The First Zionist Congress

Theodor Herzl had published Der Judenstaat in February 1896, arguing that antisemitism in Europe was ineradicable and that the only remedy was Jewish sovereignty in a territory of the Jews’ own. Eighteen months later he convened a congress at Basel, which sat from 29 to 31 August 1897. Its stenographic record — issued under the title its own title page carries, Officielles Protocoll, “Basel (29. 30. und 31. August 1897)”, published at Vienna in 1898 by the Verlag des Vereines »Erez Israel« — closes with David Wolffsohn reading out the attendance list, and with the parenthesis the stenographer set down after it: Die Gesammtzahl der anwesenden Delegierten beträgt 204, the total number of delegates present is 204. Published figures for the congress vary, and this archive prints the protocol’s own count rather than a later estimate. Women were in the hall and did not vote. When a delegate, Dr Kornblüh, asked from the floor whether the ladies had the right to vote, Herzl answered from the chair: Die Damen sind selbstverständlich sehr verehrte Gäste, nehmen aber an der Abstimmung nicht theil — the ladies are, of course, most honoured guests, but they take no part in the voting.

The congress founded the Zionist Organization, with Herzl as president, and adopted what became known as the Basel Programme. Arriving at it took an argument over a single word, and the protocol preserves it. The draft that Max Nordau’s programme committee put to the floor read Der Zionismus erstrebt für das jüdische Volk Schaffung einer rechtlich gesicherten Heimstätte in Palästina — a home in Palestine secured by law. Delegates led by Leo Motzkin of Kiev pressed for völkerrechtlich: secured by international law. Nordau returned to the rostrum to say that his committee could find no reason to change its position and that adding öffentlich to rechtlich expressed nothing not already contained in the original text, but that it would accept the insertion for the sake of unity. The first clause as adopted — carried by acclamation, not by ballot — read: Der Zionismus erstrebt für das jüdische Volk die Schaffung einer öffentlich-rechtlich gesicherten Heimstätte in Palästina. Motzkin then rose to state that those who had demanded völkerrechtlich were satisfied with the change. In the English text published by the Institute for Palestine Studies the clause reads: “Zionism strives for the establishment of a publicly and legally secured home in Palestine for the Jewish people.” The four means the programme listed, in the same translation, were “the appropriate promotion of colonizing Palestine with Jewish agriculturalists, artisans and tradesmen”; “the organization and gathering of all Jews through suitable local and general institutions according to the laws of the various countries”; “the promotion of Jewish national feeling and consciousness”; and “preparatory steps for the attainment of such Government consent as is necessary in order to achieve the aim of Zionism.” The financial instruments followed: the Jewish Colonial Trust in 1899, and the Jewish National Fund in 1901, whose land, once acquired, was to be held inalienably for the Jewish people.

Herzl recorded in his diary what he thought had happened. “At Basel I founded the Jewish State,” he wrote on 3 September 1897, adding that if he said this out loud he would be answered by universal laughter — but that in five years, perhaps, and certainly in fifty, everyone would know it. The entry is in the second volume of the Patai edition of his complete diaries.

The Ottoman districts in question were not empty. The population of Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century was overwhelmingly Arab, Muslim and Christian, alongside a small Jewish minority much of it long-established and religious rather than nationalist. Estimates of the exact proportions in 1897 differ widely and none of them is settled; what is not in dispute is which community was the majority. Nothing in the Basel Programme addressed what would become of it. The gap between the programme’s confidence and the country’s demography is the origin of everything that followed: the political effort was directed at European chancelleries, and the consent that was sought was that of governments, not of the people who lived there.

Sources

• Basel (Zionist) Program — the German original and English translation, Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (palquest), Institute for Palestine Studies
• Officielles Protocoll — Basel, 29, 30 and 31 August 1897 (Vienna, 1898, Verlag des Vereines »Erez Israel«): the congress’s own stenographic record, in German (Internet Archive)
• The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed. Raphael Patai, trans. Harry Zohn (Herzl Press / Thomas Yoseloff, 1960), vol. II, entry of 3 September 1897 — Internet Archive
• History of the Question of Palestine — United Nations (UNISPAL)