struggle for existence incidents in the pearl john steinbeck

Throughout the seventy-four years of Soviet history, any form of Jewish nationalist or Zionist organization was mercilessly suppressed by successive Soviet regimes. But they were a tiny minority among their own people and-as good Communists-they hated every form of Jewish nationalism. It was true that there were a disproportionate number of Jews among the Bolshevik leadership, most notably Leon Trotsky. If Weizmann had known what was truly motivating the British embrace of Zionism, he would have laughed. He genuinely thought that the growing British interest in his cause was based on a passion for the Bible and justice for the Jews, as well as on gratitude for his own useful role in building modern munitions factories the length of Britain to provide more shells for the war. None of this calculation was known to Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist movement in Britain. The desperate government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, ready to clutch at straws, bought into this fevered fantasy. Commit the British cause to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and “Great Jewry” would make sure Russia stayed in the war while speeding up America’s commitment to send its armies to the Western Front. In flowering, ecstatic language that reads more like a Victorian novel than sober documents of state, he proclaimed that the Zionist movement had vast power over the Bolsheviks in Russia and the government of President Woodrow Wilson in the United States. Sir Mark Sykes, Britain’s chief diplomatic negotiator on Middle East affairs, had an answer. How could Britain keep Russia on its feet and America committed in the meantime? Russia was floundering and on the verge of being knocked out of the war, and it would be many months, perhaps more than a year, before new American armies could be trained, transported, and organized to plug the holes on the weakened Western Front. In autumn 1917 the British War Cabinet faced a dire prospect. The Zionists, who knew their own powerlessness, never dreamed they held such influence or aspired to anything of the sort. (Zionist is a loaded word, to be sure, but it literally means someone who believes in a Jewish state.) The Balfour Declaration was actually based on the ludicrous belief that the Zionist leaders of the time controlled the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the political destiny of the United States. This was not out of British love for the Jews and the Zionists among them.

The idea of Israel had its real advocates among the British, who in 1917 issued the famous Balfour Declaration, calling for the creation of a Jewish state. In fact, the first president to address the issue was Woodrow Wilson, who was hostile to the idea of a “Jewish national home in Palestine.” According to the rhetoric of the most severe critics of Israel, Israel is the unholy spawn of the United States.

Struggle for existence incidents in the pearl john steinbeck