Book Description:
This is a fascinating insight into the relationship between Arthur Balfour and Chaim Weizmann and an important background to the Arab-Israeli conflict raging today.On November 2nd 1917 Arthur Balfour, then Foreign Secretary, wrote to Lord Rothschild to say that the British Government viewed with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. It was a statement the consequences of which have reverberated throughout the world in a crescendo of bitterness and violence ever since. It interposed a European (mainly Russian) Jewish cultural idea in an Arab land and it led eventually to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Eleven years before his declaration, Balfour had met the passionate Zionist and emigre chemist Chaim Weizmann while electioneering in Manchester. It was shortly after Uganda had been mooted as a possible homeland for the displaced Jews. Weizmann tried to explain his reasons for insisting on Jerusalem as the home of Zion.'Suppose' he said, 'I were to offer you Paris instead of London?' 'But, Dr Weizmann, we already have London, 'Balfour replied. 'That is true, but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh.' Balfour was visibly surprised. 'Are there many Jews who think like you?' he asked.'I believe I speak for millions of Jews,' replied Weizmann.'It is curious' Balfour remarked, 'The Jews I meet are quite different.''Mr Balfour' said Weizmann, 'You meet the wrong kind of Jews.'At the centre of Geoffrey Lewis' compelling book is the story of this encounter and the developing relationship between these two men: the Zionist and the Zealot, so different from each other, yet drawn together by forces that neither quite understood and with consequences that were to have a profound effect on the modern world.
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