p. 2 | Zionist Movement

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 25, 1915

Zionist Movement

The chairman of the provisional executive committee for Zionistic affairs, Mr. Louis D. Brandeis, delivered November 9, in the Memorial Continental Hall, at Washington, D. C., a lecture on Zionism, in which he first explained what Zionism is and what it is not:—

First, it is not a movement to transport all the Jews in the world to Palestine. That, indeed, would be impossible, for Palestine is only about the size of Massachusetts. There are 14,000,000 Jews in the world, and Palestine could not accommodate more than one fifth of the number.

Second, it is not a movement to compulsorily transport a single Jew to Palestine. For Zionism is preeminently a movement of freedom, to give the Jews more liberty, not less, the liberty which practically every other people in the world enjoys—the liberty to live in the land of their birth or adoption or to go to the land of their fathers.

Third, neither is it a movement to wrest the sovereignty of Palestine from the Turkish government.

Zionism is a movement to give the Jews a home in the land of their fathers, where the Jewish life may be lived normally and naturally, and where the Jews may in time hope to constitute a majority of the population, and look forward to what we have come to call home rule. — Washington Post, November 10.

We do not think, however, that the Scriptures justify the expectation of even this much of a return of the Israel after the flesh to their native land of Palestine. It is the spiritual Israel to whom the promises of restoration are now to be fulfilled.