![\"Lt.-Col.](\"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Lt.-Col.jpg\")
<\/a>Lt.-Col. John Patterson<\/p><\/div>
\n\u201cI will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”(Genesis 12:3)
\nOn November 10th the remains of Lt.-Col. John Henry Patterson and those of his wife Frances (\u201cFrancie\u201d) Helena were interred at Moshav Avihayil in central Israel, near Netanya, where many of the men he commanded are buried. <\/p>\n
Now the spirit of this great lover of Zion rests with those he fought with so boldly as part of Israel\u2019s first organized fighting units, the Zion Mule Corps and Jewish Legion which saw service as a part of the British army in World War I at the battle of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey and in the Jordan Valley, fighting the Ottoman Turks.<\/p>\n
Not unlike the great humanitarian Oskar Schindler, the German Catholic who risked his life to save 1200 Jews during World War II and the Holocaust, Patterson too was a non-Jew, raised in an Irish Catholic home, who became a dedicated Christian Zionist and who is credited with being a central figure in the formation of the early Jewish defense force in pre-State Israel. <\/p>\n
With such figures as Zeev Jabotinsky, the founder of Etzel, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi the rightwing pre-State political movement that fought the British and called on European Jewry to immigrate to Mandate Palestine before the Holocaust, and Zionist activist and military fighter Joseph Trumpeldor, Patterson formed the Jewish Legion which fought valiantly in the first world war. Jabotinsky is quoted as saying of Patterson, \u201cNever in Jewish history has there been in our midst a Christian friend of his understanding and devotion.\u201d
\n\u201cPray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee.\u201d (Psalm 122:6)<\/p>\n
Lt.-Col. Patterson was a true Christian Zionist who saw in the Jewish people\u2019s longing for a homeland the fulfillment of Bible prophecy in his time. Patterson was born on the 10th of November 1867, in Forgney, Ballymahon, County Westmeath, Ireland, to a Protestant father and Roman Catholic mother. At the age of 17 (lying about his age but looking older than his years) he joined the British Army and rose quickly through the ranks reaching the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. <\/p>\n
Lt.-Col. Patterson fought in the Boer War and subsequently WWI. In his later years he moved to California with his wife Francie and died there seven years later. During his lifetime he maintained a close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s father, Ben-Zion who was a member of the Irgun (Etzel) and its historian. Prime Minister Netanyahu\u2019s older brother Lt.-Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, who was the commander of the elite Israeli army commando unit Sayeret Matkal and who was the sole causality at the 1976 Entebbe raid which he commanded, was named after him. <\/p>\n
In commemoration of the interment of Lt.-Col. Patterson\u2019s ashes in his beloved Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote in a letter to all those involved: \u201cLt.-Col. Patterson was one of the founders of the Jewish Legion, the first Jewish military force since the Bar Kochba Revolt and the basis upon which the IDF was established. My parents always spoke warmly of Lt.-Col. Patterson, who worked alongside my father in the 1940s in the US to promote the Zionist idea. When my older brother was born, my father called him Yonatan [Jonathan] after Lt.-Col. Patterson and my grandfather Natan. Lt.-Col. Patterson attended Yoni\u2019s circumcision and gave him a silver cup engraved with the words \u2018To my beloved godson Yonatan from Lt.-Col. John Henry Patterson.\u2019 This was a link between the commander of the renewed Jewish force and one of the future military commanders of the State of Israel.\u201d
\nTo be continued \u2026<\/p>\n
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