Theodor Herzl Knew More about Early Christian Zionism Than Anyone Realized

July 10 2024

In 1891, an American evangelical lay leader named William Blackstone wrote a memorandum (or “memorial”) calling for the U.S. to take an active role in working toward the restoration of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland, collected the signatures of 413 of America’s most prominent people, and delivered it to then-President Benjamin Harrison. This was a full five years before Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State. Historians have generally assumed that Blackstone’s efforts were little known in Europe, and that Herzl only found out about them later on. Philip Earl Steele has found evidence to the contrary. Of equal importance, he notes the influence on Blackstone of the pre-Herzlian Zionist movement that began in Russia in the 1880s:

In 1888 Blackstone sailed to England to attend a missionary conference, after which he and his daughter Flora journeyed to the Holy Land, where they travelled about on horseback, visiting not only the Christian pilgrimage sites, but also many of the new moshavot (settlements) established earlier in the decade during the First Aliyah. . . . Hence, once back in Chicago in 1889, Blackstone began to reach out to both Jewish and Christian leaders and was soon laying plans for the famous conference [that gave birth to the Blackstone memorial]. Among the several rabbis it featured was the prime mover behind Chicago’s Reform Sinai Temple, Bernhard Felsenthal, who at the opening session delivered the bluntly titled address, “Why Israelites do not accept Jesus as their messiah.”

These facts certainly belie widespread claims that evangelical Zionism has been indifferent to the fate of Jews themselves, or is simply an engine for their conversion. As for Herzl:

One of the first German-language newspapers to cover the Blackstone Memorial was the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung. Herzl deemed his literary career to have begun with that Viennese paper when he won first prize in its competition for best feuilleton in May 1885. Over the next five years he wrote for the [paper] in various capacities, and continued reading it thereafter. On March 22, 1891, the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung ran an approximately 650-word piece titled, “The Re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel.” It begins with an account of a recent local lecture on scriptural prophecies, . . . then pivots to the United States and gives [a] report on the Blackstone Memorial.

To Steele, there can be “no valid doubts” that Herzl was unaware of this and similar reports. Moreover, Steele has discovered actual correspondence between the two following the First Zionist Congress.

Read more at Fathom

More about: Christian Zionism, History of Zionism, Philo-Semitism, Theodor Herzl

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023