Summary
Presbyterian minister from Chicago whose 1891 petition for Palestine to be given to the Jews as a national home is presented in Perceptions of Palestine as one of the earliest U.S. attempts to generate support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, coming from a Protestant missionary (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 345-359).
Details
- Blackstone visited Palestine and Syria in 1889, saw Palestine’s potential for agricultural and commercial development, and concluded it should be given to the Jews as a national home to alleviate their suffering (lines 345-359 / printed p.23-24).
- Two years later he presented a petition to President Benjamin Harrison for which he had collected the signatures of 413 prominent non-Jewish Americans, including governors, congressmen, judges, clergymen, editors and business leaders, among them John D. Rockefeller (lines 345-359).
- In 1916 the Presbyterian General Assembly passed a resolution, sponsored by the same Reverend William Blackstone, favouring establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine — given in the Wilson chapter as evidence that U.S. Protestants were not unanimous in support of the Arab cause (lines 407-413).