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The American Palestine Committee was a political lobby group in the United States founded in 1932 to influence American policy towards the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, an aim achieved in 1948 with U.S. support for the Partition of Palestine and subsequent recognition of the new state of Israel.
Conceived by Emanuel Neumann, a member of the Executive of the Zionist Organization, late in 1931, following the 1930 publication of the Passfield White Paper by the British government, which was seen as a retreat from the commitments of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine. The idea of the American Palestine Committee was to organize a group of prominent (mainly non-Jewish) Americans in political support of the Zionist project of creating a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. The Committee was launched at a public dinner in Washington on January 17, 1932, and attended by members of both houses of Congress, and government dignitaries, including Vice President Charles Curtis. A letter of greeting from President Herbert Hoover was read to the audience. [1] The principal speeches at the inaugural meeting were delivered by Felix Frankfurter, Emanuel Neumann, and Elwood Mead.
By the 1940s, the membership of the committee had grown to 15,000 and included two-thirds of the United States Senate, as well as many members of the United States House of Representatives, state legislatures, mayors and other influential political figures. The main event in its calendar was an annual dinner. In 1944 the committee sponsored a National Conference on Palestine which passed resolutions calling for maximum Jewish immigration to Palestine and the conversion of Palestine into a Jewish Commonwealth.
The American Palestine Committee worked jointly with other bodies including the Christian Council on Palestine and the American Zionist Emergency Council and succeeded in 1945 in having the U.S. Congress adopt a resolution supporting the creation of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine.
In 1946 the organization merged with the Christian Council on Palestine to become the American Christian Palestine Committee. At that point its membership numbered over 15,000 Christians. On August 22, 1946, Bartley Crum spoke at a committee lunch, during which he "tore into British and U.S. Officialdom and the handling of the Palestinian question." [2]
In 1947 it advocated quick implementation of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine's plan. A few years following the successful creation of Israel in 1948, the American Christian Palestine Committee felt its work done and disbanded.
Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to espouse support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports "the development and protection of the State of Israel".
The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations, which recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Plan as Resolution 181 (II).
A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture. The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.
Christian Zionism is an ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with Bible prophecy: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant — the eschatological "Gathering of Israel" — is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The term began to be used in the mid-20th century, in place of Christian restorationism, as proponents of the ideology rallied behind Zionists in support of a Jewish national homeland.
The Biltmore Conference, also known by its resolution as the Biltmore Program, was a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy by its demand "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth." The meeting was held in New York City, at the prestigious Biltmore Hotel, from May 9 to May 11, 1942, with 600 delegates and Zionist leaders from 18 countries attending.
The Jewish National Council, also known as the Jewish People's Council was the main national executive organ of the Assembly of Representatives of the Jewish community (Yishuv) within Mandatory Palestine. Its responsibilities included education, culture, local government, welfare, healthcare, religious service, security and defense. Since 1928 it was also the official representative of the Yishuv to the British Mandate government. Established in 1920, it operated until 1948, when its functions were passed to the newly-established state of Israel.
The First Zionist Congress was the inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization (ZO) held in Basel on August 29–31, 1897. 208 delegates and 26 press correspondents attended the event. It was convened and chaired by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionism movement. The Congress formulated a Zionist platform, known as the Basel program, and founded the Zionist Organization. It also adopted the Hatikvah as its anthem.
As an organized nationalist movement, Zionism is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is intertwined with Jewish history and Judaism. The organizations of Hovevei Zion, held as the forerunners of modern Zionist ideals, were responsible for the creation of 20 Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.
In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland of the Jewish people.
The intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine was the civil, political and armed struggle between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Yishuv during the British rule in Mandatory Palestine, beginning from the violent spillover of the Franco-Syrian War in 1920 and until the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Isaac Landman was an American Reform rabbi, author and anti-Zionist activist. He was editor of the ten volume Universal Jewish Encyclopedia.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine – the biblical Land of Israel – was flawed or unjust in some way.
The American Council for Judaism (ACJ) is an organization of American Jews committed to the proposition that Jews are not a national but a religious group, adhering to the original stated principles of Reform Judaism, as articulated in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. In particular, it is notable for its historical opposition to Zionism. Although it has since moderated its stance on the issue, it still advocates that American Jews distance themselves from Israel politically, and does not view Israel as a universal Jewish homeland. The ACJ has also championed women's rights, including the right for women to serve as rabbis, and has supported Reform Jewish congregations and contributed to the publication of new editions of prayer books for religious services predominately in the English language for Jews in English-speaking countries.
This timeline of anti-Zionism chronicles the history of anti-Zionism, including events in the history of anti-Zionist thought.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
The International Jewish Labor Bund was a New York-based international Jewish socialist organization, based on the legacy of the General Jewish Labour Bund founded in the Russian empire in 1897 and the Polish Bund that was active in the interwar years. The IJLB is composed by local Bundist groups around the world. It was an "associated organisation" of the Socialist International, similar in status to the World Labour Zionist Movement or the International League of Religious Socialists. The World Coordinating Council/Committee of the Jewish Labor Bund was dissolved in New York in the mid-2000s. although local Bundist groups or groups inspired by the Jewish Labor Bund still exist in France, the UK, and most notably Australia.
Poale Zion was a movement of Marxist–Zionist Jewish workers founded in various cities of Poland, Europe and the Russian Empire at about the turn of the 20th century after the Bund rejected Zionism in 1901.
Labor Zionism or socialist Zionism refers to the left-wing, socialist variation of Zionism. For many years, it was the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizations, and was seen as the Zionist sector of the historic Jewish labour movements of Eastern Europe and Central Europe, eventually developing local units in most countries with sizable Jewish populations. Unlike the "political Zionist" tendency founded by Theodor Herzl and advocated by Chaim Weizmann, Labor Zionists did not believe that a Jewish state would be created by simply appealing to the international community or to powerful nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, or the former Ottoman Empire. Rather, they believed that a Jewish state could only be created through the efforts of the Jewish working class making aliyah to the Land of Israel and raising a country through the creation of a Labor Jewish society with rural kibbutzim and moshavim, and an urban Jewish Proletariat.
The London Conference of 1946–1947, which took place between September 1946 and February 1947, was called by the British Government of Clement Attlee to resolve the future governance of Palestine and negotiate an end of the Mandate. It was scheduled following an Arab request after the April 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry report.
Canadian Zionist Federation, or CZF, is a Nonprofit organization that promotes Zionism. It was founded as the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada two years after the first World Zionist Congress, which took place in August 1897 in Base, Switzerland and became the first nation-wide Canadian Jewish organization. In 1921 the organization changed its name and was incorporated as the Zionist Organization of Canada, becoming the primary umbrella organization for Zionist groups in Canada. In 1972, FZSC became the Canadian Zionist Federation (CZF).
