That quote may or may not be fairly edited, Herzl may have been in a bleak mood, but it doesn't sound typical imho, he was not generally as bloody-minded as some who come along later ... to my knowledge there was from him no promotion of ethnic cleansing ... because he was well aware that Palestine was not 'a land without people', he tried to interest other zionists in the colonial office's offer of part of British East Africa, but they weren't having any, they wanted the place mentioned in the book where it said distant ancestors stayed once upon a time, and never mind that it was occupied by other descendants
Yes, looks like that will be a typo, should be '48 not '18 ... but the major change in tone seems to have happened between the fall of 1917 when Allenby arrives, and the end of 1919 which had Versailles et al ... the foreign office in its infinite wisdom promised arabs self-determination for helping defeat the ottomans, then turned around and sort-of maybe perhaps in a way gave their land away to somebody else, but not really, with this carefully weasel-worded declaration to Rothschild -
'His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing
shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed
by Jews in any other country.'
... 'it being clearly understood' - riiight-o ... well the natives pretty clearly understood that when zionists started ballyhooing this as carte blanche and sending in waves of immigrants, there was trouble coming ... this is the context in which the famous mufti came to power, the terrorist gangs like Haganah start up, and the whole place deteriorates ... so this and not 1948 is the watershed time, imho, because it is when it gets ugly, before this it was not so much, there was considerable cooperation between early zionists and indigenous
The only answer for this land is Menschenstaat, a state where nobody gets excluded on the basis of religion ... it was always like that, since Saladin beat back the crusaders, not long after that a califa invited in a community of jews, that's how there was a jewish presence in Jerusalem, there were christians, druze, number of other sects ... all of them quite strongly anti-zionist, btw |
