American' support for the age-old aspirations of the jewish people to return to their homeland dates from the Colonial period when John Admas wrote:"I really wish the Jew again in Judea an independent nation for, as I believe, the most enlightened men of it have participated in the amerlioration of philosophy of the age". John Adams wrote to Major Mordechai Manuel Noah that he believed in the "rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation".
Not long after the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Licoln met a Canadian Christian Zionist, Henry Wentort Monk, who expressed hope that jews who were suffering oppression in Russia and Turkey be emancipated" by restoring them to their national home in Palestine", Lincoln said this was" a noble dream and one shared by many Americans". The President said his chiropodist was a jew who "has many times 'put me upon my feet' that I would have no objection to giving his countrymen 'leg up' ".
In 1883, Emma Lazarus, the poet whose words are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, wrote that Palestine should be as "Home for the homeless, a Goal for the Wanderer and an Asylum for the persecuted and a nation of the denationalized".
In 1891, pogroms incited by Czar Alexander II provoked an outcry by many prominent Americans, including Chife Justice of the Supreme Court and the Speaker of the House. Rev, William E. Blackstone and Cardinal Gibbons presented a petition signed by those who are concern about the fate of the jew in Russia to President Benjamin Harrison and Secretary of State James Blaine. They called for the first time international conference "to consider the Israelite claim to Palestine as their ancient home, and to promote in any other juts and proper whay to alleviation their suffering conditions.
Why not give Palestine back to the jews again? According to God's distribution of nations, it is their homeland inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force. Under their cultivation was a remarkable fruitful land, sustaining millions of Israelites, who industrially tilled its hillside and valleys. They were agricultrists and producers...the center of civilization and religion.
We believe this is an appropriate time for all nations, and especially the Christian nations of Europe, to show kindness to Israel...let us now restore to them the land which they were so cruelly despoiled by Roman ancestors.
The signatoris' idea preceded the first World Zionist Congress that adopted the program to establish a jewish homeland in Palestine by six years. |
