So we arrive at the end of World War I, which came and went, and it would be wonderful to assume that everything then went smoothly for the return of the Jews to the land. But alas, as scripture tells us, the devil knows his time is short. He went into a rage, and the story of Israel's restoration was just getting started.
We have looked at the 50 year Jubilee cycle that was kicked off in 1867 and ended in 1917. In an earlier post, I promised that we would come back to Theodor Herzl, and this post will explore another Jubilee cycle, taking place on its own timeline.
Herzl was a Hungarian journalist. He had early leanings toward a Jewish state, having had a dream about it at the age of 12. But the event that spurred him into action was called the Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish French man, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongfully accused and convicted of treason in 1894. (Dreyfus was eventually exonerated twelve years later).
Herzl had simply had it with Jews being blamed for anything and everything. His thoughts became, in my paraphrase, "we gotta think about getting our own place."
Herzl founded Zionism at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. The Oxford dictionary defines Zionism thusly: A movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.
A few days after that First Zionist Congress, Herzl penned these words: At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it.
Following World War I, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, the victors began carving up the lands in the Middle East. Various European nations were given control over chunks of the former Ottoman Empire.
The British, who occupied the Holy Land following WWI, were granted the British Mandate for Palestine at a conference in San Remo in 1920. This event kicked off two decades of violent clashes between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. And Britain, who had once championed the idea of a Jewish state, unfortunately began to change its policy and turn against the return of the Jews that it had once advocated.
There was a saying that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because there were territories and colonies of Britain on every continent. As Britain withdrew its support for the Jewish state, its empire crumbled into near nothingness. We would do well to heed the scriptures that tell us, in regard to Israel, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who lightly esteem you. Just saying.
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| British Empire, circa 1919 |
Back to Herzl's First Zionist Congress: it concluded on August 31, 1897. Can we fast forward fifty years, as Herzl proclaimed, to see if anything took place then? Why yes. Yes we can.
On August 31, 1947, the United Nations would complete the writing of the Partition Plan. This was a plan to help the Jewish-Arab skirmishes cease, and it attempted to divide the land and give a chunk to each side. A few days later, the Partition Plan was officially received and recorded by the United Nations General Assembly. That took place on September 3, 1947. Herzl wrote his 50-year prediction on September 3, 1897.
(The Jews accepted the Partition Plan. The Arabs did not. War would be on the horizon. More on that later).
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| Partition Plan of 1947 |
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