Palmerston, The Grandfather of Modern Israel

An excerpt from, “War of Anti-Christ with the Church and Christian Civilization” by George F. Dillon, 1885, Chapter XVII – Lord Palmerston:

It is with difficulty that one can believe that Lord Palmerston knew the veritable secret of Freemasonry, and that for the greater part of his career he was the real master, the successor of Nubius, the Grand Patriarch of the Illuminati, and as such, the Ruler of all the secret societies in the world. As a Statesman, the distinguished nobleman had dealings of a very close character with Mazzini, Cavour, Napoleon III, Garibaldi, Kossuth, and the other leading revolutionary spirits of Europe in his day, but it was never for a moment suspected that he went so far as to accept the supreme direction of the whole dark and complex machinery of organized Atheism, or sacrificed the welfare of the great country he was supposed to serve so ably and so well, to the designs of the terrible secret conclave whose acts and tendencies were so well known to him. But the mass of evidence collected by Father Deschamps and others to prove Lord Palmerston’s complicity with the worst designs of Atheism against Christianity and monarchy—not even excepting the monarchy of England—is so weighty, clear, and conclusive, that it is impossible to refuse it credence.

An excerpt from, “Chapter IV – Freemasonry”: 

The Jewish connection with modern Freemasonry is an established fact everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish formulas employed by Masonry, the Jewish traditions which run through its ceremonial, point to a Jewish origin, or to the work of Jewish contrivers. It is easy to conceive how such a society could be thought necessary to protect them from Christianity in power. It is easy also to understand how the one darling object of their lives is the rebuilding of the Temple. Who knows but behind the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge on Christians to persecute the Church and to destroy it, there lies a hidden hope to reconstruct their Temple, and at the darkest depths of secret society plotting there lurks a deeper society still which looks to a return to the land of Juda and to the re-building of the Temple of Jerusalem. One of the works which Antichrist will do, it is said, is to re-unite the Jews, and to proclaim himself as their long looked-for Messias. As it is now generally believed that he is to come from Masonry and to be of it, this is not improbable, for in it he will find the Jews the most inveterate haters of Christianity, the deepest plotters, and the fittest to establish his reign.

An excerpt from, “Britain in Palestine, 1838-1882: The Roots of the Balfour Policy” by Alexander Schölch, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.22 No.  1, Autumn 1992:

 Yet up to the end of World War I, the exclusive control of the “Holy Land”-as Palestine was called until the establishment of the British Mandate-by a single European power seemed unthinkable. From the opening of the “Holy Land” to Europe’s political and religious-cultural penetration during the Egyptian domination of Syria and Palestine from 1831 to 1840, the European powers-and chiefly England, Russia, France, and Prussia (Germany)-all endeavored to build up and expand their presence in Palestine. This they did particularly through religious-cultural means, including the “protection” of religious minorities. Toward this end, each energetically supported the philanthropical, cultural, and missionary activities of its own citizens.

European interests in nineteenth-century Palestine can be discussed on two levels: on the level of politics among the European governments, and on the level of the nongovernmental and social aspirations, trends, and movements in the context of which nineteenth-century European policy on Pales- tine developed. Among the latter must be counted both the notion of a “Peaceful Crusade,” which was widespread on the continent, and traditional Christian and Jewish interests in Palestine, especially the English chiliastic concept of the “restoration of the Jews.” Demands for European colonization of Palestine, often connected with the aforementioned trends, were tied to efforts of European Jews even before the rise of Zionism.

A study of European interests in Palestine would thus show that the Zionist movement represented only one of many European movements during the nineteenth century that were dedicated to the “reclamation” and colonization of Palestine. The Zionist movement did not appear in its institutional form until relatively late in the game. Moreover, until British mandatory domination was established, it was by no means certain that the Zionist movement would triumph over rival aspirations. [1] The fact that it did triumph was not the result of the skill of Zionism’s representatives or the magnanimity of individual British politicians. Rather, it was the consequence of the constellation of World War I powers and a partial convergence of interests of British imperialism and the Zionist movement. The English “Gentile Zionists” of the nineteenth century, the forerunners of the non-Jewish supporters of Zionism, had carried out the ideological advance work for this convergence.

The point of departure for all these developments was the opening of the “Holy Land” to Europe’s political and religious-cultural penetration, which began during the period from the end of the 1830s to the Crimean War. In 1831, Muhammad ‘Ali, ruler of Egypt, sent his army, commanded by his son Ibrahim, against his sovereign, the sultan in Constantinople. He conquered the entire geographical region of Syria, which included Palestine. To secure the goodwill of the European powers, especially England, in the face of his expansionist policies, Muhammad ‘Ali did two things. First, he eliminated all forms of open discrimination against the members of non-Muslim religious communities in the areas he had conquered. As subjects of the new ruler, these people had the same rights as the majority and even became to some degree privileged. Second, he facilitated political and religious-cultural penetration by the Europeans by permitting them to open consulates in the interior, and to expand and institutionalize religious missionary activities.

The most important event in Palestine in this connection was the establishment of a British consulate in Jerusalem in 1838. Because the Ottomans had to continue with Muhammad ‘Ali’s policy even after the Egyptians were expelled in 1840, Jerusalem witnessed the entrance of still other European consuls [2] and religious dignitaries. As a result, the European public’s interest in the “Holy Land” markedly increased. Thus, Palestine fell into that whirlpool of opposing European interests: the Great Powers’ “Eastern question” of the nineteenth century. Once the “Holy Land” had come into view, inordinate desires were awakened, plans were devised, and visions were given free reign. None of these, however, was politically feasible, despite the fact that the sultan would not have been able to drive the Egyptians out of Syria and Palestine without European (primarily British and Austrian) help.

Given that European intervention was undertaken for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the Ottoman Empire (Britain’s Middle Eastern policy in particular held the conservation of the empire’s core as an urgent goal), there could be no question of partitioning Ottoman territories. The problem-the nineteenth century’s “Eastern question”-was how much of the Ottoman Empire had to be preserved, and in what form, in order to protect the interests of the European powers. Since European penetration could not take the form of territorial control, then, it could only be a matter of influence. One of the most important vehicles through which the European powers tried to exercise their influence was the “protection” of non-Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire.