The Balfour Declaration 7: Clandestine Plots Scupper A Peace Initiative.

Conscious that the final resolution to the war would be critical to the Zionist claims on Palestine, their British and American leaders became increasingly involved in a secretive network aimed at influencing government policy. The three month period between April and June 1917 was peppered with urgent cables between Louis Brandeis in Washington and, Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild in London, updating each other about privileged meetings, current opinions and actions to be taken to advance the Zionist plan.[1] Unknown to elected politicians and cabinet members in both countries, these men operated a clandestine cell of Zionist interest whose specific purpose was to normalise, validate and protect the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Their targets were A J Balfour in Britain and President Woodrow Wilson in the United States. The British foreign secretary was known to be sympathetic; the American president had yet to indicate his approval.

Even before America had formally declared war on Germany (6 April, 1917), the London cabal insisted that increased pressure be brought on the President to support the Zionist cause. Every opportunity which presented itself had to be taken. Urged by the American Ambassador at London, Walter Page, the British Government decided to send a distinguished commission to the United States on the day before America declared war on Germany. [2] America’s entry profoundly altered the ground rules because neutrality was no longer an issue for the Atlantic powers, but did not change the ultimate aim to crush Germany. Lloyd George chose the near seventy-year old Arthur Balfour, former prime minister and current foreign secretary, to lead the charm offensive to Washington.

A J Balfour’s mission to the United States in 1917 proved a crucial turning point. The foreign secretary had been primed by Weizmann to speak with Brandeis when he was in Washington. The two men were introduced at a reception in the White House on 23 April and Balfour was reported to have greeted the Judge with ‘ You are one of the Americans I had wanted to meet.’ [3] Why, other than to gauge the strength of American-Jewish support for a homeland in Palestine? They met several times, but not in the White House. Over the following days and unknown to the President, his Supreme Court Judge and the visiting British foreign secretary had their first private breakfast together. [4] What was a on the menu for discussion was kept secret.

Balfour was in Washington to bolster the Allied cause and he and the President’s main advisor, Mandell House, specifically discussed the terms which might be imposed on Germany once it had been destroyed. On 28 April, Balfour produced a map of Europe and Asia Minor (one of the terms used to cover the Middle Eastern states largely within the Ottoman Empire) on which was traced the results of the secret treaties and agreements with Britain and France which will be examined in a later blog. They had, in Houses’ words, ‘divided up the bear-skin before the bear was dead.’ [5] Interestingly, Constantinople no longer featured as a probable Russian possession [6] but there was no indication of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. None.

One he was informed of this, Brandeis felt obliged to intervene. He had a forty-five minute meeting with Wilson on 6 May to assure him that the establishment of a Jewish Palestine was completely in line with the President’s concept of a just settlement. The British Zionists wanted assurance that their American compatriots approved the general plan for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and would publicise their support. Pressure had to be applied on both sides of the Atlantic. On 9 May, Brandeis sent a cable to James Rothschild in which he announced the American Zionist approval for the British programme. [7]  This was followed by another secret morning discussion with Balfour and on 15 May, Brandeis reported back to Weizmann and Rothschild that their objective had been successful. The precise wording in his cable demonstrated the extent to which the leading Zionists on both sides of the Atlantic were actively influencing their respective governments. Brandeis’s cable read: ‘Interviews both with President and Balfour were eminently satisfactory confirming our previous impressions as to reliable support in both directions. Presented views in line with your program [but] was assured that present circumstances did not make Government utterances desirable.’ [8] Private conversations between the President and the visiting foreign secretary were secretly passed across the Atlantic without compunction in contravention of a variety of secrecy acts. Whose national interest was being served?

Louis Brandeis continued to press Wilson for a public commitment to a Jewish homeland, but caution was advised. His cable to James Rothschild on 23 May stated that Balfour told him: ‘if we exercised patience and allowed events to take their natural course, we would obtain more’. According to Brandeis, President Wilson was reluctant to make a public declaration because the United States was not at war with Turkey. So much for the notion that Judge Brandeis limited his activities to matters of law. His secret collusion with British Zionists should have raised concerns about a conflict of interest but that paled into insignificance when compared with his involvement in destroying a clandestine American peace-mission to Turkey.

In early June 1917 an extremely concerned Louis Brandeis made an urgent call to London. The Zionist plans were suddenly threatened by an unexpected and unwelcome intervention about which none of them had the slightest warning. Brandeis discovered that a secret American delegation, headed by the former United States Ambassador at Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, was on its way to Switzerland. Its purpose was to convince Turkey to break away from the German-Austrian alliance, an action which would have radically altered the geo-political situation when the war ended. Indeed, if successful, it would have shortened the war.

Former ambassador Morgenthau believed that a combination of German domination and war famine was making life unbearable in Turkey. Even the Young Turks had become ‘heartily sick of their German masters’ [9] Henry Morgenthau thought that he understood the Turkish mind. His plan was to go to Switzerland to meet former members of the Ottoman cabinet and offer generous peace terms and ‘any other means’ (by that he meant bribes) to encourage them to abandon their allies. Initially Robert Lansing the US secretary of state, talked over the proposal with Arthur Balfour. The British foreign secretary suggested that since Switzerland was ridden with spies, Morgenthau should use Egypt as a base… as if Egypt wasn’t riddled with spies? It afforded the very plausible excuse that the American delegation was concerned with the condition of Jews in Palestine. Lansing agreed and an American Zionist, Felix Frankfurter, was added to the official delegation. One flaw surfaced almost immediately after Morgenthau set off for Europe. The mission had been sanctioned without due consideration to its possible consequences for Zionism.

Judge Louis Brandeis learned about the venture after the Americans had departed for a rendezvous with their Allied compatriots in Europe. [10] He immediately understood the mortal danger which any such rapprochement with the Turks would bring to the Zionist ambitions. Brandeis alerted Chaim Weizmann. They both realised that these negotiations could completely undermine their carefully constructed plans. In June 1917 there was no Jewish homeland. The very concept was at best paper-talk and had yet to be formally accepted by any of the major powers. A generous settlement for the Turks which might have left Palestine and Arabia intact, would have destroyed the Zionist ambitions before the world war had ended.

In London, Weizmann’s contacts at the foreign office confirmed Brandeis’s anxiety. He learned that the proposed British contingent which was scheduled to join Morgenthau contained envoys whom he did not consider as ‘proper persons’ for such a mission. [11] Since when did unelected observers make decisions on who was or was not a ‘proper person’ to undertake a foreign office assignment? Weizmann turned to C P Scott his Manchester journalist friend, and within a matter of days was invited to speak behind closed doors with foreign secretary Balfour, recently returned from Washington.

What emerged was an astonishing acknowledgement of Zionist complicity in scuttling the American mission. In complete secrecy, Balfour appointed Chaim Weizmann as the British representative to meet Morgenthau. Not a career diplomat. Not a Jewish member of the House of Lords or Commons. He gave the task to a ‘proper person’. The leader of the Zionist movement in Britain, Chaim Weizmann, was formally appointed by the foreign office as Britain’s representative to a secret mission which, had it been allowed to progress unmolested, could radically have shortened the war. Weizmann was given a formidable set of credentials, his own intelligence officer and the responsibility to stop Henry Morgenthau in his tracks.[12]

Chaim Weizmann grasped the opportunity. The Secret Elite chose to use him for their own ends. Their ultimate plan not only for Palestine, but the entire Middle East, would have been seriously compromised had Morgenthau successfully disengaged Turkey from the war. For the Zionists it was imperative that their ambition for a homeland in Palestine was approved by one of the great Powers before the fighting ceased. Chaim Weizmann, accompanied by Sir Ronald Graham [13] and Lord Walter Rothschild met Balfour again. They put one condition on the table. The time had come for a definitive declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This had to be acknowledged – urgently, incase an unexpected peace closed down the opportunity. Balfour agreed. In fact he did more than agree. He asked Chaim Weizmann to submit a form of words that would satisfy the Zionist aspiration, and promised to take it to Lloyd George’s War Cabinet.[14] Here was the golden chance which could not be missed. This was the starting point for the formal declaration which would be endorsed by the war cabinet and called The Balfour Declaration.

Behind the scenes in America, Louis Brandeis succeeded in completely overturning the original position held by Robert Lansing at the Department of State. The plan which had been given official sanction had to be scuppered. On 25 June, while Morgenthau was en-route across the Atlantic on the SS Buenos Aires, an urgent telegram was sent from Washington to Balfour alerting the British to Morgenthau’s arrival in Europe. Lansing specifically stated that ‘it is considerably important that ‘Chaim Weizmann meet Mr Morgenthau at Gibraltar’. [15] How extraordinary. Secretary Lansing requested that his own former ambassador should meet Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the British Zionists before proceeding further. On the same day he instructed the American Ambassador (Willard) at Madrid to ensure that, as soon as he landed, Morgenthau fully understood that he was ordered to go to Gibraltar to meet Weizmann. This instruction was to be sent by ‘special red code strictly confidential’ [16] Who was in charge of American foreign policy, Lansing or Brandeis? No matter. They certainly meant to stop Morganthau.

While the choice of Weizmann as the main British negotiator was inspired, it was little wonder that his involvement, and indeed the whole mission, was a closely guarded secret. The Americans were halted in Gibraltar, ostensibly to agree how the Turks might be approached. With all the weight and authority of his Zionist credentials, Chaim Weizmann pressed Morgenthau on his intentions. Why did he imagine that the Zionist organisations on either side of the Atlantic supported his actions? Did he realise that his proposals would compromise everything that Jewish organisations had been working towards? Realising what he was up against, Morganthau abandoned the mission within two days of Weizmann’s onslaught. He back-tracked to the comfort of Biarritz and left France on 12 July without informing Ambassador Willard of his future plans. [17]

His ego seriously dented, Morgenthau dispatched his own heart-felt complaint to Washington. Given the ease with which diplomatic telegrams could be intercepted, the Americans were appalled. He received a stinging rebuke from Lansing’s office which was as much for international consumption as it was for Morgenthau’s. The telegram read: ‘Department surprised and disturbed that your text seems to indicate you have been authorised to enter into negotiations which would lead to a separate peace with Turkey… Final instructions were to deal solely with the conditions of Jews in Palestine…under no circumstances confer, discuss or carry messages about internal situation in Turkey or a separate peace.’ [18] The aims of the Secret Elite and the political Zionist organisation began to move in tandem. Consider carefully what had happened.

Brandeis had interfered directly with the US State Department policy. Furthermore, he did not hesitate to pass secret information to Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild in London so that Morgenthau’s plans would be thwarted, nominally by the British government. Weizmann, in turn, was ushered in as the foreign office solution. Though by 1917 he was a naturalised British citizen, Chaim Weizmann was no diplomat or civil servant. He was a Zealot for an unbending cause. By pitting a most able and skilled Jewish negotiator against a moderate (at best) American-Jewish diplomat, the Secret Elite approved an inspired appointment. Weizmann crushed Morgenthau with deep-felt passion. At an even deeper level of conspiracy Brandeis had nailed his colours, not to Old Glory, but to the Zionist flag borne by Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild.

Weizmann the zealot lived for one purpose in 1917. His determination was absolute. He wrote to Philip Kerr, a Milner protege and one of Lloyd George’s ‘secretaries’: ‘Some Jews and non-Jews do not seem to realise one fundamental fact, that whatever happens we will get to Palestine.’ [19] And what of Louis Brandeis? He chose to promote and protect the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in favour of an action which could well have ended the war before American troops landed in Europe. American lives or a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Did Louis Brandeis ever consider that thought?

Long after these events, in September 1922, President Warren G Harding affirmed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine against the advice of his officials in the state department. [20] One of but a few who spoke out against a well-organised Jewish lobby was Professor E.B. Reed of Yale who had served as a Red Cross worker in Palestine for three and a half months in 1919. He testified that the Zionist programme would bring oppression to the Arab majority in Palestine, that it was illegal and violated Arab rights. [21] In his memoirs, Chaim Weizmann recalled, incorrectly, that Professor Reed was a Senator. What annoyed him was Reed’s accusation that the leaders of the Zionist movement were unworthy men, and that he (Weizmann) had prolonged the war by two years by undermining the Morgenthau mission. [22] Strange that Weizmann remained in such stubborn denial. Truly, he and his associates, had prolonged that damned war.

1.https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/XXII_THE_BALFOUR_MISSION_TO_THE_UNITED_STATES
2. Blanche E C Dugdale, Arthur J Balfour, Vol II, p. 231.
3. Richard Neb Lebow, Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40. No. 4 (Dec 1968) p. 507 footnote 22.
4. Charles Seymour, Mandell House vol.II pp. 42-3.
5. What an enlightening insight. The Tzar having been deposed, all promises to Russia could be abandoned with all haste.
6. Richard Neb Lebow, Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40. No. 4 (Dec 1968) p. 508 footnote 26.
7. Ibid.
8. Nevzat Uyanik, Dismantling the Ottoman Empire: Britain, America and the Armenian Question, pp. 62-63.
9. Memorandum of Henry Morgenthau’s Secret Mission, 10 June 1917, Robert Lansing Papers, Box 7, Folder 2. Quoted in Uyanik, Dismantling the Ottoman Empire, p. 63.
10. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 246.
11. Ibid., p. 247.
12. The British chief of staff in Egypt responsible for the safety of the Suez Canal. Married to daughter of Viscount Milner’s great friend, Lord Midleton. [I. S. Munro, ‘Graham, Sir Ronald William (1870–1949)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33505]
13. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 256.
14. United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1917, (FRUS) Supplement 2, The World War (1917) p. 109.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 127.
17. Ibid., p. 129.
18. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 227.
19. S.J. Res. 191, 67th Congress, 2 Session, Congressional Record, Vol. LX11, part 5, p.5376.
20. The Lodge-Fish Resolution, Herbert Parzen, American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol. 60. no. 1 Zionism in America, (September 1970, p. 71.
21. Irwin Oder, American Zionism and the Congressional Resolution of 1922 on Palestine, Publications of the American-Jewish Historical Society, Vol. 45, No.1 (September 1955.) p. 44.
22. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 251.

The Balfour Declaration 6: Embraced by the Secret Elite.

Chaim Weizmann had a valuable friend, the journalist and editor, C P Scott. Later the proprietor of the Manchester Guardian, Scott was an Oxford-educated man of staunch Liberal leanings. He spent ten years as member of parliament for Leigh in Lancashire (1895-1905) and welcomed Lloyd George’s courage in opposing the Boer War. [1] Their friendship endured through tumultuous times and Lloyd George trusted C P Scott’s views. [2] The newspaper owner had befriended Chaim Weizmann when he was teaching at Manchester University and proved to be, in Weizmann’s words, ‘of incalculable value’. He pointed the Zionist leader towards the one Jewish member of Asquith’s government, Herbert Samuel, whom he believed, could be of great assistance.[3] Samuel was not a practising Jew and before the war had never spoken about Zionism. Despite this apparent lack of interest he proposed in November 1914, that Britain sponsor the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine after the war. [4] Was it co-incidence that on both sides of the Atlantic, influential Jewish financiers and politicians, Rothschild, Brandeis, Weizmann and Herbert Samuel looked ahead to the end of the war and appreciated the opportunity it would bring? Note the coincidence of both Brandeis and Samuel’s proposals in November 1914. According to his memoirs Samuel was inspired by being the first Jew ever to sit in the British cabinet and claimed that he turned to Chaim Weizmann for advice. [5] Consequently, he spoke to Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, about the future of Palestine. Samuel expressed his alarm at the prospect of this part of the world falling into the hands of any of the Continental Powers (including France) and stressed the strategic importance of that region to the British Empire. He professed his enthusiasm for a Jewish State in Palestine which would be ‘a centre of a new culture … a fountain of enlightenment’.[6]

What followed was a very curious breakfast-meeting of a pro-Zionist group, including Lloyd George, on 3 December 1914. The most intriguing part of the meeting, which Weizmann described in great detail in his autobiography, [7] was that Lloyd George apparently forgot all about it. In his own self-aggrandising memoirs the Welshman explicitly dated his first meeting with Chaim Weizmann from 1916 when the Manchester chemist, by that time a Professor at the university, worked for the ministry of munitions. Indeed the impression which Lloyd George deliberately tried to infer was that the later Balfour Declaration was a reward for Weizmann’s services to the British nation for his development of acetone as a source to enhance munitions. [8] What rubbish. [9] Why did he feel it necessary to falsify his own record? Lloyd George had been introduced to Chaim Weizmann on 3 December 1914 in the company of Herbert Samuel, C P Scott and Joshiah Wedgwood, and the sole topic of conversation, had been Palestine. [10] The then chancellor of the exchequer’s account is so ridiculous that we have to ask, what was he trying to hide? Did later developments in Palestine embarrass Lloyd George politically? Were there other secret influences from whom he had to deflect enquiry?

Herbert Samuel proved to be an important advocate for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He promoted the idea both informally with fellow ministers and in January 1915 wrote a draft memorandum for the Cabinet in which he concluded that Palestine’s annexation to the British Empire, together with an active colonisation of Jewish settlers, was the best solution for Britain. [11] Prime Minister Asquith was not impressed. [12] When in March 1915 Samuel circulated his revised memorandum to all members of the Cabinet, Asquith was scathing in his dismissal, describing the proposals as ‘dithyrambic’, an educated put-down implying a wild, over-the-top, possibly wine-fuelled raving. He went further with a racist swipe which emphasised his disapproval of the very idea that ‘we should take Palestine, into which the scattered Jews c[oul]d swarm back from all quarters of the globe, and in due course claim Home Rule.’ [13] Insects swarm; not people. Asquith also ridiculed the notion that Lloyd George cared a whit about the future of Palestine, adding: ‘ Lloyd George … does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it would be an outrage to let the christian holy places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of Agnostic Atheistic France!’ [14] Why did Asquith find Lloyd George’s stance ‘curious’? Before taking office in 1906, Lloyd George’s legal firm had represented Theodore Herzl in his negotiations with the over the the Uganda proposal. It was he who submitted Herzl’s views on the offer to the British Government. [15] His association with Zionism was long-standing.

Other important politicians and cabinet ministers who responded positively to Herbert Samuel’s memorandum included Sir Edward Grey, Rufus Isaacs, Lord Chief Justice of England from 1913, Richard Haldane, who at that time was Lord Chancellor, Lord James Bryce, former Ambassador to the United States and Arthur J Balfour, [16] who was to become foreign secretary when Grey was replaced in 1916.

Alfred Milner was positively predisposed towards what he himself termed, the Jewish Race. In 1902 he wrote to the President of the Zionist Federation of South Africa: ‘I have known the Jews as excellent colonists at the Cape – industrious, law-abiding and thoroughly loyal’. [17] Herzl had written to Milner in 1903 putting forward his arguments for a Jewish National Home in Palestine and praised the bond which he believed ‘united us [Jews] all closely to your nation.’ [18] Weizmann valued the strength of Milner’s support. He believed that Milner profoundly understood that the Jews alone were capable of rebuilding Palestine, and of giving it a place in the modern family of nations. [19] Such nonsense should have been summarily dismissed but Milner had more immediate concerns, amongst which the strategic defence of the Empire was a powerful motivator. The Secret Elite understood the natural advantage to be gained from a pliant Jewish-Palestine which would protect the western side of the Suez canal and all of the concomitant interests in Persia.

Weizmann held individual discussions with a stream of Secret Elite politicians and agents. Naturally he endowed each with qualities and perceptions which supported Zionism. [20] He specifically targeted Lloyd George’s minders in the Downing Street Garden suburb, [21] His subliminal message was hardly difficult to understand; Britain should trust in a Jewish homeland in Palestine to protect the Suez Canal and the gateway to Persia and India. Weizmann had a further advantage. He understood the matriarchal power inside the Jewish household and sought to use it to his advantage. For example, when James de Rothschild was serving in the British army, Weizmann befriended his wife Dorothy Pinto and ‘won her over’ to Zionism. Jessica Rothschild, wife of Nathan’s second son, Charles, also proved to be a valuable asset and willingly helped the Zionist leader to widen his contacts inside London Society.

And it came to pass that the people of influence, mostly powerfully rich Jews, adopted Chaim Weizmann. The English Zionist Federation office in Fulbourne Street in the East End of London had become too small to meet the demands placed on it by 1917. Weizmann would have us believe that ‘after much consideration and heart-searching we decided to open an office at 175 Piccadilly’. So innocuously put; so entirely misleading. From the East End to Piccadilly was a massive step on its own, but to 175 Piccadilly? To become near neighbours of their friends in ‘Rothschild Row’? [22] How wonderful. Yet that was not the important point. What mattered was that the English Zionist Federation was absorbed into Empire House, the home of Milner’s Round Table Quarterly Review, [23] at the heart of the very court of influence which dominated British political thinking. Weizmann and his organisation were literally embraced by the Secret Elite’s inner-most think-tank. 175 Piccadilly became the hub ‘towards which generated everything in Zionist life’. [24] Incredible. One building, two organs of political influence and a shared interest. 175 Piccadilly was a very significant address. Its importance was kept well away from public scrutiny.

Louis Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann were intimately involved in promoting Zionist intentions behind the backs of their political allies. But they hid it well. Louis Brandeis’s biographer, Alphas Thomas Mason was authorised and approved by the Supreme Court Judge himself and given full access to all his public papers, notebooks, diaries, memoranda, archived letters and personal correspondence. [25] Yet in his 240,000-word scholarly work, only two small paragraphs, ten lines in total, cover Brandeis’s feverish activities between April and June 1917. [26] The truth, to which we now turn, is far more revealing.

1. Trevor Wilson, Scott, Charles Prestwich (1846–1932)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
2. They did fall out for a year in1920-21 over Ireland.
3 Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 190.
4. Bernard Wasserstein, ‘Samuel, Herbert Louis, first Viscount Samuel (1870–1963)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
5. Viscount Samuel, Memoirs, p. 139.
6. Ibid., pp. 140-142.
7. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 191.
8. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 348-9.
9. Oscar K Rabinowicz, Fifty Years of Zionism, p. 69.
10. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 192.
11 Viscount Samuel, Memoirs, p.142.
12. Micheal and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley. p. 406.
13. Ibid., p. 477.
14. Ibid.
15. http://www.jta.org/1931/01/15/archive/mr-lloyd-george-was-legal-adviser-to-dr-herzl-on-uganda-project-and-submitted-dr-herzls-views-to
16. Viscount Samuel, Memoirs, pp.143-4.
17. Vladimir Halpern, Lord Milner and the Empire, p. 169.
18. Ibid., p. 170.
19. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 226.
20. Ibid., p. 241.
21 J A Turner, The Historical Journal vol.20, No 1 (March 1977) p. 165-184.
22. Fredric Bedoire and Robert Tanner, The Jewish Contribution to Modern Architrecture, 1830-1930, p. 131.
23. Walter Nimmocks, Milner’s Young Men, p.166.
24. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 232.
25. Mason, Brandeis – A Free Man’s Life, p. vii.
26. Ibid., p. 452-3.

The Balfour Declaration 4: Early Zionist Roots in Britain.

The term Zionism was coined in the late nineteenth century to represent the movement for the return of the Jewish people to their so-called ‘historic homeland’ in Palestine, though from the start the term was interpreted in different ways by different Jewish and non-Jewish communities. It grew from small beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century,  but had sufficient numbers in the last years of that millennium to contemplate an international congress.

The First Zionist Congress was held in Basle between the 29th and 31st of August, 1897, and was can be gleaned by the photograph above, these delegates were drawn mainly from middle-class European jews. Its aim was to have a recognised ‘and legally secured’ home in Palestine.[1] Chaired by Theodore Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist and keen Jewish activist, the meeting of around 200 participants created the World Zionist Organisation. Who could have known that from such small beginnings a new State would eventually emerge? Small in number, these Zionists were dedicated zealots. Their stance was absolute. They accepted no criticism. They belittled as enemies those many Jews who believed in assimilation into the countries in which they lived and who questioned Zionism’s political aims. Yet there was no popular, widespread enthusiasm for the ‘homeland’ proposal.

At the Second Basle Congress one year later it was clear that very few Jews were interested in the political aims. There was no clamour for radical change. Consequently, the Zionist emphasis was altered. Herzl recognised the need to galvanise Jewish communities, most of whom remained ignorant of, or completely disinterested in, or positively against, the idea of Zionism.

In December 1901 a Jewish National Fund (JNF) was established in Britain to acquire land in Palestine as the ‘inalienable estate of the Jewish people’.[2] It is entirely dubious whether any international law validated such an ‘inalienable’ right, but what is important is that the JNF was part of the slow and barely successful process of encouraging Jewish settlers to go to Palestine. Yet the focus on Palestine was one from which Zionists were not to be turned. We should not forget that the suffering and desperation of many Jews, especially in Russia, whose anti-Jewish pogroms were a barbarous indictment of the Romanov Empire, pressed heavily on the evolving Zionist movement. From their vantage point it was a refugee crisis which no-one else was minded to solve.

Of the major world Powers, Britain was the most progressively liberal in its attitude towards Jewish assimilation. Wealthy Jews in banking, finance and business were increasingly included in what was known as ‘society’. There were Jewish Members of Parliament; Jews ennobled and given membership of the House of Lords. Jewish refugees from the Russian pogroms settled in the slums in the East End of London and other major cities. Life was far from easy for the masses of impoverished immigrants, but Britain was a comparative safe haven and more welcoming than France. The nascent cries for a ‘homeland’ did not come from the ordinary Jewish refugee, but from the Zionist lobby which had begun to assert itself at the turn of the century. And there was sympathy for the Zionist desire for a national homeland inside the corridors of power in London. The problem was that the solution which was offered was not the one that Zionists wanted.

A British offer of an autonomous homeland for Jewish settlers in East Africa [3]  was considered at the Sixth Congress in 1903 and the Zionists reluctantly agreed to send a delegation to examine the practicalities of a Jewish settlement in Uganda. They turned it down. Unsuitable. The Zionists had no intention of resettling in Uganda. Ever. It was not the ‘promised land’. Another approach to the British government about the possible colonisation of a strip of territory on the southern boundary of Palestine and Egypt called El Arish had been secretly conducted by Theodore Herzl, but was also found to be impractical.[4] What mattered was that some British politicians appeared sympathetic to the aspirations of political Zionists.

Herzl died in 1904, and after a considerable struggle, Chaim Weizmann emerged as a charismatic and persuasive Zionist leader. He dominated the Eighth Congress in 1907 and managed to fuse together its political and the practical divisions into what was termed ‘Synthetic Zionism’, a hybrid between political zionism and more practical approaches. Weizmann built on common links between a variety of Zionist groups. Progress was slow. Numbers remained comparatively small, but Palestine was always the ultimate target for a ‘national homeland’. [5]

It seems strange that in his seminal work The Anglo-American Establishment, Professor Carroll Quigley made no mention of Chaim Weizmann’s activities in Britain before or during the First World War. This is all the more puzzling when we unpick Weizmann’s many and frequent associations with the key political forces inside the elite British establishment. He penetrated the hidden web of political influence as no other previously had. Every possible door was opened to him and anything that might prove incriminating, that smelled of collusion, removed from the historic record. [6]  Weizmann operated as the Zionist leader in Britain from 1904-5 onwards, meeting political sympathisers, using his contacts and building up a network of relationships which proved vital to his cause.

Chaim Weizmann initially met Arthur Balfour, formerly Conservative leader during the general election of 1906, [7] at a time when Lord Nathaniel Rothschild worked closely with his Secret Elite colleague. [8] Balfour wanted to know why the Zionists had turned down the British government’s practical solution of a settlement in Uganda? Weizmann spelled out his philosophy with absolute clarity. He dwelt on the spiritual side of Zionism and his ‘deeply religious conviction’ that only Palestine would do. In his eyes, any deflection from Palestine, was ‘a form of idolatry,’  [9] an interesting form of words, rooted in religious abhorrence. He professed that Palestine had a magic and romantic appeal for the Jews; that no other homeland could energise the Jewish people to build up and make habitable, what he deemed, a wasteland. Palestine was not a wasteland nor was it uninhabited. In peddling this misconception, Weizmann was very persuasive. His was not the policy advocated by the wealthy Jews who had made such important strides in British society. This was not an Englishman, proud to be English … and a Jew. Weizmann was not a privileged Rothschild or one of the many other rich upper-middle class Englishmen of Jewish faith who had been completely assimilated into British society. Weizmann was a Zionist zealot. Lord Nathaniel Rothschild was, apparently not.

Chaim Weizmann had one particularly influential mentor who knew precisely the names of the prime decision-makers in Britain. He was a Rothschild – Baron Edmond de Rothschild, head of the French branch of the banking dynasty. Edmond de Rothschild also believed passionately in Palestine. He had funded the establishment of Jewish settlements between 1880-95 and was later hailed as the father of Jewish colonisation.[10] Although the initial months of the war looked bleak for France and her allies, Edmond de Rothschild was convinced of ultimate victory, even in 1914. His advice to Weizmann, whom he considered a capable leader, reflected the forward nature of Zionist thinking. He could see that this was the opportunity. That moment, in the first months of a murderous world war, was the time to act so ‘we might not be forgotten in the general settlement’ . [11] Consider that advice. Edmund de Rothschild forewarned Weizmann that war would ultimately end in a settlement of conflicting claims, and the Zionists had to act immediately to ensure that theirs was included. Chaim Weizmann’s task was to influence British statesmen and politicians to support the Zionist cause in Palestine. It is inconceivable that Rothschild would have failed to identify the key personnel, the trusted agents and members of the Secret Elite whose support was vital to the Zionist ambition. When we analyse the list of men and women whom Weizmann targeted for support, there can be no other explanation, for they formed the core of the secret society that was revealed by Professor Quigley. [12] Weizmann may not have been fully aware of their one-world agenda but these were the people who could approve the transformation of Palestine from the unrequited holy grail to a Jewish state. They became his immediate targets.

British Zionism had a champion. His network of influence was firmly based on his Rothschild connections, and he knew whom he must influence to bring about the radical changes he vigorously pursued. As the pieces in this jigsaw begin to take shape, pay special attention to the clandestine involvement of our Secret Elite agents.

1. Jessie Ethel Sampter, A Guide to Zionism, p. 59.
2. Ibid., p. 64.
3. letter from Sir Clement Hill, chief of Protectorate Department, Foreign Office to Mr. L J Greenberg, 14 August 1903.
4. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, pp. 120-1.
5. Ibid., p. 121.
6. for example, no mention is made of Weizmann in Hankey’s Diaries. GBR/0014/HNKY or in Roskill’s masterly volume on Hankey up to 1918.
7. The 1906 election produced a landslide victory for Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal party and expelled A J Balfour from office until 1915.
8. Niall Ferguson,The House of Rothschild, The World’s Banker, 1849-1999, pp. 417-8.
9. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 143.
10. http://www.jta.org/1931/08/20/archive/baron-edmond-de-rothschild-86
11. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 189.
12. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 311-5.