (The National Archives of the United Kingdom, FO 800/501/SU/46/15).One of those places was the Near East, especially Palestine, where since April 1922 Great Britain had ruled through a Mandate of the League of Nations. The Mandate obligated Britain to encourage the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people; that is, a Jewish state.In 1939, with war imminent, the British abandoned this policy, fearing that the Arab world might turn against them otherwise. Over the next five years Jewish immigration to Palestine was limited to 75,000; after that it depended on the permission of the Arabs. The Zionist dream of a Jewish state seemed to be over. The Zionist leader, David Ben-Gurion, called the British volte-face the worst betrayal the civilized world had ever seen.In the following years, the Zionists turned to the United States for help—which U.S. leaders agreed to provide. This willingness stemmed partly from domestic politics. In supporting the establishment of the state of Israel, U.S. politicians hoped to win the votes of Jewish Americans.Jewish lobbying in Washington was successful and well known. Not so well known is the Jewish lobbying that took place in Moscow, which was also very successful, as Wiebke Bachmann shows. Without Moscow's support, there would have been no Israel.What did the Soviet Union want in Palestine? The main objective, as Bevin had rightly discerned, was to weaken British influence in the Near East (p. 122). Soviet leaders hoped that the new Jewish state would lean toward socialism and become a partner of the Soviet Union. That is why the Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin let some 200,000 Jews move from Eastern Europe to Palestine in one of the most dramatic illegal operations against the British.In early 1947 Britain relinquished its role and handed back the Palestine Mandate to the United Nations (UN). In subsequent months, the Soviet Union surprised many by backing the Zionist cause in favor of the partition of Palestine. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly approved partition.Although U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized de facto the provisional government of Israel just eleven minutes after Israel's independence took effect at midnight local time on 14 May 1948, the Soviet Union was the first to recognize Israel de jure: on 17 May 1948. Moscow also provided the new state with infusions of weapons to fight the Arabs in the so-called war of independence.Drawing mostly on Soviet archival material, Bachmann shows how things changed later in the year after Israel demanded the release of Jews in the Soviet Union (p. 138). By mid-1950, after Israel took out a loan in the United States (p. 139) and supported the West in the Korean War, Israel had definitely become a lost cause for Stalin.After Stalin turned forcefully against Israel, Egypt steadily gained favor in the Soviet Union. In 1955, Egypt received large quantities of armaments from Moscow, the first Arab country to receive Soviet weapons. The book ends with the 1956 Soviet Communist Party Congress. So we learn nothing about the crucial months leading up to the Suez Crisis, to say nothing about Moscow's role before and during the Six-Day War in 1967.

What the Collapse of the Two-State Solution Means for Palestinian and Israeli Nationalism

What the Collapse of the Two-State Solution Means for Palestinian and Israeli Nationalism

The ingathering of (non-human) exiles: The creation of the Tel Aviv Zoological Garden animal collection, 1938–1948

This article examines the formation of the animal collection at the Tel Aviv zoological garden. Using Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, the article analyzes the images and practices of animal importation. It shows that in spite of the importance of Zionist enthusiasm in driving the establishment of the Tel Aviv zoo, and the attribution of Zionist vocabulary to animals living in it, its significance cannot be reduced to Zionist ideology and practice. The zoo’s animal collection was the product of the specific historical, colonial-imperial circumstances formed under the British Mandate. The gathering of the animals reflects the indispensable British contribution to the development of cultural endeavors in Palestine, and the coexistence of British and Zionist aspirations.

From Critic to Cheerleader: The Clarifying Example of Benny Morris' ‘Conversion’

Benny Morris attributes his ‘conversion’ to the political events of the year 2000. This article offers an explanation of his conversion that is internal to his work as a historian of the events of 1948. Through the 1990s Morris was faced with overwhelming evidence that made it difficult for him to continue to escape the fundamental insight that a Jewish state could not have been established in Palestine in 1948 without large-scale Palestinian displacement. Once he started taking this insight fully to heart he confronted a stark choice. Either he had to reject the worthiness of the Zionist dream, or he had to find a means of justifying the displacement it necessitated as a lesser evil than the evil of leaving the dream unrealised. His conversion is a coming to terms with this choice. Anyone who is interested in adopting a coherent position towards the establishment of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba is confronted with a similar choice. Morris's pre and post conversion attitudes clarify the two options available to anyone who is so committed to the Zionist dream that no amount of evidence about its disastrous consequences to Palestinians can dissuade him from its worthiness.

‘Two & three air raids daily. What a bother’: an American diplomat in Israel during the War of Independence

In the summer of 1948, Charles F. Knox, Jr., a career American Foreign Service officer with no prior experience in Middle Eastern affairs, was assigned by the State Department to serve as Counsellor to the initial United States Mission in Israel. White House officials who had overcome State Department opposition to the recognition of Israel in May regarded Knox with suspicion. However, in the course of his service in Israel Knox transcended a Foreign Service milieu that was traditionally hostile to Zionist aspirations as well as his own negative stereotypes about the character of American Jews. The letters Knox sent to family and friends at home, as well as his official dispatches to his superiors in Washington, provide a vivid record of daily life in wartime Tel Aviv as well as a notably sympathetic portrayal of the Israeli people at war.

The antisemitism of Henry Wickham Steed

ABSTRACT Henry Wickham Steed (1871–1956), then editor-in-chief of the London Times, adopted an ambiguous position with regard to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion when the tract first appeared in English in 1920. He neither endorsed nor rejected it but instead mused in the editorial pages of The Times about whether it might be authentic. The following year, when The Times correspondent in Istanbul brought out proof that The Protocols was a forgery, Steed accepted his correspondent's findings and publicly retracted his earlier ambivalent position. This incident reflects on Steed's (deserved) reputation as an antisemite but it also suggests something of the complexity of his position. Steed's denunciations of Jewish influence, discovered, by his own account, through his experience as a foreign correspondent in Vienna before the First World War, are recurrent in his writings. At the same time, Steed lent strong support to Zionist aspirations at the time of the Balfour Declaration and thereafter, and, in the 1930s, he was among the very first English critics of Hitler's antisemitism. In this article, I propose to offer some hypotheses regarding Steed's antisemitism. Strange as it may sound in the wake of the Second World War, it was Steed's visceral Germanophobia that lay at the heart of his antisemitism. Until the advent of the Third Reich, Steed identified Jews with Germans and with German interests. As an ardent exponent of the ‘principle of nationality’, however, Steed consistently extended his advocacy of statehood for various Eastern European nationalities to the Jewish national cause. A final factor that helps to explain Steed's suspiciousness and gullibility is that, by disposition and as a lifelong journalist, he was drawn to conspiracy theories. He created a number of sensations in his career and, to return to the example of The Protocols, he was loath to discount so spectacular a conspiracy story.

Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, Hillel Kook-Peter Bergson, and the Campaign for a Jewish Army

Viewed within the larger context of Zionist ideology and Zionist politics, the story of the campaign for a Jewish Army in World War II must begin with Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. As early as 1923, the founder of the Jewish Legion in World War I and of the first Hagana units in Jerusalem against Arab attack in 1920, respectfully analyzing adamant Arab opposition to Zionist aspirations, advocated the only solution to be a Jewish majority with a formidable army in an independent Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. The thesis of this pioneering essay, ‘‘The Iron Wall,’’ was reiterated in the right-wing political platform of Jabotinsky’s World Union of Zionist Revisionists two years later. 1 Jabotinsky was not, at the same time, prepared to embrace the maximalist trend in Revisionism, spearheaded in the early l930s by Abba Ahimeir, Yehoshua Yeivin, and poet Uri Zvi Greenberg. While Greenberg had already called in 1923 for ‘‘biryonim’’ (ruffians) who dreamt of ‘‘the Kingdom of Israel’’ and in 1928 for a Jewish armed force to conquer Palestine, and Yeivin blasted the World Zionist Organization (WZO) executive for relying on the British mandatory power, Ahimeir urged Jabotinsky to become Zionism’s authoritarian Duce a la Mussolini. Ahimeir also called on Revisionist Betar youth to become the fighting avant-garde for Jewry’s national liberation and, with Yeivin, even raised the possibility of political terror. Jabotinsky applauded Ahimeir’s personal example of imprisonment, but his own abiding faith in British parliamentarianism, in liberal values, and in open diplomacy precluded the revolt demanded by Ahimeir’s small Brit HaBiryonim circle; he refused to resign from the WZO. After the 1929 Arab riots, Jabotinsky pressed for a renewal of the Jewish Legion in Palestine, all the while preferring that a Jewish commonwealth become part of Britain’s dominions as advocated by Josiah Wedgwood, M.P. 2 Ahimeir’s influence extended to young Revisionists within the El-Al fraternity at the Hebrew University, who responded to his call

Rural ethos and urban development: the emergence of the first Hebrew town in modern Palestine

Since the late nineteenth century, the Zionist movement emphasized ruralism not only for the pastoral areas of Palestine, but also for its urban centres. This paper explores the emergence of Tel Aviv, the first Hebrew town, in the light of the Zionist rural/pastoral ideology and within the late nineteenth century discourse on city planning. It discusses early Tel Aviv’s rural images and the various means that were implemented by local and international planners, Zionist cultural agents, volunteer organizations and residents in order to materialize the green vision for the first Hebrew town. This paper argues that till the mid‐1930s, the development of Tel Aviv discarded the common modern dichotomy of nature/culture or pastoral/urban, proving that the development of the rural, agricultural landscape and the construction of the urban metropolis were complementary facets of the Zionist dream.

Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship (review)

Reviewed by: Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship Justin D. Lyons Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship, by Martin Gilbert. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007. 359 pp. $30.00. A great many books have been written about Winston Churchill, in part because the story of Churchill’s life intersects with many of the most important events of the twentieth century. Sir Martin Gilbert’s Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship is yet another illustration of Churchill’s pervasive influence on these events. The central part of this story is Churchill’s support for the Zionist movement, which led eventually to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Gilbert sets this fascinating and lesser known tale in the context of the world wars and, more importantly, within the political struggle of conflicting interests and opinions. Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph, had bucked the antisemitic sentiment widespread in the British upper classes by maintaining friendships with several [End Page 174] prominent Jews. Churchill continued in his father’s footsteps with personal and political contacts throughout his life. What is more, Churchill became the figure in British politics most central to Jewish concerns both inside and outside Britain. His first political involvement in Jewish concerns came in 1904 as Member of Parliament for Manchester North-West where a third of his constituency was Jewish. He fought successfully against the Conservative Government’s Aliens Bill aimed at restricting the immigration of Jews fleeing Tsarist Russia. Churchill’s defense of Jewish rights in Britain was an important element of his tenure as Home Secretary beginning in 1910. Beyond domestic politics, Churchill was a supporter of Jewish aspirations for a national home even before the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration, named for A. J. Balfour, Foreign Secretary in Lloyd George’s Government, pledged British support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. That support was given in the hope that both American and Russian Jewry would aid the British war effort: Russia would be encouraged to stay in the war, and the military participation of the United States would be accelerated. Churchill was grateful for Jewish efforts and was adamant that the Declaration, which he viewed as the solemnly pledged word of Britain to the Jews, “could not be set aside when, in later years, it became awkward to fulfill” (p. 28). He pursued the fulfillment of this promise in the face of many practical difficulties and much political opposition. Churchill’s post-war positions in the British Government made him a central figure in the realization of Zionist aspirations. As Secretary of State for War, he had responsibility for Palestine, which was still under British military administration, and had to deal with the difficulties involved in the disposition of the lands previously governed by the Ottoman Empire. In 1921, Churchill was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies and continued his administrative duties over the British Mandates of Palestine and Mesopotamia. During his tenure, the borders of Palestine and the Arab kingdoms were set, Jewish immigration keyed to the productive capacity of the land was ongoing, and practical steps to expand that capacity were encouraged. It was Churchill who authored the 1922 White Paper which, when approved by the League of Nations, internationally guaranteed the Jewish National Home in Palestine. Zionism had its opponents both in Britain and the Middle East. Arab opposition grew with the Jewish population of Palestine, breaking out in violent attacks targeting both Jews and the British. In 1939, Neville Chamberlain’s Government, in response to Arab pressure, issued a White Paper which limited Jewish immigration to Palestine. Its aim was to ensure a permanent Arab [End Page 175] majority there, effectively eliminating the possibility of an eventual Jewish state. Churchill spoke strongly “against what he believed was both a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration, and a shameful act of appeasement” (p. 158). The Second World War did not drive Zionism from Churchill’s mind; in fact, it magnified its importance. The need to recall British troops stationed in Palestine, the need to find a place for Jewish refugees from Europe, and moral outrage at the horrors...

WHO'S THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL? WOMEN, WOMANHOOD, AND ETHNICITY IN ZIONIST ERETZ ISRAEL

This article examines the ways Zionist aspirations towards women, womanhood, and ethnicity materialized in the pre-state era, focusing on the Queen Esther contest as an example. I maintain that selecting Yemenite women as queens enhanced the Zionist agenda and promoted its ideals while at the same time instilling and preserving the Yemenite ethnic identity. Furthermore, granting Yemenite women this symbolic pedestal—on which they were enshrined as biblical beauties—inspired the women, wittingly or unwittingly, to collaborate with the Zionist movement.

In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955

In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955

Who's the Fairest of Them All? Women, Womanhood, and Ethnicity in Zionist Eretz Israel

This article examines the ways Zionist aspirations towards women, womanhood, and ethnicity materialized in the pre-state era, focusing on the Queen Esther contest as an example. I maintain that selecting Yemenite women as "queens" enhanced the Zionist agenda and promoted its ideals while at the same time instilling and preserving the Yemenite ethnic identity. Furthermore, granting Yemenite women this symbolic pedestal—on which they were enshrined as biblical beauties—inspired the women, wittingly or unwittingly, to collaborate with the Zionist movement.

My Contributions to Science and Society

My Contributions to Science and Society

The Patria affair: Moderates vs. activists in Mapai in the 1940s

1This article examines the fierce controversy generated by the Patria affair, which was a crucial juncture in the history of the illegal immigration to Palestine. Jewish life in Palestine constituted the purpose of the Zionist dream and the precondition for its realization. The possibility of bringing Jews to Palestine was severely curtailed by the stringent restrictions on Jewish immigration in the White Paper published by the British government in May 1939 and the spread of World War II to the Mediterranean theater in 1940. Against this background, the political organizations of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) became divided on the question of what measures should be taken in view of Britain’s retreat from its promise to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. In this period, two major factions concerning the use of force had evolved in Mapai (the Israel Workers Party), which was the most dominant and influential party in the Yishuv. While the “activists” called for intensive combat against the British, the “moderates” advocated a policy of utmost restraint as a means of realizing the aims of the Zionist movement in its struggle for a homeland. In the 1940s the moderates became a distinct political stream within Mapai, which continually found itself clashing with the activist views of the senior party members. At the head of the Mapai activists were David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katznelson, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Aharon Zisling, Dov Hoz, Shaul Meirov (Avigur) and Yisrael Galili. The moderates were headed by Eliezer Kaplan, David Remez, Yosef Sprinzak, Pinhas Lubianiker (Lavon) and Yitzhak Lofban.