Questions on Zionism and the British Mandate - for November 15

November 13: Zionist and the British Mandate

Readings:

JAH 357-369

Primary Sources in Mendes-Flohr, pp. 660-670:

• The Balfour Declaration, 
• Zionist Manifesto issued after the Balfour Declaration, 
• Proposal to the General Assembly of the Workers of Eretz Israel, 
• the Churchill White Paper, 
• Mandate for Palestine.

pp. 690-697: 

• “Jewish Needs Vs. Arab Claims” (by Vladimir Jabotinsky)
• The Peel Commission Report
• The White Paper of 1939
• Statement on the McDonald White Paper of 1939

Questions:

1. What was the Balfour Declaration and how did the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann convince the British government to make the declaration in November of 1917?
2. Who was Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky and how did Revisionist Zionism differ from earlier political or socialist Zionism? 
3. What were the early (post World War I) Zionist analyses of the situation of the Arabs of Palestine?
4. What was the dispute between Chaim Weizmann and Louis Brandeis, the American Zionist leader, about?
5. How did the Jewish community in Palestine change during the period of the British mandate (from 1920-1948)? What new Zionist cultural institutions were built at this time?
6. How did relations between the Zionist and the Arab population of Palestine shift during the Mandate period? How did the British react to Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine?
7. What were the recommendations of the Peel Commission?