The British mandate was set up by the United Nations after the First World War. They despised each other.Ī personal footnote, my father always had a bust of Weitzman and an etching of Herzl in his study. Weitzman saw Israel as part of the wider Jewish world. Ben Gurion adamantly believed the Diaspora had no right to interfere in Israeli life yet needed its support. In Palestine, the Zionist movement, and its agencies the Minhelet Ha’Am and Moetzet Ha’Am, the Leadership of the People and the Committee of the People, together with the workers’ cooperative the Histadrut, were dominated by the left and David Ben Gurion, the first prime Minister of Israel. Chaim Weitzman was regarded as the prime mover of the Zionist movement in the Diaspora and the Balfour Declaration.
At the start of the twentieth century, 90% of the Jews lived outside the Land of Israel. It was always a fractious mix of anti- Religious, Religious, Marxist, Socialists, Capitalists, and all shades in between. Theodor Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 ( but died in 1904). But even within themselves they were seriously divided. The New Yishuv was made up of mainly secular Jews coming from the anti-Semitic cauldrons of Russia and Poland. The Jews in the Land of Israel were split between what was called the Old Yishuv , the Charedi, and Sefardi Jews who had been coming in relatively small numbers during the previous centuries. They both illustrate the internal and external divisions, conflicts, and compromises and yes, the violence and murders that lay behind the process of achieving a State and reaching a declaration that all parties signed on to despite their differences. Both are essential for anyone interested in the mechanisms of establishing the State of Israel and why its politics are still such a mess today. And the 2019 “A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion” by Tom Segev (Picador). “Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment” by Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Ziegler (Cambridge University Press).
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