Gur Alroey's Zionism without Zion offers readers a triumphant study of spectacular failure. The subject of Alroey's book, the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO), barely gets a mention in most Zionist historiographies. Yet the ITO once presented a powerful ideological challenge to Zionism and competed for popular and intellectual support. Alroey reveals how the ITO emerged as the most notable nationalist ideological rival to Zionism in the early twentieth century and was later reborn in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
Readers unfamiliar with ITO ideology, its history of humanitarian efforts, and its rivalry with Zionism will feel as though they have stumbled upon a bizarre world in which Zionist values and aims have been inverted. Instead of the biblical land of Israel as the focus of nation building, the Territorialists—as ITO adherents were typically known—sought another parcel of land large enough to sustain a Jewish demographic majority. Instead of devotion to Zion, Territorialists worked to rescue Jews and resettle them elsewhere in the Diaspora. And though they venerated Theodor Herzl, the Territorialists favored another author, playwright, and activist, Israel Zangwill.
Alroey thus calls the ITO the “alter ego” of the Zionist movement (12). Though he does not state as much, Alroey's intimation seems unmistakable: that one cannot adequately understand modern European Jewish history—and especially the trajectory of Zionism—without delving into the sad history of Territorialism. The looking-glass world that Territorialism holds up to the Jewish past reveals what might have been and, hence, urges us to consider our commitments in the present era. Unfortunately, few scholars have demonstrated much interest in the ITO or its interwar reincarnation, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization.
Zionism without Zion is the third in a “triptych” of works, based on books originally published in Hebrew, that address east European Jewry's distress in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (vii). In these books and in his dozens of scholarly articles, Alroey has demonstrated superb archival skills and analytical acumen, all while writing lucid prose (well translated into English).
The first two chapters of Zionism without Zion elucidate the origin of the ITO as a breakaway faction of Zionism. In 1905, the Zionist Congress rejected a British proposal to establish a semiautonomous Jewish entity in the East African Protectorate (today's Kenya)—the so-called Uganda Plan. The subsequent rejection of any territory outside of Palestine led frustrated Zionists like Zangwill to establish the ITO. These Territorialists believed themselves to be the true heirs of Herzlian political Zionism. With Zangwill as their indefatigable leader, the Territorialists seized on Zionism's weaknesses. The ITO garnered political and popular momentum because of Zionism's inability to deal with the persecutions, poverty, and mass migrations endured by Jews in Europe and czarist Russia. Likewise, ITO leaders hounded Zionists for their unwillingness to face the fact that there were hundreds of thousands of Arab residents in Ottoman Palestine who presented an obstacle to state-building efforts. Territorialists may not have been gifted with clairvoyance, but they certainly made trenchant criticisms of Zionism, some of which echo today.
ITO partisans used the dire situation of Jewish communities suffering in the wake of pogroms “to advance the territorialist idea” (96). Alroey examines the popularity of Territorialism “on the Jewish street” (87–97), and his exploration of archival sources demonstrates the strength of ITO support. Some of Alroey's most intriguing findings expose how the ITO established information bureaus throughout the Pale of Settlement and thereby exposed potential Jewish emigrants to Territorialist ideas. He finds that “the emigrants came to appreciate the ITO's willingness to come to their aid,” while the Zionists mostly “disregarded the migrants’ plight and offered help only to those who wanted to go to Palestine” (121). Alroey correctly concludes that the Territorialists offered the masses a compelling solution to the “central question on the Jewish social agenda” (122): Wohin—wither?
Chapter 3 delves into ITO ideology in greater detail. Alroey highlights how Territorialists sought an immediate territorial solution for homeless European and Russian Jews, while the Zionist movement “did not regard the pogroms as an existential threat” (170). Territorialism ranked humanitarian goals above nation building, whereas Zionism prioritized a Jewish state above the rescue of the Jewish masses. Alroey's archival research strengthens this point. He finds, for example, that Zionist officials in the Yishuv dissuaded 60 percent of those inquiring about immigration to Palestine from making Aliyah (137).
Even once immigrants arrived in the Yishuv, there was no guarantee they would remain in the Zionist camp. In fact, as Alroey discusses in chapter 4, a significant number of those settling in Ottoman Palestine supported Territorialism, including Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. Alroey delves into period documents to demonstrate “the breadth and diversity” of Territorialism's supporters in the Yishuv (196).
Chapter 5, “The Search for a Homeland,” summarizes several Territorialist projects, including efforts to secure land in locales such as Angola, Australia, and East Africa. Yet the sketches Alroey provides lack the drama and narrative coherence that I find most compelling about the ITO's barren efforts. I recognize that this prejudice stems from my own familiarity with these fascinating stories. Nonetheless, given Alroey's own goal of providing a synoptic approach to ITO plans, he should have at least mentioned the ITO mission to Cyrenaica (in today's Libya), an important precursor to the ITO commission sent to Angola and its nearly successful negotiations to obtain land in the Portuguese colony.
The final chapter focuses on the afterlife of Territorialism following the Balfour Declaration in 1917. To stalwart Territorialists, the compromise language of the declaration was tantamount to abandoning Zionism's goal of creating a Jewish state. Though Zangwill was reconciled to Zionism's ascendancy, he maintained his criticism of the movement's leadership until his death in 1926. Between 1917 and the early 1930s, Territorialism faded from the political scene, but the rise of Hitler spurred a revival. In the latter half of chapter 6, Alroey discusses this “New Territorialism” and the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization as the ITO's successor. Though the Freeland League never achieved the ITO's popularity, Alroey is right to include the visionary group's work in his study.
Alroey concludes Zionism without Zion with an important observation about nationalism in general. He writes that “[r]esearch tools and scientific calculations”—like those employed by the ITO and the Freeland League—“have no power in a national discourse, whose core is premised on myth” (303). Here, Alroey's work connects with that of the late Anthony Smith, an influential historian of nationalism. Though Smith's work does not appear in Alroey's bibliography, there can be little doubt from Zionism without Zion that the ethnosymbolism of Israel was the Zionists' “secret strength” and the “main weakness” of Territorialism (304).
