[¹] The Final Exodus; or, the Restoration to Palestine of The Lost Tribes, ... with a description of the Battle of Armageddon, ... as deduced wholly from prophecy. London:... 1854....
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.”[¹]
[¹] India and Palestine: or, the Restoration of the Jews, viewed in relation to The Nearest Route to India.... By Thomas Clarke, M.D.... Manchester: ... (pp. 12–15). p. vi., Wilmslow, July, 1861.
CHAPTER XXVII.
EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
Christianity and Judaism—Disraeli’s character—Jewish features—Alroy—Tancred—The defence of Jewish rights—Oriental policy.
The most original combination of an Englishman and a Jew was Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1887), Earl of Beaconsfield (1876), whom Zionists may claim as one of the greatest representatives of their movement. Was Lord Beaconsfield a Christian or a Jew? For Jews the question is satisfactorily answered by their instinct of sympathy. Lord Beaconsfield felt towards the members of his race as a Jew feels for his fellow-Jews. That being the test, Lord Beaconsfield proved himself a good Jew in that respect. In religious matters, however, Lord Beaconsfield was a Christian—and a Zionist.
He was purely Jewish by descent, and was the eldest son of Isaac D’Israeli (1766–1848), the author of The Curiosities of Literature (1791), The Genius of Judaism (1833), etc., by his wife Miriam (Maria), a daughter of Naphtali (d. 1808) de Solomon Basevi of Verona, Italy. He was born in London on Friday, 21 December, 1804, and was initiated into the Abrahamic covenant on the following Friday, 26 Tebet, 5565, by David Abarbanel Lindo (1772–1852). Isaac D’Israeli severed his connection finally with the Bevis Marks synagogue in March, 1817, and on the 31 July following, at the instigation it is said of Samuel Rogers (1763–1855), the banker poet, the future Premier was baptised at the parish church of St. Andrew, Holborn. In his public conduct and pronouncements he proved undeniably that an Englishman, by birth a Jew, can be as much an Englishman as any descendant of Saxon, Norman, or Dane living in these islands, and can share with as warm a glow the common sentiment of patriotism that unites Englishmen round their ancient throne and institutions.
Disraeli was a living monument of the greatness of the Jewish race, of its capacity to produce individuals equal in mental stature to the loftiest among mankind. What he thought of his ancestral and of his adopted faith respectively may be gathered from the well-known words in one of his earlier writings: “Christianity is Judaism for the multitude,” a sentence which to his brethren in race is equivalent to saying: “Ye are the salt of the earth.” The perseverance and zeal which acknowledged no defeat and produced such extraordinary successes were essentially Jewish. The most superficial acquaintance with Jews is sufficient to reveal the fact that there is no Jewish trait more distinctive than this unconquerable determination. It is a heritage bequeathed to them by their ancestors. With the many different experiences of a race dispersed in every corner of the globe, without a home for nearly twenty centuries, hunted from country to country, carrying their lives in their hands, and bound to be on the alert for every emergency, it is not strange that the Jews display great resourcefulness.
The Disraeli family had been expelled by the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, in the fifteenth century, and found an asylum in Italy. Two centuries and a half later, Benjamin (1730–1816) [de Isaac] Israeli of Cento, in Ferrara, Italy, grandfather of the Earl of Beaconsfield, settled in England. Thus the experience stored in the mind of a typical Jew like Beaconsfield represents more than a single trait of heredity; it is a combination of such traits. But what was most Jewish in him was his affection for the Holy Land. This pious feeling, which he shared with his race, became with him a tremendous power; it influenced his policy and caused him to consolidate England’s power in the East. He also constantly supported every movement towards Jewish emancipation.