PIRMARY SOURCE ANYALSIS:
“THEODORE HERZL ON THE JEWSIH STATE”
HIST 122
Western Civilization since the Thirty Years War
Dr. Kelly Jernigan
07 May 2018
Before the nation of Israel was established in 1948, the Jewish people did not have a homeland and were faced with extreme situations and violence towards them. Facing persecution and often attacked by anti-Semitic views of the host countries they inhabited, the Jewish population was in a way being isolated and singled out. For example in imperial Russia, Jews were being subjected to pogroms, or violence against their beliefs and practices. The term came into widespread usage after the riots of 1881 and 1882 in the Russian Empire (Klier, 2010). Herzl would use the atrocities …show more content…
Theodore Herzl would use these events to propose the idea of a homeland for the Jewish people and ultimately lead to the establishment of the nation of Israel.
Herzl proposed the foundation of Jewish homeland as means to provide and identity for the Jewish people. He wanted to establish a Jewish state that would function on its own and be a competitive with modern nations as those in the present time. Herzl realized that in order for this idea to be acknowledged it would need the support and endorsement of a larger national superpower. At a meeting held on April 23, 1903 with the Colonial Secretary of Great Britain, Joseph Chamberlain stated that in his opinion, Uganda in East Africa seemed an ideal location for the resettlement of the Jews (History Central, A History of Israel)
The territory land would be cultivated and built upon by Jews and Jews alone. Herzl states “Let the sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage for