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 ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside Europe. With the rejection of alternate proposals for a Jewish state, it eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, and of central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became Israel's national or state ideology.
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.
Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild was a French member of the Rothschild banking family. A strong supporter of Zionism, his large donations lent significant support to the movement during its early years, which helped lead to the establishment of the State of Israel—where he is simply known as "The Baron Rothschild", "HaBaron", or "Hanadiv Hayeduah".
The one-state solution is a proposed approach to resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, according to which one state would be established in former Mandatory Palestine. Proponents of this solution advocate a single state encompassing the currently recognized state of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The term one-state reality describes the belief that the current situation in Israel/Palestine is de facto a single state. The one-state solution is sometimes also called a bi-national state, owing to the hope that the state would be a homeland for both Jews and Palestinians.
The 1920 Nebi Musa riots or 1920 Jerusalem riots took place in British-controlled part of Occupied Enemy Territory Administration between Sunday, 4 April, and Wednesday, 7 April 1920 in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Five Jews were killed and several hundred injured; four Arabs were killed, and eighteen injured; 7 Britons were injured. The riots coincided with and are named after the Nebi Musa festival, which was held every year on Easter Sunday, and followed rising tensions in Arab–Jewish relations. The events came shortly after the Battle of Tel Hai and the increasing pressure on Arab nationalists in Syria in the course of the Franco-Syrian War.
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.
General Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope was a British soldier and colonial administrator.
Brit Shalom was a group of Jewish Zionist intellectuals in Mandatory Palestine, founded in 1925.
Judah Leon Magnes was a prominent Reform rabbi in both the United States and Mandatory Palestine. He is best remembered as a leader in the pacifist movement of the World War I period, his advocacy of a binational Jewish-Arab state in Palestine, and as one of the most widely recognized voices of 20th century American Reform Judaism. Magnes served as the first chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1925), and later as its President (1935–1948).
The Passfield White Paper, issued October 20, 1930, by colonial secretary Lord Passfield, was a formal statement of British policy in Palestine, which previously had been set by the Churchill White Paper of 1922. The new statement resulted from the Hope Simpson Commission's investigation into the deeper causes of the 1929 Palestine riots, that initially started over access to the Western Wall. The white paper limited official Jewish immigration to a much greater degree.
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.
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 Revolt 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.
Shlomo Kaplansky was a Labour Zionist politician, who served as the secretary of the World Union of Poalei Zion. During the 1920s he was a leading advocate of a bi-national state in Palestine. Kaplansky was the President of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Albert Montefiore Hyamson, was a British civil servant and historian who served as chief immigration officer in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1921 to 1934.
Ihud was a small binationalist Zionist political party founded by Judah Leon Magnes, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon and Henrietta Szold, former supporters of Brit Shalom, in 1942 as a binational response to the Biltmore Conference, which made the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine the policy of the Zionist movement. Other prominent members were David Werner Senator, Moshe Smilansky, agronomist Haim Margaliot-Kalvarisky (1868–1947), and Judge Joseph Moshe Valero.
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 that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
Labor Zionism or socialist Zionism refers to the left-wing, socialist variant 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.
Nevill Barbour was a BBC journalist and reporter who wrote about the Arab world.
