The Conflict Amongst American Jewry between Judaism and Zionism - in 1926

More than 300 delegates from around the United States attended the 1926 conference that created the Association for Jewish Culture and Education called at the initiative of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to create a permanent national organization for Jewish education. The official call says that the purpose was to overcome the fragmented and inadequate state of Jewish education in American Jewish communities.

It was held on May 16, 1926, at the Astor Hotel.

Its objectives included promoting Hebrew language and literature; increasing knowledge of Eretz Yisrael, then Mandate Palestine; strengthening Jewish youth organizations; promoting Jewish literature and the fine arts; encouraging Jewish education among children, youth and adults; and developing educational material about Eretz-Yisrael and Zionism.

A substantial proposed budget was $290,000 for its first year, including the educational and cultural organizations already affiliated with the ZOA, such as Young Judaea and Histadruth Ivrith.

Chaim Nahman Bialik was present. Ze'ev Jabotinsky was not invited although in the country.

And, of course, there was an important dispute over how explicitly Zionist the new organization should be.

The official program adopted by the conference spoke of Jewish cultural values, Hebrew, Eretz-Yisrael, Jewish aspirations, etc. But Max Rhoade of Washington, representing the minority of the program committee, proposed inserting a much more explicitly Zionist formulation. His amendment would have said that:

“Zionism as the expression of the Jewish national spirit is inseparable from Jewish education and culture…”

It called for Jewish education to be infused with “the Zionist spirit” and connected with the Jewish renaissance in Palestine.

That amendment was rejected.

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Anti-Zionism in Parliament, 1923

On June 21, 1923, Lord Islington, among others, spoke in the British House of Lords to move to reconsider the Mandate over Palestine.

One of his points was to separate "Zionism" from the Jews residing in the area, as if Zionism is not the Jewish national liberation movement, as if Jews do not want an independent polity in their historic homeland and as if Zionism is illegitimate.  And as if only super isolationist insular religious messianic-beleiving Jews are the only 'true' and 'genuine' Jews. As if only non-Jewish anti-Zionists have the right and privilege of telling the vast majority of Jews that they're wrong about the centrality of Israel.

Here is how he phrased it:

The Jewish people in Palestine have lived in the past in harmony with the Arab community. They have enjoyed in largo measure the same privileges as their Ottoman fellow subjects and, I venture to say also as a fact, they never agitated for Zionism. I do not think—I speak subject to correction—that there has ever been a demand from the Jewish Community in Palestine for the introduction of a Zionist Home in that country. The whole agitation has conic from outside, from Jews in other parts of the world. I go further, and say—I think I have said it before; if so, I repeat—that a very large number of the Jewish community in Palestine to-day look with considerable aversion not only upon the Zionist Home but upon the Jews who are being introduced into the country from Eastern Europe.

That claim, as presented, continues to be voiced, by Jews and non-Jews to this day - and we'll ignore his historical untruths and prejudice against East European Jewry.

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The Litani River as a northern Border (Updated)

This has recently appeared:

which recalls the 1919 efforts to set the northern border of the future state of Israel.

From the Zionist Organization Statement on Palestine at the Paris Peace Conference on February 3, 1919:

"The boundaries of Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below:

Starting on the North at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity south of Sidon and following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr El-Karaon thence to El-Bire, following the dividing line between the two basins of the Wadi El-Korn and the Wadi Et-Teim, thence in a southerly direction following the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity west of Beit Jenn, then eastward following the northern watersheds of the Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway.

 

In the east a line close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba."

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UPDATE:

Arabe sources claim there's a suggestion to move the border northwards to the Awali River:

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How Oren Yiftachel Sees Zionism

How do Israeli academic anti-colonialists who identify with the cause of a liberated Palestine view Zionism? What is their conceptual thinking? How do they grasp the historical record?

One prominent such figure is Oren Yiftachel. As his biography attests, he is a product of Australia's higher education, home to the deveklopment of post-colonial studies.

I have selected an excerpt from a recent article, published in Hebrew in the Van Leer Institute's journal Theory and Criticism that recently appeared. Even the most cursory reading as well as a nominal knowledge of Jewish nationalism can easily notice that Yiftachel chooses to denude all historic depth of Jewish attachment to, residence in and returning to the Land of Israel over a 3,000 year period.

There is an absence of the literature, the religious rituals and cultural customs attached to the land, the various Returns of Zion, prayers and poetry, laws and commandments, financial support for the communities living in the Land during the centuries of Exile and so much more. He adopts fully the approach poularized by A.B. Yehoshua in his essay "Between Right and Right" [translated from his Hebrew Bein Zechut Le-Zechut], Doubleday, 1981 in which, as one reviewer puts it, he "proposes justifications for Israeli statehood in terms of universal morality rather than particularistic religious entitlement.".

On the other hand, the Palestinian narrative, all theoretical, lacks any critical review or detailed attention from Yiftachel. They, in good part, are "liberal".

The excerpt:

There is a clear disregard in Palestinian academic and political discourse in the Diaspora and the occupied territories for the tragic fate of Jews in the twentieth century and the need to discuss their future in the Middle East, most of which is hostile to Zionism. Zionism is perceived by many Palestinians primarily as an ideology of taking over the land, and not as much of its members formulated it — a national movement to save Jews from anti-Semitism and persecution. Palestinian discourse sometimes lacks the understanding that Israel served and still serves as a land of refuge in a historical homeland, and is characterized by frequent disregard for the legitimate rights of Jews the Israelis have earned them from the family of nations. 

The Zionist project is perceived as one-dimensional – an occupying homogeneous power of which the Palestinians are eternal victims. The critical discussion of the active part of the Palestinians in the disaster that rages upon their people is extremely poor, except for a few exceptions such as the researchers Salim Tamari, Rama Hammami, Asaad Ghanem or Yazid Sayigh, and its lack of an internal critical discussion on the devastating consequences of Palestinian defiance and terrorism in the century of struggle. Also, from the Palestinian discourse is almost completely absent an examining of non-colonial structural factors, such as Israeli nationalism and liberalism, which also shape the conflict and sometimes even moderate it.

And yet, it is important to note that throughout a century of conflict there have been Palestinian voices calling for mutual recognition and division of the land, led by communist leaders such as Emil Habibi and Tawfik Ziad but also prominent figures from the Nashashibi and Dajani families or relatively liberal  organizations led by leaders like Hanan Ashrawi or Mustafa Barghouti.

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That 1942 Lord Moyne Speech

Lord Moyne was serving as Britain's Minister for State for the Middle East from January 1944 in Cairo, Egypt and was assassinated by two member of the Lechi undergound on November 5 that year.

In a 2012 interview, Yitzchak Shamir, the main commander over the operation was adamant why he was killed:

because we fought against the British in this area, we took him for a target. This was the main reason for his assassination. Certainly, we had known about his hostile attitude towards Zionism, towards the idea of ingathering of the Jewish people here. He was against any Jewish aliyah, any Jewish immigration. He didn’t believe that there exists such a thing like a Jewish nation, or a Jewish people … and therefore, we decided to make this operation.

At the Lechi Veterans' web site, one can read this:

In the House of Lords in June 1942, he expressed his support for the White Paper and limitations on Jewish immigration. He found the Zionist vision narrow, advocating a solution of a federation of Arab lands.

When he came to serve as minister of state in Cairo, Lord Moyne launched extreme plans to strangle the Yishuv. He openly spoke of Palestine as an Arab land; Jews were a mixed race, and the Jews of Palestine could be relocated to another land in Africa.

Bernard Wasserstein, in a 1980 article, reprinted in Midstream ("New Light on the Moyne Murder," Midstream 26, March 1980: 30-38), sought to debunk the "racial" elements of that speech and wrote:

When Moyne states that Jews are racially mixed he is putting them into the same category as every other European people, including the British. To interpret his speech as signifying that he considered the Jews as inlerior alter the Nazi fashion is therefore nonsense. Indeed, by arguing that the most "primitive" of known races is racially "pure" whereas the most "advanced" are racially intermixed, he is precisely contradicting one of the basic premises of Nazi racialist ideology. From allthis it will be evident that there is no substance in the charge of racialist antiSemitism made against Moyne on the basis of his House of Lords speech.

What did Moyne declare on June 9, 1942 in the House of Lords? Here:

Since the Mahomedan invasion of 632 the Arabs have occupied Palestine for practically the same period. To these Arabs the Jews are not only alien in culture but also in blood. It is very often loosely said that Jews are Semites, but anthropologists tell us that, pure as they have kept their culture, the Jewish race has been much mixed with Gentiles since the beginning of the Diaspora. During the Babylonian captivity they acquired a strong Hittite admixture, and it is obvious that the Armenoid features which are still found among the Sephardim have been bred out of the Ashkenazim by an admixture of Slav blood.

The Zionist movement has its main spring among those Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Be that as it is understood, or misunderstood, the speech is important in other ways.

The speech was delivered on the background of another speech, one delivered by Lord Wedgwood who was a strong supporter of Zionism and actually a supporter of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who had adopted Wedgwood's Seventh Dominion idea in 1927. The Irgun at the time of its reprisal raids during the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 made effective use of a letter Wedgwood wrote on May 30, 1938 which advocated an armed Jewish civil revolt in Palestine. 

That May 1942 speech can be found in this file. And see here, on page 161.

It caused quite a ruckus. Wedgwood defended himself and Moyne participated in the debate.

It deserves to be quoted in its entirety.  The text is taken from Hansard.

Lord Wedgwood did not mean what he said. Anybody who heard the broadcast which Lord Wedgwood read out must attach the ordinary meaning to the language, and interpret it as a direct incitement to the Jews of Palestine to seize political domination and the land from the present inhabitants. I am always amazed at the attitude of Lord Wedgwood. He boasts of his patriotism and he parades his love of England, and I cannot see how he can reconcile himself to the role of abusing and libelling his own country and his own countrymen.

Lord Wedgwood's incitement to Zionists to seize the land of Palestine. In considering this treasonable appeal to the Jews to levy war on their own legal Government it is, of course, reasonable to consider whether the Jews have, as the noble Lord suggested, any well-founded complaint against the administration of the Palestine Mandate. The Zionist claim has raised two burning issues: firstly, the demand for large-scale immigration into an already overcrowded country, and, secondly, racial domination by these newcomers over the original inhabitants.

In 1922, when the present Prime Minister was Colonial Secretary, he issued a statement on British policy in Palestine which is very much to the point in regard to the Jewish claim to political domination and the swamping of the Arab population by immigration to-day. Mr. Churchill stated that His Majesty's Government had not at any time contemplated the subordination of the Arabic population, language or culture in Palestine. Attention was further drawn to the fact that the terms of the Balfour Declaration do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded in Palestine. It was also laid down that immigration cannot be so great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals. "It is essential," the statement went on, "to ensure that the immigration should not be a burden on the people of Palestine as a whole." It was stated that up to that time immigration had fulfilled these conditions, the number of immigrants since the British occupation having been about 25,000.

Your Lordships should bear in mind that figure of 25,000 immigrants, which Mr. Churchill considered reasonable for the four years after the end of the last war, and compare that with the demand, backed by the noble Lord, for bringing in 3,000,000 Jews immediately after this war to swamp the population of Palestine. The inhabitants of that small country—about the size of Wales, but much less fertile—are already threatened with conditions of grave congestion. At the present rate of increase, the Arab population will double within twenty-seven years. All the fertile soil is not only occupied but very closely cultivated. At the end of the last war, the Jewish community numbered 80,000. It now numbers about 450,000; and yet the Zionist Organization have indignantly refused the terms of the White Paper, under which further immigration should be allowed up to another 75,000 in five years. They have also rejected the proposal 1o co-operate in a Joint Government by taking over responsibility for certain departments in proportion to the respective populations, as they claim not merely equal citizenship but political ascendency.

There is certainly no basis for these demands under the Mandate. There is no question of this country having broken faith. The Mandate obliges the Mandatory to ensure that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced. Over and over again Commissions and White Papers have expressed the opinion that neither the Mandate nor the Balfour Declaration intended Palestine to be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population. The tragedy of the Palestinian question is, as was said by the Royal Commission, that it is a conflict between two rights. When Jerusalem was destroyed and its site ploughed up in the year 135 A.D., the Jews had occupied the country for about 1,300 years. Since the Mahomedan invasion of 632 the Arabs have occupied Palestine for practically the same period. To these Arabs the Jews are not only alien in culture but also in blood. It is very often loosely said that Jews are Semites, but anthropologists tell us that, pure as they have kept their culture, the Jewish race has been much mixed with Gentiles since the beginning of the Diaspora. During the Babylonian captivity they acquired a strong Hittite admixture, and it is obvious that the Armenoid features which are still found among the Sephardim have been bred out of the Ashkenazim by an admixture of Slav blood.

The Zionist movement has its main spring among those Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe. Their leaders demand that an already overcrowded Palestine should be trebled in its population by the admixture of another three million Jews immediately after the war. Now it is not a matter of putting a quart into a pint pot, it is a matter of putting exactly three pints into a pint pot. Successive inquiries have shown that immigration on this scale would be a disastrous mistake, and is indeed an impracticable dream. A far smaller measure of immigration led to the Palestine disturbances which lasted from 1936 to 1939, and showed that the Arabs, who have lived and buried their dead for fifty generations in Palestine, will not willingly surrender their land and self-government to the Jews. We may deplore it, but there is the stark naked fact, and you cannot get away from it by sentimental appeals to the hardship on the Jews. This country is responsible for law and order in Palestine, and we cannot possibly wash our hands of the country and let Jews and Arabs wage a civil war, as suggested by Lord Wedgwood.

But Lord Wedgwood's effort has a far greater power of mischief in being addressed to America. It must surely have a deplorable effect upon our Allies to be told by an ex-Cabinet Minister that the Palestine Administration do not like Jews, and that there are enough Anti-Semites in Great Britain to back up the Hitler policy and spirit. This suggestion is a complete reversal of the truth. If a comparison is to be made with the Nazis it is surely those who wish to force an imported régime upon the Arab population who are guilty of the spirit of aggression and domination. Lord Wedgwood's proposal that Arabs should be subjugated by force to a Jewish régime is inconsistent with the Atlantic Charter, and that ought to be told to America. The second principle of that Charter lays down that the United States and ourselves desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; and the third principle lays down that they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of Government under which they will live.

Surely it is time for the Zionists to abandon this appeal to force, and to seek a settlement with the Arabs by consent. The Zionist leaders expect about 7,000,000 Jews to be surviving in Eastern Europe at the end of the war, and they reject the policy of re-establishing Jewish communities under civilized conditions in Europe. They apparently expect the loss of half this number if the other half can get control of Palestine. The war will end with the heavy problem of trying to resettle these most pitiable victims of Nazi abominations. Millions of people cannot be left indefinitely the objects of charity in refugee camps. A merciful settlement must be a quick settlement. We ought, therefore, to look at once in all directions to find means to re-establish these martyrs to Nazi oppression in a new life. The Zionists look only to Palestine. On May 25, at the annual dinner of the Anglo-American Palestine Committee, Dr. Weizmann again declared that Palestine alone could absorb and provide for the homeless and Stateless Jews uprooted by the war. It is to canalize all the sympathy of the world for the martyrdom of the Jews that the Zionists reject all schemes to re-settle these victims elsewhere—in Germany, or Poland, or in sparsely populated regions such as Madagascar.

But even in their wish to occupy the pre-Christian home of the Jewish race, the Zionists are far too narrow in their outlook. Palestine itself is but a small fraction of the ancient land of Syria. I do not believe that the problem of overcrowding applies to Syria and the Lebanon and Transjordan as it does to Palestine. It would be physically possible for those States, if they were willing, to absorb large numbers of Jews to mutual advantage, and without any threat to their own political independence. If the fear of Jewish domination could be removed they might indeed be glad to welcome the Jewish immigrants, with their well-known industry and intelligence and with their capital. So far as I know, no effort has been made to explore these possibilities, and we ought surely, without waiting for the peace, to see how far the regions to the north of Palestine can offer asylum for the Jewish immigration, within the old limits of historic Syria. I hope the Government will give serious consideration to the possibility of negotiations with the neighbouring States of the Levant to take part in re-settling the Jews. It is obvious that the fear of political domination by immigrant Jews will be decreased if they can be spread over a wider area and shared among different Administrations. A Federation of the Northern Arab States might well assist such a solution, but federation may be long in coming, and we ought at once to discuss with the Governments concerned to what extent and under what conditions they could admit Jewish immigration without swamping their own nationalities and independence.

I trust that the revelations in Lord Wedgwood's broadcast will have finished once and for all with the idea of arming the Jews in such a way as would encourage the attempt to seize the land of Palestine. This is quite a different matter from legitimate arming in their own defence, and I think it is hardly necessary for the Government to assure the Arabs that they would not be a party to such an assault upon their rights as has been suggested. But I hope there will be no mistake in America that Lord Wedgwood is speaking only for himself in the suggestion that we ought to give up the Palestine Mandate to the United States, in the hope and expectation that she would repudiate our binding obligations. It seems to me the broadcast of Lord Wedgwood is most of all deplorable because the salvation of civilization depends primarily upon a good understanding between us and the United States. All through his broadcast runs the suggestion that we are not only unjust but feeble and incompetent. I can imagine no greater disservice than to have planted such suspicions in the minds of millions of American listeners. How are we to plan the peace if British spokesmen are to sow distrust and contempt in the minds of our Allies?

Judge for yourselves how pro-Zionism was Moyne.

___________

See also my previous post regarding this here.

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Peter Beinart Goes 'Supreme'

Peter Beinart uploaded a short clip on Instagram. Its message:

Of course, that is a sleight-of-words exercise.

He has substituted "supremacy" for "political sovereignty". He then suggests that a Jewish state is inherently wrong in that it asserts its sovereignty over non-Jews.

But what is truly invidious is that he knows well that he is employing a term that resonates as racist, such as "white supremacist".

Aside from being wrong, what he is encouraging is violence directed at Israelis and, as we have seen since October 2023, the pro-Palestine forces do not make any distinction between Israeli and Jews and go about physically assaulting Jews, damaging Jewish property and institutions and seeking to commit psychological injury to Jews for being Jews. In their logic, all Jews must be 'Zionists'.

Of course, that destroys Beinart's thesis which is that Jews should not be permitted to run a political state. But to explain to him that, at least in the modern era, a main impetetus for Zionism was antisemitism - in addition to the 2000-year old vision of a return to Zion - and that today's antisemitism simply justifies the right of Jews to maintain a state, would be beyond his intellectual grasp.

And why?

Because Beinart's prejudices and political orientation override any rational thinking in which he may engage.

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Introducing Rashid Rida on Zionism

Anyone who follows pro-'Palestine' Islamic propaganda will recognzie in the excerpts below the source material for the virulent antisemitism, exaggerations and misrepresentations emanating from the Palestinian National Authgority official bodies as well as activists on behalf on 'Palestine'.

They originate from Rashid Rida.

Another scholar claims "As one of the most influential advocates of Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism, we shall argue, Riḍā’s critiques of Zionism and Jewish expansion in Palestine were part of his anti-colonial activities against the ‘Christian’ west." Nevertheless, he notes that Rida asserted as to Jewish goals, "allegedly, they schemed to possess Jerusalem and its neighbouring regions to establish their Kingdom of Israel and turn it into the Temple of Solomon, against the desire of Christians and Muslims (ʿAbduh and Riḍā [1328] 1910, V:139–140)."

He further quotes Rida "Under the title “King of the Jews, their Temple, their Messiah and the True Messiah,” Riḍā stated that the Jews arrogantly disobeyed their prophets, who regularly warned them against God’s punishment if they abandoned His commandments (Al-Manār 30/7: 546–556)."

And Rida becomes starkly clear in this excerpt:

One of Islam’s greatest manifestations, according to Riḍā, was the confirmation of glad tidings of Jesus as a prophet of God and not his son. In this reading, God entitled Muslims to inherit the Holy Land and to build the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the place of the destroyed temple in order to establish the worship of God alone. Riḍā repeated the traditional Muslim view that God placed those who believe in Jesus above the unbelievers (Qur’an Āl ʿImrān 3:55), but that He had struck the Jews with humiliation by making them lose their kingdom until the Day of Resurrection. The Jews, Riḍā said, would follow the Antichrist as their assumed king fighting under his banner in the Holy Land, but Muslims would finally achieve victory upon them and kill them, and the true Messiah would appear and reveal the truth by destroying the Antichrist (Al-Manār 30/7: 554).

And in this:

Muslims did not persecute the Jews but treated them with justice and mercy. He observed that the Jews started to permit each other to reside in Jerusalem around the western side of the wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Al-Buraq), performing the rituals and sacrifices against the will of Muslims and Christians in the world. They had strong hope to multiply their numbers to own the Holy City and the rest of Palestine in preparation for the appearance of the Messiah again as the King of Israel (Al-Manār 30/5: 391). 

Rida also employed the term nakba already in early 1935:

A few months before Riḍā’s death, the Egyptian historian and religious scholar ʻAbd al-Wahhāb al-Najjār (1862–1941) gave a lecture at Jamʿiyyat al-Shubbān al-Muslimīn (Association of Young Muslim Men) in which he maintained that the Jewish Zionist presence in Palestine was to be like a short “summer cloud” that would clear up soon after a great shock, followed by the defeat of the Jews after the restoration of the kingdom of David and the appearance of the Messiah (Al-Manār 34/8: 607–612)...After the lecture, Riḍā stood up and disagreed with al-Najjār in his arguments. Instead of following this apocalyptic way of thinking, Riḍā requested Arabs and Muslims to “take admonition in the Jewish Zionist nakba (catastrophe) by means of the worldly affairs and social natural laws” (Al-Manār 34/8: 608). By this he urged his Muslim readers not to see the Jewish success on the basis of their religious zeal but due to their work to achieve their political goals. 

Rida "called upon Arab Christians and Arab Muslims, supported by other Muslims in the world, to get the benefit of uniting themselves against the growing power of the Jews. In his own words: The doctrine of the Jews in restoring the King of Israel by means of the Messiah is [39] a denial of the religion of Islam and a clear rejection of Christ Jesus, Son of Mary, may blessings and peace be upon him. It was, however, Christ with whom their prophets had preached, but they had denied him. It was also him who warned them against the ruin of their Temple of Solomon so that there would not remain any stone of it."

Here are more excerpts of another researcher:

A reading of Rida’s depictions of Jews as the embodiment of vices and the orchestrators of global-scale conspiracies is useful to the broader discussion on the proliferation of anti-Semitic ideas in the contemporary Arab world. Translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been available in Arabic since the mid-1920s, and by the late 1920s they were already incorporated as an argument against Zionism. Following the 1948 war, the Protocols proliferated as an explanation for the Arab defeat. However, Rida viewed Jews as the masters of anti-Christian and anti-Muslim conspiracies already at the turn of the century, with no experience of defeat in mind and no foundational hateful European textbook to guide him. It appears that he was acquainted, albeit not through primary sources, with French anti-Semitic expressions as well as with their refutations in France. Anti-Semitic allegations in Istanbul also did not escape him. Ironically and to a large measure, Rida’s developed anti-Semitism reads as accommodation of his original admiration of Jewish virtues with his realization that Zionism was a serious threat...

...Under the title “The Life of a Nation after Its Death: The Zionist Association of the Jews,” Rida revised his earliest impression of Jewish nationalism, and, always the journalist, flattered himself (without justification in this case), for having already written about the Zionist movement in 1898, “when no one else took notice of it.” His analysis failed to distinguish between Zionists and Jews, and disclosed that he was unaware that the movement had won the hearts of only a minority of Jews around the world....

...Apparently confusing, at least in part, Herzl (whose name was not mentioned in the entire article) with the British-Jewish author and Zionist leader Israel Zangwill (1864 – 1926), Rida wrote that Zangwill had recently negotiated the purchase of Jerusalem as well as predicted a massive Jewish return to Palestine and the transformation of the land by the people of Israel into a shining lighthouse in all fields – social, political, judicial, cultural, and agricultural. Rida went as far as positing that Zangwill was wrong in reprimanding the rich Jews for not donating to Zionism...

In 1903, Rida addressed the Jews again...He wrote that no people in the world demonstrated such communal unity and ethnic solidarity as the People of Israel (Sha‘b Isra’il); however, he added that the Jews tended to divert the resources of the nations among which they lived to their own benefit, and harmed themselves by their excessive egotism. This, he argued, was the reason for the persecution of the Jews and their expulsion by all the peoples and nations. Hinting at Jewish ungratefulness, he concluded that while they could find a safe haven only in the Ottoman Empire, they now sought to gain independence and renew their sovereignty in Palestine...

...On January 1908, following a long period of silence, Rida addressed Zionism again, although indirectly. In a Quran exegesis, he disputed the Jewish hope for a Messiah who would renew Jewish sovereignty. He also suggested that the Jews’ dispersion throughout the world, their lack of expertise in warfare and agriculture, and their focus on professions that required little effort, like charging interest-based loans, were impediments that would prevent the realization of their dream of renewed sovereignty. The weakness of the Jews, he argued, was a punishment from God for their infidelity. Only two years later, Rida changed his mind about the potential of Zionism...In December 1910, he presented the Zionist danger in even graver terms: should the Jews realize their plan to take over alAqsa, they would expel the Muslims and the Christians from the Holy Land...

...[In 1914 he wrote] that if Zionist ambitions were ever realized, they would not allow a single Muslim or Christian to remain in Palestine, as they believed that it belonged to the Israelites alone. Furthermore, the Promised Land that the Zionists sought to conquer was not what Muslims defined as Palestine; rather, according to Jewish scriptures and conventions, Palestine stretched to Syria and the Euphrates. Rida based his warning of the prospect of ethnic cleansing on the argument that in the book of Deuteronomy God ordered the Jews not to spare a single soul upon entering the land...

...in an appendix to a Quranic exegesis from 1924, he cautioned that the “Arabs of Palestine,” who were confronted by “two of the world’s strongest nations [the British and the Jews],” could only be saved if they united with the rest of the Arab peoples and tribes to defend Palestine as well as the holy shrines in Mecca and Medina. Yet the underlying objective of this warning – in itself exceptional for his writing during the early 1920s – was not to call for action, but to denounce Sharif Hussein and his family and praise the Sa‘uds. Rida portrayed Hussein’s family as supporters of those who were seeking to implement the “satanic plan” to deprive the Palestinians of their land, i.e., the British and the Zionists. He cautioned the Palestinians against cooperating with the Sharifian family, explaining that while they could boast a distinguished lineage (as descendents of the Prophet Muhammad), they lacked knowledge and honesty...

...until mid-1920...he noted, in an objective manner, that the Jews considered Palestine as their sacred, ancestral land, but neither debated that claim nor insisted that Palestine was a Muslim land that must never be conceded to the Jews as such. That changed in 1924, but in a way that was far from affirming that Muslims were the rightful owners of the land or would eventually have the upper hand against the Zionists. In a Quranic exegesis, Rida suggested in an almost even-handed manner that God had promised the land to both the Israelite sons of Abraham and to the Arab sons of Abraham, who had also been promised additional lands. The promises were kept for both Israelites and Arabs when they acted righteously, but when they sinned they were punished and the land was taken from them...

...Already in October 1928, only days after the tensions over the Wailing Wall began, Rida portrayed events in Palestine as a struggle between Judaism and Islam, as well as between Britain and Islam. In this struggle, the British were assisting the Jews as part of Britains’s “ambitious” and uncharacteristically illconceived plan to subordinate the Arab nation and impose British rule on the Arabian Peninsula and the three holiest shrines – in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. In this struggle, the ultimate goal of the Jews was the destruction of al-Aqsa, the third holiest shrine in Islam, and its replacement with a new Jewish temple...

...Rida elaborated [in December 1929] on the prophecies of a Muslim victory over the Jews, reiterating that those were more reliable than the Jewish prophets’ prophecies of Jewish victory. He mentioned the prophecy that the Jews would give fanatic loyalty to the Dajal, a false Messiah, fight against Muslims and Christians in Palestine and other lands, and be defeated, as well as the Prophet’s words, narrated by ‘Abdullah b. ‘Umar: “I heard Allah’s Messenger saying, ‘The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a stone will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me, kill him!’”...Zionism, he argued, was a striking example of Western moral corruption, because in Palestine the English had done something they had not done anywhere else: they had created a new people based on the ingathering of a rabble from all corners of the earth, allowing the rabble to usurp the land of another people and to exploit and discriminate against the population in a historically unprecedented way. Thus, for the first time, in late 1929, the Jews were denied in Rida’s journal not only a right to Palestine, but also the right to be considered a nation.

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Jabotinsky on the Ethics and Morality of Zionism

 Zionism and Ethics

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Di Tribune, Stockholm, May 10, 1916

There is an opinion that the Jewish people have no “moral right” to claim control of Eretz Israel. The claim that it is immoral is that since the Jewish population of Eretz Israel is only 100,000, while the Arab population is 600,000, this would mean the demanding that a minority rule over the majority. Jews have no right to risk and harm themselves by insisting on such unfair demands. The only right we have is “free repatriation and settlement activity”, but nothing more…

…If power is in the hands of a government hostile to the very idea of Jewish settlement, then such a government will be able to nullify any paragraph without any effort. And for this there will be no need to prohibit repatriation and settlement activity directly, which would simply contradict the terms of the paragraph. There are thousands of other means for this purpose. Thus, for example, without mentioning the Jews, one can establish laws on the right to own property, or on the acceptance of citizenship, or municipal and political laws for repatriates, and so on. In this way, it is possible to bring about a situation where settlement activity itself (one way or another) will run up against an iron barrier. In the end, with the help of all sorts of "proclamations" and "administrative procedures", one can do with this or that paragraph whatever one pleases.

Therefore, the paragraph concerning free repatriation does not give any guarantees. It follows that we must abandon the idea of guarantees and get used to another idea, the essence of which is that the fate of settlement in Eretz Israel depends on the good will of this or that government. Or we must go straight to the point and demand real and genuine guarantees. The most reliable guarantee is this: to grant us power in the form of a "charter" or in any other form.

This is precisely what the Basel Program demands. But the people who signed it twenty years ago suddenly came to their senses and decided that it was immoral. And now they are trying to find a way to accumulate capital and preserve their innocence at the same time. One of them wrote to me not long ago: “I would propose an agreement that would be both fair and even democratic: we should not demand a ‘charter’ for ourselves, but simply autonomy for Eretz Israel. The parliament should be elected by the entire population, both Jewish and Arab. The right to vote should be granted to everyone who can read and write, regardless of nationality or sex.

The masthead of Di Tribune 

Under this system we would get approximately the following figures: the Jewish population of Eretz Israel is only 100,000 people, but all adult men and women can read and write; thus, the Jewish population with the right to vote would be approximately 40,000 people. The number of Arabs reaches 600,000 people, but almost the entire female population does not meet the stated condition, that is, half of the population immediately drops out; and even among the male population, especially in the villages, the art of writing and reading is not very widespread. And if we continue and go along this path, then it will be possible to introduce a system of educational qualifications.

This system exists in England and Belgium. It is based on the fact that people with, say, a secondary education have the right to two votes, people with a higher education - to three votes. If such a system is introduced, then we Jews will have an absolute majority in the first parliament. The first parliament should be elected in 10 years, and during this time we will be able to properly strengthen our position in quantitative terms. How do you like this plan?"

I do not know how to answer such a question. This may indeed be a wise plan, but it has a weak point, namely, that at its core lies the idea that such an idealistically just matter as handing over Eretz Israel to the persecuted Jewish people so that they can establish their national home there, such a deeply ethical moral matter appears so immoral and unjust that it must be covered up with all sorts of fabrications.

It is also characteristic and noteworthy that only the Jews come with such claims to “ethics”...It seems that only the Jews are required to be super-ethical. Moreover, our moralists themselves do not at all want local Arabs to be in power in Eretz Israel. They want the country to be governed by some power that is sympathetic to the Jewish settlement and its activities. Some believe that such a power could be Turkey, others prefer England. But both sides think that it would be extremely "fair" if the English or the Turks were in power in Eretz Israel, although their numbers reach approximately thirty thousand. Such a situation, as you see, would be fair. But when the Jews demand the right to rule in Eretz Israel, there is no justice in this, since there are only one hundred thousand of them.

…No one demands that a "charter" be issued to those one hundred thousand Jews who have succeeded in getting into Eretz Israel, despite the barbed wire entanglements which the Turkish regime places before them. Eretz Israel must be handed over to the whole Jewish people. And this people numbers eleven or twelve million people, that is, in fact, twenty times more than the six hundred thousand Arabs who live in Eretz Israel today. In the course of four years the Jewish people can send over six hundred thousand new repatriates across the ocean. And if we take into account the entire stock of its “emigration”, that is, the entire mass that can be considered potential repatriates without fear of making a mistake, then we get a population equal to eight or even nine million people.

We demand Eretz Israel in the name of these masses, and not in the name of the "Yishuv" that exists today. And our aspiration is not to obtain a "charter" only for those who have settled already in the country, but for the entire Jewish people. This people, by virtue of its perfection, will manage the settlement in the holy land, will plant culture on it, will attract investors to it; the handful of current residents of Eretz Israel - both Jews and Arabs - are an insignificant minority in comparison with this people.

Sometimes the Jews make a funny impression, despite the fact that their faces express honesty and sentimentality. They love to sigh over the bitter fate of their opponents, and sometimes even their enemies. I know dozens of Jews who, even now, after all that has happened, feel sorry for the poor Poles because the Lord God put them in an awkward position and brought upon them such a misfortune as the Jewish question. Thank God, our relations with the Arabs are better than our relations with the Poles. And so we sigh over their fate much more often and with greater rapture. Unhappy people, we say they are, because Eretz Israel is, in fact, part of the Arab territory, because they have lived on this land for many, many years, and suddenly we have arrived and want to become masters there. I look at the moral side of the current situation with somewhat different eyes.

The tribes that speak Arabic inhabit Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mesopotamia. In a territory whose area (excluding the Arabian Peninsula) is as large as the area of all of Europe (excluding Russia), and is quite sufficient to feed a billion people, there lives only one national group - thirty-five million people. On the other hand, there is the Jewish people, a people persecuted, deprived of a homeland, who have no place of their own in the whole world. They strive for Eretz Israel because they have no other home and because everything that has brought glory to Eretz Israel in world history, all the splendor that was and is in it, all the superhuman functions that the country has performed, all this is the fruit of the spiritual development of the people of Israel. Compared with the entire vast territory inhabited by the Arab peoples, Eretz Israel constitutes only a hundredth part.

I do not know whether it is possible to speak of ethics in our time when such questions are discussed. But if it is possible, let me ask, what is ethics, in essence? Is it based on the fact that one should have much, another little? Is it based on the fact that the land, which is the basis of life, is concentrated in large quantities in the hands of one people, who are not even able to cultivate it, while another people, exiled and wandering like a dog in foreign lands, looks with great envy from behind a fence at the tempting desert? Where did this kind of ethics come from? And how can it be called ethics at all?

If they came with sword in hand to take Eretz Yisrael, we would be right before God and man, just as a beggar is right who takes from a rich man. The ethics concerning land relations between nations is, in essence, the same ethics accepted among the people of whom it is said in the Bible: from time to time there is a great harvest, and then he who has no land demands his share from he who has land in abundance. Instead of two million square kilometers, the Arabs will populate a territory of one million eight hundred thousand square kilometers. And thanks to this, a Jewish state will exist on earth, and one of the most pressing problems of history will come closer to its solution.

It is quite clear that the Arabs living in Eretz Israel have every right to demand that they not be expelled from there. That is a different matter. That is beyond any discussion and no one is going to expel them from there. There is plenty of space in Eretz Israel. The population density in Eretz Israel today is approximately twenty souls per square kilometer. In neighboring Lebanon, there are seventy souls per square kilometer; in Germany - one hundred and twenty; in Italy - one hundred and twenty-four; in Belgium - two hundred and fifty-seven; and in some densely populated areas of Egypt - three hundred and sixty-two. This is not the place to engage in puzzles and calculate how many people can live in one square kilometer in Eretz Israel in acceptable conditions.

But if we take Lebanon as an example, where the natural conditions are much worse than those in Eretz Israel, then, even then, if we calculate, we will find that in Eretz Israel there is room for at least another fifty inhabitants per square kilometer. It follows that we do not lay claim to the twenty occupied places, but to the fifty free ones, or to those deserted and abandoned places which, if only they fall into our hands, we can, with our labors, applying all our abilities, transform into an economically developed region and bring the population density in Eretz Israel closer to the level of civilized European countries. And in this way the question of the legitimate interests of the population of Eretz Israel now living will be resolved.

If there is a need to provide guarantees for the existence of their religion, language, property, personal rights, and the like, guarantees against possible tyranny or persecution on our part, then we are ready to provide them, regardless of whether the protection of their rights is handed over to a special international commission or to the consuls of the great powers. But no ethics can recognize either that they have a right of veto against Jewish settlement, or that a handful of half-savage people have the right to hold in their hands a territory that can feed millions, turn it into a desert, and close its gates.

I am not one of those people who believe that in the current situation it is naive and even unnecessary to express one's opinion in politics about the moral side of the issue. It is clear that the powers that be do not take the moral side into account, but the Jewish people cannot and should not give up their demands. We stand our ground and demand that the world hand over the land of our future into our hands, in the name of our entire history and in the name of all our suffering. In the name of that endless guilt that weighs down the conscience of the world. And it is strange to hear that there are people who do not understand this. But it is even stranger that the people who have doubts about the ethics of the "Basel program" are almost all Jews.

I myself had occasion during the war to talk about Zionism with political figures in England, France, Italy, Greece - and I have never heard such statements from anyone. People who are constantly in contact with government circles in England on questions of Zionism, and they have never encountered such excuses. The healthy political mind of a healthy people decides simply and clearly: it is impossible to imagine a settlement without real power. If the very fact of settlement is "ethical", then the power is ethical. If in relation to such countries as England, France, Italy, which in addition to colonies have enough of their own land, if it is ethical for them to settle colonies, then it is even more ethical in relation to a people deprived of any land at all. And only from the Jews are cries of protest heard. From this we can conclude that in this matter we are not talking about moral rights at all, but about fear of the idea itself.

^

Restoring the Jews

The Christian theological conceptualization of the Jewish people's restoration to their national home dovetailed with the Biblical and Talmudic idea of the return to Zion. There is another meaning to "restoration" which is interpreted as the "restoration of the Israelites, who were formerly rejected, and the bringing them back to the communion of God in Christ". As is recorded: "In July of 1696, the New England Puritan Cotton Mather wrote in his diary: “This day, from the dust, where I lay prostrate, before the Lord, I lifted up my cries […] For the conversion of the Jewish Nation, and for my own having the happiness, at some time or other, to baptize a Jew, that should by my ministry, be brought home to the Lord.”"

This concept of Jewish restoration to Palestine as was argued by some of its proponents "for Jewish supremacy over Gentiles in the millennial period." For those who promoted the idea, there was an element of "Judeo-centrism".

I have extracted a considerable amount of quotations from this source to show that the idea of Jews going home ot the Land of Israel was a constant throughout the centuries, from the 13th on. (The footnotes can be found at the source)

one who held to a Jewish restoration is Gerard of Borgo San Donnino (around 1255). He taught that some Jews would be blessed as Jews in the end time and would return to their ancient homeland.18  John of Rupescissa (ca. 1310–1366) could most likely be viewed as a Christian Zionist. “For him the converted Jews would become God’s new imperial nation and Jerusalem would be completely rebuilt to become the center of the purified faith. For proof he drew on a literal exposition of the Old Testament prophecies which until then had been read by Christian exegetes to apply either to the time of the incarnation or to the heavenly Jerusalem in the beyond.”19

it was out of the English Puritan movement that this belief sprung. “Starting with the Puritan ascendancy,” notes Tuchman, “the movement among the English for the return of the Jews to Palestine began.”32 Why the Puritan? Puritans were not just dissenters, they were a Protestant sect that valued the Old Testament to an unprecedented degree in their day.

One of the first Englishman to put forth the view that the Jews should be restored to the land of Israel was a scholar who had taken two degrees from Cambridge named Francis Kett. In 1585 he had published a book entitled The Glorious and Beautiful Garland of Mans Glorification Containing the Godly Misterie of Heavenly Jerusalem (one of the shorter titles of the day). While his book primarily dealt with other matters, Kett did have a section in which he mentioned “the notion of Jewish national return to Palestine.”

As the 1600s arrived, a flurry of books advocating Jewish restoration to their land began to appear. Thomas Draxe released in 1608 The Worldes Resurrection: On the general calling of the Jews, A familiar Commentary upon the eleventh Chapter of Saint Paul to the Romaines, according to the sense of Scripture. Draxe argued for Israel’s restoration based upon his Calvinism and Covenant Theology.38

Two great giants of their era were Thomas Brightman (1552–1607), (likely a Postmillennialist) and Premillennialist Joseph Mede (1586–1638) who both wrote boldly of a future restoration of Israel. Brightman’s work, Revelation of the Revelation appeared in 1609 and told “how the Jews will return from the areas North and East of Palestine to Jerusalem and how the Holy Land and the Jewish Christian church will become the centre of a Christian world.”39  Brightman wrote: “What, shall they return to Jerusalem again? There is nothing more certain; the prophets do everywhere confirm it.”40

Joseph Mede’s contribution was released in 1627 in Latin42 and in 1642 in English as The Key of the Revelation. 43 The father of English premillennialism was also an ardent advocate of Jewish restoration to their homeland. Following Mede in many ways, Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) also saw the Jews one day returning to Israel. In An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1639), he taught that the Jews would be converted to Christ by 1656.44 Momentum was certainly building toward widespread acceptance of English belief in Jewish restoration, but a few bumps in the road still lay ahead. Giles Fletcher (1549–1611), a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge and Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to Russia wrote a work advocating Restorationism. Fletcher’s book, Israel Redux: or the Restauration of Israel; or the Restauration of Israel exhibited in two short treatises (shortened title) was published posthumously by the Puritan divine Samuel Lee in 1677.45 Fletcher cites a letter in his book from 1606 as he argues for the return of the Jews to their land.46 Fletcher repeatedly taught the “certainty of their return in God’s due time.”47 A key proponent for Israel’s future restoration was Henry Finch (1558-1625) who wrote a seminal work on the subject in 1621, called The World’s Resurrection or The Calling of the Jewes. A Present to Judah and the Children of Israel that Ioyned with Him, and to Ioseph (that valiant tribe of Ephraim) and all the House of Israel that Ioyned with Him. 48 Finch, at the time of the publication of his book was a member of Parliament and the most highly respected legal scholars in England at the time…Finch taught that the biblical “passages which speak of a return of these people to their own land, their conquest of enemies and their rule of the nations are to be taken literally, not allegorically as of the Church.”51 King James of England was offended by Finch’s statement that all nations would become subservient to national Israel at the time of her restoration.52 Finch and his publisher were quickly arrested when his book was released by the High Commissioner (a creation of King James), and examined.53 Finch was striped of his status and possessions and then died a few years latter. “The doctrine of the restoration of the Jews continued to be expounded in England, evolving according to the insight of each exponent, and finally playing a role in Christian Zionistic activities in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the first of the twentieth centuries.”54 Many Puritans of the seventeenth century taught the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land.55 One of the greatest Puritan theologians in England was John Owen (1616–1683) who wrote, “The Jews shall be gathered from all parts of the earth where they are scattered, and brought home into their homeland.”56

There were a number of Restorationists in Holland during the time of the Puritan movement. Isaac de la Peyrere (1594–1676), who served as the French Ambassador to Denmark, “wrote a book wherein he argued for a restoration of the Jews to Israel without conversion to Christianity.”59 In 1655, Paul Felgenhauever, wrote Good News for Israel in which he taught that there would be the “permanent return of the Jews to their own country eternally bestowed upon them by God through the unqualified promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”60 The Dane, Holger Paulli (1644–1714) “believed wholeheartedly in the Jewish Return to the Holy Land, as a condition for the Second Coming.”61 He even “lobbied the kings of Denmark, England, and France to go and conquer Palestine from the Ottomans in order that the Jews could regain their nation.”62 Frenchman, Marquis de Langallerie (1656–1717), schemed with the Turkish Ambassador in the Hague on a plan defeat the Pope and trade the papal empire for a return of the Jews to the Holy Land. Langallerie was arrested in Hamburg, tried and convicted of high treason and died in prison a year later.63 Other European Restorationists of the era include: Isaac Vossius, Hugo Grotius, Gerhard John Vossius, David Blondel, Vasover Powel, Joseph Eyre, Edward Whitaker, and Charles Jerran.64 The mid-1600s witnessed “the sudden explosion of millenarian publications,”65 which predisposed the British to also consider the future fate of the Jews in the holy land. James Saddington lists the following seventeenth century English individuals as holding to Restorationist views: John Milton, John Bunyan, Roger Williams, John Sadler and Oliver Cromwell.66 “The doctrine of the restoration of the Jews continued to be expounded in England, evolving according to the insight of each exponent,” concludes Ehle, “and finally playing a role in Christian Zionistic activities in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the first of the twentieth centuries.”67

Perhaps the most influential of the early Puritan ministers in New England was John Cotton, who, following the postmillennialism of Brightman held to the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land.68 According to Ehle, in addition to John Cotton (1584–1652), early Restorationists included: John Davenport (1597–1670), William Hooke (1601–1678), John Eliot (1604–1690), Samuel Willard (1640–1707), and Samuel Sewall (1652–1730).69 Ephraim Huit, a Cambridge trained early minister in Windsor, Connecticut believed that the Jews would be regathered to their homeland in 1650.70 One of the standout advocates of the restoration doctrine was Increase Mather (1639–1723), the son of Richard and father of Cotton. Increase Mather wrote over 100 books in his life and was a president of Harvard. His first work was The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation, which went through about a half dozen revisions during his life.71 His support of the national restoration of Israel to her land in the future was typical of American Colonial Puritans and was generally widespread.

President John Quincy Adams expressed his desire that “the Jews again [were] in Judea, an independent Nation, . . . once restored to an independent government and no longer persecuted.”74 President Abraham Lincoln in a meeting with Canadian Christian Zionist, Henry W. Monk, in 1863 said, “Restoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans. He (the Jewish chiropodist of the President) has so many times ‘put me on my feet’ that I would have no objection to giving his countrymen a ‘leg up’.”75

The wave of premillennialism is what produced in Britain a crop of Christian Zionists that led to political activism which culminated in the Balfour Declaration. Anthony Ashley Cooper (1801–1885), later Lord Shaftesbury…“Oh, pray for the peace of Jerusalem” were the words engraved on a ring that he always wore on his right hand.84 Since Lord Shaftesbury believed that the Jews would return to their homeland in conjunction with the second advent, he “never had a shadow of a doubt that the Jews were to return to their own land. . . . It was his daily prayer, his daily hope.”85 In 1840, Shaftsbury was known for coining a slogan that he would often repeat throughout his life, that the Jews were “a country without nation for a nation without a country.”86 Shaftesbury greatest contribution to the Restoration movement was his attempt to accomplish something in the political realm in order to provoke England to develop a policy in favor of returning the Jews to their homeland. He succeeded in influencing England to adopt that policy, but England failed, at that time to influence the Turks. In 1838, in an article in the Quarterly Review, Shaftsbury put forth the view that Palestine could become a British colony of Jews that “could provide Britain with cotton, silk, herbs, and olive oil.”87 Next, Shaftsbury “lobbied Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, using political, financial and economic arguments to convince him to help the Jews return to Palestine. And Palmerston did so. What was originally the religious beliefs of Christian Zionists became official British policy (for political interests) in Palestine and the Middle East by the 1840s.”

While British foreign secretary in 1840, Henry John Temple Palmerston (1784–1865) wrote the following letter to his ambassador at Constantinople in his attempt to advocate on behalf of the Jews: There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe, a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine. . . . It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and to settle in Palestine because the wealth which they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan’s dominions; and the Jewish people, if returning under the sanction and protection and at the invitation of the Sultan, would be a check upon any future evil designs of Mehemet Ali or his successor. . . . I have to instruct Your Excellency strongly to recommend [the Turkish government] to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine.

One time governor of Australia, Colonel George Gawler (1796–1869) was one of the most zealous and influential Restorationist, next to Shaftsbury, in the 1840s.93 “Colonel Gawler was a senior commander at the Battle of Waterloo.”94 When he returned to England in 1841 he became a strong advocate of Jewish settlements in the land of Palestine. Gawler’s Restorationism, like most of his day, was sparked by his religious convictions, but he argued for Jewish return to their land upon geopolitical grounds. Gawler stated the following: [England] urgently needs the shortest and safest lines of communication. . . . Egypt and Syria stand in intimate connection. A foreign hostile power mighty in either would soon endanger British trade . . . and it is now for England to set her hand to the renovation of Syria through the only people whose energies will be extensively and permanently in the work—the real children of the soil, the sons of Israel.95 Working with Sir Moses Montefiore (a British Jew) Gawler provided an agricultural strategy for Jewish resettlement of the Holy Land. One of these Montefiore-Gawler projects resulted in “the planting of an orange grove near Jaffa, still existent today and known as Tel Aviv’s ‘Montefiore Quarter.’”96 Charles Henry Churchill (1814–1877), an ancestor of Winston Churchill, was a British military officer stationed in Damascus in 1840. “He was a Christian Zionist and he supported the Jews against the non-Zionist Christians of Damascus.”97 It was through his efforts that he helped acquit the Jews accused of the infamous charge of blood libel. Col. Churchill was honored a banquet hosted by a grateful Jewish community where he spoke of the “hour of liberation of Israel . . . that was approaching, when the Jewish Nation would once again take its place among the powers of the world.”98 In a letter to Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), dated June 14, 1841, Churchill said, I cannot conceal from you my most anxious desire to see your countrymen endeavor once more to resume their existence as a people. I consider the object to be perfectly obtainable. But two things are indispensably necessary: Firstly that the Jews themselves will take up the matter, universally and unanimously. Secondly that the European powers will aid them in their views.99

Laurence Oliphant (1829–1888) was an evangelical “British Protestant, an officer in the British Foreign Service, a writer, world-traveler and an unofficial diplomat.”103 Oliphant was passionate about the Jewish Restoration to their land that came from his intense religious convictions, which “he tried to conceal them behind arguments based on strategy and politics.”104 In 1880 he published a book, The Land of Gilead, “proposing Jewish resettlement, under Turkish sovereignty and British protection, of Palestine east of the Jordan.”105 Even then, he foresaw the agricultural potential and the possibilities of developing the resources of the Dead Sea.

A German Lutheran, C. F. Zimpel, who “described himself as Doctor et Philosopiae, member of the Grand Ducal Saxon Society for Mineralogy and Geognosy at Jena,” published pamphlets in the mid-1800s entitled “Israelites in Jerusalem” and “Appeal to all Christendom, as well as to the Jews, for the Liberation of Jerusalem.”123

Frenchman, Charles-Joseph Prince de Ligne (1735–1814) advocated Jewish Restorationism. He called upon the Christians of Europe to lobby the Turkish Sultan so that the Jews could return to their homeland. De Ligne’s appeal was used by Napoleon in his efforts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. “Among those French Restorationists were theologians and authors, but also, increasingly, politicians.”125 Some of them included Ernest Laharanne, Alexandre Dumas, and Jean-Henri Dunant (1828–1910), who was also the rounder of the International Red Cross.126 Restoration proposals were put forth by a number of Europeans in the nineteenth century. A Swiss theologian named Samuel Louis Gaussen who wrote a book advocating a Jewish return to their land in 1844.127 Italian, Benedetto Musolino (1809–1885) wrote a book, after a visit to the Holy Land, in which he argued “that the restoration of the Jews would allow European culture into the Middle East.”

^

Getting a 'Push' Home from an Anti-Semite, 1911

I came across this news item but had not background knowledge:

That's from The Hebrew Standard in April 1911. Phillip Steele assisted me in research.

It stemmed from anti-immigration sentiment cojoined with anti-semitism in 19th Century England.

And this is the back story:

By the end of the 19th century there was public protest about the level of immigration, especially from Eastern Europe into London. A lot of these immigrants were of Jewish heritage, and they were often fleeing from anti-semitic persecution in Europe. The protests in London took place because English workers feared they might lose their jobs to the migrants, who seemed prepared to work for less money.

A Captain William Stanley Shaw formed the British Brothers League (BBL) in 1902 to campaign in East London against immigration. The BBL was connected to the local Stepney Member of Parliament (MP), William Evans-Gordon, who led moves to pass an Aliens Act to restrict immigration.

In this move, at least not a matter of violent pogroms, Shaw followed as well as preceded others such as the notorious Gyozo Istoczy in Hungary, active especially in the 1870-80s. There was Goldwin Smith in the UK/Canada and in Poland there was Władysław Studnicki in the interwar period. 

The BBL was formed in 1901 by Shaw:

The Aliens Act 1905, which restricted immigration, was largely seen as a success for the BBL and, as a result, the movement by and large disappeared.

It officially carried on until 1923, albeit on a tiny scale, and was associated with G. K. Chesterton and the distributist movement...The League also left behind a legacy of support for far-right groups in east London and this was exploited by the British Union of Fascists

Information on the BBL an be found in chapter 6 of this book, like:

On Shaw, here:

Shaw left the group after but a year but continued to promote anti-alienism:

One can presume his 1911 scheme was an outgrowth of his distaste of Jews.

^

Ze'ev Jabotinsky at 21 - Excerpts from an Anti-Anti-Zionist Article

I present excerpts from Vladimir Jabotinsky's "Science and Common Sense" which the then not yet twenty-two-year-old published in the Odessa News newspaper of September 8, 1902. It very well may be the very first known Zionist statement by the future writer, thinker, public figure and political leader. And it predates his supposed conversion to Zionism as a result of the pogrom in 1903 in Kishinev.

Jabotinsky responds to an anti-Zionist piece by Iosif Menassievich Bikerman (1867-1942) published in the Russkoje Bogatsttwo [Russian Wealth]

Mr. Bikerman's article made a big impression...This is the experience of a real scientific assessment of Zionism...This article has scientifically proven that Zionism is a utopia. "Scientific". 

...Poems of a non-poet are album literature, these are not poems, but rhymes. And in the same way, this scientificity for fifty dollars, the scientificity of one's own home-made dressing, the scientificity arranged for a balalaika, and therefore accessible to the first person you meet - all this is landscape and toilet scientificity, suitable for flirting with young ladies, and not for a weighty conscientious dispute. To think scientifically, one must be a scientist, that is, a producer in the fields of science, and not a simple consumer of its products...enough, in fact, to be afraid of this shout: "Utopia!" Stupid word from the vocabulary of cowards. Much that a hundred years ago seemed like a utopia is now strong and marching, and advancing, and conquering.

...when a mass of people in unison embraces the whole of one ideal, this means that it was not the “feuilletonists” who whispered it to her. The power of things whispered to her. Those ideals that are whispered by the force of things are not utopias. They are a real need. They are the future reality.

...he has only one argument against Zionism:

“World history,” writes Mr. Bikerman, “does not know a case when any group of people — a clan, a tribe, a people, a horde — would have taken it into their heads to create a state one fine morning, and having thought of it, would have created it. Both in ancient and modern times, states were the result of the activity of the human masses, but never served as the goal of this activity.

I.e: “What has never happened before, cannot happen again.” I.e: - All the laws of historical movement are already known to us, and nothing that we have not yet seen and foreseen is not supposed to happen.

I don't think it's scientific...No serious theoretician of history would allow himself to state categorically that what has never happened before will never happen again. Only someone self-satisfied with semi-knowledge, not obliged to cherish either the dignity or the prestige of science, is capable of uttering such prophecies in its name ...

Examples of mass emigration were repeated both in ancient times and in the coming times. Zionism and offers mass emigration.

...Mr. Bikerman also reproaches the Zionists for trying to lure their people along the path of greatest resistance. And this is futile, because an irresistible law of nature tells all energy to follow the path of least resistance. This, of course, is correct. No energy will follow the path of greatest resistance. 

Why did the first Christians in Rome, or the same Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, or the Huguenots in France, prefer persecution and emigration instead of assimilation quietly and calmly, that is, accepting the faith of the strongest? This, of course, does not mean that they all followed the path of greatest resistance, for it is logically unthinkable to follow the path of greatest resistance. It simply means that, for many different reasons, it was easier and more profitable for them to endure persecution, die at the stake, go bankrupt and emigrate than to give in.

You can never know exactly which path at a given moment presents the greatest or least resistance.

...Another thing is purely practical objections to Zionism. They are made without a pretentious tone, they follow from the sober considerations of sane people, and it is pleasant to answer such objections. These objections are often very valid.

Will Turkey give in? Will the powers allow it? Will Palestine provide enough food? Are Jews capable of agriculture?

All these are important and complex questions, and nothing can be said categorically about them, simply because nothing can ever be confidently asserted about the future. But, in any case, there are no less practical arguments for , and good arguments, than against...will the Jews make Palestine a "land of honey and milk," if not, but, in any case, they will make it a livelier, more cultured and, therefore, more profitable region than it is now. 

...Whether the Jews are capable of agriculture, whether the soil of Palestine is capable of producing cereals in sufficient quantities - all questions could be answered only with numbers in hand. I can only remind you that in Finland there are completely bare cliffs where people have applied black soil and live on the fruits of this black soil. It is possible to adapt, not immediately, of course, but after two or three generations, to everything, not only to agriculture. Especially the Jews, who have long proved their ability to adapt to any, even the most incredible conditions of existence.

One can laugh at the money game with the term "scientific"; practical arguments should be thoughtfully and seriously considered and argued, but against the third category of objections raised by Zionism, one can only protest indignantly and uncompromisingly.

...Is nationalism regressive? To love one's nationality more than all other nationalities is as natural as to love one's mother more than all other mothers. Just as a person has the right to protect and develop his individual characteristics, so the nation has the right to cherish its national characteristics. 

– Zionism distracts the Jews from universal cultural work, from concern for the interests of all mankind.

It is a strange claim that all people must work in the same field. One can be a friend of all mankind, but work for the good of one nationality, because the good of one nationality is part of the good of mankind. Does Zionism dream of tearing the Jews away from spiritual affinity with Europe? Zionism wants to give the Jews a place where they can maintain this intimacy, develop it, enjoy it - only without being humiliated, without enduring persecution, without the risk of losing their national identity.

One can argue against Zionism—find it unworkable or undesirable. But to speak of its reactionary character, to see in its leaders traitors to the ideals of the common human good, is not to argue, but to dishonor, to dishonor crudely and frivolously the dream born of all the sobs, of all the sufferings of the Jewish people; it means to invite people to your shop not by washing, but by rolling; this means responding with a curse to the tearful prayer of the tormented Ahasuerus and slandering and slandering his centuries-old reserved ideal.

Ideals stand above ignorance and are not afraid of slander.

And Jabotinsky applying himself just a half year later: 

On Zubatov, Czarist Russian police administrator.

I decided to update this with excerpts from a second article published in June 1903

Kadimah 

I know three objections to Zionism...The third objection is:

“Your movement is calling people back to fanaticism, to misanthropy, to tribal enmity."

I consider this objection embittered, and I usually do not answer it, but fall silent and mournfully look at the one who threw this untruth to me, and I marvel, saddened, at his anger.

Strange outrage. You can be distrustful of what you find unrealizable; but indignation against someone else's ideal is understandable only when this someone else's ideal is the ideal of violence, enslavement, outrage. Meanwhile, whatever the fate of Zionism in the future, it carries in any case the noble ideal of emancipation. Where does this bitterness, this rage come from, and not from strangers or reactionaries; and from the side of blood brothers and people who boast of an advanced way of thinking?

...There is nothing else to justify all the passion of these unrighteous attacks; because on our part we have not deserved them in any way, and have always been and conscious of ourselves as honest friends of progress, freedom of spirit and brotherhood; and from the moment our movement emerged in an enlightened milieu, its motto has been Kadimàh , a beautiful and deep word that means "to the east" and at the same time "forward"...

...We are told:

“Your movement did not spring from any positive striving. It is caused by anti-Semitism: since it is difficult for Jews in the Diaspora, you want to take them to Palestine. This means that all this was not started at all in order to create a new nest of culture. Your chain is negative, not positive: flight, not striving. First of all, you need a shelter, an almshouse, a fortress, where you would be sheltered from malice, and not a factory for the production of new values. Compassion drives you, not a burst of creativity. Choose for yourself any motto you like: "pity", "intercession" - but not the word "forward". Running was never moving forward.

Well, that's right. Running was never moving forward. Flight is backward movement. Flight is the last concession. Whoever runs has already given up. Whoever runs, he already thereby says: I refuse to fight. I no longer defend what I undertook to defend. I cede to you what I wanted to consider my property.

Flight is a movement backwards and cannot be anything else, because in it lies the concession of the very principle for which the struggle was waged. This is the main thing. Without the element of concession, there is no escape. If I made a mistake with the door and ended up in someone else's apartment, then, noticing the mistake, I apologize and leave; but this is not an escape, because I had no intention of taking possession of this strange apartment. But if I deliberately burst into it in order to take possession of it, and were forced to abandon this goal and leave, then my departure would be a real flight; for he is a fugitive who, yielding to force, renounces the principle for which he stood up.

But the Jews did not then come to the lands of the diaspora in order to take possession of them or establish themselves in them. We did not even come - we were squeezed into these lands. Nineteen centuries of our history are not about what we did, but about what others did to us. Others squeezed us into Spain, forced us out of Spain and squeezed us into the east of Europe; we walked where we were pushed, and stopped when the inertia of the push stopped. Some stopped in Holland, others only in Romania; but neither one nor the other came there on purpose for the purpose of capturing or settling down. Falling from exhaustion on Romanian soil, they did not say to themselves: I want and will live here! They said: I can't go any further; I will stay here - maybe they won’t torture me here as much as in the land of Sepharad ...

We came to the countries of the diaspora, not having the goal of establishing ourselves. In our movement then there was no purpose at all, there was only a reason .

And now we see that we made a mistake with the door and got to the wrong place, where our place is, and we want to leave. This is not an escape, because when we came to these lands, we did not bring any goal with us, and now we must not give up any goal.

However, no. We brought one chain with us: the preservation of our nationality, which was then symbolized for us in religion. Spain offered us equality for apostasy; but we preferred torture and exile. So, coming from Spain, we wanted to remain Jews. This was our only goal. We carried this single goal through the fire and water of our long history. And we do not abandon this goal: we are faithful to it today more than ever: for this we want to leave forever from foreign cities, in order to remain Jews!

We have not given up or yielded in what is and has been the goal of our historical struggle; therefore our campaign will not be an escape, but a triumph. But fugitives will be those who yielded and surrendered, those who could not bear the constraints and ceased to be Jews; preaching of renunciation, calls for apostasy, invitations to humble yourselves in spirit and become Germans or Frenchmen, since it is difficult to remain Jews—this is what will truly be stigmatized with the name of cowardice and flight.

And so we come to the main point - to apostasy. Flight is apostasy. And if we needed only flight, then we would preach not Zionism, but apostasy .

The masses under the influence of the current influence are always directed along the path of least resistance. Anti-Semitism represents a strong external pressure: but in order to be saved from it, there is no need to colonize Eretz-Yisrael. There is a path much less difficult - the path of apostasy. Escape is the path of least resistance. Change your faith, and today you will acquire all rights before the law, and tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, with the help of mixed marriages, you will be recognized as your own and by society. If this merging takes time, then, in any case, it will be easier for you than buying out abandoned land and creating a new homeland on the ruins ...

Anti-Semitism could not give rise to Zionism. Anti-Semitism could only give rise to the desire to flee from persecution along the path of least resistance - that is, apostasy. But in order for a call to national self-consciousness and revival to sound instead of preaching apostasy, something was needed besides anti-Semitism, an internal stimulus, an internal and positive imperative was needed. This imperative lies in the life-giving instinct of national self-preservation, which has given us the strength to pass through the order of history.

The Arab fell asleep under a bush. At dawn he was bitten by a flea. From the bite he woke up, saw the dawn and said:

Thanks to this bug. She woke me up; now I will perform ablution and get to work.

But when he began to perform ablution, the flea bit him a second time. Then the Arab caught her and strangled her, saying:

“It is evident that you were proud of the fact that I praised you; and indeed, you helped me wake up: but not by your prodding will I pray and work ...

Here is the role of anti-Semitism in the Zionist movement. We do not deny that he helped us wake up. But only. If, on waking up, we straightened up, washed ourselves with fresh water and set to work, it was not for the sake of the miserable insect that woke us up, but for the sake of the life instinct that is inherent in us.

If we wanted to flee, we would call for apostasy; if we needed an almshouse, we would call for apostasy, because apostasy is easier and more likely to save our skins. But it is not we, but our opponents who preach this easy way of renunciation; we Zionists reject capitulation and call for the hard work of creation . We call the Jewish people to historical creativity . Pointing to the east, we do not say to the people: run, hide from persecution in this hole; we point to the east and proclaim "forward": Kadimàh .

^