Centuries of support for Jewish Restoration to Israel

Doron draws our attention to this excellent article from Mideast Web, posted 2003, by Ami Isseroff. A brief citation is posted below. Follow the link for the full, excellent article complete with bibliography ...


The Balfour declaration, offering Palestine to the Jews... reflected a deep-seated philosophical and religious movement for restoration of the Jews that had become rooted in British culture ....

.... The pagan Roman Emperor Julian began the project of restoring the Jews to Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple. He fell in battle before the project could be completed ...

....In 1621, the British MP Sir Henry Finch ... encouraged Jews to reassert their claim to the Holy Land, writing, "Out of all the places of thy dispersion, East, West, North and South, His purpose is to bring thee home again and to marry thee to Himself by faith for evermore." ...

... In 1799, Napoleon issued a proclamation promising to restore Palestine to the Jews, as he was camped outside Acre.

... the idea had been planted and took root in British soil. ...prominent Britons learned Hebrew, wrote novels about restoration of the Jewish commonwealth, began settlement and exploration societies and advocated restoration of the Jews in public and in private. Among the advocates we may include Lord Lindsay, Lord Shaftesbury Lord Palmerston, Disraeli, Lord Manchester, George Eliot, Holman Hunt, Sir Charles Warren, Hall Caine and others. Shaftesebury was probably responsible for the phrase "A country without a nation for a nation without a country," later to become the Zionist slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land." He asserted, " There is unbroken identity of Jewish race and Jewish mind down to our times; but the great revival can take place only in the Holy Land."

Lord Lindsay wrote: The soil of "Palestine still enjoys her sabbaths, and only waits for the return of her banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with her agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was in the days of Solomon.....

Charles Henry Churchill, a British resident of Damascus, also became a zealous propagator of the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. ...

In 1839 the Church of Scotland ...report on "the Condition of the Jews in their land." ... was widely publicized in Great Britain and it was followed by a "Memorandum to Protestant Monarchs of Europe for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine." This memorandum was printed verbatim in the London Times, including an advertisement by Lord Shaftesbury igniting an enthusiastic campaign by the Times for restoration of the Jews.

In August 1840 the Times reported that the British government was considering Jewish restoration. ...Lord Shaftesbury was the most active restoration lobbyist. 'The inherent vitality,' he wrote, 'of the Hebrew race reasserts itself with amazing persistence. Its genius, to tell the truth, adapts itself more or less to all the currents of civilization all over the world, nevertheless always emerging with distinctive features and a gallant recovery of vigor.

Lord Shaftesbury lobbied for the idea with Prime Minister Palmerston and his successors in the government and was incidentally instrumental in the considerable assistance and protection against oppression that Britain hence­forth extended to the Jews already living in Palestine.

Sir George Gawler, a hero of Waterloo, urged the restoration of the Jews as the remedy for the desolation of Palestine. In 1848 he wrote, "I should be truly rejoiced to see in Palestine a strong guard of Jews established in flourishing agricultural settlements and ready to hold their own upon the mountains of Israel against all aggressors. I can wish for nothing more glorious in this life than to have my share in helping them do so." Gawler formed a Palestine colonisation fund to help the work of settlement.

..... Toward the end of the nineteenth century, British interest in the Middle East increased, because it was considered essential to guard the route to India and to guarantee the stability of the Turkish empire against Russian and other imperialist threats. Settlement of Jews in Palestine was offered first as a way to bolster the faltering Turks and help guarantee the security of the Suez canal. The idea which had seemed utopian became a more or less respectable and acceptable project.