Upon meeting Oliphant in Lwów/Lviv that year, the great Rabbi Samuel Mohilever publicly endorsed him thus: ‘He and his wife wish only for the fulfillment of the words of the prophets that Israel will be restored to its land, and that they should do this in a way that enables [Jews] to keep every detail of the Jewish religion.’ Moreover, ‘In cities and small towns in Russia, Romania, and Galicia’, writes the historian of Zionism Nathan Gelber, ‘you could find in the houses of poor Jews a picture of Oliphant. It would be hung right next to the pictures of the great philanthropists Moses Montefiore and Baron Hirsch.’

Evangelical Christians also lay great store in the prophecy that the Jews would one day be restored to the cradle of their religion and culture. This belief became a political project in the 19th century, once Great Britain had become a global empire capable of contributing to the restoration ‘in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.’ The career of Laurence Oliphant is one of that century’s most illuminating examples of such British efforts.

Throughout his Zionist efforts, Oliphant repeatedly stressed the advantages that Evangelical beliefs offered his plan – as when he noted that the Jews’ restoration to the Holy Land was ‘a favorite religious theory’ that would ‘carry with it the sympathy and support of those who are not usually particularly well versed in foreign policies.’

In 1896, the outstanding Zionist Karpel Lippe of Romania recalled Laurence in his review of Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat as the first of the great Zionist figures of ‘the old trinity’ – comprised of Oliphant, the leading publicist David Gordon and… himself.

Oliphant’s place in ‘the old trinity’ was secured by the many reasons outlined above – as well as by the fact that Oliphant had been central both to the establishment and survival of the new settlements of Rosh Pina and Zichron Ya’acov, founded under the aegis of Lippe, Moses Gaster, and the other Romanian Zionist leaders. Oliphant’s most significant contribution was in providing these moshavot (settlements) with the money they needed direly to survive until Baron Rothschild’s munificence became paramount in Jewish Palestine.

Although Oliphant’s Zionist efforts were an important spark igniting the movement that was to bring about the birth of modern Israel, he did not achieve the political framework for the Jewish polity in Palestine of which he had dreamed. He failed in his bids with the Sultan to win a charter – just as Herzl and the early Zionist Congresses were also to fail. Ultimately, the matter was not to be resolved until General Allenby entered Palestine in the autumn of 1917 and created the physical basis for the Mandate.

Full-length essay published by BICOM’s research journal fathomjournal.org.