ABSTRACT
Parallel with this developing interest in many sections of the British people in Palestine as a centre of Jewry was a similar growth of interest among Jews in England and in other countries. The first English Jew to take an interest in Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine was Sir Moses Montefiore, for half of the nineteenth century the most prominent and most influential Jew in England, respected and, towards the end of his life, revered by Gentile and Jew alike. Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist Movement, was a Viennese journalist and writer, resident in Paris. Dr. Weizmann, aware of the consistent pro-Jewish attitude of British Governments over a period of centuries, felt that only with British support and sympathy would the future of the Jews in Palestine have any chances of success. The English Jews felt little interest in the proposed creation of a Jewish state.
