Werzit

Intel - History
Zionsism

"In God we trust.
All others we monitor."

• I cannot conceal from you my most anxious desire to see your countrymen endeavour 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. It is for the Jews to make a commencement. Let the principal persons of their community place themselves at the head of the movement. Let them meet, concert and petition. In fact the agitation must be simultaneous throughout Europe. There is no Government which can possibly take offence at such public meetings. The result would be that you would conjure up a new element in Eastern diplomacy — an element which under such auspices as those of the wealthy and influential members of the Jewish community could not fail not only of attracting great attention and of exciting extraordinary interest, but also of producing great events. (Churchill and the Jews, by Michael Joseph Cohen, p. 13)

• During negotiations leading to the Treaty of London, July 1841, Lord Palmerston wrote instructions to Lord John Ponsonby, the British ambassador at Constantinopole which echo motifs of the missives he had been receiving from Shaftesbury: "Palmerston exclaimed in a July 1841 memorandum, "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." (The Politics of Christian Zionism, 1891-1948‎ - Page 40, by Paul Charles Merkley)

• Resolution adopted by the majority: The messianic idea should receive prominent mention in the prayers, but all petitions for our return to the land of our fathers and for the restoration of a Jewish state should be eliminated from the liturgy.... (The Jew in the modern world, by Paul R. Mendes-Flohr, Jehuda Reinharz, p. 185)

• In 1862, the future British King Edward VII, then the Prince of Wales, made a well-publicized tour of the Holy Land, the first English crown claimant to do so in nearly 600 years.

• In 1865 the Palestine Exploration Fund was founded with funding mainly from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the Grand Lodge of Freemasons.

• To omit Disraeli from a central place in the 19th century development of Zionism, agent historian Barbara Tuchman once said, "would be as absurd as to leave the ghost out of Hamlet." As prime minister under Victoria in the 1870s, Disraeli was the overseer of Britain's imperial design to secure a "homeland" for Jews as a British outpost in the Middle East, and a secret document authored by Disraeli became the manifesto for early Zionism in Europe. (Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour, by Barbara Tuchman, need a page number reference)

• Let us not delay to send out the best agents ... to search the length and breadth of Palestine, to survey the land, and if possible to go over every corner of it, drain it, measure it, and, if you will, prepare it for the return of its ancient possessors, for I believe that the time cannot be far off before that great event will come to pass Is there no other destiny for Palestine but to remain desolate or to become the appendage of an ambitious foreign power ? Syria and Palestine will ere long become most important. On the Euphrates and along the coast old cities will revive and new ones will be built : the old time will come back on a scale of greater vastness and grandeur :and bridging the districts the stream will run in the track of the caravans. Syria then will be a place of trade pre-eminence. A'ld who are pre-eminently the traders of the world ? Will there, when the coming change has taken place, be any more congenial field for the energies of the Jew ? The country wants capital and population. The Jews can give it both. And has not England a special interest in promoting such a restoration ? It would be a blow to England if either of her rivals should get hold of Syria. Her Empire reaching from Canada in the West to Calcutta and Australia in the South-East would be cut in two. England does not covet any such territories, but she must see that they do not get in the hands of rival Powers. She must preserve Syria to herself. Does not policy then —if that were all — exhort England to foster the nationality of the Jews and aid them, as opportunity may offer, to return as a leavening power to their old country? England is the great trading and maritime power of the world. To England, then, naturally belongs the role of favouring the settlement of the Jews in Palestine. The nationality of the Jews exists :the spirit is there and has been there for 3000 years, but the external form, the crowning bond of union is still wanting. A nation must have a country. The old land, the old people. This is not an artificial experiment : it is nature, it is history." (History of Zionism, 1600-1918‎, p. 206 by Nahum Sokolow, Arthur James Balfour Balfour)

• In 1878 they moved to Vienna, where Herzl, as a law student, was an enthusiastic German nationalist with an admiration for Prussia, Bismarck, and Wagner. (The German-Jewish dialogue: an anthology of literary texts, 1749-1993‎, p. 147)

• "Blond, clever-eyed little girl . . . today I realized for the first time that it is possible to fall in love with a little girl ... as I boarded the ship...as I boarded the ship at Mainz I immediately saw the allerliebste Kleine...so as not to lose a thing, I posted my deck chair not too closely." He was twenty-three at the time and the girl was eight. (Herzl, by Amos Elan, p. 48)

• ..."being a British agent who was during the Jewish people into a nefarious adventure designed to serve the strategic interests of his employers in London." (Herzl As I Remember Him, by Erwin Rosenberger, p. 136)

Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, prominent voice in Judaism

• "Here again Isaac Mayer Wise took the lead ha delineating true Judaism and Americanism from "that crazy scheme," "that new messianic movement over the ocean..." (American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust‎, p. 95, by Melvin I. Urofsky)

• In the 1890s Theodor Herzl infused Zionism with a new ideology and practical urgency, leading to the first congress at Basel, Switzerland in 1897, which brought the World Zionist Organization (WZO) into being.

• The world at large took little note of this Zionist Congress in Basel. To the world press it was only a crackpot Jewish organization holding another meeting. Nor did the world note the replica of the Jewish coin used in the days of the bar Kochba rebellion against Rome, which each member in the Zionist organization received. But the Basel Congress touched off a conflagration among the mass of Jews. The rich Jews, the assimilationist Jews rejected Herzl and his Zionist ideas. Many Reform rabbis attacked him. But the poor, the ignorant, and the orthodox flocked to his banner. (Jews, God, and History, p. 398)

• At the Zionist Congress in 1903, when Herzl proposed that the Zionists abandon Palestine for Uganda (where the British government had promised him land), a magnificent furor broke out. The great Herzl was accused of being a traitor. Realizing his blunder, he joined the opposition in order to preserve a unified Zionist organization. (Jews, God, and History, p. 399)

• He met and was impressed by Israel Zangwill and Baron Nathan Rothschild, and in 1908 wrote to a leader of Manchester Jewry: I am in full sympathy with the historical traditional aspirations of the Jews. The restoration to them of a centre of true racial and political integrity would be a tremendous event in the history of the world. . . . Jerusalem must be the only ultimate goal. When it will be achieved it is vain to prophesy: but that it will some day be achieved is one of the few certainties of the future...The establishment of a strong, free Jewish state astride the bridge between Europe and Africa, flanking the land roads to the East, would not only be an immense advantage to the British Empire but a notable step toward a harmonious disposition of the world among its peoples." (Churchill, by Robert Blake, William Roger Louis, p. 171)

• "After we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine."
• Page 103 of "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict" By Norman G. Finkelstein

• To prevent a partition of Palestine, the British quickly came up with a compromise solution, the White Paper of 1939, which was accepted with reluctance by the Arabs and rejected with gunfire by the Jews. This White Paper proposed that Jewish immigration be limited to 15,000 a year for five years and then stopped altogether, (Jews, God, and History, p. 404)