Part XI

The Jews, who were actively attempting to restore Jewish life in Palestine, recognized in 1917 that a defeat of the Turks might lead the British to sponsor a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. This possibility emboldened them to advance the Zionist cause, asserts historian Martin Gilbert.

At the beginning of 1917, Sir Mark Sykes, a Conservative member of Parliament and chief secretary of the War Cabinet, communicated with Nahum Sokolow, a member of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization, and Chaim Weizmann about how to deal with the “Zionist problem.”

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had appointed Sykes to the War Cabinet Secretariat, as an assistant secretary with a specific task for British policy toward Palestine.

Chaim Weizmann described Sykes in his autobiography, “Trial and Error,” as a devout Catholic who “had conceived the idea of the liberation of the Jews, the Arabs and the Armenians, whom he looked upon as the three downtrodden races par excellence.”

Weizmann understood that were it not for the counsel of men like Sykes and Lord Robert Cecil, who served in the British Cabinet as minister of blockade, “we with our inexperience in delicate diplomatic negotiations would undoubtedly have committed many dangerous blunders.”

Sykes and François Georges-Picot, a lawyer, diplomat and a representative of the French government, had initial conversations with Dr. Moses Gaster, hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation in London, and a leader of the Zionist movement in England.

Sykes and Picot were chosen because in 1916 they had prepared a legally binding secret agreement to divide the Ottoman Empire into British and French areas of influence and control.

A meeting with Sokolow and Weizmann took place on February 7, 1917, which marked the official start of negotiations, led to a meeting with Lord Walter Rothschild, the unofficial leader of the British Jewish community; Weizmann; Herbert Samuel, leader of the Liberal Party in Parliament; Harry Sacher, a prominent businessman and Zionist; and Sokolow.

The success of these deliberations resulted in Sokolow being asked to continue working with Sykes and Picot on a regular basis. It should be noted that Sokolow was the “principal architect of the Balfour Declaration,” writes historian Arthur Hertzberg. His draft statement of October 1916, delineating Zionist objectives in Palestine, later became the foundation for the British Mandate.

The French Government

In March 1917, Sokolow said the French government asked him to come to Paris. On March 22, he met at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he presented the Zionist objectives. At the meeting, he was informed that the French government viewed the Zionist project very positively, and was authorized to advise the Zionist Organizations of Russia and America of this fact by telegraph.

Meeting With French Jews

While in Paris, Sokolow met with the official leadership of French Jewry, who were opposed to Zionism. They feared that by focusing on the Jewish people’s national character, their own status as “Frenchmen of the Jewish religious persuasion” might be challenged, Hertzberg said.

Through Sokolow’s close connection to Edmond de Rothschild, Hertzberg said, Sokolow was able to soften, and essentially quash this hostility. Until his death in 1934, Rothschild, the foremost leader of French Jewry, was the greatest supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine. Rothschild would not accept opposition from the assimilationist Jews. He convened a private meeting with the leading Jews of France, where he basically “bullied them into silence,” Hertzberg asserted, while Sokolow negotiated with the French.

Sokolow’s Mission to Rome

After his almost month-long meetings in France, Sokolow went to Rome to meet with Italian Jewish leaders, whom he found to be receptive to his program. When he broached the subject of the Holy Places, he was advised to speak directly with the Vatican, which he did.

In Rome, he had to convince the Italian government and the Vatican, which was a very difficult task. Approximately 15 years before, Theodore Herzl met with Pope X, and “the atmosphere had been decidedly chilly and negative.” After having a number of conferences with cardinals, especially Pietro Gasparri, diplomat and politician in the Roman Curia, he met with Pope Benedict XV on May 10. The meeting with Benedict XV went well, “in part because of [Sokolow’s] own charm and great diplomatic skill.”

He reassured them that the Christian holy sites, which were their major concern, would be protected by Protestant Britain as they had been by Muslim Turkey, Hertzberg said.

Herzberg attributes Sokolow’s success to his “urban, but clearly religious” persona, that “acted as assurance to the Pope and his entourage that the Zionists who proposed to come to Palestine were not a group of radicals who could not be trusted to be neighbors of the holiest shrines of Christendom. The Pope did not declare himself a Zionist but the Vatican remained benevolently neutral during those critical months.”

Several times between May 12 and May 18, 1947, Sokolow said, he and the president of the Jewish community in Rome met at that Italian Consulta, and with by the then Italian Prime Minister Paolo Boselli, who assured him that the Italian government and the Allied Powers would support the Zionist program. He was authorized to convey this approval to the Russian and American Zionist organizations.

Dr. Alex Grobman, a Hebrew University-trained historian, is senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.