By Rabbi Uri Pilichowski, JNS
The same weakness of character that saw some Zionists abandon Israel for Uganda still exists among the Jewish people today.
In his autobiography, Trial and Error Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann recalled a shocking scene at the Sixth World Zionist Congress in August 1903 in Basel, Switzerland.” As he wrote, “It has always been the custom to hang on the wall, immediately behind the president’s chair, a map of Palestine. This had been replaced by a rough map of the Ugandan protectorate, and the symbolic action got on us quickly, and filled us with foreboding.”
Those familiar with Zionist history know the history of this episode and its destructive effect on the Zionist movement. British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain offered Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern-day Zionism, the opportunity to create a Jewish state in British East Africa.
This offer came in the aftermath of devastating pogroms against the Jews. Russian Jews were immigrating to England in increasing numbers, and the British government saw the creation of a Jewish state in primitive Africa as a way to stop Jewish immigration into their country. In addition, the British had just constructed a large, very expensive railway in Africa and had to see a return on its investment. By moving Jews into the area, business innovation would hit the rail lines and England would see the results from its investment. They also thought the establishment of a Jewish state in Africa would make the Jews of England satisfied that its government was helping the Jewish people.
Some of the Zionists in favor of accepting the British offer saw the immediate establishment of a Jewish state as a method of saving Eastern European Jewry from the dangerously rising incidents of antisemitism. Herzl opened the congress with a strong speech advocating the Uganda scheme, saying, “Let us save those who can be saved … I do not doubt that the congress will welcome the new offer with the warmest gratitude.” Dr. Max Nordau, an early Zionist leader and a physician, followed Herzl’s speech with his own fiery address known as the “Nachtasyl speech,” where he said Uganda would be a “night shelter” for the Jewish people from the plague of antisemitism and a stepping-stone to eventually establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, the Land of Israel.
The Russian delegation to the Congress adamantly rejected the notion of abandoning Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, even if only temporarily. They tore their clothes and sat on the floor in a sign of mourning. King David’s statement in Psalms, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning,” rang in their ears. The tradition that the Jewish people could expect nothing but tragedy if they forsook Jerusalem and traded it in for another land scared many of these traditional and religious delegates. Later, some would attribute Herzl’s early death later that year at the age of 44 to his desertion of Jerusalem for Uganda. Herzl knew that he was going to lose the vote and essentially killed the Uganda scheme through bureaucratic methods.
Many Zionists mistakenly like to imagine that 1903 was the last year that the Uganda scheme was proposed and that from then on, it was “Israel or bust.” Uganda had many adherents partly because of its philosophical implications. Israel Zangwill, a Zionist leader and close friend of Herzl, advocated for the Uganda scheme for years. He feared that attachment to the land could revive religious Judaism instead of the modernity that was the preference of the secular Zionists. Zangwill and his allies’ commitment to East Africa kept a dangerous division alive among the Zionists that inhibited their progress in establishing a Jewish state.
It’s no coincidence that the offer came from Chamberlain. He was a well-known appeaser of the Irish and bore a son, Neville Chamberlain, who followed his father’s path to infamy with his compromises to Adolf Hitler. The appeasement of one’s enemies and the abandonment of one’s dreams require a unique weakness of character that combines cowardice and a lack of self-confidence. Chamberlain was so talented at this that he was able to persuade Zionism’s founder to give up on the 2,000-year-old Jewish dream of Eretz Yisrael for unsettled nations away.
While advocacy for Uganda has long been killed off and Zionism has become a movement forever associated with Eretz Yisrael, the same weakness of character that saw some Zionists abandon Israel for Uganda still exists among the Jewish people.
Many Jews are ashamed of the Jewish strength and initiatives that led to the establishment of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948. They advocate a particular anti-Zionism that rejects the nation, its successes and its right to eliminate its enemies in self-defense. They criticize Israel’s victories in 1947 and 1967, and today in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. These Jews advocate a policy of appeasement where the Jewish people abandon their historic homeland to enemies in the misguided hope that they will accept Jews living among them and forgo efforts to annihilate Israel. While their weakness is the true embarrassment of the Jewish people, they call the Israel Defense Forces and its success the shame of the Jewish people.
Zionists today can be grateful that their movement quickly evolved from a weak advocacy of abandonment to a strong, resilient nation insistent on thriving economically and defending its citizens. All Jews and Zionists can be proud of their land, nation and military.
