Chapter 7
The Birth of Zionism
How did the Jewish conscience evolve in
Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century? Towards 1910,
Vladimir Jabotinsky describes this evolution in his somewhat passionate
manner: at first, the mass of Jews opposed the Enlightenment, “the
fanatic prejudice of an overvalued specificity.” But time did its work,
and “as much Jews, historically, fled humanist culture, as much they
aspire to it now… and this thirst for knowledge is so widespread that it
perhaps makes us, Jews of Russia, the first nation in the world.”
However, “running towards the goal, we passed it. Our goal was to form a
Jew who, by staying Jewish, could live a life that would be that of the
universal man”, and “now we have totally forgotten that we must remain
Jewish”, “we stopped attaching a price to our Jewish essence, and it
began to weigh on us.” We must “extirpate this mentality from
self‐contempt and revive the mentality of self‐respect… We complain that
we are despised, but we are not far from despising ourselves.”1
This description reflects the general trend
towards assimilation, but not all aspects of the picture. As we have
already seen (chapter 4), in the late sixties of the nineteenth century,
the publicist and man of letters Smolenskin had spoken out vigorously
against the tendency to assimilate Jewish intellectuals, as he had
observed it in Odessa or as it had spread in Germany. And he at once
declared war on both “bigots and false devotees who want to drive out
all knowledge of the house of Israel.” No! One must not be ashamed of
their origins, one must cherish their national language and dignity;
however, national culture can only be preserved through language, the
ancient Hebrew. This is all the more important because “Judaism deprived
of territory” is a particular phenomenon, “a spiritual nation”.2
The Jews are indeed a nation, not a religious congregation. Smolenskin
advanced the doctrine of “progressive Jewish nationalism.”3
Throughout the 70s, Smolenskin’s voice
remained practically unheard of. At the end of this period, however, the
liberation of the Slavs from the Balkans contributed to the national
awakening of the Jews of Russia themselves. But the pogroms of 1881‒1882
caused the ideals of Haskala to collapse; “The conviction that
civilisation was going to put an end to the persecutions of another age
against the Jews and that these, thanks to the Enlightenment, would be
able to approach the European peoples, this conviction was considerably
shaken.”4
(The experience of the pogroms in the south of Ukraine is thus
extrapolated to all the Jews of Europe?) Among the Jews of Russia “there
appeared the type of the ‘repentant intellectual’, of those who aspired
to return to traditional Judaism.”5
It was then that Lev Pinsker, a well‐known
doctor and publicist, already sixty years of age, gave the Jews of
Russia and Germany a vigorous appeal to self‐emancipation.*
Pinsker wrote that faith in emancipation had collapsed, that it was now
necessary to stifle every ounce of hope in brotherhood among peoples.
Today, “the Jews do not constitute a living nation; they are strangers
everywhere; they endure oppression and contempt on the part of the
peoples who surround them.” The Jewish people is “the spectre of a dead
wandering among the living”. “One must be blind not to see that the Jews
are the ‘chosen people’ of universal hatred. The Jews cannot
“assimilate to any nation and consequently cannot be tolerated by any
nation.” “By wanting to mingle with other peoples, they have frivolously
sacrificed their own nationality,” but “nowhere have they obtained that
the others recognise them as native‐born inhabitants equal to them.”
The destiny of the Jewish people cannot depend on the benevolence of
other peoples. The practical conclusion thus lies in the creation of “a
people on its own territory”. What is needed, therefore, is to find an
appropriate territory, “no matter where, in what part of the world,”6 and that the Jews come to populate it.
Moreover, the creation in 1860 of the
Alliance [Israelite Universal] was nothing but the first sign of Jewish
refusal of a single option—assimilation.
There already existed among the Jews of Russia a movement of Palestinophilia,
the aspiration to return to Palestine. (Conforming, in essence, to
traditional religious salutation: “Next year in Jerusalem.”) This
movement gained momentum after 1881‒1882. “Stretching out its efforts to
colonise Palestine… so that within a century the Jews can finally leave
the inhospitable land of Europe”… The slogans that the Enlightenment
had previously broadcasted, inciting to fight “traditionalism, Hasidism
and religious prejudices, gave way to a call for reconciliation and the
union of all layers of Jewish society for the realisation of the ideals”
of Palestine, “for the return to the Judaism of our fathers.” “In many
cities of Russia, circles were formed, called circles of the ‘Lovers of
Zion’—Khovevei‐Tsion.7*
And it was thus that an idea joined another to rectify it. Going to settle elsewhere, yes, but not anywhere: in Palestine.
But what had happened in Palestine? “The
first crusade resulted in the virtual disappearance of the few Hebrews
who remained in Palestine.” Nevertheless, “a tiny Jewish religious
community had succeeded in surviving and the collapse of the Crusader
State, and the conquest of the country by the Mamelukes, and the
invasion by the Mongol hordes.” Over the following centuries, the Jewish
population was somewhat replenished by a modest migratory flow of
“believers from different countries”. At the end of the eighteenth
century a certain number of Hasidim emigrated from Russia. “In the
middle of the nineteenth century, there were twelve thousand Jews in
Palestine,” whereas at the end of the eleventh century there were
twenty‐five thousand. “These Jewish towns in the land of Israel
constituted what was called the Yishuv. All their inhabitants (men) were only studying Judaism, and nothing else. They lived on Haluka—subsidies
sent by Jewish communities in Europe. These funds were distributed by
the rabbis, hence the absolute authority of the rabbis. The leaders of
the Yishuv “rejected any attempt to create in the country even
an embryo of productive work of Jewish origin.” They were studying
exclusively the Talmud, nothing else, and on a fairly elementary level.
“The great Jewish historian G. Gretz, who visited Palestine in 1872,”
found that “only a minority studied for real, the others preferred to
stroll the streets, remained idle, engaged in gossip and slander.” He
believed that “this system favours obscurantism, poverty and
degeneration of the Jewish population of Palestine”—and for this he
himself “had to undergo Herem**.”8
In 1882, in Kharkov, Palestinophile students
founded the Biluim circle. They proposed to “create in Palestine a
model agricultural colony”, to set “the tone to the general colonisation
of Palestine by the Jews”; they undertook to found circles in several
cities of Russia. (Later they created a first settlement in Palestine,
but were confronted to the hostility and opposition of the traditional Yishuv: the rabbis demanded that, according to ancient custom, the cultivation of the earth be suspended one year out of seven.9)
Pinsker supported the advocates of the
return to Palestine: in 1887 he summoned the first Congress of
Palestinophiles in Katovice, then in Druskeniki, and the second in 1887.
Propagandists began to cover the Pale of Settlement, speaking in
synagogues and public meetings. (Deutsch testifies that after 1882 P.
Axelrod himself contributed to palestinophilia…10)
Of course, Smolenskin is one of the
passionate apostles of the return to Palestine: bubbling and lively, he
connects with Anglo‐Jewish political actors, but he comes up against the
opposition of the Alliance, who does not want to promote the
colonisation of Palestine, but rather to direct the migratory wave
towards America. He then describes the tactics of the Alliance as
“betrayal of the cause of the people.” His premature death cut his
efforts short.11
We note, however, that this movement towards
Palestine was rather weakly received by the Jews of Russia; it was even
thwarted. “The idea of a political revival of the Jewish people brought
a small handful of intellectuals behind it at the time, and it soon
came up against fierce adversaries.”12 The conservative circles, the rabbinate and the Tzadikim*
saw in this current towards Palestine an attack on the divine will, “an
attack on faith in the Messiah who alone must bring the Jews back to
Palestine. As for the progressive assimilationists, they saw in this
current a reactionary desire to isolate the Jews from the rest of
enlightened humanity.”13
The Jews of Europe did not support the movement either.
Meanwhile, on site, the success of the
return was revealed to be “too mitigated”: “many colonists discovered
their incompetence in the work of the land”; “the ideal of rebirth of
the ancient country was crumbling into petty acts of pure benevolence”;
“The colonies survived only because of the subsidies sent by Baron
Rothschild.” And in the early 1990s, “colonisation went through… a
serious crisis due to an anarchic system of land purchase” and a
decision by Turkey (the owner of Palestine) to ban the Jews of Russia
from disembarking in Palestinian ports.14
It was at this time that the publicist,
thinker and organiser Asher Ginzberg became known, under the eloquent
pseudonym of Ahad Haam (“One of His People”). He strongly criticised
practical palestinophilia as it had been constituted; what he advocated
was, “before striving for a renaissance on a territory”, to worry about
“a ‘rebirth of hearts’, an intellectual and moral improvement of the
people”: “to install at the centre of Jewish life, a living and
spiritual aspiration, a desire for national cohesion, revival and free
development in a national spirit, but on the basis of all men.”15 This will later be called “spiritual Zionism” (but not “religious”, and this is important).
That same year, 1889, in order to unite
among them those who were dear to the idea of a rebirth of national
feeling, Ahad Haam founded a league—or, as it is called—an order: Bne‐Moshe*
(“The sons of Moses”), whose status “resembled strongly those of the
Masonic lodges; the applicant made the solemn promise of strictly
executing all the demands of order; the new members were initiated by a
master, the “big brother”; the neophyte undertook to serve without
reserve the ideal of national rebirth, even if there was little hope
that this ideal would be realised any time soon.”16
It was stipulated in the manifesto of order that “national
consciousness takes precedence over religious consciousness, personal
interests are subject to national interests,” and it was recommended
that a feeling of unreserved love for Judaism, placed above all other
objectives of the movement. Thus was prepared “the ground for the
reception of political Zionism” of Herzl17… of which Ahad Haam absolutely did not want.
He made several trips to Palestine: in 1891,
1893, and 1900. Regarding colonisation, he denounced an anarchic
character and an insufficient rootedness in tradition.18 He “severely criticised the dictatorial conduct of Baron Rothschild’s emissaries.”19
This is how Zionism was born in Europe, a
decade behind Russia. The first leader of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, had
been, until the age of thirty‐six (he only lived to forty‐four), a
writer, a playwright, a journalist. He had never been interested in
Jewish history or, a fortiori, in the Hebrew language, and,
characteristically, as a good Austrian liberal, he considered the
aspirations of the various “ethnic minorities” of the Austro‐Hungarian
Empire to self‐determination and national existence to be reactionary, and found it normal to stifle them.20
As Stefan Zweig writes, Herzl cherished the dream of seeing the Jews of
Vienna enter the cathedral in order to be baptised and seeing the
Jewish question resolved once and for all by the fusion of Judaism and
Christianity. But anti‐Jewish sentiments developed in Austria‐Hungary in
parallel with the rise of Pan‐Germanism, while in Paris, where Herzl
resided at the time, the Dreyfus affair broke out. Herzl had the
opportunity to witness the “public degradation of Captain Dreyfus”;
convinced of his innocence, he was deeply shaken and changed his course.
“If separation is inevitable,” he said, “well, let it be radical! … If
we suffer from being without a country, let us build ourselves a
homeland!”21
Herzl then had a revelation: it was necessary to create a Jewish state!
“As if struck by lightning, Herzl was enlightened by this new idea:
anti‐Semitism is not a fortuitous phenomenon subject to particular
conditions, it is a permanent evil, it is the eternal companion of the
eternal errant,” and “‘the only possible solution to the Jewish
question’, is a sovereign Jewish state.”22
(To conceive such a project after nearly two thousand years of
diaspora, what imaginative power one needed, what exceptional audacity!)
However, according to S. Zweig, Herzl’s pamphlet entitled A Jewish State received from the Viennese bourgeoisie
a welcome “perplexed and irritated… What’s gotten into this writer, so
intelligent, so cultivated and spiritual? Our language is German and not
Hebrew, our homeland—beautiful Austria”, Herzl, “does he not give our
worst enemies arguments against us: he wants to isolate us?”
Consequently, “Vienna… abandoned him and laughed at him. But the answer
came to him from elsewhere; it burst forth like a thunderbolt, so
sudden, charged with such a weight of passion and such ecstasy that he
was almost frightened to have awakened, around the world, a movement
with his dozens of pages, a movement so powerful and through which he
found himself overwhelmed. His answer did not come to him, it is true,
from the Jews of the West… but from the formidable masses of the East.
Herzl, with his pamphlet, had inflamed this nucleus of Judaism, which
was smouldering under the ashes of the stranger.”23
Henceforth, Herzl gives himself body and
soul to his new idea. He “breaks off with those closest to him, he only
frequents the Jewish people… He who, even recently, despised politics,
now founds a political movement; he introduces to it a spirit and a
party discipline, forms the framework of a future army and transforms
the [Zionist] congresses into a true parliament of the Jewish people.”
At the first Congress of Basel in 1897 he produced a very strong
impression “on the Jews who were meeting for the first time in a
parliamentary role,” and “during his very first speech, he was
unanimously and enthusiastically proclaimed… leader and chief of the
Zionist movement.” He shows “a consummate art to find the formulas of
conciliation”, and, conversely, “the one who criticises his objective…
or merely blames certain measures taken by him…, that one is the enemy
not only of Zionism, but of the entire Jewish people.”24
The energetic writer Max Nordau (Suedfeld)
supported him by expressing the idea that emancipation is fallacious,
since it has introduced seeds of discord into the Jewish world: the
emancipated Jew believes that he really has found a homeland, when “all
that is living and vital in Judaism, which represents the Jewish ideal,
the courage and the ability to advance, all this is none other than
Zionism.”25
At this 1st Congress, the delegates of
Russian Zionism “constituted one third of the participants… 66 out of
197.” In the eyes of some, their presence could be regarded as a gesture
of opposition to the Russian government. To Zionism had adhered all of
the Russian Khovevei‐Tsion, “thus contributing to the establishment of
global Zionism.”26
Thus “Zionism drew its strength from the communities of oppressed Jews
in the East, having found only limited support among the Jews of Western
Europe.”27
But it also followed that the Russian Zionists represented for Herzl a
most serious opposition. Ahad Haam waged a fierce struggle against
Herzl’s political Zionism (alongside the majority of the
palestinophiles), strongly criticising the pragmatism of Herzl and
Nordau, and denouncing what he called “their indifference to the
spiritual values of Judaic culture and tradition.”28 He found chimeric the hope of political Zionism to found an autonomous Jewish state in the near future;
he regarded all this movement as extremely detrimental to the cause of
the spiritual rebirth of the nation… “They do not care about the
salvation of Judaism in perdition because they care nothing about
spiritual and cultural heritage; they aspire not to the rebirth of the ancient nation, but to the creation of a new people from the dispersed particles of ancient matter.”29
(If he uses and even emphasises the word “Judaism,” it is almost
evident that it is not in the sense of the Judaic religion, but in the
sense of the spiritual system inherited from ancestors. The Jewish Encyclopædia tells us about Ahad Haam that in the 70s, “he was more and more imbued with rationalism and deviated from religion.”30
If the only vocation for Palestine is to “become the spiritual centre
that could unite, by national and spiritual ties, the dispersed
nations,”31
a centre which “would pour out its ‘light’ on the Jews of the whole
world”, would create “a new spiritual bond between the scattered members
of the people”, it would be less a “State of the Jews” than “an elite
spiritual community.”32
Discussions agitated the Zionists. Ahad Haam
strongly criticised Herzl whom Nordau supported by accusing Ahad Haam
of “covert Zionist”. World Zionist congresses were held every year; in
1902 took place the one of the Russian Zionists in Minsk, and the
discussions resumed. This is where Ahad Haam read his famous exposition:
A spiritual rebirth.33
Zionism no longer met with amenity from the
outside. Herzl expected this: as soon as the program of the Zionists
would take a concrete form and as soon as the real departure to
Palestine began, anti‐Semitism everywhere would end. But long before
this result was reached, “stronger than others, the voice of those who…
feared that the taking of a public position in the nationalist sense of
an assimilated Jew would give antisemites the opportunity to say that
every assimilated Jew hides under his mask an authentic Jew… incapable
of blending into the local population.”34
And as soon as an independent state was created, the Jews went
everywhere to be suspected and accused of civic disloyalty, ideological
isolationism—which their enemies had always suspected and accused them
of.
In reply, at the Second Zionist Congress
(1898), Nordau declared: “We reject with disdain the name of ‘party’;
the Zionists are not a party, they are the Jewish people themselves…
Those who, on the contrary, are at ease in servitude and contempt, they
keep themselves carefully apart, unless they fight us fiercely.”35
As one English historian observes: Yes,
“Zionism has done a great service to the Jews by restoring them a sense
of dignity,” and yet “it leaves unresolved the question of their
attitude towards the countries in which they live.”36
In Austria, a compatriot of Herzl, Otto
Weininger, argued with him: “Zionism and Judaism are incompatible with
the fact that Zionism intends to force the Jews to take upon themselves
the responsibility of a state of their own, which contradicts the very
essence of every Jew.”37 And he predicted the failure of Zionism.
In Russia in 1899, I. M. Biekerman argued
strongly against Zionism, as an idea deemed “quacky, inspired by
anti‐Semitism, of reactionary inspiration and harmful by nature”; it is
necessary “to reject the illusions of the Zionists and, without in any
way renouncing the spiritual particularism of the Jews, struggle hand in
hand with the cultural and progressive forces of Russia in the name of
the regeneration of the common fatherland.”38
At the beginning of the century, the poet N.
Minsky had issued this criticism: Zionism marks the loss of the notion
of universal man, it lowers the cosmopolitan dimensions, the universal
vocation of Judaism to the level of an ordinary nationalism. “The
Zionists, speaking tirelessly of nationalism, turn away from the
genuinely national face of Judaism and in fact seek only to be like
everyone else, not worse than others.”39
It is interesting to compare these sentences
with the remark made before the revolution by the orthodox thinker S.
Bulgakov: “The biggest difficulty for Zionism is that it is not able to
recover the lost faith of the fathers, and it is obliged to rely on a
principle that is either national, cultural or ethnic, a principle on
which no genuine great nation can rely exclusively.”40
But the first Russian Zionists—now, “it is
from Russia that most of the founders of the State of Israel and the
pioneers of the State of Israel came out,”41 and it was in Russian that “were written the best pages of Zionist journalism”42—were
filled with an irrepressible enthusiasm for the idea of returning to
their people the lost homeland, the ancient land of the Bible and their
ancestors, to create a State of unparalleled quality and to have men of
exceptional quality grow there.
And this impulse, this call addressed to all
to turn to physical work, the work of the earth!—Does not this appeal
echo the exhortations of a Tolstoy, the doctrine of asceticism?43
All streams lead to the sea.
*
But, in the final analysis, how can a Zionist behave towards the country in which he resides for the time being?
For the Russian Zionists who devoted all
their strength to the Palestinian dream, it was necessary to exclude
themselves from the affairs that agitated Russia as such. Their statutes
stipulated: “Do not engage in politics, neither internal nor external.”
They could only weakly, without conviction, take part in the struggle
for equal rights in Russia. As for participating in the national
liberation movement?—but that would be pulling the chestnuts out of the
fire for the others!44
Such tactics drew Jabotinsky’s fiery reproaches: “Even passing travellers have an interest in the inn being clean and tidy.”45
And then, in what language should
the Zionists display their propaganda? They did not know Hebrew, and,
anyway, who would have understood it? Consequently: either in Russian or
in Yiddish. And this brought closer once more the radicals of Russia46 and the Jewish revolutionaries.
Evidently, the Jewish revolutionary youth
jousted with the Zionists: no and no! The solution of the Jewish
question does not lie in the departure out of Russia, it is in the
political fight for equal rights here! Instead of going to settle far
beyond the seas, we must make use of the possibility of affirming
ourselves here in this country. And their arguments could not avoid
shaking more than one by their clarity.
In the Bolshevik circles, the Zionists were
denounced as “reactionary”; they were treated as “the party of the
darkest, most desperate pessimism.”47
Inevitably, intermediate currents were to
emerge. Thus the Zionist party of the left Poalei‐Tsion (“Workers of
Zion”). It was in Russia that it was founded in 1899; it combined
“socialist ideology with political Zionism.” It was an attempt to find a
median line between those concerned exclusively with class problems and
those concerned only with national problems. “Profound disagreements
existed within Poalei‐Tsion on the question of participation in
revolutionary action in Russia.”48
(And the revolutionaries themselves were divided, some leaning towards
the Social‐Democrats, others towards the Social Revolutionaries.)
“Other Tseirei‐Tsion groups, ideologically close to non‐Marxist socialist Zionism, began to form from 1905 onwards.”49
In 1904, a split within Poalei‐Tsion gave birth to a new party, the
“Socialist Zionists”, breaking with the ideal of Palestine: the
extension of Yiddish as a spoken language to all Jewish masses, that is
quite sufficient, and we scorn the idea of national autonomy! Zionism
begins to take on a bourgeois and reactionary tint. What is
needed is to create from it a socialist movement, to awaken
revolutionary political instincts in the Jewish masses. The party
“strongly supported” the “social and economic content” of Zionism, but
denied the need to “revive the land of Judea, culture, Hebrew
traditions.” Granted, Jewish emigration is too chaotic, it must be
oriented towards a specific territory, but “there is no essential link
between Zionism and Palestine.” The Hebrew state must be based on
socialist and non‐capitalist foundations. Such an emigration is a
long‐term historical process; the bulk of the Jewish masses will remain
well into the future in their current places of residence. “The party
has approved the participation of the Jews in the political struggle in
Russia”50—that is to say, in the struggle for their rights in this country. As for Judaism and faith, they despised them.
All this mishmash had to generate a
“socialist Jewish” group called “Renaissance”, which “believed that the
national factor is progressive by nature”, and in 1906 the members of
this group who had broken with the Zionists Socialist Party constituted
the Soviet Socialist Workers’ Party, the SERP. (They were called serpoviys or seymovtsy, for they demanded the election of a Jewish national Sejm—Seim—intended to be the “supreme organ of Jewish national self‐government.”51)
For them, Russian and Hebrew were, in their capacity of languages of
use, equal. And by advocating “autonomism” within the Russian state, the
SERP, socialist, was distinguished from the Bund, also socialist.52
In spite of the disagreements that divided
the Zionists among themselves, a general shift of Zionism towards
socialism took place in Russia, which attracted the attention of the
Russian government. Until then, it had not interfered with Zionist
propaganda, but in 1903 Interior Minister Plehve addressed the governors
of the provinces and to the mayors of the big cities a bulletin stating
that the Zionists had relegated to the background the idea of leaving
Palestine and had concentrated on the organisation of Jewish life in
their places of residence, that such direction could not be tolerated
and that consequently any public propaganda in favour of Zionism would
now be prohibited, as well as meetings, conferences, etc.53
Made aware of this, Herzl (who had already
solicited an audience with Nicholas II in 1899) went immediately to
Saint Petersburg to ask to be received by Plehve. (It was just after the
Kichinev pogrom, which occurred in the spring, of which Plehve had been
strongly accused—and which had therefore attracted him the blame and
invectives of the Russian Zionists…)
Plehve made Herzl understand (according to
the latter’s notes) that the Jewish question for Russia is grave, if not
vital, and “we endeavour to solve it correctly… the Russian State
wishes to have a homogeneous population”, and it demands a patriotic
attitude from all… “We want to assimilate [the Jews], but assimilation…
is slow… I am not the enemy of the Jews. I know them well, I spent my
youth in Warsaw and, as a child, I always played with Jewish children. I
would very much like to do something for them. I do not want to deny
that the situation of the Jews of Russia is not a happy one. If I were a
Jew, I, too, would probably be an opponent of the government.” “The
formation of a Jewish State [accommodating] several million immigrants
would be extremely desirable for us. That does not mean, however, that
we want to lose all our Jewish citizens. Educated and wealthy people, we
would gladly keep them. The destitute without education, we would
gladly let them go. We had nothing against Zionism as long as it
preached emigration, but now “we note great changes”54
in its goals. The Russian government sees with a kindly eye the
immigration of Zionists to Palestine, and if the Zionists return to
their initial plans, they are ready to support them in the face of the
Ottoman Empire. But it cannot tolerate the propagation of Zionism, which
advocates a separatism of national inspiration within Russia itself55:
this would entail the formation of a group of citizens to whom
patriotism, which is the very foundation of the State, would be foreign.
(According to N. D. Lyubimov, who was then director of the minister’s
cabinet, Plehve told him that Herzl, during the interview, had
recognised that Western bankers were helping the revolutionary parties
of Russia. Sliosberg, however, thinks this is unlikely.56)
Plehve made his report to the Emperor, the report was approved, and Herzl received a letter of confirmation in the same vein.
He felt that his visit to Plehve had been a success.
Neither of them suspected that they had only eleven months left to live…
Turkey had no intention of making any
concessions to the Zionists, and the British Government, in that same
year of 1905, proposed that not Palestine, but Uganda, be colonised.
In August 1903, at the Sixth Congress of the
Zionists in Basel, Herzl was the spokesperson for this variant “which,
of course, is not Zion”, but which could be accepted on a provisional
basis, in order for a Jewish state to be created as quickly as possible.57
This project provoked stormy debates. It seems that it met with some support, in the Yishuv,
for new immigrants, discouraged by the harsh living conditions in
Palestine. The Russian Zionists—who claimed to have more than all the
need to quickly find a refuge—fiercely opposed the project. Headed by M.
M. Oussychkine (founder of the Biluim group and, later, the right‐hand
man of Ahad Haam in the Bne‐Moshe League), they recalled that Zionism
was inseparable from Zion and that nothing could replace it!58
Congress nevertheless constituted a commission to travel to Uganda to study the land.59 The Seventh Congress, in 1905, heard its report, and the Ugandan variant was rejected.60 Overcome by all these obstacles, Herzl succumbed to a heart attack before he knew the final decision.61
But this new dilemma provoked a new rupture
in Zionism: they split the so‐called “territorialists”, led by Israel
Zangwill, to which joined the English delegates. They established their
International Council; the latter held its meetings, receiving subsidies
from Jacob Schiffe and Baron Rothschild. They had given up demanding
“Palestine and nothing else”. Yes, it was necessary to carry out a mass
colonisation by the Jews, but wherever it was. Year after year, in their
research, they reviewed a dozen countries. They almost selected Angola,
but “Portugal is too weak, it will not be able to defend the Jews”, and
therefore “the Jews risk becoming the victims of the neighbouring
tribes.”62
They were even ready to accept territory
within Russia even if they could create an autonomous entity with an
independent administration.
This argument: a strong country must be able
to defend immigrants on the premises of their new residence, reinforced
those who insisted on the need to quickly establish an
independent state capable of hosting mass immigration. This was
suggested—and would suggest later—Max Nordau when he said that he was
not afraid of the “economic unpreparedness of the country [that is, of
Palestine] for the reception of newcomers.”63
However, for this, it was necessary to be get the better of Turkey, and
also find a solution to the Arab problem. The adherents of this program
understood that, in order to implement it, it was necessary to have
recourse to the assistance of powerful allies. Now this assistance, no
country, for the moment, proposed it.
To arrive at the creation of the State of Israel, we must go through two more world wars.
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