Nietzschean Zionism Although Buber did believe that to truly grow fond of Nietzsche one must desert him. Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist movement and future first president of the State of Israel, was influenced by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Weizmann believed that the Jews lacked power, and in Zionism he saw a phenomena that would steer the Jews toward power and freeing themselves. Whether Weizmann’s intention was conscious or not, it relates to Nietzsche’s idea of Übermensch. Although Weizmann did believe the Jews contained sufficient intellect to understand and incorporate the writings of Nietzsche into their lives. Weizmann believed this
Chaim Weizmann was afraid of the rise of the Nazis. From 1933 there were year-on-year leaps in mass immigration by 50%. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's attempted reassurance on economic grounds in a White Paper did little to stabilize Arab-Israeli relations. In 1936 Weizmann addressed the Peel Commission (set up by the returning Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin), whose job it was to consider the working of the British Mandate of Palestine. On 25 November 1936, testifying before the Peel Commission, Weizmann said that there were in Europe 6,000,000 Jews ... "for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live