A History of Zionism (91 page)

The MacDonald letter was to remain Weizmann’s last major political success for years. His position inside the Zionist movements had progressively weakened. Having resigned from the executive in October 1930, he was asked by his colleagues to carry on as its chairman to the next congress. But even some of his friends advised him not to put forward his candidature again. He was too strongly identified with the collaboration-with-Britain-at-any-price school, and as the difficulties with the mandatory power increased he became the chief target of the opposition. Even among the General Zionists, support for him fell to some twenty-five out of eighty-four delegates at the 1931 congress - the British, German, Czech and a few Americans of the Lipsky-Fishman faction. Weizmann, however, had the support of Palestinian labour. In a speech in Nahalal in March 1931 he declared ‘my fate is connected with yours’. He complained bitterly about the mounting wave of attacks, the speeches and articles which referred to him as a traitor.
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He did not really want to resign, but his fighting spirit was petering out a little after more than twelve years of serving as chief ambassador, propagandist and tax collector.

It was in this atmosphere of mounting tension and mutual recriminations that the seventeenth Zionist congress opened in Basle on 30 June 1931. The revisionists had decided to use the opportunity to press for a definition of the final aim, the
Endziel
, of Zionism. They claimed that there had been too much loose talk about parity between Jews and Arabs, even about a bi-national Palestine, that this defeatist line was clearly incompatible with political Zionism as preached by Herzl and Nordau. They insisted that the time had come for a showdown, a radical reorientation of policy.

The meeting was opened by Sokolow, who called it ‘a congress of realism’. He apparently saw no contradiction between this statement and the declaration later on in his speech that there was no connection between the Arab riots of 1929 and the Balfour Declaration: the disturbances had been caused by religious fantacism. Weizmann, speaking after him, retraced the recent history of Zionism: he discussed the origins and motives of the Balfour Declaration and the various interpretations that had been put on it since.
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He referred to the exaggerated expectations prevalent at the time and then surveyed the factors which had impeded the building of the national home - the greater influence of pro-Arab circles on the one hand, and on the other the impoverishment of east European Jewry and the loss to the Zionist movement of Russian Jewry. His own policy had been to steer a middle course between those who believed that after the Balfour Declaration there was no longer any need for political activity, and the other extreme which wanted to engage only in politics. Critics had talked with contempt about the old Lovers of Zion approach: yet another dunam, yet another few trees, another cow, another goat, and two more houses in Hadera. But ‘if there is another way of building a house, save brick by brick, I don’t know it,’ Weizmann said. ‘If there is another way of building a country save dunam by dunam, man by man, and farmstead by farmstead - again I do not know it. One man may follow another, one dunam may be added to another, after a long interval or after a short one - that is a question of degree and determined not by politics alone.’

It was an impressive speech, but it left many of his critics unconvinced. They had heard it too often and they wanted a change of leadership. Jabotinsky argued that economic achievements were not sufficient to create political positions of strength. The MacDonald letter was not satisfactory as a basis of cooperation with the mandatory power because it accorded the Arabs the right of veto against any measure in carrying out the mandate. It was not enough to aim at Jewish preponderance in Palestine at some unspecified future date. To clarify its position the movement had to declare that it aimed at a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan, a Jewish state. It was not Britain’s fault alone if there had been a retreat from the spirit of the Balfour Declaration. It was the fault of the Zionist movement, or at any rate of its leadership, which had assured the British that the political situation was satisfactory.

Jabotinsky put the worst possible interpretation on the MacDonald letter, but on the whole his speech was statesmanlike, free of personal attacks. Other speakers were less restrained: Gruenbaum, while praising Weizmann’s social and economic policies, sharply denounced his conduct of foreign affairs. His minimalism had been justified in the early years after the Declaration, when it had been necessary to avoid conflicts. But now his system had outlived its usefulness, it had died in 1929. There was no longer any confidence in England. Farbstein (representing Mizrahi) demanded Weizmann’s resignation because in a speech at the Action Committee meeting the year before he had abandoned the demand for a Jewish majority.

The sharpest attack came from Rabbi Stephen Wise, who had many sterling qualities but lacked political instinct and foresight: you have sat too long at English feasts, Wise called out, apostrophising Weizmann.
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Only men who believed in their cause could talk to the British, but not a leadership which said in fact: you are big and we are small, you are omnipotent and we are nothing. There were more bitter attacks from revisionists: U.U. Urinberg, the poet, announced that life in Palestine had become ‘hell’, and Stricker said that the Zionist movement had to be guided either by the spirit of Herzl or the spirit of Weizmann - there could be no compromise.

Ben Gurion and Arlosoroff led the counter-attack. The former criticised the revisionists for their ‘easy Zionism’, the slogan-mongering and the demagogy, making the leadership responsible for each and every setback. The revisionists had declared in effect that ‘we shall create a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan, if you give us a majority at the congress’. Naïve young men in Poland might be taken in by such words, but not anyone familiar with Palestinian realities. Arlosoroff charged Weizmann’s critics with lack of political realism. They were apparently not aware that Zionism had been for several years in a not-too-splendid isolation, that the world political situation had deteriorated sharply. At the end of the debate, the most dramatic since the days of the Uganda controversy, it appeared that the movement was more or less evenly divided into supporters and opponents of Weizmann’s policy.

In this precarious situation Weizmann unwisely decided to give an interview to a correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in which he said that he had no sympathy and understanding for the slogan of a Jewish majority in Palestine, which would only be interpreted by the outside world as the wish to expel the Arabs. Even Arlosoroff called this interview politically harmful. A personal statement by Weizmann was of no great help. The damage had been done. Nahum Goldmann, who as a radical Zionist leader had long been among those aiming at Weizmann’s overthrow, acted as spokesman of the political commission and decided to make the most of Weizmann’s mistake. He said he regarded Weizmann’s interview as a ‘declaration of war’ against the Zionist movement and demanded a vote of confidence, which Weizmann lost by 106 against 123 votes.

It was a well-timed manœuvre, the only way in effect to defeat Weizmann, for as it soon appeared, the majority which had rejected the old leader was sharply divided about his successor. The revisionist proposal to define once and for all the final aim of Zionism was heavily defeated and the new executive, elected against revisionist opposition (Sokolow, Arlosoroff, Brodetsky, Farbstein, Locker, Neumann), represented in its majority Weizmannism without Weizmann. It may have been the feeling of Weizmann’s opponents (as he later wrote) that Sokolow’s pliability would make it easier for them to give the movement the direction they had in mind. If so, they were mistaken, for Jabotinsky was not given his chance. Nahum Goldmann, ironically enough, who had helped to bring down Weizmann, many years later found himself in a position not dissimilar to that of Weizmann in 1931: he was removed from the leadership of the movement because of his advocacy of ‘gradualism’ and ‘minimalism’.

The 1931 congress seemed to most participants a great turning point in Zionist history. This was a misjudgment, for its policy underwent no substantial change, and Weizmann returned to the leadership four years later. To attribute decisive historical importance to conflicts within Zionism betrayed a lack of perspective. The real turning point was of course 1933, and it came as a result of events over which the movement had not the slightest control.

The new executive took over at an inauspicious moment. True, relations with the mandatory power had somewhat improved following the publication of the MacDonald letter, and this was the prerequisite for any constructive work in Palestine. But the Zionist world organisation was financially weaker than ever before. The head of the political department complained that facing tremendous tasks, there was less money for his work than there had been ten years earlier. From America he received, like Weizmann before him, much advice but little money. The number of new immigrants in 1931 totalled 4,075, less than in any year after the First World War except 1927-8. The new high commissioner, General Sir Arthur Wauchope, was well-disposed towards Zionism but firm in his belief that the gradual introduction of a parliamentary system, a Constituent Assembly, was overdue. This would have been a catastrophe for the Zionists since it would have made immigration and settlement dependent on the goodwill of the Arab majority. The danger was averted only because of the stubborn demands of the Arab leaders, who insisted on a total ban on immigration and land sales as a condition for their collaboration in any political scheme.

The executive in London carried on very much as before. Sokolow was received that year by King Fuad of Egypt, President Lebrun of France, Mussolini, de Valera, the vice president of the United States, and even Mahatma Gandhi, from whom he received ‘a satisfactory declaration’.
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(Seven years later, after the November pogroms in Germany, Gandhi wrote to Martin Buber that the German Jews were in duty bound to stay in Germany and practise
satyagraha
, passive resistance, rather than emigrate to Palestine.) What was the outcome of these and other diplomatic activities? The more far-sighted Zionist leaders such as Arlosoroff, now in charge of the political department, were near despair. Arlosoroff met Arab leaders on various occasions, but soon realised that there was no real hope for agreement. He had long personal exchanges with the high commissioner, whom he persuaded to read Pinsker’s
Autoemanzipation.
(Sir Arthur was impressed but said that there was no antisemitism in Britain.) Arlosoroff bitterly denounced the ‘empty phrases’ of the revisionists about a colonisatory régime to be introduced in Palestine. They wanted the British to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them while looking for political support in Paris, Rome and Warsaw.
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At the same time, scanning the political horizon, he reached conclusions which were not that dissimilar from the revisionist conception. He wrote to Weizmann in June 1932 that it might well appear one day that the Zionist analysis of the Jewish question had been correct but that it was unable to achieve its aim. Everywhere there was a return to the time-honoured Jewish fatalism, to Micawberish expectations that something would turn up. But evolutionary Zionism was of limited use only: it could neither excite enthusiasm nor raise money. Arlosoroff was anything but optimistic. He anticipated a new world war ‘within the next five to ten years’. The question of relations with the Arabs was no nearer a solution: ‘Perhaps we have to stumble along the road without knowing exactly where we are heading.’ He did not rule out the possibility of a (temporary) revolutionary dictatorship to prevent Arab domination, even if this was ‘dangerously close to certain popular notions’.
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In 1932 the economic situation in Palestine improved, the number of immigrants being twice that of the year before. In 1933 thirty thousand came, the highest figure ever, and their arrival stimulated a minor boom. But while the Jewish position in Palestine became stronger, it deteriorated dramatically in central Europe. Zionists had always warned their co-religionists against any facile belief in the allegedly inevitable progress of tolerance and liberalism. But even the most pessimistic among them were not prepared for what was to come. When Weizmann said in November 1932 that Palestine would have to be built up on the ruins of diaspora Jewry,
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he no doubt envisaged economic ruin, not physical destruction.

In Frankfurt in December 1932, the German Zionist Federation convened for its last meeting before Hitler came to power. Its chairman, Kurt Blumenfeld, had played Cassandra for a long time. By 1932 he had reached the conclusion that the German Jews would soon be reduced to second-class citizenship. Weizmann warned him not to jeopardise the situation of German Jews by such dire predictions, and it was decided that there should be two political addresses at Frankfurt, the second to counter-balance Blumenfeld’s ‘ultra-pessimistic’ views. Nahum Goldmann, hot-foot from Geneva and familiar with the mood of the world’s governments and statesmen, assured his listeners that France and England would never permit a government headed by Hitler to come to power, that Russia regarded the Nazis as their mortal enemy and would not look on passively, that, in other words, there was no cause for alarm.
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Three months later Hitler was chancellor and after a few more weeks Germany had become a fully fledged dictatorship.

Jewish reaction was at first one of concern, but there was not yet any feeling of real urgency. It was believed that Hitler, after all, would not antagonise the outside world by carrying out his insane political programme. It was one thing to be the leader of an extremist political movement, another to be head of a government. Surely his newly acquired responsibilities would compel him to curb the more fanatical antisemites among his followers? By April, after the anti-Jewish boycott and the establishment of the first concentration camps, there was no longer room for illusions. The era of emancipation and equal rights was over for the Jews, the central organ of German Zionism wrote.
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