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The scene takes place on a beautiful night in 1916 in London's Westminster district. Two elegantly dressed men stroll in the pale glow of the moon. They discuss the future of Palestine, this province of the Ottoman Empire, the conquest of which His Majesty's army is preparing as a continuation of the Arab revolt sparked by Thomas Edward Lawrence, known as “Lawrence of Arabia”.
The man with a goatee and mustache conducting the interview is Chaïm Weizmann, 42, a renowned Jewish chemist and professor at the University of Manchester (UK). The man who would become the first president of the State of Israel was struck by the pogroms in Tsarist Russia, where he was born, and went on to lead the British branch of the World Zionist Organization. This movement, founded at the end of the 19th century by the Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl, advocates the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The ancestral homeland of this scattered ghost nation was then inhabited by 500,000 Arabs and fewer than 40,000 Jews.
Chaïm Weizmann (1874–1952), first President of Israel, from 1948 to 1952. BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
The man who listens With shiny hair and graying bacchantes, the former Conservative Prime Minister (1902-1905), Lord Arthur James Balfour, then First Lord of the Admiralty. Ironically, in 1905 he had passed a very restrictive law intended to stem the flow of anti-Semitic persecutees from Eastern Europe that was flowing across the English Channel at the time. Like many of his colleagues, Balfour is influenced by prejudices against Jews, whom he mistrusts as much as he idealizes them.
Thanks to a journalist friend, Weizmann entered Britain's ruling circles. His sesame? A process for producing synthetic acetone, a compound essential for making explosives. Amid a conflict with Germany, the main exporter of this solvent in Europe, the discovery comes at the right time. In return for his contribution to the war effort, Professor Weizmann gained the ear of the highest officials of the Crown.
Centuries of persecution
As he walked the streets of London that evening in 1916, accompanied by Lord Balfour, with whom he had dined, the Zionist leader made his main argument: the interests of his movement and the United Kingdom were aligned. The man of science may operate from a small, dark apartment in Piccadilly Circus, but through his charisma and interpersonal skills he has shaped the image of a “King of the Jews.” As good Protestants, Balfour and Prime Minister David Lloyd George were steeped in the romantic mythology of the return to Zion, which was presented as a prelude to final salvation, the second coming of Christ to earth.
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