would be master of your own fate. To till the soil and become free in mystical contact with mother earth. To create a society without masters and slaves, where everyone would be equal, where no one would be rich or poor. To do all this in your own state, in your own homeland, to follow in the footsteps of the ancient heroes of your people, to resurrect a Jewish commonwealth, to live where the events of the Bible actually took place. This was the dream.
It was a dream so beautiful, so basic, so tangible, it drew the best, the most adventurous, from all over Eastern Europe to a tiny far-off Turkish colony called Palestine.
It was a glorious movement of liberation, pure and simple, its aim to create a society untainted by any struggle except the struggle with its own soul.
Just one fact was completely overlooked in the excitement: Palestine was not an empty country.
* * *
The story of Zionism begins with a little book, written by Herzl in a mood of feverish excitement, that appeared in February, 1896. He called it Der Judenstaat, "The Jewish State," and it struck the Jewish masses in Europe like a thunderbolt. Coming at exactly the right time, in exactly the right mood, providing answers to questions on everybody's mind, it was one of those few documents which have changed the course of history. In this book, Herzl set down a complete, detailed blueprint of the future Jewish state. It contained such chapters as "Workers' Dwellings," "Purchase of Land," "Unskilled Laborers"; it described what the flag should look like; it told how the project was to be financed and dealt with many other topics.
But the book did not contain one single reference to the fact that Palestine was inhabited by Arabs. In fact, the word "Arab" does not appear in the book at all. As