Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
26 August
BRITAIN AGREED TO GIVE ZIONIST MOVEMENT PART OF EAST AFRICA
On this day in 1903, Herzl proposed the Uganda Scheme for Zionist colonisation to the Sixth Zionist Congress at Basel. The Congress voted to send an expedition to examine the territory proposed. Three days later the British government released an official document allocating a "Jewish territory" in East Africa. British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain had told Herzl that in "East Africa there would be no difficulty in finding land suitable for Jewish settlers."
وافقت بريطانيا على منح الحركة الصهيونية جزءًا من شرق إفريقيا
٢٦ أغسطس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام ١٩٠٣ اقترح هرتزل خطة أوغندا للاستعمار الصهيوني على المؤتمر الصهيوني السادس في بازل. صوت الكونغرس على إرسال بعثة لفحص الأراضي المقترحة. بعد ثلاثة أيام، أصدرت الحكومة البريطانية وثيقة رسمية تحدد" أرض يهودية "في شرق إفريقيا. وكان وزير المستعمرات البريطاني جوزيف تشامبرلين قد أخبر هرتزل أنه" لن تكون هناك صعوبة في العثور على أراض مناسبة للمستوطنين اليهود في شرق إفريقيا "
When Theodor Herzl began his quest to establish a homeland for the Jewish people, he sought out the support of the great powers to help achieve his goal. In 1903, Herzl turned to Great Britain and met with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary and others high ranking officials who agreed in principle to Jewish settlement in East Africa.
At the Sixth Zionist Congress at Basel on August 26, 1903, Herzl proposed the British Uganda Program as a temporary refuge for Jews in Russia in immediate danger. By a vote of 295-178 it was decided to send an expedition ("investigatory commission") to examine the territory proposed. Three days later the British government released an official document allocating a "Jewish territory" in East Africa "on conditions which will enable members to observe their national customs..."
The Uganda Program was finally rejected by the Zionist movement at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, but Nahum Syrkin and Israel Zangwill called an alternative conference to continue the plan of the Uganda scheme.
Territorialism preached the formation of a Jewish collective in Palestine, or anywhere else, on the basis of self-rule. The territorialist outlook coalesced in the debate over the Uganda Program. In July 1905, after the Zionist Congress rejected this plan, the Territorialist Jewish Organization was established in Basle under the leadership of the writer Israel Zangwill. It attempted to locate territory suitable for Jewish settlement in various parts of Africa, Asia, and Australia, but with little success. The Balfour Declaration and the resulting Zionist awakening negated the movement and led to its dissolution in 1925.
Herzl's first solution to ‘the Jewish problem’ was a mass conversion of Austrian Jews to Catholicism. ‘It should be done on a Sunday, in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in the middle of the day, with music and pride, publicly,’ he wrote.
In this video a journalist presents a number of Israeli students with a quote from Herzl (6m15secs in) and asks who they thought wrote it. Every one of them says "Hitler". They are shocked to discover the truth; the Herzl they’d learned about in school could not have written such an antisemitic statement. This is the quote: "An excellent idea enters my mind - to attract outright anti-semites and make them destroyers of Jewish wealth".
The journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery referred to Herzl’s writings as having, in places, ‘a strongly antisemitic odour’. Indeed they do. Try this for example (describing the attendees at a Berlin soiree in 1885): “ Some thirty or forty ugly little Jews and Jewesses. No consoling sight.” Clearly Herzl didn’t like Jews much.
Read full article Theodore Herzl: visionary or anti-semite? by Leon Rosselson, 24 January 2019