The problem with history, of course, is that it is written by humans and we know what they are like. I became an amateur student of the history of Israel, and therefore Zionism, in 1963 as I prepared to live in Israel and to do my postdoctoral training at the Weizmann Institute with the late Aharon Katzir-Katchalsky and Ora Kedem.
I recently ran across this inmteresting account of the events during the WWI era:The Dark Forces Behind the Balfour Declaration — And Its Lasting Legacy Read on below for a synopsis and my comments.
I always knew the central role of this declaration in the eventual founding of the state of Israel. The politics behind it are very interesting:
Why does the Balfour Declaration, written in 1917 during the darkest days of World War I, tug at our elbow, insisting we pay attention to it? Indeed even today, “Operation Protective Edge” in Gaza harkens back to Balfour. Political analyst Avishai Margalit said, “You can unspool this vendetta back to the Balfour Declaration.”
That should get anyone's attention. Let us examine this further. We know the central role the British played in all this. We also know the central role the British played in colonialism and then their tactic for neocolonial domination. They always made sure the colony they left had warring factions so that neocolonial rule would not require their presence on the land.
But Israel is special, in a sense. It should come as no surprise that
the genesis of the declaration had little to do with Zionism and everything to do with World War I, British interests in the war, power politics — and anti-Semitism. Indeed, the declaration derived from classic European anti-Judaism and from the gentile English version of anti-Semitism.
The story begins not in Palestine but in Ottoman Turkey, in 1908, with the beginnings of the revolution of the Committee of Union and Progress — the “Young Turks” — which ultimately established hegemony over the Ottoman Sultanate.
The leaders of the Young Turks uprising were viewed with sympathy by the British Foreign Office, in London, but with disdain by the British Embassy in Constantinople, where it counted. As historian David Fromkin tells it, the British ambassador, Sir Gerald Lowther, fell completely under the influence of his “First Dragoman”: his adviser on Middle Eastern affairs, Gerald FitzMaurice, who detested the Young Turks. To FitzMaurice, the fact that the Young Turk revolution began in 1908 in Salonika, Greece (then under Ottoman rule), was significant: More than half of Salonika’s inhabitants were Jews of one flavor or another. This, plus the fact that Salonika had a Freemason lodge founded by a Jew, was enough for FitzMaurice, who himself was entirely taken with the notion of an “international Jewish conspiracy”: The C.U.P. was part of an international Jewish Freemason conspiracy — “the Jew Committee of Union and Progress” — and FitzMaurice convinced his boss, Lowther (who was rather a fool to begin with), of this canard.
And as always, the plot sickens:
Lowther and FitzMaurice cobbled together a report to the Foreign Office, alleging that the Jews (“adept at manipulating occult forces”) had taken control over the Ottoman Empire.
The FitzMaurice and Lowther report won wide acceptance among British officials in London and led to a profound misconception about Middle East power and politics: that a group of Jews wielded political power in the Ottoman Empire — indeed everywhere in the world — at that time. This misconception was common enough; it found particular sinister expression in the Czarist forgery “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” But in this case, the obvious conclusion was drawn: The Great War, in which Britain was by then heavily engaged, could be won by buying the support of this powerful group. But bought with which coin? Zionism, of course, with British Zionists making the case for the notion of a British-allied postwar Jewish Palestine.
If you are reading that the roots of Zionism were deep into anti-Semitism and find the notion confusing or contradictory this may help you understand. Lots of conspiracy theorists have played with these ideas so beware. We know that in 1948, when the British evacuated from the Palestine that became Israel, that they left all their forts to the Arabs and expected the Jews to be wiped out. Their anti-Semitism never died. We live with this warped legacy today.
The British government never learned that Lowther and FitzMaurice had supplied it with a warped view of Ottoman politics, one in which the Ottoman government was pictured as a tool of world Jewry. In fact, this backdrop served as a perfect setting for the Balfour Declaration.
This national icon derived from dark forces indeed.
As I said above, history is written by humans so we need to be careful. On the other hand, truth is often stranger than fiction. You be the judge.