[Errigal]

This article was well worth reading but it had a few problems that jumped out at me. The main problem being his decision to start the story of Zionism in England far too early and then ending it too early.

The Jews Did Not Invent Zionism, Anglican England Did

The Judeophile mood or Zionization of the English elites actually began when King Henry VIII proclaimed himself head of the Church of England (the Anglican Church) in 1534 and later ordered one English copy of “the whole” Bible to be placed in every church in England. As the new lay interpretation of the Bible penetrated English culture, with a particular emphasis on the Old Testament, the English Reformation began to look like a process of false Judaization of the British people. This is probably when the words “Semites,” “Hebrews,” “Israelites,” and “Jews” began to be viewed as almost synonymous by an English culture deeply penetrated by the new literal interpretation of the Bible.

He is getting the Anglican Royalists mixed up with the Calvinist Parliamentarians. This is a bit like mixing up the Czarists and the Bolsheviks.

By 1589 Zionism had become visible in England, when a man named Francis Kett was condemned and burnt alive for adhering to Zionism (“Restoration”), then considered heretical (Epstein 1984). British Zionism continued to grow, despite occasional anti-Jewish incidents, such as in the case of the Jewish personal physician of Elizabeth I, who was “accused of high treason and of an attempt to poison the Queen” (Carmichael 1992, 91).

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice was performed at this time too. It is a bit of evidence that Jews were known to the theatre going public of London despite being officially banned from England and that they were not at all liked. The play itself is clearly hostile to Jews and is not in any way Zionist.

Yet despite the various efforts either to create or instigate a Jewish Zionist movement and a Jewish leadership who were able and/or willing to assist in carrying out the British-proposed colonization schemes for Palestine, Zionism remained essentially alien to the masses of European Jews before Britain introduced it in the wake of the assassination of Russian Czar Alexander II in 1881 and the subsequent pogroms and mass migrations of Eastern European Jews to the Americas.

This is when the action really started, when prominent Jews and non-Jews had to figure out what to do with wave after wave of unwelcome Russian Jewish migration. That's when Jews with influence started the campaign to make Palestine a Jewish homeland. The First World War gave them the opportunity to squeeze a promise out of the British but even then the Brits were trying to put limits on the Zionist project.

Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
"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".
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely
Arthur James Balfour

source

From 1917 to 1949 the British showed very little enthusiasm for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. It was only American pressure, the newly created UN and the magic power of the Holocaust that got the Zionist project over the top.


British Mandate of Palestine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia