•

BOOKSRichard Cohen

The Life
of Zion
ITS EXISTENCE
IN A WAY, ISRAEL OWES
es
not just to the homicidal anti-Semit of
t
Central and Eastern Europe bu to the
l
much more gentle and gentee ones of
Britain. The latter did not so much hate
Jews as fear them, admire them, loathe
s
them, and in other way consider them
to be a people apart— immensely
r
powerful and rich, neve mind their
-
almost absolute powerless
ness and widespread poverty. It was to
curry the favor of these people—a kind of
t
madness, if there ever was one—tha
accounts for why Britain: announced in
1917 that it favored the establish-
h
ment of a "national home for the Jewis
people." That home would be in Pales-
y
tine, an amorphous entity regrettabl
-
located in the midst of millions of puz he
i- government of Prime Minister David up president of the very country
zled and hostile Arabs. It was a dec
Lloyd George decided to enlist the helped create.
sion not without some consequence.
support of world Jewry in Britain's Weizmann was a man of many tal-
The story of how Britain decided an e
ge fight with the German and Ottom ents—not the least of them being th
to throw its considerable presti of
Empires. Balfour had been prime min- ability to harness the raw power
behind a relative handful of Zionists— If
ts; ister himself once (1902-06), but in all bigotry and enlist it in his cause.
most English Jews were not Zionis h
ar, other ways he was a run-of-the-mill, Christians believed in vast Jewis
and some, the very rich in particul ey
e upper-class Englishman, which usu- wealth, he would not argue. If th
viewed Zionism with horror—is th en
es ally meant a fondness for horses and an believed in the immense and unse
great and rambunctious tale that driv it.
he antipathy toward Jews. power of this ancient tribe, so be
Jonathan Schneer's new book, T ld
f Into this milieu entered the aston- If they believed that the Jews cou
Balfour Declaration: The Origins o ar
s ishing Chaim Weizmann. Born in the somehow bring the First World W
the Arab-Israeli Conflict. It involve -
n squalid and oppressive Pale of Settle to an end—they were rumored to be
some extraordinary figures—Winsto ng
g ment—that area of the vast Russian the hidden power behind the You
Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, Kin ce 0
re Empire where Jews were compelled to Turks and have immense influen
Hussein of the Hejaz—and some mo oic ld
ry live—he managed by dint of a her in the Kaiser's Germany, and cou
ordinary ones with extraordina ed
, self-discipline, stunning intellect, and, yank Russia out of the war if it suit
names: Lancelot Oliphant, for instance n o
- above all, phenomenal charm, to make them—then why would Weizman
or the incomparable Marmaduke Pick rt
e the case for Zionism in the chancel- disabuse them of such idiocy? Robe
thall. Among the more forgettabl is-
, Cecil, son of one prime minster (Sal
ones was in fact Arthur James Balfour leries and drawing rooms of Europe, ),
particularly England. Weizmann was bury) and cousin to another (Balfour
who, fortunately for his posterity, hap- to
e born lower than a serf, but he wound: put it best: "I do not think it is easy
pened to be foreign minister when th

50 AUGUST.16,. 2010
exaggerate the international power of the already! Schneer tells you of meetings Jews, reduced to tears by Chaim Weiz
Jews." Somehow, he managed. that didn't matter, the address of the mann's account of Jewish suffering. He
Of course, given the era, anti-Semitism houses where they occurred, and what slipped into history as an appendage
was a relatively minor madness. The might or might have been served for to his much-more-famous declara-
world was at war, and by the time it breakfast ("When Lloyd George, per- tion, and even that, like the papal bulls
was over, the Russian, Ottoman, and haps leaning over eggs, bacon, toast assigning various lands to Spain or
Austro-Hungarian Empires were gone, and coffee, informed ... "). He specu- Portugal, was nullified by reality. Soon
and the Prussian one assembled by lates repeatedly on why something did enough, the declaration produced a
Otto von Bismarck had not only turned or did not happen and when, unac- colossal case of seller's remorse. The
into a democracy but was greatly countably, he takes you into the desert Jews had an emotionally compel-
reduced in size. As a result, the British with Lawrence of Arabia, it's the reader ling tale—for so many Englishmen,
Foreign Office was a busy place. The who wanders aimlessly, parched for Bible tales come to life—but the Arabs
machinery of diplomacy was in over- relevance. Lawrence made it out; I had all that oil, the approaches to the
drive, amply lubricated by buckets of barely did. Suez Canal and, not incidentally, the
duplicity. At the very time Britain was Still, this is a work .of impressive wholly understandable conviction
telling Weizmann and others Jews that research and scholarship. Its relevance is that the land was theirs. By the late
next year they might really be in Jeru- obvious. It rebuts the canard, so 1930s, the Balfour Declaration was a
salem, it was also promising much comforting to Israel's critics, that the dead letter, and Britain had gone wob-
of the Arab world to Hussein Ibn Ali, Zionists never .took the Arabs bly on the Jews. A royal corn-
sherif of Mecca and a trusting soul. All into consideration—"a land mission had even suggested a
the while, behind the collective backs without people for a people How the division of the country—the
of Arab and Jew, the Brits and the without land," is the formula-
French were divvying up the Middle tion often cited. But while the
story of so-called two-state solution
that every so often comes
East, signing the notorious Sykes-Picot Jews never thought that Pales- Israel around like a diplomatic Hal-
Agreement, a closed covenant very tine was one big, empty place,
closely arrived at. and no one of importance came �® ley's comet and gets excitedly
greeted as something new. By
In the end, much of. what Sir Mark urged genocide or anything look a the late 193os, though, the
Sykes of Britain and Francois Georges- even approaching it, they did
Jewish presence in Palestine
Picot of France agreed upon came a lot like had been established: a uni-
think that the people who lived
cropper. The French could hold neither there did not matter much. Lawrence versity, a symphony orches-
Syria nor Lebanon. Hussein, given the
This, after all, was an era when :
boot by a tribal chieftain named Ibn "white European" was not a of Arabia tra, a Bauhausian metropolis
Saud from up Riyadh way, decamped description but a statement of (Tel Aviv), and an increasingly
effective militia, the Haganah.
for exile. In compensation, Britain entitlement, and the Arabs, at any rate, What had been an indifference to Zi-
drew some lines in the sand and cre- were not their own masters. Palestine onism among European Jews turned
ated Transjordan for one of Hussein's was a part of the Ottoman Empire, hurriedly into a frantic enthusiasm
sons, Abdullah, while placing another, later given to Britain by the League of as Hitler set out to murder them all.
Faisal, on the throne of Iraq. That didn't Nations, and coveted by others, besides A Jewish state, as Zionism's founder,
last, either. Jews. The Arab world was just coalesc- Theodor Herzl, had foreseen, had
If some of this sounds like a recap of ing, tottering on fledging ideologies become a necessity. The Zionists
Lawrence of Arabia, it is because some and nationalisms, considered incapable would have liked Britain's support, but
of it is. The story of Balfour and his of governing by the European powers since that had been withdrawn, they
declaration is really the creation myth and, to the fury of its own progressives, wanted its departure. In 1948 a weary
of the Middle East. It is an enormous, riven by tribalism, sectarianism, and and bloodied Britain complied, struck
cinemascopic epic, hard to contain in a still-coalescing political geography. its colors, and left. Within moments,
a single book. Alas, Jonathan Schneer Syria was anything it said it was. Hus- Israel was born and war commenced.
doesn't even try. The book sprawls, the sein in Mecca claimed Damascus in . It has yet to end.
consequential and the inconsequen- Syria. In this Wild East, anyone could
tial getting equal time, its margins stake a claim. COHEN is a columnist for The Washing-
sprouting invocations, imprecations, and Lord Balfour went from being a gen- ton Post and the author of a forthcoming
pleas from a vexed me: Stop! Enough tleman anti-Semite to a lover of the book on Israel.
Newsweek (FSSN 0028.9004), August 15, 2010, Volume CLVI, No. 7. Newsweek publishes weekly, except when combined issues are published (currently in July, August and December). In the U.S. send subscription inquiries to Newsweek, P.O. Box 5571, Harlan, IA
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