The ESCO Foundation for Palestine, or just ESCO Foundation, was a private Zionist family foundation set up in 1940 by Frank Cohen and named in honor of his wife Ethel Cohen. [1] It was focused on Jewish projects in Mandatory Palestine, later Israel. [1]
One of its best known projects was the publication of Palestine - A Study Of Jewish Arab And British Policies in spring 1947, a two-volume 1350-page source document published by Yale University Press covering the history of Mandatory Palestine, primarily created by (although not attributed to) Isaac Baer Berkson. [1] The work was used by the UNSCOP in their deliberations over the future of the region. [1] The work for the study was begun on 18 April 1942, and the draft versions were used throughout the 1940s by Abba Hillel Silver's American Zionist Emergency Council. [1]
"ESCO" is an acrostic for Ethel S. Cohen, one of the founders and the wife of Frank Cohen. Other members of the ESCO boards were: Irvin M. Berliner, Dr. Israel S. Chipkin, Mark Eisner, Marian Gerber Greenberg, Harry Handler, Dr. Leo Honor, Rose G. Jacobs (President), Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan, Leah Klepper and Dr. Israel S. Wechsler. [2] Henrietta Szold was an advisor to the foundation. [1]
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text of the declaration was published in the press on 9 November 1917.
Zionism is an ethnic or ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century that aimed for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people through the colonization of a land outside of Europe, with an eventual focus on Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became an ideology that supports the development and protection of Israel as a Jewish state. It has also been described as Israel's national or state ideology.
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). The resolution recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States linked economically and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings.
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.
The Churchill White Paper of 3 June 1922 was drafted at the request of Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, partly in response to the 1921 Jaffa Riots. The official name of the document was Palestine: Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation. The white paper was made up of nine documents and "Churchill's memorandum" was an enclosure to document number 5. While maintaining Britain's commitment to the Balfour Declaration and its promise of a Jewish national home in Mandatory Palestine, the paper emphasized that the establishment of a national home would not impose a Jewish nationality on the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. To reduce tensions between the Arabs and Jews in Palestine the paper called for a limitation of Jewish immigration to the economic capacity of the country to absorb new arrivals. This limitation was considered a great setback to many in the Zionist movement, though it acknowledged that the Jews should be able to increase their numbers through immigration rather than sufferance.
Revisionist Zionism is a form of Zionism characterized by territorial maximalism. Revisionist Zionism promoted expansionism and the establishment of a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan River.
The Peel Commission, formally known as the Palestine Royal Commission, was a British Royal Commission of Inquiry, headed by Lord Peel, appointed in 1936 to investigate the causes of conflict in Mandatory Palestine, which was administered by the United Kingdom, following a six-month-long Arab general strike.
Gershon Harry Agron was an Israeli newspaper editor, politician, and the mayor of West Jerusalem between 1955 and his death in 1959.
Nahum Goldmann was a leading Zionist. He was a founder of the World Jewish Congress and its president from 1951 to 1978, and was also president of the World Zionist Organization from 1956 to 1968.
Haim Arlosoroff was a Socialist Zionist leader of the Yishuv during the British Mandate for Palestine, prior to the establishment of Israel, and head of the political department of the Jewish Agency. In 1933, Arlosoroff was assassinated while jogging on the beach in Tel Aviv.
The Palestine Communist Party was a political party in the British Mandate of Palestine formed in 1923 through the merger of the Palestinian Communist Party and the Communist Party of Palestine. In 1924 the party was recognized as the Palestinian section of the Communist International. In its early years, the party was predominantly Jewish, but held an anti-Zionist position.
Palestinian Jews or Jewish Palestinians were the Jewish inhabitants of the Palestine region prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
During the British rule in Mandatory Palestine, there was civil, political and armed struggle between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish Yishuv, beginning from the violent spillover of the Franco-Syrian War in 1920 and until the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The conflict shifted from sectarian clashes in the 1920s and early 1930s to an armed Arab Rebellion against British rule in 1936, armed Jewish Revolt primarily against the British in mid-1940s and finally open war in November 1947 between Arabs and Jews.
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—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.
The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan – which had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries – following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The mandate was assigned to Britain by the San Remo conference in April 1920, after France's concession in the 1918 Clemenceau–Lloyd George Agreement of the previously agreed "international administration" of Palestine under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Transjordan was added to the mandate after the Arab Kingdom in Damascus was toppled by the French in the Franco-Syrian War. Civil administration began in Palestine and Transjordan in July 1920 and April 1921, respectively, and the mandate was in force from 29 September 1923 to 15 May 1948 and to 25 May 1946 respectively.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
The Mandatory Palestine national football team, also known as the Eretz Israel national football team, represented the British Mandate of Palestine in international football competitions, and was managed by the Palestine Football Association.
The Morrison–Grady Plan, also known as the Morrison Plan or the Provincial Autonomy Plan was a joint Anglo-American plan announced on 31 July 1946 for the creation of a unitary federal trusteeship in Mandatory Palestine.
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.
The Sursock Purchases were land purchases made by Jewish organizations from the Greek Sursock family, mainly from 1901 to 1925. These included the Jezreel Valley and Haifa Bay, as well as other lands in what became the Mandate for Palestine. These collectively formed the largest Jewish land purchase in Palestine during the period of early Jewish immigration.