Thinking Through Empire: Zionists, British Imperial Networks, and the Future of the Jewish National Home

• In Event: Diaspora Jewry and Israel/Palestine in Transnational Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores how Zionists from Palestine, South Africa, and Britain in the interwar period saw the cultivating of relationships and the negotiation of political developments from across the British Empire—particularly India—to be critical in securing Jewish political futures in Palestine. In preparing for a range of possible British imperial fates (spanning from the persistence of imperial rule to the triumph of anti-colonial independence movements), these Zionists understood the future of the Yishuv and Palestine, the question of British mandatory policy, and the matter of Jewish-Palestinian Arab relations to be part of a much broader British imperial dynamic.

Both Chaim Arlosoroff and Gershon Agronsky, for instance, agreed that Pan-Islamic political movements (including efforts led by the Indian Muslim leader Shaukat Ali) had the capacity to influence British policy in Palestine and to shape local Jewish-Arab relations. But the two Zionist leaders took substantially different approaches to addressing the matter. Agronsky worked to build ties with secular Muslim activists in India who opposed Pan-Islamism, viewing these relationships as a counteractive measure to Pan-Islamic influence in Palestine and the broader British Empire. In contrast, Arlosoroff attempted to convince British mandatory and colonial authorities to use their power to curb Pan-Islamic political activities (specifically the World Islamic Congress held in Jerusalem in 1931).

While Arlosoroff negotiated with the British and Agronsky worked to create connections between Jews in Palestine and Muslims in India, other Zionists worked to build political alliances between their movement and Hindu nationalists. As Zionist leaders became increasingly convinced by the 1930s that imperial and anticolonial politics in India mattered a great deal to Jewish futures in Palestine, South African Jews who had befriended Gandhi during his long tenure in the country (from 1893-1914) emerged as uniquely capable of navigating this issue. Morris Alexander, Hermann Kallenbach, and Henry Polak (who had varying Zionist and non-Zionist politics), worked to establish connections between Gandhi and the Zionist movement and to convince the Indian leader that both Jewish and Indian nationalisms shared common visions and aspirations.

Author

• Elizabeth E. Imber, The College of Idaho