A History of Zionism (22 page)

There was a heated exchange, another Rothschild brother was called in, and at last Herzl had a chance to discuss his own plans:

I moved my chair round to the side of his better ear, and said: ‘I want to ask the British government for a colonisation charter.’ ‘Don’t say “charter”. This word has a bad sound’, Rothschild replied. ‘Call it what you please,’ I replied. ‘I want to found a Jewish colony in a British possession.’ Rothschild said: ‘Why not take Uganda?’ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘I can only use – and as there were other people in the room I wrote on a slip of paper’: Sinai peninsula, Egyptian Palestine, Cyprus. And I added, ‘Are you for it?’ He thought it over, chuckling, and said: ‘Very much.’ This was victory.
*

The next day Herzl mentioned his plan to Lord James of Hereford, chairman of the Aliens Commission, who thought he might be able to carry out his Sinai-Cyprus project with the help of the Rothschilds. Herzl’s appearance before the commission was in his own view less than successful. He wanted to propagate Zionism and to win new adherents, without, however, saying anything which could be used as an argument for restricting immigration into Britain, for however grandiose its vision, there was nothing the Zionist movement could do at that moment to alleviate the fate of east European Jewry. Herzl could not, as he said in a letter to Rothschild, refuse to consider any scheme for emigration and settlement. He claimed that he had drawn up a plan for the organisation of a Jewish Eastern Company because the Rothschilds (‘the most effective force our people has possessed since our dispersion’) had declared themselves opposed to Palestine. Yet the idea of Jewish territory, if not a Jewish state, in a country other than Palestine had occurred to him more than once before. Back in 1898 he had noted in his diary that the Jewish masses needed immediate help and could not wait until Turkey was so desperate as to give the Zionists what they wanted.

How to set an immediatly accessible goal without yielding any historical rights? After the third Zionist congress, when the position of Rumanian Jewry was deteriorating, he thought the Cyprus plan might be a possible alternative to be submitted to the British government if no progress were made with Turkey over Palestine: ‘I … shall have the congress decide to go to Cyprus next.’ But whereas some of Herzl’s collaborators, such as Davis Trietsch, had been strong supporters of the Cyprus project for years, the great majority, above all the Russian Hoveve Zion, would not hear about it, and Herzl had to move cautiously even in regard to his own closest collaborators.

In October 1902 he was received by Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary, that famous ‘master figure of England’. The moment was well chosen: British public opinion felt that something should be done for east European Jewry if they were to be barred from entering England. Chamberlain did not reject in principle the idea of founding a self-governing Jewish colony in the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean. Herzl described his negotiations with the sultan:

You know what Turkish negotiations are. If you want to buy a carpet, first you must drink half a dozen cups of coffee and smoke a hundred cigarettes; then you discuss family stories, and from time to time you speak again a few words about the carpet. Now I have time to negotiate, but my people have not. They are starving in the Pale. I must bring them help.
*

Chamberlain made on Herzl the impression of a competent businessman; not a man of imagination but with a clear and unclouded head. He could talk to Herzl only about Cyprus – Herzl would have to take up the El Arish and Sinai project with Lord Lansdowne, the foreign secretary. As for Cyprus, Britain would not evict the Greeks and Muslims for the sake of newcomers.

Chamberlain was in favour of the idea of Jewish settlement in the Brook of Egypt (Wadi el Arish) if Lord Cromer, the viceroy, accepted it. As for Egypt itself, briefly mentioned by Chamberlain, Herzl immediately retorted: ‘We will not go to Egypt – we have been there.’ But he did mention his Haifa hinterland idea; he was hoping to induce the Turks to lease the Haifa district at a lower rate once the Jews turned up at El Arish and showed that Zionism meant business.

Next day Herzl again briefly saw Chamberlain and, at greater length, Lord Lansdowne, whose attitude was on the whole sympathetic. He asked for a written memorandum for the cabinet and promised to write to Cromer about it. Herzl dispatched to Cairo Leopold Greenberg, an English Zionist who was later to become editor of the
Jewish Chronicle.
Greenberg met both Cromer and the Egyptian prime minister, who mentioned various difficulties, such as Turkish claims on the territory in question and the failure of a previous attempt to establish a Jewish colony in the region of ancient Median. Cromer suggested the dispatch of a commission of experts. Herzl accepted the idea, emphasising that since the Jews had no alternative they would accept land considered unsuitable by others. It did not take him long to realise that Cromer was all important; the British government would go as far as Cromer, no farther.

The expedition was dispatched and Greenberg continued his talks in Cairo, but Herzl, who felt left out and feared that things were not proceeding as smoothly and rapidly as he wanted, also decided to go to Cairo. His meeting with Cromer (‘the most disagreeable Englishman I have met’) was not a success. The viceroy told Herzl that he need not bother about the Turkish representative in the Egyptian capital. But the question of water supplies was of vital importance. Water for irrigating land could come only from the Nile, and Herzl would have to wait for an expert report. With this Herzl was dismissed. ‘A bit too much arrogance’, he noted in his diary; ‘a touch of tropical madness and unlimited vice-regalism.’ After meeting Cromer he felt sympathy for Egyptian nationalism. He had been struck by the intelligent-looking young Egyptians whom he had met at a lecture: ‘They are the coming masters. It is a wonder that the English don’t see this. They think they are going to deal with fellahin forever.’
*
Herzl stayed in Egypt only a few days, but the negotiations dragged on for many months. In the end there was yet another failure. The Egyptian government turned the El Arish project down because their irrigation expert had reached the conclusion that five times as much water as originally thought would be needed to make the scheme a success. The diversion of so much water from the Nile was thought to be impossible. On 12 May 1903 Herzl received a cable that the plan had definitely been rejected. Four days later he noted in his diary that he had thought the Sinai scheme so certain that he no longer wanted to buy a family vault in the Doebling cemetery where his father had been provisionally laid to rest: ‘Now I consider the matter so utterly shattered that I have been to the borough court and have acquired vault 28.’
†

Herzl did not give up. In London a month earlier a new project had been mentioned. Chamberlain, who had meanwhile been on a tour of Africa, told Herzl that he had seen Uganda and had thought: ‘There’s a land for Dr Herzl – but of course he only wants to go to Palestine or its neighbourhood.’ Uganda, Chamberlain reported, was hot on the coast, but the climate in the interior was excellent for Europeans. Sugar and cotton could be raised there. Herzl brushed the idea aside. The Jewish base would have to be near Palestine. Later on the Jews could also settle in Uganda, for there were great masses of them ready to emigrate. But one month later, after the failure of the El Arish project and after a further meeting between Greenberg and Chamberlain, Herzl was more inclined to consider the East African scheme. The political significance of the offer seemed considerable. Perhaps it could be used as a training ground for the Jewish national forces? On 30 May he wrote Rothschild: ‘I am not discouraged. I already have another plan, and a very powerful man is ready to help me.’
*
Thus began yet another fateful chapter in Herzl’s desperate efforts to find a country for the people without a land, and it was to involve the Zionist movement in the deepest crisis it had so far faced.

Before the discussions on Uganda reached a decisive stage Herzl was to engage in yet another political mission which aroused deep misgivings and bitter criticism within the ranks of his own movement. In August 1903 he went to St Petersburg to discuss with leading members of the tsarist government various possibilities to speed up the emigration of Russian Jews. How could Herzl talk to Plehve, the arch reactionary, who as minister of the interior had to bear responsibility for the terrible wave of pogroms which had swept Russia only a few months before, the man ‘whose hands were stained with the blood of thousands of Jewish victims’? (Weizmann). Only a few months earlier, between 6 and 8 April, a pogrom had taken place in Kishinev in the course of which about fifty Jews had been killed, many more wounded, and many Jewish women raped. The feeling in the Jewish community was one of horror, but also of terrible shame that Jews had been beaten and killed like sheep without offering resistance. ‘Great is the sorrow and great is the shame’, Bialik wrote after the massacre; ‘and which of the two is greater, answer thou, o son of Man.’ ‘The grandsons of the Maccabeans – they ran like mice, they hid themselves like bedbugs and died the death of dogs wherever found.’

Kishinev was a turning point in the history of the Jews in eastern Europe, the beginning of Jewish self-defence. The Russian pogroms of 1903 had produced a wave of indignation in western Europe, and Herzl assumed, not incorrectly, that the tsarist government, eager to refurbish its image, might be willing to make certain concessions. Plehve had given instructions in June to take energetic measures against Zionist propaganda which, he asserted, had deviated from its original aim, namely the emigration of Jews to Palestine, and was directed instead to strengthening national consciousness among the Jews and the organisation of closed societies. Above all, the sale of shares in the Jewish Colonial Trust had been banned, as well as collections for the Jewish National Fund, and this constituted a real danger for the Zionist movement.

Herzl hoped that the tsarist government, eager to get rid of at least some of its Jews, could be induced to exert pressure on Turkey to absorb some of them. This idea was more than a little fanciful, for Turkey was in any case concerned about encroachments of its powerful northern neighbour, and Russian Jews were in Turkish eyes potential Muscovite agents. Herzl had introductions to both Plehve and to Witte, the minister of finance. Plehve, who had been described to him as a brute, made a far better impression on him than Witte, who had the reputation of a liberal and even friend of the Jews. Plehve spoke with cynical frankness: the Jews lived in a ghetto and their economic situation was bad; the benefits of higher education were extended to a few only, ‘as otherwise we should soon have no positions left to give to the Christians’. Of late their situation had grown worse because so many of them had joined the revolutionary parties. Herzl suggested Russian intervention with the sultan to secure a charter, the removal of the restrictions on Zionist work in Russia, and Russian financial aid for emigration. Plehve showed himself astonishingly well-informed about the affairs of the Russian Zionist movement. He claimed that since the Minsk conference (in September 1902) it had been more interested in promoting cultural and political work than in its original aim, emigration, and anyway, its leaders with a few exceptions were up in arms against Herzl. Herzl countered by comparing his situation with that of Christopher Columbus: a revolt of the sailors against the captain, as week followed week with no land in sight: ‘Help us faster to land and the revolt will end. So will defection to the socialist ranks.’

When Herzl saw Plehve again a week later, the tsar had been informed about his proposals and it was agreed that the Zionist movement should receive moral and material assistance with respect to measures which would lead to a diminution of the Jewish population in Russia, but there was also a warning that Zionism would be suppressed if it were to lead to any intensification of Jewish nationalism. The tsar announced that he had been hurt at the thought that anyone should have dared to assert that the Russian government had abetted the pogroms. Did not the tsar, in his great and well-known kindness, extend his goodwill to all his subjects? He was therefore particularly grieved at even being thought capable of the slightest inhumanity. Plehve, a more honest man than his master, again admitted that the situation of the Jews was unhappy: ‘If I were a Jew I too should probably be an enemy of the government.’ But there were too many Jews and the tsarist government was unable to change its policy. It wanted to keep those of superior intelligence, able to assimilate themselves, but had to get rid of the rest, and for that reason favoured the establishment of an independent Jewish state capable of absorbing several millions of them.

Herzl’s meeting with Witte was less of a success. According to Herzl’s report, Witte said that the Jews were arrogant, poor, dirty, repulsive, and engaged in the vilest pursuits, such as pimping and usury. Witte was opposed to making their lot even more miserable, but there was no way out – they would have to continue to endure the present state of affairs. The ideas of Zionism seemed to him not unattractive but on the whole impractical. When Herzl left Witte he wondered how the minister of finance had ever acquired a reputation for being a friend of the Jews when he had done less than nothing to help them during his thirteen or fourteen years in government. Perhaps Witte merely wanted to capitalise on Plehve’s troubles over the Kishinev affair, in the hope that it would lead to the downfall of his rival? The results of Herzl’s mission to Russia have been bitterly disputed. Herzl related that Plehve told him that but for his (Herzl’s) intervention Zionism would have been banned in Russia. But Plehve was killed by a terrorist the following year, and there were more pogroms, often with the tacit approval of the government, which was far too preoccupied with other problems to take any constructive initiative on the Jewish problem. Herzl’s critics maintained that his negotiations were indefensible, that he had made a deal with Plehve promising that the Jewish Socialists would no longer attack the tsarist government, and that he had tried to influence the Poale Zion, the left-wing Zionists, in this direction. Herzl did in fact declare at the sixth Zionist congress that the Russian government would put no obstacles in the way of the Zionist movement if its activities remained within a legal framework.
*