Excerpt from Zionism and the Jewish Diaspora At the same time we find that, in spite of the tenacity with which a people will defend the possession of its motherland, a great deal of this patriotism is governed by political considerations. We observe, for instance, that the French in Canada are indifferent to the fate of France; that the Germans in Austria and Switzerland, though once politically united with other Germans in their proximity, are relatively independent of the present German Reich. We have seen in the case of the United States of America that even a determined antagonism may grow up in a colony towards the home of the race. In the case of the Jews, in spite of distance of time and place, there has never been a definite divorce of the people from its religion and its land. It is remarkable that even those who are most insistent on their indifference to Palestine as the homeland of the Jewish people have taken great pains to interest themselves in that country. The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, organisations which before the War competed primarily for the spread not of Jewish but of French and German influences respectively, devoted to Palestine a measure of their resources and energies quite out of proportion to the number of the Jewish inhabitants of that part, of the world. The reason for this instinctive attachment of the Jews to Palestine is to be found in the hold which the Land of Israel has exercised on the people of Israel from the very earliest times. If we go through the Books of Moses, from the call of Abraham till the entry of the children of Israel into the Promised Land, we find that the idea of the possession of that land as an integral part of the purpose and destiny of the people is a dominant note which is never absent in the history and legislation, in the discipline and the religion of those to whom God has given that supreme national blessing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.