The ESCO Foundation for Palestine, or just ESCO Foundation, was a private 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 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).
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine.
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.
Yishuv, Ha-Yishuv, or Ha-Yishuv Ha-Ivri denote the body of Jewish residents in the Land of Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living across the Land of Israel, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were some 630,000 Jews there. The term is still in use to denote the pre-1948 Jewish residents in the Land of Israel.
Revisionist Zionism is a form of Zionism which is 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 unrest in Mandatory Palestine, which was administered by Great Britain, following a six-month-long Arab general strike.
The Jordanian annexation of the West Bank formally occurred on 24 April 1950, after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, during which Transjordan occupied territory that had previously been part of Mandatory Palestine and had been earmarked by the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947 for an independent Arab state to be established there alongside a Jewish state mainly to its west. The annexation tripled the population of Transjordan, from 400,000 to 1,300,000.
Gershon Harry Agron was an Israeli newspaper editor, politician, and the mayor of West Jerusalem between 1955 and his death in 1959.
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 walking 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.
Kenneth W. Stein is a professor known for studying the Arab–Israeli conflict, in both historical and social-economic context. He spent many years working with the Carter Center from the 1980s, before cutting ties in 2006; and decades teaching at Emory University starting in 1977. His life has been filled with teaching and interdisciplinary study of the Middle East with the publication of many books on the subject of Israel, the Middle East and the foundations of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Reuven Gal is an Israeli social and clinical psychologist, a social activist and entrepreneur, researcher, author and consultant in the field of behavioural, communal and social sciences.
Yitzhak Reiter is an Israeli political scientist who is full professor of Islamic, Middle East and Israel Studies serving as the Head of Research Authority and Chair of Israel Studies at Ashkelon Academic College. He is also a senior researcher at both the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and the Harry S. Truman Institute for Peace Research of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as Editor-In-Chief of Israel Academic Press.
The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. 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 established 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 Sursock Purchase of the Jezreel Valley and Haifa Bay, as well as other parts of Mandatory Palestine, was the largest Jewish land purchase in Palestine during the period of early Jewish immigration.