Democratic Palestine : 23 (ص 25)
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- Democratic Palestine : 23 (ص 25)
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coming of Christ was supposed to end
the Jews’ state of exile; they would
return to Palestine and establish their
‘national presence’.
The European reformation move-
ment concentrated on Palestine, because
the Holy Land and Palestine held the
ideal combination of ingredients to
substantiate comprehensive Zionist in-
terpretations. Thus, Palestine became
the homeland of the Jews, and the Jews
became the people of Palestine, in the
eyes of western Protestants. The Jews
were depicted as a ‘people estranged’
from the European countries they had
always lived in, as a people ‘removed
from their rightful country’ who must
be ‘returned’ to it at the appropriate
time.
Thus, the Zionist misrepresentation
of modern history, based on claims of
‘historical rights’ in Palestine, reverts
back to Protestant Evangelicalism. The
history of the land of Palestine has, on
the other hand, been gradually reduced
to paragraphs, and even these are
limited to the history of Jewish
presence there. Europeans were even-
tually led to believe that nothing of
major consequence ever occurred in
Palestine, except for what was depicted
in the stories of the Old Testament.
More important still was that no serious
efforts were made to challenge or
categorize these stories, and _ they
became accepted as true history.
The incorporation of Zionist themes
into the fabric of European Protestan-
tism reached a peak during the period
of Puritanism in England in the 17th
century. Puritanism was a fanatical
trend which attached special priority to
the Old Testament. This was converted
into a guidebook even for everyday liv-
ing. Thus, depiction of the Jews as the
descendents of the Israelites of the Old
Testament became most widespread
during the 1740s. Previously it was
popularly accepted that Palestine was
the Christians’ Holy Land which many
an Englishman had sacrificed his life to
«defend against the heretics.» Today,
however, Palestine has been stripped of
its old Christian content to become the
«homeland for Jews who must return
to it» according to the prophesies of the
Old Testament.
It is evident that the organic connec-
tion between Zionism and European
culture originated from religious ideas.
Even during the Renaissance, art and
literature picked up where religious
belief left off. Zionist themes can be
found in the classical works of Euro-
pean writers and philosophers such as
John Milton, William Blake, Newton,
Fichte, Pascal and Rousseau. The
understanding of Jews and Judaism as
an “organic nation’ instead of being a
religious group or religion, was one of
the specialities of the philosopher Kant
who said that Jews were «Palestinians
living among us.»
ZIONISM CONVERGES
WITH BRITISH INTERESTS
Towards the end of the 19th century,
England became the ideal hotbed for
politica!, non-Jewish Zionism, due to
the convergence of three major points
of British interest in the land of
Palestine. These were: (a) the balance
of power in Europe; (b) the security of
India; and (c) the route to India
through Syria. It was from this con-
vergence that an unnatural unity bet-
ween the policies of the British empire
and a kind of patriarchal Christian
Zionisin was initiated. This unholy
alliance became more evident in British
policies as time went by.
It was none other than Lord Anthony
Ashley Cooper, the seventh Earl of
Shaftesbury, who was the first to coin
the slogan «a country without a nation
for a nation without a country» in
1839. This was later to be picked up by
prominent Jewish Zionists and
rephrased as «a land for a people for a
people without a land.»
The well-known Canadian geologist,
Sir John William Dawson, after retur-
ning from a journey to Palestine, wrote
that to date no nation had been able to
establish itself as a people of Palestine,
and no unity or national spirit prevailed
there: «The mixture of tribes there are
only temporary residents, clearly
awaiting those who deserve to be per-
manent owners of the land.»
A decade later, an English scientist,
Isaac Ash, proposed the following in
order to convert Palestine into a
homeland for the Jews: He said that
three of four steps must be im-
plemented immediately to «restore
Jewish nationality to Palestine.» These
were (1) buying land from the present
owners; (2) making it valuable by in-
jecting capital, and thereafter renting it
to the Jews for an unlimited period at a
stable rate, after the restoration of the
land; and (3) the capital injected must
be directed not only to land restoration,
but also to creating jobs of ‘national
nature and importance’. With regard to
the fourth point, he advises that all
these tasks and others must be carried
out to enable the ‘nation’ to ‘maintain
its independence’ by putting it in a
position of military defense. This
Statement, which preceded the
establishment of the Zionist National
Fund by 30 years, clearly heralded the
policies outlined by Jewish Zionist
leaders three decades later.
PROTESTANTISM CARRIES
ZIONISM TO AMERICA
It was natural that the Zionist trend
emanating from Europe would con-
stitute an important element in
American thought and political life
from the time of European settlement
in the New World in the second half of
the 17th century. In effect, English
Puritanism, which had celebrated the
Zionist theme, established the founda-
tions for future English-America mis-
sionary work. According to William E.
Hartpole Lecky, a prominent Irish
historian and essayist, «Hebrew mortar
is what established the basis of
American democracy.» Evangelical
missionary work in the US took on a
broader form than that which prevailed
in Puritan England. It developed into a
widely accepted culture permeated by
many Zionist principles.
At that time, the most prominent
American Jew was William Blackstone,
author and benefactor, who launched
innumerable campaigns calling for a
Jewish homeland in Palestine, despite
the fact that this conflicted with the
desires of many American Jews. After
concluding a visit to Palestine in the
1890s, he returned to the US and in
typical Zionist fashion began his work
with renewed conviction that Palestine
should be developed agriculturally and
commercially by her ‘rightful’ Jewish
owners. His efforts culminated in an
appeal to the then US president, Ben-
jamin Harrison, insisting on _ the
establishment of a Jewish state in
Palestine.
At first glance the submission of such
a petition to the US president might be >
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