THIRD MEMORANDUM
Historical survey of the waves of Jewish immigration into Palestine from the arab conquest to the first zionist pioneers. (640-1882)

I. Introductory.

The object of the following survey is to show how modern Jewish immigration was preceded by successive waves of immigration to Palestine in the ordinary, practical sense of the term. We intend to prove in the light of historical evidence that long before a ship brought the first modern Zionist immigrants to Jaffa in 1882, Jews from all parts of the Diaspora had been coming to the Holy Land. There is no truth in the contention sometimes put forward that the earlier immigrants to Palestine were only aged Jews, spending the last years of their lives in prayer and devotion in this country. We intend to prove that the early immigrants were also builders of the Yishuv, and that like their successors, they were drawn to the country partly by a deep sentimental attachment to the Holy Land, and partly by the life of unbearable humiliation they suffered in the Diaspora. Constant spiritual and physical contact, therefore, always existed between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel, with corresponding beneficial effects on Jewish life in Palestine.

Before the unprecedented catastrophe that befell the Jewish people in our own generation, two similar events in the history of Israel a permanent imprint on their lives. These were the Spanish exile, and the Russian pogroms. The latter brought in their wake the renascence of Jewish agricultural settlement in this country, while the former led to the revival of important urban and rural centres which were later expanded and strengthened by the successive waves of Ashkenazi immigrants which followed during the next four hundred years. Without the so-called "Old Yishuv", the modern Yishuv outside the confines of of the walls of the old towns would have been inconceivable. Without the old "Love of Zion", the modern "Love of Zion" with all its revolutionary implications, would have been unimaginable. Without the deep mystical faith which drove the earlier immigrants so that at times they assumed the proportions of messianic movements, the intense new faith in the revival of the people of Israel in the Land of Israel, the deep longing for the soil, of the builders of our modern Yishuv would now be incomprehensible.

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