Jerusalem. The Biography

memorandum for Palmerston: ‘There’s a country without a nation and God in his wisdom and mercy directs us to a nation without a country.’ *
    ‘It will be part of your duty’, Palmerston instructed Jerusalem vice-consul Young, ‘to afford protection to the Jews generally.’ At the same time he told his ambassador to the Sublime Porte that he should ‘strongly recommend [the sultan] to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine’. In September 1839, Young founded the Jerusalem branch of the London Jews Society. Shaftesbury was exultant, noting in his diary, ‘The ancient city of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations. I shall always remember that God put it into my head to conceive the plan for His honour, gave me the influence to prevail with Palmerston, and provided a man for the situation, who can remake Jerusalem in her glory.’ Shaftesbury’s signet ring was inscribed ‘Pray for Jerusalem’, while (as we have seen) another zealous Victorian fixated with Jerusalem – Sir Moses Montefiore – added Jerusalem to his new coat of arms and inscribed it like a talisman on his carriage, his signet ring and even his bed. Now, in June 1839, Montefiore and his wife Judith returned to Jerusalem, armed with pistols to protect the cash they had raised in London.
    Jerusalem was ravaged by the plague, so Montefiore camped outside on the Mount of Olives where he held court, receiving over 300 visitors. When the plague was ebbing, Montefiore entered the city on a white horse, lent him by the governor, and proceeded to hear petitions and distribute alms to the poverty-stricken Jews. He and his wife were welcomed by all three religions in Jerusalem, but while they were visitingthe Sanctuary in Hebron to the south, a Muslim mob attacked them. They only escaped with their lives thanks to the intervention of Ottoman troops. Montefiore was not discouraged. As he left, this reborn Jew and dedicated imperialist celebrated a similar though of course different messianic fervour as Shaftesbury: ‘O Jerusalem,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘may the city soon be rebuilt in our days. Amen.’
    Shaftesbury and Montefiore both believed in the divine providence of the British empire and the Jewish return to Zion. The righteousness of evangelical zeal and the reborn passion of Jewish dreams of Jerusalem dovetailed neatly to become one of the Victorian obsessions, and it happened that the painter David Roberts returned from Palestine in 1840 just in time to show the public his hugely popular romantic images of a flamboyantly Oriental Jerusalem ripe for British civilization and Jewish restoration. The Jews were in urgent need of British protection because the competing promises of tolerance issued by the sultan and the Albanians provoked a deadly backlash.
    JAMES FINN: THE EVANGELICAL CONSUL
     
    In March 1840, seven Jews in Damascus were accused of killing a Christian monk and his Muslim servant to use their blood for a human sacrifice at Passover. This imaginary scenario was the notorious ‘blood libel’ that had first appeared in Oxford at the time of the Second Crusade in the twelfth century. Sixty-three Jewish children were arrested and tortured to force their mothers to reveal the ‘hiding place of the blood’.
    Even though he had only just returned to London, Sir Moses Montefiore, backed by the Rothschilds, led the campaign to rescue the Damascene Jews from this medieval persecution. Joining forces with the French lawyer Adolphe Cremieux, Montefiore dashed to Alexandria where he canvassed Mehmet Ali to free the prisoners. But only weeks later, there was another case of the ‘blood libel’ in Rhodes. Montefiore sailed from Alexandria to Istanbul where he was received by the sultan whom he persuaded to issue a decree that categorically denied the truth of the ‘blood libel.’ It was Montefiore’s finest hour – but his success was due as much to his nationality as to his often ponderous diplomacy. It was a fine time to be an Englishman in the Middle East.
    Both the sultan and the Albanians were frantically bidding for British favour as the very existence of the Ottoman empire hung in the balance. Jerusalem remained under Ibrahim the Red who ruled much of the Middle East. While France backed the Albanians, Britain tried to satisfytheir appetite while preserving the Ottomans. They offered Palestine as well as Egypt if Ibrahim would withdraw from Syria. It was a