The Balfour Declaration 12: The Hand of The Rothschilds

Before 2 November 1917 no public position had been taken on the future of Palestine by any government. Thereafter there was a proposal from Lloyd George’s British government, approved by President Wilson in America,  to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland under certain conditions. But the future of Palestine had been included in three radically different commitments secretly made by the British government to the French, the Arabs and the Jews. The French could be bought-off with Syria. The Arabs, well they were considered a lesser race by the Secret Elite and, it was presumed, could be led down a different path. The Jews, by that time described as Zionists, offered a very interesting opportunity. Key inner-circle members of the Secret Elite believed that the Empire’s strategic security would be greatly enhanced by a Jewish Palestine which owed its existence to Britain. These Zionists could be useful.

Behind the political enthusiasm for a Jewish homeland displayed so publicly by the War Cabinet in 1917 lay this question: who was influencing them? Which of the small number of Zionist enthusiasts penetrated their inner circle and found favour with the Secret Elite? The primary answer was the House of Rothschild. Not every Rothschild, no, but over the span of 1914-1917 significant Rothschilds championed the Zionist cause and were seen by the public, especially the Jewish public, as its real leaders. Baron Edmond de Rothschild in Paris was the first of the nineteenth-century Rothschilds to help Russian victims of the vile pogroms to emigrate to Palestine between 1881-2. Throughout the pre-war years, he acquired and supported several communities in Palestine. By 1903 nineteen out of twenty-eight Jewish settlements in Palestine were subsidised partly or wholly by him. It was claimed that Edmond’s commitment was not aimed at the creation of a Jewish state. [1] That is convenient, for once the First World War was underway, it was he who urged Weizmann to seize the opportunity to establish a Jewish Palestine. [2]

In London, under the patronage of Lord Nathaniel, the Rothschilds had originally expressed no particularly strong enthusiasm for Palestine. They were considered to be disinterested, until Natty died in 1915. Described at his funeral as the ‘leader of his far-flung brothers … the Prince of the Diasporas of Israel’ [3] by the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, the great ‘Natty’ held a ‘quasimonarchial status within British Jewry’. [4] Yet again mythistory gave rise to extravagant titles. Suddenly, Natty Rothschild was transformed into a mythological prince of a mythological diaspora.

If Nathaniel was King, Walter was his heir. It was to Walter Rothschild that Balfour sent the Declaration because, for much of the preceding year, Walter had been actively promoting Zionism in company with Chaim Weizmann. Walter has long been described first and foremost as a zoologist who collected exotic birds and animals; a reluctant banker; a very shy man with a speech impediment. [5] The evidence from which we have analysed the Balfour Declaration stands testament to a different truth. It was Walter Rothschild who allegedly drafted and redrafted letters to foreign secretary Balfour in 1917. [6] Be mindful that the Declaration passed through at least 5 drafts. At the very least, if say, Weizmann drafted these letters in Walter’s name, it had the Rothschild signature.  Walter opposed the idea that power in Palestine might be shared between Britain and France and, Weizmann claimed, believed that Palestine must become a British Protectorate. [7]

Later, Jacob, the 4th Lord Rothschild described his grandfather Walter as a deeply eccentric ornithologist who, for example, did not open any mail over a two year period because he didn’t want to communicate with the rest of the world. [8]  Well, he clearly opened Balfour’s letter. Walter did not flinch when confronted by Jewish opponents to political Zionism. He tackled them head-on. He wrote to The Times on several occasions to condemn leading Jewish opponents. When the presidents of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association published what he deemed to be a manifesto against Zionism, both he and Weizmann wrote stinging letters of condemnation. Walter Rothschild then had the authors of the letter censured at the next meeting of the Board of Deputies and used his father’s name to justify his position. Whether he was a led in such matters by Weizmann or not, changes nothing.

It was generally believed that Natty Rothschild held little time for Zionists but Walter insisted that ‘during the latter years of his life, [his father] had frequently told him that in principle he was in favour of the establishment of a Jewish National homeland in Palestine, but not so long as Palestine was in Turkish hands’ [9] The dead cannot easily contradict the living. Walter Rothschild pressed both Lloyd George and Balfour to make a clear statement in favour of a Jewish homeland, and accompanied Chaim Weizmann when the Zionist leader in Britain went to persuade Balfour that a Jewish homeland had to have an expression of support before the war ended. [10] Walter presided over the mass meeting of triumph after the Declaration at the London Opera House on 2 December and spoke eloquently. Walter Rothschild was intimately involved in the successful delivery of the Balfour Declaration and fronted much of the political pressure which the Zionists exerted.

So too was the French-born James de Rothschild, Edmond’s son. He abandoned France after the anti-Jewish Dreyfus affair at the turn of the century [11] and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. James shared his father’s enthusiasm for Jewish communities in Palestine. Chaim Weismann corresponded with him, [12] and visited his wife, Dorothy Pinto [13] while James was serving in France. The Rothschild Archives at Waddesdon Manor retains a priceless collection of documents, including the original Balfour letter itself, but the correspondence from Dorothy de Rothschild clearly proves that Weizmann’s success within British society was neither opportunism nor good fortune. Dorothy had married James when she was seventeen years of age and her commitment to the Zionist cause never wavered. She wrote frequently to Chaim Weizmann and helped him to become integrated into  British Society, and most importantly, the Secret Elite. According to Lord Jacob, Dorothy devoted herself to Israel. If, as he claimed, Chaim Weizmann miraculously seduced Lloyd George, Balfour and the Secret Elite into accepting the Zionist ambitions, [14] it was a miracle facilitated by and through the Rothschild family.

James de Rothschild had attended a special meeting on 17 February 1917, with Weizmann, Walter Rothschild, Herbert Samuel and Sir Mark Sykes to establish a pressure group specifically created to urge the British government to make a positive statement confirming Palestine’s future. [15] James, distrustful of French politicians, warned that if British Jews approached the French government for support, the French would would use their own Rabbis to press for a French mandate for Palestine. He became involved in  day-today Zionist politics and in April and May, 1917, he played an integral part in the Brandeis- Weizmann telegram exchanges which we have already examined. [16] He too spoke at the great rally of 2 December and, quoting his father Edmond’s unerring commitment to Palestine, claimed that ‘Jewish ideals up to this time had been met at the gate, but could not get through. With one stroke of the pen the English government had flung open these gates.’ According to the Rothschild historian, Niall Ferguson, the meeting at Covent Garden was held to underline the Rothchilds’ contributions to the historic breakthrough from which the state of Israel could be traced. [17]

What’s more, the English Zionists Federation soon re-interpreted the original letter so that it was entitled ‘The Charter of Zionism’. But this letter of support was not a charter. It was not a Magna Carta. This ‘breakthrough’, this ‘Jewish Charter’ [18] contained a delicate and labyrinthine conundrum. How could any Power which claimed to have gone to war to protect the rights of small self-determining nations bring a non-existent ‘country’ to an international conference and claim it had greater rights to recognition than others? The first step was the British government’s Declaration of intent to support the establishment of a ‘homeland’. An outburst of international and orchestrated approval certainly helped. But there had to be a more tangible basis; proof positive that there was a just cause. This was the reason behind the Zionist Commission sent to the ‘Holy Land’ in 1918 to reassure the Arabs that no-one intended them harm. It aimed to lend credibility to the Zionist claims; give Zionists some right to be heard when the world was redivided at the end of the war. And all of this timely enterprise was orchestrated through the Rothschild influence.

In addition, membership of the Secret Elite began to change in a subtle manner to which Carroll Quigley made no overt reference. Perhaps a better word might be partnership. As economic power increasingly flowed through the Morgan – Rothschild – Rockefeller – Kuhn Lowe axis in the United States, political alliances began to firm around key issues … like Palestine, but why did they go to such extraordinary lengths to realise a mythistory? The Brandeis – Weizmann connection was reflected in the Balfour-Lansing understandings. In other words, the Zionist aims metamorphosed into British and American foreign policy. The Anglo-American Establishment began to slowly readjust its position. In a sense, the drive for one world government moved towards a shared trans-Atlantic agenda that would become clearer in the coming decades. In the new order that lay ahead, would it still be the British elite who were in charge? If so, for how long could that continue?

1. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 280.
2. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 189.
3. Memorial Sermon given by The Very Rev. Dr. J. H. Hertz, 19 April, 1915, https://archive.org/stream/rthonlordrothsch00hert#page/n3/mode/2up
4. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 450.
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rothschild,_2nd_Baron_Rothschild
6. National Archives GT 1803 and CAB 24/24/4.
7. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 450.
8. Interview with Lord Jacob Rothschild on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCioKnpHdY
9. The Times 18 June 1917.
10. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 256.
11. In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was wrongly convicted by the army of spying for the Germans. His conviction was ridiculous and became a celebrated cause of establishment-based anti-semitism. The scandal split France and made many Jews very angry and uncomfortable with the anti-semitic attitude of their government. After great public protest, Dreyfus was exonerated in 1908. Recommend Ruth Harris, The Man On Devil’s Island.
12. Ibid., p. 201.
13. Ibid., p. 206.
14. Interview with Lord Jacob Rothschild on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCioKnpHdY
14. Ibid., p. 238.
15. Interview with Lord Jacob Rothschild on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCioKnpHdY
16. The Balfour Declaration 7: posted on 1st August 2017.
17. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 452.
18. The title ‘Charter’ appears to have been invented by the English Zionist Federation, whose pamphlet, Great Britain, Palestine and the Jews: Jewry’s Celebration of its National Charter, published anonymously after December 1917 repeats the concept of a ‘Charter’ almost as if it was the Magna Carta, talking of ‘ a National Charter’, ‘The Charter of Zionism’ and the ‘British Charter of Zionism’.

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 onward, 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.