The first theoretic exponent of this new movement, called "Love of Zion," [1] was M.L.Lilienblum, who in a former stage of radicalism had preached the need of religious reforms in Judaism.

[2] As far back as in the autumn of the first pogrom year Lilienblum published a series of articles in which he interpreted the idea of Palestinian colonization, which had but recently sprung to life, in the light of a common national task for the whole of Jewry.

Lilienblum endeavored to show that the root of all the historic misfortunes of the Jewish people lay in the fact that it was in all lands an alien element which refuses to assimilate in its entirety with the dominant nation--with the landlord, as it were.

The landlord tolerates his tenant only so long as he finds him convenient; let the tenant make the slightest attempt at competing with the landlord, and he will be promptly evicted.

During the Middle Ages the Jews were persecuted in the name of religious fanaticism.
Now a beginning has been made to persecute them in the name of national fanaticism, coupled with economic factors, and this "second chapter of our history will no doubt contain many a bloody page." [Footnote 1: A translation of the Hebrew term _Hibbat Zion_.