Wikipedia

Homeland for the Jewish people

(Redirected fromJewish National Home)
For the ongoing debate as to the nature of the State of Israel, seeJewish state.

Ahomeland for the Jewish peopleis an idea rooted inJewish history,religion,andculture.The Jewish aspiration toreturn to Zion,generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since thedestruction of the First Templeand theBabylonian exile.[1]

Jews, largelyHolocaust survivors,on their way from France toMandatory Palestine,aboard theSSExodus

History (1881–1916)

Further information:ZionismandIsrael § Modern period and the emergence of Zionism
The bookDer Judenstaat(The Jewish State,1896) byTheodor Herzl

The first wave of modern Jewish migration toOttoman-ruled Palestine,known as theFirst Aliyah,began in 1881, as Jews fledpogromsin Eastern Europe.[2]Although the Zionist movement already existed in practice,Austro-HungarianjournalistTheodor Herzlis credited with founding politicalZionism,[3]a movement that sought to establish aJewish statein the Land of Israel, thus offering a solution to the so-calledJewish questionof the European states, in conformity with the goals and achievements of other national projects of the time.[4]

In 1896, Theodor Herzl set out his vision of a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people in his bookDer Judenstaat(The Jewish State).[5][6]The following year he presided over theFirst Zionist CongressinBasel,at which theZionist Organizationwas founded.[7]

The draft of the objective of the modern Zionist movement submitted to the First Zionist Congress of the Zionist Organization in 1897 read: "Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by law." One delegate sought to replace "by law" with "by international law",[8]which was opposed by others. A compromise formula was adopted, which came to be known as theBasel Program,and read:

Zionism seeks to establish a home in Palestine for the Jewish people, secured under public law.[9]

TheSecond Aliyah(1904–14) began after theKishinev pogrom;some 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, although nearly half of them left eventually. Both the first and second waves of migrants were mainlyOrthodox Jews,[10]although the Second Aliyah includedsocialistgroups who established thekibbutzmovement.[11]Though the immigrants of the Second Aliyah largely sought to create communal agricultural settlements, the period saw the establishment ofTel Avivas the first planned Jewish town in 1909. This period also saw the emergence of Jewish armed militias, the first beingBar-Giora,a guard founded in 1907. Two years later, the largerHashomerorganization was founded as its replacement.

TheSykes–Picot Agreementof 16 May 1916 set aside the region of Palestine for "international administration" under British control.[12]The first official use of the phrase "national home for the Jewish people" was in theBalfour Declaration.[13]The phrase "national home" was intentionally used instead of "state" because of opposition to the Zionist program within the British Cabinet. The initial draft of the declaration referred to the principle"that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people."[14]

History (1917–1948)

Further information:Israel § British Mandate
External videos
"Palestine Outburst Follows UN Vote",British Movietone News,December 8, 1947.[2]

With the 1917Balfour Declaration,theUnited Kingdombecame the first world power to endorse the establishment in Palestine of a "national home for the Jewish people."

In 1919Harry Sacherwrote "A Jewish Palestine the Jewish case for a British trusteeship. In 1919 the general secretary (and future President) of the Zionist Organization,Nahum Sokolow,published aHistory of Zionism (1600–1918).In this book, he explained:

"... It has been said, and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent" Jewish State ". But this is wholly fallacious. The" Jewish State "was never part of the Zionist programme. The" Jewish State "was the title of Herzl's first pamphlet, which had the supreme merit of forcing people to think. This pamphlet was followed by the first Zionist Congress, which accepted the Basle programme—the only programme in existence."[15]

At theSan Remo conferenceof 19–26 April 1920, the principalAllied and Associated Powersmandated the creation of a Jewish homeland.[16]Britain officially committed itself to the objective set out in the Balfour Declaration by insisting on its forming the basis of theMandate for Palestine,which was formally approved by theLeague of Nationsin June 1922. The preamble of the Mandate declared:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might 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....[17]

A statement on "British Policy in Palestine," issued on 3 June 1922 by the Colonial Office, placed a restrictive construction upon the Balfour Declaration. The statement excluded "the disappearance or subordination of the Arabic population, language or customs in Palestine" or "the imposition of Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole", and made it clear that in the eyes of the mandatory Power, the Jewish National Home was to be founded in Palestine and not that Palestine as a whole was to be converted into a Jewish National Home. The Committee noted that the construction, which restricted considerably the scope of the National Home, was made prior to the confirmation of the Mandate by the Council of the League of Nations and was formally accepted at the time by the Executive of the Zionist Organization.[18]The Partition Resolution of the UN General Assembly died at birth when rejected by the Arabs. The UNGA has only the power to recommend.

On 29 September 1923, the British government became responsible for the administration ofMandatory Palestine.Along with its longstanding control of thePersian Gulf Residencyand theAden Protectorate,and its recently-acquired control of theEmirate of Transjordanand ofMandatory Iraq,the British now controlled all of the territories in the Middle East except theFrench Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.

In 1942, theBiltmore Programwas adopted as the platform of the Zionist Organization, with an explicit call "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth." In 1946, theAnglo-American Committee of Inquiry,also known as theGrady-Morrison Committee,noted that the demand for a Jewish State went beyond the obligations of either the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate and had been expressly disowned by the Chairman of the Jewish Agency as recently as 1932.[19]

The period of the British Mandate was characterized by a great deal ofpolitical and social unrestamong the Jews, the Palestinian Arabs, and the British (for example, the1936–1939 Arab revolt,the1944–1948 Jewish insurgency,and the1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine).

TheUnited Nations Partition Plan for Palestinewas passed on 29 November 1947. The plan was accepted by theJewish Agency for Palestinebut was rejected by theArab Higher Committeeand by most of the Arab population. TheArab Leaguethen adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict.

Founding of the State of Israel

The State of Israel was finally established on 14 May 1948 with theIsraeli Declaration of Independence.[20]

The concept of a national homeland for the Jewish people in the British Mandate of Palestine was enshrined in Israeli national policy and reflected in many of Israel's public and nationalinstitutions.The concept was expressed in the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 and given concrete expression in theLaw of Return,passed by theKnesseton 5 July 1950, which declared: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as anoleh."[21][better source needed]

Character of the State of Israel

See also:Jewish state

According to a 11 January 2019 article inHaaretz,JusticeEsther Hayut,the President of theHigh Court of Justice,announced that eleven justices would be debating the "legality" of the July 2018Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People,also known as the Nation-state law, including its "historical stipulations".[Notes 1][22][23][24]

Notes

  1. ^Israel'sMinister of Justice,Ayelet Shaked,was the advocate and architect of theBasic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish Peoplewhich defines theState of Israelas thenation-stateof theJewish people.

See also

References

  1. ^Berlin, Adele (2011).The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion.Oxford University Press. p. 813.ISBN978-0-19-973004-9.
  2. ^Halpern, Ben (1998).Zionism and the creation of a new society.Reinharz, Jehuda. New York: Oxford University Press. pp.53–54.ISBN978-0-585-18273-5.OCLC44960036.
  3. ^Kornberg 1993"How did Theodor Herzl, an assimilated German nationalist in the 1880s, suddenly in the 1890s become the founder of Zionism?"
  4. ^Herzl 1946,p. 11
  5. ^Herzl, Theodor(1988) [1896]."Biography, by Alex Bein".Der Judenstaat[The Jewish state]. transl. Sylvie d'Avigdor (republication ed.). New York: Courier Dover. p. 40.ISBN978-0-486-25849-2.Retrieved28 September2010.
  6. ^"Chapter One".The Jewish Agency for Israel1.21 July 2005. Archived fromthe originalon 10 December 2018.Retrieved21 September2015.
  7. ^The World Zionist Organization
  8. ^Jubilee Publication (1947).The Jubilee of the first Zionist Congress, 1897–1947.Jerusalem: Executive of the Zionist Organization. pp. 108 pages, 2 leaves of plates.Published simultaneously in Hebrew, French, Spanish and Yiddish.
  9. ^"Der Zionismus erstrebt für das jüdische Volk die Schaffung einer öffentlich-rechtlich gesicherten Heimstätte in Palästina." The original proposal had "rechtlich" rather than "öffentlich-rechtlich" but was altered during the Congress.
  10. ^Stein 2003,p. 88. "As with the First Aliyah, most Second Aliyah migrants were non-Zionist orthodox Jews..."
  11. ^Romano 2003,p. 30
  12. ^"Sykes-Picot Agreement".Retrieved21 May2016.
  13. ^Barzilay-Yegar, Dvorah(4 May 2017).A National Home for the Jewish People: The Concept in British Political Thinking and Policy Making 1917-1923.Vallentine Mitchell.ISBN978-1-910383-32-2.
  14. ^Stein, Leonard (1961).The Balfour Declaration.New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 470.
  15. ^Sokolow, Nahum(1919).History of Zionism (1600–1918).Vol. I. London: Longmans, Green, and Company. pp. xxiv–xxv.
  16. ^Sovereignty over the old city of Jerusalem: a study of the historical, religious, political and legal aspects of the question of the old city: Gauthier, Jacques Paul – Genève: Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales, 2007. 1142 pp.
  17. ^The Council of the League of Nations (2008)."The Palestine Mandate".The Avalon Project.New Haven, Connecticut: Lillian Goldman Law Library.Retrieved24 October2023.
  18. ^See the report of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, UN Document A/364, 3 September 1947
  19. ^See Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry – Chapter V, the Jewish Attitude,[1]
  20. ^"The Declaration Scroll".Tel Aviv:Independence Hall of Israel.2013.Retrieved19 October2023.
  21. ^"Israel's Law of Return".jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  22. ^Wootliff, Raoul."Israel passes Jewish state law, enshrining 'national home of the Jewish people'".The Times of Israel.Retrieved19 July2018.
  23. ^Kershner, Isabel (19 July 2018)."Israel Passes Law Anchoring Itself as Nation-State of the Jewish People".The New York Times.Archived fromthe originalon 19 July 2018.Retrieved11 January2019.
  24. ^"The High Court of Justice Against the Israeli People".Haaretz.11 January 2019.Retrieved11 January2019.

Works cited

Further reading

  • Shatz, Adam, "We Are Conquerors" (review ofTom Segev,A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion,Head of Zeus, 2019, 804 pp.,ISBN978 1 78954 462 6),London Review of Books,vol. 41, no. 20 (24 October 2019), pp. 37–38, 40–42. "Segev's biography... shows how central exclusionarynationalism,warandracismwere toBen-Gurion's vision of theJewish homelandinPalestine,and how contemptuous he was not only of theArabsbut of Jewish life outsideZion.[Liberal Jews] may look at the state that Ben-Gurion built, and ask if the cost has been worth it. "(p. 42 of Shatz's review.)
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