The Jewish National Home

Extract

It is just fifty years ago since Theodor Herzl, a Viennese Jew who, short of baptism, was completely assimilated, went to Paris to report the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew and an officer of the French army who, like Herzl, had ceased to be Jewish in anything but name. The extraordinary outburst of anti-semitism to which the trial gave rise and the completely unjustifiable conviction of Dreyfus moved Herzl to the depths. The Jewish problem, the present plight and future destiny of the Jewish people, became the dominating concern of the remaining years of his life. Three years later a Zionist organisation was set up under his leadership. Its aim was formulated foy its first Congress, held at Basle in August, 1897. ‘Zionism,’ the Congress declared, ‘aims at establishing-for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.’

Twenty-five years later, on November 2nd, 1917, a letter was addressed to the then Lord Rothschild by Arthur James Balfour, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, viewing with favour ‘the establishment in Palestine of a “national home for the Jewish people,’ and undertaking to ‘use their best endeavour 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.’