Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine - The World War I ...

48 ZIONISM AND PALESTINE
thanking Dr. Weizmann for allaying apprehensions
which, but for his exposition, might have been aroused.
He prayed for unity of aim, which alone could bring
prosperity to Palestine, and he quoted, generalizing, a
Hadith, a tradition of the Prophet, "Our rights are
your rights and your duties our duties".
It had been from a sense of previousness, of inopportunity,
that Clayton and I had regretted the immediate
arrival of the Zionist Commission ; certainly not from
anti-Zionism, still less from anti-Semitism. We believed
(and I still believe) that there was in the world no
aspiration more nobly idealistic than the return of the
Jews to the Land immortalized by the spirit of Israel.
Which nation had not wrought them infinite harm ?
Which had not profited by their genius? Which of all
was more steeped in the Book of Books or had pondered
more deeply upon the prophecies thereof than England ?
The Return stood indeed for something more than a
tradition, an ideal or a hope. It was The Hope—
Miqveh Yisroel, the Gathering of Israel, which had never
deserted the Jews in their darkest hour—when indeed
the Shechinah had shone all the brighter,
"a jewel hung in ghastly night".
In the triumph of the Peace the wrongs of all the world
would be righted ; why not also the ancient of wrongs ?
Zionism Was created by the Diaspora; throughout
the ages it has slept but never died. A remnant shall
return 1 , shall return with joy ; "next year in Jerusalem".
In Russia, where Jewish suffering if not bitterest certainly
lasted longest, there appeared in the last century the
Hovevéi Tsiyon, 2 the Lovers of Zion, burning with the
1 Some, however, hold that all such prophecies were fulfilled
when the Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylon.
1 The conventional spelling "Choveve Zion" gives a false impression
to the English reader.