Blog Nov 15

1. The Balfour Declaration was a letter written by British foreign secretary James Balfour. He was writing to Lionel Walter Rothschild, who was the honorary president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, expressing his support of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow submitted their plan to the British government on the parameters in which they believed the Jewish state should be established. They believed Palestine should be recognized as the one and only national home of the Jewish people. Although the British government supported their ideals, they changed a detail within their provisions. Instead of it being the national home of the Jewish people it was changed to a national home of the Jewish people. This could suggest the British government understood the complexity of religious influence within the geographic area of Palestine, and didn’t want to put the Jewish people in a situation in which they would become oppressed again.

2. Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky was a Ukrainian Revisionist Zionist who founded the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa. Jabotinsky was instrumental in the development of a Jewish military unit that would part take in the conquering of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. He was an important figure in the Zionist movement, but split from the mainstream after a disagreement with Chaim Weizmann. His view of Zionism contrasted with socialist Zionism because its economic and social orientation was focused on the Jewish middle class in Europe. This was also in contention with the Labor Zionism movement. This movement called for the establishment of an agriculturist society based on moral equality, not on the basis of a private elite society.