By Soumya Ghosh
?His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..?? ? were the ominous tract of 67 words penned by the then-British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour in a letter written to Lord Rothschild, au fond, de facto endorsing the establishment of a Jewish state in the historical land of Palestine.
For the first time, in 1917, a major international power had backed the Zionist aspirations of Jewish settlement in historical Palestine. Historians quite convincingly argue that the Balfour Declaration had brought about a seismic shift in the landscape of the Middle East. This de facto endorsement soon transfigured into a de jure endorsement by the now-defunct organization, the League of Nations.
Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine, over the next few decades, increased manifold, as hundreds of thousands of Jews fled the wrath of virulent anti-Semitism in the erstwhile Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe to fulfil their religious aspirations and discover a new liberated sense of living in modern-day Israel. The antiquated Jewish phrase?L’Shana Haba’ah, or ?Next year in Jerusalem? had now ostensibly metamorphosed into a pellucid actuality. Last year marked the centenary anniversary of this portentous document, known to the posterity as the Balfour Declaration.
La Belle ?poque and France in 1894
Twenty-three years prior to the Balfour Declaration, in 1894, France was still reeling with the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and its territorial acquiescence thereof, especially that of Alsace-Lorraine. The seeds of revanchism were still fervently echoing the psyche of the average French citizenry.
But amidst this ideological entropy, a new epoch arose which redefined France forever. The year of 1894 was also arguably the zenith of La Belle ?poque (French for The Beautiful Era). An unprecedented era of relative peace and stability coupled with economic growth and artistic evolution was engulfing France. In the realms of art, post-Impressionists avant-garde painters like Paul C?zanne, Camille Pissarro, and Claude Monet were irreversibly revolutionizing the world of art.
Taking a cue from the title of a book by E?mile Zola, this era between 1871 and the start of the First World War in 1914, is best symbolized by the phrase joie de vivre or the joy of living. This was the era wherein the parochial predispositions of the past were being replaced by a spirit of artistic, cultural, and most importantly political progressivism.
The arrest of Alfred Dreyfus
In December 1894, a French Jewish artillery officer by the name of Alfred Dreyfus was court-martialed, squarely convicted of high treason and sentenced to life imprisonment in the notorious Devil?s Island located in South America. Dreyfus was convicted of passing on military secrets to the German Military attach? in Paris based on fabricated testimonies and spurious evidence, in front of an allegedly anti-Semitic jury, which unanimously affirmed his conviction.
To provide some context, France in 1894 wasn?t a nation pulsating the idealisms charted out in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen but rather a nation where primitive anti-Semitism was still omnipresent and ubiquitous. Eduard Drumont?s La France Juive or the Jewish France ? a vile and odious book chronicling the themes of racial supremacy and alleged Jewish control of global Finance was a bestseller among the French populace. The renowned French journalist and active monarchist L?on Daudet covering the Dreyfus trial wrote, ?His face (Alfred Dreyfus?s) is grey, flattened and base, showing no sign of remorse – a wreck from the ghetto.? Daudet?s forthrightness was just one of the many examples of blatant anti-Semitism in the French media.
On one fine day in January 1895, the military degradation ceremony of artillery officer Dreyfus took place in the court of the ?cole Militaire. Dreyfus?s military insignia was stripped while a gazing French mob looked on. Exclamations of ?Judas? reverberated in the crowd as Dreyfus proudly proclaimed his innocence shrieking, ?Innocent, Innocent! Vive la France! Vive l’Arm?e!?
Injustice and the seeds of Zionism
With new evidence brought to light in 1896 by virtue of an investigation conducted by Major Georges Picquart, fingers of culpability were now pointed towards another Major by the name of Ferdinand Esterhazy. This episode coincided with Alfred?s brother Mathieu?s relentless campaign to free him. Mathieu Dreyfus?s campaign to free his innocent brother soon permeated the overwhelmingly anti-militarist leftist press circles, the broader French public consciousness and perhaps most significantly the ears of future French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau?who published the newspaper L?Aurore.
The French state dictums vis-?-vis the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus was now viewed from a more suspicious lens. France was ideologically split along the lines of anti-Dreyfusards who espoused a nebulous form of atavistic nationalism and Dreyfusards motivated by an ethos of overturning the miscarriage of justice. Even the upper French intelligentsia was split. The impressionist painters Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas towing the French state line pitted against their fellow impressionists Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet.
These public acts of incredulity by the Dreyfusards were revolutionary in a number of ways. Until this time, one might add, the French state and the military was predominately viewed as righteous and infallible from an iota of criticism. The Dreyfus Affair was slowly but steadily bringing about an immutable change in the panorama of French politics.
Few miles away from the degradation of Alfred Dreyfus, an Austrian correspondent for the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse or New Free Press by the name of Theodor Herzl was documenting the events which were unravelling in Paris. Herzl, a secular and assimilated Jew, was shaken to his core. Profoundly disturbed, he started writing a pamphlet called Der Judenstaat or the Jewish State. This new torrent of vitriolic anti-Semitism in France made him contemplate in his pamphlet that:
?If France?a bastion of emancipation, progress and universal socialism?can get caught up in a maelstrom of anti-Semitism and let the Parisian crowd chant ‘Kill the Jews!’ Where can they be safe once again?if not in their own country??
The first Zionist Congress and the ascendancy of Zionism
Previously a staunch proponent of the assimilation of Jews in the wider mainstream European society, Theodor Herzl now staunchly supported the creation of a Jewish state. Herzl came to this irrevocable conclusion owing not to his religious convictions or lack thereof, but rather his certitude that anti-Semitism as a phenomenon will never perish from mainstream society, even in ?humanist? nations like France.
Herzl along with Nathan Birnbaum, another fellow Austrian Jew who coined the term ?Zionism? formed the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and held its first Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Zionism, as a political and religious movement, now gained traction among many assimilated Jewish citizenry of France and other European countries.
In the first Zionist Congress, the delegates of the WZO agreed to the Basel Program, which inter-alia included bolstering Jewish migration to historical Palestine and fostering a sense of ethnoreligious consciousness and nationalism among the Jewish citizens of Europe. Theodor Herzl soon started building liaisons with the Ottoman Emperor Abdul Hamid II ? who then controlled much of modern-day Israel, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, and even Pope Pius X ? to no avail with the latter describing the Church position as non possumus on such matters of religious sensitivity.
J?accuse, the rise of Chaim Weizmann, and the Declaration
On a January day in 1898, the French novelist ?mile Zola launched a scathing diatribe against the French government and the military in deliberately trying to suppress evidence and incarcerate Alfred Dreyfus. Perhaps the most zealous Dreyfusard, Zola penned this acerbic open letter in the newspaper L’Aurore starting powerfully with, ?J?accuse (I accuse)?.? Esterhazy?s trial and acquittal a few months earlier was the final nail in the coffin for him.
This nearly 5,000-word article detailing the complicity of the French State and the underbelly of anti-Semitism in the French military was indubitably a huge success in changing the perception of the public-at-large. The battle for the soul of France had now by any standard become more veridical than it previously was. Prominent Dreyfusards including Marcel Proust, Anatole France, and others published a public petition asking for a retrial. But by this time, the verdict of the Dreyfus trial and the French military?s reputation were inextricably linked. A retrial it was, but with forged and concocted evidence ? and the guilty judgement soon unanimously reasserted. With international indignation mounting, and France?s very reputation at stake ? Dreyfus, in 1906, was completely exonerated from any wrongdoing and restored to his full military rank. Justice at last.
In 1915, nearly nine years after Dreyfus?s exoneration, Chaim Weizmann a renowned Chemist and now a prominent Zionist associated with the World Zionist Organization ? invented a new process to mass produce acetone – a critical ingredient to manufacture explosives and thus helping the British war effort, with Britain being heavily embroiled in the First World War.
David Lloyd George the then-Minister for Munitions and future British Prime Minister asked Weizmann for any amount he wanted in return for his service, Weizmann calmly responded that his intentions were never monetary and in return wanted British involvement to foster Jewish rights over historical Palestine. Chaim Weizmann and the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour soon became good friends. This close personal bond between Weizmann and two of the most prominent and powerful British politicians i.e. Lloyd George and Lord Balfour ? soon bore dividends in the form of the Balfour Declaration which was proclaimed on November the 2nd, 1917.
To conclude, the Dreyfus Affair was a cataclysmic event in a myriad of ways. Modern commentators argue that France became more ?mature? as a nation after this episode. The Dreyfus Affair ineluctably brought the values of libert?, ?galit?, fraternit? to the forefront of public consciousness. The alleged sacrosanctity of the French government was shattered into a thousand pieces. The right-wing reactionary and anti-democratic forces who for so long espoused virulent anti-Semitism and promulgated the miscarriage of justice, allegedly to defend the French state?s very image, was resolutely defeated in 1906?when Dreyfus?s conviction was overturned.
In the domain of Zionism, the Dreyfus Affair fundamentally led to the drafting and creation of the Basel Program. The deeply ingrained facets of anti-Semitism among the French public only bolstered Jewish aspirations and yearnings for an independent country?free from any discrimination or malice. Liberal Jews who for years had been staunch proponents of assimilationism now favoured Zionism as a medium to find true liberation. Zionism, as a political ideology, soon transcended from the fringe to the majoritarian viewpoint. These inveterate convictions combined with mass immigration to historical Palestine soon catapulted in the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, and the rest is history as we know it.
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