The need to remember Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888)1
Many years before Theodor Herzl’s programmatic text Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State)(1896), which ultimately led to the founding of the State of Israel, the non-Jewish Laurence Oliphant set to work on a plan for the settlement of Jews in Palestine.
Oliphant had experienced, especially on his trips to Russia and eastern Europe, the growing oppression of the Jews and wanted to create a liberating safety valve for it. He negotiated with the Turkish Sultan, to whose domains Palestine belonged, and with the British government, which approved his proposal. A region east of Jerusalem and the River Jordan was selected for the settlement. With his wife Alice, he relocated to Haifa and the land of the Druze (Daliat-el-Karmel), where long ago the prophet Elijah had fought the priests of Baal, near Mt. Carmel, to which Pythagoras had once journeyed.
Oliphant learned Hebrew, and his wife Arabic, so that they could work together with the neighbouring residents who they very much esteemed, no less than the Druze, who believed in reincarnation. In addition, Oliphant worked to realise a railway line project from Haifa to Damascus and wrote books.
Oliphant found a helper and friend in the person of the poet Naphtali Herz Imber (1856-1909), the composer of the song which would later become the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah”. As a child, Imber was called “Herzele”, an unconscious allusion to Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), a very different character.
After the first Zionist Congress in Basel (1897), Herzl became the actual trailblazer for the State of Israel, which was founded in 1948. The dualism with the Palestinians had already been preprogrammed into the situation by the “Balfour Declaration” (1917)as well as by the endless attempts at mediation, which were doomed to fail. Herzl became a dazzling new Messiah, like Sabbatai Zevi in the 17th century, whose actions proved to be just as unfruitful.
Oliphant’s vision had much broader, more humanitarian aims, of which Israel today has completely lost sight. They will be able to come alive again when the end of the current destruction becomes conceivable.
An appropriate evaluation of Oliphant’s efforts, which have been regarded by many Jews with enthusiasm, can be found in the introduction to his book Life in the Holy Land (new edition, 1976) written by Rechavam Ze’evi. “With remarkably prophetic prescience”, writes Ze’evi “he foresaw that Jerusalem would become a great apple of discord between nations and religions and that much blood would be shed over it.”
That Laurence Oliphant, out of supranational motives, was the first to become active in the Holy Land on behalf of oppressed Jewish people enables us to hope that insurmountable boundaries will not have been set to his activity as has been the case with the narrow focus of Zionism.
T.H. Meyer
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1 Editorial to Der Europäer Vol. 28/No.5, March 2024