Abe Lincoln's Secretary of State William H. Seward On Jewish Majority In Jerusalem

I've written before that as a reporter, Karl Marx confirmed that Jews were a majority in Jerusalem as early as 1854.

Emet m'Tsiyon has written that Karl Marx apparently used diplomatic and historical sources about the Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

Now we have a new, unexpected source that Jews were a majority in Jerusalem already in the 19th century.

On his blog I*Consult, Lenny Ben-David writes how President Lincoln's Secretary of State Describes Jerusalem in 1871, Attends Friday Night Services at the Hurva Synagogue:

William H. Seward served as President Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State. On the night of Lincoln's assassination Seward was attacked in his home by one of Booth's co-conspirators and was seriously wounded.

But he survived, and in 1871 traveled the world and visited Jerusalem where he described the population, visited the "Wailing Wall," and even participating in Friday night services, apparently at the Hurva synagogue.

In an excerpt from his 788-page book Travels around the World, Seward writes:

We have done so, and we have found it neither a short nor an easy promenade. The city occupies two ridges of a mountain promontory, with the depression or valley between them. The walls of the modern Turkish city have been so contracted with the decrease of the population, as to exclude large portions of the, ancient city. Jerusalem is now divided according to its different classes of population. The Mohammedans are four thousand, and occupy the northeast quarter, including the whole area of the Mosque of Omar. The Jews are eight thousand, and have the southeast quarter. These two quarters overhang the Valley of Jehoshaphat and the brook Kedron. The Armenians number eighteen hundred, and have the southwest quarter; and the other Christians, amounting to twenty-two hundred, have the northwest quarter, which overlooks the Valley of Hinnom....

Read the whole thing. Ben-David's excerpts are fascinating.

The key point here is that Seward confirms what Karl Marx wrote, that at the time of their visits, in the 1800's, the Jewish population of Jerusalem was double that of the Arabs.

Another case of historical fact the pro-Palestinian propagandists want you to ignore.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jerusalem and Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx.