Zionist Quotes: Chaim Weizmann-A Brief Biography & Quotes

BASED On Declassified Israeli Documents & Personal Diaries

Chaim Weizmann was Russia born Jew, and later he spent several years in Switzerland. In 1904 he settled in England, at the age of thirty, where he lectured in the University of Manchester chemistry department. During WWI, he was credited with developing a method of producing acetone from maize; which was needed for the production of artillery shells, and in 1917 he was credited with securing a promise from the British to build a "Jewish National Home" in Palestine, (better known as the Balfour Declaration).

Weizmann was one of the three Zionist leaders (along with Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion) most responsible for turning Zionism into reality. Soon after Theodor Herzl's death in 1904 (the father of Zionism), Weizmann was becoming a prominent figure in the Zionist movement, having acquired a reputation as a powerful public speaker, until the mid-1930s. As the Zionist movement center of gravity shifted from Europe to Palestine in the late 1930s-early 1940s, Weizmann played a secondary role behind David Ben-Gurion, who led the movement until 1962. Soon after the conclusion of the 1948, and the establishment of the "Jewish state" he became first Israeli President.

Weizmann was a very patient and savvy politician, who knew how to patiently lobby for Zionism in Europe, specially among the British whom he knew very well how to charm and court. He is credited with clarifying Herzl's vision of Zionism in the West and many Western Jewish communities. Weizmann's style of management was almost the exact opposite of Ben-Gurion's, who became militant, rigid, and uncompromising after the Nazis rose to power in Germany. As evidence of the Nazi atrocities was surfacing, Zionists and Jews in general advocated the creation of a "Jewish state" as soon as WWII ended, and the slogan "never again" became their motto. All of these factors pushed Weizmann to the background, and the Israeli Hawks dominated the Israeli political spectrum to the present day. It should be noted that Moshe Sharett was marginalized in a similar fashion as well.

Related Links

• More About Chain Weizmann and 'Transfer' by Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons

Famous Quotes

In 1914, Chaim Weizmann attempted to lay down the foundations of realizing Zionism, and began by asserting that Palestine was empty and that its current inhabitants have no say in its fate. He stated:

"In its initial stage, Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks] must, there for, be persuaded and conceived that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 6)

Remind us please who shall push who into the sea? Jaffa May 1948, Palestinians were being pushed into the sea by Zionist Jewish forces

Note how Weizmann didn't claim that the country was empty (see the quote below), but he denied that there was a people which deserved the right of self-determination. The selective definition of "who are a people, and who are not" was crafted to serve Zionists' agenda for the following reasons:

• To lure European Jewry to immigrate to Palestine,
• To secure international legitimacy for the emerging "Jewish state", and
• To deceive the Yishuv, the Jews who were residing in Palestine before 1948, into believing that they were robbing no other people's rights.

Repeatedly, Zionists argued that Palestinians could be "transferred" to neighboring Arab states without infringing their right, and such "transfer" would be beneficial to both communities. Click here if you wish to read our response to this argument.

Just prior to the British conquest of Palestine, Chaim Weizmann wrote describing the Palestinian people as:

" the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 17)

Note how Weizmann referred to the Palestinian people, as rocks. Usually Zionists use similar dehumanizing language to refer to the Palestinian people, such as rocks, primitive, naive, ignorant, savage, demographic problem, ticking time bombs, question, 5th column, obstacles, "transfer solution", " should be cleared", "should be broomed", etc.

Zionist leaders stressed the strategic advantages to Britain of a "Jewish state" in Palestine. In a letter written in 1914 to a sympathizer, Chaim Weizmann said:

"... should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in 20 to 30 years a million Jews out there - perhaps more; they would ... form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal." (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section II)

Another Weizmann letter of 1916 reads:

"... The British Cabinet is not only sympathetic toward the Palestinian aspirations of the Jews, but would like to see these aspirations realized ...

England ... would have in the Jews the best possible friends, who would be the best national interpreters of ideas in the eastern countries and would serve as a bridge between the two civilizations. That again is not a material argument, but certainly it ought to carry great weight with any politician who likes to look 50 years ahead." (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section II)

Ironically, the disadvantages of establishing a "Jewish state" are never discussed. For example,

• What if Arabs and Muslims perceive the creation of a "Jewish state" as the 2nd Crusade? What is the impact of this perception on America's and England's national interests?
• What if England's and America's national interests run contrary to the "Jewish state's" national interests? Would Israel point its bayonets against the American and British peoples? It should be noted that Zionist bayonets in Palestine were pointed toward the British (who practically created the "Jewish state") during WWII until May 1948.

Soon after the arrival of Weizmann to Jerusalem in late 1918, he described the ultra-orthodox neighborhoods of the city to his wife as follows:

"There's nothing more humiliating than 'our' Jerusalem. Anything that could be done to desecrate and defile the sacred has been done. It is impossible to imagine so much falsehood, blasphemy, greed, so many lies. It's such an accursed city, there's nothing there, no creature comforts. . . [It] hasn't a single clean and comfortable apartment." (One Palestine Complete, p. 71)

In 1918 Chaim Weizmann denied the existence of an Arab nation in Palestine and portrayed them as ignorant and naive. He described Palestinians in a letter to a colleague of his:

"The poor ignorant fellah [Arabic for peasant] does not worry about politics, but when he is told repeatedly by people in whom he has confidence that his livelihood is in danger of being taken away from him by us, he becomes our mortal enemy. . . The Arab is primitive and believes what he is told." (One Palestine Complete, p. 109)

While the peace conference was convening at Versailles in early 1919, Weizmann was asked of his understanding of the "national home" referred to by Balfour Declaration, he answered:

"the country [Palestine] should be Jewish in the same way that France is French and Britain is British." (One Palestine Complete, p. 117)

Similarly, Weizmann pronounced the same formula in an address to the English Zionist Federation on September 19, 1919:

"By a Jewish National Home I mean the creation of such conditions that as the country is developed we can pour in a considerable number of immigrants, and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English or America American." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 41)

Even in the early 1920s, the Zionists goals were not popular among many Jewish comminutes around the world. However, the Zionist Organization, with Weizmann's leadership, was a able to erect a powerful lobbying facade in England and the United States as if they were speaking on behalf of all Jews, and in that regard Chaim Weizmann stated:

"The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air ... every day and every hour of these last 10 years, when opening the newspapers, I thought: Whence will the next blow come? I trembled lest the British Government would call me and ask: 'Tell us, what is this Zionist Organization? Where are they, your Zionists?' ... The Jews, they knew, were against us [the Zionists]; we stood alone on a little island, a tiny group of Jews with a foreign past." (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section V)

On the other hand, the holocaust propelled the Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, and later the "Jewish state" to become the representative of Jewish interests among most Jews, especially in the United States. For example, the Jewish Agency and the "Jewish state" took the leading role in securing compensation for German atrocities and for Swiss' looting of Jewish artwork.

In the early 1920s, Ben-Gurion asked Chaim Weizmann why he had accepted the promise of a "national home" in Palestine (as referred to by Balfour Declaration) rather than holding out for a state, Weizmann responded the he did not demand a state because he would not have gotten one. For him the choice of "national home" was a "tactical question". Weizmann believed in cautious, gradual action, in a doctrine of stages. (One Palestine Complete, p. 101)

Weizmann argued for increased Jewish immigration to Palestine because they were unwanted all over the world. He stated in 1930:

"while they [European Jews] are seeking an outlet, every door of those countries into which the Jews emigrated in the past is gradually being closed before them: America, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, each used to be a country of immigration; they are closed now." (Israel: A History, p. 65)

Similarly, at the annual dinner of the Anglo-American Palestine Committee, Weizmann declared that Palestine must be the only place for settlement for Jewish refugees. He stated on May 25, 1942,:

Adolf Eichmann & Co. coined a special Gold Medallion in honor of the Nazis' relationship with Zionists!

"Palestine alone could absorb and provide for the homeless and the stateless Jews uprooted by the war. It is canalized all the sympathy of the world for the martyrdom of the Jews that the Zionists reject all schemes to resettle these victims elsewhere-- in Germany, or Poland, or in sparsely populated regions such as Madagascar." It was Hitler who, in 1940, had first suggested Madagascar as a place where all the Jews of Europe might be sent, before the policy turned to physical extermination. (Israel: A History, p. 113)

It's not only that this was lie, it was also criminal against Jews since Zionists' main objective was to channel all fleeing European Jewish citizen to Palestine. This was was done for one and only one purpose: to turn Palestinian into a Jewish state where Jews would constitute a majority. Ben-Gurion stated similar statements in 1938.

By no mean we imply that Zionists did not care about European Jewish citizens, however, achieving Zionists' main goal was paramount, and securing a Jewish majority in Palestine, as Moshe Sharett called it in 1948, was the "crowing achievement". As a result, Zionists' main objective had blinded them from protecting their European Jewish brothers. This serious and divisive question is silently being debated in many Jewish communities around the world.

Chaim Weizmann attempted on more than one occasion to extend Zionist colonization outside the borders of British Mandated Palestine. For example, in 1934 Weizmann tried to interest the French Mandate authorities in his settlement plans in Syria and Lebanon. This plan was originally submitted by the World Zionist Organization in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 which included Western Jordan, Southern Syria including the Golan Heights, and Southern Lebanon south of the Litani River, click here for a map illustration. Similar ideas were also proposed by Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan. (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 47)

In a letter Chaim Weizmann sent to the Palestine-British high Commissioner while the Peel Commission was convening in 1937:

"We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time.....this is only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 62)

Chaim Weizmann wrote in a letter dated April 28, 1939 to the American Zionist leader Solomon Goldman about the possibility of acquisition of a large tract of land belonging to the Palestinian Arab Druze in the Galilee and eastern Carmel:

"The realization of this project would mean the emigration of 10,000 [Palestinian] Arabs [to Jabal al-Druze in Syria], the acquisition of 300,000 dunums. . . . It would also create a significant precedent if 10,000 [Palestinian] Arabs were to emigrate peacefully of their own volition, which no doubt would be followed by others." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 167)

Ironically, what actually happened during the 1948 war was almost the complete opposite. The Palestinian Druze Arabs were the ones who were permitted to stay (among other minorities as some Shi'ites Muslims and Maronite Christians), especially in and around the Haifa and al-Carmel area.

The idea of partition lay dormant through the early 1940s. At the Biltmore Conference, David Ben-Gurion spoke of an undivided Palestine, for there was no point in conceding anything at that stage. Weizmann, however, kept his private hopes alive. "He cannot forget his partiti?n plan," Moshe Shertok reported to a Zionist meeting in 1943. "If we were given any part of Palestine for a Jewish state, I think we would accept it." Mr. Shertok was right. In a remarkably frank interview with one of Churchill's private secretaries in October Weizmann made explicit the theory of the toehold which the Arabs so feared. The British official jotted down Weizmann's remarks:

He made it clear that he did not regard it as impossible to devise some form of partition which would be acceptable and frankly gave his reason as being that it was possible to take two bites at the cherry. So long as sufficient elbow room was given at the start, he id not see why all the burden should fall on the present generation and why one could not look to the possibility of future expansion by some means or other.

And he made the point directly in a letter to Welles:

Our heritage in Palestine was cut down to the bone when Trans-Jordan was separated in 1922. What is left is clearly a unit, and further partition of it would deprive the settlement of finality. ( See Israel in The Mind of America by Peter Grose p. 238)

On July 8, 1947, Weizmann described how the average stateless Jew felt like to UNSCOP (UN Special Committee On Palestine) as follows:

"We ask today: 'What are the Poles? What are the French? What are the Swiss?' When that is asked, everyone points to a country, to certain institution, to parliamentary institution, and the man in the street will know exactly what it is. He has a passport.

If you ask what is a Jew is -- well, he is a man who has to offer a long explanation for his existence, and any person who has to offer an explanation as to what he is, is always suspect--- and from suspicion there is only one step to hatred or contempt." (Israel: A History, p. 147)

Haifa, Palestinians are crowded on ships to take them to Acre soon after they were ethnically cleansed buy Zionist forces, April 1948.

This explanation eloquently articulates how the average dispossessed, ethnically cleansed, and occupied Palestinian feels.

Similarly, he continued to explain "Why Palestine?" should be the only place where Jews should establish their political independence:

"Why not Kamchatka, Alaska, Mexico, or Texas? There are great many empty countries. Why should the Jews choose a country which has a population that does not want to receive them in a particular friendly way; a small country; a country which has been neglected and derelict for centuries? [click here for rebuttal to this myth] It seems unusual on the part of a practical and shrewd people like the Jews to sink their effort, their sweat, and blood, their substance, into the sands, rocks, and marches of Palestine.

Well, I could, if I wished to be facetious, say it was not our responsibility -- not the responsibility of the Jews who sit here -- it was the responsibility of Moses, who acted from divine inspiration. He might have brought us to the United States, and instead of the Jordan might have had the Mississippi. It would have been an easier task. But he chose to stop here. We are an ancient people with old history, and you cannot deny your history and begin fresh." (Israel: A History, p. 147-148)

It is worth noting that Weizmann's argument is classic among Zionist leaders to gain international support and sympathy for Israel and the Zionist movement. Similarly, when Ben Gurion was interviewed by the British Peel Commission in 1937, he also used the Bible as a "Mandate" or a real estate deed for the "Jewish people". (One Palestine Complete, p. 401)

What baffles many Palestinians and Muslims is: Why the Bible not used to "redeem" the "Promised Land" during the Crusade's Genocide between the 11th-13th century?

Jaffa National Christian Orthodox School (1938)

Briefly, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has little to do with religion, and a lot to do with Europe's racism towards its Jewish citizens and Palestinian dispossession by the Israelis. On both sides of the conflict, God is being used to distract and confuse the conflict to achieve political gains. The conflict would have been at the same level of intensity even if both warring parties had been Jewish, Christians, or even Muslims.

By war's end in 1949, Chaim Weizmann was surprised by a sudden "miracle": Palestinians are almost out of "Eretz Yisrael", how did that happen? As if the the Haganah, the Irgun, and the Stern terror gangs were angels who played no role in this sudden and swift so called "miracle". He described the EXODUS of the Palestinian people from their homes, farms, and businesses as follows:

" a miraculous CLEARING of the land: the miraculous simplification of Israel's task." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 175 & Simha Flapan, p. 84)

Note the racist use of the term "simplification" as if the Palestinian people are question or a mathematical conjecture. Click here if you wish to learn more how the "miraculous clearing" took place based on declassified Israeli and Zionists archives. The question that is begged here is:

Was it the Almighty's miracle or not?