Nadene Goldfoot
Chaim Weizmann, 1st president of the state of Israel: (b:1874 in Motel city, near Pinsk, Brest Region of Belarus-d: 1952), about my paternal grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus's age who was born in Telsiai, Lithuania. Later, this will all be referred to as the Russian Empire. Answering a census question will be the answer, born in Russia. Chaim is buried in Rehovot, Israel where the national project, YAD CHAIM WEIZMANN has been erected in his memory. WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE. It's a research institute, dedicated in 1949.
Chaim Weizmann grew up in a family that dreamed of a rebuilt Zion even before the Zionist movement existed. He organized support for the movement, and attended all but the first of the World Zionist Congresses. Chaim soon became a World Zionist leader. He was not yet 30 when he led the opposition to Herzl's plan for a temporary homeland in Uganda.
It was in 1903 that Herzl bought into England's offer of this African state being anti-Semitism had become so terrible. The Uganda Scheme was a proposal presented at the Sixth World Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903 by Zionism founder Theodor Herzl to create a Jewish homeland in a portion of British East Africa. He presented it as a temporary refuge for Jews to escape rising antisemitism in Europe.
At the congress the proposal met stiff resistance. To those attending, this was simply a band-aid. They wanted the permanent solution of their land in Palestine. The only problem was it was in the hands of the Ottoman Empire, but they had had about 3 groups of Jews who had returned and were living there already, the people who made Aliyah. The large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine began in 1882.
The pronounced persecution of Russian Jews between 1881 and 1910 led to a large wave of emigration. Since only a small portion of East European Jews had adopted Zionism by then, between 1881 and 1914 only 30–40,000 emigrants went to Ottoman Palestine, while over one and a half million Russian Jews and 300,000 from Austria-Hungary reached Northern America, my paternal grandparents among them.
Why didn't more go to Palestine and live under the Ottoman Empire? The USA was so enticing, so free, and streets were already there, paved with gold. Going to Palestine was almost like going to conditions that Uganda had to offer. Read: THE SETTLERS, by Meyer Levin. (about Palestine from the turn of the century to the Balfour Declaration, Nov 2, 1917)
WWI had brought terrible misery. In 1914, the Jewish population in Eretz Yisrael was 85,000. At the end of the war, it was fewer than 55,000. Nearly 1/3 had died of starvation, illness, or exposure. But they achieved by proving they could be equals in anything that a great power could undertake, even in the longest and bloodiest war the world had yet known. They gained self-confidence. In this end, great Britain, with the support of the USA, had declared that the Jews were entitled to a national home in Palestine.
They had also made common cause with the Arabs, another group long oppressed by the Turks. During the war, Chaim Weizmann had met with Emir Feisal, on of the most important of the Arab leaders. The 2 men had agreed that there was room enough in Palestine to fulfill the dreams of both Arabs and Jews.
Lord Balfour (1848-1930) who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. with which Herzl negotiated in 1902-3. He was Foreign Secretary in 1917 and issued the Balfour Declaration, and was always outspokenly devoted to the Zionist ideal.
Weizmann's work as a research chemist had brought him to England, where he met a leading British statesman, Lord Arthur James Balfour. Balfour tried to convince Weizmann that the Jews should accept Britain's off of a homeland in Uganda.
It was Weizmann who convinced Balfour that Palestine was the only place that could mobilize the loyalty, energy and commitment of the Jewish people. This was the reason that submerging themselves in other people's countries didn't help the Jewish soul. Look what happened in England. Jews had been thrown out of the country from 1290 to 1655; 365 years of not being allowed to enter! Countries had been turning against Jews. If they weren't expelled, they were being forcibly converted. Those that remained were suffering from pogroms. They had to get back to their origins. Balfour became an enthusiastic Zionist.
During World War I, the British had a problem which only a chemist could solve. The country needed a steady supply of the chemical acetone to make ammunition. before the war, this chemical had come from Germany. Where would the acetone come from to fight Germany?
Weizmann was able to provide the answer. He succeeded in producing acetone from corn, which was plentiful in England. through his political and chemical work, Weizmann came to know most of the political figures in England. the time would come when these contacts would help the Zionist cause.
The Turks launched 2 attacks on the Suez Canal, something important to England as it was the key link between Britain and India, connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, which cut the shipping distance from England to India by more than 4,000 miles. The British didn't trust the Egyptians to defend the Canal, but an excellent defense, however, would be a strong Jewish settlement in Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration, encouraging and allowing Jewish immigration, was on the docket. A small but influential group of wealthy but Hellenized English Jews fought this move. They were afraid Zionism might damage their position in England where they enjoyed full political rights for only one generation! Now, Zionists were showing loyalty to Palestine!
The President of the USA, Woodrow Wilson, cabled the British government his approval of a Jewish homeland. This broke the deadlock. On November 2, 1917, Lord Balfour, by then Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, issued a letter which stated:
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
France, Italy and the US officially agreed.
Remember the Jewish Mule Corps? While the Jewish Legion was being formed, the British launched their attack in Palestine under the command of General Edmund Allenby. Within a few weeks, Allenby drove the Turks from Jaffa. On December 11, 1917, he marched into the City of David to proclaim "A NEW ERA OF BROTHERHOOD AND PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND." Allenby's arrival in Jerusalem took place on HANUKKAH. On the same day, Jews celebrated both the liberation of Jerusalem from the Turks in 1917-------and from the Syrian Greeks more than 2,000 years before.
The war wasn't over yet. Winter rains prevented Allenby from ending his conquest. That winter was the worst for the Yishuv. The Turks attacked the Jewish farm settlements, mercilessly robbing and murdering. At last, the Spring came and Allenby---now joined by the Jewish legion----marched north. The Turks fled. Jabotinsky himself led a Jewish unit across the Jordan River in pursuit. By September 1918, the last of the Turkish forces in Palestine had been defeated. Two months later, WWI ended.
Resource:
A Young Person's History of Israel, 2nd edition, by David Bamberger
Facts About Israel, published by division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
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