The Fall and Rise of Israel, Part 3 - World War I and The Balfour Declaration

WWI.  It was to change our globe forever.

There is quite a back story how it started, but the simple version goes like this:

On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, was riding in a motorcade through the streets of Sarajevo, when he was shot by a Bosnian Serb nationalist.

Archduke Ferdinand
 Heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Many empires and countries, having previously made alliances with each other, began to be sucked into the conflict until the world was in uproar.  The British Empire was drawn in one one side, the Ottoman Empire on the other.

I need to back up at this point.  There was a man born in the Russian Empire in 1874, the third child in a Jewish family of 15 children.  He had a passion for chemistry and moved to Germany to study it.  But he had a deeper passion than science - the dream that his people would someday return to their ancient homeland.  His name was Chaim Weizmann. He attended Theodor Herzl's second Zionist Congress while still living in Germany.

Weizmann moved to Britain in 1904 and made the acquaintance of a man named Arthur Balfour, who was a deeply committed Christian. 

As the war drew nearer, Weizmann was appointed as an advisor to the British Ministry of Munitions under its head, David Lloyd George - another committed Christian.

Weizmann's passion for a Jewish homeland left a deep impression on both of those men.

During the war, Britain experienced a shortage of acetone - a substance used in warfare that was produced by the Germans.  Well, Germany was on the opposite side of the conflict, and they were not going to sell warfare chemicals to their enemies.  Duh.  Weizmann found a way to produce the chemical in mass quantities, which had a direct impact on the Allied victory.

As the war was drawing to a close, the British government collapsed in December of 1916. Prime Minister Asquith, who was against a Jewish homeland, was ousted.  He was succeeded by David Lloyd George, who appointed Arthur Balfour as his foreign secretary.

Two men in favor of a Jewish homeland.

Because of his successful war efforts, Weizmann was asked what the British government could do for him.  His response?  A Jewish homeland, por favor.

Chaim Weizmann

On October 31, 1917, a letter was penned by Arthur Balfour, and two days later was declared publicly.  The document became known as the Balfour Declaration  It included this statement:

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...

Fifty years after the release of the land, the release was fulfilled.  In that first jubilee, the land was measured.  In this subsequent jubilee, the land was transferred.

Interestingly, on the Sabbath just before the Balfour Declaration went forth, the reading in the synagogues around the world included Genesis 12, the scripture that established the ancestral right.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you... Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.

The next post will back up and examine some war details.  I'll try not to make it boring (like school history class always was).  Click here to continue.