Analogous considerations, buttressed by his own futuristic narrative, inspired Theodor Herzl’s enthusiastic response (“excellent!”) to an overture in 1896 by an agent of Abdul Hamid II suggesting that he marshal “Jewish power” on the sultan’s behalf, especially in the Armenian matter. Herzl was acutely conscious that his leverage with the sultan would evaporate once Armenians ceased to be a threat, while Abdul Hamid himself wanted an armistice only to buy time to marshal his forces. All was very hugger-mugger: “Under no circumstances are the Armenians to learn that we want to use them in order to erect a Jewish state.” But the wary Armenians kept Herzl at arm’s length.
Abdul Hamid’s precondition for the audience that the Zionist leader wanted to jump-start his Palestine project was Herzl’s success in persuading newspapers “in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna to treat the Armenian question in a manner more friendly to the Turks.” Herzl declared himself ready “a ` me mettre en campagne.” Proposing to “create an atmosphere” receptive to the “submission of the Armenians,” he promised not only to contact journalists throughout Europe but also to produce a series of articles in Vienna’s leading daily, his own Neue Freie Presse, on his favorable impressions of Constantinople’s ruling circles. A puff piece appeared the next day. Herzl gave interviews to the correspondents of Novosti and other Russian papers, to Israel Zangwill for the Sunday Times, and to Lucien Wolf, foreign affairs editor of the Daily Graphic. The latter nearly blew Herzl’s cover by asking about a rumor that the sultan was angling for Jewish support against the Armenians in return for benevolence toward Herzl’s plans for Palestine. The “new Moses” indignantly denied it.
“Down in Turkey, far away”: Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres, and Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany* | Margaret Lavinia Anderson
