Loading article…
The Biltmore Conference, also known by its resolution as the Biltmore Program, was a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy, prompted by the White Paper of 1939 and the ongoing Holocaust,[1] that sought "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth."[2] The meeting was held in New York City, at the prestigious Biltmore Hotel, from May 6 to May 11, 1942, with 600 delegates and Zionist leaders from 18 countries attending.[3]
This marked the first time that the Zionist leaders called for the establishment of a Jewish state.[4] The program has been described by a number of historians as "a virtual coup d’état" within Zionism since the movement's more moderate leaders were replaced by leaders with more aggressive goals.[5]
Prior to this Extraordinary Zionist Conference at the Biltmore, official Zionism had steadfastly refused to formulate the ultimate aim of the movement but preferred to concentrate on the practical task of building the Jewish National Home. The Biltmore Program became the official Zionist stand on the ultimate aim of the movement.[1] According to Ben-Gurion, the "first and essential" stage of the program was the immigration of two million additional Jews to Palestine. In 1944, a One Million Plan would become the official policy of the Zionist leadership.[6] There was no reference to the Arab population prevailing in Mandatory Palestine, which, according to Anita Shapira, marked a transition to the view that conflict was inevitable between the Arabs and Jews and could only be resolved by the sword.[7]
The major shift at Biltmore was prompted by intense common opposition to the British White Paper of 1939, which interpreted the terms of the Mandate in a way that would freeze "the Jewish community to a permanent minority status", and the negative situation during the war. The shift was prompted also by the realization that America would play a larger part in fulfillment of Zionist designs after the war.[8]
Official Zionism’s firm unequivocal stand did not please everyone, however. The pro-British Chaim Weizmann had bristled at it. Also, binationalists such as Henrietta Szold and Judah L. Magnes rejected the stand and broke off to establish their own party, Ichud ("Unification"), which advocated an Arab–Jewish federation. Opposition to the Biltmore Program also led to the founding of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism.[9]
Various Zionist organizations were represented in the American Emergency Committee of Zionist Affairs, which called an "Extraordinary Zionist Conference" as a substitute for the full (22nd) Zionist Congress, which had been cancelled because of World War II. Attendees included Chaim Weizmann, as President of the Zionist Organization; David Ben-Gurion, as Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive; and Nahum Goldmann, as a member of the Executive of the Zionist Organization of America.[10] The four main organisations of American Jewry represented were the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah, Mizrahi, and Poale Zion. Among the American organizers was Reform Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.
The joint statement issued at the end of the session was known as the Biltmore Program. It asked for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. Here is the full text of the program:
After approval by the Zionist General Council in Palestine, the Biltmore Program was adopted as the platform of the World Zionist Organization.
The significance of the program to a Jewish commonwealth was in stepping beyond the terms of the Balfour Declaration, which had been reaffirmed as British policy by Winston Churchill's White Paper of 1922, that there should be a "Jewish National Home" in Palestine. According to Ami Isseroff, the program was "a crucial step in the development of the Zionist movement, which increasingly saw itself as opposed to Britain rather than a collaborator of Britain, and it determined that henceforth Ben-Gurion and the Zionist Executive in Palestine, rather than Weizmann would lead the Zionist movement and determine policy toward the British."[10]
The program spoke of the Jewish people for "the economic, agricultural and national development of the Arab peoples and states" but was implicitly a rejection of the proposal for a binational solution to the question of Arab-Jewish co-existence in Palestine.Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist-Zionist group, accordingly voted against the program.
The estimates for the destruction of European Jewry grew throughout 1942 and 1943. Chaim Weizmann urged a re-evaluation of the Biltmore program in June 1943.[14] Weizmann’s earlier estimate of 25% destruction, which had been declared at the Biltmore Conference, now seemed wildly optimistic.[15] Rabbi Meyer Berlin, the leader of the Mizrahi, a Zionist party, disagreed and argued that no one could know how many Jews would survive and how many would die.[14]
At the American Jewish Conference of 29 August 1943, the program's adoption was challenged by Joseph Proskauer and Robert Goldman. They argued that the immediate problem was the rescue effort, not the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth.[14] Goldman felt that the program was unduly weighted in favour of the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth and that focusing on that as a priority would hamper the efforts to rescue the European Jewry.
However, Abba Silver and Emanuel Neumann put forward that the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth should be the movement's primary aim.
Convening in the art deco dining halls of New York’s Biltmore Hotel in May 1942, Zionist representatives approved an eight-point plan that, for the first time, explicitly called for the creation of a “Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new democratic world.” Gone were the proposals for an amorphous Jewish national home in Palestine, for carving out Jewish cantons and delineating autonomous regions with an overarching Arab state. Similarly, effaced was the long-standing Zionist assumption that Palestine's fate would be decided in London. Instead, the delegates agreed that the United States constituted the new Zionist “battleground” and that Washington would have the paramount say in the struggle for Jewish sovereignty. Henceforth the Zionist movement would strive for unqualified Jewish independence in Palestine, for a state with recognized borders, republican institutions, and a sovereign Army, to be attained in cooperation with America.
Many historians view the Biltmore Program as evidence of a virtual coup d'etat within the Zionist movement: The Young Turks, represented by David Ben-Gurion of the Yishuv-based Jewish Agency Executive, replaced their more moderate elders, represented by the London-based Chaim Weizmann, at the head of the World Zionist Organization. Weizmann had advocated gradualism, the partition of Palestine between Jews and Palestinians, and negotiations with Britain. Ben-Gurion championed immediate statehood, the establishment of a Jewish state in all of Palestine, and armed resistance, if necessary, to achieve Zionist goals.