Speech #930045380

I would also like to offer my best wishes to Israel for continued achievements and good fortune in the years to come. Beginning in the latter part of the 19th century. Jewish emigrants from Europe returned in increasing numbers to their ancestral homeland. which was then under the administration of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Following World War I. the region known as Palestine came under British administration. and the menacing surge of European religious persecution in the 1930s gave impetus to thousands of Jewish refugees to seek haven there. During World War II. Jewish residents of Palestine fought bravely alongside the Allies in the desert war against the Nazi enemy.