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 Israelportal |
Elections to the Assembly of Representatives of Mandatory Palestine were held on 2 August 1944. [1] Just over 200,000 Jewish residents voted, more than 70% of all those eligible to vote. This compared with just over 50,000 who voted at the previous elections in 1931. The difference reflected the high level of Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s.
A total of 24 parties contested the elections, nominating 1,694 candidates. [1] However, the Revisionist-Zionist Hatzohar party, Sephardic Bloc, the General Zionist Group “B” and the Jewish Farmers Association boycotted the elections. [2]
 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Votes | % | Seats | |
| Mapai | 73,122 | 36.85 | 64 | |
| Left Bloc (Hashomer Hatzair–Poale Zion Left) | 24,582 | 12.39 | 21 | |
| New Aliyah Party | 21,279 | 10.72 | 19 | |
| Hapoel HaMizrachi | 18,748 | 9.45 | 16 | |
| Ahdut HaAvoda | 17,928 | 9.04 | 16 | |
| Mizrachi | 6,513 | 3.28 | 7 | |
| Yemenite Association | 5,019 | 2.53 | 4 | |
| Democratic Centre | 4,704 | 2.37 | 4 | |
| Women's International Zionist Organization | 4,314 | 2.17 | 4 | |
| Palestine Communist Party | 3,780 | 1.90 | 3 | |
| Maccabi | 3,718 | 1.87 | 3 | |
| HaOved HaTzioni | 3,685 | 1.86 | 3 | |
| Independent Religious List | 3,118 | 1.57 | 2 | |
| Merchants | 1,673 | 0.84 | 2 | |
| People's Movement for a Jewish State | 1,418 | 0.71 | 1 | |
| Mizrachi Women | 1,217 | 0.61 | 1 | |
| Yemenite Workers | 957 | 0.48 | 1 | |
| HaOved HaDati | 790 | 0.40 | 0 | |
| Discharged Soldiers and Families | 666 | 0.34 | 0 | |
| Oriental Religious Group | 543 | 0.27 | 1 | |
| Young Men of Aden | 264 | 0.13 | 0 | |
| Bnei HaYishuv | 240 | 0.12 | 0 | |
| National Workers Front | 118 | 0.06 | 0 | |
| Religious Women Workers | 30 | 0.02 | 1 | |
| Total | 198,426 | 100.00 | 173 | |
| Valid votes | 198,426 | 98.78 | ||
| Invalid/blank votes | 2,455 | 1.22 | ||
| Total votes | 200,881 | 100.00 | ||
| Source: Palestine Post | ||||
Around 80% of the elected Assembly members supported the Biltmore Declaration, which demanded the creation of a "Jewish Commonwealth" after World War II. [2]
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).
Yishuv, Ha-Yishuv, or Ha-Yishuv Ha-Ivri denote the body of Jewish residents in Palestine 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 in that region, 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 Palestine, corresponding to the southern part of Ottoman Syria until 1918, OETA South in 1917–1920, and Mandatory Palestine in 1920–1948.
Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, was a British Liberal politician who was the party leader from 1931 to 1935.
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 Zionist Congress was established in 1897 by Theodor Herzl as the supreme organ of the Zionist Organization (ZO) and its legislative authority. In 1960 the names were changed to World Zionist Congress and World Zionist Organization (WZO), respectively. The World Zionist Organization elects the officers and decides on the policies of the WZO and the Jewish Agency, including "determining the allocation of funds." The first Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. Any Jew over age 18 who belongs to a Zionist association is eligible to vote, and the number of elected delegates to the Congress is 500. 38% of the delegates are allocated to Israel, 29% to the United States of America, and 33% to the remainder of the countries of the Diaspora. In addition there are about 100 delegates which are appointed by International Organizations affiliated with WZO.
Hatzohar, full name Brit HaTzionim HaRevizionistim, was a Revisionist Zionist organization and political party in Mandatory Palestine and newly independent Israel.
From the founding of political Zionism in the 1890s, Haredi Jewish leaders voiced objections to its secular orientation, and before the establishment of the State of Israel, the vast majority of Haredi Jews were opposed to Zionism, like early Reform Judaism, but with distinct reasoning. This was chiefly due to the concern that secular nationalism would redefine the Jewish nation from a religious community based in their alliance to God for whom adherence to religious laws were “the essence of the nation’s task, purpose, and right to exists,” to an ethnic group like any other as well as the view that it was forbidden for the Jews to re-constitute Jewish rule in the Land of Israel before the arrival of the Messiah. Those rabbis who did support Jewish resettlement in Palestine in the late 19th century had no intention to conquer Palestine and declare its independence from the rule of the Ottoman Turks, and some preferred that only observant Jews be allowed to settle there.
Sephardim and Oriental Communities was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the Likud party.
The First Zionist Congress was the inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization (ZO) held in Basel on August 29–31, 1897. Two hundred and eight 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.
The Jewish Party, in full the Jewish Party of Romania or the Jewish National Party, was a right-wing political party in Romania, representing Jewish community interests. It originally followed an undercurrent of Zionism, promoting communitarianism as a prerequisite of resettlement in Palestine, and later progressed toward Religious Zionism and Revisionism. Founded by Tivadar Fischer, József Fischer, and Adolphe Stern, it had particularly strong sections in Transylvania and Bessarabia. In the Old Kingdom, where it registered least support, it was mainly represented by A. L. Zissu, Mișu Benvenisti, and Renașterea Noastră newspaper.
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.
The Assembly of Representatives was the elected parliamentary assembly of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine. It was established on 19 April 1920, and functioned until 13 February 1949, the day before the first Knesset, elected on 25 January, was sworn in. The Assembly met once a year to elect the executive body, the Jewish National Council, which was responsible for education, local government, welfare, security and defense. It also voted on the budgets proposed by the Jewish National Council and the Rabbinical Council.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland was a Jewish socialist party in Poland which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, sought to combat antisemitism and was generally opposed to Zionism.
Elections to the Assembly of Representatives of Mandatory Palestine were held on 5 January 1931. Mapai emerged as the largest party, winning 27 of the 71 seats.
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.
Moshe Sneh was a Haganah commander and an Israeli politician. One of the founders of Mapam, he later joined the Israeli Communist Party (Maki).
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.
Ceire Cion, sometimes called the Zionist Party or Ethnic Socialist Party, was a centre-left Jewish political party in Latvia during the inter-war period. It was led by jurist Max Lazerson. The party combined the ideas of Zionism and democratic socialism. One of the party's goals was to create a Jewish state in Palestine.
Maki was a communist political party in Israel.
