Protecting the Rights of Jews, Fighting for a Jewish State: The Dual Nature of Zionist Diplomacy at the League of Nations

The founding of the League of Nations in 1919 held a promise for Jews around the world. The minorities protection system, overseeing international minority treaties signed at the Paris peace conference, sought to protect Jewish rights in Eastern Europe. Moreover, The League`s mandates system created a tutelage period for Jews to develop their Jewish National Home in Palestine, under British hospices.

Throughout the 1920`s, Jewish diplomats in Geneva, the seat of the League of Nations, kept the two causes apart. Representatives of Jewish organizations, like Lucien Wolf and Zvi Aberson, lobbied and petitioned the League`s Minorities Section, while Zionist diplomats, like Chaim Weizmann and Victor Jacobson, lobbied the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) and concentrated their endeavors on Zionist causes in Palestine.

In the 1930`s, with the rise of Nazi Germany, the surge of Antisemitism in Eastern Europe and increasing terror in Palestine, Zionist diplomats at the League of Nations occupied themselves with the European Jewish problem and sought to convince League officials that Palestine is the best solution for Europe`s unwanted Jews.

This paper provides an analysis of the dual nature of Zionist diplomacy at the League of Nations in the 1930`s, focusing on three main characters: Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Goldmann and Ze`ev Jabotinsky. These Zionist leaders saw Geneva as an ideal platform to advance Jewish interests and believed in the moral authority of the League to safeguard Jewish rights, in Europe and Palestine. Central to this dual Jewish "diasporic-nationalistic" nature was Goldmann, who acted in Geneva both as the chairman of the World Jewish Congress and head of the Jewish Agency`s local office.