Abu Mazen's Mendacious Historical Monologue -- Did Cromwell Found Zionism?

Link added 3-21-2018

One of Mahmoud Abbas' elaborate and ludicrous lies was that Oliver Cromwell, the leader of Puritan, Protestant forces in the English civil war against the king and his established church, the Anglican church, had founded Zionism. I often find Abbas' speeches to be entertaining, though offensive at the same time. He also claimed that Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism, another one of Abbas' large fibs that I will take up later.

But back to Cromwell. Abbas claims that after staging a coup against the king and founding a republic, Cromwell:

came up with the idea of transferring the Jews from Europe to the Middle East, to this region, because they [who are they? Was Cromwell a plural person?] wanted this region to become an advanced post to protect the interests and the convoys coming from Europe to the East. He asked Holland, which owned the largest fleet in the world, to transfer the Jews. . . [here]

First, let's get rid of the last lie in the paragraph, that about Holland. England and Holland were bitter enemies in that period and indeed fought several wars with the main motive probably being trade competition. They were hardly about to cooperate.

Now did Cromwell found Zionism? Is there a tiny smidgen of truth buried among Abbas' lies? Did Cromwell have any contact or connection with Zionism? Actually: Yes. But as usual with Abbas, if he has anything to do with the truth, he reverses it.
Now, living in Amsterdam while Cromwell was the ruler of England was a rabbi named Menasseh ben Israel [מנשה בן ישראל]. Rabbi Menasseh was interested in the redemption of the Jewish people from their exile. And he had a theory: If the Jews were totally scattered throughout the world, if the Jewish Diaspora covered every country, then that would be the trigger to begin the messianic redemption of the Jews that would return them to their own land, the Land of Israel. Now to accomplish this total dispersion, Jews had to be everywhere. But just across the North Sea from Amsterdam was the island of Great Britain where England was located. Jews had been expelled from there in 1290. And still in the 1650s Jews were not allowed to live there, at least not openly as Jews. "The complete redemption would come after the complete Exile. This motivated him to seek permission for Jews to return to and settle in England. For this purpose he wrote a book, The Hope of Israel, which opens with a dedication to the parliament and state council" of England. "The book aroused the interest of Oliver Cromwell, the ruler of the state. . . In 1655 Menasseh ben Israel was given permission to come to England" [Jaacov Avishai, אלף אישים (Tel Aviv: Amihai nd), p 518] to plead his case. Many leading Englishmen supported Rabbi Menasseh's plea for readmission. But many others opposed it. So Cromwell decided to allow Jews to come and settle in England quietly without making a public pronouncement on the issue.

The historian Solomon Grayzel reports that the book was originally written in Spanish (maybe called La Esperanza de Israel, published 1650). The rabbi later translated it into Latin and it was this edition that had a dedication to the English parliament.

Grayzel believes that two reasons prompted Cromwell and others to promote the return of Jews to England. 1) The belief that Jews had helped Holland, their rival, become more prosperous and therefore that Jews could help England likewise; & 2) The messianic beliefs and the interest in the Hebrew Bible of many English Protestants at the time which opened them to Menasseh ben Israel's theory. (Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society  1959], pp 495-499). Just by the way, Rabbi Menasseh was friendly with the great painter Rembrandt who painted his portrait.

Now back to Mahmoud Abbas and his lies. We see that a Jew, Rabbi Menasseh, initiated or encouraged a certain interest in the Zionist idea in England. We also see that Cromwell reacted favorably to the rabbi's call to let Jews come back and settle in England. Cromwell did not initiate it. His main reason was likely to foster English trade and prosperity. But he did not collaborate with the Dutch on any scheme to transport Jews to the Land of Israel. And he did not establish any English colonies in the Land of Israel or Syria or Egypt of today. And he no doubt worried more about Dutch competition and rivalry and war with the Dutch rather than with conquering any Arab-inhabited or Arab-ruled land. The main consequence of Cromwell's support for Menasseh ben Israel was that Jews could come to England and openly live as Jews.

Zionism meaning the return of Jews to their Land existed long before Cromwell. It is prophesied in the Bible, such as in the book of Zechariah, and is found in the Jewish daily prayers. It is even prophesied in the Quran. At best, Abbas reverses the truth if he comes anywhere near it. So Abbas has all the credibility of a used car dealer who wears a greasy necktie.
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2-12-2018 BESA Center on Abbas' lying speech [here]

Did Zionism Want Oriental Jews?

Link added at bottom 10-6-2015

There has been some discussion over the years as to whether the Zionist movement wanted Oriental [Mizrahi] Jews to take part in the Zionist enterprise. Much is written about Zionism based on ignorance. So we will quote from the writings of two of the theoreticians of Zionism, Leon Pinsker and Theodor Herzl, both of whom wrote their main Zionist works in the 19th century. Whereas Pinsker was more of a theoretician, Herzl actually founded the Zionist Organization in 1897.

Writing in 1882, Pinsker was under the impact of the widespread pogroms/massacres of Jews in 1881in the southwest of the Russian Empire, Ukraine,  after the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II by a so-called "radical revolutionary" group. That same year saw formation of the Lovers of Zion (Hibbat Tsiyon [Zion] or Hovevey Tsiyon [Zion]) groups in that area. 1882 saw formation of the BILU group also in the Ukraine. The BILU actually came to the Land of Israel and settled there, albeit meeting many difficulties. Pinsker was concerned about the welfare of Jews throughout the world, not only in the Russian Empire. He thought that non-Jewish societies could tolerate Jews only in small numbers. In his book of that same year, he wrote:

But there exists, as we have said already, a point of saturation that the Jews must not go beyond under the penalty of finding themselves exposed to the danger of anti-Jewish persecutions, as in Russia, Rumania, Morocco, etc. . . . It is now high time to create a place of refuge . . . [translated from Autoemancipation! Avertissement d'un Juif Russe a Ses Freres (Paris: Mille et Une Nuits 2006), p 63 (emph. added)]

So Pinsker wrote of Morocco as one of the principal places where Jews were threatened with or suffered from persecutions, like Russia and Rumania. And that Moroccan Jews needed and deserved a refuge as the Russian and Rumanian Jews did.  Georges Bensoussan, the editor of a French edition of Pinsker's book, Autoemancipation!   A Warning from a Russian Jews to His Brothers (first ed. 1882) that I have quoted, remarks in a footnote (p 63) that Pinsker should have added the Persian Jews to his list of most threatened Jewish communities. He goes on to point out that two of these countries, Morocco and Persia, "belong to the Muslim sphere," which, he adds, ought to "defang the legend of an Islamic world tolerant overall towards its minorities." The two countries, at opposite ends of the Islamic world, had never been under Ottoman rule, he points out, which was more tolerant, at least towards the Jews. I add that at that time neither country was under European rule and had not been since the Arab conquest of the two countries in the 7th century [Morocco became a French Protectorate in 1912]. Rumania, by the way, a Christian country, had been under Ottoman control until 1878, just four years before  Pinsker wrote his book.

The facts about oppression of Jews in Persia and Morocco ought to have, but have not, "defanged" the legend of Muslim benevolence toward non-Muslim minorities. Why not? That is an important question in itself.

Now back to our subject with Herzl. He himself was of part Ashkenazic and part Sefardic family background, his father coming from a town near Belgrade, Zemun, that had long been under the Ottoman Empire but was no longer when he was born, although the Ottoman border was close by. Rabbi Alkalai who officiated at a synagogue in that town had lived for several years in his childhood around 1800 in Jerusalem and had  some ideas which later turned up in Herzl's own book, The Jewish State. Herzl was born in 1860, so we can assume that his father and grandfather were living in that town, Zemun, before he was born and knew of Rabbi Alkalai's ideas. Below is a description of Herzl with mention of his intent to negotiate the orderly departure of Jews from various Diaspora countries, including Algeria, then part of France, since 1830, where the persecution of Jews was acute, especially during the Dreyfus Case which was taking place around the time that he wrote The Jewish State. In Algeria, Jews were persecuted both by Arab Muslims and by French and other European settlers. Today's currently fashionable ideology of Third Worldism sees European Settlers and Arab "natives" in Algeria as irremediably opposed. But they could and did find common cause against the Jews, as much (or more) native to the country as the Arabs (the Arab conquest took place in the 7th century. Jews were there long before.):

Herzl was primarily a man of action who wished to translate his ideas into reality. His basic premise, that Zionism constituted an effective antidote to antisemitism, led him to the conviction that the countries most plagued by this problem were his potential allies. As early as June 9, 1895, he jotted down in his diary, "First I shall negotiate with the Czar regarding permission for the Russian Jews to leave the country … Then I shall negotiate with the German kaiser, then with Austria, then with France regarding the Algerian Jews, then as need dictates." [see here]

That was Herzl's diary, Here is a passage from his book, The Jewish State. He mentions the dangers to Algerian Jews near the beginning of Chapter 2:

Attacks [on Jews- note by Eliyahu] in Parliaments, in assemblies, in the press, in the pulpit, in the street, on journeys—for example, their exclusion from certain hotels—even in places of recreation, become daily more numerous. The forms of persecutions varying according to the countries and social circles in which they occur. In Russia, imposts are levied on Jewish villages; in Rumania, a few persons are put to death; in Germany, they get a good beating occasionally; in Austria, Anti-Semites exercise terrorism over all public life; in Algeria, there are travelling agitators; in Paris, the Jews are shut out of the so-called best social circles and excluded from clubs. Shades of anti-Jewish feeling are innumerable.

Obviously, the claim is false that Zionism was founded with the intention of excluding Jews from Oriental countries.
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Added 6 October 2015-- Shmuel Trigano discusses why Jews left the Arab countries. [here]