Sejarah Zionisme, 1600-1918/Volume 1/Bab 26

CHAPTER XXVI.

PROTECTION AND RESTORATION

The Don Pacifico case—Admiral Sir William Parker—Lord Stanley—Mr. J. A. Roebuck—Lord Palmerston’s policy attacked—Peel and the Opposition—Plans for colonization of Palestine—Mordecai Manuel Noah—Warder Cresson—Rev. A. G. H. Hollingsworth—Colonel George Gawler—“The Final Exodus”—Dr. Thomas Clarke.

A serious conflict broke out between England and Greece, and consequently in England itself, in 1850. The cause was Lord Palmerston’s quarrel with the Greek Government, which had failed to protect Don David Pacifico (1784‒1854), a Gibraltar Jew and a British subject, from the violence of the Athenian mob. The British fleet, under Admiral Sir William Parker (1817‒1866), was ordered to the Piræus and seized a number of Greek ships to enforce compensation. A vote of censure upon this high-handed proceeding was moved and carried by Lord Stanley (1775‒1851) in the House of Lords. The majority against the Government was thirty-seven. In the House of Commons Mr. J. A. Roebuck (1801‒1879) moved a counter-resolution, expressing confidence in the Government, and Lord Palmerston defended himself in a speech five hours long. He uttered upon that occasion the celebrated phrase “Civis Romanus sum,” and declared that, wherever a British subject might be, the watching eye and the strong arm of England would protect him.

Gladstone, on the other side, pointed out the dangers of this policy. “What, sir,” he asked, “was a Roman citizen? He was the member of a privileged class; he belonged to a conquering race, to a nation that held all others bound down by the strong arm of power. For him there was to be an exceptional system of law, for him principles were to be asserted, and by him rights were to be enjoyed that were denied to the rest of the world. Is such the view of the noble lord as to the relation which is to subsist between England and other countries?”

Such, at all events, was the view of the House of Commons, for Mr. Roebuck’s motion was carried by a majority of forty-six. However, on both sides of the controversy, protection was considered as an obligation involving great and far-reaching responsibilities. This conflict gives us an idea of the difficulties with which the question of the protection of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire was beset.

At the conclusion of this memorable debate, which took place on June 24th, 1850, [Sir Robert] Peel [Bart.] (1788‒1850), in a brief speech of singular eloquence and wisdom, expressed his “reluctant dissent” from the motion, and uttered his final caution against perverting diplomacy, “the great engine used by civilized society for the purpose of maintaining peace, into a cause of hostility and war.”

Needless to say, the Opposition had no intention whatever of blaming the Government for undertaking the protection of the Jews. There was only a difference of attitude, not one of principle, between the Palmerston Government and the Opposition. The Opposition became alarmed about the dangerous consequences which they thought likely to result from certain steps taken by the Government; the Government, on the other hand, had to consider carefully every new scheme of protection for the Jews, particularly after the conflict with Greece in the Don Pacifico case.

Reviewing the whole period and all the petitions, projects and experiments in connection with the colonization of Palestine by Jews, we see that Great Britain’s protection was considered a “conditio sine qua non” for their success—at least as far as English Jews were interested in the movement. It is the same idea which modern Zionism expressed half a century later in the Basle Programme (1897) by demanding the consent of the Powers in the form of a legal guarantee or public recognition. The formula was different; but the fundamental idea is the same. It means security. The “Civis Romanus” system of Palmerston, a Government which sends a fleet to demand satisfaction for one protected Jew, was justly considered a sufficiently reliable guarantee of security. It is therefore quite clear that when the opponents of modern Zionism half a century later endeavoured to draw a line between the old schemes and efforts on the one hand, and political Zionism on the other, apparently approving of the former and anathematizing the latter, they were merely playing with words, and had no notion of the real facts.

Why did the plans for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine remain unfulfilled? Was it through political changes, for want of preparation, or through the absence of adequate organization on the part of the Jewish people? It is not our business to criticize the past. Let us deal instead with the further development of the idea, which in fact was never dropped, but, on the contrary, continually gained ground.

In 1844 it was proposed to encourage the settlement of the Jews in Palestine by giving them employment on the land. Lady Montefiore writes in her journal:—

“General satisfaction was expressed at the suggestion of a plan which might enable them to obtain an honourable independence. Energy and talent, they said, existed. Nothing was needed but protection and encouragement.” In another letter, referring to the same subject, she writes:—“Our high-spirited nationality, under a judiciously exercised protectorate, might be assisted to work out, in due time, its own civilization, and to become a flourishing autonomous community with an extending commerce.”

From this it is evident that Sir Moses was continuing his efforts under the new circumstances. His correspondence with the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler (1803‒1890) shows that this famous Ecclesiastic was also greatly in sympathy with the idea (Appendix lvi).

At the same time the notion of establishing a Jewish Commonwealth found ardent champions among another section of English-speaking Jews and among Christians of Puritan aspirations in America.

Major Mordecai Manuel Noah was one of the most prominent American Jews. He was Consul of the United States to Morocco from 1813 to 1816. On his return he established the National Advent and afterwards the New York Enquirer, subsequently also a weekly paper, The Times. He was Surveyor of the Port and Sheriff. In 1819 he published a book of his travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.

His attempt to establish a Jewish city of refuge on Grand Island, near Buffalo, is the one incident in his career that caused some sensation; but there was a great deal more of interest in the Major’s life than that famous episode. It would be a great pity indeed were the rest of his career allowed to pass into oblivion. Major Noah would have deserved to be remembered had he never gone to Buffalo, and there dedicated the City of Ararat in the Episcopal Church. It was on the dedication of the Shearith Israel Synagogue in New York City in 1818, seven years before the Ararat episode, that Noah said: “The Jews will possess themselves once more of Syria, and take their rank among the governments of the earth.” Again, in 1844, nineteen years after Ararat, he delivered a public discourse in New York, in which he expressed to an audience of Christians his firm belief in the Restoration of Israel to the Promised Land. The tenacity with which Noah held to his Jewish nationalistic ideas is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that he was so thoroughly American. His great-great-grandfather, he said in one of the addresses referred to, was buried in the Cemetery at Chatham Square. He himself was a great literary and political personality in New York. It was said that he told the best story, rounded the best sentence and wrote the best play of all his contemporaries. He was one of the most prominent editors of the City. He held, at different times, the offices of Consul-General at Tunis, Sheriff of New York County, Surveyor of the Port, and Judge of the Court of Sessions. “No man of his day had a better claim to the title of ‘American,’ yet all his life he cherished the idea of a Restoration of the Jews to Palestine.”

In 1845 he published a Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews, delivered at the Tabernacle on October 28th and December 2nd, 1844. In the Preface to his book he refers to some Christian supporters of the idea, and says:—

“True, the efforts to evangelize them (the Jews) contrary, as I think, to the manifest predictions of the prophets, continue to be unceasing, yet even in this there is charity and good feeling, which cannot fail to be reciprocally beneficial.” He then quotes the letter of the late President of the United States, Mr. Adams, to which we referred above (see Chapter IX.), and draws the attention of the Americans to the idea of Restoration in most forcible and often eloquent language.

Another American, Warder Cresson (1798‒1860), United States Consul in Jerusalem, was a great Zionist in his time. He wrote a book on the subject, in which he says:—

“All the different nations have appointed consuls in Jerusalem, as in anticipation of some very important and general movement; which is regarded with a jealous eye by the Turks, as well as the other European Powers. ‘Britain has had a consul in Jerusalem three years before any other nation, except Prussia; but no sooner did she send a bishop, than France, Russia and Austria sent consuls forthwith; and thus in Jerusalem—which is, in a commercial point of view, but a paltry inland Eastern town, without trade or importance of any kind—sit the five consuls of the Great European powers (as well as one appointed by the United States of America), looking at one another, and it is difficult to say why and wherefore.’ To use the words of Dr. Alexander Keith (1791‒1880): ‘A country which for previous centuries, no man inquired after, excites anew the liveliest interest among the greatest of earthly potentates.’”

Having devoted some considerable time to Biblical study, Cresson embraced the Jewish faith, and after his conversion was named Michael Boaz Israel. He founded a colony in Palestine which was one of the pioneer enterprises of its kind.

Meanwhile, the propaganda in England made considerable progress. The Rev. A. G. H. Hollingsworth aroused public opinion and appealed to the British Government for help for the Jews to regain the land of their fathers. He says:—

“Such objects are worthy of the efforts of a great people. These designs are to be brought into maturity by the settlement and the protection of the Jew in Palestine. It is his native climate and home. There he can feel the deathless energies of his race, and the high destinies of his future. He is poor, he is powerless, he is alone; scattered like iron amid the clay of surrounding nations. But let him ask in peace for the common rights of a subject of Turkey, in a country where the very hills have voices to remind him of what he has been and may be; and under the protecting flag of Victoria, he will be able, divinely permitted, to prove himself possessed of heroic virtues in all that makes man great, noble, religious and free.”

Another famous Englishman, Colonel George Gawler (1796‒1869), Governor of South Australia (1838‒1841), who devoted his whole life to religious and philanthropic pursuits, was more of a political Zionist, and dealt with the question from the standpoint of British politics. He declared:—

“Divine Providence has placed Syria and Egypt in the very gap between England and the most important regions of her colonial and foreign trade, India, China, the Indian Archipelago and Australia. She does not require or wish for increase of territory—already has she (that dangerous boon) more direct dominion than she can easily maintain; but she does most urgently need the shortest and the safest lines of communication to the territories already possessed.... Egypt and Syria stand in intimate connection. A foreign hostile power mighty in either, would soon endanger British trade and communications through the other. Hence the providential call upon her, to exert herself energetically for the amelioration of the condition of both of these Provinces. Egypt has improved greatly by British influence, 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.”

An anonymous author considers it a sign of the times that extraordinary events are announced to take place in regard to Jews. He is the writer of some of the most beautiful passages in Zionist literature by a Christian Englishman (Appendix lvii).

Dr. Thomas Clarke, author of Palestine for the Jews, wrote: “Any one who has studied the features of the past, and watched intently the signs of the present, can see that a terrible convulsion is coming; and if, out of the chaos, Poles, Huns, Magyars, Sclaves and Italians— ... are to be resuscitated, is not also that nation through whom we as Gentiles derive a title to our blessings, and whose ancestor, above four thousand years ago, was the friend of God? And I, as an Englishman, cannot blind myself to the fact that, while it would be an inestimable boon to the house of Israel, it would be also of the greatest possible advantage to us; for if it has been a necessity in times past that the kingdom of Turkey shall exist as a neutral power, and that its boundaries should remain intact as a defence and barrier ... surely, ... the occupation of Palestine by ... the Jews, under the protection of England, must be a greater necessity than ever.... If England, again, is ... relying upon its commerce as the corner-stone of its greatness; if one of the nearest and best channels of that commerce is across the axis of the three great continents; and if the Jews are essentially a trading ... people, what so natural as that they should be planted along that great highway of ancient traffic? Is not the mind struck with astonishment at the contemplation of such a possibility? How the cycles of ages seem to be but the revolutions of the giant wheel of time, and how the past is but the seed ... of the future,... For, in the realisation of what is certainly more than a probability, the now almost forgotten and long buried cities of Palmyra, Babylon, Bagdad and especially of ancient Balsorah (sic), at the junction of the two great Eastern rivers—a position scarcely second to Constantinople itself,—must again become emporiums (sic) of wealth, and rise to a splendour and importance equal, or superior, to what they were in the acme of their glory.— ... Syria must be occupied by a trading ... people—it lies in the great route of ancient commerce; and were the Ottoman Power to be displaced, that old commercial route would immediately re-open. Trade would flow once more in its old channel across Syria and along the valley of the Euphrates ... and in what more skilful hands could the exchanges betwixt the East and the West be placed? In his harbours would the ships of Europe discharge the fabrics and manufactures of the industrious West, and return laden with the wine and oil, and silks and gems of the East. In fine, Syria would be safe only in the hands of a brave, independent, and spirited people, deeply imbued with the sentiment of nationality,... Such people we have in the Jews.... Restore them their nationality and their country once more, and there is no power on earth that could ever take it from them.”