HERZL'S MISSION CIVILISATRICE

Zionism would not have been able to achieve its goals without the overall support of the Western imperialist powers. The Israeli state was and still is central to Western projects in the “East”. In fact the Israeli state owes its very existence to the British colonial power in Palestine, despite the military tensions that existed in the last decade of the British mandatory period between the colonial power and the leadership of the militarized Jewish “Yishuv”. Under the Ottomans the European Zionist settlers were not given a free hand in Palestine; had the Ottomans been left in control of Palestine after the First World War, it is very unlikely that a Jewish state would have come into being. The situation changed radically with the occupation of Palestine by the British in 1918; already on 2 November 1917 Zionism had been granted title to Palestine in the well-known Balfour Declaration, a letter sent by foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour to the Zionist Federation, via Baron Walter Rothschild, in which the British government declared its commitment to Zionism: “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.”