Showing posts with label Arthur Balfour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arthur Balfour. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Tonight's Two Day Holidays Begin in Israel: Of Mourning and Celebrating

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              


Tonight (Tuesday, April 29, 2025) begins Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembrance for the soldiers, police and members of the security services who fell defending Israel as well as for the victims of terror.

On April 29, 2025, in Israel, Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli Memorial Day, is commemorated with solemn ceremonies and observances. This includes placing the national flag on graves of fallen soldiers, lighting torches, and observing moments of silence. The date is just before the celebration of the anniversary of Israel's creation according to the Jewish calendar. 

Israel's Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron, began in 1951 as a separate day of remembrance for soldiers who fell in the War of Independence, distinct from the festive Independence Day. This separate day was established after families of fallen soldiers expressed a desire for a specific day of mourning. In January 1951, the Public Council for Soldiers' Commemoration was formed to recommend establishing the 4th of Iyyar (the day before Independence Day) as the General Memorial Day. This proposal was approved by the government the same year. Israel has been remembering for the past 74 years out of its 77 years established.  .  



 It is followed on Wednesday night by Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's 77th Independence Day, in USA on April 30,2025. The number 77 spelled out in Hebrew spells "Strength". May this be a year of physical and spiritual strength for Israel and the entire Jewish nation.

                                              

 Nir Am, Israel on April 20, 2010 enjoying Independence Day, like American 4th of July;  because Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948, which corresponded with the 5th of Iyar on the Hebrew calendar in that year, Yom Ha'atzmaut was originally celebrated on that date. However, to avoid Sabbath desecration, it may be commemorated one or two days before or after the 5th of Iyar if it falls too close to the Sabbath. The day preceding Israel's independence day is Yom HaZikaron, which is dedicated to the memory of fallen Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilian victims of terrorism.  
Born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) died at 87 was the primary national founder and first prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led the movement for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine.
Born in Płońsk, then part of Congress Poland, to Polish Jewish parents, he immigrated to the Palestine region of the Ottoman Empire in 1906. Adopting the name of Ben-Gurion in 1909, he rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948,
David ben Gurion and Golda Meir, 2 prime ministers of Israel, announcing the birth of their nation in 1948...
The announcement of Israel's independence on May 14, 1948, was a culmination of decades of Zionist aspirations, the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Declaration of Independence was proclaimed by the Jewish People's Council at the Tel Aviv Museum, marking the birth of the State of Israel. 

 This holiday was proclaimed by future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion on behalf of the Yishuv on 14 May 1948. The mood outside of Ben-Gurion's residence just prior to the announcement was joyous:

The possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been a goal of Zionist organisations since the late 19th century. In 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, above, stated in a letter (Balfour Doctrine)  to British Jewish community leader Walter, Lord Rothschild that:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours 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. (Arthur Balfour)

Arthur Balfour, at center, in 1925, was an early convert to the idea that the Jews might constitute more than a religious community.Photograph by Universal History Archive / Getty

“Our policy may fail; I do not deny that this is an adventure. Are we never to have adventures? Are we never to try new experiments?” Arthur Balfour said, in an address to the House of Lords, defending what has become known as the Balfour Declaration. At the time of that speech, his declaration was not quite five years old; today, it is exactly a hundred years old. (It was made public, in a letter to Lord Rothschild, on November 2, 1917.) “His Majesty’s government,” the Balfour Declaration read, “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours 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.” He accepted the view, Balfour continued before the Lords, “that some members of this race (Jews) may have given—doubtless did give—occasion for much ill will.” But this should be seen, he continued, in light of the “tyranny and persecution” to which they were subjected. Surely it was proper to send a message, to “every land where the Jewish race has been scattered,” that Christendom is not “unmindful of the service they have rendered to the great religions of the world.”  (Said when Balfour Doctrine was not quite 5 years old. ) No doubt he refers to something, as I think of all the anti-Semitism they have rendered to Jews, causing them to seek new homes in their neighbor's countries like Persia, Iraq, Syria, instead of places like Germany, Poland, etc...At the creation of Israel, they were thrown out of their newer homes of Iraq, Syria, etc.                                 

       Iraqi Jews;  Seated in the centre: Sir Sassoon Eskell, first Minister of Finance of the Kingdom with King Faisal I immediately to his left. The tycoon Senator Menahem Saleh Daniel is seated on the far right of this shot.

  The expulsion of Jews from Iraq occurred primarily between 1950 and 1952, after the establishment of Israel in 1948. This large-scale exodus, known as Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, saw nearly the entire Iraqi Jewish population emigrate to Israel. This was a result of increasing persecution and government oppression following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which the Iraqi government then allowed in exchange for renunciation of Iraqi citizenship.  

                        Chaim Weizmann:   (born Nov. 27, 1874, Motol, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Belarus]—died Nov. 9, 1952, Reḥovot, Israel) was the first president of the new nation of Israel (1949–52), who was for decades the guiding spirit behind the World Zionist Organization.  Besides that, Chaim Weizmann's profession, as a chemist, created a method to produce acetone which was crucial for Britain's war effort during World War I. This acetone was a key component in making cordite (smokeless gunpowder). It helped Britain to win the war.
 
Jewish men of Palestine, rabbi in center,  served in significant numbers in the British Army and other branches of the military during World War I, with an estimated 50,000 Jewish soldiers fighting for Britain. Beyond their direct military service, Jewish communities in Britain and elsewhere contributed to the war effort through various support roles and acts of patriotism. Additionally, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, supporting the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, in part to secure Jewish support for the war effort. 


Resource:


israelAM

https://unpacked.media/what-is-yom-hazikaron-how-and-when-do-we-commemorate-israels-memorial-day/#:~:text=Israeli%20soldiers%20salute%20after%20placing,KAHANA/AFP%20via%20Getty%20Images)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(Israel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Declaration_of_Independence#:~:text=

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iraq

 

Thursday, August 25, 2022

Those Debaters Of 1920 and Earlier For A Jewish Homeland

 Nadene Goldfoot                                       

  A Jewish family who never left, a family among many others living on Mount Zion, a hill in Judah/Judea. Jews were in Zfat (Safed) and many other areas before the land became a country with a government again.           
                
Hey, it's been 2,000 years already that we haven't had our own Jewish State!  We need it NOW!  Who felt the call to answer this situation?   

The League of Nations made a clear decision in London on the 24th at 3.p.m due to the results of the San Remo Peace Conference that was held in 1920.   The concept of a National Jewish Home in Palestine as set forth in the Balfour Declaration was approved by the League of Nations Council on July 24, 1922, and endorsed by a joint resolution of the United States Congress on June 30, 1922. The "Mandate for Palestine" was issued by the League of Nations.                       

Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, FRS (24 October 1784 – 28 July 1885)The modern legal attempts to establish a national homeland for the Jewish people began in 1839 with a petition by Moses Montefiore to Sa'id of Egypt for a Jewish homeland in the region of Palestine.     was a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London. Born to an Italian Sephardic Jewish family based in London, after he achieved success, he donated large sums of money to promote industry, business, economic development, education and health among the Jewish community in the Levant (Palestine). He founded Mishkenot Sha'ananim in 1860, the first settlement outside Jerusalem's walled Old City.

                  Charles Henry Churchill (1807-1869)

Not connected to Winston, It appears that Charles Henry Churchill was a descendant of General Charles Churchill (1656–1714), who was a brother of John Churchill, 1st Duke  of Marlborough.     They probably are connected though, and need a DNA test for proof.  

As President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Montefiore corresponded with Charles Henry Churchill, the British consul in Damascus, in 1841–42; his contributions are seen as pivotal to the development of Proto-Zionism.  Colonel Charles Henry Churchill, also known as "Churchill Bey", was a British army officer and diplomat. He was a British consul in Ottoman Syria, and proposed one of the first political plans for Zionism and the creation of an Israeli state in the region of Ottoman Palestine.     

 In 1820, Ararat, established as a city of refuge for the Jewish nation, was founded in 1825 by New York politician and playwright Mordecai Manuel Noah, who purchased most of Grand Island, a 27-square-mile (70 km2) island near Buffalo, New York. It is no longer a "Jewish city."in a precursor to modern Zionism, 

Mordecai Manuel Noah tried to found a Jewish homeland at Grand Island in the Niagara River,  to be called "Ararat" after Mount Ararat, the Biblical resting place of Noah's Ark. He erected a monument at the island which read "Ararat, a City of Refuge for the Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah in the Month of Tishri, 5586 (September, 1825) and in the Fiftieth Year of American Independence." In his Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews Noah proclaimed his faith that the Jews would return and rebuild their ancient homeland. Noah called on America to take the lead in this endeavor. Some have speculated whether Noah's utopian ideas may have influenced Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter Day Saint movement in Upstate New York a few years later.                        

Nahum ben Joseph Samuel Sokolow (Hebrew: נחום ט' סוקולוב Nachum ben Yosef Shmuel Soqolov, Yiddish: סאָקאָלאָוו; 10 January 1859 – 17 May 1936) was a Zionist leader, author, translator, and a pioneer of Hebrew journalism.  Nahum Sokolow:  President of World Zionist Organization       

In 1919 the general secretary (and future President) of the Zionist Organization, Nahum Sokolow, published a History of Zionism (1600–1918) He also represented the Zionist Organization at the Paris Peace Conference. He explained:  

Nahum Sokolow was born in Wyszogród, in the Płock Governorate of Congress Poland in the Russian Empire. He began to attend heder at the age of 3. When he was 5, his parents moved to Płock. At the age of 10, he was already renowned as a Hebrew scholar. His father wanted him to study for the rabbinate but with the intervention of Baron Wrangel, the governor of Płock, he enrolled in a secular school.  At the age of 20, he moved to Warsaw and became a regular contributor to the Hebrew daily HaTzefirah. Eventually he wrote his own column and went on to become editor and co-owner. In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, he moved to London to work with Chaim Weizmann.

Theodor Herzl: Theodor Herzl was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish lawyer, journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern political Zionism.
The object of Zionism is to establish for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law. "... It has been said and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent "Jewish State" But this is wholly fallacious. The "Jewish State" was never part of the Zionist programme. 
                                              

                                            
      
                           Title page of Der Judenstaat (1896)
The Jewish State was the title of Herzl's first pamphlet, which had the supreme merit of forcing people to think. This pamphlet was followed by the first Zionist Congress, which accepted the Basle programme – the only programme in existence."     

Beginning in late 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews). The small book was initially published 14 February 1896, in Leipzig, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, by M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung. It is subtitled "Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage", ("Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question"). Der Judenstaat proposed the structure and beliefs of what political Zionism was.

Herzl's solution was the creation of a Jewish state. In the book he outlined his reasoning for the need to reestablish the historic Jewish state.

                  
 
    Title page of Altneuland (1902), Herzl's last writing

Britain officially committed itself to the objective set out in the Balfour Declaration by insisting on its forming the basis of the Mandate of Palestine (which it could have avoided), which was formally approved by the League of Nations in June 1922, and which formalized British rule in Palestine which had started in 1917. The preamble of the Mandate declared:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on 2 November 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...
Theodor Herzl was born in the Pest section of Budapest, Hungary on May 2, 1860, to Jeanette and Jacob, a secular Jewish family originally from Zimony (today Zemun, Serbia). He was raised in a well-to-do home, received a basic Jewish education, and was educated in the spirit of the German-­Jewish Enlightenment of the period, which was characteristic of Jews living in Central Europe at that time.

 Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state.  Theodor Herzl was born in the Dohány utca (Tabakgasse in German), a street in the Jewish quarter of Pest (now eastern part of Budapest), Kingdom of Hungary (now Hungary), to a Neolog Jewish family. His father's family had migrated from Zimony (today Zemun, Serbia), to Bohemia in 1739, where they were required to Germanize their family name Loebl (from Hebrew lev, 'heart') to Herzl (diminutive of Ger. Herz; 'little heart').

He was the second child of Jeanette and Jakob Herzl, who were German-speaking, assimilated Jews. It is believed Herzl was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic lineage predominately through his paternal line and to a lesser extent through the maternal line.   In the late 19th century, Theodor Herzl, who saw contemporary antisemitism as a reaction to Jewish emancipation, set out his vision of the restoration of a Jewish state and sovereign homeland for the Jewish nation in his book Der Judenstaat. Herzl was later hailed by the Zionist political parties as the founding father of the State of Israel.                             

                        In office 1895-1903, Joseph Chamberlain 

The British Uganda Program was a plan to give a portion of British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland.

The offer was first made by British Colonial Secretary Joseph

 Chamberlain to Theodore Herzl's Zionist  group in 1903. He offered 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2) of the Mau Plateau in what is today Kenya.

 The offer was a response to pogroms against the Jews in

 Russia, and it was hoped the area could be a refuge from

  persecution for the Jewish people. Jews didn't go for that offer, 

wanting to return to Zion  (Palestine of that era).  The Tradition 

of praying 3 times a day for that return meant something to all.             

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION 

Arthur  James Balfour was the author of the Declaration. Almost 80% of the original Palestine was immediately given away to Prince Abdullah of Arabia.  What happened to article 5?  Article 5 The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.  Abdullah established his government on 11 April 1921. Britain administered the part west of the Jordan as Palestine, and the part east of the Jordan as Transjordan. Technically they remained one mandate, but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates. We have just ignored the technicalities about a huge swatch of land ! 

The English aristocrat was serving as foreign secretary in the British government when the Declaration was issued and is the author of it.  The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home. The declaration specifically stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The document, however, said nothing of the political or national rights of these communities and did not refer to them by name. Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists and seemed the fulfillment of the aims of the World Zionist Organization.

This led to at a meeting on 19 June, Balfour asked Lord Rothschild and Weizmann to submit a formula for a declaration. Over the next few weeks, a 143-word draft was prepared by the Zionist negotiating committee, but it was considered too specific on sensitive areas by Sykes, Graham and Rothschild. Separately, a very different draft had been prepared by the Foreign Office, described in 1961 by Harold Nicolson – who had been involved in preparing the draft – as proposing a "sanctuary for Jewish victims of persecution" The Foreign Office draft was strongly opposed by the Zionists, and was discarded; no copy of the draft has been found in the Foreign Office archives.

Following further discussion, a revised – and at just 46 words in length, much shorter – draft declaration was prepared and sent by Lord Rothschild to Balfour on 18 July. It was received by the Foreign Office, and the matter was brought to the Cabinet for formal consideration.

              Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild (1868-1937)

A descendant of the powerful Jewish Rothschild banking family, Walter Rothschild was a Zionist and a close friend of Chaim Weizmann.  Though he retired from parliament by 1910, he remained active as a figurehead of the British Jewish community and served as the president of the English Zionist Federation. He was the recipient of the Balfour Declaration.

In the summer of 1917, Arthur Balfour asked Rothschild and Weizmann to draft a statement that would be in line with Zionist goals.


The original draft sent by Rothschild to Balfour proposed that “Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people”. But following objections within the cabinet, the wording was made vague.  His lobbying efforts alongside Weizmann and other Zionists, both within and outside of the British government, were central in pressuring the government to issue the declaration.


Chaim Weizmann was one of the major leaders in speaking to the British.  Chaim Azriel Weizmann was a Russian-born biochemist, Zionist leader and Israeli statesman who served as president of the Zionist Organization and later as the first president of Israel. He was elected on 16 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952.

Chaim Weizmann was born in the village of Motal, located in what is now Belarus and at that time was part of the Russian Empire. He was the third of 15 children born to Oizer and Rachel (Czemerinsky) Weizmann. His father was a timber merchant. From ages 4 to 11, he attended a traditional cheder, or Jewish religious primary school, where he also studied Hebrew. At the age of 11, he entered high school in Pinsk, where he displayed a talent for science, especially chemistry. While in Pinsk, he became active in the Hovevei Zion movement. He graduated with honors in 1892.


Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henry_Churchill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann

https://www.britannica.com/event/Balfour-Declaration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Zion

https://israelforever.org/state/Mandate_for_Palestine_Jewish_State/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ararat,_City_of_Refuge#:~:text=Ararat%2C%20established%20as%20a%20city,longer%20a%20%22Jewish%20city.%22

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state