Faisal bin Hussein Quotes
We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement …. We all wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.
Faisal, 1885-1933, (Faisal bin Hussein), Emir of the Hashemites, King of Transjordan [Jordan], Letter to Felix Frankfurter, March 3, 1919
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is the first statement of a Jewish nation since Biblical Times.
He also expressed his pleasure with the British Balfour Declaration granting the Jews their own country in part of Palestine ({594001}). Wilson had earlier committed himself to support the Zionist claim for Palestine. See {585124}.
Wilson did so later: {585123}. Wilson was not the only early American President who had “Zionist” aspirations for Palestine. See John Adams quotation: {585141}.
There was a strong movement among the early religious Christian Americans to go to the Holy Land to reclaim the Kingdom God promised in the Bible. American missionaries went to the Middle East. See {585147} for another early American politicians view.
The advocacy of the Jewish Return to the Holy Land was not first suggested or stated by European Jewish Zionists. Brightman was not only the first Christian to urge the return of the Jews, but the secon person of any faith to suggest it. He was only preceded by a Jewish refugee from the Spanish Inquisition--Joseph Nasi in 1561.
The recommendation for partition was the basis of the decision of the United Nations in 1949 to partition Palestine.
of the Jewish refugees from the German concentration camps
Mr. Brandeis was Louis D. Brandeis, first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and one of the leading Zionist world leaders. Theodor Herzel is generally credited with being the father of Zionism but his treatise was written in 1895. Four years earlier, Blackstone, a Methodist Evangelical Minister, had drafted what has come to be called the Blackstone Memorial, which was a petition to President Benjamin Harrison to have American foreign policy work to return the Jews to Palestine where they would have a state and government. The petition was signed by over 400 notables. Straus, Brandeis and other Jewish Zionists credited Blackstone even though history has almost forgotten him. See {614860} for quotes from the Blackstone Memorial.
Olmert was speaking for a significant minority of Israelis who believe that God consecrated the land of Palestine to the Jewish People and all other peoples who controlled it did so by conquest. So their logic is for those who do not believe in the Bible and give no modern credence to God’s will, the Jews have no taken back the land by conquest which is the way the Palestinians and all of the many peoples had controlled that land. For believers, the Jews have the highest right; for non-believers, their right of conquest is no weaker than any of the others.
This quotation is very surprising for most people. Reading the text alone, most of us would assume that it came from someone when the Zionist movement was fighting for a Jewish homeland in what is now Israel. Or just before the UN decision in 1947 to partition Palestine. However, it came from one of our founding fathers in Colonial times. Adams was by no means the only Founding Father with this point of view. Fundamentalist Protestants have put much credence in God’s granting the area for the Jewish People—then as today.
There was a strong movement among the religious Christian Americans to go to the Holy Land to help the Jews reclaim the Kingdom God promised in the Bible. American missionaries went to the Middle East and even an early American President was enthusiastic about Jews reclaiming their kingdom. See {585141}.
