CAZALET, EDWARD°

CAZALET, EDWARD° (1827–1883), British industrialist who worked for the return of the Jews to Ereẓ Israel. Through his contacts with Russia, Cazalet became aware of the hardships endured by Russian Jewry. He proposed settling the Jews in Syria and Palestine, under British protection, and advocated his ideas in a pamphlet entitled England's Policy in the East: Our Relations with Russia and the Future of Syria (18792). In 1881 Cazalet sent James Alexander, a Jew, to Constantinople, to negotiate with the Turkish government regarding a permit to lay a railway from Syria to Mesopotamia and the receipt of adjacent lands for settlement. His intention was to employ Jewish immigrants in the railway construction, and settle them along the route. The negotiations lasted for several years, but when Great Britain consolidated its control over Egypt (1883), there was no longer room for negotiation and Cazalet's activities ended. His grandson, VICTOR ALEXANDER CAZALET (1896–1943), was a Conservative member of parliament, chairman of the Parliamentary Pro-Palestine Committee, and a leading supporter of Zionism. He was a close friend of chaim weizmann ; his last public function included a meeting with david ben-gurion in Palestine. Cazalet was killed near Gibraltar in July 1943 in the plane crash which also took the life of Polish government-in-exile head General Wladyslaw Sikorski. Cazalet was one of the most important and active Gentile pro-Zionists in England. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: N. Sokolow, History of Zionism (1919), 267; I. Klausner, Be-Hitorer Am (1962), index. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: ODNB online for both Edward and Victor Cazalet; R.R. James, Victor Cazalet: A Life (1996). (Israel Klausner)