American Minute with Bill Federer
Kaiser, Sultan, World War I, Chaim Weizmann & the Birth of Modern Day Israel
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In the course of the 1800s, the
Turkish Ottoman Empire
became weaker.
Countries broke away or were claimed by colonizing European powers:
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Romania, 1812, 1877;
Moldova, 1812;
Serbia, 1817;
Greece, 1821-1830;
Algeria, 1830;
Bosnia, 1831, 1878;
Herzegovinia, 1831, 1878;
Egypt, 1867, 1882;
Bulgaria, 1878;
Cyprus, 1878;
Tunisia, 1881;
Italian North Africa, 1882;
Crete, 1898.
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By the late 1800s, the
Ottoman Empire
was called
"the sick man of Europe."
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When
Armenia
tried breaking away,
Sultan Abdul Hamid II
massacred over 100,000 from 1894 to 1896.
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President Grover Cleveland
addressed Congress, December 7, 1896:
"In
Turkey
... rage of mad bigotry and cruel fanaticism ... wanton destruction of homes and the bloody butchery of men, women, and children, made
martyrs to their profession of Christian faith ...
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... Outbreaks of blind fury which lead to murder and pillage in
Turkey
occur suddenly and without notice."
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In 1898,
Sultan Abdul Hamid II
purchased rifles from
Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II
for use in subduing revolts and
annihilating Turkey's Armenian population.
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This was in exchange for granting
Germany
rights to build a
Berlin-Baghdad Railway
to access
Iraq's oil fields.
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Sultan Abdul Hamid II
survived an assassination attempt in 1905, but was ultimately
deposed
on January 23, 1913.
Three Pashas
had staged a coup d'état and took control:
Ismail Enver Pasha, Mehmed Talaat Pasha,
and
Ahmed Djemal Pasha
-- who were known as
"The Young Turks."
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When former Ottoman territories, namely
Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro,
and
Serbia,
tried to free members of their nationalities that still remained in Turkey, the
First Balkan War broke out,
1912-1913.
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The response of the
Young Turks
was to exterminate the remaining members of those non-Turkish nationalities on Turkish lands.
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The Young Turks instituted a program of
"Ottomanization"
or
"Turkification"
-- to create a centralized, homogeneous nation of
one race, one language, one culture,
and
one religion -- Islam.
The thought was that a
"unified" Turkey
would prevent
encroachment by European powers.
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This evolved into a tragic genocide of millions of
Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other minorities.
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Kaiser Wilhelm II
sent military officers to train and upgrade Turkey's forces, resulting in a
Ottoman-German Alliance.
German General Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorf,
Chief of Staff at the Ottoman General Headquarters, supported the
massacre of Armenians
as retribution for their "treason."
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Historian Gabriele Yonan stated:
"Germany's Oriental Propaganda Department
in Berlin counseled and urged the government of the
Young Turks
to declare a
'Holy War'
and did not demand a cessation once this declaration evolved into a policy of
'annihilation of the Christians'
under conditions of Germany's 'shared responsibility.'
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The 2016 movie,
"The Promise,"
starring actors Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac and Charlotte Le Bon, depicted the
Ottoman-German Alliance,
along with the subsequent Armenian genocide in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.
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The
First Balkan War
led up to
World War I.
Beginning in 1914, it eventually involved more than
70 million military personnel
across the globe and resulted in over
38 million casualties.
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Allied Powers
included:
Britain, France, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Belgium, Japan, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Hejaz, Greece, Thailand Siam,
and the
United States.
Central Powers
included:
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria,
and the
Turkish Ottoman Empire.
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Just as
Germany
wanted oil from the
Middle East,
so did
Britain.
Winston Churchill
had transitioned the
British Navy
from
coal
to
oil.
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Where
Britain
had much coal, it had little oil, just one well, located in the
Sherwood Forest.
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In 1908, the British formed an oil company with Persia (Iran), the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company,
which was later renamed
British Petroleum,
or
BP.
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As
World War I
progressed,
Britain's
war effort was hindered by their
ineffective manufacturing of explosives.
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The situation suddenly changed when a chemist made a breakthrough in synthesizing the needed
solvent "acetone"
by using
a bacterial fermentation process.
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The chemist was
Dr. Chaim Weizmann,
born NOVEMBER 27, 1874.
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His Jewish family had immigrated from
Russia
after
Anti-Jewish pogroms
of 1881-1884, the stories of which were the basis for the famous musical
Fiddler on the Roof.
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In gratitude for
Dr. Chaim Weizmann's
significant contributions to the nation's military, Britain's Foreign Secretary
Lord Arthur Balfour
issued the
Balfour Declaration,
November 2, 1917, establishing a home for Jews in the former Turkish land now under British control.
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In his autobiography,
Trial and Error
(1949),
Dr. Weizmann
recounted his response to
Lord Balfour's
initial offer of giving Jews the
British controlled country of Uganda:
"'Mr. Balfour,
supposing I was to offer you Paris instead of London, would you take it?' He sat up, looked at me, and answered: 'But
Dr. Weizmann,
we have London.' 'That is true,' I said, 'but we had
Jerusalem
when London was a marsh.'
He ... said two things which I remember vividly. The first was: 'Are there many Jews who think like you?' I answered: 'I believe I speak the mind of millions of Jews whom you will never see and who cannot speak for themselves' ... To this he said: 'If that is so you will one day be a force.'"
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British Prime Minister Lloyd-George
had met with
Chaim Weizmann
in 1916, writing in his
War Memoirs:
"(Weizmann)
explained his aspirations as to the repatriation of the
Jews
to the sacred land they had made famous. That was the fount and origin of the famous declaration about the
National Home for the Jews in Palestine
...
As soon as I became
Prime Minister
I talked the whole matter over with
Mr Balfour,
who was then
Foreign Secretary."
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In January of 1919, thirty-two nations met at the
Paris Peace Conference
where they agreed to the
Treaty of Versailles
and planned the
League of Nations.
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Delegates formally determined the fate of
post-war Europe,
intending to follow
Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points
and the principle of self-determination, where people of different ethnic backgrounds would be allowed to determine their own fate.
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Lands which had been controlled by the defeated
Central Powers
of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire, were
divided up.
Out of the land was created homelands for Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Hungarians, Slovenes, Serbs, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Croats.
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The
Balfour Declaration
gave an area called the
British Mandate
to the
Jews,
stretching from Lebanon and Syria in the North; to Egypt and Arabia in the South; from the Mediterranean in the East; to Iraq in the West.
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The inspiration for
Jews,
who had been quietly resettling in their homeland for decades, came from
Theodore Herzl's Zionist movement.
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The Zionist movement
initially grew out of America's 19th century
Second Great Awakening Religious Revival
where
evangelical Christians
preached that
Jewish resettlement
was necessary before the coming of
Christ
and the
Advent of the Millennium.
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Lord Balfour
addressed a Jewish gathering, February 7,1918:
"My personal hope is that the
Jews will make good in Palestine
and eventually found
a Jewish state.
It is up to them now; we have given them their great opportunity."
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Also, during World War I, an obscure
British lieutenant
serving in Cairo,
T.E. Lawrence,
had been sent off to assess if
undisciplined Arab tribes
were capable of
helping the British fight the Ottoman Turks.
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Instead of simply reporting back,
T.E. Lawrence
took it upon himself to lie to the
Arabs,
promising them that if they would join the
British
in fighting the
Turks, they would get the land in the Middle East,
as he wrote in
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
(1922):
"I risked the
fraud,
on my conviction that
Arab help was necessary
to our cheap and speedy victory in the East, and that
better we win and break our word
than lose."
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Lawrence's
unauthorized promises conflicted with a
Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916
between
Britain, France and Russia
for governing the
post-war Middle East and Turkey,
thus he inadvertently laid the groundwork for future land disputes, especially after the fall of Russia from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
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Democrat President Woodrow Wilson
expressed enthusiastic
support of Israel,
as he wrote to
Rabbi Stephen A. Wise,
1918:
"I think all Americans will be deeply moved by the report that ... the
Weizmann commission
has been able to lay the foundation of the
Hebrew University at Jerusalem."
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Rabbi Stephen A. Wise
described
Woodrow Wilson:
"He is one of the great presidents of American history."
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Justice Louis Brandeis,
who was nominated by
Woodrow Wilson
to the U.S. Supreme Court, told
Reformed Rabbis
in April 1915:
"The undying longing of
Jews for Palestine
is a fact of deepest significance; that it is a manifestation in the struggle for existence by
an ancient people
which has established
its right to live,
a people whose
three thousand years of civilization
has produced a faith, culture and individuality which enable it to contribute largely
in the future, as it has in the past."
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During World War I, the leader who cooperated with the British in leading the
Arab Revolt
against the
Turks
was the
Hashemite Sharif of Mecca, Hussein ibn-Ali.
He stated in 1918:
"The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the
Jewish immigrants
... That the country (is) for its original sons, for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland."
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Hussein ibn-Ali's son, Faisal ibn-Husseini,
was recognized by
Britain
as the
new King of Syria and Iraq.
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King Faisal
represented the
Arab nations
at the
Paris Peace Conference
, and signed the
Faisal-Weizmann Agreement,
January 3, 1919, adopting the
Balfour principles:
"Article IV-All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate
immigration of Jews into Palestine
on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to
settle Jewish immigrants
upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil."
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King Faisal
wrote a letter, March 3, 1919, to
Felix Frankfurter,
who was later nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The letter stated:
"We feel that the
Arabs and Jews are cousins
in having suffered similar oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves ...
We
Arabs,
especially the educated among us look with the deepest sympathy on the
Zionist movement ...
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We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home ...
With the chiefs of your movement, especially with
Dr. Weizmann,
we ... continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper of our cause, and I hope the
Arabs
may soon be in a position to make the
Jews
some return for their kindness ...
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Our two movements complete one another.
The Jewish movement
is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both ...
People ... less responsible than our leaders ... have been trying to
exploit the local difficulties
that must necessarily arise in Palestine ...
to make capital out of what they call our differences."
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Felix Frankfurter
replied:
"ROYAL HIGHNESS: Allow me ... to acknowledge your recent letter with deep appreciation.
Those of us who come from the United States have already been gratified by the friendly relations ... between you and the
Zionist leaders,
particularly
Dr. Weizmann ...
We knew that the aspirations of the
Arab and the Jewish peoples
were parallel, that each aspired to re-establish its nationality in its
own homeland,
each making its own distinctive contribution to civilization, each seeking its own peaceful mode of life ...
The Arabs and Jews are neighbors in territory;
we cannot but live
side by side as friends."
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In 1920, a hastily convened
San Remo Conference
gave
France a "mandate" to oversee post-war Syria.
France immediately invaded and
expelled Faisal,
leaving him
King only of Iraq.
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Faisal's brother, Abdullah,
planned to mount an attack, but
Winston Churchill
persuaded him not to, agreeing instead to recognize
Abdullah as King
of a part of the British protectorate which had
previously been given to the Jews.
It was named
"Transjordan"
as it was on the other side of the
Jordan River.
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After World War I, in an
abrupt about-face against the Jews,
Britain
issued
White Papers in 1922
deterring further Jewish resettlement of their homeland.
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The 1960 movie
"Exodus,"
starring
Paul Newman,
depicted this period in Israel's history.
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The proposal to split Israel's land was ironically instigated by Britain's
anti-Zionist Jews.
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Chaim Weizmann
referred to these
anti-Zionist Jews,
which included
Claude Montefiore, Lord Reading, Edwin Montagu and Lucien Wolf,
in his autobiography,
Trial and Error
(1949):
"Their
secular
representative, the secretary of the Conjoint Committee, was
Mr. Lucien Wolf
... in whom the
opposition to Zionism
was a mixture of principle and of
personal idiosyncrasy ...
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He resented the rise of what he called
'foreign Jews' in England,
looked upon the Foreign Office as his patrimony (inherited estate) --
he was of an old Anglo-Jewish family
-- and
put me down as a poacher ...
Zionism
was in his view a purely East European movement ...
beneath the notice of respectable British Jews.
It was ... impossible for him to understand that English non-Jews did not look upon his
anti-Zionism
as the hallmark of a superior loyalty.
It was never borne in on him that men like
Balfour, Churchill, Lloyd George,
were deeply religious,
and
believed in the Bible,
that to them the
return of the Jewish people to Palestine
was a reality, so that we Zionists represented to them a great tradition for which they had enormous respect ..."
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Chaim Weizmann
continued:
"I remember
Prime Minister Lloyd George
saying to me,
a few days before the issuance of the Balfour Declaration:
'I know that with
the issuance of this Declaration
I
shall please one group of Jews and displease another.
I have decided to please your group because you stand for a great idea.'"
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Meanwhile, in Arabia,
Abdul Aziz of the House of Saud,
allied himself with fundamentalist
Wahhabi (Salafi) movement
to
oust Ali of Hejaz,
the eldest son of
Hashemite Sharif of Mecca Hussein ibn-Ali.
and the
brother of King Faisal of Iraq
and
King Abdullah of Transjordan.
In 1924,
Saudi King Abdul Aziz
officially ended the relatively moderate Hashemite rule of Arabia --
a role they held since the 10th century.
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Now called
"Saudi" Arabia,
it was still of relatively little worth geography
,
till 1937, when
John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of California
discovered
oil
there.
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Within a few decades,
Saudi Arabia
went from the
poorest Muslim country to the richest.
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An
Arabian-American Oil Company
was formed called
"Aramco."
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King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud
practiced Islamic polygamy, having many wives and 45 sons.
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With his new found wealth, he began to spread the
fundamentalist Wahhabi (Salafi) Sharia version of Islam,
which has the goal of establishing global
Caliphate of Islamic Sharia domination.
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Meanwhile,
World War I
I began in 1939, involving more than 30 countries and over 100 million people.
Fatalities are estimated as high as 85 million, making it the deadliest war in human history.
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During the war, millions of
Jews
were persecuted and killed in Europe by
Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party.
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Hitler
initially expelled
Jews
from Europe, from where many found a way to their ancient homeland.
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The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Haj Amin al-Husseini,
traveled to Berlin and met with
Hitler
on November 28, 1941. confirming
their mutual hatred of "the English, the Jews, and the Communists."
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Haj Amin al-Husseini
insisted
Hitler
publicly commit to
"the elimination of the Jewish national home."
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During World War II,
Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt
coined the name "United Nations" for the Allied countries working together against the Axis Powers.
Roosevelt
explained that the goal of this new organization included protecting Jews, March 24, 1944:
"The United Nations are fighting to make a world in which tyranny and aggression cannot exist ...
In one of the blackest crimes of all history -- begun by the Nazis ... the wholesale systematic murder of the
Jews
of Europe goes on unabated ... Hundreds of thousands of
Jews
... are now threatened with annihilation as Hitler's forces descend ...
The United Nations have made it clear that they will pursue the guilty ... All who knowingly take part in the deportation of
Jews
to their death ... are equally guilty with the executioner."
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On November 11, 1942,
President Franklin Roosevelt
complimented the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America:
"A victory of the United Nations is to be a world of enduring peace ... founded on renewed loyalty to the spiritual values ...
In cooperation with
Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant
scholars ... it will in time, I trust, become an increasingly powerful instrument for
enlightening men of all faiths."
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Near the end of World War II, February 4-11, 1945,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
met with
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and
Soviet leader Josef Stalin
at the
Yalta Conference
to decide how to divide up post-war Europe.
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Roosevelt,
being in a feeble condition just two months before his death, capitulated to
Stalin's
demand that millions of
Eastern Europeans
be dominated by the totalitarian
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
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On his way home from the Yalta Conference, in declining health,
Franklin Roosevelt
stopped in Saudi Arabia to meet with
King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud
on the
USS Quincy
in the Suez Canal, February 14, 1945.
Roosevelt's
intention was to persuade the
Saudi King
to
support Jewish immigration to Palestine.
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King Abdul Aziz
slaughtered a goat on deck for their meal, then blindsided
Roosevelt,
pressuring him to abandon his planned support of a Jewish homeland.
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Saudi King Abdul Aziz
then persuaded the ailing
Roosevelt
to make a secret oil-for-security agreement, where the United States would supply military assistance, training and built a
military base in Arabia
in exchange for
secure access to Saudi oil.
The
Saudi King
followed up with a letter to
Roosevelt,
who wrote back, April 5, 1945, promising that the United States would not to recognize a Jewish State.
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One week later,
Roosevelt
was dead of his illnesses.
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The next
President, Harry S Truman,
immediately proceeded with plans to recognize the
State of Israel.
The United Nations Charter
was signed June 26, 1945, by 51 member nations.
One of its first acts was the
recognition of the State of Israel in 1948.
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The negotiator of the
Middle East Armistice Agreemen
t was
Ralph Bunche,
the African American diplomat who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his efforts.
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Bunche Beach in Fort Myers, Florida is named for him.
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On November 29, 1948, Democrat
President Harry S Truman
wrote to
Dr. Chaim Weizmann
, the first President of Israel:
"I remember well our conversations about the Negeb ... I agree fully with your estimate of the importance of the area to
Israel,
and
I deplore any attempt to take it away from Israel.
I had thought that my position would have been clear to all the world, particularly in the light of the specific wording of the
Democratic Party platform."
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The
1948 Democrat Party Platform
stated:
"President Truman,
by granting immediate recognition to Israel, led the world in extending friendship and welcome to a people who have long sought and justly deserve freedom and independence.
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We pledge full recognition to the State of Israel.
We affirm our pride that the United States under the leadership of
President Truman
played a leading role in the adoption of the resolution of November 29, 1947, by the United Nations General Assembly for
the creation of a Jewish State.
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We approve the claims of the
State of Israel
to the boundaries set forth in the United Nations resolution of November 29th and consider that modifications thereof should be made only if fully acceptable to the
State of Israel.
We look forward to the admission of the
State of Israel
to the United Nations and its full participation in the international community of nations.
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We pledge appropriate aid to the State of Israel in developing its economy and resources.
We favor the revision of the arms embargo to accord to the State of Israel the right of self-defense."
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Harry S Truman
recorded in his book,
Memoirs-Volume Two: Years of Trial and Hope,
1956, of a note he had written to an assistant:
"I surely wish God Almighty would give the Children of Israel an Isaiah, the Christians a St. Paul, and the Sons of Ishmael a peep at the Golden Rule."
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President Truman
concluded his letter to Israel's President
Dr. Chaim Weizmann,
November 29, 1948:
"I have interpreted my re-election as a mandate ... to carry out ... the plank on Israel ... In closing, I want to tell you how happy and impressed I have been at the remarkable progress made by the new
State of Israel."
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Dr. Chaim Weizmann
had stated:
"I think that the God of Israel is with us."
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
[email protected]
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