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Institute for Historical Review 



Behind the Balfour Declaration 

Britain's Great War Pledge To Lord Rothschild 

By Robert John 
Acknowledgements 

To Benjamin H. Freedman, who committed himself to finding and telling the 
facts about Zionism and Communism, and encouraged others to do the same. 
The son of one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee, which for 
many years was anti-Zionist, Ben Freedman founded the League for Peace with 
Justice in Palestine in 1946. He gave me copies of materials on the Balfour 
Declaration which I might never have found on my own and encouraged my 
own research. (He died in April 1984.) 

The Institute for Historical Review is providing means for the better 
understanding of the events of our time. 

Attempts to review historical records impartially often reveal that blame, 
culpability, or dishonor are not to be attached wholly to one side in the 
conflicts of the last hundred years. To seek to untangle fact from propaganda is 
a worthy study, for it increases understanding of how we got where we are and 
it should help people resist exploitation by powerful and destructive interests in 
the present and future, by exposing their working in the past. 

May I recommend to the Nobel Prize Committee that when the influence of this 
organization's historical review and search for truth has prevailed the societies 
of its contributors — say about 5 years or less from now — that they consider 
the IHRfor the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Regrettably, some of the company in that award would be hard to bear! 



The Balfour Declaration may be the most extraordinary document produced by any 
Government in world history. It took the form of a letter from the Government of His 
Britannic Majesty King George the Fifth, the Government of the largest empire the world has 
even known, on which — once upon a time — the sun never set; a letter to an international 
financier of the banking house of Rothschild who had been made a peer of the realm. 

Arthur Koestler wrote that in the letter "one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the 
country of a third." More than that, the country was still part of the Empire of a fourth, 
namely Turkey. 

It read: 



Foreign Office, November 2nd, 19 17 

Dear Lord Rothschild, 

I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty's 
Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist 
aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet: 

"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." 

I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the 
Zionist Federation. 

Yours sincerely, 

Arthur James Balfour. [11 

It was decided by Lord Allenby that the "Declaration" should not then be published in 
Palestine where his forces were still south of the Gaza-Beersheba line. This was not done 
until after the establishment of the Civil Administration in 1920. 

Then why was the "Declaration" made a year before the end of what was called The Great 
War? 

"The people" were told at the time that it was given as a return for a debt of gratitude which 
they were supposed to owe to the Zionist leader (and first President of Israel), Chaim 
Weizman, a Russian-born immigrant to Britain from Germany who was said to have invented 
a process of fermentation of horse chestnuts into scarce acetone for production of high 
explosives by the Ministry of Munitions. 

This horse chestnut propaganda production was not dislodged from the mass mind by the 
short bursts of another story which was used officially between the World Wars. 

So let us dig into the records and bury the chestnuts forever. 

To know where to explore we must stand back from the event and look over some parts of 
the relevant historical background. The terrain is extensive and the mud deep, so I shall try to 
proceed by pointing out markers. 

Herzl on the Jewish Problem 

Support for a "national home" for the Jews in Palestine from the government of the greatest 
empire in the world was in part a fulfillment of the efforts and scheming of Theodore Herzl 
(1860-1904), descendant of Sephardim (on his rich father's side) who had published Der 
Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in Vienna in 1896. It outlined the factors which he believed had 
created a universal Jewish problem, and offered a program to regulate it through the exodus 
of unhappy and unwanted Jews to an autonomous territory of their own in a national-socialist 
setting. 



Herzl offered a focus for a Zionist movement founded in Odessa in 1881, which spread 
rapidly through the Jewish communities of Russia, and small branches which had sprung up in 
Germany, England and elsewhere. Though "Zion" referred to a geographical location, it 
functioned as a Utopian conception in the myths of traditionalists, modernists and Zionists 
alike. It was the reverse of everything rejected in the actual Jewish situation in the 
"Dispersion," whether oppression or assimilation. 

In his diary Herzl describes submitting his draft proposals to the Rothschild Family Council, 
noting: "I bring to the Rothschilds and the big Jews their historical mission. I shall welcome 
all men of goodwill — we must be united — and crush all those of bad." [2J 

He read his manuscript "Addressed to the Rothschilds" to a friend, Meyer-Cohn, who said, 

Up till now I have believed that we are not a nation — but more than a nation. I 
believed that we have the historic mission of being the exponents of universalism 
among the nations and therefore were more than a people identified with a 
specific land. 

Herzl replied: 

Nothing prevents us from being and remaining the exponents of a united 
humanity, when we have a country of our own. To fulfill this mission we do not 
have to remain literally planted among the nations who hate and despite us. If, in 
our present circumstances, we wanted to bring about the unity of mankind 
independent of national boundaries, we would have to combat the ideal of 
patriotism. The latter, however, will prove stronger than we for innumerable 
years to come." [2al 

In this era, there were a number of Christians and Messianic groups who looked for a Jewish 
"return." One of these was the Protestant chaplain at the British Embassy in Vienna, who had 
published a book in 1882: The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine According to the 
Prophets. Through him, Herzl obtained an audience of the Grand Duke of Baden, and as they 
waited for their appointment to go to the castle, Herzl said to Chaplain Hechler, "When I go 
to Jerusalem I shall take you with me." 

The Duke gave Herzl's proposal his consideration, and agreed to Herzl's request that he might 
refer to it in his meetings outside of Baden. He then used this to open his way to higher levels 
of power. 

Through intermediaries, he endeavoured to ingratiate himself with the Sultan of Turkey by 
activities designed to reduce the agitation by l^migri'^ Armenian committees in London 
and Brussels for Turkish reforms and cessation of oppression [AJ and started a press 
campaign to calm public opinion in London on the Armenian question. But when offered 
money for Palestine, the Sultan replied that his people had won their Empire with blood, and 
owned it. "The Jews may spend their millions. When my Empire is divided, perhaps they will 
get Palestine for nothing. But only our corpse can be divided. I will never consent to 
vivisection. " [2bl 

Herzl met the Papal Nuncio in Vienna and promised the exclusion of Jerusalem, Bethlehem 
and Nazareth from the Jewish state. He started a Zionist newspaper, Die Welt, and was 
delighted to hear from the United States that a group of rabbis headed by Dr. Gustave 
Gottheil favored a Zionist movement. All this, and more, in a few months. 



It was Herzl who created the first Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland, 29-31 August 1897, 
[BJ There were 197 "delegates"; some were orthodox, some nationalist, liberal, atheist, 
culturalist, anarchist, socialist and some capitalist. 

"We want to lay the foundation stone of the house which is to shelter the Jewish nation," and 
"Zionism seeks to obtain for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally secured 
homeland in Palestine." declared Herzl. And his anti-assimilationist dictum that "Zionism is a 
return to the Jewish fold even before it is a return to the Jewish land," was an expression of 
his own experience which was extended into the official platform of Zionisn as the aim of 
"strengthening the Jewish national sentiment and national consciousness." [31 

Another leading figure who addressed the Congress was Max Nordau, a Hungarian Jewish 
physician and author, who delivered a polemic against assimilated Jews. "For the first time 
the Jewish problem was presented forcefully before a European forum," wrote Weizmann. 
But the Russian Jews thought Herzl was patronizing them as Askenazim. They found his 
"western dignity did not sit well with our Russian- Jewish realism; and without wanting to, we 
could not help irritating him." [41 

As a result of the Congress, the "Basic Protocol," keystone of the world Zionist movement, 
was adopted as follows: 

Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by 
public law. The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of 
this end: 

1. The promotion on suitable lines of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish 
agricultural and industrial workers. 

2. The organization and binding together of the whole of Jewry by means of 
appropriate institutions, local and international, in accordance with the laws of 
each country. 

3 . The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and 
consciousness. 

4. Preparatory steps towards obtaining Government consent where necessary to 
the attainment of the aim of Zionism.[51 

The British Chovevei-Zion Association declined an invitation to be represented at the 
Congress, and the Executive Committee of the Association of Rabbis in Germany protested 
that: 

1. The efforts of so-called Zionists to found a Jewish national state in Palestine 
contradict the messianic promise of Judaism as contained in the Holy Writ and in 
later religious sources. 

2. Judaism obligates its adherents to serve with all devotion the Fatherland to 
which they belong, and to further its national interests with all their heart and 
with all their strength. 

3. However, those noble aims directed toward the colonization of Palestine by 
Jewish peasants and farmers are not in contradiction to these obligations, 
because they have no relation whatsoever to the founding of a national state. [61 



In conversation with a delegate at the First Congress, Litman Rosenthal, Herzl said, 

It may be that Turkey will refuse or be unable to understand us. This will not 
discourage us. We will seek other means to accomplish our end. The Orient 
question is now the question of the day. Sooner or later it will bring about a 
conflict among the nations. A European war is imminent. . The great European 
War must come. With my watch in hand do I await this terrible moment. After 
the great European war is ended the Peace Conference will assemble. We must 
be ready for that time. We will assuredly be called to this great conference of the 
nations and we must prove to them the urgent importance of a Zionist solution to 
the Jewish Question. We must prove to them that the problem of the Orient and 
Palestine is one with the problem of the Jews — both must be solved together. 
We must prove to them that the Jewish problem is a world problem and that a 
world problem must be solved by the world. And the solution must be the return 
of Palestine to the Jewish people. [American Jewish News, 7 March 1919] 

A few months later, in a message to a Jewish conference in London, Herzl wrote "the first 
moment I entered the Movement my eyes were directed towards England because I saw that 
by reason of the general situation of things there it was the Archimedean point where the 
lever could be applied." Herzl showed his desire for some foothold in England, and also 
perhaps his respect for London as the world's financial center, by causing the Jewish Colonial 
Trust, which was to be the main financial instrument of his Movement, to be incorporated in 
1899 as an English company. 

Herzl was indefatigable. He offered the Sultan of Turkey help in re-organizing his financial 
affairs in return for assistance in Jewish settlement in Palestine. [71 To the Kaiser, who visited 
Palestine in 1888 and again in 1898, [CI he promised support for furthering German interests 
in the Near East; a similar offer was made to King Edward VII of England; and he personally 
promised the Pope to respect the holy places of Christendom in return for Vatican 
support. [Dl But only from the Czar did he receive, through the Minister of the Interior, a 
pledge of "moral and material assistance with respect to the measures taken by the movement 
which would lead to a diminution of the Jewish population in Russia." [81 

He reported his work to the Sixth Zionist Congress at Basle on 23 August 1903, but stated, 
"Zion is not and can never be. It is merely an expedient for colonization purposes, but, be it 
well understood, an expedient founded on a national and political basis." [9J 

When pressed for Jewish colonization in Palestine, the Turkish Sublime Porte offered a 
charter for any other Turkish territory [with acceptance by the settlers of Ottoman 
citizenship] which Herzl refused. [1 1] The British Establishment, aware of Herzl's activities 
through his appearance before the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, [EJ and 
powerful press organs such as the Daily Chronicle and Pall Mall Gazette which were 
demanding a conference of the Powers to consider the Zionist program, [12] somewhat 
characteristically, had shown a willingness to negotiate about a Jewish colony in the Egyptian 
territory of El-Arish on the Turco-Egyptian frontier in the Sinai Peninsula. But the Egyptian 
Government objected to making Nile water available for irrigation; the Turkish Government, 
through its Commissioner in Cairo, objected; and the British Agent in Cairo, Lord Cromer, 
finally advised the scheme's rejection. [13] 

Meanwhile, returning from a visit to British East Africa in the Spring of 1903, Prime Minister 
Joseph Chamberlain put to Herzl the idea of a Jewish settlement in what was soon to become 
the Colony of Kenya, but through a misunderstanding Herzl believed that Uganda was 
intended, and it was referred to as the "Uganda scheme." Of the part of the conversation on 



the El-'Arish proposal, Herzl wrote in his diary that he had told Chamberlain that eventually 
we shall gain our aims "not from the goodwill but from the jealously of the Powers." [141 
With the failure of the El-'Arish proposal, Herzl authorized the preparation of a draft scheme 
for settlement in East Africa. This was prepared by the legal firm of Lloyd George, Roberts 
and Company, on the instructions of Herzl's go-between with the British Government, 
Leopold Greenberg. [151 

Herzl urged acceptance of the "Uganda scheme," favoring it as a temporary refuge, but he 
was opposed from all sides, and died suddenly of heart failure on 3 July 1904. Herzl's death 
rid the Zionists of an "alien," and he was replaced by David Wolffsohn (the Litvak [F1). [161 

The "Uganda proposal" split the Zionist movement. Some who favored it formed the Jewish 
Territorial Organization, under the leadership of Israel Zangwill (1864-1926). For these 
territorialists, the renunciation of "Zion" was not generally felt as an ideological sacrifice; 
instead they contended that not mystical claims to "historic attachment" but present 
conditions should determine the location of a Jewish national homeland. [171 

In Turkey, the "Young Turk" (Committee of Union and Progress) revolution of 1908 was 
ostensibly a popular movement opposed to foreign influence. However, Jews and crypto-Jews 
known as Dunmeh had played a leading part in the Revolution. [191 

The Zionists opened a branch of the Anglo-Palestine Bank in the Turkish capital, and the 
bank became the headquarters of their work in the Ottoman Empire. Victor Jacobson [GJ was 
brought from Beirut, "ostensibly to represent the Anglo-Palestine Company, but really to 
make Zionist propaganda among the Turkish Jews." [201 His contacts included both political 
parties, discussions with Arab members of Parliament from Syria and Palestine, and a general 
approach to young Ottoman intellectuals through a newspaper issued by the Zionist 
office. [2 11 In Turkey, as in Germany, "Their own native Jews were resentful of the attempt to 
segregate them as Jews and were opposed to the intrusion of Jewish nationalism in their 
domestic affairs." Though several periodicals in French "were subvened" by the Zionist-front 
office under Dr. Victor Jacobson, [221 (the first Zionist who aspired to be not a Zionist leader 
but a "career" diplomat,) and although he built up good political connections through social 
contacts, "always avoiding the sharpness of a direct issue, and waiting in patient oriental 
fashion for the insidious seed of propaganda to fructify," [231 yet some of those engaged in 
the work, notably Vladimir (Zev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940), came to despair of success so long 
as the Ottoman Empire controlled Palestine. They henceforth pinned their hopes on its 
collapse. [241 

At the Tenth Zionist Congress in 1911, David Wolffsohn, who had succeeded Herzl, said in 
his presidential address that what the Zionists wanted was not a Jewish state but a homeland, 
[261 while Max Nordau denounced the "infamous traducers," who alleged that "the Zionists 
... wanted to worm their way into Turkey in order to seize Palestine . It is our duty to 
convince (the Turks) that ... they possess in the whole world no more generous and 
self-sacrificing friends than the Zionists." [HJ [271 

The mild sympathy which the Young Turks had shown for Zionism was replaced by suspicion 
as growing national unrest threatened the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Balkans. Zionist 
policy then shifted to the Arabs, so that they might think of Zionism as a possible 
make -weight against the Turks. But Zionists soon observed that their reception by Arab 
leaders grew warmer as the Arabs were disappointed in their hopes of gaining concessions 
from the Turks, but cooled swiftly when these hopes revived. The more than 60 Arab 
parliamentary delegates in Constantinople and the newly active Arabic press kept up "a 
drumfire of complaints" against Jewish immigration, land purchase and settlement in 
Palestine.[281 



"After many years of striving, the conviction was forced upon us that we stood before a blank 
wall, which it was impossible for us to surmount by ordinary political means," said Weizmann 
of the last pre-war Zionist Congress. But the strength of the national will forged for itself two 
main roads towards its goal — the gradual extension and strengthening of our Yishuv (Hebrew: 
literally, "settlement," a collective name for the Jewish settlers) in Palestine and the spreading 
of the Zionist idea throughout the length and breadth of Jewry. [291 

The Turks were doing all they could to keep Jews out of Palestine. But this barrier was 
covertly surmounted, partly due to the venality of Turkish officials, [301 (as delicately put in 
a Zionist report — "it was always possible to get round the individual official with a little 
artifice"); [321 and partly to the diligence of the Russian consuls in Palestine in protecting 
Russian Jews and saving them from expulsion. [331 

But if Zionism were to succeed in its ambitions, Ottoman rule of Palestine must end. Arab 
independence could be prevented by the intervention of England and France, Germany or 
Russia. The Eastern Jews hated Czarist Russia. With the entente cordiale in existence, it was 
to be Germany or England, with the odds slightly in Britain's favor in potential support of the 
Zionist aim in Palestine, as well as in military power. [II On the other hand, Zionism was 
attracting some German and Austrian Jews with important financial interests and had to take 
into account strong Jewish anti-Zionist opinion in England. 

But before Zionism had finally reckoned it could gain no special consideration in Palestine 
from Turkey, the correspondent of The Times was able to report in a message published 14 
April 1911, of the Zionist organ Jeune Turc's [JJ "violent hostility to England" and "its 
germanophile enthusiasm," and to the propaganda carried on among Turkish Jews by 
"German Zionist agents." When the policy line altered, this impression in England had to be 
erased. [341 The concern of the majority of rich English Jews was not allayed by articles in the 
Jewish Chronicle, edited by Leopold Greenberg, pointing out that in the Basle program there 
was "not a word of any autonomous Jewish state," [351 and in Die Welt, the official organ of 
the Movement, the article by Nahum Sokolow, then the General Secretary of the Zionist 
Organization, in which he protested that there was no truth in the allegation that Zionism 
aimed at the establishment of an independent Jewish State. [3 61 Even at the 1 1th Congress in 
1913, Otto Warburg, speaking as chairman of the Zionist Executive, gave assurances of 
loyalty to Turkey, adding that in colonizing Palestine and developing its resources, Zionists 
would be making a valuable contribution to the progress of the Turkish Empire. [371 

[A1 A letter entered in Herzl's diary on 15 May 1896 states that the head of the Armenian 
movement in London is Avetis Nazarhek, "and he directs the paper Huntchak (The 
Bell). He will be spoken to." 

[B1 On either side of the main doorway of the hall hung white banners with two blue stripes, 
and over the doorway was placed a six-pointed "Shield of David." It was the invention 
of David Wolffsohn, who employed the colors of the traditional Jewish prayer shawl. 
Fifty years later, the combined emblems became the flag of the Zionist state. The 
"Shield of David" is of Assyrian origin: previously a decorative motif or magical 
emblem. It appeared on the heraldic flag of the Jews in Prague in 1527. 

[CI On the latter trip he was accompanied by his Empress. Their yacht, the Hohenzollern, 
put in at Haifa, and they were escorted to Jerusalem by 2,000 Turkish soldiers. 

[D1 Pope Pius X told him that the Church could not support the return of "infidel Jews" to 
the Holy Land.[101 



[EJ In 1880, there were about 60,000 Jews in England. Between 1881 and 1905, there was 
an immigration of some 100,000 Eastern Jews. Though cut by the Aliens Bill of the 
Balfour Government, which became law in the summer of 1905, immigration continued 
so that by 1914 there was a Jewish population in England of some 300,000. A leader of 
the fight against the Aliens Bill and against tightening up naturalization regulations in 
1903-1904 was Winston S. Churchill. [181 

[F] The Eastern Jews referred to each other as "Litvaks" (Lithuania), "Galizianers" 

(Galicia), "Polaks," "Hungarians," and geographical regions of their ancestral origin, 
e.g., "Pinskers"; never by the term Jew. 

[GJ (1869 — 1935). Born in the Crimea, and nurtured in the atmosphere of assimilation and 
revolutionary agitation in Russia, Jacobson had organized clubs and written about 
Zionism in Russian Jewish newspapers. After the First World War, the era of the direct 
and indirect bribe and the contact man gave way to one in which the interests of 
nationalities, represented by diplomat-attorneys, had to be met, wrote Lipsky: "In this 
new world into which Jacobson was thrown, he laboured with the delicacy and 
concentration of an artist . . working persistently and with vision to build up an interest 
in the cause. He had to win sympathy as well as conviction." [25J 

[HJ In the Zionist Congress of 191 1, (22 years before Hitler came to power, and three years 
before World War I), Nordau said, "How dare the smooth talkers, the clever official 
blabbers, open their mouths and boast of progress ... Here they hold jubilant peace 
conferences in which they talk against war... But the same righteous governments, who 
are so nobly, industriously active to establish the eternal peace, are preparing, by their 
own confession, complete annihilation for six million people, and there is nobody, 
except the doomed themselves, to raise his voice in protest although this is a worse 
crime than any war ..." [3JJ 

[I] Approximate annual expenditure for military purposes by the European Powers in the 
first years of the century were: France — £38,400,000; Germany — £38,000,000; Italy — 
£15,000,000; Russia - £43,000,000; United States - £38,300,000; Great Britain - 
£69,000,000 at pre- 19 14 values of sterling. 

|71 Its business manager was a German Jew, Sam Hochberg. Among invited contributors 
was the immensely wealthy Russian Jew Alexander Helphand who, as "Parvus," was 
later to suggest to the German left-wing parties that Lenin and his associates be sent to 
Russia in 1917 to demoralize still further the beaten Russian armies. 



The Great War 

Until mid- 19 14, the surface of European diplomatic relations was placid, reflecting 
successfully negotiated settlements of colonial and other questions. But certain British 
journalists were charged by their contemporaries "that they deliberately set out to poison 
Anglo-German relations and to create by their scaremongering such a climate of public 
opinion that war between the two Great Powers became inevitable." (The Scaremongers: The 
Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896-1914, A. J. A. Morris, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 
1984) 

Were they paid or pure? Every anti-German diatribe in British newspapers added to German 
government concern as to whether it was part of a policy instigated or condoned by Downing 
Street. Further, there were groups in every major European country which could see only in 
war the possible means to further their interests or to thwart the ambitions of their rivals. This 
is why the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian 
throne, on 28 June in Sarajevo, soon set Europe crackling with fire, a fire which naturally 



spread through the lines of communications to colonial territories as far away as China. 

On 28 July, Austria declared war on Serbia. Germany sent an ultimatum to Russia threatening 
hostilities if orders for total mobilization of the Russian army and navy were not 
countermanded. 

A telegram dated 29 July 1914 from the Czar Nicholas to the Emperor Wilhelm, proposing 
that the Austro-Serbian dispute should be referred to the Hague Tribunal, remained 
unanswered. At the same time Germany sent a message to France asking if she would remain 
neutral; but France, which had absorbed issue after issue of Russian railroad bonds in 
addition to other problems, was unequivocal in supporting Russia. Amid mounting tension 
and frontier violations, Germany declared war on Russia and France. 

The French Chief-of-Staff, General Joseph Joffre, was prepared to march into Belgium if the 
Germans first violated its neutrality [381 which had been guaranteed by Britain, France, 
Prussia, Austria and Russia. German troops crossed the Belgian frontier (on 4 August at 8 
a.m.) and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. 

First Pledge 

Lord Kitchener, who had left London at 1 1:30 on the morning of 3 August to return to Egypt 
after leave, was stopped at Dover and put in charge of the War Office. [3 91 At the first 
meeting of the War Council he warned his colleagues of a long struggle which would be won 
not at sea but on land, for which Britain would have to raise an army of millions of men and 
maintain them in the field for several years. [401 When the defense of Egypt was discussed at 
the meeting, Winston Churchill suggested that the ideal method of defending Egypt was to 
attack the Gallipoli Peninsula which, if successful, would give Britain control of the 
Dardenelles. But this operation was very difficult, and required a large force. He preferred 
the alternative of a feint at Gallipoli, and a landing at Haifa or some other point on the Syrian 
coast. 

In Turkey, the Sultan had taken the title of Khalif-al-lslam, or supreme religious leader of 
Moslems everywhere, and emissaries were dispatched to Arab chiefs with instructions that in 
the event of Turkey being involved in the European hostilities, they were to declare a jihad, 
or Moslem holy war. A psychological and physical force which Kitchener of Khartoum, the 
avenger of General Gordon's death, understood very well. 

Kitchener planned to draw the sting of the jihad, which could affect British-Indian forces and 
rule in the East, by promoting an Arab revolt to be led by Hussein, who had been allowed by 
the Turks to assume his hereditary dignity as Sherif of Mecca and titular ruler of the Hejaz. 
Kitchener cabled on 13 October 1914 to his son, Abdullah, in Mecca, saying that if the Arab 
nation assisted England in this war, England would guarantee that no internal intervention 
took place in Arabia, and would give the Arabs every assistance against external aggression. 

A series of letters passed between Sherif Hussein and the British Government through Sir 
Henry McMahon, High Commissioner for Egypt, designed to secure Arab support for the 
British in the Great War. One dated 24 October 1915 committed HMG to the inclusion of 
Palestine within the boundaries of Arab independence after the war, but excluded the area 
now known as Lebanon. This is clearly recognized in a secret "Memorandum on British 
Commitments to King Hussein" prepared for the inner group at the Peace Conference in 
1919. (See Appendix) I found a copy in 1964 among the papers of the late Professor Wm. 
Westermann, who had been adviser on Turkish affairs to the American Delegation to the 
Peace Conference. 



The Second Pledge 

As the major ally, France's claim to preference in parts of Syria could not be ignored. The 
British Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, told the French Ambassador in London, Mr. Paul 
Gambon, on 21 October 1915, of the exchanges of correspondence with Sherif Hussein, and 
suggested that the two governments arrive at an understanding with their Russian ally on their 
future interests in the Ottoman Empire. 

M. Picot was appointed French representative with Sir Mark Sykes, now Secretary of the 
British War Cabinet, to define the interests of their countries and to go to Russia to include 
that country's views in their agreement. 

In the subsequent secret discussions with Foreign Secretary Sazonov, Russia was accorded 
the occupation of Constantinople, both shores of the Bosporus and some parts of "Turkish" 
Armenia. [A] France claimed Lebanon and Syria eastwards to Mosul. Palestine did in fact 
have inhabitants and shrines of the Greek and Russian Orthodox and Armenian churches, and 
Russia at first claimed a right to the area as their protector. This was countered by 
Sykes-Picot and the claim was withdrawn to the extent that Russia, in consultation with the 
other Allies, would only participate in deciding a form of international administration for 
Palestine. 

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was incompatible with the pledges made to the Arabs. When the 
Turks gave Hussein details of the Agreement after the Russian revolution, he confined his 
action to a formal repudiation. 

Like the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Tripartite Agreement made no mention of 
concessions to Zionism in the future disposition of Palestine, or even mention of the word 
"Jew." However it is now known that before the departure of Sykes [B] for Petrograd on 27 
February 1916 for discussions with Sazonov, he was approached with a plan by Herbert 
Samuel, who had a seat in the Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board and was 
strongly sympathetic to Herzl's Zionism. [4 11 

The plan put forward by Samuel was in the form of a memorandum which Sykes thought 
prudent to commit to memory and destroy, Commenting on it, Sykes wrote to Samuel 
suggesting that if Belgium should assume the administration of Palestine it might be more 
acceptable to France as an alternative to the international administration which she wanted 
and the Zionists did not. [421 Of boundaries marked on a map attached to the memorandum 
he wrote, "By excluding Hebron and the East of the Jordan there is less to discuss with the 
Moslems, as the Mosque of Omar then becomes the only matter of vital importance to discuss 
with them and further does away with any contact with the bedouins, who never cross the 
river except on business. I imagine that the principal object of Zionism is the realization of the 
ideal of an existing center of nationality rather than boundaries or extent of territory. The 
moment I return I will let you know how things stand at Pd." [431 

However, in conversations both with Sykes and the French ambassador, Sazonov was careful 
not to commit himself as to the extent of the Russian interest in Palestine, but made it clear 
that Russia would have to insist that not only the holy places, but all towns and localities in 
which there were religious establishments belonging to the Orthodox Church, should be 
placed under international administration, with a guarantee for free access to the 
Mediterranean. [441 

Czarist Russia would not agree to a Zionist formula for Palestine; but its days were 



numbered. 

A) This new offer to Russia of a direct outlet into the Mediterranean is a measure of the great 
importance attached by Britain and France to continued and wholehearted Russian 
participation in the war. British policy from the end of the Napoleonic wars had been directed 
against Russia's efforts to extend its conquests to the Golden Horn and the Mediterranean 
(threatening Egypt and the way to India). For this reason, Britain and France had formed an 
alliance and fought the Crimean War (1854-56), which ended in the Black Sea being declared 
neutral; no warships could enter it nor could arsenals be built on its shores. 

But Russian concern for the capture of Constantinople was more than economic and 
strategic. It was not unusual for priests to declare that the Russian people had a sacred duty 
to drive out the "infidel" Turk and raise the orthodox cross on the dome of Santa Sophia. 

In 1877, the Russian armies again moved towards Constantinople with the excuse of 
avenging cruelties practiced on Christians. Again England frustrated these designs and the 
aggression ended with the Congress of Berlin, and British occupation of Cyprus. 

B) Sir Mark Sykes, Secretary of the British War Cabinet, sent to Russia to negotiate the 
Tripartite (Sykes-Picot) Agreement for the Partition of the Ottoman Empire. M. Picot was the 
French representative in the negotiations. Neither Hussein nor Sir Henry McMahon were 
made aware of these secret discussions. Among other things, the agreement called for parts of 
Palestine to be placed under "an international administration." 

The Third Pledge 

In 1914, the central office of the Zionist Organization and the seat of its directorate, the 
Zionist Executive, were in Berlin. It already had adherents in most Eastern Jewish 
communities, including all the countries at war, though its main strength was in Russia and 
Austria-Hungary. [45J Some important institutions, namely, the Jewish Colonial Trust, the 
Anglo-Palestine Company and the Jewish National Fund, were incorporated in England. Of 
the Executive, two members (Otto Warburg [A] and Arthur Hantke) were German citizens, 
three (Yechiel Tschlenow, Nahum Sokolow and Victor Jacobson) were Russians and one 
(Shmarya Levin) had recently exchanged his Russian for Austro-Hungarian nationality. The 
25 members of the General Council included 12 from Germany and Austria-Hungary, 7 from 
Russia... Chaim Weizmann and Leopold Kessler) from England, and one each from Belgium, 
France, Holland and Rumania. [461 

Some prominent German Zionists associated themselves with a newly founded organization 
known as the Komitee fur den Osten, whose aims were: "To place at the disposal of the 
German Government the special knowledge of the founders and their relations with the Jews 
in Eastern Europe and in America, so as to contribute to the overthrow of Czarist Russia and 
to secure the national autonomy of the Jews." [471 

Influential Zionists outside the Central Powers were disturbed by the activities of the K.f.d.O. 
and anxious for the Zionist movement not to be compromised. Weizmann's advice was that 
the central office be moved from Berlin and that the conduct of Zionist affairs during the war 
should he entrusted to a provisional executive committee for general Zionist affairs in the 
United States. 

At a conference in New York on 30 August 1914, this committee was set up under the 
chairmanship of Louis D. Brandeis, with the British-born Dr. Richard Gottheil and Jacob de 
Haas, Rabbi Stephen Wise and Felix Frankfurter, among his principal lieutenants. For 



Shmarya Levin, the representative of the Zionist Executive in the United States, and Dr. 
Judah Magnes, to whom the alliance of England and France with Russia seemed "unholy," 
Russian czarism was the enemy against which their force should be pitted. [481 But on 1 
October 1914 Gottheil, first President of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote from the 
Department of Semitic Languages, Columbia University, to Brandeis in Boston enclosing a 
memorandum on what the organization planned to seek from the belligerents, with respect to 
the Russian Jews: 

We have got to be prepared to work under the Government of any one of the 
Powers ... shall be glad to have any suggestion from you in regard to this 
memorandum, and shall be glad to know if it meets with your approval. I 
recognize that I ought not to have put it out without first consulting you; but the 
exigencies of the situation demanded immediate action. We ought to be fully 
prepared to take advantage of any occasion that offers itself. [491 

In a speech on 9 November, four days after Britain's declaration of war on Turkey, Prime 
Minister Asquith said that the traditional eastern policy had been abandoned and the 
dismemberment of the Turkish Empire had become a war aim. "It is the Ottoman 
Government," he declared, "and not we who have rung the death knell of Ottoman dominion 
not only in Europe but in Asia." [501 The statement followed a discussion of the subject at a 
Cabinet meeting earlier that day, at which we know, from Herbert Samuel's memoirs, that 
Lloyd George, who had been retained as legal counsel by the Zionists some years before, [511 
"referred to the ultimate destiny of Palestine." In a talk with Samuel after the meeting, Lloyd 
George assured him that "he was very keen to see a Jewish state established in Palestine." 

On the same day, Samuel developed the Zionist position more fully in a conversation with the 
Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. He spoke of Zionist aspirations for the establishment in 
Palestine of a Jewish state, and of the importance of its geographical position to the British 
Empire. Such a state, he said, "could not be large enough to defend itself." and it would 
therefore be essential that it should be by constitution, neutral. Grey asked whether Syria as a 
whole must necessarily go with Palestine, and Samuel replied that this was not only 
unnecessary but inadvisable, since it would bring in a large and unassimilable Arab 
population. "It would," he said be a great advantage if the remainder of Syria were annexed 
by France, as it would be far better for the state to have a European Power as a neighbor than 
the Turk. " [521 

In January 1915 Samuel produced a Zionist memorandum on Palestine after discussions with 
Weizmann and Lloyd George. It contained arguments in favor of combining British 
annexation of Palestine with British support for Zionist aspirations, and ended with objections 
to any other solution. [531 Samuel circulated it to his colleagues in the Cabinet. Lloyd George 
was already a Zionist "partisan"; Lord Haldane, to whom Weizmann had had access, wrote 
expressing a friendly interest; [541 though privately expressing Zionist sympathies, the 
Marquess of Crewe presumably did not express any views in the Cabinet on the 
memorandum; [551 Zionism had a strong sentimental attraction for Grey [561 but his 
colleagues, including his cousin Edwin Montagu, did not give him much encouragement. 
Prime Minister Asquith wrote: "I confess that I am not attracted by the proposed addition to 
our responsibilities, but it is a curious illustration of Dissy's favorite maxim that race is 
everything to find this almost lyrical outburst proceeding from the well-ordered and 
methodical brain of H.S." [571 

After further conversations with Lloyd George and Grey. [581 Samuel circulated a revised 
text to the Cabinet in the middle of March 1915. 

It is not known if the memorandum was formally considered by the Cabinet, but Asquith 



wrote in his diary on 13 March 1915 of Samuel's " dithyramb ic memorandum" of which Lloyd 
George was "the only other partisan. " [591 Certainly, at this time, Zionist claims and 
aspirations were secondary to British policy towards Russia and the Arabs. 

Britain, France and Germany attached considerable importance to the attitudes of Jewry 
towards them because money and credit were needed for the war. The international banking 
houses of Lazard Freres, Eugene Mayer, J. & W. Seligman, Speyer Brothers and M.M. 
Warburg, were all conducting major operations in the United States, as were the Rothschilds 
through the New York banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.[B] Apart from their goodwill, the 
votes of America's Jewish community of 3,000,000 were important to the issue of that 
country's intervention or non-intervention in the war, and the provision of military supplies. 
The great majority represented the one-third of the Jews of Eastern Europe, including Russia, 
who had left their homelands and come to America between 1880 and 1914. Many detested 
Czarist Russia and wished to see it destroyed. Of these Jews, not more than 12,000 were 
enrolled members of the Zionist Organization. [601 

The goodwill of Jewry, and especially America's Jews, was assessed by both sides in the war 
as being very important. The once-poor Eastern European Jews had achieved a dominant 
position in New York's garment industry, and had become a significant political force. In 
1914 they sent a Russian-born socialist to the Congress of the United States. They produced 
dozens of Yiddish periodicals; they patronized numerous Yiddish theatres and music halls; 
their sons and daughters were filling the metropolitan colleges and universities. [6 11 

From the beginning of the war, the German Ambassador in Washington. Count Bernstorff, 
was provided, by the Komitee fuer den Osten, with an adviser on Jewish Affairs (Isaac 
Straus); and when the head of the Zionist Agency in Constantinople appealed, in the winter 
of 1914, to the German Embassy to do what it could to relieve the pressure on the Jews in 
Palestine, it was reinforced by a similar appeal to Berlin from Bernstorff. [621 In November 
1914, therefore, the German Embassy in Constantinople received instructions to recommend 
that the Turks sanction the re-opening of the Anglo-Palestine Company's Bank — a key 
Zionist institution. In December the Embassy made representations which prevented a 
projected mass deportation of Jews of Russian nationality. [631 In February 1915 German 
influence helped to save a number of Jews in Palestine from imprisonment or expulsion, and 
"a dozen or twenty times" the Germans intervened with the Turks at the request of the Zionist 
office in Turkey, "thus saving and protecting the Yishuv." [651 The German representations 
reinforced those of the American Ambassador in Turkey (Henry Morgenthau).[C] [661 
Moreover, both the German consulates in Palestine and the head of the German military 
mission there frequently exerted their influence on behalf of the Jews. [671 

German respect for Jewish goodwill enabled the Constantinople Zionist Agency from 
December 1914 to use the German diplomatic courier service and telegraphic code for 
communicating with Berlin and Palestine. [681 On 5 June 1915 Victor Jacobson was received 
at the German Foreign Office by the Under-Secretary of State (von Zimmerman) and regular 
contact commenced between the Berlin Zionist Executive (Warburg, Hantke and Jacobson) 
and the German Foreign Office. [691 

Zionist propagandists in Germany elaborated and publicized the idea that Turkey could 
become a German satellite and its Empire in Asia made wide open to German enterprise; 
support for "a revival of Jewish life in Palestine" would form a bastion of German influence 
in that part of the world. [701 This was followed by solicitation of the German Foreign Office 
to notify the German consuls in Palestine of the German Government's friendly interest in 
Zionism. Such a course was favored by von Neurath [D] when asked by Berlin for his views 
in October, and in November of 1915, the text for such a document was agreed upon and 



circulated after the approval of the German Chancellor (Bethmann-Hollweg). It was 
cautiously and vaguely worded so as not to upset Turkish susceptibilities, stating to the 
Palestine consuls that the German Government looked favorably on "Jewish activities 
designed to promote the economic and cultural progress of the Jews in Turkey, and also on 
the immigration and settlement of Jews from other countries." [711 

The Zionists felt that an important advance toward a firm German commitment to their aims 
had been made, but when the Berlin Zionist Executive pressed for a public assurance of 
sympathy and support, the Government told them to wait until the end of the war, when a 
victorious Germany would demonstrate its goodwill. [721 

When Zionist leaders in Germany met Jemal Pasha, by arrangement with the Foreign Office, 
during his visit to Berlin in the summer of 1917, they were told that the existing Jewish 
population would be treated fairly but that no further Jewish immigrants would he allowed. 
Jews could settle anywhere else but not in Palestine. The Turkish Government, Jemal Pasha 
declared, wanted no new nationality problems, nor was it prepared to antagonize the 
Palestinian Arabs, "who formed the majority of the population and were to a man opposed to 
Zionism." [731 

A few weeks after the interview, the Berlin Zionists' pressure was further weakened by the 
uncovering by Turkish Intelligence of a Zionist spy ring working for General Allenby's 
Intelligence section under an Aaron Aaronssohn. "It is no wonder that the Germans, tempted 
as they may have been by its advantages, shrank from committing themselves to a pro-Zionist 
declaration." [741 

It was fortunate for Zionism that the American Jews as a whole showed no enthusiasm for the 
Allied cause, wrote Stein, political secretary of the Zionist Organization from 1920 to 1929, 
"If they had all along been reliable friends, there would have been no need to pay them any 
special attention." [751 

In 1914 the French Government had sponsored a visit to the United States by Professor 
Sylvain Levy and the Grand Rabbi of France with the object of influencing Jewish opinion in 
their favor, but without success. A year later, it tried to reply to disturbing reports from its 
embassy in Washington about the sympathies of American Jews [761 by sending a Jew of 
Hungarian origin (Professor Victor Basch) to the United States in November 1915. [771 

Ostensibly he represented the Ministry of Public Instruction, but his real mission was to 
influence American Jews through contact with their leaders. [781 Though armed with a 
message to American Jewry from Prime Minister Briand, he encountered an insuperable 
obstacle — the Russian alliance. "For Russia there is universal hatred and distrust ... We are 
reproached with one thing only, the persecution of the Russian Jews, which we tolerate — a 
toleration which makes us accomplices ... It is certain that any measures in favor of Jewish 
emancipation would be equivalent to a great battle lost by Germany." [791 Basch had to 
report to French President Poincare the failure of his mission. [801 

At the same time that Basch had been dispatched to the United States, the French 
Government approved the setting up of a "Comite de propagande Francais aupres des Juifs 
neutres," and Jacques Bigart, the Secretary of the Alliance Israelite, accepted a secretaryship 
of the Comite. Bigart suggested to Lucien Wolf, of the Jewish Conjoint Foreign Committee in 
London, that a similar committee be set up there. Wolf consulted the Foreign Office and was 
invited by Lord Robert Cecil to provide a full statement of his views. [8 11 

In December 1915 Wolf submitted a memorandum in which he analyzed the characteristics 
of the Jewish population of the United States and reached the conclusion that "the situation, 



though unsatisfactory, is far from unpromising." Though disclaiming Zionism, be wrote that 
"In America, the Zionist organizations have lately captured Jewish opinion." If a statement of 
sympathy with their aspirations were made, "I am confident they would sweep the whole of 
American Jewry into enthusiastic allegiance to their cause." [821 

Early in 1916 a further memorandum was submitted to the British Foreign Office as a formal 
communication from the Jewish Conjoint Foreign Committee. This stated that "the London 
(Conjoint) and Paris Committees formed to influence Jewish opinion in neutral countries in a 
sense favorable to the Allies" had agreed to make representations to their respective 
Governments. First, the Russian Government should be urged to ease the position of their 
Jews by immediate concessions for national-cultural autonomy secondly, "in view of the 
great organized strength of the Zionists in the United States," (in fact out of the three million 
Jews in the U.S. less than 12,000 had enrolled as Zionists in 1913), [831 the Allied Powers 
should give assurances to the Jews of facilities in Palestine for immigration and colonization, 
liberal local self-government for Jewish colonists, the establishment of a Jewish university, 
and for the recognition of Hebrew as one of the vernaculars of the land — in the event of their 
victory. [841 

On 9 March 1916 the Zionists were informed by the Foreign Office that "your suggested 
formula is receiving (Sir Edward Grey's) careful and sympathetic attention, but it is necessary 
for H.M.G. to consult their Allies on the subject." [851 A confidential memorandum was 
accordingly addressed to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs in Petrograd, to ascertain his 
views, though its paternity, seeing that Asquith was still Prime Minister, "remains to be 
discovered." [861 No direct reply was received, but in a note addressed to the British and 
French ambassadors four days later, Sazonov obliquely assented, subject to guarantees for the 
Orthodox Church and its establishments, to raise no objection to the settlement of Jewish 
colonists in Palestine. [871 

Nothing came of these proposals. On 4 July the Foreign Office informed the Conjoint 
Committee that an official announcement of support was inopportune. [881 They must be 
considered alongside the Sykes-Picot Agreement being negotiated at this time, and the virtual 
completion of the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence by 10 March 1916, with the hope that 
an Arab revolt and other measures would bring victory near. 

But 1916 was a disastrous year for the Allies. "In the story of the war" wrote Lloyd George, 

the end of 1916 found the fortunes of the Allies at their lowest ebb. In the 
offensives on the western front we had lost three men for every two of the 
Germans we had put out of action. Over 300,000 British troops were being 
immobilized for lack of initiative or equipment or both by the Turks in Egypt and 
Mesopotamia, and for the same reason nearly 400,000 Allied soldiers were for all 
purposes interned in the malarial plains around Salonika. [891 

The voluntary system of enlistment was abolished, and a mass conscript army of continental 
pattern was adopted, something which had never before occurred in British history. [E] [901 
German submarine activity in the Atlantic was formidable; nearly 1 1/2 million tons of 
merchant shipping had been sunk in 1916 alone. As for paying for the war, the Allies at first 
had used the huge American debts in Europe to pay for war supplies, but by 1916 the 
resources of J.P. Morgan and Company, the Allies' financial and purchasing agents in the 
United States, were said to be nearly exhausted by increased Allied demands for American 
credit. [9 11 There was rebellion in Ireland. Lord Robert Cecil stated to the British Cabinet: 
"France is within measurable distance of exhaustion. The political outlook of Italy is 
menacing. Her finance is tottering. In Russia, there is great discouragement. She has long 
been on the verge of revolution. Even her man-power seems coming near its limits. " [941 



Secretary of State Kitchener was gone — drowned when the cruiser Hampshire sank on 5 
June 1916 off the Orkneys when he was on his way to Archangel and Petrograd to nip the 
revolution in the bud. He had a better knowledge of the Middle East than anyone else in the 
Cabinet. The circumstances suggest espionage and treachery. Walter Page, the U.S. 
Ambassador in London, entered in his diary: "There was a hope and feeling that he (Lord 
Kitchener) might not come back... as I make out." 

There was a stalemate on all fronts. In Britain, France and Germany, hardly a family 
numbered all its sons among the living. But the British public — and the French, and the 
German — were not allowed to know the numbers of the dead and wounded. By restricting 
war correspondents, the American people were not allowed to know the truth either. 

The figures that are known are a recital of horrors. [E] 

In these circumstances, a European tradition of negotiated peace in scores of wars, might 
have led to peace at the end of 1916 or early 1917. 

Into this gloomy winter of 1916 walked a new figure. He was James Malcolm, [F] an Oxford 
educated Armenian [G] who, at the beginning of 1916, with the sanction of the British and 
Russian Governments, had been appointed by the Armenian Patriarch a member of the 
Armenian National Delegation to take charge of Armenian interests during and after the war. 
In this official capacity, and as adviser to the British Government on Eastern affairs, [951 he 
had frequent contacts with the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the War Office and the 
French and other Allied embassies in London, and made visits to Paris for consultations with 
his colleagues and leading French officials. He was passionately devoted to an Allied victory 
which he hoped would guarantee the national freedom of the Armenians then under Turkish 
and Russian rule. 

Sir Mark Sykes, with whom he was on terms of family friendship, told him that the Cabinet 
was looking anxiously for United States intervention in the war on the side of the Allies, but 
when asked what progress was being made in that direction, Sykes shook his head glumly, 
"Precious little," he replied. 

James Malcolm now suggested to Mark Sykes that the reason why previous overtures to 
American Jewry to support the Allies had received no attention was because the approach 
had been made to the wrong people. It was to the Zionist Jews that the British and French 
Governments should address their parleys. 

"You are going the wrong way about it," said Mr. Malcolm. "You can win the sympathy of 
certain politically-minded Jews everywhere, and especially in the United States, in one way 
only, and that is, by offering to try and secure Palestine for them." [961 

What really weighed most heavily now with Sykes were the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot 
Agreement. He told Malcolm that to offer to secure Palestine for the Jews was impossible. 
"Malcolm insisted that there was no other way and urged a Cabinet discussion. A day or two 
later, Sykes told him that the matter had been mentioned to Lord Milner who had asked for 
further information. Malcolm pointed out the influence of Judge Brandeis of the American 
Supreme Court, and his strong Zionist sympathies." [971 

In the United States, the President's adviser, Louis D. Brandeis, a leading advocate of 
Zionism, had been inducted as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on 5 June 1916. That 
Wilson was vulnerable was evident, in that as early as 191 1, he had made known his 
profound interest in the Zionist idea and in Jewry. [981 



Malcolm described Wilson as being "attached to Brandeis by ties of peculiar hardness," a 
cryptic reference to the story that Wilson had been blackmailed for $40,000 for some hot 
love letters he had written to his neighbor's wife when he was President of Princeton. He did 
not have the money, and the go-between, Samuel Untermeyer, of the law firm of 
Guggenheim, Untermeyer & Marshall, said he would provide it if Wilson would appoint to 
the next vacancy on the Supreme Court a nominee selected by Mr. Untermeyer. The money 
was paid, the letters returned, and Brandeis had been the nominee. 

Wilson had written to the Senate, where opposition to the nominee was strong: "I have 
known him. I have tested him by seeking his advice upon some of the most difficult and 
perplexing public questions about which it was necessary for me to form a judgment When 
Brandeis had been approved by the Senate, Wilson wrote to Henry Morgenthau: "I never 
signed any commission with such satisfaction." "Relief might have been a more appropriate 
word. 

The fact that endorsement of Wilson's nominee by the Senate Judiciary Committee had only 
been made "after hearings of unprecedented length" [991 was not important. Brandeis had the 
President's ear; he was "formally concerned with the Department of State." [1001 This was 
the significant development, said Malcolm, which compelled a new approach to the Zionists 
by offering them the key to Palestine. 

The British Ambassador to the United States (Sir Cecil Spring-Rice) had written from 
Washington in January 1914 that "a deputation came down from New York and in two days 
'fixed' the two Houses so that the President had to renounce the idea of making a new treaty 
with Russia." [1011 In November 1914 he had written to the British Foreign Secretary of the 
German Jewish bankers who were extending credits to the German Government and were 
getting hold of the principal New York papers" thereby "bringing them over as much as they 
dare to the German side and "toiling in a solid phalanx to compass our destruction." [1021 

This anti-Russian sentiment was part of a deep concern for the well-being of Russian and 
Polish Jews. Brandeis wrote to his brother from Washington on 8 December 1914: "... You 
cannot possibly conceive the horrible sufferings of the Jews in Poland and adjacent countries. 
These changes of control from German to Russian and Polish anti-semitism are bringing 
miseries as great as the Jews ever suffered in all their exiles." [H] [1031 

In a speech to the Russian Duma on 9 February (27 January Gregorian) 1915, Foreign 
Minister Sazonov denied the calumnious stories which, he said, were circulated by Germany, 
of accounts of alleged pogroms against the Jews and of wholesale murders of Jews by the 
Russian armies. "If the Jewish Population suffered in the war zone, that circumstance 
unfortunately was inevitably associated with war, and the same conditions applied in equal 
measure to all people living within the region of military activity." He added to the rebuttal 
with accounts of hardship in areas of German military action in Poland, Belgium and 
Serbia. [1041 

It is noteworthy that the chairman of the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee responded 
to an appeal by the Brandeis group that all American Jews should organize to emphasize 
Zionist aims in Palestine before the Great Powers in any negotiations during or at the end of 
the war, by dissociating his community from the suggestion that Jews of other nationalities 
were to be accorded special status. He said that "the very thought of the mass of the Jews of 
America having a voice in the matter of deciding the welfare of the Jews in the world made 
him shrink in horror." [1071 

The new approach to the Zionist movement by Mark Sykes with James Malcolm as 



preliminary interlocutor took the form of a series of meetings at Chaim Weizmann's London 
house, with the knowledge and approval of the Secretary of the War Cabinet, Sir Maurice 
Hankey. 

A Programme for a New Administration of Palestine in Accordance with the Aspirations of 
the Zionist Movement was issued by the English Political Committee of the Zionist 
Organization in October 1916, and submitted to the British Foreign Office as a basis for 
discussion in order to give an official character to the informal house-talks. It included the 
following: 

(1) The Jewish Chartered Company is to have power to exercise the right of 
pre-emption over Crown and other lands and to acquire for its own use all or any 
concessions which may at any time be granted by the suzerain government or 
governments. 

(2) The present population, being too small, too poor and too little trained to 
make rapid progress, requires the introduction of a new and progressive element 
in the population. (But the rights of minority nationalities were to be protected). 

Other Points were, (3) recognition of separate Jewish nationality in Palestine; participation of 
the Palestine Jewish population in local self-government; (5) Jewish autonomy in purely 
Jewish affairs; (6) official recognition and legalization of existing Jewish institutions for 
colonization in Palestine. [1081 

This Programme does not appear to have reached Cabinet level at the time it was issued, 
probably because of Asquith's known lack of sympathy, but as recorded by Samuel Landman, 
the Zionist Organization was given official British facilities for its international 
correspondence. [1091 

Lloyd George, an earnest and powerful demagogue, was now prepared to oust Asquith, his 
chief, by a coup de main. With the death of Kitchener in the summer of 1916, he had passed 
from Munitions to the War Office and he saw the top of the parliamentary tree within his 
grasp. In this maneuver he was powerfully aided by the newspaper proprietor Northcliffe, [I] 
who turned all his publications from The Times downwards to depreciate Asquith, and by the 
newspaper-owing M.P., Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook). 

With public sympathy well prepared, Lloyd George demanded virtual control of war policy. 
It was intended that Asquith should refuse. He did. Lloyd George resigned. Asquith also 
resigned to facilitate the reconstruction of the Government. The King then sent for the 
Conservative leader, Bonar Law, who, as prearranged, advised him to offer the premiership 
to Lloyd George. [1101 

Asquith and Grey were out; Lloyd George and Balfour were in. With Lloyd George as Prime 
Minister from December 1916, Zionist relations with the British Government developed fast. 
Lloyd George had been legal counsel for the Zionists, and while Minister of Munitions, had 
had assistance from the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann; the new Foreign Minister, Arthur 
Balfour, was already known for his Zionist sympathies. 

The Zionists were undermining the wall between them and their Palestine objective which 
they had found impossible "to surmount by ordinary political means" prior to the war. [1111 
Herzl's suggestion that they would get Palestine "not from the goodwill but from the jealousy 
of the Powers," [1121 was being made to come true. 

The Zionists moved resolutely to exploit the new situation now that the Prime Minister and 



Foreign Secretary were their firm supporters. 

Landman, in his Secret History of the Balfour Declaration, wrote: 

Through General McDonogh, Director of Military Operations, who was won 
over by Fitzmaurice (formerly Dragoman of the British Embassy in 
Constantinople and a friend of James Malcolm), Dr. Weizmann was able, about 
this time, to secure from the Government the services of half a dozen younger 
Zionists for active work on behalf of Zionism. At the time, conscription was in 
force, and only those who were engaged on work of national importance could 
be released from active service at the Front. I remember Dr. Weizmann writing a 
letter to General McDonogh and invoking his assistance in obtaining the 
exemption from active service of Leon Simon, (who later rose to high rank in the 
Civil Service as Sir Leon Simon, C.B.), Harry Sacher, (on the editorial staff of 
the Manchester Guardian), Simon Marks, [J] Yamson Tolkowsky and myself. At 
Dr. Weizmann's request I was transferred from the War Office (M.I. 9), where I 
was then working, to the Ministry of Propaganda, which was under Lord 
Northcliffe, and later to the Zionist office, where I commenced work about 
December 1916. Simon Marks actually arrived at the Office in khaki, and 
immediately set about the task of organizing the office which, as will be easily 
understood, had to maintain constant communications with Zionists in most 
countries. 

From that time onwards for several years, Zionism was considered an ally of the 
British Government, and every help and assistance was forthcoming from each 
government department. Passport or travel difficulties did not exist when a man 
was recommended by our office. For instance, a certificate signed by me was 
accepted by the Home Office at that time as evidence that an Ottoman Jew was 
to be treated as a friendly alien and not as an enemy, which was the case with 
the Turkish subjects. 

A. Jacob Schiff, German-born senior partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and "the most 
influential figure of his day in American Jewish life," wrote in The Menorah Journal of 
April 1915: "It is well known that I am a German sympathizer ... England has been 
contaminated by her alliance with Russia ... am quite convinced that in Germany 
anti-Semitism is a thing of the past. [641 The Jewish Encyclopedia for 1906 states that 
"Schiffs firm subscribed for and floated the large Japanese war loan in 1904-05" (for 
the Russo-Japanese war), "in recognition of which the Mikado conferred on Schiff the 
second order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan." 

Partners with Schiff were Felix M. Warburg and his brother Paul who had come to 
New York in 1902 from Hamburg, and organized the Federal Reserve System. 

B. An award for Morgenthau's heavy financial support for Wilson's presidential campaign. 

C. Later, Foreign Minister (1932-38) and Protector of Bohemia (1939-43). 

D. Russian nationals resident in the United Kingdom (nearly all of them Jews), not having 
become British subjects, some 25,000 of military age, still escaped military service. [921 
This prompted Jabotinsky and Weizmann to urge the formation of a special brigade for 
Russian Jews, but the idea not favorably received by the Government, and the Zionists 
joined non-Zionists in an effort to persuade Russian Jews of military age to volunteer as 
individuals for service in the British army. The response was negligible, and in July 
1917 the Military Service (Conventions with Allies) Act was given Royal assent. Men 
of military age were invited to serve in the British army or risk deportation to Russia. 
However, the Russian revolution prevented its unhindered application. [931 

E . Half a million Frenchmen were lost in the first four months of war, 1 million lost by the 



end of 1915, and 5 million by 1918. Who can imagine that the Allies lost 600,000 men 

in one battle, the Somme, and the British more officers in the first few months than all 

wars of the previous hundred years put together? 

At Stalingrad, in the Second World War, the Wehrmacht had 230,000 men in the field. 

The German losses at Verdun alone were 325,000 killed or wounded. 

By this time a soldier in one of the better divisions could count on a maximum of three 

months' service without being killed or wounded, and the life expectancy for an officer 

at the front was down to five months in an ordinary regiment and six weeks in a crack 

one. 

F. See his Origins of the Balfour Declaration: Dr. Weizmann's Contribution . 

G. Born in Persia, where his family had settled before Elizabethan days. He was sent to 
school in England in 1881, being placed in the care of a friend and agent of his family, 
Sir Albert (Abdullah) Sassoon. Early in 1915, he founded the Russia Society in London 
among the British public as a means of improving relations between the two countries. 
Unlike the Zionists, he had no animus towards Czarist Russia. 

H. A reference to the 1914 invasion of Austria and East Prussia by the Russians with such 
vigor that many people believed that the "Russian steamroller" would soon reach 
Berlin and end the war. Only the diversion of whole army divisions from the Western 
to the Eastern Front under the command of General von Hindenburg saved Berlin, and 
in turn saved Paris. 

There was a direct effort by certain groups to support anti-Imperial activities in Russia 
from the United States, |T051|T061 but Brandeis was apparently not implicated. 

I. Northcliffe was small-minded enough to have Lloyd George called to the telephone, in 
front of friends, to demonstrate the politician's need of the Press. 

J. Associated with Israel M. Sieff, another of Weizmann's inner circle, in the business 
which later became Marks & Spencer, Ltd. Sieff was appointed an economic 
consultant to the U.S. Administration (OP A) in March 1924. As subsequent supporters, 
with Lord Melchett, of "Political and Economic Planning" (PEP), they exercised 
considerable influence on British inter-war policy. 

The Declaration, 1917 

The informal committee of Zionists and Mark Sykes as representative of the British 
Government, met on 7 February 1917 at the house of Moses Gaster, [A] the Chief Rabbi of 
the Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) congregations in England. Gaster opened the meeting 
with a statement that stressed Zionist support for British strategic interests in Palestine which 
were to be an integral part of any agreement between them. As these interests might be 
considered paramount to British statesmen, support for Zionist aims there, Caster said, was 
fully justified. Zionism was irrevocably opposed to any internationalization proposals, even 
an Anglo-French condominium. [1 131 

Herbert Samuel followed with an expression of the hope that Jews in Palestine would receive 
full national status, which would be shared by Jews in the Diaspora. The question of conflict 
of nationality was not mentioned and a succeeding speaker, Harry Sacher, suggested that the 
sharing should not involve the political implications of citizenship. [1141 Weizmann spoke of 
the necessity for unrestricted immigration. It is clear that the content of each speech was 
thoroughly prepared before the meeting. 

Sykes outlined the obstacles: the inevitable Russian objections, the opposition of the Arabs, 
and strongly pressed French claims to all Syria, including Palestine. [1151 James de Rothschild 
and Nahum Sokolow, the international Zionist leader, also spoke. 

I. The meeting ended with a summary of Zionist objectives: 



II. International recognition of Jewish right to Palestine; 

III. Juridical nationhood for the Jewish community in Palestine: 

IV. The creation of a Jewish chartered company in Palestine with rights to acquire land: 
V. Union and one administration for Palestine; and 

VI. Extra-territorial status for the holy places. [1171 

The first three points are Zionist, the last two were designed to placate England and Russia, 
respectively [1181 and probably Italy and the Vatican. Sokolow was chosen to act as Zionist 
representative, to negotiate with Sir Mark Sykes. 

The Zionists were, of course, coordinating their activities internationally. On the same day as 
the meeting in London, Rabbi Stephen Wise in the United States wrote to Brandeis: "I sent 
the memorandum to Colonel House covering our question, and he writes: 'I hope the dream 
you have may soon become a reality." [118a1 

The reports reaching England of impending dissolution of the Russian state practically 
removed the need for Russian endorsement of Zionist aims, but made French and Italian 
acceptance even more urgent. This at any rate was the belief of Sykes, Balfour, Lloyd George 
and Winston Churchill, who, as claimed in their subsequent statements, were convinced that 
proclaimed Allied support for Zionist aims would especially influence the United States. 
Events in Russia made the cooperation of Jewish groups with the Allies much easier. At a 
mass meeting in March 1917 to celebrate the revolution which had then taken place, Rabbi 
Stephen Wise, who had succeeded Brandeis as chairman of the American Provisional Zionist 
Committee after Brandeis's appointment to the Supreme Court, said: "I believe that of all the 
achievements of my people, none has been nobler than the part the sons and daughters of 
Israel have taken in the great movement which has culminated in free Russia." [1191 

Negotiations for a series of loans totalling $190,000,000 by the United States to the 
Provisional Government in Russia of Alexander Kerensky were begun on the advice of the 
U.S. ambassador to Russia, David R. Francis, who noted in his telegram to Secretary of State 
Lansing, "financial aid now from America would be a master-stroke. Confidential. 
Immeasurably important to the Jews that revolution succeed... " [1201 

On 22 March 1917 Jacob H. Schiff of Kuhn, Loch & Co., wrote to Mortimer Schiff, "We 
should be somewhat careful not to appear as overzealous but you might cable Cassel because 
of recent action of Germany (the declaration of unlimited U-boat warfare) and developments 
in Russia we shall no longer abstain from Allied Governments financing when opportunity 
offers." 

He also sent a congratulatory cable to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first Provisional 
Government, referring to the previous government as "the merciless persecutors of my 
co-religionists." 

In the same month, Leiber Davidovich Bronstein, alias Leon Trotsky, a Russian-born U.S. 
immigrant, had left the Bronx, New York, for Russia, with a contingent of followers, while 
V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin) and a party of about thirty were moving across Germany from 
Switzerland, through Scandinavia to Russia. Some evidence exists that Schiff and other 
sponsors like Helphand financed these revolutionaries. 

In March 1917, President Wilson denounced as "a little group of willful men," the 
non-interventionists who filibustered an Administration-sponsored bill that would have 
empowered Wilson to wage an undeclared naval war against Germany. The opposition to 
Wilson was led by Senators La Follette and Norris. 



On 5 April, the day before the United States Congress adopted a resolution of war, Schiff had 
been informed by Baron Gunzburg of the actual signing of the decrees removing all 
restrictions on the Jews in Russia. 

At a special session of Congress on 2 April 1917, President Wilson referred to American 
merchant ships taking supplies to the Allies which had been sunk during the previous month 
by German submarines (operating a counter-blockade; the British and French fleets having 
blockaded the Central Powers from the beginning of the war); and then told Congress that 
"wonderful and heartening things have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia." 

He asked for a declaration of war with a mission: 

for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in 
their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a 
universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring 
peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are 
and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has 
come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the 
principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace that she has treasured. 
God helping her, she can do no other, (emphasis supplied) 

That night crowds filled the streets, marching, shouting, singing Dixie" or "The Star Spangled 
Banner." Wilson turned to his secretary, Tumulty: "Think what that means, the applause. My 
message tonight was a message of death, How strange to applaud that!" 

So, within six months of Malcolm's specific suggestion to Sykes, the United States of 
America, guided by Woodrow Wilson, was on the side of the Allies in the Great War. 

Was Wilson guided by Brandeis away from neutrality — to war? 

In London, the War Cabinet led by Lloyd George lost no time committing British forces first 
to the capture of Jerusalem, and then to the total expulsion of the Turks from Palestine. The 
attack on Egypt, launched on 26 March 1917, attempting to take Gaza, ended in failure. By 
the end of April a second attack on Gaza had been driven back and it had become clear that 
there was no prospect of a quick success on this Front. 

From Cairo, where he had gone hoping to follow the Army into Jerusalem with Weizmann, 
Sykes telegraphed to the Foreign Office that, if the Egyptian Expeditionary Force was not 
reinforced then it would be necessary "to drop all Zionist projects ... Zionists in London and 
U.S.A. should be warned of this through M. Sokolow... " [120a1 

Three weeks later, Sykes was told that reinforcements were coming from Salonika. The War 
Cabinet also decided to replace the Force's commander with General Allenby. 

Sykes was the official negotiator for the whole project of assisting the Zionists. He acted 
immediately after the meeting at Gaster's house by asking his friend M. Picot to meet Nahum 
Sokolow at the French Embassy in London in an attempt to induce the French to give way on 
the question of British suzerainty in Palestine. [1211 James Malcolm was then asked to go 
alone to Paris to arrange an interview for Sokolow directly with the French Foreign Minister. 
Sokolow had been previously unsuccessful in obtaining the support of French Jewry for a 
meeting with the Minister; since the richest and most influential Jews in the United States and 



England, with the notable exception of the Rothschilds, who could have arranged such a 
meeting, were opposed to the political implications of Zionism. In Paris, the powerful 
Alliance Israelite Universelle had made every effort to dissuade him from his mission. [1221 
Not that the Zionists had no supporters in France other than Edmond de Rothschild, [B] but 
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no reason to entangle itself with fhem. [1231 Now James 
Malcolm opened the door directly to them as he had done in London. 

Sykes joined Malcolm and Sokolow in Paris. Sykes and Malcolm, apart from the 
consideration of Zionism and future American support for the war, were concerned with the 
possibility of an Arab-Jewish-Armenian entente which, through amity between Islamic, 
Jewish and Christian peoples, would bring peace, stability and a bright new future for the 
inhabitants of this area where Europe, Asia Minor and Africa meet. Sokolow went along for 
the diplomatic ride, but in a letter to Weizmann (20 April 1917) he wrote: "I regard the idea 
as quite fantastic. It is difficult to reach an understanding with the Arabs, but we will have to 
try. There are no conflicts between Jews and Armenians because there are no common 
interests whatever." [C] [1241 

Several conversations were held with Picot, including one on 9 April when other officials 
included Jules Cambon, the Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry, and the Minister's 
Chef de Cabinet, Exactly what assurances were given to Sokolow is uncertain, but he wrote 
to Weizmann "that they accept in principle the recognition of Jewish nationality in terms of a 
national home, local autonomy, etc." [1251 And to Brandeis and Tschlenow, he telegraphed 
through French official channels: "... Have full confidence Allied victory will realise our 
Palestine Zionist aspirations." [1261 

Sokolow set off for Rome and the Vatican. "There, thanks to the introductions of Fitzmaurice 
on the one hand and the help of Baron Sidney Sonnino [D] on the other," a Papal audience 
and interviews with the leading Foreign Office officials were quickly arranged. [1271 

When Sokolow returned to Paris, he requested and received a letter from the Foreign 
Minister dated 4 June 1917, supporting the Zionist cause in general terms. He hastily wrote 
two telegrams which he gave to M. Picot for dispatch by official diplomatic channels. One 
was addressed to Louis D. Brandeis in the United States. It read: "Now you can move. We 
have the formal assurance of the French Government." [E] [1281 

"After many years, ' wrote M. Picot, "I am still moved by the thanks he poured out to me as 
he gave me the two telegrams ... do not say that it was the cause of the great upsurge of 
enthusiasm which occurred in the United States, but I say that Judge Brandeis, to whom this 
telegram was addressed, was certainly one of the elements determining the decision of 
President Wilson." [1291 

But Wilson had declared war one month before! 

It is natural that M. Picot should want to believe that he had played a significant part in 
bringing America into the war and therefore helping his country's victory. The evidence 
certainly supports his having a part in helping a Zionist victory. 

Their objective was in sight, but had still to be taken and held. 

Although the United States was now a belligerent, no declaration of support had been made 
for the Zionist program for Palestine, either by Britain or the United States, and some of the 
richest and most powerful Jews in both countries were opposed to it. 

The exception among these Jewish merchant princes was, of course, the House of Rothschild. 



From London on 25 April 1917, James de Rothschild cabled to Brandeis that Balfour was 
coming to the United States, and urged American Jewry to support "a Jewish Palestine under 
British Protection,,, as well as to press their government to do so. He advised Brandeis to 
meet Balfour. [1341 The meeting took place at a White House luncheon, "You are one of the 
Americans I wanted to meet," said the British Foreign Secretary. [1351 Brandeis cabled Louis 
de Rothschild: "Have had a satisfactory talk with Mr. Balfour, also with Our President. This 
is not for Publication. " [1361 

On the other hand, a letter dated 17 May 1917 appeared in The Times (London) signed by the 
President of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the President of the Anglo-Jewish Association 
(Alexander and Montefiore, both men of wealth and eminence) stating their approval of 
Jewish settlement in Palestine as a source of inspiration for all Jews, but adding that they 
could not favor the Zionist's political scheme. Jews, they believed, were a religious 
community and they opposed the creation of "a secular Jewish nationality recruited on some 
loose and obscure principle of race and ethnological peculiarity." They particularly took 
exception to Zionist Pressure for a Jewish chartered company invested with political and 
economic privileges in which Jews alone would participate, Since this was incompatible with 
the desires of world Jewry for equal rights wherever they lived. [1371 

A controversy then ensued in the British press, in Jewish associations and in the corridors of 
government, between the Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. In this, Weizmann really had less 
weight, but he mobilized the more forceful team. The Chief Rabbi dissociated himself from 
the non-Zionist statement and charged that the Alexander-Montefiore letter did not represent 
the views of their organizations. [1381 Lord Rothschild wrote: "We Zionists cannot see how 
the establishment of an autonomous Jewish State under the aegis of one of the Allied Powers 
could be subversive to the loyalty of Jews to countries of which they were citizens. In the 
letter you have published, the question is also raised of a chartered company." He continued: 
"We Zionists have always felt that if Palestine is to be colonized by the Jews, some 
machinery must be set up to receive the immigrants, settle them on the land and develop the 
land, and to be generally a directing agency. I can only again emphasize that we Zionists have 
no wish for privileges at the expense of other nationalities, but only desire to be allowed to 
work out our destinies side by side with other nationalities in an autonomous state under the 
suzerainty of one of the Allied Powers." [1391 This letter stressed the colonialist aspect of 
Zionism, but detracted from the strong statist declaration of Weizmann. The Zionist body in 
Palestine was to be of a more organizational character for the Jewish community. 

Perhaps feeling that his statement bad been a little too strong for liberal acceptance, 
Weizmann also joined this correspondence in the Times. Writing as President of the English 
Zionist Federation, he first claimed that, 

it is strictly a question of fact that the Jews are a nationality. An overwhelming 
majority of them had always had the conviction that they were a nationality, 
which has been shared by non-Jews in all countries." 

The letter continued: 

The Zionists are not demanding in Palestine monopolies or exclusive privileges, 
nor are they asking that any part of Palestine should he administered by a 
chartered company to the detriment of others. It always was and remains a 
cardinal principle of Zionism as a democratic movement that all races and 
sects in Palestine should enjoy full justice and liberty, and Zionists are 
confident that the new suzerain whom they hope Palestine will acquire as a result 
of the war will, in its administration of the country, be guided by the same 
principle. [1401 (emphasis supplied) 



The competition for the attention of the British public and British Jewry by the Zionists and 
their Jewish opponents continued in the press and in their various special meetings. A 
manifesto of solidarity with the opinions of Alexander and Montefiore was sent to The Times 
on 1 June 1917; and in the same month at Buffalo, N.Y., the President of the Annual 
Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis added his weight against Jewish 
nationalism: "I am not here to quarrel with Zionism. Mine is only the intention to declare that 
we, as rabbis, who are consecrated to the service of the Lord ... have no place in a movement 
in which Jews band together on racial or national grounds, and for a political State or even for 
a legally-assured Home." [1411 

But while the controversy continued, the Zionists worked hard to produce a draft document 
which could form a declaration acceptable to the Allies, particularly Britain and the United 
States, and which would be in the nature of a charter of international status for their aims in 
Palestine. This was treated as a matter of urgency, as Weizmann believed it would remove 
the support from non-Zionist Jews [1421 and ensure against the uncertainties inseparable 
from the war. 

On 13 June 1917 Weizmann wrote Sir Ronald Graham at the Foreign Office that "it appears 
desirable from every point of view that the British Government should give expression to its 
sympathy and support of the Zionist claims on Pales tine. In fact, it need only confirm the 
view which eminent and representative members of the Government have many times 
expressed to us ... " [1431 This was timed to coincide with a minute of the same date of one 
of Balfour's advisers in which it was suggested that the time had arrived "when we might 
meet the wishes of the Zionists and give them an assurance that H.M.G. are in general 
sympathy with their aspirations. " [1441 To which Balfour remarked, "Personally, I should 
still prefer to associate the U.S.A. in the Protectorate, should we succeed in securing it." 
£1451 

The Zionists also had to counter tentative British and American plans to seek a separate 
peace with Turkey. When Weizmann, for the Zionists, together with Malcolm, for the 
Armenians, went on 10 June to the Foreign Office to protest such a plan, Weizmann broadly 
suggested that the Zionist leaders in Germany were being courted by the German 
Government, and he mentioned, to improve credibility, that approaches were made to them 
through the medium of a Dr. Lepsius. 

The truth, probably, is that the Berlin Zionist Executive was initiating renewed contact with 
the German Government so as to give weight to the pleading of their counterparts in London 
that the risk of German competition could not be left out of account. Lepsius was actually a 
leading Evangelical divine, well known for his championship of the Armenians, who were 
then being massacred in Turkey. When Leonard Stein examined the papers of the Berlin 
Executive after the war, his name was not to be found, and Mr. Lichtheim of the Executive 
had no recollection of any overtures by Lepsius. [1461 

In the U.S., in July 1917, a special mission consisting of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., and Justice 
Brandeis's nephew, Felix Frankfurter, was charged by President Wilson to proceed to Turkey, 
against which the United States did not declare war, to sound out the possibility of peace 
negotiations between Turkey and the Allies. In this, Wilson may have been particularly 
motivated by his passion to stop the massacres of Armenian and Greek Christians which were 
then taking place in Turkey and for whom he expressed immense solicitude On many 
occasions. Weizmann, however, accompanied by the French Zionist M. Weyl, forewarned, 
proceeded to intercept them at Gibraltar and persuaded them to return home. [1471 During 
1917 and 1918 more Christians were massacred in Turkey. Had Morgenthau and Frankfurter 
carried out their mission successfully, maybe this would have been avoided. 



This account appears in William Yale's book The Near East: A Modern History. He was a 
Special Agent of the State Department in the Near East during the First World War. When I 
had dinner with him on 12 May 1970 at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, I asked him if 
Weizmann had told him how the special mission had been aborted. He replied that Weizmann 
said that the Governor of Gibraltar had held a special banquet in their honor, but at the end 
all the British officials withdrew discretely, leaving the four Jews alone. "Then," said 
Weizmann, "we fixed it." 

The same evening, he told me something which he said he had never told anyone else, and 
which was in his secret papers which were only to be opened after his death. He later wrote 
to me, after he had read The Palestine Diary, saying that he would like me to deal with those 
papers. 

One of Yale's assignments was to follow Wilson's preference for having private talks with key 
personalities capable of influencing the course of events. He did this with Lloyd George, 
General Allenby and Col. T.E. Lawrence, for example. Yale said he had a talk with 
Weizmann "somewhere in the Mediterranean in 1919," and asked him what might happen if 
the British did not support a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Weizmann thumped his 
fist on the table and the teacups jumped, "If they don't," he said, "we'll smash the British 
Empire as we smashed the Russian Empire." 

Brandeis was in Washington during the summer of 1917 and conferred with Secretary of 
State Robert S. Lansing from time to time on Turkish-American relations and the treatment of 
Jews in Palestine. [1481 He busied himself in particular with drafts of what later became the 
Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine, and in obtaining American 
approval for fhem. [1491 A considerable number of drafts were made in London and 
transmitted to the United States, through War Office channels, for the use of the American 
Zionist Political Committee. Some were detailed, but the British Government did not want to 
commit itself to more than a general statement of principles. 

On 18 July, such a statement, approved in the United States, was forwarded by Lord 
Rothschild to Lord Balfour. It read as follows: 

His Majesty's Government, after considering the aims of the Zionist 
Organization, accepts the principle of recognizing Palestine as the National 
Home [E] of the Jewish people and the right of the Jewish people to build up its 
national life in Palestine under a protectorate to be established at the conclusion 
of peace following the successful issue of war. 

His Majesty's Government regards as essential for the realization of this principle 
the grant of internal autonomy to the Jewish nationality in Palestine, freedom of 
immigration for Jews, and the establishment of a Jewish national colonization 
corporation for the resettlement and economic development of the country. 

The conditions and forms of the internal autonomy and a charter for the Jewish 
national colonizing corporation should, in the view of His Majesty's Government, 
be elaborated in detail, and determined with the representatives of the Zionist 
Organization . [1501 

It seems possible that Balfour would have issued this declaration but strong representatives 
against it were made directly to the Cabinet by Lucien Wolf, Claude Montefiore Sir Mathew 
Nathan, Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, [F] and other non-Zionist Jews. It was 
significant they believed that "anti-semites are always very sympathetic to Zionism," and 



though they would welcome the establishment in Palestine of a center of Jewish culture, 
some — like Philip Magnes — feared that a political declaration would antagonize other 
sections of the population in Palestine, and might result in the Turks dealing with the Jews as 
they had dealt with the Armenians. [1541 The Jewish opposition was too important to ignore, 
and the preparation of a new draft was commenced. At about this time, Northcliffe and 
Reading [G] visited Washington and had a discussion with Brandeis at which they 
undoubtedly discussed Zionism. [1551 

Multiple pressures at key points led Lord Robert Cecil to telegraph to Col. E.M. House on 3 
September 1917: "We are being pressed here for a declaration of sympathy with the Zionist 
movement and I should be very grateful if you felt able to ascertain unofficially if the 
President favours such a declaration. " [1561 House, who had performed services relating to 
Federal Reserve and currency legislation for Jacob W. Schiff and Paul Warburg, [1571 and 
was Wilson's closet adviser, relayed the message, but a week later Cecil was still without a 
reply. 

On 1 1 September the Foreign Office had ready for dispatch the following message for Sir 
William Wiseman, [H] head of the British Military Intelligence Service in the United States: 
"Has Colonel House been able to ascertain whether the President favours sympathy with 
Zionist aspirations as asked in my telegram of September 3rd? We should be most grateful for 
an early reply as September 17th is the Jewish New Year and announcement of sympathy by 
or on that date would have excellent effect." But before it was sent, a telegram from Colonel 
House dated 1 1 September reached the Foreign Office. 

Wilson had been approached as requested and had expressed the opinion that "the time was 
not opportune for any definite statement further, perhaps, than one of sympathy, provided it 
can be made without conveying any real commitment." Presumably, a formal declaration 
would presuppose the expulsion of the Turks from Palestine, but the United States was not at 
war with Turkey, and a declaration implying annexation would exclude an early and separate 
peace with that country. [1581 

In a widely publicized speech in Cincinnati on 21 May 1916, after temporarily relinquishing 
his appointment as Ambassador to Turkey in favor of a Jewish colleague, Henry Morgenthau 
had announced that he had recently suggested to the Turkish Government that Turkey should 
sell Palestine to the Zionists after the war. The proposal, he said, had been well received, but 
its publication caused anger in Turkey. [1591 

Weizmann was "greatly astonished" at this news, especially as he had "wired to Brandeis 
requesting him to use his influence in our favour ... But up to now I have heard nothing from 
Brandeis." [1611 

On 19 September Weizmann cabled to Brandeis: 

Following text declaration has been approved by Foreign Office and Prime 
Minister and submitted to War Cabinet: 

1. H.M. Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be 
reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people. 

2. H.M. Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement 
of the object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the 
Zionist Organization . [1621 

Weizmann suggested that non-Zionist opposition should be forestalled, and in this it would 
"greatly help if President Wilson and yourself support the text. Matter most urgent." [1631 He 



followed this up with a telegram to two leading New York Zionists, asking them to "see 
Brandeis and Frankfurter to immediately discuss my last two telegrams with them," adding 
that it might be necessary for him to come to the United States himself. [1641 

Brandeis saw House on 23 September and drafted a message, sent the following day through 
the British War Office. It advised that presidential support would be facilitated if the French 
and Italians made inquiry about the White House attitude, but he followed this the same day 
with another cable stating that from previous talks with the President and in the opinion of his 
close advisers, he could safely say that Wilson would be in complete sympathy. [1651 

Thus Brandeis had either persuaded Wilson that there was nothing in the draft (Rothschild) 
declaration of 19 September which could be interpreted as "conveying any real commitment," 
which is difficult to believe, or he had induced the President to change his mind about the 
kind of declaration, he could approve or was sure he and House could do so. [1661 

On 7 February 1917, Stephen Wise had written to Brandeis: "I sent the memorandum to 
Colonel House covering our question, and he writes, 'I hope the dream you have may soon 
become a reality." [1671 In October, after seeing House together with Wise, de Haas reported 
to Brandeis: "He has told us that he was as interested in our success as ourselves." To Wilson, 
House stated that "The Jews from every tribe descended in force, and they seem determined 
to break in with a jimmy, if they are not let in." [1681 Anew draft declaration had been 
prepared; Wilson had to support it. 

On 9 October 1917, Weizmann cabled again to Brandeis from London of difficulties from the 
"assimilants" Opposition: "They have found an excellent champion ... in Mr. Edwin Montagu 
who is a member of the Government and has certainly made use of his position to injure the 
Zionist cause. " [1691 

Weizmann also telegraphed to Brandeis a new (Milner-Amery) formula. The same draft was 
cabled by Balfour to House in Washington on 14 October: 

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a 
national home for the Jewish race and will use its best endeavours to facilitate 
achievement of this object; it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done 
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non- Jewish 
communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed in any other 
country by such Jews who are fully contented with their existing nationality and 
citizenship. [1701 

It was reinforced by a telegram from the U.S. Embassy in London direct to President Wilson 
(by-passing the State Department), stating that the "question of a message of sympathy with 
the (Zionist) movement" was being reconsidered by the British Cabinet "in view of reports 
that (the) German Government are making great efforts to capture (the) Zionist movement." 
[1211 

Brandeis and his associates found the draft unsatisfactory in two particulars. They disliked 
that part of the draft's second safeguard clause which read, "by such Jews who are fully 
contented with their existing nationality and citizenship," and substituted "the rights and 
civil political status enjoyed by Jews in any country. In addition, Brandeis apparently 
proposed the change of "Jewish race" to "Jewish people." [1721 Jacob de Haas, then 
Executive Secretary of the Provisional Zionist Committee, has written that the pressure to 
issue the declaration was coming from the English Zionist leaders: "they apparently needed 
it to stabilize their position against local anti-Zionism. If American Zionists were anxious 
about it, Washington would act." De Haas continues: 



Then one morning Baron Furness, one of England's unostentatious 
representatives, brought to 44 East 23rd Street, at that time headquarters of the 
Zionist Organization, the final draft ready for issue. The language of the 
declaration accepted by the English Zionists based as it was on the theory of 
discontent was unacceptable to me. I informed Justice Brandeis of my views, 
called in Dr. Schmarya Levin and proceeded to change the text. Then with Dr. 
Wise, I hurried to Colonel House. By this time he had come to speak of Zionism 
as "our cause." Quietly he perused my proposed change, discussed its wisdom 
and promised to call President Wilson on his private wire and urge the change. 
He cabled to the British Cabinet. Next day he informed me that the President 
had approved. I had business that week-end in Boston and it was over the long 
distance wire that my secretary in New York read to me the final form as 
repeated by cable from London. It was the text as I had altered it. [173] 

"It seems clear," wrote Stein, "that .it was not without some prompting by House that 
Wilson eventually authorized a favourable reply to the British enquiry." Sir William 
Wiseman, "who was persona grata both with the President and with House, was relied upon 
by the Foreign Office for dealing with the declaration at the American end. Sir William's 
recollection is that Colonel House was influential in bringing the matter to the President's 
attention and persuading him to approve the formula." [1741 

On 16 October 1917, after a conference with House, Wiseman telegraphed to Balfour's 
private secretary: "Colonel House put the formula before the President who approves of it 
but asks that no mention of his approval shall be made when His Majesty's Government 
makes formula public, as he had arranged the American Jews shall then ask him for 
approval, which he will publicly give here. "[1751 

The Balfour Declaration, as stated, was issued on 2 November 1917. Its text, seemingly so 
simple, had been prepared by some the craftiest of the craft of legal drafting. Leaflets 
containing its message were dropped by air on Germany and Austria and on the Jewish belt 
from Poland to the Baltic Sea. 

Seven months had passed since America entered the war. It was an epochal triumph for 
Zionism, and some believe, for the Jews. 

On the other hand, two months before the declaration, Sokolow had written of a marked 
falling off in "le philo-semitisme d'autrefois," ascribed by some to the impression that the 
Russian Jews were the mainspring of Bolshevism; and on the day it was issued, The Jewish 
Chronicle complained of "the antisemitic campaign which a section of the press in this 
country, indifferent to the national interests, is sedulously conducting." [1761 There only 
remained certain courtesies to be effected. On November 1917, Weizmann wrote a letter of 
thanks to Brandeis: 

"... I need hardly say how we all rejoice in this great event and how grateful we 
all feel to you for the valuable and efficient help which you have lent to the 
cause in the critical hour ... Once more, dear Mr. Brandeis, I beg to tender to 
you our heartiest congratulations not only on my own behalf but also on behalf 
of our friends here — and may this epoch-making be a beginning of great work 
for our sorely tried people and also of mankind." [1771 

The other principal Allied governments were approached with requests for similar 
pronouncements. The French simply supported the British Government in a short paragraph 
on 9 February 1918. Italian support was contained in a note dated 9 May 1918 to Mr, 



Sokolow by their ambassador in London in which he stressed the religious divisions of 
communities, grouping "a Jewish national centre" with existing religious communities." 

On 31 August 1918, President Wilson wrote to Rabbi Wise "to express the satisfaction I 
have felt in the progress of the Zionist movement . . since ... Great Britain's approval of the 
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Brandeis joined in 
Zionist delight at the President's endorsement and wrote: "Since the President's letter, 
anti-Zionism is pretty near disloyalty and non-Zionism is slackening." [1781 Non-Zionist 
Jews now had a hard time if they wanted to disseminate their views; if they could not 
support Zionism they were asked at least to remain silent. 

On 30 June 1922, the following resolution was adopted by the United States Congress: 

Favouring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish 
people; 

Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States 
of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favours 
the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being 
clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil 
and religious rights of Christians and all other non- Jewish communities in 
Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine 
shall be adequately protected. [J] 

All people tend to see the world and its events in terms of their own experience, ideas and 
prejudices. This is natural. It is a fact used by master politicians and manipulators of opinion 
who form their appeals accordingly. The case of the Balfour Declaration is a fascinating 
example of a scheme presenting a multiplicity of images according to the facet of mind on 
which it reflected. 

There were critics of the Balfour Declaration, although among the cacophony of many 
events competing for attention, few but its beneficiaries concentrated on the significance of 
what was being offered. One was the Jewish leader and statesman Mr. Edwin Montagu, who 
had no desire that Jews should be regarded as a separate race and a distinct nationality. [18JJ 
The other was Lord Curzon, who became Foreign Secretary at the end of October 1918. He 
prepared a memorandum dated 26 October 1917, on the penultimate and final drafts of the 
Balfour Declaration and related documents, and circulated it in the Cabinet. It was titled 
"The Future of Palestine." Here are some extracts: 

I am not concerned to discuss the question in dispute between the Zionist and 
anti-Zionist Jews . I am only concerned in the more immediately practical 
questions: 

(a) What is the meaning of the phrase "a national home for the Jewish race in 
Palestine," and what is the nature of the obligation that we shall assume if we 
accept this as a principle of British policy? 

(b) If such a policy be pursued what are the chances of its successful 
realisation? 

If I seek guidance from the latest collection of circulated papers (The Zionist 
Movement, G.-164) I find a fundamental disagreement among the authorities 
quoted there as to the scope and nature of their aim. 



A "national home for the Jewish race or people" would seem, if the words are 
to bear their ordinary meaning, to imply a place where the Jews can be 
reassembled as a nation, and where they will enjoy the privileges of an 
independent national existence. Such is clearly the conception of those who, 
like Sir Alfred Mond, speak of the creation in Palestine of "an autonomous 
Jewish State," words which appear to contemplate a State, i.e., a political entity, 
composed of Jews, governed by Jews, and administered mainly in the interests 
of Jews... 

The same conception appears to underlie several other of the phrases employed 
in these papers, e.g., when we are told that Palestine is to become "a home for 
the Jewish nation," "a national home for the Jewish race," "a Jewish Palestine," 
and when we read of "the resettlement of Palestine as a national centre," and 
"the restoration of Palestine to the Jewish people," all these phrases are variants 
of the same idea, viz., the re-creation of Palestine as it was before the days of 
the dispersion. 

On the other hand, Lord Rothschild, when he speaks of Palestine as "a home 
where the Jews could speak their own language, have their own education, their 
own civilization, and religious institutions under the protection of Allied 
governments," seems to postulate a much less definite form of political 
existence, one, indeed, which is quite compatible with the existence of an alien 
(so long as it is not Turkish) government... 

Now what is the capacity as regards population of Palestine within any 
reasonable period of time? Under the Turks there is no such place or country as 
Palestine, because it is divided up between the sanjak of Jerusalem and the 
vilayets of Syria and Beirut. But let us assume that in speaking of Palestine in 
the present context we mean the old scriptural Palestine, extending from Dan to 
Beersheba, i.e., from Banias to Bir es-Sabi... . an area of less than 10,000 
square miles. What is to become of the people of this country, assuming the 
Turk to be expelled, and the inhabitants not to have been exterminated by the 
war? There are over a half a million of these, Syrian Arabs — a mixed 
community with Arab, Hebrew, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian, and possibly 
Crusaders' blood. They and their forefathers have occupied the country for the 
best part of 1,500 years. They own the soil, which belongs either to individual 
landowners or to village communities. They profess the Mohammadan faith. 
They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants, or to 
act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter. 



A. Born in Rumania in 1856, his imposing presence and scholarship combined with "an 
oracular manner suggesting that he had access to mysteries hidden from others, had 
made him an important figure at Zionist Congresses and on Zionist platforms in 
England and abroad." It was calculated that Sykes would be impressed by his 
personality and background. I" 11 61 

B. These included the socialist leader, Jules Cuesde, who had joined Viviani's National 
Government as Minister of State; Gustave Herve: the publicist and future Minister de 
Monzie; and others. 

C. Privately, Sokolow resented Malcolm as "a stranger in the center of our work," who 
was "endowed with an esprit of a goyish kind. " [1301 

D. Of Jewish extraction. [ 1311 

E. The French note represented a defeat for the "Syrian Party" in the government who 



believed in French dominion over the entire area. This was not only due to the strong 
representations of Sykes on behalf of his Government, but was assisted by those of 
Baron Edmond de Rothschild, [1321 who prevailed upon the Alliance Israelite to 
back the Zionist cause. 

The result of the no less successful conversations in Rome and the Vatican were 
cabled to the Zionist Organization over British controlled lines. [1331 

F. The use of the term "National Home" was a continuation of the euphemism 
deliberately adopted since the first Zionist Congress, when the term "Heimstaette" 
was used instead of any of the possible German words signifying "state." At that time, 
its purpose was to avoid provoking the hostility of non-Zionist Jews. [1511 

The author or inventor of the term "Heimstaette" was Max Nordau who coined it "to 
deceive by its mildness " until such time as "there was no reason to dissimulate our 
real aim." [1521 

The Arabic translation of "National Home" ignores the intended subtlety, and the 
words employed: watan, qawm, and sha'b, are much stronger in meaning than an 
abstract notion of government. [1531 

G. (1879-1924). His father, the first Lord Swaythling, and Herbert Samuel's father were 
brothers. 

H. Rufus Isaacs, a Jewish lawyer, who had quickly risen to fame in his profession, and 
then in politics. This was a period when elevations to the peerage for political and 
financial assistance to the party in power were so numerous that the whole system of 
British peerage was weakened. In 1916, Isaacs was a viscount; in 1917 an earl. 

I. Joined Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in 1921. and was responsible for their liaison with London 
banks, and was "in charge of financing several large enterprises." [1601 

J. This was introduced by Mr. Hamilton Fish. His interpretation of his action was 
clarified thirty-eight years later, when the World Zionists held their 25th Congress in 
Jerusalem. David Ben Gurion, as Prime Minister of Israel, in his address to the 
gathering stated: "every religious Jew has daily violated the precepts of Judaism by 
remaining in the diaspora"; and, citing the authority of the Jewish sages, said: 
"Whoever dwells outside the land of Israel is considered to have no god." He added: 
"Judaism is in danger of death by strangulation. In the free and prosperous countries it 
faces the kiss of death, a slow and imperceptible decline into the abyss of 
assimilation." [1791 



Mr. Hamilton Fish replied: "As author of the first Zionist Resolution patterned on the 
Balfour Resolution, I denounce and repudiate the Ben Gurion statements as irreconcilable 
with my Resolution as adopted by Congress, and if they represent the Government of Israel 
and public opinion there, then I shall disavow publicly my support of my own Resolution, as 
I do not want to be associated with such un-American doctrines. "[1801 

Wilson and the War 

If the contract with Jewry was to bring the United States into the Great War in exchange for 
the promise of Palestine, did they in fact deliver, through Brandeis or anyone else? 

For the German- Jewish princes of the purse in the United States, the evidence points more 
to the Russian revolution being the factor of most weight in determining their attitude. 

Was it the resumption of Germany's submarine blockade, the sinking of the Laconia, the 
Zimmerman telegram, which really influenced Wilson for war? Was it the Zionist counsel of 
Brandeis? In a careful study, Prof. Alex M. Arnett showed in 1937 that Wilson had decided 
to put the United States into the war on the side of the Allies many months before the 



resumption of U-boat warfare by Germany, which was promoted as a sufficient reason. [1821 

In the propaganda battle for American public opinion between Britain and Germany, the 
former had the advantage of language, and the fact that on 5 August 1914 they had cut the 
international undersea cables linking Germany and the United States, thus eliminating quick 
communication between those two countries and giving British "news" the edge in forming 
public opinion. 

The success of British propaganda methods were acknowledged by a German soldier of the 
time when he dictated his memoirs, Mein Kampf, in 1925: "In England propaganda was 
regarded as a weapon of the first order, whereas with us it represented the last hope of a 
livelihood for our unemployed politicians and a snug job for shirkers of the modest heroic 
type. Taken all in all, its results were negative." 

British propaganda portrayed the war as one of just defense against a barbarian aggressor 
akin to the hordes of Genghis Khan, who were rapers of nuns, mutilators of children, led by 
the Kaiser — pictured as a beast in human form, a lunatic, deformed monster, modern Judas, 
and criminal monarch. 

Stories that German soldiers cut off the hands of Belgian children and crucified prisoners 
and perpetrated and all sorts of other atrocities said to have been practiced in Belgium, were 
circulated as widely as possible. The story about their making glycerine and soap from 
corpses did not appear until the end of April 1917, when new stories were created by 
American propagandists. One, a book called Christine, by "Alice Cholmondeley," a 
collection of letters purporting to have been written by a teenage girl music student to her 
mother in Britain until her death in 1914, mingled a damning catalogue of alleged German 
character faults with emotional feelings for her fictitious mother and music. Propaganda 
experts rated it highly. [1831 

The head of the American section of the British propaganda bureau, Sir Gilbert Parker, was 
able to report on his Success in the issue of his secret American Press Review for 1 1 
October 1916 before the Presidential election: "This week supplies satisfactory evidence of 
the permeation of the American Press by British influence." 

Men of British ancestry still dominated the powerful infrastructure of the economy, filled 
top Positions in the State Department in the influential Eastern universities, in the 
communications and cultural media. Britain and France were more identified with 
democracy and freedom, and the Central Powers with imperial militaristic autocracy. From 
Oyster Bay, former President Theodore Roosevelt, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, 
performed high-pitched war dances of words in support of belligerency. 

But at the Democratic convention, and in the subsequent campaign, it was William Jennings 
Bryan and his allied orators who created the theme and slogan: "He kept us out of war." 

Bryan had resigned as Secretary of State in June 1915 because he believed Wilson was 
jeopardizing American neutrality and showing partiality towards England. In his last 
interview, he told Wilson bitterly, "Colonel House has been Secretary of State, not I, and I 
have never had your full confidence." 

House, a secretive and subtle flatterer who had performed services relating to the Federal 
Reserve Bank and currency legislation for Jacob W. Schiff and Paul Warburg, was 
perceived by Wilson as the "friend who so thoroughly understands me," "my second 
personality.... my independent self, His thoughts and mine are one." 



Bryan had wanted to go on a peace mission to Europe at the beginning of 1915, but the 
President sent House instead. House had actually sailed on the British ship Lusitania and as 
it approached the Irish coast on 5 February, the captain ordered the American flag to be 
raised. 

The Intimate Papers of Colonel House record that on the morning of 7 May 1915, he and 
the British Foreign Secretary Grey drove to Kew. "We spoke of the probability of an ocean 
liner being sunk," recorded House, "and I told him if this were done, a flame of indignation 
would sweep across America, which would in itself probably carry us into the war." An hour 
later, House was with King George in Buckingham Palace. "We fell to talking, strangely 
enough," the Colonel wrote that night, "of the probability of Germany sinking a trans- 
Atlantic liner... " He said, "Suppose they should sink the Lusitania with American 
passengers on board... " 

That evening House dined at the American Embassy. A dispatch came in, stating that at two 
in the afternoon a German submarine had torpedoed and sunk the Lusitania off the southern 
coast of Ireland. 1,200 lives were lost, including 128 Americans. It took 60 years for the 
truth about its cargo to be confirmed; that it had carried munitions which exploded when the 
torpedo hit. But Secretary of State Bryan remarked to his wife, "I wonder if that ship carried 
munitions of war... . If she did carry them, it puts a different face on the whole matter! 
England has been using our citizens to protect her ammunition." 

In a telegram to President Wilson from England on 9 May 1915, House said he believed an 
immediate demand should made to Germany for assurance against a similar incident. 

I should inform her that our Government expected to take measures ... to 
ensure the safety of American citizens. 

If war follows, it will not be a new war, but an endeavor to end more speedily 
an old one. Our intervention will save, rather than increase loss of life. We can 
no longer be neutral spectators . 

In another telegram on 25 May, he noted that he had received from Ambassador Gerard a 
cable that Germany is in no need of food. "This does away with their contention that the 
starving of Germany justified their submarine policy." 

The next day, House lunched with Sir Edward Grey and read him all the telegrams that had 
passed between the President, Gerard and himself since last they had met. And he wrote on 
30 May 1915, "I have concluded that war with Germany is inevitable, and this afternoon at 
six o'clock I decided to go home on the S.S. St. Paul on Saturday. I sent a cable to the 
President to this effect." After his arrival in the United States, he wrote to the President 
from Rosslyn, Long Island, on 16 June 1915, a long letter which included the paragraph: 

I need not tell you that if the Allies fail to win, it must necessarily mean a 
reversal of our entire policy. 

I think we shall find ourselves drifting into war with Germany ... Regrettable as 
this would be, there would be compensations. The war would be more speedily 
ended, and we would be in a strong position to aid the other great democracies 
in turning the world into the right paths. It is something that we have to face 
with fortitude, being consoled by the thought that no matter what sacrifices we 
make, the end will justify them. Affectionately yours, E.M. House. 



Are these references related to Zionism or Palestine? I think not. Perhaps the clue is that 
immediately after the election of Wilson, House had anonymously published a political 
romance entitled Philip Dru: Administrator. Dru leads a revolt and becomes a dictator in 
Washington, where he formulates a new American constitution and brings about an 
international grouping or league of Powers. 

Let us look to the other side of the water again in 1916, a year later. 

About a month before Malcolm's meeting with Sir Mark Sykes, Lloyd George gave an 
interview to the President of the United Press Association of America, in which he said "that 
Britain had only now got into her stride in her war effort, and was justifiably suspicious of 
any suggestion that President Wilson should choose this moment to 'butt in' with a proposal 
to stop the war before we could achieve victory." 

"The whole world ... must know that there can be no outside interference at this stage. 
Britain asked no intervention when she was unprepared to fight. She will tolerate none now 
that she is prepared, until the Prussian military despotism is broken beyond repair... . The 
motto of the Allies was 'Never Again!' " And this made worthwhile the sacrifices so far as 
well as those needed to end the war with victory. [1841 

Grey wrote to him on the 29th of September that he was apprehensive about the effect "of 
the warning to Wilson in your interview... . It has always been my view that until the Allies 
were sure of victory the door should be kept open for Wilson's mediation." 

But the following month, at one of the formal regular meetings with the Chief of the 
Imperial Staff, when Lloyd George received the familiar answers as to the course of the war 
— the German losses were greater than the Allies, that the Germans were gradually being 
worn down, and their morale shaken by constant defeat and retreat — he asked Sir Wm. 
Robertson for his views as "to how this sanguinary conflict was to be brought to a successful 
end ... He just mumbled something about 'attrition'." 

Lloyd George then asked for a formal memorandum on the subject. This was not 
encouraging, and said that an end could not be expected "before the summer of 1918. How 
long it may go on afterwards I cannot even guess." 

The facts were far from rosy, but were the hopes of Great Britain really hanging upon 
American entry into the war? There were two other possible courses. 

One was suggested by the Marquess of Landsdowne, a member of the Cabinet and a 
statesman of considerable standing as the author of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. It was 
contained in a Memorandum Respecting a Peace Settlement, circulated to the Cabinet with 
the consent of the Prime Minister. Landsdowne suggested doubts as to the possibility of 
victory within a reasonable space of time. 

What does the prolongation of the war mean? Our own casualties already 
amount to over 1,100,000. We have had 15,000 officers killed, not including 
those who are missing. There is no reason to suppose that, as the force at the 
front in the different theatres of war increases, the casualties will increase at a 
lower rate. We are slowly but surely killing off the best of the male population 
of these islands. The figures representing the casualties of our Allies are not 
before me. The total must be appalling. [1851 

The other members of the Cabinet and the Chief of Staff repudiated peace without victory. 



The other course was that adopted: to thrust more men and money into the holocaust 
(defined as a wholesale sacrifice or destruction). What would now be called political and 
military summit meetings were held in France to plan for it. They commenced on 15 
November 1916. 

In the political presentations, the only reference to America seems to have been offered by 
Lloyd George: 

The difficulties we have experienced in making payment for our purchases 
abroad must be as present to the minds of French statesmen as to ourselves. 
Our dependence upon America is growing for food, raw material and munitions. 
We are rapidly exhausting the securities negotiable in America. If victory shone 
on our banners, our difficulties would disappear. [Asquith deleted the next 
sentence, which read] Success means credit: financiers never hesitate to lend to 
a prosperous concern: but business which is lumbering along amidst great 
difficulties and which is making no headway in spite of enormous expenditure 
will find the banks gradually closing their books against it. 

This reference to Allied problems in getting more credit from the bankers in the United 
States, who were predominantly German- Jewish, elucidates Schiff s agreement to arrange 
credit for Britain through the Jewish banker Cassel — they were not waiting for a Balfour 
Declaration, they were waiting for the Russian Revolution! 

On the military side, there was general agreement at the summit conference that what was 
needed was a "knock-out blow," and it was decided that the 1917 plan of campaign would 
be an offensive on all fronts, including Palestine, with the Western Front as the principal 
one. 

On 7 December the Asquith government fell and Lloyd George, who was pledged to a more 
vigorous prosecution of the war, took over the Government. Five days later, Germany and 
her allies put forward notes in which they stated their willingness to consider peace by 
compromise and negotiations. 

The first of the battles opened on 9 April 1917, heralded by a bombardment of 2,700,000 
shells. Another attack was launched by the French nine days later, these resulting in about a 
million dead and wounded on both sides. The French Army mutinied, and General Petain 
was put in charge. 

At this time the two events which were to twist the world into a new shape were occurring, 
the Russian Revolution and American entry into the war. 

French Government wanted to defer all offensive operations until American assistance 
became available, but the generals thought otherwise. Maj.-Gen. J.F.C. Fuller, whom I have 
met, one of the few bright military -political minds in this century, tells us that Haig "had set 
his heart on a decisive battle in Flanders, and so obsessed was he by it that he believed that 
he could beat the Germans single-handed, and before the Americans came in." [1861 1 do 
not think that people who did not live in the great days of the British Empire can have a 
sense of the hubris of a Haig, unless one gets it from classical literature. Perhaps today it 
would be found in the head of the World Bank, from whom we taxpayers, like the common 
soldiers of that time, are so far removed! There was actually resentment in the England of 
my boyhood about Americans claiming to have played any significant part in fighting the 
Great War. 



The outcome of the grandiosity of the generals and politicians was the costly Flanders 
campaign of the summer and autumn. On 7th June it was opened by the limited and 
successful Battle of Messines, which was preceded by a seventeen days' bombardment of 
3,500,000 shells, and initiated by the explosion of nineteen mines packed with a million 
pounds of high explosives. 

On 31st July it was followed by the Third Battle of Ypres, for which the largest force of 
artillery ever seen in British history was assembled. In all, the preliminary bombardment 
lasted nineteen days, and during it 4,300,000 shells, some 107,000 tons in weight were 
hurled onto the prospective low lying battlefield. Its entire surface was upheaved; all drains, 
dikes, culverts and roads were destroyed, and an almost uncrossable swamp created, in 
which the infantry wallowed for three and a half months. When, on 10th November, the 
battle ended, the Germans had been pushed back a maximum depth of five miles on a 
frontage often miles, at a cost of a little under 200,000 men to themselves, and, at the 
lowest estimate, of 300,000 to their enemy. 

Thus ended the last of the great artillery battles of attrition on the Western Front, and when 
in retrospect they are looked on, it becomes understandable why the politicians were so 
eager to escape them. 

The Great War was like a greatly magnified version of the mutual destruction of noble men 
in the Niebelungenlied. Set against each other by the vanity and lack of vision of their 
rulers, the more they fought the more there was to avenge until death delivered them from 
their need. "At the going down of the sun and in the morning," we should learn their lesson. 

Britain's Obligation? 

In a memorandum marked in his own handwriting "Private & Confidential" to Lord Peel 
and other members of the Royal Commission on Palestine in 1936, James Malcolm wrote: 

I have always been convinced that until the Jewish question was more or less 
satisfactorily settled there could be no real or permanent peace in the world, 
and that the solution lay in Palestine. This was one of the two main 
considerations which impelled me, in the autumn of 1916, to initiate the 
negotiations which led eventually to the Balfour Declaration and the British 
Mandate for Palestine. The other, of course, was to bring America into the War. 

For generations Jews and Gentiles alike have assumed in error that the cause of 
Anti-Semitism was in the main religious. Indeed, the Jews in the hope of 
obtaining relief from intolerance, engaged in the intensive and subversive 
propagation of materialistic doctrines productive of "Liberalism," Socialism, and 
Irreligion, resulting in de-Christianisation. On the other hand, the more 
materialistic the Gentiles became, the more aware they were subconsciously 
made of the cause of Anti-Semitism, which at bottom was, and remains to this 
day, primarily an economic one. A French writer — Vicomte de Poncins — has 
remarked that in some respects Anti-Semitism is largely a form of self-defence 
against Jewish economic aggression. In my opinion, however, neither the Jews 
nor the Gentiles bear the sole responsibility for this. 

As I have already said, I had a part in initiating the negotiations in the early 
autumn of 1916 between the British and French Governments and the Zionist 
leaders, which led to the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for 



Palestine. 

The first object, of course, was to enlist the very considerable and necessary 
influence of the Jews, and especially of the Zionist or Nationalist Jews, to help 
us bring America into the War at the most critical period of the hostilities. This 
was publicly acknowledged by Mr. Lloyd George during a recent debate in the 
House of Commons. 

Our second object was to enable and induce Jews all the world over to envisage 
constructive work as their proper field, and to take their minds off destructive 
and subversive schemes which, owing to their general Sense of insecurity and 
homelessness. even in the periods preceding the French Revolution, had 
provoked so much trouble and unrest in various countries, until their 
ever-increasing violence culminated in the Third International and the Russian 
Communist Revolution. But to achieve this end it was necessary to promise 
them Palestine in consideration of their help, as already explained, and not as a 
mere humanitarian experiment or enterprise, as represented in certain quarters. 

It is no wonder that Weizmann did not refer to Malcolm in his autobiography, and Sokolow 
privately resented Malcolm "as a stranger in the center of our work," who was "endowed 
with an esprit of a goyish kind. " [1871 

It is also worth noting that on page seven of his memorandum Malcolm quoted General 
Ludendorff, former Quartermaster General of the German Army, and perhaps at least 
remembered for heading an unsuccessful coup in Munich in 1923, as saying that the Balfour 
Declaration was "the cleverest thing done by the Allies in the way of propaganda and that 
he wished Germany had thought of it first." 

On the other hand, might it not have provided some cold comfort for Ludendorff to believe 
that the Zionist Jews were a major factor in the outcome of the war — if that is what he is 
implying? 

Malcolm's belief in the Balfour Declaration as a means of bringing the United States into the 
war was confirmed by Samuel Landman, secretary to the Zionist leaders Weizmann and 
Sokolow, and later secretary of the World Zionist Organization. As 

the only way (which proved so to be) to induce the American President to come 
into the war was to secure the cooperation of Zionist Jews by promising them 
Palestine, and thus enlist and mobilize the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful 
forces of Zionist Jews in America and elsewhere in favour of the Allies on a 
quid pro quo contract basis. Thus, as will be seen, the Zionists having carried 
out their part, and greatly helped to bring America in, the Balfour Declaration 
of 1917 was but the public confirmation of the necessarily secret "gentlemens 1 " 
agreement of 1916, made with the previous knowledge, acquiescence, and or 
approval of the Arabs, and of the British, and of the French and other Allied 
governments, and not merely a voluntary, altruistic and romantic gesture on the 
part of Great Britain as certain people either through pardonable ignorance 
assume or unpardonable ill-will would represent or rather misrepresent ... [1881 

Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 July 1922, Winston Churchill asked rhetorically, 

Are we to keep our pledge to the Zionists made in 1917...? Pledges and 
promises were made during the war, and they were made, not only on the 
merits, though I think the merits are considerable. They were made because it 



was considered they would be of value to us in our struggle to win the war. It 
was considered that the support which the Jews could give us all over the 
world, and particularly in the United States, and also in Russia, would be a 
definite palpable advantage. I was not responsible at that time for the giving of 
those pledges, nor for the conduct of the war of which they were, when given, 
an integral part. But like other members I supported the policy of the War 
Cabinet. Like other members, I accepted and was proud to accept a share in 
those great transactions, which left us with terrible losses, with formidable 
obligations, but nevertheless with unchallengeable victory. 

However, Hansard notes, one member, Mr. Gwynne, plaintively complained that "the House 
has not yet had an opportunity of discussing it." 

Writing to The Times on 2 November 1949, Malcolm Thomson, the official biographer of 
Lloyd George, noted that this was the thirty-second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration 
and it seemed a 

suitable occasion for stating briefly certain facts about its origin which have 
recently been incorrectly recorded. 

When writing the official biography of Lloyd George, I was able to study the 
original documents bearing on this question. From these it was clear that 
although certain members of the Cabinets of 1916 and 1917 sympathized with 
Zionist aspirations, the efforts of Zionist leaders to win any promise of support 
from the British Government had proved quite ineffectual, and the secret 
Sykes-Picot agreement with the French for partition of spheres of interest in the 
Middle East seemed to doom Zionist aims. A change of attitude was, however, 
brought about through the initiative of Mr. James A. Malcolm, who pressed on 
Sir Mark Sykes, then Under-Secretary to the War Cabinet, the thesis that an 
allied offer to restore Palestine to the Jews would swing over from the German 
to the allied side the very powerful influence of American Jews, including Judge 
Brandeis, the friend and adviser of President Wilson. Sykes was interested, and 
at his request Malcolm introduced him to Dr. Weizmann and the other Zionist 
leaders, and negotiations were opened which culminated in the Balfour 
Declaration. 

These facts have at one time or another been mentioned in various books and 
articles, and are set out by Dr. Adolf Boehm in his monumental history of 
Zionism, "Die Zionistische Bewegung," Vol. 1, p. 656. It therefore surprised me 
to find in Dr. Weizmann's autobiography, "Trial and Error," that he makes no 
mention of Mr. Malcolm's crucially important intervention, and even attributes 
his own introduction to Sir Mark Sykes to the late Dr. Caster. As future 
historians might not unnaturally suppose Dr. Weizmann's account to be 
authentic, I have communicated with Mr. Malcolm, who not only confirms the 
account I have given, but holds a letter written to him by Dr. Weizmann on 
March 5, 1941, saying: "You will be interested to hear that some time ago I had 
occasion to write to Mr. Lloyd George about your useful and timely initiative in 
1916 to bring about the negotiations between myself and my Zionist colleagues 
and Sir Mark Sykes and others about Palestine and Zionist support of the allied 
cause in America and elsewhere." 

No doubt a complexity of motives lay behind the Balfour Declaration, including 
strategic and diplomatic considerations and, on the part of Balfour, Lloyd 
George, and Smuts, a genuine sympathy with Zionist aims. But the determining 



factor was the intervention of Mr Malcolm with his scheme for engaging by 
some such concession the support of American Zionists for the allied cause in 
the first world war. 

Yours, & c, 

MALCOLM THOMSON 

According to Lloyd George's Memoirs of the Peace Conference, where, as planned many 
years before, the Zionists were strongly represented, 

There is no better proof of the value of the Balfour Declaration as a military 
move than the fact that Germany entered into negotiations with Turkey in an 
endeavor to provide an alternative scheme which would appeal to Zionists. A 
German-Jewish Society, the V.J.O.D., [A] was formed, and in January 1918, 
Talaat, the Turkish Grand Vizier, at the instigation of the Germans, gave vague 
promises of legislation by means of which "all justifiable wishes of the Jews in 
Palestine would be able to meet their fulfillment." 

Another most cogent reason for the adoption by the Allies of the policy of the 
Declaration lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had been secretly 
active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they had become the 
chief agents of German pacifist propaganda in Russia; by 1917 they had done 
much in preparing for that general disintegration of Russian society, later 
recognised as the Revolution. It was believed that if Great Britain declared for 
the fulfillment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own pledge, one 
effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the Entente. 

It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence 
upon world Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish 
financial interests. In America, their aid in this respect would have a special 
value when the Allies had almost exhausted the gold and marketable securities 
available for American purchases. Such were the chief considerations which, in 
1917, impelled the British Government towards making a contract with 
Jewry, r 1891 

As for getting the support of Russian Jewry, Trotsky's aims were to overthrow the 
Provisional Government and turn the imperialist war into a war of international revolution. 
In November 1917 the first aim was accomplished. Military factors primarily influenced 
Lenin to sign the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. 

The Zionist sympathizers Churchill and George seemed never to lose an opportunity to tell 
the British people that they had an obligation to support the Zionists. 

But what had the Zionists done for Britain? 

Where was the documentation? 

"Measured by British interests alone," wrote the Oxford historian Elizabeth Monroe in 1963, 
the Balfour Declaration "was one of the greatest mistakes in our imperial history!" 

The Zionists had the Herzlian tradition — shall we call it — of Promises, "promises." 
Considerable credit for the diplomacy which brought into existence the Jewish national 
home must go to Weizmann. A British official who came into contact with him summarized 



his diplomatic method in the following words: 

When (the First World War) began, his cause was hardly known to the principal 
statesman of the victors. It had many enemies, and some of the most formidable 
were amongst the most highly placed of his own people ... He once told me that 
2,000 interviews had gone into the making of the Balfour Declaration. With 
unerring skill he adapted his arguments to the special circumstances of each 
statesman. To the British and Americans he could use biblical language and 
awake a deep emotional undertone; to other nationalities he more often talked 
in terms of interest. Mr. Lloyd George was told that Palestine was a little 
mountainous country not unlike Wales; with Lord Balfour the philosophical 
background of Zionism could be surveyed; for Lord Cecil the problem was 
placed in the setting of a new world organization; while to Lord Milner the 
extension of imperial power could be vividly portrayed. To me, who dealt with 
these matters as a junior officer of the General Staff, he brought from many 
sources all the evidences that could be obtained of the importance of a Jewish 
national home to the strategical position of the British Empire, but he always 
indicated by a hundred shades and inflections of the voice that he believed that 
I could also appreciate better than my superiors other more subtle and recondite 
arguments. [1901 

A) Vereinigung Judischer Organisationen in Deutschland zur Wahrung der Rechte des 
Osten. (Alliance of the Jewish Organizations of Germany for the Safeguarding of the Rights 
of the East.) 

Triumph and Tragedy 

Herzl correctly predicted a great war between the Great Powers. His followers organized to 
be ready for that time to further their ambitions through exploiting the rivalry of the Great 
Powers. They had a vested interest in promoting that war and in its continuance until 
Palestine was wrested from Turkey by British soldiers. 

They prepared for the Peace Conference at Versailles although they had no belligerent 
standing, but they had the weight of the Rothschilds, Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter, and 
others, which made room for them. 

In the Introduction to The Palestine Diary I wrote, 

The establishment in 1948 of a "Jewish state" in Palestine was a phenomenal 
achievement. In fifty years from the Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 
1897 — attended by a small number of Jews who represented little more than 
themselves — the Zionist idea had captivated the vast majority of world Jewry, 
and enlisted in particular Britain, America and the United Nations to intervene 
in Palestine in its support. 

In 1983, seventy-five years after the Balfour Declaration and nearly ninety years after the 
first Zionist Congress in Switzerland a meeting was held there of the International 
Conference on the Question of Palestine — but the conferees were not Jews — they were 
Palestinians — two million are in exile — displaced by Jews! 

Where is the meaning for us? 

On a day-to-day level, we can look in our newspapers for Zionist tactics of influence and 
leverage which we can document they have used successfully in the past. 



Then there is a long-term strategy, From the mass of material in a century of history and in 
our complex society of today I see the underlying effect of two themes, They influence the 
lives of every one of us, and will continue to do so unless a change is made. 

We can see them clearly in their early formulation, before they had been fed as valid data 
into the information processing and software systems of our society, with the result that 
most of the answers we get are wrong! 

They are found in the conversation of Herzl and Meyer-Cohn in 1895. The sets of ideas are 
those associated with Jewish nationalism and racism on the Right [1911 — racism being 
defined by Sir Andrew Huxley P.R.S. as the belief in the subjugation of one race by another, 
and on the other hand the concept of "universalism." 

Acceptance of this input from the Right into our computations has resulted in the transfer of 
some $50 billion from our pockets into theirs. [1921 In 1983, budgeted American tax money, 
labeled "aid," alone amounts to $625 for every man, woman and child in Israel. [1931 It 
results in our acceptance of concentration camps for Palestinians containing thousands of 
people without a squeak from the so-called "international community" in acceptance of their 
assassination, torture, deportation, closing of their schools and colleges, even of their 
massacre. [1941 The lives of American troops — men and women, are committed to 
supporting these crimes. [1951 Criticism is called "antisemitism," a word which computes as 
"unemployable social outcast." 

Jewish nationalism and Israeli policy planned the present destabilization of Lebanon in 
1955. [1961 This is part of larger schemes to fragment and enfeeble possible challenges to 
their supremacy in the Middle East. [1971 

On the other hand we have "universalism." This, I believe was the factor motivating 
Woodrow Wilson through House in his telegram of 30 May 1916 and letter of 16 June 1915 
to the President, to which I have referred. "The League of Nations," the United Nations 
Organization, are its printouts. Just as House was a coefficient of the international bankers, 
so the United Nations and the international bankers have been part of the coefficient 
whereby over $400 billion of the earnings of workers in countries where universalism is a 
significant force, has been transferred to the peoples of Asia, Africa, South America and 
Communist countries; money needed for our capital investment. 

People should ask: How is it that, with such multiplication of industrial power and resources, 
our peoples' standard of living and possibilities to have and support children have not 
multiplied accordingly? Why do so many of our women have to work? Why does no public 
figure — politician, labor leader — dare to ask — and raise the roof? 

Universalism and Marxism compete superficially for first place as finalists in western culture 
distortion. Both promote its ethnic dilution, but deny us the reality of racial differences. 
Against our individuality and our nationalism, they and the global capitalists and their 
corporations unite as transnationals to reduce all but themselves to a common consumer 
market of blurred boundaries and one color. They would like one law — which they would 
make; one armed force — which they would control. Universalism would impose — not a 
global peace, but a global tyranny! 

Universalism has come up with "interdependence," an expression used as a cover for the 
expropriation of our earnings as foreign aid in various forms; it has anesthetized the sense of 
self-defense of our countries so that those who have tried to stop their colonization by 
people from exploding populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America have been made to 



feel that they were depriving others of their "human rights." 

In countries where they live other than Israel, Zionists are in the forefront of opposition to 
restrictions on immigration. Note that even in 1903 a leader of the fight against the Alien's 
Bill and against tightening up naturalization regulations in Britain was the pro-Zionist 
Winston S. Churchill, and the super-Zionist Herzl appeared before the Royal Commission on 
Alien Immigration to oppose any restriction. 

And yet, my Arab friends born in Jerusalem are cast out and cannot return. 

"If," said Herzl, "we wanted to bring about the unity of mankind independent of national 
boundaries, we would have to combat the ideal of patriotism. The latter, however, will prove 
stronger than we for innumerable years to come. 

In a hundred years they have almost won that struggle. 

In a conversation with Joseph Chamberlain in 1903, Theodore Herzl was asked how the 
Jewish colony would survive in the distant future. Herzl said, "We shall play the role of a 
small buffer state. We shall attain this not through the goodwill but from the jealousy of the 
Powers." 

This is the game that Israel plays today, obtaining its military supplies, its high technology, 
and its billions of dollars from the pay packets of American workers, using the rivalry of the 
USSR and the U.S.A. 

We should not allow ourselves to be made pawns in the games of others. 



Appendix 

SECRET 

Political Intelligence Department, 

Foreign Office. 

Special 3. 

Memorandum on British Commitments to King Husein 

(Page 9) With regard to Palestine, His Majesty's Government are committed by Sir H. 
McMahon's letter to the Sherif on the 24th October, 1915, to its inclusion in the boundaries 
of Arab independence. But they have stated their policy regarding the Palestinian Holy 
Places and Zionist colonisation in their message to him of the 4th January, 1918: 

"That so far as Palestine is concerned, we are determined that no people shall be subjected 
to another, but that in view of the fact: 

"(a.) That there are in Palestine shrines, Wakfs, and Holy Places, sacred in 
some cases to Moslems alone, to Jews alone, to Christians alone, and in others 
to two or all three, and inasmuch as these places are of interest to vast masses 
of people outside Palestine and Arabia, there must be a special regime to deal 
with these places approved of by the world. 

"(b.) That as regards the Mosque of Omar, it shall be considered as a Moslem 



concern alone, and shall not be subjected directly or indirectly to any 
non-Moslem authority. 

"That since the Jewish opinion of the world is in favour of a return of Jews to 
Palestine, and inasmuch as this opinion must remain a constant factor, and 
further, as His Majesty's Government view with favour the realisation of this 
aspiration. His Majesty's Government are determined that in so far as is 
compatible with the freedom of the existing population, both economic and 
political, no obstacle should be put in the way of the realisation of this ideal." 

This message was delivered personally to King Husein by Commander Hogarth, and the 
latter reported on his reception of it as follows: 

"The King would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I 
instructed to warn him that such a State was contemplated by Great Britain. He 
probably knows nothing of the actual or possible economy of Palestine, and his 
ready assent to Jewish settlement there is not worth very much. But I think he 
appreciates the financial advantage of Arab co-operation with the Jews." 



Notes 

£11 A Survey of Palestine, 1945-1946, H.M.S.O., vol. I, p.l. 

[21 Lowenthal, The Diaries of Theodor Herzl. pp.35. 

f2al Ibid., p. 63. 

[2bl Ibid., pp. 128-129, 132, 152, 176. 

£31 Ibid., p. .215. 

[41 Weizmann, Trial and Error, p.45-46. 

[5] Stein, Leonard, Zionism, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubaer and Ca., 1932). 
p.62. 

[6J Bela. Alex., Theodor Herzl (tr. Maurice Samuel). (Philadelphia: Jewish Palestine 
Society), pp. 304-305; Halpern. The Ideal of a Jewish State, p. 144. 

[7] Ibid,. For financial details, see pp. 262-264. 

[81 Lowenthal, The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 398. 

[9J Lewisohn, Ludwig, Theodor Herzl. (New York: World. 1955). pp. 335-341. 

riOl Bela. Theodor Herzl, p.490. 

rill Ibid., pp. 361ff. 378f. 

[12] Ziff, William B., The Rape of Palestine. (New York: Longmans & Green, 1938), p. 
43. 

f 1 31 British Foreign Office to Herzl, 19 lane 1903, Zionist Archives, Jerusalem. 

£141 Tagebuecher, vol.111, pp, 412-413 (24 April 1903), Berlin 1922. 

f 1 51 Stein. Leonard, The Balfour Declaration. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1916), 

f 1 61 Lipsky, Louis, A Gallery of Zionist Profiles, (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 
1956), p.37. 

[17] Halpern, The Idea of a Jewish State, pp. 154-155. 

f 1 81 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 78. 



[19] Ibid., p. 35. 

f201 Lipsky, A Gallery of Zionist Profiles, p. 94. 

[21] Alsberg, F.A., Ha-Sh'ela ha-Aravit, vol. I, Shivat Zion, IV, pp. 161-209. Quoted by 
Halpern in The Idea of a Jewish State, p. 267. 

f221 Lipsky, A Gallery of Zionist Profiles, p. 36. 

[231 Ibid., p. 98. 

f241 Halpern, The Idea of a Jewish State, p.267. 

f251 Lipsky, A Gallery of Zionist Profiles, pp. 95. 98. 

f261 Protocols of the 10th Zionist Congress, p.ll. 

f271 Lipsky, A Gallery of Zionist Profiles, p. 26. 

f281 Halpern. The Idea of a Jewish State, p. 267. 

f291 Report of the 12th Zionist Congress (London: Central Office of the Organization. 
1922) pp. 13ff. 

r301 Bela, A., Return to the Soil. (Jerusalem: Zionist Organization. 1952) p. 27. 

[3JJ Hecht, Ben, Perfidy, (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1961), p.254. 

f321 Reports submitted by the Executive of the Zionist Organization to the 12th Zionist 
Congress, London, 1921, Palestine Report, p. 7. 

[33J Hyamson, A.M., The Near East, 31 Oct. 1913, (London, 1917), p.68. 

[34J Ibid., pp.39-40. 

f351 Jewish Chronicle, 16 October 1908. 

[36J Die Welt, 22 January 1909. 

f371 Protocols of the 1 1th Zionist Congress, p. 6. 

f381 Joffre, Joseph J.C., The Memoirs of Marshal Joffre, (London and New York: 
Harper & Brothers, 1932), Vol.1, pp.38-39. 

f391 Chamberlain, Austen, Down the Years, (London: Cassell & Co., 1935), p. 104. 

[401 Churchill, Winston L.S., The World Crisis, 1911-1918, (London: T. Butterworth, 
1931), Vol.1, p.234. 

f4 1 1 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 104-105. 

[42J Ibid., $.109. 

[43J Ibid., pp.233-234. 

\44] Adamov, E., Ed., Die Europaeische Maechte und die Tuerkei Waehrend des 
Weltkriegs-Die Aufteilung der Asiatischen Tuerkei. Translation from Russian 
(Dresden, 1932), No.91. 

f451 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 97. 

f461 For details see 1921 Reports submitted by the Executive Committee of the Zionist 
Organization to the Twelfth Zionist Congress, London, 1921. 

f471 Letter from Max Bodheimer to Otto Warburg, 22 November 1914 Jerusalem: 
Zionist Archives), quoted in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p.98, n.8. 

[481 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 197-198. 

[49J Gottheil to Louis 0. Brandeis, 1 October 1914 (unpublished). 

r501 London: The Times, 10 November 1914. 



f5 1 1 Letter from Greenberg to Herzl, 4 July 1903, quoted in Stein, The Balfour 

Declaration, p.28. This seems to indicate Lloyd George's first contact with the 
Zionist movement: Lloyd George, as you know, is an M.P.; he, therefore, knows 
the ropes of these things and can be helpful to us.' 

\51\ Samuel, Viscount Herbert, Memoirs, (London: Cresset Press, 1945), pp 139ff. 

f531 Letter from Samuel to Weizmann, 1 1 January 1915, quoted in Stein, The Balfour 
Declaration, p. 109, fo. 24; also Samuel, Memoirs, p. 144. 

f541 Samuel, Memoirs, p. 143. In a letter of 20 November 1912 to the Zionist Executive, 
Weizmann mentioned Haldane as one of the important persons to whom he thought 
he could gain access: Zionist Archives. 

f551 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 1 1 1 , fn. 33; Crewe's mother-in-law was the 

Countess of Rosebery, daughter of Baron Mayer de Rothschild, see p.l 12, fn. 34. 

f561 Samuel, Memoirs, p. 141 . 

f571 Oxford and Asquith, Earl, Memories and Reflections, (London: Cassell, 1928), Vol. 
II , p. 59. 

[581 Samuel, Memoirs, pp. 143-144. 

f591 Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections, Vol. II, p. 65. 

f601 Ibid., p. 188; Reports submitted by the Executive Committee of the Zionist 

Organization to the Twelfth Zionist Congress, London 1921. 'Organization Report.' 
p. 113, gives a much smaller figure. 

[61] Rischin, Moses, The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870-1914, (Cambridge: 
Harvard University Press, 1962). 

[62] German Foreign Office Documents at London Record Office, Washington to Berlin 
K 692/K 176709-10, and K 692/K 1761 1-12-Berlin to Washington, 1 November 
1914. 'Some time ago we already strongly advised Turkey, on account of 
international Jewry, to protect Jews of every nationality, and we are now reverting 
to the matter once again.' 

[631 German Foreign Office Documents, K 692/K 176723 and 176745. 

f641 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p.201. 

f651 Richard Lichtheim to Leonard Stein, 12 February 1952, The Balfour Declaration, 
p.209, fn. 9. 

f661 Report dated 8 March 1915, Papers of Nahum Sokolow, Quoted in Stein, The 
Balfour Declaration, p. 210, fn. 10. 

f671 Palestine Report to 1921 Zionist Congress, p. 34. 

f681 Lichtheim, Richard, Memoirs, published in Hebrew version as She'ar Yashoov, (Tel 
Aviv: Newman, 1953), Chapter XV 

[691 Ibid., Chapter XVIII. 

f701 The Times of history of the War; Vol. XIV, pp. 320-321; Stein, The Balfour 

Declaration, pp. 212-213; e.g., Preussicher Jahrbuecher, August-September 1915, 
article by Kurt Blumenfeld. 

f711 Lichtheim, Memoirs, Chapter XVIII; Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 213-214, 
fns. 21.22. 

[721 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p.214, fn. 23. 

f731 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 536-537; Note of the interview in 
memorandum 28 August 1917, Zionist Archives. 



[741 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p.537. Even in 1959, Aaronssohn's superior, 

Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. wrote: "I am not at liberty to divulge any of his 
exploits as it would publicize methods better kept secret"- Middle East Diary 
1917-1956 (New York: Yoseloff, 1960) p. 5. 

[751 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p.217. 

[761 Conjoint Foreign Committee 1916/210,5 April 1916; Stein, The Balfour 
Declaration, p.218. 

[771 Hatikvah (Antwerp), December 1927, contains article by Basch. 

[781 Conjoint Foreign Committee, 1915/340. 

[791 Ibid., 1916/183ff; Translated in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 219. 

[801 Poincare, R., Au Service de la France, (Paris: Plon, 1926), Vol. VIII, p.220,15 May 
1916. 

f8 1 1 Conjoint Foreign Committee, 1916/110, 124; Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p 
220. 

[821 Conjoint Foreign Committee, 1916/1 Iff; Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 

220-221. 

[831 Die Welt, 1913, No. 35, p. 1146; Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 67. 

[841 Conjoint Foreign Committee, 1916/130ff, 18 February 1916; Stein. The Balfour 
Declaration, p. 221. 

[851 Conjoint Foreign Committee, 1916/206; Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 223. 

[861 Stein. The Balfour Declaration, p. 225. 

[871 Adamov, E., Ed., Die Europoeische Maechte und die Tuerkei Waehrend des 
Weltkriegs-Die Aufteilung der Asiatischen Tuerkei. Translation from Russian 
(Dresden, 1932), No.80. 

[881 Conjoint Foreign Committee, 1916/387. 

[891 Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 1915-1916, p.434. 

[901 Falls, Cyril, The Great War, (New York; Putnam, 1959), p. 180. 

f9 1 1 Yale, William, The Near East: A Modern History, (Ann Arbor: The University of 
Michigan Press. 1958) p. 263. 

[921 Caster (Moses) Papers, quoted in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 285, fn. 

[931 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 488-490. 

[941 Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 1915-1916, p.276. 

[951 Landman, S., in World Jewry, Balfour Declaration: Secret Facts Revealed, 

(London: Independent Weekly Journal, 1935), Vol.2, No. 43, 22 February 1935. 

[96] Landman, Balfour Declaration: Secret Facts Revealed, Vol. 2, No 43, 22 February 
1935; also, Malcolm, Origins of the Balfour Declaration: Dr. Weizmann's 
Contribution, pp. 2-3. 

[971 Landman, Balfour Declaration: Secret Facts Revealed, Vol. 2, No 43, 22 February 
1935; also, Link, A.S., Wilson, The New Freedom, (Princeton: University Press. 
1956) pp. lOff, 13ff. 

[981 Ziff, The Rape of Palestine, p. 58. 

[991 Mason, Alphoos T.M., Brandeis, A Free Man's Life, (New York: Viking Press, 
1956), p. 451. 

[1001 Ibid.,p. 452. 



r 1 1 1 Gwynn, Stephen, Ed., Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring Rice, (London: 
Constable, 1929), Vol. II, pp. 200-201. 

1021 Yale, The Near East, p.268. 



1031 Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man's Life, p. 448. 



1041 The Times Documentary History of the War, London, 1917, Vol. IX, Part 3, p. 303. 



1051 National Archives. Department of State, Decimal File 1910-1929, No. 
881.4018/325. 

1061 Jewish Advocate, 1 3 August 1915. 



1071 Boston Post, 4 October 1915. 



1081 The ESCO (Ethel Silverman Cohn) Foundation of Palestine. Inc., Palestine: A 
Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies, (New Haven: Yale University Press 
1947), Vol. I, pp.87-89. 

1091 Sykes, Two Studies in Virtue, p. 187. 



1101 Somervell, D.C., British Politics Since 1900, (New York: Oxford University Press 
1950), p. 113. 

1111 Report of the Twelfth Zionist Congress (London: Central Office of the Zionist 
Organization, 1922), p. 13ff. 

1121 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 25. 



1131 Antonius, The Arab Awakening, p. 263. 



1141 Taylor. Alan, Prelude to Israel, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 19. 



1151 The ESCO Foundation, Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies, 
Vol. I, pp. 92-93 

1161 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 286-287. 



1171 The ESCO Foundation, Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies, 
Vol. I, pp. 94. 

1181 Taylor. Alan, Prelude to Israel, p. 20. 



118a1 Stein, p 509 citing Brandeis' papers. 



1191 New York Times 24 March 1917. 



1201 United States: State Department Document 861.00/288, 19 March 1917. 



120a1 120a. Stein, p 332 fn. 



1211 Sykes, Two Studies in Virtue, p. 196. 



1221 Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality, p. 140. Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 396, fn. 
10. 

1231 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 396-397. 



1241 Ibid., p. 394 fn 3. 



1251 Letter from Sokolow to Weizmann, quoted in The Balfour Declaration, p. 400, fn. 

27. 

1261 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 400. fn. 29. 



1271 Landman, S., in World Jewry, Balfour Declaration: Scent Facts Revealed 
(London: Independent Weekly Journal 1935), 1 March 1935. 

1281 Les Origines de la Declaration Balfour, Question d'Israel, (Paris, 1939), Vol. 17, 
p. 680 (Translation) 

1291 Ibid. 



r 1 301 Translation from Russian in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 395. 

f 1 3 1 1 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 414. 

f 1 321 Sykes, Two Studies in Virtue, p. 211. 

f 1331 Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality, p. 141. 

IT341 Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man 's Life, p. 452. 

f 1 3 51 Dugdale, Blanche E.C., Arthur James Balfour, (London, Hutchinson, 1936), Vol, 
II. p. 231. 

f 1361 Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man 's Life, pp. 452-453 . 

[137] The Times, (London), 24 May 1917. 

[138] Ibid., 28 May 1917. 

f 1391 Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality, p. 148. 

[140] Ibid., p 149. 

ri411 Ibid., p 153. 

IT421 Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 179. 

ri431 Stein, p. 462. 

[144] Ibid. 

IT451 Ibid. 

ri461 Ibid., pp 463-64. 

IT471 Yale, The Near East: A Modern History, p. 241 Also article by William Yale in 
World Politics, (New Haven: April 1949), Vol. I, No. 3, pp. 308-320 on 
Ambassador Morgenthau's Special Mission of 1917'; Stein, The Balfour 
Declaration, pp. 352-360. 

IT481 Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man's Life, p. 453. 

[149] Ibid., p 453. 

fl 501 Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality, pp. 163-164. 

f 1 5 1 1 De Haas, Jacob, Theodor Herzl: A Biographical Study, (Chicago: University Press, 
1027), Vol. I, pp. 194etseq 

fl 521 Sykes, Two Studies in Virtue: On the basis of Nordan's manuscript, 'The Prosperity 
of His Servant.' p 160 fn 1. 

f 1 531 Sadaqu Najib, Qadiyet Falastin, (Beirut: 1946) pp. 19, 31. 

f 1 541 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 526. 

f 1 551 Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man's Life, p. 673. 

f 1 561 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 504, fn. 5. 

[157] Seymour, Charles (ed. by), The Intimate Papers of Col. House, (New York: 
Houghton Mifflin, 1926), pp. 161, 174. 

f 1 581 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 504-505, fn. 5, 7. 

f 1 591 The Jewish Chronicle, 26 May 1916. In a personal communication, Prof. W. Yale 
notes that the Cairo publisher Dr. Faris Nimr told him that Morgenthau had talked 
with the Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, in 1914, regarding a role in promoting the cession 
of Palestine to Egypt. 

|T 601 New York Times, Obituary, 18 June, 1962. 

f 1 6 1 1 Chaim Weizmann Papers in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 506. 



r 1621 Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man's Life, p. 453. 

f 1631 Ibid., p.453. Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p.506. 

|"1641 Brandeis to de Haas and Lewin-Epstein. 20 September 1917, Brandeis Papers, in 
Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 506. 

|"1651 Ibid., Brandeis to House, 24 September 1917. 

|"1661 Stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 507-508. 

|"1671 The Brandeis Papers in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 509. 

|"1681 The Wilson Papers in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 509. 

|"1691 Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man 's Life, p.453 . 

ri701 Ibid. 

f 1 T 1 1 Adler. 'The Palestine Question in the Wilson Era,' pp. 305-306. Quoted in Stein, 
The Balfour Declaration, p. 528. 

|"1721 See 'The Zionist-Israel Juridical claims to constitute "The Jewish people" nationality 
entity and to confer membership in it: Appraisal in public international law.' W.T. 
Mallinson, Jr., George Washington Law Review, Vol. 32, No. 5, (June 1964). pp. 
983-1075, particularly p. 1015. 

f 1731 The New Palestine published by the Zionist Organization of America, 28 October 
1927, pp. 321,343. 

|T 741 William Wiseman to Leonard Stein, 7 November 1952: in Stein, The Balfour 
Declaration, p. 529. 

f 1751 In a dispatch dated 19 May 1919 from Balfour to Curzon, 'The correspondence with 
Sir William Wiseman in October 1917' is mentioned as evidence of endorsement of 
the Balfour Declaration. Document on British Foreign Policy, First Series, Vol. IV, 
No.196, fn. 4, p.281. 

ri761 Stein, pp. 561-62. 

[177] Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man 's Life, p. 454. 

[178] Ibid.,pA55. 

IT791 New York Times, 8 January 1961, 53:6. 

[180] Ibid., 14 January 1961, 22:5. 

f 1 8 1 1 Lloyd George, Memoirs of the Peace Conference, Vol. II, p. 732. 

fl 821 Claude Kitchen and the Wilson War Policies, 1937, reprinted 1971, Russel. 

IT831 Knightley, Phillip, The First Casualty, (N.Y.: Harcourt Brace, 1975), p. 122. 

fl 841 War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1933), pp. 280-3. 

IT851 War Memoirs, p.29 1 . 

IT861 The Conduct of War, J.F.C. Fuller, (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1961), p. 171 

f 1 871 Translation from the Russian in Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 395. 

f 1 881 Great Britain, the Jews and Palestine, (London, 1936), pp. 4-5, New Zionist Press. 

f 1 891 George, Memoirs of the Peace Conference, p. 726. 

IT901 Taylor, Prelude to Israel, p. 24. 

f 1 9 1 1 Example: resigning Israeli Chief of Staff, Gen. Rafael Eytan, following the invasion 
of Lebanon, likened the Palestinians to "cockroaches." 



r 1921 The U.S. General Accounting Office figure for military and economic aid to Israel 
from 1948 through 1982 was $24 billion. To this must be added the tax-free 
contributions to Israeli organizations, loss on investment of funds in Israeli bonds by 
American cities such as New York, by labor unions, and other entities. To the add 
the costs of transfer of American technology to Israel. Since 1982, U.S. annual 
taxpayer levies for Israel have been increased by Congress, so that the cost of Israel 
for the United States could easily climb to well in excess of $100 billion over the 
next decade. 

ri931 New York Times, 10 July 1983. 

|T 941 I recall distinctly how our soldiers fired their weapons at the elderly, at women and 
children, all on order of their commanders. I witnessed the pleas and cries of small 
children after their mothers were brutally killed in front of them by our soldiers. 
Some of the soldiers even fired phosphorus canisters into Ein El-Helweh shelters, 
where hundreds of civilians had taken refuge. None of them survived." Account by 
Lt. Eytan Kleibneuf in Haolam Hazeh, Israel, 7 July 1982. Kleibneuf is a member 
of Mi'jan Michael Kibbutz and member of Mapam's United Kibbutzim Movement, 
and a reserve officer in the Israel infantry forces. 

The West German weekly Stern, 24 August 1982, carried an article by Austria's 
Jewish Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, stating that Israel had committed "gigantic 
crimes" in its invasion of Lebanon. "Israel stands morally naked. Its leaders have 
shown their true face," he concluded. 

During Israel's invasion of Lebanon, the U.S. Jewish Press carried a regular column 
by Rabbi Meir Kahane advocating the killing of Palestinians of all ages. This he 
wrote, was G-d's will as expressed in the Torah. Not to do so, opposed that will. 
This is the Holy War (herem) which God "commanded" the Hebrews to wage 
against the Canaanites for the possession of the Promised Land. The Old Testament 
repeatedly refers to the terror that the herem would produce and to Israel's 
obligation to destroy all persons with their property who remain in the land, lest 
they become slaves or corrupting influences. The Hebrew word herem designates a 
sacred sphere where ordinary standards do not apply, and in a military context ... 
herem is a total war of annihilation without limits against men, women, animals and 
property. For a discussion of the herem and its revival by the Zealots as reflected in 
the Dead Sea Scrolls, see de Vaux, R., Ancient Israel, New York: McGraw-Hill. 
1972,pp.258-267. 

In psychological terms, the defense for indulgence in the horror of herem is 
projection -projection of ideas of herem as being held by others, or indulging in 
behavior which invites the "Group-Fantasy of Martyrdom." See Journal of 
Psychohistory, Vol.6, No. 2, Fall 1978, H.F. Stein, "The Psychodynamic Paradox of 
Survival Through Persecution," pp. 15 1-2 10. 

f 1951 Within three weeks of the presentation of this lecture at the IHR conference, 241 
U.S. Marines and 58 French servicemen were killed in Beirut on 23 October 1983. 

IT961 Israel's Sacred Terrorism by Livia Rokach. Belmont 1980: Assoc, of Arab-Amer. 
Grads. Amer. Grads. Contains the Memoirs of Moshe Sharett 1953-57, Israel's first 
Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister. 

IT971 "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties," by Oded Yinon, a former officer in 
the Israeli Foreign Ministry. In Kivunim (Directions), the Hebrew-language journal 
of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization, February 
1982. "The dissolution of Syria and Iraq ... into ethnically or religious unique areas 
such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the eastern front in the long run, 
while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the short term 
target," the presentation reads in part. 



From The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1985-6 (Vol. 6, No. 4). This paper was first 
presented by the author at the Fifth IHR Conference, 1983. It was also the basis for the 
booklet, Behind the Balfour Declaration: The Hidden Origin of Today's Mideast Crisis, 
published by the Institute for Historical Review in 1988. 

About the Author 

Robert John — foreign affairs analyst, diplomatic historian, author and psychiatrist — was 
educated in England . He graduated from University of London King's College, and then 
studied at the Middle Temple , Inns of Court, in London . He was the author, with Sami 
Hadawi, of The Palestine Diary: British, American and United Nations Intervention, 
1914-1948. This detailed two-volume work, first published in 1970, includes a foreword by 
British historian Arnold Toynbee. Robert John died on June 4, 2007, age 86. 



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