It is the image familiar to tourists and Israelis alike, the face of the father of modern Zionism that appears on mugs, tea-towels and every other flat surface imaginable.
Few people’s casual holiday snaps have become as famous as the picture of Theodor Herzl taken in Basel, gazing idly into the horizon as he leaned over the balcony of his hotel room, overlooking the Rhine river.
Herzl’s exhortation to the future builders of Zion, “If you will it, it is no dream,” has become inextricably linked with this picture. It is, effectively, shorthand for the vision of the future of Israel.
But now the businessman who owns the hotel in Basel, where Herzl relaxed on the balcony during a break in the 1901 Zionist Congress, is about to sell the property.
