Myths and Facts. 4.- The Legal Aspects of Jewish Rights to a National Home in Palestine

The Two Most Significant Events in Modern History Leading to the Creation of the Jewish National Home:

I. The Founding of Modern Zionism 

Benjamin Ze’ev (Theodor) Herzl 

(May 2, 1860 – July 3, 1904) 

After witnessing the spread of antisemitism around the world, Herzl felt compelled to create a political movement with the goal of establishing a Jewish National Home in Palestine. To this end, he assembled the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. Herzl’s insights and vision can be learned from his writings:

“Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has survived such struggles and sufferings as we have gone through.

“Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.

“The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is a very old one: it is the restoration of the Jewish State.

“The world resounds with outcries against the Jews, and these outcries have awakened the slumbering idea. ... We are a people - one people.” 1

II. The Balfour Declaration

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“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.”

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,

Arthur James Balfour

[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

¹ The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, 1896. Translated from German by Sylvie D’Avigdor. This edition was published in 1946 by the American Zionist Emergency Council.
² The British Foreign Office, November 2, 1917.

Eli E. Hertz. 

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