Season 2 Second Block

34. The British Are Coming

34. The British Are Coming

The Zionist movement seized the opportunity presented by World War One — the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the advancement of the British Empire into the Middle East — to ally themselves with the West in the hopes of securing the promise of a territorial homeland in Palestine. They succeeded. But the British also made promises to the Arabs, and thus began a thirty-year struggle.

THE PLOT

World War One was raging and the British were trying to defeat Germany in Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. The British wanted to capture Palestine, which was under the Ottomans and the key strategic territory from which Britain could control the rest of the Middle East. It was essential, then, for the British to recruit the support of the local populations — about 600,000 Arabs, and a bit less than 100,000 Jews, to rebel against the Ottomans. 

The British were particularly disposed to seek the support of the Jews. For one thing, Britain had a longstanding fascination with all things ancient and biblical in Palestine. For the Philo-Semites of Britain — Christians who profess their love for the Jews — there was a religious justification for the return of the Jewish People to their ancient homeland (and the anti-Semites were happy to have somewhere to send the Jews away to). At the same time, being seen to support the Zionist movement would, the British hoped, positively influence the Jews in both the United States and Russia to pressure their governments to also support the British; and make the Jews of Germany think twice about supporting the German war effort.

Chaim Weizmann, the key Zionist leader after the death of Herzl in 1904, was the indispensable diplomat between the Jews of Palestine and the British. Intellectual and charismatic, he was also an important player in the British war effort, having developed crucial military technology the British needed. This gave him access to Britain’s senior military and political leaders, including the Prime Minister and, most importantly, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour.

To secure Jewish support, and to reward them for their loyalty to Britain, the British issued the Balfour Declaration in November, 1917. It was a 68-word letter from Lord Balfour expressing the British Empire’s support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and a pledge to help facilitate it. It tied British government policy to the aims of the Zionist movement.

The problem was that the British also made a secret promise (in 1915) to the Arabs to support the creation of an independent Arab empire in the Middle East, including Palestine, if they started a revolt against the Ottomans. And in 1916 they made yet another secret deal with the French, called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to divide up the Middle East into British and French spheres of influence. It was a betrayal of the promise made to the Arabs, seen as an imperialist-colonialist agreement that robbed the Arabs of their Middle Eastern empire. And it set up competing claims on the territory of Palestine.

FUN FACTS

Chaim Weizmann defined the foundation of Zionism as “the yearning of the Jewish people for its homeland, for a national centre and a national life.”

Weizmann invented the mass production of acetone, the crucial element needed in the production of cordite, which was the main ingredient for the explosives used by the British military to wage World War One.

Under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the French would get Syria and Lebanon, the British Palestine and Iraq, and Jerusalem would be specially zoned as an international city.

 

NAMES TO KNOW

Chaim Weizmann: successor to Theodore Herzl and one of most eminent Zionist leaders. Originally from Belarus, he was a trained chemist and became the movement’s most prolific diplomat between Palestine and Britain, securing much of Zionism’s support within the British government. He was an advocate for democracy, cultural literary, and the creation of the Jewish National Fund.

Lord Arthur Balfour: Foreign Secretary of Great Britain from 1916-1919, he issued the Balfour Declaration supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

KEY CONCEPTS TO KNOW

In November, 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, a short, 68-word letter expressing the British Empire’s support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It is one of the foundational documents of modern Israel, and one of the great achievements of Theodore Herzl’s Political Zionism. It represents both the first international recognition of Zionism, but also the beginning of an irreconcilable clash with the Arabs over land, as the British made more promises than it could keep.

The British had a long standing interest in the Holy Land from both a religious and geopolitical viewpoint. The violent anti-Semitism that plagued much of Europe was largely absent from Britain, Jews having made much progress in political emancipation, economic prosperity, and assimilation as English citizens. British leaders often exhibited Philo-Semitism, or “love of the Jews” that caused them to look favorably on Zionism. Still, anti-Semitism was still present in the upper levels of society.

Chaim Weizmann developed the Synthetic branch of the Zionist tree. His take on Zionism was to try to blend all the branches together, and to pursue the aims of Political and Cultural Zionism all at the same time. He was invested in the political creation of the state, inspired by the idea of the Jewish homeland becoming the spiritual center of Judaism, and supportive of the efforts to establish agricultural communities in Palestine.

33. To Arms!

33. To Arms!
Jason Harris

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many of the early Zionist pioneers thought it essential that the Jews learn how to defend themselves. But the Jewish People hadn’t fielded an army since the Bar Kokhba Revolt against the Roman Empire in the year 135 CE. As a whole the Zionists had very little military experience. But that all changed with the onset of World War One in 1914, which provided an opportunity for the Zionists to not only get combat experience, but to also demonstrate loyalty to Britain, and, perhaps, get rewarded for their efforts.

THE PLOT

The Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and the Jews were afraid of what the Turks would do if the Jews sided with the British. Paranoid about enemy sympathizers, the Turks began expelling thousands of Jews from Palestine, especially those of Russian origin. They sent around 6,000 Jews abroad, mostly to Egypt, where a few hundred of them banded together to form a Jewish fighting unit for the British.

On March 13, 1915, a meeting was held in Alexandria to determine a response to the Jewish deportations. It was led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the most influential and controversial figures in Israeli history. He believed that since neither Turkey nor the Arabs would ever support Zionism, the only way the Jews would ever get a homeland would be to ally with the winning side in the war: the British. At the meeting he met Joseph Trumpeldor, a kindred spirit with significant military experience, and together they launched a new Zionist project to create a Jewish army. 

Although the British struggled to authorize a Jewish fighting unit, they eventually allowed the Jews to form a supply battalion: a mule transport unit that would carry supplies to British soldiers on the front lines. Thus the Zion Mule Corps was born, with the Grand Rabbi officiating at the ceremony. Their first mission: to support the Allied invasion of Gallipoli. A disastrous campaign for the Allies and the only major military victory for the Ottoman Empire during the war,  the Zion Mule Corps found themselves in the thick of the fighting. They suffered casualties and fought with distinction, impressing the British. Though disbanded in 1916, another Jewish fighting force came into being, called the Jewish Legion, with over 5,000 soldiers who continued to fight on the side of the Allies.

Meanwhile, back in Palestine, a small group of Jews launched a covert intelligence campaign against the Turks. The Aaronsohn siblings and a few friends formed an espionage unit called NILI to gather intelligence against the Turks and report back to the British. Sarah Aaronsohn  ran the show from her home in Zichron Ya’akov, but in 1917 she was caught by the Turks and tortured for information. She committed suicide before being taken to prison for further interrogation, which led to significant controversy over whether she could be buried in a Jewish cemetery. She is today an Israeli national hero.

FUN FACTS

In his spare time Jabotinsky translated Edgar Allen Poe into Hebrew.

Jabotinsky’s famous slogan was, “better to have a gun and not need it than to need it and not have it.”

Trumpeldor lost an arm in battle but after several months of recovery he rejoined his unit. When asked why he continued to fight, he said, “I still have another arm to give to the motherland.”

The Zion Mule Corps refused to unload the unkosher bacon supplies until they received a special dispensation from the Grand Rabbi.

Sarah Aaronsohn, having committed suicide in violation of Jewish law, was only allowed to be buried in a Jewish cemetery if a small fence was placed around her gravesite. 

NAMES TO KNOW

Vladimir Jabotinsky: Russian journalist from Odessa whose experience of the violent pogroms of the early 1900s convinced him that the Jews needed to learn self-defense. He had a much more antagonistic approach to the Arabs and was focused on aggressive colonization of the Land of Israel. He is the origin of Israel’s right-wing politics. 

Joseph Trumpeldor: colorful Israeli national hero from Russia with numerous military exploits to his name. The most decorated Jewish solider in Russian history, he emigrated to Palestine in 1911 and was one of those deported to Egypt.

Sarah Aaronsohn: One of the founders of NILI, a Jewish espionage unit working against the Turks. At 24 years old she left her marriage to start NILI with her siblings and another fighter whom she fell in love with. She committed suicide in 1917 after capture by the Turks, becoming both a religious and secular symbol of Zionist martyrdom.

KEY CONCEPTS TO KNOW

Outraged by the pogroms afflicting the Jews of Russia, in particular the infamous Kishinev pogrom of 1903, Jabotinsky formed Jewish self-defense leagues with the purpose of arming and training Jews to defend their communities. He believed that the Jews would never establish a homeland in Palestine without being able to defend themselves, and made self-defense the central pillar of his Zionist activity. 

The Zion Mule Corps, and its successor Jewish Legion, were the first Jewish fighting units since the first century CE. They fought for the Allied cause in the hopes that when the British defeated the Ottomans, the Jews would be rewarded for their loyalty with a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They also saw World War One as a learning opportunity to train fighters and develop military skills and experience that could be used for self-defense in Palestine. 

Some Jews in Palestine also wanted to join the fight against the Ottomans by forming controversial espionage units. The most famous was NILI, organized by the Aaronsohn family and a few close friends. But many in the Yishuv were vehemently against such activity, worrying that the Turks would respond with mass reprisals and persecution. In several instances local Jews turned in Jewish spies in the hopes of currying favor with the Turks, and even after the war continued criticizing the NILI for putting the Yishuv in danger.

32. Meet Me at the Kibbutz

32. Meet Me at the Kibbutz
Jason Harris

The kibbutz is perhaps the most famous Israeli institution, and has its origins in the Labor Zionism tree brach. Labor Zionism’s deep ideological tradition traces back to the socialist vision of Jewish workers in Russia and Eastern Europe. It was the dominant Zionist tree branch in Israel for decades.

THE PLOT

The genius of the kibbutz system is that it exemplified two trends that complemented each other at this moment of Jewish history. One was economic necessity. The immigrants of the First Aliyah — the first wave of immigration in the last decades of the 19th century — largely failed at developing individual private farms. But those of the Second Aliyah realized that they could pool together their resources under the umbrella of a coordinated land purchase from the Jewish National Fund, to create a collective farming community. They called this type of community a kibbutz.

The second reason is socialism, which Jews in Eastern Europe, especially Russia, found themselves attracted to. Zionist and socialist ideology seemed incompatible at first. But for one thinker, Nachman Syrkin, Zionism needed socialism in order to be successful. The Jewish state, he said, should be based on social justice, equality, and secular culture. If Jews were to leave Russia, taking with them their socialist ideology, and merge it with Zionism in the Land of Israel, they would create their own successful Zionist-oriented socialist revolution there. Thus was born the Labor Zionist tree branch. 

The kibbutz was the vehicle for implementing the socialist-Zionist vision. The Labor Zionists looked with disdain upon the impoverished, physically weak Jews of Europe, and determined that the hard work of manual agricultural labor would create a New Jew who was physically and mentally strong.  AD Gordon, the spiritual father of Labor Zionism, called this “the religion of labor.”

To live on a kibbutz was to live by a set of principles around collectivism: communal property, communal care, communal decision-making. Gender equality was a necessary component, since all were required to work to ensure that the community functioned properly. 

The kibbutzim, focused on building the New Jew, didn’t use Arab labor on Jewish land. For one, they wanted to train Jews to defend themselves and so used Jewish guards to protect the kibbutz. Secondly, the point of the movement was to force Jews to do the manual labor of farm work, not to hire anyone else to do it, which would create an un-socialist class division between owners (Jews) and workers (Arabs). So a key feature of the kibbutzim is that they were populated solely by Jews. 

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the Yishuv was developing apace. There were about 85,000 Jews living in Palestine, spreading out in agricultural communities and coastal cities. But then came 1914, the world went to war, and Palestine all but collapsed.

FUN FACTS

“Ki-betz” is a Hebrew root word meaning “to gather or collect as a group”.

On many kibbutzim parents didn’t directly raise their own children in their home. There was a children’s house where kids lived from toddler to teenager under the watch of workers dedicated to child care and teaching.

The first kibbutz was called Degania, meaning “Cornflower”, and was established on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in 1909 by ten men and two women.

 

NAMES TO KNOW

Nachman Syrkin. Russian Jewish socialist thinker who set forth the founding principles of the Labor Zionist tree branch. He saw a natural merge between Zionism and socialism in which Jewish immigrants to Palestine would import revolutionary ideas to create a Jewish homeland free of class struggle. 

Kibbutz: collective farming community representing the practical expression of the revolutionary socialist ideology that Eastern European Jewish immigrants were bringing into Palestine.

AD Gordon: spiritual father of the Labor Zionist movement. He came from a well-off Orthodox family in Russia and didn’t come to Palestine until he was already in his 40s. But he devoted himself to working the land on a settlement near the Sea of Galilee, practicing the philosophy which he believed would lead to individual and national redemption. 

Ha’Shomer: meaning “the Watchman”, it was a semi-professional Jewish guard force trained to defend the kibbutz.

KEY CONCEPTS TO KNOW

Kibbutz life was hard. Here is how an early pioneer described kibbutz life, as told in Ari Shavit’s book, My Promised Land: “It’s either day or night here. Hard labor at the noon of day and ideological debates into the night. A loving family, a soft caress of a mother’s hand, the stern but encouraging look of a loving father — all the things that make life bearable — are not here.” There was searing heat, backbreaking work, little infrastructure or machinery to help with the labor, swamps and disease, and a rigid ideological structure. To be on a kibbutz wasn’t just to sign up for a life of labor; it was to sign up for an entire way of life.

Labor Zionism, merging socialism with Zionism, said that “in a Jewish state, and only in a Jewish state, can Jews live normal, healthy lives, and develop a community around socialist principles.” This tree branch will be the dominant tree branch for most of Israeli history, responsible not only for much of Israel’s founding ideology but also for many of its founding fathers and later leaders. From Labor Zionism will we get most of the powerful institutions that built the Jewish homeland and then, when the state was declared in 1948, were turned into official government agencies. 

Second Aliyah. The second major wave of immigration came on the heels of the infamous 1903 Kishniev pogrom. Zionism only played a small role in the decision of millions of Jews to leave Europe. Only around 40,000 went to Palestine. Although most left, the ones who stayed were passionate about the socialist revolution, took up modern Hebrew, and set about building the institutions and settlements necessary for the Jewish revival. 

31. In the Land of Poetry

31. In the Land of Poetry
Jason Harris

It’s the beginning of the most important theme in Israeli history: Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. Persuading Jews to move to Palestine was a difficult task, and the Zionist Movement was divided over how best to achieve it. The different Zionist tree branches — Political, Cultural, and Labor — approached the task of settling the Land of Israel with different ideologies, motivations, and urgencies.

THE PLOT

Palestine was a rough place to eke out a living in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was a lack of everything: not enough food, water, infrastructure, jobs, health care, or education. But there was an ample supply of extreme heat and tropical disease. The First Aliyah — waves of immigration to Palestine — brought around 25,000 Jews to the land. They were financially supported by the ultra-wealthy Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild. He bought up tons of land and funded the necessary services, establishing Israel’s earliest communities like Rishon LeZion and Zichron Ya’akov. But without proper farming skills or capacity to develop the land amidst such hardship, most immigrants left soon after arriving.

It was the Second Aliyah, from about 1900-1914, that found success in developing Jewish agricultural communities, small new towns, and the institutions that would turn the the Jewish homeland into the State of Israel. Their ideological orientation was socialist, and they largely belonged to the Labor Zionist tree branch. Rachel Blustein, a poet, and her sister came with this second wave, brimming less with Zionism than with romantic idealism and a desire to escape European oppression. She exemplified the classic experience of the chalutzim — “the pioneers”: falling in love with an idealized version of Eretz Yisrael, yet melancholy about the extreme difficulties of life there. Rachel the Poetess died young, but her works later made her a national hero in Israel. 

The Second Aliyah immigrants were determined to build more than just agricultural communities. They wanted industries and factories and Jewish neighborhoods and cities, and to move forward with the practical approaches to building the Jewish homeland. The Jewish National Fund was created in 1897 to buy up as much land as possible and to build schools, plan cities, and develop essential infrastructure.

Arthur Ruppin was the man chosen to lead this effort. He believed that the most essential element in the creation of a Jewish state then was to buy land and settle it as quickly as possible by any means possible. It didn’t matter if it was urban or rural, as long as the Jewish settlement could be economically viable, safe, and thriving.

Ruppin got a JNF loan for a small group of people to create a Jewish suburb next to the ancient port of Jaffa. They wanted to create the kind of small city they had left behind in Europe  to be a center for Zionist culture: Hebrew in nature and adopting modern urban aesthetics. Sixty-six families chose plots of land on April 11, 1909 and a year later gave their new town a name that evoked both the ancient past as well as Jewish renewal: Spring Hill — or, in Hebrew, Tel Aviv.

FUN FACTS

Rachel and her sister learned Hebrew by hanging out at the local kindergarten.

To start the Jewish National Fund, the first donation was made in the amount of ten pounds. Theodore Herzl provided the second donation to the organization, and the first tree the JNF planted was in his posthumous honor.

By the 21st century the JNF has planted over 250 million trees in Israel, making Israel the only country in the world to enter that century with more trees than it had at the start of the 20th.

The sixty-six families who gathered on a beach to start Tel Aviv in 1909 drew color-coded seashells to determine who got which plot of land. 

 

NAMES TO KNOW

The Yishuv: the collective term for the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine. 

Rachel the Poetess: one of Israel’s earliest national heroes. She arrived in Palestine at age 19 and went to work at an agricultural school along the Sea of Galilee. Her poetry evoked both the romantic idealism of the early pioneers as well as the extreme hardships they endured to develop the land. When Rachel contacted tuberculosis her kibbutz kicked her out, and she died at the age of 40 in Tel Aviv in 1931.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild: scion of the famous Jewish banking family, his philanthropy paid for the earliest Zionist enterprises in Palestine. A huge supporter of Zionism, he had no patience for Theodore Herzl or other movement leaders, insisting that his Zionist colonies were his to do with as he pleased.

Arthur Ruppin: chief “doer” of the Zionist movement in Palestine, placed in charge of executing the practical necessities of developing Jewish settlement. He created two of Israel’s most famous and lasting institutions: Tel Aviv and the kibbutz. 

KEY CONCEPTS TO KNOW

Aliyah means to “go up” or “ascend” (see Episode 27), and is the term used to mean immigrating to the Land of Israel. The history of aliyah is divided into different eras. The First Aliyah, or major wave of immigration, ran from roughly 1880 to the early 1900s, while the Second Aliyah, considered more consequential, ran from the early 1900s until the beginning of World War One. Tens of thousands of Jews came from Europe, but only a small percentage actually weathered the hardships to permanently settle. Each Aliyah wave shaped the Yishuv's — and then Israel’s — demographics in meaningful ways.

In 1901 Theodore Herzl proclaimed the creation of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organization to raise money to buy up land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. In 1905 the JNF started planting trees, and also served as a crucial agency for managing water resources, planning cities, organizing education, and researching new agricultural techniques. By the 21st century the JNF had developed over 250,000 acres of land, built a couple hundred reservoirs and dams, built the infrastructure for more than 1,000 communities, and created several thousand parks.

In 1909 the JNF gave Arthur Ruppin a loan for a small community to start a new neighborhood on the beach outside Jaffa. They called this new village Ahuzat Bayit, meaning “homestead,” and they wanted it to be a Hebrew version of the small European towns they had left behind. It began with just sixty-six families, and they soon renamed their town Tel Aviv, meaning “Spring Hill,” which was the Hebrew title given to Herzl’s 1902 book Altneuland, Old New Land.