Obama couldn’t have been more wrong.
The roots of Jewish aspirations for a state — what we call Zionism — run much deeper in the cycle of history. The quest for Jewish statehood did not germinate in European persecution — not in the Holocaust, not in the Spanish Inquisition, not in the systematic slaughter of Jews during the Crusades.
To trace Zionist roots, one must rewind the historical tape to a non-European setting some four thousand years ago. The genesis of Zionism starts with the Book of Genesis.
There, in Chapter 12, is the first flicker of Zionism:
Now the Lord said unto Abram: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the LAND that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great NATION, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and BE THOU A BLESSING.”