— In the post below, “Israel is going to lose“, I commented on the Jewish diaspora, noting that very few Jews lived in the Middle East prior to the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. A reader comments that there must have been some. This takes us to the modern history of the Zionist movement. Zionism was born in the late 19th century, following the Russian pogroms of 1881-82. In the early days, waves of Jewish migration to Israel were called “aliyas,” numbered first through fifth:
Aliya and Absorption —
By 1940, nearly 250,000 Jews had arrived during the Fifth Aliya (20,000 of them left later) and the yishuv’s population reached 450,000. From this time on, the practice of “numbering” the waves of immigration was discontinued – which is not to say that aliya had exhausted itself.
During the aliya period, Jews living in the area we now call Israel lived under Turkish or British rule, and many left within a few years of arriving.
The British government, after taking over Palestine, was the first government in the area to recognize and support the national aspirations of the Zionist movement, in the Balfour Declaration, which said:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
It’s that bit about the civil rights of non-Jews in the area that has our Arab brethren so upset today.