In a previous programme I talked about how Kaiser Wilhelm II, well before the Great War, has positively drooled at the thought of winning Jewish favour and support. The Kaiser was definitely anti-Semitic. He believed in the international Jewish conspiracy but vast amounts of money were waiting there to be tapped by a friend of the Jews – him for Germany. He had met with Sultan, Abdulhamed to plead the Jewish cause - but without success.

It was now 1917 and things had changed a lot since the Kaiser’s meeting before the war. The British were advancing towards Jerusalem. Not perhaps the best time to make the offer that Theodor Herzl had wanted back then, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Zionism, after all, had been born in Austria. The headquarters for the Zionist movement up to 1914 had been in Berlin.

With prodding from the Germans, in August 1917, Jemal Pasha, the tyrant of Jerusalem, visited Berlin. He met with German Zionists and the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha. Jemal reluctantly agreed to promote ‘a Jewish national home’. A kind of chartered company was offered for German Zionists with a limited form of local self-government and right of immigration.

News of this reached the halls of power in London. They’d been thinking along the same lines, but they were now in a much better position to really do something, because General Allenby, with his army, was approaching Jerusalem.

The name most closely associated with the move that the British now decided to make was Lord Balfour – and its now time to tell you how the English came to think that it was a good idea to create a homeland for the Jews not on their traditional lands, but instead in Uganda.

Tag words: Kaiser Wilhelm II; Sultan Abdulhamed; Theodor Herzl; Zionism; Jemal Pasha; Talaat Pasha; General Allenby; Lord Balfour; Holy Lands; Yasser Arafat; Dr Chaim Weizmann; Sir George Buchanan; Lloyd George; Russian Revolution; Emperor Nicholas II; Lord Rothschild; Balfour Declaration; Muslims; Arabs; Arthur Toynbee; Sherif Hussein; Old Testament; Sherif of Mecca; World War I; Lawrence of Arabia; Arab Revolt; The Truth About the Peace Treaties; Lord Robert Cecil; Treaty of Versailles; Zionist Organization; Jewish National Home; Sokolow Nahum; League of Nations; Felix Frankfurter; Feisal; Woodrow Wilson; Palestinian Arabs; San Remo Conference; Uganda;