Jewish Return Quotes
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.
This quotation shows that in 1870 there was already a Jewish Zionist return to Palestine from Europe and the US well underway. They were welcomed by the Islamic Ottoman government. Some Arabs have developed a propaganda narrative that claims that Jews were not in Palestine and Jerusalem in particular until the British Mandate after WWI where the Christians let them in against the desire of the Muslims. Some of these same people claim that there never was a Jewish Kingdom in the area of Palestine nor were there substantial numbers of Jews every in Jerusalem and Palestine. This evidence is just one of the many ranging from Muslim Ottoman Turkish land deeds and other Jewish ownership documents to the Roman Census of 7 AD showing the large Jewish Population in Egypt as well as what we now call Palestine and Israel.
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}.
