6/7/2023 0 Comments Balfour declaration![]() Led by Edwin Montagu, secretary of state for India and one of the first Jews to serve in the cabinet, the anti-Zionists feared that British-sponsored Zionism would threaten the status of Jews who had settled in various European and American cities and also encourage anti-Semitic violence in the countries battling Britain in the war, especially within the Ottoman Empire. Over the course of 1917, however, a vigorous anti-Zionist movement within Parliament held up the progress of the planned declaration. ![]() The establishment of a Zionist state there-under British protection-would accomplish this goal, while also following the Allied aim of self-determination for smaller nations. Additionally, Britain’s leaders hoped that a formal declaration in favor of Zionism would help gain Jewish support for the Allies in neutral countries, in the United States and especially in Russia, where the anti-Semitic czarist government had just been overthrown with the help of Russia’s Jewish population.įinally, despite Britain’s earlier agreement with France dividing influence in the region after the presumed defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Lloyd George had come to see British dominance in Palestine-a land bridge between the crucial territories of India and Egypt-as an essential post-war goal. ![]() The motives behind this decision were various: First, a genuine belief in the righteousness of the Zionist cause was held by Lloyd George and many other influential leaders. David Lloyd GeorgeĪgainst this troubling backdrop, the government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George-elected in December 1916-made the decision to publicly support Zionism, a movement led in Britain by Chaim Weizmann, a Russian Jew who had settled in Manchester, England. On the Eastern Front, the fate of one ally, Russia, was uncertain: The Russian Revolution in March had toppled Czar Nicholas II, and the Russian government was struggling against widespread opposition to the country’s disintegrating war effort against Germany and Austria-Hungary.Īlthough the United States had just entered the war on the Allied side, a sizable infusion of American troops was not scheduled to arrive on the continent until the following year. Britain’s acknowledgement and support of Zionism, and Zionism’s focus on establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, emerged from growing concerns about the direction of World War I.īy mid-1917, Britain and France were mired in a virtual stalemate with Germany on the Western Front, while efforts to defeat Turkey on the Gallipoli Peninsula had failed spectacularly.
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