"The Dream of centuries is about to be realized" To be a free people in our own land.

From the  Sunday June 17 1917 New York Tribune: The Birth of New Nations: Palestine.

 From the article:

The problem of the Jew is nearly 2000 years old. It first came into existence when Rome destroyed in 70 AD the Jewish state in Palestine exiling its inhabitants. Robbed of its home, the Jewish nation was dispersed to all corners of the Roman empire. There seemed little chance it would survive as an individual entity...

Wandering from land to land, spreading all over the surface of the globe, the people without a country continued to stick to their national institutions and to passionately yearn for their lost fatherland...

Since the Jewish religion is intensely a national one, fundamentally bound up with the Holy land, it is a big mistake to regard the Jews as professors of a certain faith only. The Jews are a nation. Their religion is almost entirely devoted to the perpetuation of that idea

The return to Palestine became a subject for daily prayer in the synagogue immediately after the disruption of the Jewish state. The fact that it is almost 2,000 years since the event occurred should not in the least affect the Jewish claim to Palestine. If anything, it should add to the strength of the claim.

Our eyes have always looked to the east.

Many Jewish leaders turned their eyes toward the holy land, seeking a way towards the return of the scattered Jews to the land of their fathers...Barren Palestine became the center of pilgrimage to many patriotic Jews.  With enormous energy the immigrants tackled the difficulties of cultivating the long neglected soil of the Holy Land.

The article concludes:

"The dream of centuries is about to be realized" , and indeed it has. Again, we are a free people in our own land.