(photo)

                             (1860­1904)

           “In Basle I founded the Jewish state . . . Maybe in five years, certainly in
           fifty, everyone will realize it.”
 
 

        Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl, the visionary of Zionism, was born in Budapest in
        1860. He was educated in the spirit of the German­Jewish Enlightenment of the
        period, learning to appreciate secular culture. In 1878 the family moved to Vienna,
        and in 1884 Herzl was awarded a doctorate of law from the University of Vienna. He
        became a writer, a playwright and a journalist. The Paris correspondent of the
        influential liberal Vienna newspaper Neue Freie Presse was none other than Theodor
        Herzl.

        Herzl first encountered the anti-Semitism that would shape his life and the fate of
        the Jews in the twentieth century while studying at the University of Vienna (1882).
        Later, during his stay in Paris as a journalist, he was brought face-to-face with the
        problem. At the time, he regarded the Jewish problem as a social issue and wrote a
        drama, The Ghetto (1894), in which assimilation and conversion are rejected as
        solutions. He hoped that The Ghetto would lead to debate and ultimately to a solution,
        based on mutual tolerance and respect between Christians and Jews.

        The Dreyfus Affair

        In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was unjustly
        accused of treason, mainly because of the prevailing anti-Semitic atmosphere. Herzl
        witnessed mobs shouting “Death to the Jews” in France, the home of the French
        Revolution, and resolved that there was only one solution: the mass immigration of
        Jews to a land that they could call their own. Thus, the Dreyfus Case became one of
        the determinants in the genesis of Political Zionism.

        Herzl concluded that anti-Semitism was a stable and immutable factor in human
        society, which assimilation did not solve. He mulled over the idea of Jewish
        sovereignty, and, despite ridicule from Jewish leaders, published Der Judenstaat
        (The Jewish State, 1896). Herzl argued that the essence of the Jewish problem was
        not individual but national. He declared that the Jews could gain acceptance in the
        world only if they ceased being a national anomaly. The Jews are one people, he said,
        and their plight could be transformed into a positive force by the establishment of a
        Jewish state with the consent of the great powers. He saw the Jewish question as an
        international political question to be dealt with in the arena of international politics.

        Herzl proposed a practical program for collecting funds from Jews around the world
        by a company to be owned by stockholders, which would work toward the practical
        realization of this goal. (This organization, when it was eventually formed, was called
        the Zionist Organization.) He saw the future state as a model social state, basing his
        ideas on the European model of the time, of a modern enlightened society. It would
        be neutral and peace-seeking, and of a secular nature.

        In his Zionist novel, Altneuland (Old New Land, 1902), Herzl pictured the future
        Jewish state as a socialist utopia. He envisioned a new society that was to rise in the
        Land of Israel on a cooperative basis utilizing science and technology in the
        development of the Land.

  He included detailed ideas about how he saw the future state's political structure,
  immigration, fund­raising, diplomatic relations, social laws and relations between
  religion and the state. In Altneuland, the Jewish state was foreseen as a pluralist,
  advanced society, a “light unto the nations.”This book had a great impact on the Jews                                              at the time and became a symbol of the Zionist vision in the Land of Israel.

  A Movement Is Started

        Herzl's ideas were met with enthusiasm by the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe,
        although Jewish leaders were less ardent. Herzl appealed to wealthy Jews such as
        Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild, to join the national Zionist movement, but in vain.
        He then appealed to the people, and the result was the convening of the First Zionist
        Congress in Basle, Switzerland, on August 29­31, 1897.

        The Congress was the first inter-territorial gathering of Jews on a national and
        secular basis. Here the delegates adopted the Basle Program, the program of the
        Zionist movement, and declared “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish
        people in Palestine secured under public law.” At the Congress the World Zionist
        Organization was established as the political arm of the Jewish people, and Herzl
        was elected its first president.

        Herzl convened six Zionist Congresses between 1897 and 1902. It was here that the
        tools for Zionist activism were forged: Otzar Hityashvut Hayehudim; the Jewish
        National Fund and the movement's newspaper Die Welt.

        After the First Zionist Congress, the movement met yearly at an international Zionist
        Congress. In 1936 the center of the Zionist movement was transferred to Jerusalem.

        Uganda Isn't Zion

        Herzl saw the need for encouragement by the great powers of the aims of the
        Jewish people in the Land. Thus, he traveled to the Land of Israel and Istanbul in
        1898 to meet with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and the Sultan of the Ottoman
        Empire. When these efforts proved fruitless, he turned to Great Britain, and met
        with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary and others. The only
        concrete offer he received from the British was the proposal of a Jewish
        autonomous region in east Africa, in Uganda.

        The 1903 Kishinev pogrom and the difficult state of Russian Jewry, witnessed
        firsthand by Herzl during a visit to Russia, had a profound effect on him. He
        requested that the Russian government assist the Zionist Movement to transfer Jews
        from Russia to Eretz Yisrael.

        At the Sixth Zionist Congress (1903), Herzl proposed the British Uganda Program as
        a temporary refuge for Jews in Russia in immediate danger. While Herzl made it
        clear that this program would not affect the ultimate aim of Zionism, a Jewish entity
        in the Land of Israel, the proposal aroused a storm at the Congress and nearly led to
        a split in the Zionist movement. The Uganda Program was finally rejected by the
        Zionist movement at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905.

        Herzl died in Vienna in 1904, of pneumonia and a weak heart overworked by his
        incessant efforts on behalf of Zionism. By then the movement had found its place on
        the world political map. In 1949, Herzl's remains were brought to Israel and
        re-interred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

        Herzl's books Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”) and Altneuland (“Old New Land”),
        his plays and articles have been published frequently and translated into many
        languages. His name has been commemorated in the Herzl Forests at Ben Shemen and
        Hulda, the world's first Hebrew gymnasium — “Herzlia” — which was established in
        Tel Aviv, the town of Herzliya in the Sharon and neighborhoods and streets in many
        Israeli towns and cities.

        Herzl coined the phrase “If you will, it is no fairytale,” which became the motto of
        the Zionist movement. Although at the time no one could have imagined it, Zionism
        led, only fifty years later, to the establishment of the independent State of Israel.

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

As with all many new ideas created by Visionaries, once Herzl's idea of Zionism spread throughout World Jewry, the many cabals and groups that form the World Jewish population, made their own interpretation of Zionism. From that process there developed several different kinds of Zionists, the most dangerous were those who fled Russia, immigrating to England before The Bolshevik Revolution (1903-1917); After penetrating the British government, a chemist. Dr. Chaim Weizmann seized the opportunity (read The Balfour Letter) to go to The Holy Land and establish a Reign of Terror to drive the Palestinians off their land. Some Jews followed Herzl's original plan to purchase properties from the Arab owners. Once, the Zionist Commission began to occupy The Holy Land area, resistance from the Palestinians brought on increasingly deadly warfare. Most of the State of Israel's first leaders were leader's of the Jewish Terrorism as horrible as the terrorism that now rages throughout the world, primarily because the leaders of the USA government have armed modern Israel and funds that small state of 5.3 million Jews with an annual foreign aid of $3 billion! 

For the entire historical record of what the real issue is in The Holy Land today and American involvement in this 80 year war, please go to  HISTORY !

    csf sr.