Zionism: The Crucial Phase

This sequel to The Origins of Zionism and Zionism: The Formative Years completes the most comprehensive and thorough examination of the rise and consolidation of the Zionist movement yet attempted. Zionism transformed the structure - and to some extent the ethos - of Jewry and much else besides. Its impact on international politics has been remarkable for a national movement emanating from a people whose condition has been largely determined by their endemic weakness. Yet on the eve of the First World War it was a movement in decline, its leadership was faltering, and the promise it had held out to the crushed and impoverished Jews of Europe was drastically diminished. The sources and consequences of this decline and the dramatic and unexpected war-time recovery from it form the chief subjects of this volume. Not the least of its purposes is to dispel the myths and legends that have long enveloped both the circumstances in which Great Britain's temporary patronage of Zionism was decided upon under Lloyd George and Balfour, and the springs and problems of Zionism and the Zionists themselves.