Theodor Herzl 1860-1904

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The First Zionist Congress is credited for the following achievements:

The formulation of the Zionist platform, (the Basel program, see below)
The foundation of the Zionist Organization
The adoption of Hatikvah as its anthem
The absorption of most of the previous Hovevei Zion societies
The suggestion for the establishment of a people's bank, and
The election of Herzl as President of the Zionist Organization and Max Nordau one of three Vice-Presidents.

Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary (September 3, 1897):
"Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word - which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly - it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it."

— Theodor Herzl (1897)


[fun fact....50 years later...1948....Israel was officially founded]

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The Basel Program.

The program set out the goals of the Zionist movement as follows:

“Zionism seeks to secure for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally assured homeland in Palestine.
For the attainment of this purpose, the Congress considers the following means serviceable:
1. The promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and tradesmen in Palestine.
2. The federation of all Jews into local or general groups, according to the laws of the various countries.
3. The strengthening of the Jewish feeling and consciousness.
4. Preparatory steps for the attainment of those governmental grants which are necessary to the achievement of the Zionist purpose.”

The original draft did not include the word for "publicly recognized"; this was the only amendment made during the debate at the Congress, and can be seen in the final version with the word öffentlich inserted via a curly bracket. The amended draft was approved unanimously by the 200-person congress.

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Józef Unszlicht or Iosif Stanislavovich Unshlikht (Russian: Ио́сиф Станисла́вович У́ншлихт; nicknames "Jurowski", "Leon") (December 31*[O.S. 19 December]*1879 - July 28, 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary activist, one of the founders of the Cheka, and Soviet government official of Polish-Jewish extraction from the Masovian region. Unschlicht participated in and in fact initiated some of the worst excesses of the Bolshevik revolution including mass murders of political opponents. In 1924, he was replaced by Genrikh Yagoda who continued and amplified Unschlicht's previous policies.

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btw they asked Einstein if he wanted to become Israel's president....he declined.

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The Jerusalem Program (Hebrew: תוכנית ירושלים) is the ideological platform of the Zionist Movement, and was initially adopted in 1951 at the 23rd World Zionist Congress to replace the Basel Program.
The Jerusalem Program differed from the original Basel Program in which it shifted the goals of the Zionist Movement once the State of Israel was already established.

The 1953 Jerusalem Program stated that:
The task of Zionism is the consolidation of the State of Israel, the in gathering of exiles in Eretz Israel, and the fostering of the unity of the Jewish people.

The program of work of the World Zionist Organization is:
1. Encouragement of immigration, absorption and integration of immigrants; support of Youth Aliyah; stimulation of agricultural settlement and economic development; acquisition of land as the property of the people.
2. Intensive work for halutziut (pioneering) and hachsharah (training for halutziut).
3. Concerted effort to harness funds in order to carry out the tasks of Zionism.
4. Encouragement of private capital investment.
5. Fostering of Jewish consciousness by propagating the Zionist idea and strengthening the Zionist Movement; imparting the values of Judaism; Hebrew education and spreading the Hebrew language.
6. Mobilization of world public opinion for Israel and Zionism.
7. Participation in efforts to organize and intensify Jewish life on democratic foundations, maintenance and defense of Jewish rights.

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"4. Encouragement of private capital investment."

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According to Amos Elon, as a young man, Herzl was an ardent Germanophile who saw the Germans as the best Kulturvolk (cultured people) in Central Europe and embraced the German ideal of Bildung, whereby reading great works of literature by Goethe and Shakespeare could allow one to appreciate the beautiful things in life, and thus become a morally better person (the Bildung theory tended to equate beauty with goodness).
Through Bildung, Herzl believed that Hungarian Jews such as himself could shake off their "shameful Jewish characteristics" caused by long centuries of impoverishment and oppression, and become civilized Central Europeans, a true Kulturvolk along the German lines.

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A sketch in Herzl's Diary of a proposed flag for the Zionist movement.

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With the outbreak of World War I, the anticipated disintegration of the Ottoman Empire raised hopes among Zionists for increased Jewish immigration and eventual sovereignty in Palestine. In 1918, Great Britain conquered the region and it fell under British military rule.

Following the promulgation of the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration of 1917, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the British Zionist Federation formed the Zionist Commission in March 1918 to go to Palestine and make recommendations to the British government. The Commission reached Palestine on 14 April 1918 and proceeded to study conditions and to report to the British government, and was active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine. Weizmann was instrumental in restructuring the ZO's Palestine office into departments for agriculture, settlement, education, land, finance, immigration, and statistics. The Palestine Office was merged into the Zionist Commission, headed by Chaim Weizmann.

On 25 April 1920, the Principal Allied Powers agreed at the San Remo conference to allocate the Ottoman territories to the victorious powers and assigned Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq as Mandates to Britain, with the Balfour Declaration being incorporated into the Palestine Mandate. The League of Nations formally approved these mandates in 1922. Article 4 of the Mandate provided for "the recognition of an appropriate Jewish agency as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population of Palestine." The ZO leaders had contributed to the drafting of the Mandate. In November 1921, the Zionist Commission became the Zionist Executive[dubious – discuss] and was designated as the Jewish agency for Palestine for the purpose of Article 4 of the Palestine Mandate.

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The American Israel Public Affairs Committee was founded in 1951 by Isaiah L. "Si" Kenen. Kenen originally ran the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs as a lobbying division of the American Zionist Council. Before that, Kenen was an employee of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to journalist Connie Bruck, AIPAC was incorporated in 1963 and headed by Kenen until his retirement in 1974. Kenen was "an old-fashioned liberal", according to former AIPAC volunteer journalist M.J. Rosenberg, who did not seek to win support by donating to campaigns or otherwise influencing elections, but was willing to "play with the hand that is dealt us".

Michael Oren writes in his book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present, "Though founded in 1953, AIPAC had only now in the mid-70s, achieved the financial and political clout necessary to sway congressional opinion. Confronted with opposition from both houses of Congress, United States President Gerald Ford rescinded his 'reassessment.'"

George Lenczowski notes a similar, mid-1970s, timeframe for the rise of AIPAC power. "It [the Carter Presidency] also coincides with the militant emergence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as a major force in shaping American policy toward the Middle East." He further notes that this period also coincides with a major shift in Israeli government policies related to the election of Menachem Begin in Israel.

In 1980, Thomas Dine became the executive director of AIPAC, and developed its grassroots campaign. By the late 1980s, AIPAC's board of directors was "dominated" by four successful businessmen—Mayer (Bubba) Mitchell, Edward Levy, Robert Asher, and Larry Weinberg.

In 2005, Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst pleaded guilty to espionage charges of passing US government secrets to AIPAC policy director Steven Rosen and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman, in what is known as the AIPAC espionage scandal. Rosen and Weissman were later fired by AIPAC. In 2009, charges against the former AIPAC employees were dropped.

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AIPAC has been compared to firearms, banking, defense, and energy lobbies as "long" being "a feature of politics in Washington". Its promotional literature notes that a reception during its annual policy conference "will be attended by more members of Congress than almost any other event, except for a joint session of Congress or a State of the Union address". The New York Times has described AIPAC as "a major force in shaping United States policy in the Middle East" that is able to push numerous bills through Congress. "Typically", these "pass by unanimous votes". A House of Representatives resolution condemning the UN Goldstone Report on human rights violations by Israel in Gaza, for example, passed 344 to 36 in 2009.

In 1997, Fortune magazine named AIPAC the second-most powerful influence group in Washington, D. C. According to journalist Connie Bruck, AIPAC has been able to "deliver the support of Congress", and prevent any president who wants to negotiate with Israel using "the multibillion-dollar packages of military aid that go to Israel each year" as leverage by passing the funding and taking away this "strongest negotiating chit".

AIPAC advises members of Congress about the issues that face today's Middle East, including the dangers of extremism and terrorism. It was an early supporter of the Counter-Terrorism Act of 1995, which resulted in increased FBI resources being committed to fight terrorism, as well as expanded federal jurisdiction in prosecuting criminal activities related to terrorism.

AIPAC has also supported the funding of a number of Israeli military projects that have resulted in new additions to the arsenal of the United States Armed Forces.[citation needed] One such outcome is the production of Israel's Arrow anti-missile system at a Boeing plant in Huntsville, Alabama for use by both the United States and Israel. Additionally, the U.S. military has purchased Israeli-made tank armor, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other technologies for use in its operations.

AIPAC also lobbies for financial aid from the United States to Israel, helping to procure up to three billion in aid yearly, making Israel "the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II".

Additionally, the result of AIPAC's efforts include numerous exceptional provisions that are not available to other American allies.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), these include providing aid "as all grant cash transfers, not designated for particular projects, and...transferred as a lump sum in the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in periodic increments. Israel is allowed to spend about one quarter of the military aid for the procurement in Israel of defense articles and services, including research and development, rather than in the United States."

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has estimated total aid since 1949 at approximately $108 billion.

United States India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) works with and tries to emulate the success of AIPAC, USINPAC sees AIPAC as "Gold Standard in terms of political activism".

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So....since 1948...the foundation of Israel....the US GAVE Israel 108 billion total for developing the new state and buy their way into global affairs.

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http://archive.org/details/ajewishstateana00aviggoog

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Theodor Herzl

The Hungarian-born Austrian Jewish author Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) founded the World Zionist Organization and served as its first president.

Theodor Herzl, son of Jacob and Jeanette Herzl, was born on May 2, 1860, in Budapest, Hungary, where he attended elementary and secondary schools. In 1878 he was admitted as a law student to the University of Vienna, but after a year of legal studies he switched to journalism. He worked for the Allgemeine Zeitung of Vienna until 1892, when he took an assignment in Paris as correspondent for the Vienna Neue Freie Presse.

In this capacity he reported on the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, and he was greatly troubled by the anti-Semitism he saw in France at the time. In 1896 Herzl started his political career with the publication of his pamphlet The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question.

According to The Jewish State, persecution could not destroy the Jewish people but would accomplish the opposite: it would strengthen Jewish identification. In Herzl's view, effective assimilation of the Jews would be impossible because of the long history of prejudice and the competition between the non-Jewish and Jewish middle classes. Because of conditions in the Jewish Diaspora, some communities might disintegrate, but the people as a whole would always survive.

Herzl believed that the Jews had little choice but to begin the concentration of the Jewish people in one land under its own sovereign authority. To achieve this purpose, he organized the First Zionist Congress, which met in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897. This meeting marked the establishment of the World Zionist Organization, whose executives were to be the diplomatic and administrative representatives of the Zionist movement. Herzl became president of the organization, a post he held until his death.

The official goal of the World Zionist Organization was the establishment of "a secured homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people." Because Palestine was part of Turkey and because Germany enjoyed a special relationship with Turkey, in 1898 Herzl met with Kaiser William II in an unsuccessful effort to win his support. In May 1901 Herzl was received by the sultan of Turkey, Abdul-Hamid II. But this meeting too had no positive results, since Turkey was not willing to allow mass immigration without restrictions to Palestine.

In view of the deteriorating situation of eastern European Jewry, Herzl considered other territorial solutions for the Jewish problem. The British government suggested Uganda for the Jewish mass immigration, but this plan was rejected by the Fourth Zionist Congress in 1903, which again stated the ultimate goal of Zionism as the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

During the Uganda polemics Theodor Herzl showed signs of grave illness. On July 3, 1904, he died and was buried in Vienna. According to his wishes, his remains were transferred by the government of the independent state of Israel to Jerusalem in 1949 and buried on Mt. Herzl, the national cemetery of Israel.

Further Reading

The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl was edited by Raphael Patai (5 vols., 1960) and is also available in several abridged editions. Two biographies are Alex Bein, Theodor Herzl: A Biography (trans. 1940), and Israel Cohen, Theodor Herzl (1959).
Additional Sources
Beller, Steven, Herzl, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.
Blau, Eric, The beggar's cup, New York: Knopf, 1993.


Braham, Mark, Jews don't hate: how a Jewish newspaper died, London, Nelson, 1970.
Elon, Amos, Herz, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1975; Schocken Books, 1986, 1975.
Falk, Avner, Herzl, king of the Jews: a psychoanalytic biography of Theodor Herzl, Lanham: University Press of America, 1993.
Finkelstein, Norman H., Theodor Herzl, New York: F. Watts, 1987; Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Co., 1991.
Gurko, Miriam, Theodor Herzl, the road to Israel, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988.
Handler, Andrew, Dori, the life and times of Theodor Herzl in Budapest (1860-1878), University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1983.
Hein, Virginia Herzog., The British followers of Theodor Herzl: English Zionist leaders, 1896-1904, New York: Garland Pub., 1987.
Herzl, Theodor, The Jewish state, New York: Dover Publications, 1988.
Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst. Herzl comes home: 22nd anniversary Jewish Community House, Nov. 20, 1949, Brooklyn: Jewish Community House, 1949.


Kornberg, Jacques, Herzl year book, New York: Herzl Press, 1958-.
Kotker, Norman, Herzl, the kin, New York, Scribner, 1972.
Mystics, philosophers, and politicians: essays in Jewish intellectual history in honor of Alexander Altmann, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982.
Pawel, Ernst, The labyrinth of exile: a life of Theodor Herzl, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989.
The Psychoanalytic interpretation of history, New York, Basic Books, 1971.
The Rise of Israel: From precursors of Zionism to Herzl, New York: Garland Pub., 1987.
The Rise of Israel: Herzl's political activity, 1897-1904, New York: Garland Pub., 1987.
Sela, Jaim, Teodoro Herzl, Jerusalem, Israel: La Semana Publicaciones, 1983.
Sternberger, Ilse, Princes without a home: modern Zionism and the strange fate of Theodore Herzl's children, 1900-1945, San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1994.
Stewart, Desmond, Theodor Herzl, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1974.
Theodor Herzl: a memorial, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1976, 1929.
Vital, David, The origins of Zionism, Oxford Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1975.