Winston Churchill in Palestine – 100 Years On

“The establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine will be a blessing to the whole world.”

Lee Pollock | 24.03.21

Winston Churchill in Tel Aviv, 1921, from the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

On March 24, 1921 an overnight train from Cairo arrived in Gaza, a town populated by some 15,000 Arabs and fewer than a hundred Jews, located just inside the southwestern border of the newly created British mandatory territory of Palestine. The League of Nations mandate had been granted to Britain under the terms of the San Remo Conference eleven months before.

The train carried three important British passengers including Sir Herbert Samuel, a veteran Jewish Liberal (and Zionist) politician who had been appointed as Britain’s first High Commissioner for Palestine, and a shrewd army colonel possessing unequalled familiarity with the Middle East, T. E. Lawrence.

Portrait of Herbert Samuel taken shortly after his appointment as High Commissioner for Palestine, ca. 1920 (Photo: Yaakov Ben Dov). From the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection, National Library of Israel archives

The third passenger was Winston Spencer Churchill, another political veteran who just a few weeks before had become Secretary of State for the Colonies, responsible for Britain’s administration of both Palestine and what had been intended to be a parallel mandate in Mesopotamia.

Churchill, Samuel and Lawrence had spent nearly three weeks in Cairo meeting with other senior British officials to reshape the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and create the new Arab kingdoms of Iraq and Trans-Jordan.

Churchill remained in Palestine for eight days on what would be his only official visit to the Holy Land. He was already sympathetic to Jewish aspirations for the national home in Palestine, which Britain had pledged in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, although his support was tempered by concerns about the cost of administering the new mandate and an even greater anxiety about the ability of the Jewish community and its much more populous Arab neighbors to coexist.

Notwithstanding his doubts, Churchill’s experiences during that visit served to solidify both his admiration for the Jewish people and his support of Zionism. He set himself up in Government House in Jerusalem, meeting with both Arab and Jewish delegations. A talented amateur painter, he also found time to create a beautiful landscape of sunset over the city, a work still owned by his descendants.

On March 27, he dedicated the new British Military Cemetery on the Mount of Olives and the following day met with Emir Abdullah, the newly designated King of Trans-Jordan, to assuage his anxiety about the pace of Jewish immigration into the area. While Abdullah was not wholly mollified, Churchill agreed that Jewish settlement east of the River Jordan would be proscribed.

Churchill with Bishop MacInnes of Jerusalem at the memorial service in the Mt. Scopus Military Cemetery, 26 March 1921 (American Colony Photo Dept. / Library of Congress)

Winston Churchill, TE Lawrence and Emir Abdullah walking in the gardens of the Government House in Jerusalem, 1921 (G. Eric Matson / Library of Congress)

Two days later, he planted a tree at the site on Mount Scopus of the future Hebrew University, telling the assembled dignitaries, “My heart is full of sympathy for Zionism. The establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine will be a blessing to the whole world.”

Herbert Samuel and Winston Churchill (with shovel) at the tree planting ceremony on the future site of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 28 March 1921 (G. Eric Matson / Library of Congress)

Winston Churchill speaking at the tree planting ceremony on the future site of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 28 March 1921 (American Colony Photo Dept. / Library of Congress)

The next day, Churchill received a delegation from the Congress of Palestinian Arabs whose 35-page protest against Zionist activity included a variety of anti-Semitic tropes: “The Jew is clannish and unneighborly. He will enjoy the privileges and benefits of a country but will give nothing in return.”

Churchill vigorously rejected their assertions, saying:

“It is manifestly right that the Jews should have a National Home where some of them may be reunited. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated.”

Churchill told the Jewish delegation which followed:

“The cause of Zionism is one which carries with it much that is good for the whole world, and not only for the Jewish people; it will bring prosperity and advancement for the Arab population.”

Before returning to Cairo the evening of March 30, Churchill visited the then twelve-year-old Jewish town of Tel Aviv, meeting with its Mayor Meir Dizengoff, and the agricultural settlement in Rishon LeZion. On his return to London, he told the House of Commons:

“Anyone who has seen the work of the Jewish colonies will be struck by the enormous productive results which they have achieved from the most inhospitable soil.”

Mayor Meir Dizengoff (back right) listens to Winston Churchill speaking at the Tel Aviv City Council on Rothschild Boulevard, 1921. From the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Churchill hoped that the Jews of Palestine – and the Jewish majority state that he envisaged might someday grow out of it – would live in a peaceful and productive relationship with their Arab neighbors.

This aspiration has been partially realized in a cold peace with the major states with whom Israel fought three wars after 1948, and now a newly warmer one with the Gulf states. Nonetheless – one hundred years after his visit – he would find that peaceful co-existence between the peoples living within the borders of what was then Mandatory Palestine remains challenging and uncertain.

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Lee Pollock is a Trustee and the former Executive Director of The International Churchill Society, which is co-hosting the symposium “Churchill and the Making of the Middle East: The Cairo Conference One Hundred Years On“.

This article has been published as part of Gesher L’Europa, the National Library of Israel’s initiative to connect with people, institutions and communities across Europe and beyond, through storytelling, knowledge sharing and community engagement.

The Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection has been reviewed and described thanks to the generous support of The Leir Foundation.

David Ben-Gurion, the Iconoclast

The story behind Ben-Gurion's refusal to wear a head covering at the funeral of S.Y. Agnon…

Nati Gabbay | 14.03.21

David Ben-Gurion History of Israel Israeli politics The Knesset

Ben-Gurion at Agnon's funeral, wearing no head covering. February 18th, 1970, the Dan Hadani Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

On February 18^th, 1970, Israel’s President, the Prime Minister, the Chief Rabbi and Supreme Court judges all came to pay their last respects to the esteemed writer, Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

David Ben-Gurion, by then a former prime minister, also attended the funeral. Unlike the rest of the attendees and contrary to what was customary at Jewish funerals, Ben-Gurion decided not to wear a head covering – a kippah (yarmulke) or any form of hat.

Ben-Gurion at Agnon’s funeral, wearing no head covering. February 18^th, 1970, the Dan Hadani Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Rabbi Menachem Porush, who was at the funeral, noticed this. Porush, one of the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox political party, Agudat Yisrael, decided to act and approached Ben-Gurion; he figured the iconic Israeli statesman had simply forgotten to bring a head covering and offered him one. To his astonishment, Porush learned this was no mistake – Ben-Gurion had intentionally left his head bare. “I have a hat with me,” Ben-Gurion said, “but I will not wear it in light of the government’s decision to force religion with regard to the question of who is a Jew.”

Footage of S.Y. Agnon’s Funeral, 1970:

Ben-Gurion was referring to an amendment to Israel’s well known Law of Return, which carried in the first reading at the Knesset a few days earlier and stated for the first time in the history of law in the State of Israel an answer to the longstanding question: Who is a Jew? After countless debates, arguments, demonstrations and struggles, the Knesset approved the amendment, according to which “a Jew is someone with a Jewish mother or someone who has converted to Judaism and is not a member of another religion.” Ben-Gurion deeply objected to the mixture of religion and state embodied by the endorsement of a halakhic approach to such a sensitive issue.

But Rabbi Porush would not let up. “Don’t you think that the religious Agnon would expect his escorts to cover their heads?” Ben-Gurion had an answer to this, as well: “I visited Agnon not so long ago, and he said nothing when he saw that I was bareheaded”.

Agnon (center) at David Ben-Gurion’s (right) 80^th birthday celebration. Zalman Shazar, Israel’s President at the time, is on the left. The S.Y. Agnon Archive at the National Library of Israel

Speaking of Ben-Gurion and Agnon, the latter was one of several intellectuals and religious leaders of whom in 1958 Ben-Gurion himself asked to answer the question: Who is a Jew? Agnon replied in a letter that the answer could be found in the “Shulchan Aruch,”, a 16^th century book of Jewish law, but added that “religion and state at this time are like two neighbors who are not comfortable with each other. You, upon whom the well-being and the welfare of the state depend, would do well to stay away from discussing matters of religion, for good or for better, so that your attention will be free for matters of state.”

But there’s more; those looking through the historical photographs of Agnon’s funeral may have noticed that at a certain point, Ben-Gurion indeed donned on a hat. Had he changed his mind and decided to honor Rabbi Porush and the ceremony? Not in the least. The chilly winds on the Mount of Olives, where Israel’s first Nobel laureate was buried, were the only reason for the former prime minister’s dramatic change of wardrobe.

David Ben-Gurion finally wearing a hat at Agnon’s funeral. Photo credit: GPO

The Rabbi Who Called to Establish a Jewish State in Uganda

Why did Rabbi Reines, the founder of Religious Zionism, support the British Uganda Proposal?

Amit Naor | 02.03.21

History of Israel Zionism

Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

An uproar filled the large hall in the Swiss city of Basel. The shouting of the delegates participating in the 6th Zionist Congress in the summer of 1903, accompanied by a variety of dramatic gesticulations, was overwhelming. The conference later came to be known as the “Uganda Congress.” It is difficult to overstate the drama that took place at this historic event, in which a significant rift emerged in the young Zionist movement. Theodor Herzl’s proposal, to create a (temporary!) shelter for Jews in Africa, was accepted. However, following that vote, a group of Russian Zionist delegates left the hall and shut themselves in another room, where they proceeded to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem. According to one of the descriptions, when Herzl asked to come into the room and speak to them, they refused, with one even calling him a “traitor.” Herzl ended the congress with a promise that the Uganda Proposal was only a temporary solution and swore: “If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.”

Theodor Herzl opening one of the Zionist Congresses, the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

It is worth mentioning the events that led to Herzl’s rushed decision to advance the rather strange idea of settling Jews in East-Central Africa. On Easter 1903, antisemitic riots broke out in the city of Kishinev, then part of the Russian Empire, with mobs of local residents descending upon Jewish homes and businesses, unimpeded by military or police forces. Thousands of shops were looted or demolished, houses were set on fire, and it is best not to go into detail about the other horrific events that took place. Approximately 50 Jews were murdered, and around 600 were brutally wounded. The event left a brutal, profound impression on the Jewish population around the world – as well as on Herzl, who decided to accelerate his efforts to attain approval from a major world power that would allow Jews to settle in a designated location somewhere across the globe. As far as he was concerned, this was a transitional stage in which several Jewish colonies would be established in different locations, where Jews would then undergo training in order to later establish a state in the Land of Israel.

“Mass Killing in Kishinev” – A report in the Hebrew newspaper “Havazelet,” May 8^th, 1903

The Uganda Proposal received many votes in the Zionist Congress thanks to the support of one of its major factions: The “Mizrachi” movement – the religious Zionists. Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, the leader of the movement and one of the founders of the stream of Religious Zionism, was an associate of Herzl and firmly supported his plan. Many historians have wondered about his support, which, at face value, seems out of the ordinary in the context of Religious Zionism. However, historian Dr. Moshe Berent argues that Reines’ position adheres to the principles of early Religious Zionism. These Mizrachi members solved the alleged contradiction concerning the goals of Zionism with the religious prohibition against “hastening redemption”, arguing that Zionism’s goal was to carry out an immediate, material, and political redemption. According to the members of Mizrachi, there was no connection between Zionism and the spiritual redemption of the Jewish people. The spiritual redemption that would eventually come in the Land of Israel would occur only through the will of God and not through any human actions.

Rabbi Reines, from the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Reines believed that the existence of Jewish autonomy would reinforce religious sentiment among the Jewish people. Where that autonomy would exist was another matter. Contrary to the competing argument that Judaism would be saved only if the Jewish National Home were to be be established in the Land of Israel, Reines argued that in order for there to be Judaism, there must be Jews as well – and therefore, the salvation of the people themselves was of the highest priority. Reines saw the issue of Europe’s Jews as the most urgent matter on the agenda, arguing that the very real physical danger superseded any “spiritual” interests. Furthermore, surely if the danger arose because of a person’s Jewishness, he or she could easily be tempted to throw it away. Thus, Reines’ position was justified as a measure against assimilation.

This does not imply that Reines did not believe, as an ideal, in a Jewish revival in the Land of Israel. However, he laid emphasis on his practical motives, saying: “We agreed to the African proposal because we took heed of the needs of our people, whom we love more than the land.”

As aforementioned, the British proposal for Jewish autonomy in East Africa was accepted in the “Uganda Congress”. However, as you may be aware, it wasn’t actually carried out. The political drama that took place in Basel was only the start of long months of turbulent debate within the Zionist movement. After a compromise was settled upon, a delegation was sent to East Africa to examine the area and its suitability for the establishment of a Jewish colony. The report presented to the 7th Zionist Congress was unfavorable, and, consequently, the proposal was rejected. British enthusiasm for the idea also waned after the Minister of the Colonies was replaced.

Less than a year after the “Uganda Congress” crisis, Herzl died prematurely. Rabbi Reines continued to lead the Mizrachi movement until his death in 1915.

One Last Bonus:

The best-known opponents of the Uganda Proposal were the members of the “Zionists of Zion” faction. Most were Russian Jews, headed by Menachem Ussishkin and Chaim Weizmann. Herzl was supported by his friend Max Nordau, British Zionist activist Israel Zangwill, and, as mentioned above, leaders of the “Mizrachi” movement. However, the “African Proposal,” as it was called, had a few more surprising supporters. One of the most vocal was a prominent Zionist activist, who had already settled in Jerusalem decades earlier, named Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the “reviver of the Hebrew language”. In addition to enthusiastic articles endorsing the proposal, which he published in his journal “HaZvi,” Ben Yehuda wrote and published a pamphlet called “The Jewish State,” detailing the reasons that led him to support the idea. This was what he wrote in the first chapter: “Has nothing been learned from the Chronicles? Will we, too, sin as our ancestors sinned for one thousand and eight hundred years, by closing their eyes to reality and satisfying themselves with hope only?”

Further reading:

The Jewish Cause: An Introduction to a Different Israeli History, [Hebrew] Moshe Berent, Carmel Publishing, 2019, pp. 196-234,

Herzl, Amos Elon, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976

The Unsung Heroine-Artist Who Helped Save Israel’s Wildflowers

From a very young age, Bracha Avigad's roots connected her to the Land of Israel and its flora

Zack Rothbart | 27.01.21

German Jewry Gesher L’Europa Jewish Art Land of Israel Life Before The Holocaust posters Zionism

"With me, things go very deep and I stay true to what I internalized as a child." (Source images: "Flowers of the Carmel" & The Bracha Avigad Collection, Nadav Mann / Bitmuna via the National Library of Israel Digital Collection)

In Israel’s early years there was a very real and present danger that the country’s beloved wildflowers would soon go extinct due to over-picking.

A law forbidding the act was passed in 1963, and a subsequent wildly successful public awareness campaign changed everything, as posters commanding the public to not pick, uproot, buy or sell wildflowers popped up all over the young country.

Simple wording and beautiful illustrations made the campaign one of the most successful of its kind in Israel’s history, ensuring that the wildflowers dotting the Biblical landscape continued to flourish, which they do until today.

“It’s forbidden to pick them! Don’t pick! Don’t uproot! Don’t buy! Don’t sell!” Society for the Protection of Nature poster featuring illustrations by Bracha Avigad, 1968 (Publisher: Levin Epstein). From the National Library of Israel archives

Bracha Avigad was responsible for those illustrations and though many never knew her name or story, generations have grown up knowing Bracha’s work from posters, books, postcards and even decorative plates bearing her iconic flowers.

Illustration by Bracha Avigad appearing in the book *Flowers of the Carmel*, 1958. From the National Library of Israel collection

Born Beatrix Guttman in Latvia in 1919, Bracha grew up in a relatively bourgeoisie urban environment in Darmstadt, Germany, yet some of her earliest memories – recounted in a 2014 interview conducted as part of the Toldot Yisrael initiative – reveal visceral connections to three passions destined to remain with her throughout her long life: the Land of Israel, nature, and art.

Early images of nature

On her father’s side, Bracha descended from a family of French vintners; on her mother’s, caretakers of Latvian estates belonging to absentee German landowners.

The Germany of her childhood was characterized by exponential inflation and tremendous poverty, the result of the country’s defeat in the First World War and subsequent reparations imposed upon it by the war’s victors. Nonetheless, Bracha grew up in relative comfort.

She recalled feeling awkward wearing a fur coat as a child, knowing that impoverished city residents would forage in the surrounding countryside for strawberries and mushrooms. Some would use acorns to create a substitute for the coffee they could not afford.

Drawing by Bracha Avigad presented to Henrietta Szold, 1930s. From the Bracha Avigad Collection, Nadav Mann / Bitmuna; available via the National Library of Israel Digital Collection

Though she may not have needed to forage like others, Bracha was intimately familiar with the very same countryside, which she would visit with her neighbors, one of the few families that had a car. While the neighbors’ “nationalist” leanings and “cruel” disposition made young Bracha uncomfortable, the duel allure of the automobile and the German countryside proved irresistible.

Artistic seeds

Other neighbors in her building provided childcare for young Bracha while her parents were at work. The man in the family was a professional artist – the first Bracha every met – who received payment from the city of Darmstadt in exchange for submitting a work of art every three months. While his artist’s heart resented the arrangement, it paid the bills during those austere years.

Bracha’s warm memories of much time spent in their home undoubtedly planted an artistic seed in the mind of the impressionable young girl.

While she certainly expressed her artistic talents throughout childhood, Bracha didn’t know how gifted an artist she was until a sixth grade teacher, who belonged to the Nazi party, pinched her cheek and told her what a shame it was that she was born a Jew because otherwise he would have sent her to the prestigious Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

Bracha’s adventurous father had traveled the world before coming back to Germany to fight for the Fatherland during World War I. He earned a medal of valor for his service in the naval air force, an honor later stripped from him for being a Jew.

Not long after returning from the war, he was denied a job at the pharmaceutical giant Merck due to his “race”, yet remained a very proud German. In fact, most of his friends and many, if not all, of the people Bracha interacted with in her earliest years were not Jewish.

It wasn’t until she went to school that she encountered anti-Semitism for the first time.

After a classmate derogatorily called her a Jew, Bracha returned home and asked her mother what a “Jew” was.

“They’re just jealous of you,” her mother explained, “You see, I buy you cherries… They can’t buy it for themselves, so they hate…”

She dangled the cherries next to her daughter’s ears – an image that remained with Bracha for the rest of her life; a botanical image in the mind’s eye which certainly may have later made its way onto the canvas in one form or another.

Blossoming in the Land of Israel

Within just a few short years of her teacher “discovering” the young artist’s talents, Bracha was kicked out of school because she was Jewish. She soon moved to the Land of Israel where she enrolled as part of the second class of New Bezalel, the successor to Boris Schatz’s legendary Jerusalem art school which largely defined the artistic expression of Zionist culture.

She received a scholarship to attend Bezalel from no other than Henrietta Szold herself, after Bracha had presented a collection of some of her work to Szold.

Poppies like this one (*kalaniyot* in Hebrew), are one of the most prevalent and beloved signs that spring is on its way across Israel. Drawing by Bracha Avigad presented to Henrietta Szold, 1930s. From the Bracha Avigad Collection, Nadav Mann / Bitmuna; available via the National Library of Israel Digital Collection

While leaving Germany in 1935 was obviously very much a result of increasingly unbearable anti-Semitism, Bracha’s connection to the Land of Israel – and its flora – had very deep roots.

As she approached 100, Bracha could still sing a favorite song about orange trees and date palms in the Land of Israel, which her mother had sung to her as a small child.

Around the age of five, Bracha went with her family to visit her maternal grandparents in Latvia. Upon seeing a large cane in their home – which she identified as the type that might be used to punish naughty children in fairy tales – she asked her grandfather what it was for.

He answered, “My little one, when the Messiah arrives I will take the cane in my hand and all of us will walk to the Land of Israel.”

Her grandfather’s teachings, as well as his blue Jewish National Fund tzedaka box and her mother’s songs, imbued in Bracha a very deep-seeded sense of Zionism, as she dreamed of one day going to the Land of Israel, though not necessarily by foot.

Caper plants like this one grow out of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Illustration by Bracha Avigad appearing in the book *Flowers of the Carmel*, 1958. From the National Library of Israel collection

Not long before Bracha was kicked out of school for being Jewish, she remembered being greatly impressed by an exhibit of water color flower paintings on display in a German gallery. Upon seeing it, she promised herself, “If I get to the Land of Israel, I’ll paint the flowers of the Land of Israel!”

For some seven decades, Bracha made good on her childhood promise, not only painting the flowers of the Land of Israel, but also playing a significant role in saving them from extinction.

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Many thanks to the Toldot Yisrael team for their assistance preparing this article, much of which was based on their 2014 interview with Bracha Avigad, two years before she passed away. Toldot Yisrael is an initiative dedicated to documenting the testimonies of the State of Israel’s founding generation. The collection is now deposited at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

To view the complete interview with Bracha Avigad (in Hebrew): Part I, Part II, Part III.
For original works from Bracha Avigad in the National Library of Israel Digital Collection, click here.

This article has been published as part of Gesher L’Europa, the National Library of Israel’s initiative to share stories and connect with people, institutions and communities in Europe and beyond.