Ionescu Andrei-David

Anul II, Istorie

Referat Engleză
As I write this essay, my history degree subject it’s about „Zionism” and Theodor Herzl,
who is behind the birth of Zionism. The subject might change in the future because I might find
something more interesting or I might find a subject that has been more written about to use for
my degree.
Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest on May 2, 1860. One of the greatest people in
Jewish history. He was educated in the spirit of the German-Jewish Enlightenment and learned to
appreciate secular culture. In 1878, his family moved to Vienna, and in 1884, Herzl obtained a
doctorate in law from the University of Vienna. He became a writer, playwright and journalist
and became the correspondent of the influential liberal newspaper in Vienna "Freie Presse".
Theodor Herzl believed that Jews should assimilate European culture. Herzl had an
ambivalent relationship with his Jewish identity, being both proud and ashamed of his origins.
He was deeply influenced by the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a captain of the Franco-Jewish army
who was unjustly accused of treason in 1894. The case, which came to be given as an example of
European hostility towards Jews, took place when Herzl he was the correspondent of the Freie
Presse newspaper. However, it was later suggested that Herzl's transformation took place earlier
and that he would have used the impact that Dreyfus's case had on his thinking to gain support
for his political goals.
In any case, Herzl eventually came to believe in the futility of Jewish assimilation of
European culture and in efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Thus, he promoted the idea that Jews
should move away from Europe and establish their own independent policy to ensure their
national rights. In the "Der Judenstaat", he proposed an independent state as a solution to the
Jewish problem and set out a detailed plan for its establishment. Herzl did not believe that the
Jewish state should be established in the land of Israel. In "Der Judenstaat", he considered
Palestine as well as Argentina as a location for the Jewish state. He later supported the idea of a
Jewish state in East Africa.
Herzl's view of the Jewish state was not taken seriously by the liberal Jews, who rejected
his separatist view. However, in 1897, Herzl chaired the inaugural conference of the Zionist
Organization in Basel, Switzerland. The conference drew about 200 delegates and set the Zionist
goal of establishing a new home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Herzl was elected chairman
of the group and took over the leadership of the global Zionist movement. In the years that
followed, Herzl actively promoted his ideas, meeting with German Kaiser Wilhelm II and
Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in an attempt to gain support for the Zionist cause. In 1903, he
obtained British support for the establishment of a Jewish state in East Africa and brought the
proposal before the Sixth Zionist Congress. But the idea proved controversial and was eventually
abandoned in 1905.
 Herzl also rejected the use of Yiddish, which many European Jews spoke at the time,
urging Jews to give it up. Instead, he supported the idea of a "federation of languages" in which
Jews could keep the language they were most comfortable with, trying to follow the Swiss
model. In 1902, Herzl published the book "Altneuland" or "Old New Country", a novel that
describes the transformation of Palestine into a flourishing, prosperous and modern country that
will lead to the development of the Jewish people. In 1904, Herzl died in Austria at the age of 44.
In 1949, according to his wishes, Herzl's remains were transferred to Jerusalem, being deposited
on Mount Herzl, so named in his memory.
Modern Israel is based on both religious and political sources. The biblical promise of a
Jewish land and the return to the Temple in Jerusalem were enshrined in Judaism and upheld the
Jewish identity. By the 1800s, less than 25,000 Jews lived in Jerusalem, then a province of the
Ottoman Empire.
However, in the 1880s, a rise in European anti-Semitism and the resurgence of Jewish
national pride combined to inspire a new wave of emigration to Palestine in the form of
agricultural settlements funded by Rothschild and other wealthy families. Political Zionism
became a decade later, when Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl began fighting for a Jewish state
as a political solution to the problem of anti-Semitism and for a secular Jewish identity. Herzl
received the international support of the great powers at the first failed Zionist congress in
August 1897. After his death in 1904, the Zionist organization under Chaim Weizmann made a
major effort to increase the Jewish population in Palestine while continuing to seek political
assistance.
These efforts were small-scale, while the Ottoman Turks ruled Palestine. In 1917, during
World War I, the Zionists persuaded the British government to issue the Balfour Declaration, a
document that pledged Britain to facilitate the establishment of a "Jewish homeland" in
Palestine.
Britain encouraged Jewish immigration in the 1920s, but the onset of the Great Depression of the
1930s and the flight of refugees from Nazi Germany led to a change in policy. The British
government proposed the division of Palestine into mutually dependent Arab and Jewish states.
When this was rejected by the Arabs, London decided in 1939 to severely restrict Jewish
immigration in the hope that it would retain Arab support against Germany and Italy. Palestine
was thus largely closed to Jews fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe during World War II. Despite
this, the majority of the Jewish population supported the Allies during the war while seeking,
when possible, to immigrate illegally to Palestine. The Jewish community, which was less than
100,000 in 1919, numbered about 600,000 by the end of the war. Palestinian Arabs had also
grown under mandate (through high birth and immigration rates) from about 440,000 to about
1,000,000 in 1940.