Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza

[Alex]

The whole process of Britain creating a new homeland for the Jews was begun with the Balfour Declaration (which was helped along by Britain coming to control much of the Arabian territory previously under Turkish Empire control after World War I - that is they suddenly came into possession of a bunch of land that was in no way culturally British. Of course this was at odds with the British promise of independence for Arabs (as dramatized in Lawrence of Arabia).

Popular support for something like the Balfour Declaration built in Western Europe (and in Britain particularly) as a response to the brutal anti-Jewish pograms that had been going on in Russia for most of the previous 50 years and seemed to slowly be spreading west (Poland had joined in and virulent anti-Semitism was seen to be shifting from isolation to violence in many other European locations). The Dreyfus trial in France caused a lot of sympathy for the mistreatment of Jews among certain classes of Europeans and then it was brought into stark relief in 1911 when a sham "blood libel" trial was brought again a man by the name of Beilis in Kiev. He was accused of murdering a child for use in a Jewish blood ritual.

The trial was widely seen as a sham and despite an acquittal by an all-Christian jury (despite an exceedingly unfair trial) a lot of sympathy swung towards European Jewry and the obstacles they faced. For decades Jews had been escaping Russia back to the Holy Lands where wealthy Jews in Europe supported them with donations to purchase land.

For many "enlightened" Europeans the answer was essentially what some Americans were trying to do with the creation of Liberia. Avoid the conflict by removing them from the sphere of conflict. Some people simply wanted to be helpful. Other supporters were purely anti-Semitic and hoped all the Jews would leave Europe.

But it probably would never have been a successful endeavor if the Russian pogroms and Beilis trial had never happened (in coincidental conjunction with the ending of World War I on geographical terms favorable to England).