Although nothing emerged from this interview, Herzl used the diplomatic coup as a stepping stone for his negotiations in Europe. Pulling out all the stops, he went to St. Petersburg in 1903 (soon after the first pogrom of Kishinev) and was received by the finance and interior ministers, to whom he hawked Zionism as a solution to the problem of revolutionary subversion. Undoubtedly armed with the same argument, Herzl met Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898, presenting Zionism as a means of diverting the Jews from communism. However, Herzl already understood that “The center of gravity has shifted to England,” as he noted during a trip to England in November 1895.242 In the second sentence quoted above from The Jewish State, Herzl implicitly referred to Russia’s containment policy when he presented his future Jewish state in Palestine as “an element of the wall against Asia.” It was a call directed at England. Like Disraeli, Herzl sold his project to the British as an integral part of their colonial-imperial policy. That is why in 1903, having established close contact with Joseph Chamberlain, secretary of state for the colonies, Herzl received from the British government an offer to facilitate a large Jewish settlement, with autonomous government, in present-day Uganda. The offer was presented to the sixth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903, and rejected at the seventh congress in 1906. (Herzl died between the two).
A quarter century after Disraeli had saved the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan’s opposition stymied all hope of acquiring Palestine; it was thus necessary that the Ottoman Empire disappear and the cards be redistributed. Herzl understood that “the division of Turkey means a world war.”243 His partner Max Nordau, a speaker with incomparable prophetic talent, made before the 1903 Zionist Congress a famous prophecy of the upcoming war whence “a free and Jewish Palestine” would emerge. (In the 1911 congress, he would make another prophecy: that the European governments were preparing the “complete annihilation for six million [Jewish] people.”244)
Writing in 1938, Jewish historian Benzion Netanyahu (father of the later prime minister) summarized the feverish anticipation of this great cataclysm in the Zionist community. As is always the case in Jewish historiography, all eyes were fixed on the fate of the chosen people with complete indifference to the collateral victims: “The great moment came, as he prophesied, bound together with the storm of a world war, and bearing in its wings an exterminating attack on world Jewry, which began with the massacre of the Jews of Ukraine (during the Russian Civil War) and continues to spread to the present day. Herzl’s political activity resulted in the fact that the Jews, whom he had united in a political organization, were recognized as a political entity, and that their aspirations […] became part of the international political system. Indeed, due to the war, those aspirations had become so important that the major powers turned to the Zionists.”245
Shortly before the outbreak of the World War, in 1908, the sultanate itself would be destroyed from within by the secular revolution of the Young Turks, a movement described by T. E. Lawrence as “50% crypto-Jewish and 95% freemasonic,” and, according to Rabbi Joachim Prinz, led by “ardent ‘doennmehs’,” that is, crypto-Jews who, though nominally Muslims, “had as their real prophet Shabtai Zvi, the Messiah of Smyrna” (The Secret Jews, 1973).246 After having attracted Armenians to their revolution with the promise of political autonomy, the Young Turks, once in power, suppressed their nationalist aspirations by the extermination in 1915–16 of 1,200,000 of this ancient and vibrant people whom rabbinic tradition assimilated to the Amalekites of the Bible.247
There is no consensus on the main causes of the Great War, which killed eight million soldiers and left twenty million disabled, while killing and wounding even larger numbers of civilians. The decision of Kaiser Wilhelm II to build a military fleet capable of defying British naval supremacy is often cited as the major factor. However, as historian Patrick Buchanan has clearly shown, this decision was merely the result of a deterioration in the relationship between England and Germany, a diplomatic breakdown for which England was primarily responsible. The German Kaiser, the grandson of Queen Victoria and therefore the nephew of King Edward VII, was deeply attached to this relationship, and his foreign policy was animated by a vision that he summed up at the funeral of his grandmother in 1901: “I believe that the two Teutonic nations will, bit by bit, learn to know each other better, and that they will stand together to help in keeping the peace of the world. We ought to form an Anglo-Germanic alliance, you to keep the seas, while we would be responsible for the land; with such an alliance not a mouse could stir in Europe without our permission.”
The Kaiser was particularly anxious not to impinge on England’s colonial ambitions. But he was repeatedly humiliated by his uncle and the British government, who never understood the interest of a strong and friendly Germany. From this point of view, the deep causes of the First World War were intimately linked with the cultural and political developments in England that we have just described: Puritan Judeomania on the one hand, and imperial hubris on the other. The first undoubtedly caused the British elite to lose any sense of ethnic and civilizational solidarity with the Germanic nation, while the latter made it blind to the interest of maintaining a balance with Germany.
Since history is written by the victors, the vanquished are always wrong, and blamed for starting the war. However, a growing number of revisionist historians believe that Great Britain carried the heaviest responsibility for triggering this mechanized butchery.248 The British press played its part with anti-German propaganda, no newspaper more so than the Times, the most influential press organ with the ruling class, which made its owner Lord Northcliffe, according to some, the most powerful man of his time. Under pressure from him, a Ministry of Ammunition was created in 1915 and entrusted to David Lloyd George, the same Lloyd George who became prime minister in 1917 and named Northcliffe director of propaganda. Lloyd George and Northcliffe were both members of the Rhodes-Milner Group vaunting the grandiose vision of British “race” and empire. Lord Balfour was also the nephew of Lord Salisbury, from whom he inherited the post of prime minister in 1902.249 In the United States, the same anti-German propaganda was relayed by The New York Times, as this article by Rudyard Kipling, published on May 14, 1916, illustrates: “One thing that we must get into our thick heads is that wherever the German—man or woman—gets a suitable culture to thrive in he or she means death and loss to civilized people, precisely as germs of any disease suffered to multiply mean death or loss to mankind. [. . .] As far as we are concerned the German is typhoid or plague—Pestis Teutonicus, if you like.”250
The Balfour-Rothschild Declaration
The Zionists were divided, according to their country of residence, on which side to support during the war. The most active current was led by Chaim Weizmann, Jew of Belarusian origin who became a British citizen in 1910, and who envisioned a British victory. Weizmann was elected president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain in 1917, then president of the World Zionist Organization (founded by Herzl) in 1920, ending his career as Israel’s first president from 1948 until his death in 1952. During the war Weizmann was a chemist known for his contribution to the war effort, and simultaneously the most influential Zionist lobbyist, with direct access to Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1916 to 1922) and his foreign minister Arthur Balfour, who had already received him in 1906.
On the same side were the Jews of the new Yishuv (the community of Jewish settlers since 1882), who organized resistance against the Ottoman Empire. In 1917, Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, a Jew from Odessa, succeeded in convincing the British to form three Jewish battalions to fight the Turks in the Jordan Valley. This “Jewish Legion” was officially dissolved in 1919, but in reality was recycled in the underground Haganah (Tzva Haganah le-Yisra’el, or “Defense Forces of Israel”), which in 1948 formed the embryo of the regular Israeli army.
In October 1916, England was on the brink of defeat. The submarines invented by the Germans had given them a decisive advantage, wreaking considerable
havoc on the supplies of the Allies. Germany proposed a just peace, based on a return to pre-war conditions without compensation or redress. It was then that anti-Zionist Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was dismissed from power following a press campaign and replaced by David Lloyd George, who appointed Arthur Balfour as foreign minister. Lloyd George and Balfour were Christians influenced by dispensationalism in favor of Zionism.
Arthur Balfour signed a letter dated November 2, 1917, addressed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, president of the Zionist Federation (and grandson of Baron Lionel de Rothschild, financier of the Suez Canal under the influence of Disraeli) stating that his government would “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.” The letter went on to say that it is “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.” Note that the “political rights” of Palestinian Arabs (who comprised 92 percent of the population) were not taken into consideration, unlike those of Jews all over the world. Six weeks after the Balfour Declaration, the newspapers reported the triumphal entry of General Edmund Allenby into Jerusalem; the credit for the conquest was almost wholly due to the assistance of the Arabs, over a hundred thousand strong, to whom the promise of autonomy had been made by England in 1915.
It is now known that this “Balfour Declaration,” the first official decree offered to Zionism, was the result of long negotiations. The first version proposed that “Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people.” The final version was deliberately ambiguous, which allowed Lloyd George to claim in 1938 that “National Home” simply meant “some form of British, American or other protectorate to give Jews a real center of national culture.” According to a report of the Palestine Royal Commission of 1937, Lloyd George explained the deal in those terms: “Zionist leaders gave us a definite promise that, if the Allies committed themselves to giving facilities for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause. They kept their word.”251 Churchill himself declared during the House of Commons debate on the Palestine Mandate, on July 4, 1922: “Pledges and promises were made during the War, and they were made not only on the merits, though I think the merits are considerable. They were made because it was considered they would be of value to us in our struggle to win the War. It was considered that the support which the Jews could give us all over the world, and particularly in the United States, and also in Russia, would be a definite palpable advantage.” When on March 12, 1937, Churchill was called before the Palestine Royal Commission, he repeated the argument: “I insist upon loyalty and upon the good faith of England to the Jews, to which I attach the most enormous importance, because we gained great advantages in the War. We did not adopt Zionism entirely out of altruistic love of starting a Zionist colony: It was a matter of great importance to this country. It was a potent factor on public opinion in America and we are bound by honour…”252
The United States had proclaimed its neutrality in August 1914, the day of Great Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in 1916 on the slogan “He saved us from the war” and the promise to continue in that direction. On April 2, 1917, he declared to Congress that the United States was in a state of war and announced that the objective of the war was “to establish a new international order.” Why did Wilson reverse course and renege on his promises? At the approach of the war, a little more than thirty years after Disraeli’s death, an extremely efficient Zionist network had been set up across the two sides of the Atlantic. Nahum Sokolow, a stakeholder in these deep politics, testifies to this in his History of Zionism: “Between London, New York, and Washington there was constant communication, either by telegraph, or by personal visit, and as a result there was perfect unity among the Zionists of both hemispheres.”
Among the architects of the secret diplomacy leading to the Balfour Declaration, Nahum Sokolow praises very specifically “the beneficent personal influence of the Honorable Louis D. Brandeis, Judge of the Supreme Court.”253 Louis Brandeis (1856–1941), descended from a Frankist family (adepts of kabbalist Jacob Frank), had been appointed to the highest level of the judiciary in 1916 by President Wilson, at the demand of Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermeyer who, as rumor has it, blackmailed Wilson with letters to his mistress Mrs. Mary Allen Peck.254 Untermeyer would become president of the Keren Hayesod (Hebrew for “The Foundation Fund”), a fundraising organization established at the London World Zionist Conference in 1920, to provide resources for the Zionist movement. Brandeis was, with Untermeyer, one of the most powerful Zionist schemers, exercising an unparalleled influence on the White House. Brandeis established a formidable tandem with his protégé Felix Frankfurter, who would be his successor in exerting influence on Roosevelt. “Working together over a period of 25 years, they placed a network of disciples in positions of influence, and labored diligently for the enactment of their desired programs,” writes Bruce Allen Murphy in The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection.255
Brandeis and Frankfurter belonged to a secret society dedicated to the Zionist cause and named the Parushim (Hebrew for “Pharisees” or “Separated”). Sarah Schmidt, professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, described the society as “a secret underground guerilla force determined to influence the course of events in a quiet, anonymous way.” At the initiation ceremony, each new member received for instructions: “Until our purpose shall be accomplished, you will be fellow of a brotherhood whose bond you will regard as greater than any other in your life—dearer than that of family, of school, of nation. By entering this brotherhood, you become a self-dedicated soldier in the army of Zion.” The insider responded by vowing: “Before this council, in the name of all that I hold dear and holy, I hereby vow myself, my life, my fortune, and my honor to the restoration of the Jewish nation. […] I pledge myself utterly to guard and to obey and to keep secret the laws and the labor of the fellowship, its existence and its aims. Amen.”256
The influence of Judge Brandeis on Wilson was only one element of a complex system of influence. One of its transmission belts was the closest advisor to the President, Edward Mandell House, known as Colonel House even though he never served in the army. According to his biographer, House said of Brandeis: “His mind and mine agree on most of the questions.” Wilson declared: “Mr. House is my second personality. He is my self. His thoughts and mine are one.” Colonel House’s second name was taken from a Jewish merchant from Houston, one of the most intimate friends of his father, who was of Dutch descent and changed his name from Huis to House upon emigrating to the United States. His brother-in-law, Dr. Sidney Mezes, was Jewish. House perhaps belonged to those descendants of the Marranos who maintained a secret attachment to Judaism.
Be that as it may, House’s role in favor of the hidden powers was decisive on more than one occasion, including the ratification of the Federal Reserve Act (discreetly passed by Congress on December 23, 1913), which placed the American currency under the control of a bankers’ cartel: “The Schiff, Warburg, Kahn, Rockefeller and Morgan families placed their trust in House. When the Federal Reserve legislation finally took definitive form, House was the intermediary between the White House and the financiers.” House published an anonymous novel in 1912 entitled Philip Dru: Administrator, whose hero Selwyn is the avatar of the author (he resides at Mandell House). He is assisted by a “high priest of finance” named John Thor, whose “influence in all commercial America was absolute.” Thor reads backwards Roth (which makes one think of the Rothschilds), but the banker who in reality weighed most on the presidency of Wilson, in concert with House, was Bernard Baruch, who was appointed in 1916 to the hea
d of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense, then chairman of the War Industries Board, and was the key man in the American mobilization for war. He did not exaggerate when he declared before a select congressional committee, “I probably had more power than perhaps any other man did in the war.”257
From Yahweh to Zion Page 24